Page accepts offer to join Obama's faith council
February 17, 2009
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February 15, 2009
Frank Page figured he would be one of the last religious figures in America that President Obama would want on the advisory council for his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
"Most everyone knows I'm a conservative person in theology as well as in politics, so I was shocked that they would wish for me to be on this council," the pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church and past president of the Southern Baptist Convention told The Greenville News.
But Obama and Joshua DuBois, whom the president named to head the organization, had kept Page in mind since meeting him about a year ago in Pennsylvania, during Page's final months of leading the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
"I was assured by DuBois that this was bipartisan and that they wanted people of varying viewpoints and needed involvement of people of various political and theological differences," Page said.
"And so I prayed about it, talked to some friends about it and felt led to be a part."
The council met for the first time a few days ago at the White House.
His decision to sit at the table with representatives of non-Christian religions and advise a president with whom he disagrees on many social issues met with criticism from some who felt he was selling out his conservative values, Page said.
"Some were very against me being involved in this," he said.
But he felt he could play an important role in helping set the direction for the organization, the successor of a program started by President Bush -- if he is taken seriously.
