Utah To Have Faith-Based Initiative Office

Utah’s Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has just agreed that his state will become the 25th to set up an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, according to yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune. The office will help Utah’s religious and secular charities access federal funding. The predominance of the Mormon Church (LDS) in Utah led previous governors to refrain from setting up such an office out of concern about church-state separation. The LDS Church has traditionally not gone after public funds because it dislikes the conditions attached to government grants. It is unclear how many non-Mormon religious charities there are in Utah that would want to access faith-based funding.