WASHINGTON — Several influential black pastors who were recently courted by Bush administration officials as potential partners in crafting African relief policies are now questioning the White House commitment to the continent.
The criticism came in a letter delivered Tuesday to the White House from five of the nation's most high-profile African American pastors. They called on the president to give his "ardent" support to a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair under which industrialized nations would double their aid to Africa by 2010. Bush rejected the proposal last week and announced that the United States would release a smaller sum, already appropriated by Congress, for aid to Africa.
The letter exposed a potentially damaging wrinkle in what has been an aggressive outreach strategy by White House officials, who view socially conservative black religious leaders as potential allies in policymaking and domestic politics.
Bush's rejection of the Blair proposal sent a different message on African aid from what some pastors felt they had received during an hourlong session last month with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In that meeting, Rice and about two dozen pastors discussed giving U.S.-based black churches a broader role in combating AIDS in Africa.
The pastors' letter also marked the second time this week that the administration has faced public criticism over its Africa policy. On Monday, leaders of several African nations told Bush at an Oval Office meeting that bureaucracy was delaying the delivery of needed relief funds through one of the president's signature programs, the Millennium Challenge Account.
"Some were confused by the fact that Prime Minister Tony Blair, who stood with the president on Iraq at enormous political cost to himself, did not appear to be receiving the same level of concrete support from the president when it came to Africa," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a Boston pastor who backed Bush's reelection last year and was one of the religious leaders who conferred last month with Rice. "It is our hope that the president will stand with the prime minister as strongly as the prime minister stood with him at the height of the controversy over the Iraq war."
The letter was initiated by Bishop Charles E. Blake of the 24,000-member West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles. It was also signed by Rivers, Bishop T.D. Jakes of Potter's House ministry in Dallas, Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta and the Rev. Frank Madison Reid III of Bethel AME Church in Baltimore.
