I am going to guess that this notion that Obama will support religious charities ability to hire and fire, based on faith, is false. It better be. I know New York isn't up for grabs, but I can't, in good conscience, support a candidate who would take that sort of step. Your basically talking about state-sponsored discrimination, no? This qualification doesn't help one bit:
He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.
I'm already uneasy about expanding faith-based charities, precisely because of crap like this.
UPDATE: The Obama camp claims AP has the story wrong, and even after ammending, they say it's still wrong.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Couldn't agree with you more. This is disappointing to me. Are you suggesting its false because you don't really think Obama supports this? Either way, I don't like it.
Fairly pissed at the Obama campaign these days, for a number of reasons. There's absolutely no way I won't vote for him, and I wouldn't change my vote in the primary (well, caucus), but I'm not exactly shocked that I'm disappointed--I was just hoping it'd take a bit longer.
Still, the silver lining is that I'll focus more on the down-ticket races, which I shoulda been doing already.
It is false. If you read the text of the speech, he explicitly says it's false.
JedReport has a solid post on this issue that should quickly quell your concerns:
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/07/obama-plans-rol.html
Summary: it's all good. Obama is just going where the salmon are already running in his anti-poverty initiative. Nothing to be afraid of. It's all secular and liberal-y.
Here is a line from the HuffPo piece on it:
"Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their "bottom-up" approach.
"Because they're so close to the people, they're well-placed to offer help," he was to say."
I don't really see much wrong with that. It's perfectly in line with his community organizing approach and it speaks across political affiliations. Conservatives like it because the solutions comes from the people close to the community, not DC. Liberals will like it because of the emphasis on organizing a broad anti-poverty coalition. It looks like the funding is equal opportunity for religious and secular 'neighborhood' organizations and no money can be used for proselytizing. This is exactly the kind of flexible, thoughtful stuff I supported Obama for from the beginning.
I'm one of those raging atheists and I actually don't mind if religious organizations hire and fire based on religious qualifications as long as the public funds aren't being used in that area. And as long as there aren't any theological tests for who counts as a religious organization. We have to be pragmatic somewhere. Church-state issues are paramount for me, but the best way to shortcut the craziest winger crap is to affirm the value of church organizations and direct their energy positively with the right hand and then with the left hand scoot the money towards secular purposes.
From my understanding (though I haven't read his proposal thoroughly yet), I'm not alarmed. If Obama is asking for Title VII compliance and there is oversight on how the money is spent, I'm a-ok with giving religious groups money for helping the poor.
Perhaps I'm being a little too trusting, because money is fungible, but I've always been in agreement with Obama about the left reaching out to churches on common cause issues like poverty.
And for bonus points: do you think any fundie heads will explode when they realize this proposed plan can also channel money to mosques, synagogues, and temples? Perhaps even (gasp) the Quakers? :-)
Huh. This is a grey area, and needless to say some knucklehead, knee-jerk anti-religionists will get their underwear in a twist.
I may personally not be comfortable with it in a country that ostensibly upholds the separation of church and state, but the truth is that for many places outside a metropolis/city center, the church is the center of community. And for many underserved areas they form the center for social services as well.
Also keep in mind that people are inclined to trust very few institutions outside of their church. This is especially true for communities of color, esp. immigrants.
I don't like how "faith-based services" sound when tied to government money, but at the same time, it can operate as the conduit for the most immediate access to help for vast majorities of people.
I'm not saying Obama is right, it's just ... I know the other side ain't right either.