Moravian Clergywoman Named by President Obama to Presidential Advisory Council
The Rev. Peg Chemberlin, Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been added by President Obama to the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, an agency created by George W. Bush. The Rev. Chemberlin was announced on Monday, April 6, 2009, as one of 9 appointed members and joins 24 other religious and secular leaders and scholars from various backgrounds. Each member of the Council is appointed to a one-year term and will be responsible for advising the revamped White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on how to direct government funds to religious and neighborhood groups engaged in social service work.
In February, according to a White House statement, the new office would work with nonprofit organizations “both secular and faith-based” and would help them determine how to “make a bigger impact in their cities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer.” The president also stated a top priority for this office will be “making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete.”
The Rev. Peg Chemberlin, a Moravian originally from Waconia, Minnesota, currently serves as executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches and is President-Elect of the National Council of Churches USA (NCC). She is slated to begin her presidential term with the NCC in November 2009. Elected in November 2007, she will be the first Minnesotan to be national president, and joins the Rev. Dr. Gordon Sommers (past president) and John Groenfeldt (member of the Executive Committee of the NCC) in the line of Moravians serving the NCC.
Article by Siobhan Young, Communication Assistant for the Interprovincial Board of Communication, Moravian Church in North America.
