By the time he left office, President Bush's faith-based initiative had become a kind of stand-in for his entire presidency. Whenever something went wrong on Bush's watch it was tarred as yet another "faith-based" policy. As the 2008 presidential election began to take shape, with the Democrats newly in charge of both the House and the Senate and the most aggressively religious president of the modern era plummeting toward record-low poll numbers, there was hope among many that the faith-based initiative would be swept away with the rest of Bush's failed "faith-based presidency." Instead, on the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama defied liberal expectations and pledged to revive the faith-based initiative. Surprised and disappointed civil-libertarian and secularist groups were somewhat consoled by Obama's further pledge to repeal the most controversial element of Bush's policy, so-called religious "hiring rights." On his watch, Obama initially said, receipt of federal funding would disqualify faith-based grantees from exercising religion-based discretion over hiring and employment policies, something they enjoy under civil rights law as a matter of religious liberty. To properly assess Obama's motivations and decisions in this area, the author discusses how the faith-based initiative came to exist, and why. (Contains 10 endnotes.)