President Obama yesterday unveiled a new council of religious and secular leaders to help guide America’s faith-based programs, and here at ONE we are excited and encouraged because it’s a group that promises to bring renewed attention and energy to the fight against poverty and disease.

Dubbed the Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the new group will be made up of 25 members, featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives, many of whom have been outspoken leaders in efforts to address global hunger, HIV/AIDS and endemic poverty.

Here at ONE, we are particularly excited and encouraged because it’s a group that includes ONE’s long time allies in the effort of ending extreme poverty and preventable diseases.

A founding board member of ONE, Richard Stearns, who is the president of World Vision, is on the council along with Jim Wallis, president and Executive Director of Sojourners, also a key ally of ONE’s since the start.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, is on the council and has been involved in ONE Sabbath, our faith outreach effort. Here you can hear Rabbi Saperstein talk about ONE Sabbath and the need for America’s faith community to be active in advocacy on behalf of the world’s poor.

During ONE Vote ’08, the ONE Bus stopped outside Orlando, Fla. for an event at Northland, A Church distributed, led by another member of the council, the Rev. Joel Hunter.

Another council member, Eboo Patel, is the founder of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core and has just launched a program with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that is focused on the Millennium Development Goals. William Shaw, council member and president of the National Baptist Convention, was also the keynote speaker at Bread for the World’s last Interfaith Convocation in 2007.

The Council will work with Joshua Dubois, a young Pentecostal pastor who will head the White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

ONE looks forward to working with the new council and White House office to help maximize the tremendous efforts of the countless congregations, organizations and community groups who are working each day to help those who are most vulnerable to poverty, hunger and disease.

As the president said yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast:

The particular faith that motivates each of us can promote a greater good for all of us. Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. This is not only our call as people of faith, but our duty as citizens of America.

-Mark Brinkmoeller