"In the latest blow to President Bush's signature 'faith-based initiative,' the head of the White House's effort to boost government support for religious charities said today he will resign after seven tempestuous months on the job, becoming the first senior Bush adviser to leave.

The resignation of University of Pennsylvania academic John J. DiIulio, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, wasn't entirely unexpected: He had originally hoped to serve for about six months, and health problems were making it difficult for him to continue.

But DiIulio's six-month commitment was based on a White House assumption that Bush's faith-based initiative would be enacted by Congress in that time. Instead, the initiative encountered unexpected difficulty and will now be rewritten by Senate Democrats after a scaled-back version of Bush's proposal cleared the House.

Along the way, DiIulio, a registered Democrat who favored a consensus-building approach, sparred with religious conservatives and disagreed with Bush political advisers who pushed the president's plan through the House on a party-line vote - leading Senate Democrats to pronounce the proposal dead in its current form.

Some of DiIulio's allies charged that the resignation meant the White House's faith initiative - the cornerstone of Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' and a key to his bid to win over minorities - had been taken over by religious conservatives.

'The departure of John DiIulio means George Bush officially becomes the president of white America,' said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a black minister who appeared with Bush in Austin and Washington as a vigorous backer of the effort. 'The message in Professor DiIulio's departure is that the black and the poor in the inner cities can go to hell. It sends a signal that the faith-based office will just be a financial watering hole for the right-wing white evangelists.

Asked about his differences with conservatives and Bush strategists in an interview today, DiIulio said his consensus-building approach has been vindicated.

'I look at the situation of the last six months and the political science on the subject has been validated,' he said. 'The legislative coalition to pass [the Bush plan] was gone. The need to frame a proposal broad enough to capture people of goodwill on the left and right seemed a really obvious way to proceed. It was start in the center, stay in the center. That's where the thing has moved and that's where it's going to end up.'

Conservatives, who chafed at the concessions Dilulio made to build Democratic support for the effort, appeared pleased at DiIulio's resignation. 'I think John is a fine professor and students will benefit from having him back in the classroom,' said Marvin Olasky, an early architect of Bush's faith initiative who came to oppose the plan.

Hudson Institute scholar Michael Horowitz, a conservative critic of DiIulio, today called him 'the most strategically disastrous appointee to a senior government position in the 20-plus years I've been in Washington. He has taken what could have been a triumphant issue and marched it smack into quicksand.'

Democrats and liberal interests, by contrast, spoke glowingly of DiIulio. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the Democrats' point man on the faith initiative, said Bush 'could not have found a more compelling or compassionate advocate for building a stronger partnership between government and religious and civic groups to help solve pressing social problems and lift up people's lives.'

DiIulio's departure follows a pattern somewhat similar to the defection from the GOP of Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) just as Bush was nearing the triumphant passage of his tax cut. Jeffords said Bush's adniinistration wasn't tolerating moderate views. This time, argued Barry Lynn, head of a First Amendment group bitterly opposed to Bush's faith initiative, DiIulio 'was left out of the loop in recent weeks as Bush operatives manipulated the faith-based initiative to make the plan more palatable to the religious right.'

Ari Fleischer, Bush's press secretary, said DiIulio's departure was expected. 'It was a six-month stint,' he said. 'John DiIulio has done a wonderful job.' Fleischer said the faith plan 'will continue to live after John goes back to Philadelphia.' Fleischer echoed another White House official's view that Dilufio is 'a sage and a saint.'

A Bush adviser who asked not to be identified said the reason for Dilulio's departure is a combination of personal matters and frustration. 'He's worried about his health, worried about his family, and he didn't see the end,' the adviser said.

Under DiIulio, Bush's faith initiative began as a way to increase private and public funding of religious and secular charities and to ease bureaucratic restrictions on religious groups. But the effort in the House lost some 90 percent of the funding Bush proposed and became ensnarled in a debate over whether the White House was seeking to exempt religious charities such as the Salvation Army from state and local laws prohibiting discrimination against gays. White House officials had said DiIulio's office had handled the matter but later acknowledged that Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was involved.

While DiIulio and his office worked with Democrats to build support for the effort gradually, Rove and other political advisers sought to move the proposal through Congress in a six-month time frame. After DiIulio antagonized religious conservatives by questioning the dedication to the poor of 'predominantly white, exurban, evangelical and national para-church leaders,' congressional aides say, other Bush officials appeared to take control of the faith initiative.

Now, Bush advisers and congressional staff say, the White House's goal is to pass some version of the faith initiative in the Senate even if the details aren't to Bush's liking, that would allow the White House to claim a legislative victory and proceed with administritive efforts to support religious charities. Bush officials haven't yet decided on a successor to DiIulio, but those close to the decision-making said Bush may tap a less visible leader to reflect the shift in emphasis from legislative to administrative.

DiIulio, 43, said today that the stressful 18-hour days and early morning train rides to Washington from his home in Philadelphia had taken a toll on him. He said he would leave the White House within a month and would not return to teaching this fall, instead spending time at home with his three children. DiIulio said his White House colleagues were 'tremendously supportive' and said of Bush: 'I love him.'

DiIulio, who released a report Thursday detailing the barriers religious groups face, said the effort had reached a 'plateau' after passage of a version of Bush's proposal in the House. 'For all that's happened and gone on, the word's out, there's life in the Senate, the vertical climb has been made,' he said. 'The top of the mountain is really still far up there. But the first plateau has been made.'

DiIulio called Lieberman, who is writing his own faith proposal for the Senate to consider, his 'favorite person' in Congress. 'Between the president and Senator Lieberman, whatever happens, good things will come out of this.'" (Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, August 18, 2001)