Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith. Sine Cera. Part II

EDITOR’S NOTE: Andy Chandler is a presidential historian and a museum archivist at Candles Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute and the Ernie Pyle WW II Museum in Dana Ind. He is also a photographer and his work is often seen on these pages. Recently he sat down with Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. The second of a two-part series is presented today.

Part II: The Initiative  

It was only two weeks ago to the day of my interview with Lt. Governor Beckwith that Governor Braun signed Executive Order 2-26 placing Lt. Governor Beckwith at the head of faith-based initiatives. When I asked him about the order’s origins, the Lt. Governor stated that the idea started before the 2024 election and came from, “organic dialogue between myself and then Sen. Braun. I told him, ‘I know you have strong faith and understand the value that faith community brings in partnering with state initiatives.’ I think that he is an incredible man of faith, and he understands that God has laid things out the way that we as human beings should follow. He doesn’t shy away from that. He said we needed to bring priests, pastors and rabbis. So, this started two years ago.”  

Regarding what happened after he entered office, “When we got into office, I hired a faith-based initiative director.” He went on to speak about how both offices wanted to take things to the next step and from that came the Executive Order which gives it state backing and legitimacy.  

That question did bring up a further comment by Beckwith regarding his relationship with Gov. Braun and his office.  

“People have asked me, ‘What’s your relationship with the governor?’ I think they think there’s drama. The governor, myself and our teams, we have been linking arms since day one. We don’t get push back from the governor’s office, I mean they’ll give us a heads up. They’ll call us and say, ‘There’s this or there’s that.’ But they’ve never said, ‘Don’t you dare say this,’ or ‘You’d better say that.’” 

Back to the initiative. 

According to the Lt. Governor, the initiative will be starting with faith-based roundtables in every county. He wants them to engage in solving problems: “How do we increase foster care families? How do we decrease homelessness and decrease poverty and food insecurity? How do we go after these addiction epidemics from opioids to fentanyl and some of these life destroying addictions that people find themselves in, and that comes best when faith communities engage.” 

He concedes that the government has shortcomings in how it can help people. “The government is terrible at caring for people. The government does not care for people, and honestly it wasn’t designed to be compassionate. The government’s job is to be the sword of justice, and I would even contend that the government can’t be compassionate. It was not designed to be compassionate. It as an entity is not able to be compassionate. The compassion comes from people who, out of faith, commitment to honor God, and honor your neighbor, step up to serve their neighbor. That to me is where we’ve done a disservice as government to come in and say, ‘We don’t need the faith community; We’ll try to be the compassion.’ We get out there and what happens? Government bureaucracy grows. Agencies just start seeing people as numbers. They don’t actually care if  someone’s getting off addiction, they just have a job to do and you’re just a number. If you’re homeless, you’re just a number. We’ll help you, maybe kind of. We’ll help you get some relief, but it’s just a Bbandaid. But you’re not getting a holistic healing.”  

I asked him if he’d seen examples of how he wanted this initiative to look. His eyes lit up and he gave a firm nod. “Florida has a program called Hope Navigators and Iowa has one called Thrive. We’ll probably model ours after both of those. I’ve talked to Casey DeSantis multiple times.  They are basically creating these Hope Navigators in all the counties to where you’re essentially a counselor to people, but you’re just not a counselor to get them the resources, SNAP benefits, housing assistance, or addiction recovery. It’s not just about that. It is about that, but it’s not just about that. The other aspect of these Hope Navigators is that they say, ‘We want to get you connected to a faith community. Let’s get you plugged in somewhere where there’s going to be pastors, life group members, or people who are in this community who can walk with you when the government has to go.  We want you to have a community. And then they say, ‘What do you want to be in 10 years? A Hope Navigator will say, ‘What’s your purpose in life?’ When has the government ever stopped and asked, ‘What’s your purpose, what dreams do you have?’” 

“Not that I can recall.” I responded. 

“That’s where these Hope Navigators come and say we want you to find purpose. So, they train these navigators to find purpose which only comes when God gets involved. When God gets involved that’s when their purpose comes alive. That’s a model we’ll be looking at.”  

He went onto say that Casey DeSantis told him that they (The State of Florida) have saved $100 million and they project it’ll be about $100 million savings every year when it comes to government assisting people. She states that over 10 years it will be over a billion dollars.  

I asked him if the government would provide aid to religious organizations in the form of finance and possible logistics. He was direct. “I don’t think faith communities need government money, and if faith communities come and say we need government money, I would say they need to evaluate who’s their provider. Who’s their Jehovah Jireh?” 

One of the biggest questions, in fact a question so big, I had friends asking me to ask him this, was whether faith-based meant incorporating other faiths outside of Judeo- Christianity. My question to him was if the term faith-based would use an upper- or lower-case ‘f’.  

His response was, “If you look at the Declaration [of Independence] when it speaks of all men being endowed by their Creator, was that an upper- or lower-case C?”  

I paused for a second. “Upper.”  
He leaned back in his chair like an instructor whose students understood the assignment. He is an instructor at a home school co-op. 

“The Framers had in mind a Judeo-Christian God. With a capital C when they used the word Creator.”  

I asked him about whether the eight points of the Executive Order were going to be used as metrics for the success of the EO. He stated that the question was a good one. He has a team working on it, but reminded me that the EO was only signed two weeks ago.  

“In a couple months, I think maybe the goal for us should be for us to have the measurables laid out. So, I think that would be very appropriate to come back in a couple of months and say, ‘Hey give an update on the faith-based initiatives, executive order and what are the measurables.’”  

To quote the famous governor from California: I’ll be back.