By Pamela Gentry, Senior Polticial Producer 

 Posted Dec. 18, 2007 –   Black ministers who have quietly met with the Bush administration at the White House regarding faith-based incentive dollars may now find politics from the pulpit risky business.  Their names and visits will now become part of the public record.
     A federal judge’s ruling Monday was a blow to the Bush administration, which had hoped to keep records private showing visits by prominent conservative religious leaders.

     The judge rejected the White House’s argument and ordered the information be turned over to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the liberal watchdog group that made the request.
     Early in the Bush administration, senior adviser to the president, Karl Rove, arranged several meetings with Bush and religious leaders to develop a “buy-in strategy” for Bush’s new faith-based incentives.
     Some folks agreed to meet because the meetings were behind closed doors and  their attendance and the topics discussed were not available for public consumption.
     Several well-known African-American pastors were included in one of the first such meetings in March 2001.  After the meeting, Bush told reporters, the ministers are “very crucial for helping change” their communities.
      “Many of those preachers are bishops over churches that have got great programs and change people’s hearts and provide hope in neighborhoods where there is no hope,” Bush said at the time. “So I view them not as agents of politics; I view them as agents of change.”
     Claude Allen, Bush’s former domestic policy adviser, along with Rove, arranged meetings with Black ministers, including the Rev. T. D. Jakes, of Dallas; the Rev. Kirby John Caldwell of Houston; and Bishop Eddie Long, of Atlanta.
     Some Black pastors were more public about their support: Caldwell delivered the prayer at Bush’s inaugural in 2005. But others were more low key and had hoped to keep their attendance at these pow-wows, hush-hush.
     That’s why Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wanted to know who was meeting with the administration. They went to court to get the Secret Service to turn over visitor logs about nine conservative religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell, with whom the president met.
     Anne L. Weismann, the watchdog group’s chief counsel, told The Associate Press.  “The judge saw their arguments for what they were.”
     It will be interesting to see exactly which Black religious leaders met with the Bush administration over the last six years.