BOB ABERRNETHY, host: In a coordinated effort, 43 Catholic institutions filed federal lawsuits to stop the Obama administration’s plan to require free coverage of contraceptive services. Among the plaintiffs were Catholic dioceses, hospitals, social service agencies, and universities, including Notre Dame. They say the requirement would infringe on their religious freedom. Supporters of the coverage plan say a proposed compromise would avoid religious liberty concerns, but the Catholic bishops reject that compromise. Meanwhile, a new Gallup Poll found that 82 percent of US Catholics believe birth control is morally acceptable. Fifteen percent said it was morally wrong.

Joining me now are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. Kevin, Kim, welcome. Kevin, what do you make of this?

KEVIN ECKSTROM: Well, the Catholic institutions that filed suit are basically fighting over whether or not they have to provide birth control coverage to their employees in their insurance plans. That’s what the root of this is all about. The fact that they, 43 groups, came together and filed a dozen lawsuits shows that they are trying to come at this with the full weight of the church, to show that this is not just an isolated diocese or a small group, but that the whole range of the church is really upset about this. And it also signals, I think, that they don’t see any other alternative, that they don’t see a political compromise in the works with the White House. They, I think, in a lot of ways, feel like they have no other choice but to go to court.

KIM LAWTON: And they feel that the compromise that the White House has offered which some more progressive, liberal, moderate Catholics say that’s okay— these groups are saying no, it’s not okay. It doesn’t cover us, and for them it’s a matter of religious freedom, and they very clearly said, this is not about contraception, really. It’s about religious freedom and our ability to practice our beliefs and the government not telling us what to do, what we have to do, and the government not also saying who is a religious group that qualifies for an exemption from the policy.

ABERNETHY: And how representative do you think these groups are?

ECKSTROM: Well, they’re representative in that it’s a broad range. I mean, it’s schools, it’s groups, it’s dioceses, it’s big dioceses and small ones. But it’s only a handful of dioceses, I think, you know, less than 12 dioceses out of 200 or so in the country, so the vast majority of local dioceses did not join this suit.

ABERNETHY: But that doesn’t mean that they like, what’s going on.

ECKSTROM: Right. And a lot of them support what the bishops as a whole are trying to do, but there is some dissension in the ranks about what the best legal strategy is, and a lot of people, a lot of bishops, or some bishops think that this was a bit premature.

ABERNETHY: The fury of the opposition and the breadth of it suggest that the administration might have miscalculated when they presented this in the first place. Do you see that?

LAWTON: Well, the first policy, the first iteration of this policy got very widespread disapproval from a lot of Catholics, and we’ve heard that inside the administration there were people saying, warning the administration that this would not be popular. Now, more people, more Catholics have approved this, the compromise that the Obama administration tried to work out, but there are some suggestions that maybe they weren’t prepared for this and that the religious outreach wasn’t what it should have been in order to figure out how to maneuver this.

ABERNETHY: Quickly, you agree?

ECKSTROM: Yeah, and a lot of Catholic bishops said that they were basically blindsided by this. They were never consulted beforehand and say hey, this is what we’re planning to do, what do you think? Can we find something that works? Instead, they were just handed this and said take it or leave it, and the bishops basically have said no, we’re not going to take it.

ABERNETHY: Right in the middle of an election year.

ECKSTROM: Right. And there is some concern both within the bishops’ conference but also without that the bishops risk appearing to be anti-Obama or perhaps too Republican and that the timing on this needs to be very, very sensitive.

ABERNETHY: Kevin Eckstrom. Kim Lawton. Many thanks.

KIM LAWTON: Graduation day at Union Theological Seminary in New York. This multi-denominational Christian institution describes itself as “progressive and evangelistic,” and its stated vision is that graduates will change the world by practicing their theological vocations. That vision explicitly includes women, such as Itang Young. Young grew up in Houston. She says she never saw herself becoming a pastor or religious leader.

ITANG YOUNG: The leadership roles in church were typically held by men, and the women who did work in the church were either Sunday school teachers or they worked in the kitchen or they worked in the nursery. Very rarely was there a woman in the pulpit.

LAWTON: Young became an engineer and took on a high-powered corporate job. Then, she started questioning the purpose of her life.

YOUNG: I needed to do something to help improve the lives of the people around me.

LAWTON: She concluded that seminary would help her get there, and at Union, she found a place especially open to female students.

Nationally, women make up about one-third of all seminary students. But here at Union Theological Seminary, they’re more than 50 percent of the student body. Women have been coming here for 100 years, but as recently as the 1960s, more than 90 percent of the students here were men.

PRESIDENT SERENE JONES: I think right now at this moment in history we’re in the midst of something of the magnitude of the Protestant reformation.

LAWTON: Serene Jones is Union’s first female president. She believes the rate at which women are entering theology and ministry is one of the biggest changes in 2,000 years of Christianity.

JONES: There are communities in this country in which if a woman says she wants to be a minister, she’s not going to be looked at like she’s stark raving mad. To have a situation in which we recognize the fullness of life of women, the full equality of women changes everything.

LAWTON: Women with seminary degrees are becoming ordained pastors. But they are also becoming chaplains, social workers, counselors, authors, scholars and professors. Despite the new opportunities, limitations do remain, even in denominations that support female leadership.

JONES: The number of women from Union and the number of women in this country who are the senior leaders of large congregations is so miniscule, and it still is sort of the, what they refer to as the stained glass ceiling. You can only go so far.

LAWTON: Jones says the challenges can be subtle.

JONES: There are obstacles I think in the church, of people who don’t even know they have a prejudice against women. But they’ll say things like, “You know, she just, I just, I can’t hear her voice in the back of the sanctuary. I want a minister who can talk loud.” Or “You know, she just looks a little too awkward in the pulpit.”

LAWTON: Then, there are more overt limitations. The Roman Catholic Church and certain evangelical denominations oppose female ordination.

PROFESSOR JANET WALTON: I am a Roman Catholic woman. I have no place at this table. This table is for men.

LAWTON: Janet Walton is a Roman Catholic nun who has been professor of worship at Union since 1981. She’s one of several Catholic women on the faculty here.

PROF. WALTON: It’s very difficult for me to imagine that millions of Catholics never experience a woman leading the liturgy. Because I think it matters. It’s not essentially that I think it makes a difference whether a woman or a man does it, but that no women can do it is a very big problem in the Catholic Church.

LAWTON: Part of how it matters, she argues, is in portraying a fuller vision of faith.

PROF. WALTON: There are lots of ways in which the, being a woman and having the experiences that go with being a woman do affect the way one understands God.

BARBARA RICE: It’s not just about having the same place as men in ministry. I mean, certainly we need all those same rights and need access to as many of those positions, absolutely, and equal pay, for sure, but it’s also about bringing all of our uniqueness as women into those positions. We have gifts. We have gifts that are uniquely women gifts and that those don’t get checked at the door

RICE: What is sacred?

LAWTON: Barbara Rice is a second-year masters of divinity student who says she has wanted to be in ministry her entire life. She grew up in a conservative evangelical church in North Carolina, and as a woman and a lesbian, she felt her opportunities for ministry were restricted. But she believes women have much to contribute.

RICE: We have an ability to listen to our intuition. And I think, as far as spiritual matters go, that that’s incredibly important. Whether that’s the way we’re socialized or whatever it is I think that we tend to have a sense of things, that if we can learn to trust it, especially with the discernment of a community, it can be a really spiritually enlivening thing.

LAWTON: Jones believes women bring to theology what she calls a sense of spirituality wedded to the ordinary.

JONES: It’s about breaking bread and putting on Band-Aids on a skinned knee, and about being angry and standing up for justice in a community. Those aren’t things that men don’t do, because they do. It’s just that women somehow bear that in their souls with a depth and a persistence that brings freshness to ministry.

CHARLENE SINCLAIR: The journey for women has been a journey that’s been so difficult so that when they finally are able to step on this path, there’s a level of just like deep joy and gratitude.

LAWTON: For Charlene Sinclair, a 4th year PhD student, seminary has been a way to enhance her work as a community organizer.

SINCLAIR: Seminary actually not only gave me permission to engage my head in this process, but showed me that engaging my head was critical so that I wouldn’t be a reactionary pastor or a reactionary spiritual person, but I can do it out of a place of, not just deep love, but deep, thoughtful love.

LAWTON: Jones found her own passion for theology early on.

JONES: Studying theology, reading Augustine and Calvin and learning about scripture and reading about women’s leadership, it was like eating chocolate all day long. It was so delicious. And that’s when I, when I stumbled into that world I realized I’d found my home.

LAWTON: She grew up in the Disciples of Christ denomination and says her family encouraged her to pursue that passion.

JONES: The struggle along the way was, it’s one thing to imagine yourself doing something and it’s another thing in the broader world to have this, the confidence and the strength to believe you actually can do it.

LAWTON: Jones says it’s important for women to have role models and people to encourage them. She mentors younger women. And, she says, men can also play an important role.

JONES: As women go into the ministry it’s often going to be men that are their biggest supporters. It’s not just women that are out there cheering and you know, giving sustenance.

LAWTON: Itang Young says her time at seminary vastly expanded her vision of how God may use her in ministry. She says it’s actually not all that different from her work as an engineer.

YOUNG: As an engineer, we build things better. We deconstruct and reconstruct items, objects, in a way that helps to improve the lives of other people. And within a ministerial context, the function is the same. We’re doing church in a new way. We are building God’s people. So I went from building things to helping build God’s people.

LAWTON: For now, Young is still deciding whether or not she’ll pursue ordination. She’s not at all worried that as a woman, her ministry options may be limited.

YOUNG: There’s one thing that I learned here at Union that is to create opportunities where none exist. So if there’s not a position available, market yourself and perhaps one could open. The word of God says that your gifts will make room for you, and I believe that.

LAWTON: Jones says that’s the vision she has for all her students.

JONES: If you can come to believe that God wants you to succeed and flourish and lead, that’s unstoppable.

I’m Kim Lawton in New York.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: The Alabama case before the Supreme Court stems from the brutal killing of 52-year-old Cole Cannon, whose body was found in the charred ruins of his mobile home nine years ago. Authorities first thought it to be an accident, but bruises on Cannon’s body and his broken ribs prompted them to investigate further. It turned out to be a murder committed by a neighbor, Evan Miller, who was only 14 years old, and his 16-year-old friend, Colby Smith. It was in the early morning hours; the three had been drinking heavily. When Cannon appeared too drunk to resist, the teenagers tried to rob him, but a fight broke out.

Children are capable of committing horrible crimes, even 14-year-olds like Evan Miller, who beat his victim over the head with this baseball bat and then crushed his ribs with it. He then placed a sheet over his head and told him, ‘I am God. I have come to take your life.’ A fourteen-year-old.

Candy Cheatham is the victim’s daughter.

CANDY CHEATHAM: Even with that, he did not stop beating him, and they set the trailer on fire—there were at least three or four points of origin—and left my Dad there to die. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, and he had about seven or eight broken ribs in combination with the smoke inhalation. Then they proceeded to brag to friends about what they did.

O’BRIEN: Murder in the course of another felony—in this case arson– is a capital offense in Alabama, as it is in most states. The Supreme Court threw out the death penalty for juvenile offenders in 2005, so when the jury returned its guilty verdict, the judge could only sentence Miller to life without parole. The Supreme Court won’t allow more, and Alabama law doesn’t allow anything less for one convicted of capital murder. Prosecutors say Miller got what he deserved.

ROBERT LANG (Prosecutor, Lawrence County, MO): Our legislature and the people of our state believe that if you commit these type of crimes, there are only two punishments that are fitting, and that is either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. So his protection is he’s not going to get the death penalty, but he’s going to be put away for the rest of his life.

O’BRIEN: The Supreme Court is now expected to use the Miller case to determine whether states are required to consider giving juveniles a second chance, no matter what they did. And each side is giving up a little in this case. Alabama is not arguing that all juvenile murderers should be ineligible for parole, only those who commit the worst crimes—crimes that would bring a death sentence if the defendant were an adult.

Evan Miller is represented by the Equal Justice Initiative and its founder and executive director, Bryan Stevenson, and Stevenson isn’t asking anyone actually be given parole, only that when offenders are so young that at some point far down the road, they at least be allowed to demonstrate they are entitled to be set free.

BRYAN STEVENSON (Equal Justice Initiative): I think everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done, and I think that policy makers can make decisions about how to punish them. But I think children are uniquely more than their worst act; they have quintessential qualities and characteristics that a decent society, a maturing society, an evolved society, we believe, is constitutionally obligated to recognize and protect.

O’BRIEN: An argument Stevenson pressed in court to a skeptical Justice Antonin Scalia.

STEVENSON: I think the easier rule to write would be that there is a categorical ban on all life without parole sentences for all children up until the age of 18.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: How do I come to that decision? What, do I just consult my own preferences on this matter? Something like 39 states allow it. I mean, the American people, you know, have decided that’s the rule. They allow it, and the federal government allows it. So I’m supposed to impose my judgment on what seems to be a consensus of the American people?

O’BRIEN: John Neiman, Alabama’s solicitor general, says life without parole is a reasonable alternative to the death penalty, even for juveniles.

JOHN NEIMAN (Solicitor General, Alabama): The theory and the thought is that if someone doesn’t deserve the death penalty for that particular crime they deserve life without parole. That’s the appropriate way to express society’s outrage at these sorts of aggravated murders.

It is reasonable for legislatures to conclude that they’re going to draw a line in the sand with respect to aggravated murder, such that as a floor in terms of the appropriate punishment the defendant is going to get, at the very least, life without parole, a punishment that’s no doubt severe, but one that is less severe than the impact the crime has had on society.

O’BRIEN: But Attorney Bryan Stevenson reminded the justices that they have acknowledged in their past decisions that because children do not think like adults, they are less culpable.

STEVENSON: And the decision-making of children, the thinking of children is categorically different. They’re not thinking three steps ahead. They’re not thinking about consequences. They’re not actually experienced enough with the world to understand how they deal with their frustrations in the same way that an adult is, and so their judgments about what they intend to do, their declarations mean something very, very different.

O’BRIEN: At one point, the state’s demand for retribution appeared to give way to a justice’s concern for a child.

KENT HOLT (Assistant Attorney General, Arkansas): The principle justification in this case lies with the retributive principle. The punishment for this crime reinforces the sanctity of human life, and it expresses the state’s moral outrage that something like this could happen.

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: You say the sanctity of human life, but you’re dealing with a 14-year-old being sentenced to life in prison, so he will die in prison without any hope. I mean, essentially you’re making a 14-year-old a throw-away person.

CANDY CHEATHAM: Society needs to be protected, and it’s not throwing away a juvenile. If he wants to be rehabilitated, that can happen behind bars. It’s just too high of a cost to risk.

O’BRIEN: Candy Cheatham remembers her father as a “good man” and says how he died will haunt her for as long as she lives.

STEVENSON: If we win, the United States will still have the harshest punishment scheme for children in the world. We will still have very severe punishments in place to punish any offender who commits an aggravated crime.

O’BRIEN: The court was sharply divided in 2005 when it found the death penalty unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Whether juveniles may also be spared life in prison with no parole when they commit murder isn’t any easier. Although some justices were sympathetic, others are known to feel that these decisions are best left to juries and state legislatures, not federal judges. The court’s opinions, and there will surely be several, are due in the next month.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien at the Supreme Court.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: On Sunday mornings at New Orleans’ Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, Pastor Fred Luter Jr.’s outgoing personality is on full display. At worship services such as this one that begins at 7:30 am, Luter greets almost everyone in the congregation. And with some 5,000 people attending every week, there’s a lot of greeting.

REV. FRED LUTER, JR, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church: I love what I do. I love pastoring. I love pastoring. I love pastoring this church.

LAWTON: Luter, who is 55, has been the pastor here more than 25 years. Under his leadership, Franklin Avenue has become one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the state. That takes many people by surprise, because Franklin Avenue is predominantly African-American, and the Southern Baptist Convention is about 80 percent white. The fact that Luter is likely to be elected the next president of the SBC is even more surprising.

LUTER: It’s a new day in the Southern Baptist Convention. Our doors are open to each and everybody: African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, no matter the color, no matter the creed, no matter the background, this convention doors are open and our churches are open to whosoever will, let them come.

LAWTON: At one time, Franklin Avenue was an all-white Southern Baptist church. But in the 1970s, whites moved out of the neighborhood, and the congregation changed. A New Orleans native, Luter grew up in a black Baptist denomination. When he arrived at this church in 1986, there was some debate about leaving the SBC. He convinced the congregation to stay.

LUTER: I knew this convention had a heart for evangelism, had a heart for discipleship and had a heart for reaching people in, in difficult times, and I felt this is the right place for us. Not even knowing what would happen years later.

LAWTON: The SBC was formed in 1845 after a north-south split over slavery, and the SBC long supported slaveholders and segregationists. In recent years, the convention has adopted resolutions of apology for those stands.

LUTER: I have a past, you have a past, everybody has a past. This convention unfortunately has a past that we’re trying to move forward from and, and that’s how I look at it. There was apology made, and so it’s now time to move on and that’s why I’m excited about this opportunity.

LAWTON: Still, Luter acknowledges that racism is an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed, in the denomination and across the nation. For example, he says while he doesn’t agree with all of President Obama’s policies, he has been troubled by what he sees as a lack of respect for the president in many quarters.

LUTER: A lot of the things that this president has faced has not necessarily been because of his politics or his decisions, but unfortunately it’s just only been because of the color of his skin. And that’s what lets me know that we have a long, long way to go in America as far as racial reconciliation.

LAWTON: Ongoing tensions over race, he says, can’t be ignored.

LUTER: As long as those kind of things keep happening and the Trayvon Martin thing in the Florida situation like that, we have to deal with it. Even some things maybe within the convention that we need to talk about and address.

REV. DAVID CROSBY, First Baptist Church, New Orleans: I’m not pretending like Fred’s election to the convention now is going to do away with all racial tensions in the Southern Baptist Convention or anywhere else. That’s not going to happen. But it is going to be a step, and I think a major step, in the right direction.

LAWTON: At the SBC annual meeting next month, Rev. David Crosby will be the one to officially nominate Luter as president. Crosby is pastor of a predominantly white Southern Baptist Church in New Orleans, First Baptist, and has become close friends with Luter.

CROSBY: I trust him. His presidency is not going to be about him. It’s going to be about the health of our convention. And we need his help. We need his perspective. We need his wisdom.

LAWTON: The two pastors’ friendship was forged in the difficult days after Hurricane Katrina. Franklin Avenue Baptist Church had been devastated by the storm. Months after Katrina struck, volunteers in protective suits were still trying to clean out the sanctuary.

LUTER: To come here and see this, this church that God allowed me to pastor, we built this church and—beautiful–and then coming here, and we see pews thrown all over, the mud thick, the smell, the stench, it just, I just, I cried like a baby.

LAWTON: The church had to be completely gutted and rebuilt. Most of the 7,000 congregation members had fled from New Orleans, but the remaining 50 or 60 needed a place to worship. First Baptist, which had sustained much less damage, opened its doors, and the two congregations shared the space for nearly three years. The two pastors, who didn’t know each other well before that, ended up partnering on several projects, such as a 2006 visit to New Orleans by Billy and Franklin Graham.

CROSBY: It broadened our perspective of our own faith, broadened our perspective of the church of Jesus Christ and how we can work together, helped us understand across ethnic and cultural lines who we are together as brothers and sisters.

LAWTON: After years of construction, Franklin Avenue moved back into its rebuilt church in 2008. But the relationships between the pastors and the congregations continue, such as a recent joint mission trip to Africa. Crosby says while Luter’s preaching skills are lauded across the SBC, working so closely together showed him that his friend’s gifts extend beyond preaching.

CROSBY: He’s able to articulate a vision and present it to the congregation or to people in such a way that they buy in. In every aspect imaginable, Fred Luter is qualified to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

LAWTON: If he indeed becomes president, Luter says in addition to encouraging the establishment of new churches, one of his goals will be to support local congregations that are struggling to survive.

LUTER: We really have to work with a lot of the churches who are already existing but are hurting. They haven’t baptized in a while. They’re not reaching people, and we need to go into these churches and find out what can we do as a convention to help you get back on your feet?

LAWTON: As president, Luter would also help give voice to the SBC’s often-conservative stance on public policy issues, such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. He says that’s something he doesn’t shy away from.

LUTER: We’ve always been out there on the front lines and we don’t mind that. We don’t mind because we believe in standing up for what we believe in and so there’s some things out there that’s going to have to be addressed. My mindset and my lifestyle is driven by what the Word of God says. If God says it’s wrong, then it’s wrong.

LAWTON: He’s aware that as the first African-American up for the SBC presidency, he’s disproportionately in the spotlight.

LUTER: You know whenever you’re the first at something you’re going to be scrutinized more. It comes with the territory. My wife tells me, ‘Watch what you say. Watch what you do. Watch where you go.’

LAWTON: He says it’s Elizabeth, his wife of 31 years, who helps keep him spiritually grounded.

LUTER: I call her the love of my life, the apple of my eye, my prime rib, my good thing, that’s how I introduce her. She has a very unique relationship with God that I envy and admire, and she is one that keeps me level headed, she keeps me from getting a big head, but also she keeps me connected to God. She’s, she’s my accountability partner. And there are people that I maybe can fool and get over on, but I can’t with her.

LAWTON: As the convention meeting approaches, Luter says he’s praying more than ever for wisdom.

LUTER: Cause I’ll be speaking on behalf of a denomination of 15 million members. 15 million people of over 45,000 churches, and so I want to make sure that I represent not only them well, but most of all I want to represent God well.

LAWTON: He says what he wants people to know him for is helping the SBC live out the teachings of Jesus.

LUTER: My number one hope is that they, when this is all said and done, that they can look at the fact that here was somebody that brought this convention closer, not necessarily just whites and blacks, Asians, Hispanics, but, but the young and the old, the yuppies and the buppies, that we can all come together and say let’s get back to making the main thing the main thing.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in New Orleans.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Back in the 1990s, Cambodia, impoverished and rebuilding after its genocidal Khmer Rouge years, took steps to give its new garment industry a competitive leg up. It agreed to a system of fair labor standards with a minimum wage rule, a limit to working hours, unions to represent workers, and freedom of expression. All would be open to international inspection. Today, there are perhaps 400,000 garment workers in more than 300 factories in and near the capital, Phnom Penh. They are subcontractors to brand names and retailers in Europe and America.

Beginning from scratch less than two decades ago, Cambodia’s garment industry has grown into the largest export earner for this country. Three out of four dollars that come into Cambodia come from the garment factories.

The key question is how much all this has benefited workers, almost all of whom are female. Many factories have been plagued by labor unrest. Occasionally, it’s been violent. There have been frequent reports of faintings on factory floors. The unions cite unhealthy conditions and workers weak from malnourishment.

CHEA MONY (Trade Union Leader): Workers have very low salaries, only $61US per month. You cannot afford to live on that day to day. It’s legalized slavery.

DE SAM LAZARO: Chea introduced us to these workers. Like most of their colleagues, they are young, rural migrants living in tight, shared quarters, supporting extended families back home.

SOY NAKRY (Garment Worker): We have to pay for the room, electricity, water.

VONG SOPHAL (Garment Worker): In the evening, we just buy some fish and make some soup. Sometimes we have to keep part of it for breakfast.

DE SAM LAZARO: Chem Savet supports a farm family in a rural province 60 miles away, including her husband, her parents, and two-year-old daughter.

CHEM SAVET (Garment Worker): I can only see her once a month. When I go home she really misses me, so she hugs me, especially when I must leave one day later. One time she put some of her clothes in when I was packing. She wanted to come with me.

DE SAM LAZARO: The standard six-day, 48-hour week plus overtime leaves little time for travel to see family. Factory managers aren’t sympathetic during family emergencies, they complained, and many employees are on temporary instead of permanent employment contracts.

FEMALE GARMENT WORKER: Previously, we saw a lot of strikes, but those haven’t happened recently in our factory because there are a lot of newcomers.

DAVID SCHILLING (Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility): The minimum wage clearly is not sufficient for workers to meet their basic needs. We’re talking food. We’re talking clothing.

DE SAM LAZARO: David Schilling is with the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. It’s a shareholder activist group that wants to add a moral voice in global economic matters.

SCHILLING: Whether you’re talking about all the Abrahamic traditions, the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, at the core is that concept of the human dignity of the person. So you’re taking that and then you’re moving into the realities.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ken Loo represents Cambodia’s garment factory owners. He sees a very different reality for workers.

KEN LOO (Cambodia Garment Manufacturing Association): They’re not whipped, you know. They’re not chained. They come to work willingly.

DE SAM LAZARO: He says most garment workers make more than the $61 minimum wage; closer to $90 dollars a month, he says, higher with overtime. That’s more than policemen, teachers, or most civil servants, he adds.

LOO: We have to put things in context. The per capita GDP of Cambodia for last year as announced by the World Bank was $908. The average common factory worker earns 40 percent more than national per capita GDP. If you use that as a gauge, I think any worker in America would be glad to get 40 percent more than national per capita GDP.

DE SAM LAZARO: Cambodia’s minister of commerce says factory owners have little wiggle room because they are no more than contract tailors.

CHAM PRASIDH (Cambodian Minister of Commerce): They do not own the fabric. They do not own the brand. They just import the fabric, cut, sew, pack, and then sell.

DE SAM LAZARO: Prasidh could impose higher wages in the factories, most of which are owned by investors from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia. But he says that would be suicidal.

PRASIDH: There is a lot of demonstration to ask for living condition, ask to increase the minimum wage, and what happen? The investor just packed their sewing machine, and they go home!

DE SAM LAZARO: Or they go to another country?

PRASIDH: They go to another country so we have to compare that, our price with Bangladesh. We have to compare our price with Pakistan or India, yeah, or even with China.

DE SAM LAZARO: San Francisco-based Gap is the largest buyer of garments made in Cambodia. It also buys from dozens of other developing nations. Spokeswoman Bobbi Silten says Gap, which owns the Old Navy and Banana Republic chains as well, has no plans to leave Cambodia.

BOBBI SILTEN (Gap Foundation): We have very longstanding relationships with many of the vendors in Cambodia. It’s been one of our top ten sourcing countries for the last ten years. So we are very committed to being there, and we think that the labor standards that they have put in place is one of the reasons why we continue to stay.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ken Loo says buyers may talk up the labor standards. But in 2008, when the global recession began, many, including Gap, cut back in Cambodia. At the same time, he says, Bangladesh—with lower pay and labor standards—saw no drop in business.

LOO: It just confirms our knowledge that, indeed, compliance of labor standards is the icing on the cake. Price is the cake.

PRASIDH: It is a race to the bottom, and Cambodia—to survive we have to create something special.

DE SAM LAZARO: Jill Tucker says Cambodia does have a special competitive advantage since buyers want to be associated with ethical labor standards. Tucker heads an agency supported by the UN and the US government that conducts factory inspections for compliance with the labor standards.

JILL TUCKER (Better Factories Initiative): In the olden days, by that I mean maybe ten years ago, it was more of a cat-and-mouse game than it is now, and the really smart producers, I think, realize that, you know, you need to treat your workers well to retain your workers, and that it’s just not worth it to not treat your workers well.

DE SAM LAZARO: She cites this factory, run by a Taiwan-based company, QMI, as a good example. There’s plenty of air and light and, managers say, good labor relations. All ten thousand of QMI’s workers are on permanent contracts, and wages here range from $90 to as much as $150 a month. That’s still below what unions say is adequate. But Tucker says demands for higher wages, however justified, are a tough sell given realities in the US, the biggest market.

TUCKER: I really wonder if American consumers are willing to pay significantly more for their apparel.

DE SAM LAZARO: Really?

TUCKER: Yeah. The cost of apparel has only dropped over the past decade. None of us are paying more for our garments than we were 10 years ago.

SILTEN: We do need to think about what consumers are willing to pay, where we can source these goods to achieve, you know, get the math to work for everyone. From a macro standpoint I think it’s a very complex issue.

DE SAM LAZARO: Gap’s Silten isn’t sure if consumers would pay more for ethically produced garments. The Interfaith Center’s Schilling says retailers like Gap, pressured by competitors and Wall Street investors, aren’t likely to ask them to do so. More likely, he says, campaigns by activist groups should bring a greater awareness of worker rights issues as they are now on environmental ones.

SCHILLING: There’s more and more advertising around, you know, sort of ecologically sound products. I think more and more that’s going to happen within the social space as well.

DE SAM LAZARO: That would bring greater awareness of the plight of workers in Cambodia and more urgently other nations that don’t subscribe to fair labor standards, and Schilling says it could not happen fast enough.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Among traveling evangelists Nick Vujicic is a rock star. He’s packed them in in churches around the globe. This is his second visit to the Northland megachurch in Orlando—a preacher with no arms and no legs who wants no sympathy.

NICK VUJICIC: Why does a man without arms and legs have a smile like this? It surpasses the understanding of the world, because I should be depressed. I was, until Christ came in.

SEVERSON: He travels with another message: that churches need to be more inclusive of people with disabilities.

VUJICIC: To me, in my mind everyone has a disability. Everyone needs God. But definitely it is said again and again and again, we need to go out and reach out to those people who are in need.

SEVERSON: It’s not surprising that Nick Vujicic would be invited to Northland. This is a church with about 15,000 members that goes out of its way to welcome and accommodate people in need, including the disabled. One program the church offers is a class for physically and mentally disabled children.

Teacher to class: We’re going to read the Bible story that we just heard.

SEVERSON: Laura Lee Wright has cerebral palsy. She runs the program.

LAURA LEE WRIGHT: They could go into regular class, but they might not really get the message of Jesus and the message of hope, because our volunteers are trained to accommodate their special need and their conditions.

Teacher to class: Can you all show me how you pray?

SEVERSON: Unfortunately, Northland’s attitude toward the disabled may be the exception rather than the rule. Over the years, America’s millions of physically, mentally, and emotionally disabled have made great strides in the workplace, but places of worship have lagged behind.

Jim Hukill was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was only two. He has made it his life’s mission to open more churches to the disabled.

JIM HUKILL: We are still very much in an infantile state with the faith and disability movement. I think that we have seen over the last decade a significant advancement, but we are nowhere near what has to happen.

SEVERSON: Places of worship and the disabled is the subject of a new book called Amazing Gifts by author Mark Pinsky. He says one stumbling block for people, whatever their faith, is that at first they feel awkward around people with disabilities.

MARK PINSKY: They say, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Should I tell my kids not to stare?” All these things are okay, and people in the disability community recognize that there’s going to be some unease, some initial discomfort. That’s okay. That shouldn’t discourage you from plunging ahead.

SEVERSON: He says it’s not that churches, synagogues, and mosques deliberately ignore people with disabilities.

PINSKY: We have a sort of “Zen of the normal” in most of America. Most of us worship with people who are like us racially, economically, and physically, and so if we don’t see people with disabilities we just don’t think about them. It’s not that we actively excluded them, because I don’t think we did. It’s just the fact that they weren’t there. If they weren’t seen, they weren’t considered, and because they weren’t there, people thought they didn’t exist.

SEVERSON: One of the 64 stories in Pinsky’s book is about Linda Starnes. She and her husband have two children, both with disabilities. Her daughter, Emily, has Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism. Her younger son, Mac, was born without a lower jaw and has lived his life connected to breathing and feeding tubes. When he was a baby the doctors recommended that the parents sign a “do not resuscitate” order.

LINDA STARNES: And so we said you know we need to talk about this. We’re not going to place that order right now. We need to pray about this, and we need to talk to our pastor, and decided that we would allow the course that God had for Mac to take place, and so we said we will not make that decision. You do everything you can for our son, and so they said this means a life on a ventilator, and we said that’s okay. We’re going to be up for that challenge.

SEVERSON: Her daughter, Emily, is now a freshman at the University of Tennessee. Mac plays the xylophone in the school band and has dreams of becoming a motivational speaker and/or a preacher.

Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School who has lived and worked with the disabled, says the stories in Pinsky’s book help them and those who care for them overcome feelings of isolation.

PROFESSOR STANLEY HAUERWAS: One of the aspects of disability is the kind of loneliness that it creates that you’re not sure is shareable with other people. One of the things Mark’s book does is help you share stories in a way that you recognize you’re not alone.

HUKILL: I think for people with disabilities their hunger and their desire is for someone to look past the hardware and to be able to embrace them as individuals—for someone just to share cheeseburger together with them.

PINSKY: And most of these things don’t cost money. That’s the thing that was kind of a surprise for me. It’s not just about ramps. It’s not just about elevators. It’s about attitudes and programs. It can just be asking people with Down Syndrome in your congregation if they’d like to be greeters. It says this congregation values people with disabilities and the contributions they can make. They are not just people who need help, but they are people who can help.

SEVERSON: Professor Hauerwas says caring for the disabled is fundamental to the message of Christianity.

HAUERWAS: People that you could think might have been disabled in terms of how they were depicted in the gospel, but they are seen as mad or possessed by demons and so on, and Jesus cured them. He drove the demons out.

PINSKY: There’s this wave coming demographically of people with disabilities who will be looking for spiritual homes. We’ll find people returning from the wars with PTSD, with limbs missing, and finally there’s the aging cohort of which I am a part, which is the boomers who are in large numbers aging into infirmity more or less, and the churches that are ready for that wave demographically are going to be the ones who help fill pews.

SEVERSON: Over the years, Linda Starnes has become a major force behind the welcoming nature of Northland Church. She says the bigger payoff for inclusive congregations can’t be measured in numbers.

STARNES: I think you become actually a congregation that’s more blessed, in all honesty, because you grow a heart towards being responsive to people you feel like may have needs and that you are there to perhaps serve. In the end, I believe many people realize not only am I serving, but I am receiving.

SEVERSON: And her son Mac, who can’t speak, has become a church favorite. Here he is on YouTube with Northland pastor Joel Hunter.

YOUTUBE: I look at Mac, if you had an afternoon with him you’d be totally mesmerized. You would, you would, you would because he’s like that, see? Yeah.

PINSKY: If kids see this, if kids see people with disabilities integrated and involved in the congregation, that sends a message that’s imprinted on their brains, and that’s something that’s incredible in terms of its value to the congregation.

SEVERSON: Pinsky says making a congregation inclusive for people with disabilities is more a matter of what’s in your heart than what’s in your budget.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Orlando.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: It looks more like a theme park than a school, and it’s not just the location. In one of Thailand’s most impoverished regions that’s unusual. The buildings are built of bamboo, a fast-growing, renewable resource, including a geodesic dome.

MECHAI VIRAVAIDYA: Well, just to show that you can do things people don’t normally think can be done, such as getting underprivileged kids to be at the top of the scale of many, many things, of being good, being decent.

DE SAM LAZARO: The Mechai Pattana School is the cornerstone of an idea to attack rural poverty and stereotypes and to instill a new kind of learning.

MECHAI: This is our sex education wheel.

DE SAM LAZARO: The Wheel of Fortune game teaches about various sexually transmitted diseases.

MECHAI (spinning the wheel): Green is a safe color, of course. Aha! Oh, aha! HIV, oh boy, just missed that. Then they have a good laugh, because HIV is explained up there.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mechai has long relied on good laughs to explain HIV and sex education in this conservative Southeast Asian nation. He comes from a prominent family and was trained as an economist. But Mechai became a TV personality who spearheaded family planning campaigns in the seventies and, two decades later, condom use to prevent HIV. In this predominantly Buddhist nation, he invited monks to bless the efforts.

MECHAI: And in the Buddhist scriptures it said many births cause suffering, so Buddhism is not against family planning. And we even ended up with monks sprinkling holy water on pills and condoms for the sanctity of the family before shipments went out into the villages.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mechai is credited with bringing down Thailand’s soaring HIV infection rate and its high birth rate, work that won him numerous international awards, including the $1 million Gates Foundation prize for global health.

DR. MALCOLM POTTS: In 1960, Thailand and the Philippines had about the same population, about 60 million people, 50 million people. Today, the Philippines has 94 million people, and there’s a lot of poverty. Thailand has 1.8 children per family, it’s got about 68 million people, and it’s making progress.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Malcolm Potts, former head of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, was an early collaborator with Mechai. He says population stability has yielded many economic benefits.

POTTS: I think it’s a seamless evolution. Mechai, at least in the past, used to talk about fertility-led development, and once we had these contraceptive distributors in most villages, you know, after 3 or 5 years they were the people who had intensive chicken rearing, or who had a sewing machine, or had a microloan.

DE SAM LAZARO: Thailand is no longer considered a less developed country, but there’s a growing gap between the Bangkok area, where the factories are, and rural farming regions whose young people have to migrate to the city for work. Mechai has tried to develop sustainable ideas that would be accessible in rural settings. On a beach resort once owned by Mechai’s family—it’s now run by a nonprofit group he founded—is a garden of so-called intensive agriculture.

MECHAI: This is the new style condom. This is the poverty eradication condom!

DE SAM LAZARO: The unusual metaphor aside, he says these recycled bags of potting soil can grow produce, in this case, cantaloupes with a minimum of water and space and maximum profit.

MECHAI: You’d grow it four times a year, so that’s 24,000 baht. That’s just under a thousand dollars for this much space. Nearly as good as marijuana. Might be even better. Don’t have to share with the police, either.

DE SAM LAZARO: Joking aside, he says Thai staples like mushrooms, limes, poultry, and hydroponic produce could be grown in rural enterprises. To demonstrate, he took us to Buriram Province, about four hours from Bangkok. He’s worked here for two decades, introducing new ideas like intensive agriculture. Several older initiatives have taken off independently.

MECHAI: You have a factory in the middle of nowhere here.

DE SAM LAZARO: This shoe factory was started with international grants. It now provides work for 140 to 200 people, producing mostly for the multinational Bata shoe company.

MECHAI: We helped, from Canadian money again, to provide a loan for them to establish a factory building, and then helped to get Bata to come in, rented the machinery and then bought the machinery, and they’ve been on their own for about 15 years.

DE SAM LAZARO: A short distance away are buildings that were once used to train people to raise livestock. Those activities have since shifted to people’s backyards and, in the buildings they vacated, more factories making brassieres in this building, ice skates in the next.

MECHAI: How could you imagine an old chicken pen and an old pig pen making this stuff, or brassieres?

DE SAM LAZARO: Was it really a tough sell at first?

MECHAI: Oh, yes, took seven visits. They did it out of pity at first. Then they realized that it worked. And when we bring someone new down they can’t quite fathom it how it can be done because they’re so used to the perception that you do everything like this in Bangkok, in the city.

DE SAM LAZARO: These factories provide livable if not lucrative wages and social benefits. But to truly transform rural communities, Mechai says it will take new approaches in education, which is where the Bamboo School fits in. It is now three years old and serves grades seven through ten. Building funds came from profits from Mechai’s resort, the Gates prize money, and corporate donations. Longer term, the school is developing its own vegetable farm, a key part of the business strategy.

(speaking to Mechai): So when this is up and running and flourishing, the cantaloupes and the limes will be paying the teacher salaries here?

MECHAI: Amongst other things, yes.

DE SAM LAZARO: The motto here is “The more you give, the more you get.” Quite apart from academics, for every student there are strict work requirements.

MECHAI: The parents do community service, and the kids do community service, and for every lunch time or meal time you have to do one hour’s community service, so that payment is in providing help to other people, plus their school fees.

DE SAM LAZARO: As part of their service, these students were preparing lesson plans to teach younger children in a nearby government school. It’s part of their training in leadership and critical thinking and a departure from the rote learning standard in most Thai public schools.

RUTHAICHANOK JUNPENG (Student): The teachers are here to teach us, but they’re also like friends, like an older friend that you can go to for advice, not just about what you’re learning.

PIMPAKAIN SIRI (Student): My parents are rice farmers, and I expect my future to be quite different, because I want to become a doctor, and I believe I can do that. I’ve learned new ways to help my parents, who are used to doing agriculture the traditional ways and I can help raise their income.

DE SAM LAZARO: And because students at this school regularly volunteer, they feel connected to their rural communities, says teacher Nantina Saninchai. She says two-thirds of them will be able to create or find jobs here.

NANTINA SANINCHAI: So a number will stay here. They have computers, etc., similar to what they would in the city.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ideas from the Mechai school are catching on. On weekends here, children collect litter in exchange for spending time online in a new community center or in a toy and book library. Parents and elders prepare food for the children. The village chief says one reason this community thrives is that parents are around for their children.

CHAMLEUNG PANRIN: Eight years ago, migration was rampant. Everybody would leave, and you only had children being brought up by the grandparents. Now it has very greatly improved.

MECHAI: The only road out of poverty is through business enterprise, and this is what we’re doing. Teach them, train them, lend them the money—not give them the money —and the business skills. But probably very, very important to go with it too is community empowerment.

DE SAM LAZARO: And you need to start it young?

MECHAI: Yes. Yes, start them young. When you start learning how to give when you’re young, when you get older it is second nature. Just like stealing. Start young and you keep on stealing forever. Ask my politicians.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mechai says he won’t mind if more people steal his self-help model of building community and nation.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Buriram province, Thailand.

JAMES ULAK (Senior Curator of Japanese Art, Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries): These are the designated closest disciples of the living Buddha in the time in the fifth century before the Christian era when he preached his message in what is now northeast India.

These close followers who later received the canonical number of five hundred became known as “the worthy ones.” In Sanskrit, the language of the day in India, Sanskrit calls these people arhats. You hear different names applied to these five hundred. The point of Buddhist fascination with these five hundred followers is that they take the role of intercessors and messengers from the Buddha, teaching compassion, showing that the Buddha’s life can be lived on earth, and they take on the role of supermen. The idea was that they were enlightened but yet living among us. And so they were able to show us how to live but yet also conduct these intercessory miraculous acts to save us from our sufferings.

Kazunobo created this ensemble of one hundred paintings between 1854 and 1863. The ancient purpose of painting these one hundred paintings of the five hundred followers was to give a kind of approachable, easy to see Buddhist catechism. Now I use that phrase very loosely, but it became a vehicle to show to people the basic modes for living a good Buddhist life.

The Buddha’s message, of course, was that to achieve enlightenment one has to tear away from the bonds of any attachment to essential experience. The notion in Buddhism is that everything is changing, everything is in transition, nothing is permanent, and everything we see, everything we grasp for in the material world is ultimately deceptive.

The primary question at least for the general population of his day who were viewing them was that in the midst of all of this we can have hope that there is, that the Buddha dwells among us and in us. You see that in all of the paintings.

He attempts to show you how these five hundred worthies lived their life in a monastery. There’s a wonderful pair of paintings that shows the masters of mercy as they take part in the daily communal bath. It was not just a question of hygiene, but a question of gathering together in a communal way to underscore the idea of the Buddhist community. My guess is that Kazunobu actually went down the street to his local public bath, looked at different people doing different things—a man shaving, a man clipping his toenails.

You get a real sense of compassion extended to all living things. There’s a great painting done of the arhats interacting with the animal world, the natural animal as we know it and the mythical animal world, and they’re at comfort with these creatures. There’s a painting where a unicorn-like animal is crouching in front of a seated arhat, and the arhat is cleaning his ear. Next to him is a little, another monk, and on his shoulder perched like a house cat is what seems to be an ocelot.

You see, if you will, natural history borrowings from other information they have from outside, but you also see the Buddha through the vehicle of these masters of mercy embracing everything, telling everyone everything’s all right. We care for you. We’re like you, but we’re not like you. We have this toggle role within your universe.

There’s a wonderful painting where one sees in the pair of paintings in the foreground what was a dry stream bed or river bed, and you see in one painting water spurting out of the head of one of these monk-like characters, endless stream of water filling the dry stream bed. And in the other painting you see water pouring out of a pitcher that also seems to be an endless source of water.

When we look at the paintings we see a significant amount of narrative drama that involves murder, war, pillage, suicide, earthquakes, fires and these elements alone appearing in the five hundred worthies’ paintings I think is a bit unusual. And Kazunobu in his paintings was reflecting the tumult of the day. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that he was an eye witness to certainly physical catastrophe and tried to depict that and to let his audience know that the mercies of the Buddha were there even for the suffering.

You see interventions. There’s a wonderful pair of paintings showing the worthy ones descending on clouds and hovering over the pits of hell where flames are licking at the damned and demons are poking at those who are condemned, and they come down to give mercy and in essence rescue. You see people condemned in hell climbing out of their terrible pit of torture and reaching up to a staff which one of the worthy ones is extending to his hand.

These would not be paintings you would sit in front of and meditate on. These are paintings that entertain and engage the eye. The eye cannot stay still. Every square inch of these paintings shows color, activity, detail that leave you constantly searching.

These humble looking gentlemen, these gnarled and whimsied old monks are really the embodiment of layers and layers of power inside of them. So there’s no need to show a central or overall dominant Buddha figure. The message is that the Buddha is within and moving about in very mysterious ways.