Click here to view the original June 19, 2009 story.

SAUL GONZALEZ: At the recent Worship Facilities Conference and Expo held in Long Beach, California, the business of marketing to places of worship was on full display. At this twice-a-year national convention, companies try to sell their products and services to churches and religious institutions.

UNIDENTIFIED SALES REPRESENTATIVE #1 (speaking to conference attendee): Maybe two cameras to cover the minister and the choir?

GONZALEZ: Their wares range from sophisticated video production gear to pews for churches and synagogues.

UNIDENTIFIED SALES REPRESENTATIVE #2: This is the Cadillac. This is our theater seat, a completely wooden theater seat.

GONZALEZ: Banks and credit unions that specialize in lending and financial consulting to houses of worship also attended.

UNIDENTIFIED BANK SALES REPRESENTATIVE (speaking to conference attendee): We don’t necessarily go by loan to value. We’re looking at cash flow.

GONZALEZ: Although there was plenty of hustle and bustle on the convention floor this year, the recession cast a pall over this expo.

STEVE KROH (Architect): In 25 years, it’s never hit us this hard before.

GONZALEZ: Steve Kroh is an architect whose firm specializes in church design. With congregations cutting back on expansion and new construction plans, Kroh is seeing his business plummet.

Mr. KROH: We’re not having to lay off a lot of people yet, but we’re cutting back on hours and just trying to hang in there right now. We are taking a lot smaller projects than we used to just to keep everybody busy.

ERIC KNOWLES (Founder and CEO, Church Brokers, San Diego, CA): The recession is hitting everybody, and it’s affecting churches just as much as it is the mom and pop homeowner.

GONZALEZ: Eric Knowles is the founder and CEO of Church Brokers, a San Diego firm that specializes in church real estate and financing.

Mr. KNOWLES: Right now, most of the churches we’ve been working with, probably the past year or least, they are all pulling the reins in. They’re not spending anything outside of the hard fast debt they have to pay. Salaries are getting cut back. People are getting let go. A lot of churches are letting their staff go or reducing their pay, going to part time. So it’s a challenging time for churches right now.

GONZALEZ: One house of worship struggling to keep its doors open in the down economy is Long Beach’s Immanuel Church, which is part of the United Church of Christ.

Reverend JANE STORMONT GALLOWAY (Pastor, Immanuel Church, Long Beach, CA): Foreclosure is a possibility and something that we are concerned about.

GONZALEZ: And to those out there who think of churches as being foreclosure-proof?

Rev. GALLOWAY: Oh, no. Forget it.

GONZALEZ: With revenues down, Reverend Jane Galloway’s church is struggling to pay off a more than $850,000 mortgage and loans used to pay for repairs of this more than 80-year-old building.

Rev. GALLOWAY (speaking at meeting): Talking with the mortgage — our mortgage broker. . .

GONZALEZ: To stay afloat the church has cut expenses, and Reverend Galloway has volunteered to slash most of her own pay. But despite the belt tightening, every bill that arrives brings a new challenge.

Rev. GALLOWAY: I mean we’re literally at a point where my husband walked in the other day and said this was on the side door, and it was a turn-off notice for the utilities. Now we are at a scary moment, and we know that each month, if we are unable to make our mortgage payment on time, we could be — the default process can be filed and a foreclosure proceeding could begin.

GONZALEZ: Although no single, hard number exists, banks and credit unions that lend to houses of worship report a steady increase in church bankruptcies and foreclosures. One of them is this 1,000-seat church north of San Diego. Built just in 2005, it closed last year after the church defaulted on loans. Even wealthy and powerful megachurches, such as southern California’s Crystal Cathedral, have had to cut staff and put millions of dollars worth of property up for sale to help pay off debts. Whether they’re big or small, many churches’ money troubles stem from s steady decline in giving. According to the Christian research company the Barna Group, American churches got between $3 and $5 billion less in donations than they expected to receive during the last quarter of 2008. That’s about a four to six percent decline.

Reverend PHIL HERRINGTON (Pastor, Pathways Community Church, Santee, CA, addressing congregation: I thank you to so many of you who have given faithfully using this envelope. It really helps us pay the bills and do what we do as a ministry — in helping people and loving God and loving people.

GONZALEZ: Phil Herrington is pastor of Pathways Community Church in Santee, California.

Rev. HARRINGTON: We have a number of people in our church right now that are unemployed, that have lost jobs. People who used to be significant donors in the church have just flat out lost their income. Maybe they can give in a smaller way, but that affects our overall income.

GONZALEZ: In response, Pathways has had to cut staff and fill more positions with volunteers. Houses of worship that face foreclosure and other financial troubles often get into their predicaments for the same reasons that homeowners and consumers do: borrowing and spending too much money when times are good and not being prepared when the economy goes from boom to bust.

Mr. KNOWLES: You know, churches are no different than, literally, business owners or homeowners. We all believed that everything was going continue to appreciate, that there was no turning of the curve, and so everybody was overleveraging, and churches are no different. They were not exempt.

GONZALEZ: Real estate broker Eric Knowles, a devout evangelical Christian, says churches’ financial problems are sometimes made worse by leaders who are unable to face harsh economic realities.

Mr. KNOWLES: There’s that faith, you know, that often we think that the Lord is directing us to go do something. Well, how do you refute that when I deal with a pastor that says that the Lord is calling me to buy this building? And I have many situations where it will not pencil. We run our analysis and we get real involved and detailed. But then the pastors continue to say, well, I believe God is directing me for this. Goodness. So what do you do? What do you do? We give the best counsel we can. We give it to them pragmatically, you know, documented in writing that this is where you are going to be, and often time the pastor will look me in the face and say, well, you know what? I understand what you are saying. I understand by earthly standards this will not work, but God has called me to do it. And that’s the trump card. What do you do? You’re just kind of like, okay.

GONZALEZ: In both good economic times and bad, some churches are supplementing what goes into collection baskets by finding new and creative ways to raise income. For instance, with assistance from investors Pathways Community Church purchased this once dilapidated shopping mall. The church occupies the space that was once a supermarket but rents out the rest of the center to other businesses. The revenue earned helps the church pay operating expenses and mortgage payments that total over $21,000 a month.

Rev. HARRINGTON: Right now it’s helping us survive. If we didn’t have that right now we would have to massively downsize staff and personnel and do a lot less ministry out in the community than we are doing right now. So it has opened up a lot of doors for us.

Rev. GALLOWAY (speaking at meeting): I think it could be shared space, perhaps like a collective office space . . .

GONZALEZ: But as they try to guide their churches through turbulent economic times, the strain is taking a visible toll on some religious leaders such as Reverend Galloway.

Rev. GALLOWAY: I really want this to work, and I feel a sense of responsibility. I’ll let myself be this vulnerable because you are asking me this. I feel a sense of responsibility to the people I am here for. People come here with broken hearts. People come here looking for food — looking for spiritual food, and I hear the kind of despair they are in, and I realize that it’s crazy for me to be this preoccupied with the finances of some place, when I’m here to create a place where people can come and find solace. So I feel a sense of responsibility to the people who come here for that kind of nurturance.

UNIDENTIFIED SALES REPRESENTATIVE #3: We’ve developed what we call our McDonald’s approach to church design. It’s our “church in a box.”

GONZALEZ: At the expo, those attending hoped the recession would soon end, allowing houses of worship to focus not on their money problems, but on their ministries.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Long Beach, California.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: The festival of Eid al-Adha begins with sacrifice. Those participating in the hajj, and all other Muslim families with the financial means, slaughter a sheep, lamb, goat, camel, or cow.

DAWUD WALID (Council on American Islamic Relations Michigan): This sacrifice is in remembrance of what the Qu’ran says, as well as the Bible, of when Abraham was inspired or he had a dream that he was to sacrifice one of his sons, and then God told Abraham that he did not have to sacrifice his son, and a ram came, and Abraham then sacrificed the ram.

LAWTON: American Muslims typically buy meat slaughtered according to Islamic requirements from a market or grocery store. The immediate family eats one-third of the meat. Another third is shared with the larger community of friends and relatives, and the rest is donated to the poor.

WALID: It’s a religious obligation for us to give to other people. We would not be good Muslims or following our religion, because the third pillar of Islam is charity, so we’re obligated to give charity.

LAWTON: In the United States, recipients include places such as Gleaner’s Community Food Bank of southeastern Michigan. They partner with over 400 outlets in their network of feeding programs to distribute thousands of pounds of frozen lamb meat donated by the Muslim community annually.

JOHN KASTLER (Gleaner’s Community Food Bank): It’s a high-protein item, and it’s certainly the type of food product that we really like to provide during the winter months where you get a nice, hearty meal out of the donation. Groups like the Salvation Army, the Cabbage & Soup Kitchen, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, and different feeding programs around town will be able to enjoy this blessing.

LAWTON: Through the soup kitchens they operate, mosques and Islamic centers also serve as distribution sites. Those who come in to pray are offered bags of lamb to take home, as are all non-Muslims seeking food assistance.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This past week (November 9) the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether it’s constitutional to sentence juveniles who commit crimes other than murder to life in prison without parole. Tim O’Brien reports.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young had just turned 15 when he committed a string of hotel robberies in the Tampa area, acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record.  Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money.

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN:  What tapes?

YOUNG:  Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security camera?

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN:  And you did that?

YOUNG:  Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

YOUNG: Kill her.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along.

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother blames herself for her son’s problems.

STEPHANIE YOUNG:  Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, I mean …

O’BRIEN: But that didn’t keep Kenneth from being sentenced to life in prison with no parole.

JUDGE J. ROGERS PADGETT: What we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

Judge J. Rogers Padgett

PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him, so we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Florida, like many states, allows prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults for serious crimes, and the state legislature did away with all parole in 1995. As a result, there are now 77 inmates in the state serving life without parole for non-homicides committed when they were under 18, more than in all other states combined. Paolo Annino runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University:

PAOLO ANNINO: This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions?

O’BRIEN: This week (November 9) the U.S. Supreme Court took up that question in two separate cases involving Terrence Graham, who at age 17 committed armed burglaries while on parole for a previous armed robbery, and Joe Sullivan, who was convicted of raping and robbing a 72-year-old woman when he was only 13.

BRYAN STEVENSON: We don’t think there’s any dispute that sentencing a 13-year-old to life in prison without parole is unusual. It’s happened only twice for non-homicides. We also think that to say to any child of 13 that you’re only fit to die in prison is cruel.

O’BRIEN: But Stevenson ran into some skeptical justices, including Antonin Scalia: “I don’t see why it is any crueler to an adolescent that it is to an adult… Where do you draw the line?” Justice Sam Alito: “What about …brutal rapes, assaults that render the victim paraplegic but not dead …the person shows no remorse… the worst case you could possibly imagine? That person must at some point be made eligible for parole? “You are correct, your honor,” answered Brian Gowdy, the attorney for Terrence Graham.

BRIAN GOWDY: If the court rules in Terrence’s favor, about one hundred persons who committed crimes as adolescents will benefit by getting a chance to show some day that they have changed, and that’s all we’re asking for. Not for immediate release, but a chance to show that the kid has changed.

Brian Gowdy

O’BRIEN: In court, Gowdy pointed to a landmark Supreme Court ruling four years ago in which the justices rejected the death penalty for juvenile offenders, relying heavily on evidence showing that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do. Several justices observed that that was a death penalty case, and death is different.

GOWDY: Death is different, but not in any critical respects when you’re talking about an adolescent. Both sentences condemn the adolescent to die in prison, both give up on the kid, both determine that the adolescent can’t be changed,  and both say that, based on an adolescent mistake, you can never live in civil society.

O’BRIEN: The attorney for Florida said the state’s sentencing practices were aimed at addressing a serious crime problem and that such policy decisions should not be second-guessed by federal judges.

SCOTT MAKAR (Florida Solicitor General): That’s a quintessential states’ judgment, and 21 states have said no to parole and our position is that the court shouldn’t impose something on the states that the states themselves have rejected.

O’BRIEN: Chief Justice John Roberts proposed a compromise requiring judges and juries to consider a defendant’s youth, but allowing life without parole in extreme cases. Defense lawyers dismissed the idea as too little.

STEVENSON: Because poor kids and minority kids and disadvantaged kids are always the ones who end up with these harsh sentence.

O’BRIEN: Conservatives on the court dismissed it as too much. Meanwhile, back in Florida, Kenneth Young and more than a hundred other prison inmates nationwide serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children got some support from what might seem to be an unlikely source. The judge who sentenced Young, J. Rogers Padgett, has come out against laws that deny parole to juveniles in non-homicide cases.

PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing I’m doing a snapshot, so what do I know?

O’BRIEN: The justices appeared sharply divided, making any decision unlikely before the end of the term next June. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

ABERNETHY: Among those who have filed briefs with the court are 20 religious groups that argued that the values of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion are central to their faiths. They said judges have a responsibility to consider those values, along with the possibility of rehabilitation, especially for juveniles. They urged what they call “restorative justice.”

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As Congress assembles a health care reform package, a longtime expert on medical ethics writes in a recent issue of Commonweal magazine that there has been an important idea missing from the debate—the concept of the common good. The expert is Daniel Callahan, founder and now president emeritus of the Hastings Center. His new book is Taming the Beloved Beast.  He joins us from New York.

Mr. Callahan, welcome. How do you define the common good?

DANIEL CALLAHAN (Senior Researcher and President Emeritus, The Hastings Center): I mean by the common good our life together, the stranger and the neighbor, the friend we know and the person—people we don’t know. The common good I think of as essentially a social concept. Aristotle said human beings are social animals, and I think that is true, and it seems to me that as we think about our own life, either in politics or health reform, we have to think not only of ourselves and our family but also of the neighbor, the stranger, the person we don’t know, and somehow knit that together into some meaningful whole.

ABERNETHY: And was there a time in this country’s history when the idea of the common good was very strong, very prevalent?

CALLAHAN: Well, in a curious sense, its not like—Europe has a much stronger sense of the common good, in great part because of their wars and other terrors they have gone through. In this country I think there has been ambivalence and uncertainty about the common good. We really—freedom has been our main catchword, the main value we have gone by, justice a little bit less so. But the idea of working together for the common good is something—it certainly is come at in times of warfare, but it’s sporadic. It often doesn’t mark our common life together, and a great number of people really, I think, are just enormously ambivalent. They want to help the poor, but of course they don’t want to raise their taxes. They’d like health care reform and they see the need for cutting costs, but they don’t want to give up anything themselves. So we are very torn on the common good, I think.

ABERNETHY: Is that why it has been so difficult to put together health care reform, because nobody wants to give up anything?

CALLAHAN: That’s a very powerful part of it. Now some of it is different politics. Republicans and Democrats differ on the role of government. But it is very striking that even the Democrats, who started out talking about cost control, immediately backed down and said of course we can’t take anything away from people. But, of course, we can’t control costs unless we do, unfortunately, take some things away from people.

ABERNETHY: And that’s the idea in your new book, Taming the Beloved Beast, isn’t it, that technology, medical technology, has become so important, but also so expensive, that there have got to be some kind of limits, some kind of controls. Is that right?

CALLAHAN: Exactly right. Technology is probably the main thing that drives up health care costs in this country. Everybody loves it. Doctors love it, patients love it, and it’s part of American culture, and it’s done wonderful things. It keeps us alive longer, it keeps us healthier. Yet, at the same time, the cost of it all is beginning to really corrode, even destroy, the heath care system. It’s one of those wonderful cases of when is enough enough, and when does a good thing turn into a bad thing?

ABERNETHY: And, very quickly, are we going to get a good, in your judgment, a good health care reform?

CALLAHAN: I think we’ll get a good reform in the sense that we’ll probably see a much enlarged coverage of the uninsured, and we’ll see certain changes, improvements in health care for children and Medicaid. At the same time, we will not be able to control costs under the present bill, and I think that’s going to create enormous problems in the very immediate future.

ABERNETHY: Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center, many thanks.

Daniel Callahan

The aim of health care should be, within a finite life span, to help us to have a good chance to progress from being young to being old—but not to go from being old to being indefinitely older; to relieve us of our most burdensome physical and mental suffering—but not always fully or perfectly; to rehabilitate us as best it can if we are disabled—but to understand that some of us will live our lives with chronic illnesses and disabilities; and to help us achieve as pain-free and peaceful death as is possible—but knowing that goal will not always be possible. Medicine ought not to seek an indefinite extension of life or aim to enhance our nature beyond the ordinary standards of good health, or search out medical ways of excessively fighting our decline and frailties, many of which are now and always will be unavoidable. Just as death ought not to be taken as the ultimate enemy of human life, health should not be taken as the ultimate good.

As Judith Feder and Donald W. Moran have observed, “To be serious about cost containment, it will be necessary to admit that containing costs will require affecting the decisions that individual Americans make every day in all the settings in which they make them.” Whether Americans can be brought to think differently about health, to expect less and to settle for less, and to be willing to forgo some health care they might like, or even need, for the sake of the public good, takes a utopian, or maybe a counter-utopian elixir of hope and imagination. I see no plausible alternative.

As individuals, we are in a position similar to our health care system problem if we do not learn to rein in our aspirations for perfect health, to live with some of our needs that might otherwise be medically dealt with, to run some risks with our health, understand that an elevated level of this or that reflects a possibility of harm only, not a death sentence, and to recognize (even if begrudgingly) that a cure of one of our otherwise lethal diseases will not save us from some other one. Cured diseases are always succeeded by a final and fatal disease. If we as individuals do not bring some greater realism to our health, some willingness to put up with our mortality and vulnerability, and the anxiety that goes with its recognition, then there is no hope that costs can be controlled, hardly any technologies that can be limited or denied.

There is, to be sure, an obvious objection to my line of thought here. Even if, as individuals, we limit our medical appetite, there is no guarantee that any money saved by our altruism will go to other more serious social or health needs. True enough, and that is one of the serious penalties for living in a society without universal health care and the circumscribed budget that should go with it. But it is also true, as we can see with voting, that it is a bad mistake to think that, with a large electorate, our individual votes are irrelevant. The danger is not that one vote will harm the election process. It is that, if everyone thinks that way, then the process will indeed be harmed. So, if only a few of us begin to change our views of health care, and then a few more, that might indeed make a difference.

My scenario may be fanciful, but as individuals we need an open discussion on what counts as good or bad choices, wise or imprudent ones, and our social obligations to our community as we make them. Such a discussion need not be, and ought not be, coercive. It might, however, help shape some rough consensus, moving us at least in the right direction There is an obvious truism, usually ignored in health care, that the collective, aggregate impact of our private choices can affect the public good. Hence, it is worth the effort to see if those private choices can be nudged in a helpful direction. That direction would be, following my finite model of health care, toward less, not more, and even much less.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Volunteers signed up by the thousands to lend a helping hand to people in need, and here in Portland, Oregon, where unemployment reached 12 percent this year, there are a lot of people in need. And with tax revenues down, the city needs help providing even basic services, like maintaining public schools, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. Roosevelt High, for instance, might get a visit from a maintenance man once this year if it’s lucky. Devon Baker is an administrator at Roosevelt.

DEVON BAKER (School Administrator): It does something for you, in your heart, you know, if you’re one of the staff members and suddenly the building is clean, it’s ready to go. It’s a real partnership with a lot of folks that just really makes you feel like, wow, people really do care.

Kevin Palau

SEVERSON: What makes this effort so extraordinary is not that it’s church members doing the volunteering—there are about 500 churches involved this year, including Catholic and mainline Protestant. But the majority of the 26,000 volunteers are evangelicals intentionally not here to proselytize, but to show their faith by doing good deeds such as scrubbing windows and even working in harmony with one of the most liberal cities in the US and its openly gay mayor,  Sam Adams.

SAM ADAMS (Mayor of Portland): If I could have them do it every month in my city I would, so thank you.

SEVERSON: The organizer of Season of Service, which is now in its second year, is Kevin Palau.

KEVIN PALAU (Executive Vice President, Luis Palau Association): Portland is a very proudly liberal city. This is not the Bible belt, and so to have that kind of cooperation between churches and city leaders on a long-term basis, I think, is unprecedented.

SEVERSON: Palau is the son of Luis Palau, who has staged huge evangelism festivals around the world. His son chose a slightly different path, one he thinks will put Christ’s teachings into action and, perhaps, change the image in a secular city that some have of Christians. The purpose, he says, is not to preach or proselytize.

KEVIN PALAU: We’re not doing this so that we can preach the Gospel. We’re doing this to demonstrate the love of Christ, and absolutely we’re not hiding the fact that we want people to come into relationship with Christ, but realistically through this it’s going to happen more relationally and organically, and that’s okay.

SEVERSON: Wayne Abbott graduated from Roosevelt.

WAYNE ABBOTT (Volunteer): Season of Service works because Jesus told us that he was here to serve, not be served, and there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t just take a few minutes out of a busy day and our busy lives every once in a while and do exactly what he did.

SEVERSON: The extensive work done sprucing up Roosevelt High, outside and in, would have cost the city about $200,000. Deborah Peterson is the principal.

DEBORAH PETERSON (Roosevelt High School Principal): When good people of good will come together and honor one another and believe in hope, miracles happen, and that’s what’s happening today.

SEVERSON: The churches also raised $100,000 to help the increasing numbers of homeless. Then they sponsored what they call compassion clinics throughout the city, offering free medical and dental care. These clinics were overbooked within the first half-hour with mostly uninsured patients. These clinics cared for as many as 200 patients each day—grateful patients. Churches even sponsored the mobile medical truck.

KRISTINE SUMMER (Volunteer): For the church love has to be a verb, and this is what it looks like.

JEFF PALEN (Volunteer): This is love in action. This is what Christ did for all of those 5,000. He fed them, he preached to them, he shared with them, and he loved them.

SEVERSON: Love includes free veterinarian care for their pets and haircuts for their owners. Kevin Palau says loving thy neighbor is what Season of Service is all about.

KEVIN PALAU: So our hope is that, long-term, this does lead to a lifestyle of service and sharing the Gospel by how we live.

SEVERSON: Mayor Adams said the thousands of volunteers had made Portland and its suburbs a better place.

SAM ADAMS: Honestly, we had modest hopes. Well, our modest hopes were greatly exceeded.

SEVERSON: Season of Service was topped off with a carnival that may have been as important as any of the other events—an opportunity for families to simply have fun in hard times and experience what neighborly love can do when it’s put into practice.

For Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Four years ago this weekend, Hurrican Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In this neighborhood in New Orleans, Broadmoor, the houses were in 8 feet of water. Since then, thousands of young volunteers from all over the country, from many faith traditions, have gone to New Orleans to help with the clean-up and rebuilding. Many chose to move there. We talked with residents at the Jewish social service organization, Moishe House. 

JONATHAN GRABOIES: Moishe House is a national organization. It says that the mission of the houses that they have throughout the world is “tikkun olam,” which is “repairing the world.”

JEFF PRUSSECK: That ties right in to the mission here in New Orleans, taking a city that has been faced with so many challenges and trying to, on every level of infrastructure and community development, to provide more structure to it.

GILL BENEDEK: The idea of giving back to a community, whether it be Jewish or the general community at large, was a very appealing idea.

JONATHAN GRABOIES: First, coming down, it was an absolute—it was wiped out. It looked like a bomb had gone off, and coming back in the six-month intervals you could really see the progression that was slowly happening, but with that time going by you could see progress.

I met Miss Della Mae when she came into Broadmoor looking for assistance with rebuilding her home. She’s an elderly woman, wheelchair-bound, been living in a trailer on her property for the better part of three years after Hurricane Katrina. So Miss Dell was someone we were thrilled to find the resources to help her.

DELLA MAE WITHERSPOON: Oh, they did a wonderful job. They did everything. They made me a brand new house!

JONATHAN GRABOIES: We’re already practicing tikkun olam in our day-to-day lives, so in a way we’re being Jewish even without being in the synagogue. Moishe House, in a sense, is sort of that alternative venue to come in and reengage with the community.

GILL BENEDEK: The Shabbat potluck, the Friday night dinner that we do once a month, is really very much the soul of our programming.

JONATHAN GRABOIES: It’s great to see everyone. We do this every month, and we start with some traditional prayers and a brief song. They join us for dinner, and we do the blessings. It’s sort of a great opportunity for everyone to take a moment and spend time with their friends.

What I hope Moishe House brings to New Orleans is a comfortable, open community based on Jewish values, culture, religion that is accessible to everyone.

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: In Los Angeles, a group of inner-city clergy, many of them inspired by veterans of the civil rights movement, are taking their ministries out of the pulpit and into the streets. Instead of only preaching to save souls, they are returning to activism: confronting homelessness, unemployment, and violence. Lucky Severson reports.

Speaker at Bryant Temple AME Church service: It’s time to break the silence. It’s time to draw a line saying “this far and no farther.”

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Bryant Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Central Los Angeles. The music will move you, but this is not a celebration. It’s a service dedicated to bringing an end to the needless deaths of all the boys who will never become men.

REV. EUGENE WILLIAMS (CEO and National Director, Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations Training Center, speaking at service): Our young people have been dying in the streets day and night where we have hidden our light under a bushel.

SEVERSON: How many kids have been killed, say, in the last year?

REV. WILLIAMS: About a hundred.

SEVERSON: Pastor Eugene Williams managed to survive his inner-city childhood, but the odds are worse today. He says it’s partly because too many African-American churches have lost their way.

REV. WILLIAMS: And so we’ve gone from a period of ministers like Dr Cecil Murray and Dr. J. Alfred Smith, who taught that it was important to love your neighbor as yourself, to a place where ministers believed that it was important that the community love them.

SEVERSON: So that’s why Williams and other activist preachers started a program called Passing the Mantle, now in its fourth year at the University of Southern California.  It’s a nine-day course where pastors, now known as the Old Lions, teach younger pastors, African American and Latino, how to get civically engaged in the real-life drama of inner city Los Angeles.

(to Rev. Cecil Murray): Did you ever think that you would be called an Old Lion?

REV. CECIL “CHIP” MURRAY (Professor of Christian Ethics, USC School of Religion and Former Pastor, First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, Calif.): Bless the Lord, I knew I’d be called old, but not a lion.

SEVERSON: Cecil “Chip” Murray retired at 75 as the pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, which was the largest AME church in the country. He could preach hellfire and brimstone, but he was more concerned about social issues like homelessness, jobs, violence, and hunger.

REV. MURRAY: We must not only have life after death, but we must have life after birth, even as with the founder of Christianity. He would preach personal salvation, but he would also preach social salvation. He would reach out.  I have come that you may have life, not I have come to take you to heaven.

SEVERSON: Pastor Mark Whitlock is a co-director of Passing the Mantle. He says because of Rev. Murray he turned his life around, so he knows a pastor can make a difference, even with kids society deems beyond hope.

REV. MARK WHITLOCK (Director of Community Initiatives, USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Pastor, Christ Our Redeemer AME Church, Irvine, Calif.): I would probably be one of those people you would be afraid of in the community, yeah, sold some product that were illegal and did some things that I’m not very proud of.

SEVERSON: Now, as pastor of Christ Our Redeemer AME Church, he sees how much more difficult it is today for inner-city kids to break free of their environment. He was once one of those kids. The need for black churches to get involved, he says, is urgent.

REV. WHITLOCK: It’s immediate, and you look at the challenge of gang violence, the number of African Americans, Latinos that are locked up in this country, over a million, the absence of African Americans graduating, particularly African American men graduating from high schools and even elementary schools, the attention is necessary now, and it’s an immediate need to change.

REV. MURRAY: To say we are here to save souls and that’s all—you can’t save souls in isolation. It’s a totality of heart, soul, mind, strength, family, environment. It is essentially your environment.

SEVERSON: Pastor Murray earned his reputation as an Old Lion as a leader of the civil rights movement in California from the very beginning. Despite his quiet, humble demeanor, he has won many battles and concessions from the city and state, including one that the police would no longer hold suspects in choke-holds.

Pastor J. Alfred Smith is another Old Lion who led the civil rights movement in northern California. He is senior pastor emeritus of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland.

REV. J. ALFRED SMITH (Pastor Emeritus, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland, Calif.): The church was the civil rights movement because the church understood the meaning of “go down, Moses, and tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.” The church understood the meaning of saying “we shall overcome.”

SEVERSON: And after they led the struggle against segregation and police brutality and eventually forced Congress to pass civil rights legislation, it was black pastors who calmed the fury of the LA race riots in 1992. Then things changed. Many black churches began focusing less on social justice issues and more on saving souls and preaching the gospel of prosperity, which teaches that the faithful will be rewarded with material blessings.

REV. MURRAY: I would just admonish those who preach prosperity to remember that the one who founded the Christian church had one pair of shoes.

REV. WHITLOCK: We believe Christ came to set the captives free, to bring sight to the blind, to clothe the naked, to find housing for those who are looking for housing. That’s the work of the church. We must return back to the values that made the black church a true success.

REV. WILLIAMS (speaking at Bryant Temple AME Church service): And we came by here to tell you young people that we’re sorry. We’re sorry because we left you to fend for yourselves.

SEVERSON: Outside the chapel at the special healing service, there was an empty casket. No one needed to ask why. They all know someone.

Woman praying at service: Bring, Heavenly Father, what only you can give…

SEVERSON: A few days earlier, someone dumped the body of a young man who had been shot in the head just a few hundred yards from the church.

REV. WHITLOCK: It’s wonderful labels that we’ve given our children—gang members, Crips, Bloods. I’m sorry. Those are our sons, those are our daughters, those are our cousins, those are our nieces. So we must not be afraid of our own, and if they’re doing wrong, they’re doing wrong.  Selling drugs is wrong. Doing crime is wrong.  Not going to school is wrong.  So the church must speak to the moral—take a moral position on it, but after we take a moral position then we must wrap our arms around them and love them back to a place where they feel safe in the church.

SEVERSON: Most parents in South Central LA are as caring and loving as parents everywhere, but with far greater obstacles. There are few jobs, few public parks to get the kids off the streets, poor schools, and not enough role models. There are now twice as many Latinos as African Americans, but people of all races are starting to realize they’re in this together.

REV. MURRAY: If under the skin all people are kin, if all human beings have an area that can be approached, then we need to find what that area is and go to it, because the problems are not going to fix themselves.

SEVERSON: There are some signs of progress. Inner city pastors have managed to wrangle some new affordable housing. Some of the estimated 40,000 gang members have been persuaded to try to go straight. Pastors are getting more involved. And there’s one more change on the front lines: A majority of those asking to receive the mantle are women.

Woman pastor speaking to group: …that we have to make the difference. That’s what I learned today.

REV. WILLIAMS: People are dying in the streets. We’re saying that people are engaging in risky behavior. So you’ve got to come out behind your stained glass windows and come out here and help people, because if you don’t, all of those problems are going to end up, and they are ending up, on your doorstep.

SEVERSON: They’ve heard promises of help before, promises often not kept. Now it’s the most trusted men and women in the neighborhood who are offering hope.

REV. WILLIAMS (speaking at Bryant Temple AME Church service): If we lock arms, if we continue to move and work together, we will improve the communities where we live, work, and worship. I came by here to tell you to stand on your feet, because we gonna be more better. Let’s give God some praise….

SEVERSON: So far, the Old Lions have passed the mantle to about 400 younger pastors who seem determined to do what authorities have been unable to do without them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in South Central Los Angeles.