BOB ABERNETHY, host: Familiar social issues led the religion news this week. In Washington, the Obama administration made a significant change in its policy on insurance coverage of contraception by religiously affiliated organizations. Any employer with a religious objection will not be required to offer or pay for contraceptive services but insurance companies would have to offer those services to women free of charge. This change follows a huge controversy over the administrations original plan which US Catholic bishops and several other religious groups said would have violated their constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedom. Republican candidates for president also weighed in on the controversy. Mitt Romney became the latest GOP candidate to accuse the president of waging “an assault on religion”. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have launched similar attacks. On Tuesday, support from religious and social conservatives helped Santorum win the Missouri primary and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. Following those victories, Santorum traveled to Texas where he spoke to more than 100 Christian ministers about his Catholic faith.

We want to explore the contraception debate further. Kim Lawton our managing editor has been following the issue which produced for many people Kim, as you know, this terrible bind between having to obey the law on the one hand or follow their churches’ teachings and their own consciences on the other.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor): Well, that’s what the big debate was. The original policy allowed exemptions for most churches, but for these religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals or Catholic universities or charitable organizations—they felt like they were being forced to pay for something that their church says is wrong, and so they did feel that there was this bind, which is why there was this outcry.

ABERNETHY: And so what does the compromise say?

LAWTON: And with this solution, as the Obama administration calls it, they say they’re accommodating two core principles, the core principle of giving women access to affordable preventative health care, which they say includes contraceptive services. That was a core principle for the administration. But it also, they say, now accommodates religious liberty concerns so…

ABERNETHY: They also called it a public health issue.

LAWTON: Yes, and they say that, you know, they want women to have access to these contraceptive services as a matter of public health, so now the insurance companies will directly offer those to the employees, and the religiously affiliated institutions won’t have to provide those or pay for it.

ABERNETHY: Or refer?

LAWTON: Or refer people to it. It would be the responsibility of the insurance company, and so, you know, this is their way of getting around it. There were a lot of people in the religious community, especially in the mainline Protestant community that said they supported the original mandate, but for, you know, some people, including moderate to liberal Catholics, they had a problem with it.

ABERNETHY: And so is it all solved now? Is everybody happy?

LAWTON: Well, there were a lot of hard feelings that were generated in all of this—and again this notion that the Obama administration is in some way at war with religion or at war with the Catholic Church. That was the slogan that was out there. As we’ve reported, a lot of the Republican candidates certainly jumped on that some might say, the president says, you know, cynically for political gain. That issue’s still out there. Is there some sort of, you know, growing secularism or attack on religious exercise in this country? And so I think the administration does have, you know, some repairing to do. A lot of moderate and liberal Catholics who supported this president, who supported the health care bill when it was going through Congress, they felt a little betrayed. I’m hearing from people who say, you know, yeah, the majority of Catholic women may use birth control, and yeah, a lot of people disagree maybe with the church’s policy, but this issue is bigger than that in their view. And so, you know, for them they were pleased that the administration made this compromise, but there was some damage that was done.

ABERNETHY: And we will be hearing more about this as the campaign goes on.

LAWTON: Well. certainly I think a lot of the Republicans aren’t going to let this go. They are going to keep at it. They see it as a good issue, a good issue to battle the president with.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

KATE SEELYE, correspondent: On the outskirts of Cairo, members and supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood celebrate the start of a new political era. With nearly half the seats in parliament, the party is set to wield significant influence in Egypt. Newly elected deputy Azza al Jarf calls Egypt’s first free election in decades historic.

The Brotherhood has been waiting a long time for this moment. Formed in 1928 to promote Islam, it was later banned in Egypt and its leaders repeatedly imprisoned. But as secular autocrats have collapsed from Tunisia to Egypt, Islamist parties have stepped into the political vacuum, and groups like the Brotherhood are now riding a wave of popular support with their calls for social and economic justice. On election day in a poor Cairo suburb, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Beltagy spelled out the party’s goals.

MOHAMED BELTAGY: We were oppressed and intimidated for 80 years, but today we are about to embark on a long journey to meet the needs of the people.

SEELYE: Beltagy and his party weren’t the only Islamists voted into parliament. The Noor Party, which advocates a more fundamentalist agenda, won nearly a quarter of the seats. Together, Egypt’s Islamists make up more than 70 percent of the new parliament. Liberal and youth parties account for the rest. Blogger Mahmoud Salem, who ran and lost in a district of Cairo, says youth candidates like himself didn’t stand a chance against the better known and funded Islamists.

MAHMOUD SALEM: The issue is that if you’re a party that only started three months ago you don’t have the chance to create the groundwork that is necessary. You know, as opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood who’s been around for 80 years, you know. So people vote for whoever they see in front of them.

SEELYE: It was young, secular Egyptians like Salem who sparked last year’s protests with their demands for justice and freedom. They were been sidelined in these elections, but Salem say he has no regrets.

SALEM: Now we get to play the role of the opposition, which is so much more fun, you know: Hey, Islamists, you wanted power? Fantastic. I want social justice now. Get it done.

SEELYE: But others worry democracy has been hijacked by parties they say have little respect for personal rights and freedoms.

PROFESSOR SAID SADEK (Professor of Political Science, The American University in Cairo): It is scary on many issues, especially the social issues, minorities, Christians. Also the status of women, civil liberties, personal liberties in general. What are they going to do with them?

SEELYE: Sadek says Egyptians have legitimate concerns about this parliament’s intentions, given the poor human rights records of Islamist-run countries like Sudan and Iran.

SADEK: Islam has many variety of readings and many interpretations. If they are going to adopt a moderate version, we all support them, but if they are going to adopt a very strict interpretation and they want to impose it on others, we’ll have trouble.

SEELYE: But in this working-class Cairo neighborhood, shoppers have other things on their mind. Many are struggling to get by. At this local food bank shoppers are snap up macaroni and lentils at wholesale prices provided by the Muslim Brotherhood. Nearly half of Egypt’s more than 80 million citizens live on less than two dollars a day, and economic despair fueled last year’s anti-government protests. For decades, the Brotherhood has provided for the poor, offering free health care, education, and other services. Now voters are hoping that the Brotherhood’s history of charitable work and its promises to improve people’s lives will lead to real change.

RAMADAN (Man at Food Distribution): The past government was dishonest. We hope the future will bring reforms.

SEELYE: Egypt faces many challenges. Buildings burned during last year’s protest are reminders of the country’s ongoing instability. Investment is down dramatically, as is tourism, which employs more than 10 percent of the population. Unemployment is surging. Corruption is rife. Given the country’s deep problems, the Brotherhood’s leaders say their priorities will be rebuilding Egypt’s economy and infrastructure, not pushing religion. Ossama Yassin is a Muslim brotherhood deputy in parliament.

OSSAMA YASSIN (Member of Parliament): We don’t want what’s known as a religious state. We want a modern, civil, democratic state belonging to the people.

SEELYE: Sensitive to concerns about an Islamist agenda, the Brotherhood has been moderating its religious language and emphasizing its respect for the rights of other religions and groups.

YASSIN: There is no basis for the liberals’ fears. The state we seek will guarantee freedoms and rights, like the freedom of religion and speech, the right to form groups and political parties, and the right to demonstrate.

SEELYE: By contrast, the Noor Party is calling for a religious state. This summer many of its fundamentalist supporters, known as Salafists, gathered in Cairo to demand an Islamic caliphate. Salafists once shunned democracy, claiming it gave the laws of man precedence over those of God. But today democracy offers them a chance to press for harsh religious legislation. Tarek Shaalan is a founding member of the Noor Party and holds a PhD from the University of Central Florida. He says his party seeks social justice and the strict application of Islamic law, including banning alcohol and segregating the sexes on Egypt’s beaches.

TAREK SHAALAN: The reason I want to make it segregated so I want to make the woman feel more comfortable, you understand me? Don’t look at Islam that we’re bringing a problem. No, we bring the solution, not the problem, okay?

SEELYE: Hard-line Salafist views have proliferated on religious channels here. It’s not uncommon to hear preachers like Yasser Borhami, a founder of the Noor Party, accuse Christians and Jews of being infidels. This kind of talk deeply worries Egypt’s Coptic Christian community of more than four million. Over the past several years, attacks on their community have grown. Churches have been burned and Copts killed. Salafists have been blamed for inciting sectarian violence, a charge Shaalan denies.

(speaking to Tarek Shaalan): You acknowledge that there have been growing attacks on Christians in this country?

SHAALAN: Well, I don’t want to see it this way. It’s not because of religion. It’s because of lots of other things, you know?

SEELYE: The Noor Party’s positions have been criticized by the Muslim Brotherhood. The two Islamist parties are rivals, but in Cairo cafes where Egyptians debate the future, some worry that Noor’s ultraconservative agenda may pull the Muslim Brotherhood to the right. The best protection for minority and women’s rights lies in the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution, according to Coptic community leader Mona Makram Ebeid, who is also an advisor to Egypt’s ruling military authority.

MONA MAKRAM EBEID (Member of Advisory Council to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces): I think the biggest battle now that we all must focus on is the constitution.

SEELYE: Makram Ebeid says parliament will appoint an assembly this spring to draft the constitution. She insists it must address the concerns of all of Egypt’s communities.

MAKRAM EBEID: I hope that the majority of the Muslim brothers, who are much more moderate and much more professional, will be able to have a fair constitution which takes into consideration the rights of every individual in this country, of every citizen in the country, whether it’s economic rights, social rights, political rights, religious rights, cultural rights.

SEELYE: In Tahrir Square, where the protests began just over a year ago, demonstrators continue to demand those rights. Democracy is very fragile here. Egypt is now run by a heavy-handed military which took over when Mubarak stepped down. The generals say they’ll transfer power after presidential elections this summer, but some have doubts. Nevertheless, Islamists long banned in Egyptian political life have new responsibilities and a new sense of accountability. And Makram Ebeid believes that will have a moderating effect.

MAKRAM EBEID: So I don’t think that they will be able so much to impose their own views or change the personality of Egypt as they wish, because I think that this will make them lose their popularity. The more there is an opening to democracy, the more the process of democratization will be, will go ahead, and the more they will come more to the center.

SEELYE: While some might disagree, few dispute the importance of Egypt’s democratic opening. The test will be safeguarding the process so that future voters can choose to re-elect their parliamentarians or not.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Kate Seelye in Cairo.

KRISTIN CORNWELL (Teacher, Hanley Elementary School, speaking to students): All right, I am going to give you five seconds to be settled.

BOB FAW, correspondent: In Memphis public schools, where only a small  percentage of students go on to college, Kristin Cornwell tells all her fourth graders they can be “college-ready.”

CORNWELL: The expectations haven’t been set before necessarily even that high, and they live up to it. One of the biggest delights is when I hear kids sitting in their groups, and they’ll whisper to each other, “Get college-ready,” and they’ll sit up straight, and they know exactly what that looks like, and they want that for themselves.

FAW: In a public school system where failure is common…

ERIN SVOBODA (Teacher, Kingsbury Middle School, speaking to students): Where’s the right angle in that diagram?

FAW: …Erin Svoboda’s goal is that 100 percent of her students pass the state math exam.

SVOBODA : A lot of my students are a little bit jaded, and they maybe feel a little bit even cheated. They understand that maybe they haven’t received the education that they should have. So I hope to maybe renewing their faith in their education and the schools and in what they can do with that later.

FAW: In this poor neighborhood, where reading scores are abysmally low, Katelyn Woodard praises her students for trying to find the right answer.

KATELYN WOODARD (Teacher, Hanley Elementary School, speaking to students): It’s by itself beautiful. Good job, Demetria.

Students: Good job, Demetria!

FAW: Katelyn, Erin, and Kristin are graduates of MTR—Memphis Teacher Residency, a  three-year-old program designed to give poor inner city students the same opportunities as students in wealthier areas. David Montague is the director of the school.

DAVID MONTAGUE (Memphis Teacher Residency): It’s absolutely an injustice, because there’s such a large academic achievement gap between students that are generally poor and minority relative to students who generally live in the suburbs and who are white.

FAW: Funded mostly by foundations and private contributions, this program takes college graduates and gives them housing, training, and tuition, even awards them a master’s degree. In return, they agree to teach in an inner city school here for four years. The program is faith-based.

MONTAGUE: What we’re doing here we’re doing within a Christian context. We believe in God’s word as revealed in Scripture, and that faith informs how you think about students. It informs your efficacy. It informs your belief that every child can learn.

FAW: There is something about this work that draws people of faith. Erin, for example, planned a career as a hospital pharmacist until her faith made her decide otherwise.

SVOBODA: I feel like this is absolutely where God wants me to be. I had much different ambitions for my life and much different aspirations. But I feel like the Lord kept putting this in my path.

(speaking to students): Remember what this page is called? What’s this page called?

FAW: Katelyn also sees what she is doing in the classroom as a kind of ministry.

WOODARD: How I want to live out my faith in the classroom is by constantly looking at the Lord and looking at how he deals with the world and reflect that in my classroom. If I treat them with that respect and that love that I really believe the Lord has for everyone, then they feel that.

FAW: Is there any such thing as an unteachable child?

SVOBODA. No.

FAW: To these teachers their students are not potential dropouts, but God’s creatures.

CORNWELL: I’ve seen kids who everyone said, “There’s no way. There’s no way that child is going to be successful.” And I’ve seen them overcome that when someone believes in them, when someone takes the time to sit with them and work with them and pull the assets that we can see from them, and they start to believe, “I can do this.”

MONTAGUE: What we still have particularly in urban education is what some people often call soft racism or soft bigotry, which is this idea of teachers at times having very low expectations of their students because of the race or class that they come from. So what we’re trying to do is say absolutely every single child can learn, and we’re going to have very, very high expectations for those children.

FAW: In this school, presided over by principal Rosalind Davis, the teachers from MTR have already had a huge impact.

ROSALIND DAVIS (Principal, Hanley Elementary School): They’ve changed the culture of the school. Their approach to the work, their work ethic, and their strategies, the way they interact with the students.

FAW: Because, says Davis, these teachers with strong faith bring something many other teachers often lack.

DAVIS: Sometimes what’s missing from a teacher’s belief system is a belief that something supernatural and miraculous could happen in schools. They might get knocked down one day, but they come back fighting the next because they prayed about it, they reflected and, you know, they get up.

FAW: Don’t be misled. The MTR program is not some roundabout way to impose doctrine, much less to proselytize, as Montague explains.

MONTAGUE: If you do a Bible study, and you explain why Jesus is the son of God and the only way to heaven, what you’re doing is you’re creating a very unhealthy and non-safe environment for every child in that classroom that doesn’t come from a Christian family, okay, and so you’re inhibiting your children, your students from being able to learn.

SVOBODA: I might not be able to necessarily tell them that I believe that they’re God’s children and that he loves them, but I’m trying to show that love to them.

DAVIS: Your faith isn’t something that you walk around beating people on the head with. People should be able to tell that you’re a Christian without you saying a word.

FAW: It is grindingly difficult work. Children coming here test well below students in more affluent areas. What is accomplished in the classroom is often offset by what they experience outside. Dealing with all that is a real test of faith.

(speaking to Erin Svoboda): You’re swimming upstream.

SVOBODA: That’s what it feels like most days, yes.

FAW: Your faith keeps you going?

SVOBODA: Yes. I will be honest. I don’t know how other people do it. Without that or motivating you have no ideal how anyone would willingly wake up and come to this every day. I don’t mean to make it sound that terrible, but it is hard.

FAW: The program is so new it is hard to measure its success. But test scores are climbing, and students are responding.

(speaking to student): She pushes you?

TEAVIKA JOHNSON: Yes.

FAW: You don’t mind the discipline? You like it?

JOHNSON: No, because it helps me more so I can understand more.

FAW: (speaking to student): The goal up there says 100 percent. So she really inspires you?

WENDY CABAERA: Yes. Actually, for me she is one of our best teachers.

FAW: And if the cynic were to argue that here they can make only the smallest of inroads, that progress will be scant and short-lived; that goals like Erin’s 100 percent target are not likely to be reached—if so, their faith, they insist, will not be diminished.

CORNWELL: I walk here in knowing that I come with my five loaves and two fish, my meager here’s my best that I have, and God’s going to have to multiply that. Whether he chooses to do that now or 20 years from now in urban education, that’s up to him.

WOODARD: What you come to learn through doing this job and through your faith is that there’s a deeper joy and peace and contentment than you could ever imagine that comes from knowing that you’re doing God’s work.

FAW: As they answer a calling and live their faith one student, one classroom at a time.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Memphis, Tennessee.

BOB ABERNETHY (anchor): Now, a profile of a best-selling writer of fantasy and adventure long before J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter. She is Madeleine L’Engle, whose science fiction, beginning with A WRINKLE IN TIME, like the Harry Potter books, has been both widely read by young people and strongly criticized by some religious conservatives. I spoke with Madeleine L’Engle a year ago about Christianity, censorship, science, suffering, and love.

Madeleine L’Engle broke her hip last year, and that has slowed her down. But on this evening, as an Episcopal lay woman she was saying vespers with the nine Episcopal nuns at New York’s Community of the Holy Spirit. L’Engle prays and reads the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer every morning and evening. For many years, she did her writing at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where she is still librarian and writer-in-residence. So does all that Christian practice make her a Christian writer?

MADELEINE L’ENGLE: No. I am a writer. That’s it. No adjectives. The first thing is writing. Christian is secondary.

ABERNETHY: At occasional workshops for other writers, Madeleine passes on her unsentimental, uncomplaining approach to life and her craft.

L’ENGLE: Basically one word: write. So who would like to be the first to read?

A young poet went to Colette and complained that he was unhappy. And she said, “Who asked you to be happy? Write.” And I think that is very good advice.

ABERNETHY: Madeleine is working now on a book about aging and an article about hate. She has written more than 50 books, of which the most famous is A WRINKLE IN TIME, published in 1961 after more than 30 rejections. The heroine is a teenager named Meg who expresses L’Engle’s own deepest belief.

L’ENGLE: Meg finally realizes that love is stronger than hate. Hate may seem to win for a while, but love is stronger than hate.

ABERNETHY: A WRINKLE IN TIME is a science-fiction fantasy that has sold more than six million copies and is now in its 66th printing. Readers still send Madeleine copies of that book and others to autograph, and she says she never tires of signing them.

L’ENGLE: Never, because anybody who has received as many rejection slips as I have is not going to complain about autographs.

ABERNETHY: Many Christians have found in Madeleine L’Engle’s books a profound religious message. Others have seen her witches and dark forces as essentially un-Christian, and their complaints to schools and libraries have made L’Engle one of the ten most banned writers in the country.

MS. L’ENGLE: We have always liked banning. And Hitler and his cohorts started banning books and then to killing people. You have got to be very careful of banning. What you ban is not going to hurt anybody, usually. But the act of banning is.

ABERNETHY: L’Engle’s view of the universe has been shaped by both Christianity and science. Often, at night, she reads both the Bible and books about particle physics, and she sees no conflict between them.

L’ENGLE: Religion and science? One and the same. I don’t have any trouble with it. A lot of people do. They have to put one here and one there, and I think they’re much more like that, each one informing the other.

ABERNETHY: But isn’t the skeptical scientific attitude a challenge to faith?

L’ENGLE: Religion is less accepting than science. Science knows things move and change, and religion doesn’t want that. So I am more comfortable with science. At the same time, I am not throwing God out the window.

ABERNETHY: But you’re making a distinction between religion and God.

L’ENGLE: Temple, the archbishop in the 19th century, said, “God is not chiefly interested in religion.” I like that.

ABERNETHY: L’Engle has experienced a lot of loss in her life: the death of her husband, Hugh Franklin, an actor well-known for his role as a doctor in the TV series ALL MY CHILDREN. She wrote about their marriage and his death in her book TWO-PART INVENTION. She wrote about her mother’s death in THE SUMMER OF THE GREAT GRANDMOTHER. Many of Madeleine’s close friends have died, and last Christmastime so did her son, Bion.

MS. L’ENGLE(reading from her journal): It’s late at night on Christmas Eve. We went to the Cathedral for the midnight mass. Bion died a week ago today. I still don’t believe it. Bion’s death has ripped the fabric of the universe.

ABERNETHY: Madeleine has kept journals almost all her life, and she says writing in them about grief makes it easier to bear.

L’ENGLE: I am very grateful that I have a journal and that I can write, because that helps me to objectify things that might just mess me around emotionally otherwise. I can no longer look at this and weep and feel sorry for myself. I see it more clearly. And it sends me back to work.

ABERNETHY: Eventually, Madeleine says, she will write about her son. Madeleine sees suffering as a normal part of life, and she also says she feels closest to God when she suffers.

L’ENGLE: In times when we are not particularly suffering we do not have enough time for God. We are too busy with other things. And then the intense suffering comes, and we can’t be busy with other things. And then God comes into the equation: “Help.” And we should never be afraid of crying out, “Help.”

ABERNETHY: Madeleine also sees suffering as necessary for a full life.

L’ENGLE: Where there is no suffering nothing happens. One time, my godmother went to visit my mother, who was her best friend, and something awful had happened. I don’t know what. And she burst into tears, instead of offering comfort, and said, “I envy you. I envy you. You had a terrible life, but you have lived.”

ABERNETHY: L’Engle insists that, in the end, life and the universe are good. She remembers singing a sad ballad to one of her two granddaughters when she was a child.

L’ENGLE: And she said, “Gran, you know that is a bad one.” And I said, “What?” “Gran, you know that’s a bad one.” And I said, “Why, Charlotte? Because everybody dies?” And she said, “No, Gran. Nobody loved anybody.” And then it was the next night, putting them to bed, that Lena just looked at me cosmically and said, “Gran, is it all right?” She didn’t mean any thing … She meant the whole thing. “Is it all right?” And I swallowed my heart and my everything and said, “Yes, Lena. It’s all right.”

ABERNETHY: Madeleine grew up an only and, she says, a lonely child. So she loves family gatherings such as this one, with four generations. She says she expects to keep enjoying good company, good food, good talk, and work for another twenty years.

L’ENGLE: I was writing in my journal yesterday and ended a paragraph with, “I think it smells like hope.” And we have to hang on to that.