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.

SONYA YENCER (Red Thread Promise): The name of the Red Thread Promise came from an ancient Chinese proverb that talks about a silken red thread of destiny that connects everybody. In Haiti, disabled children are often not treated well, they are often neglected, sometimes abused, abandoned. So, following the earthquake, the majority of St. Vincent ‘s original school and clinic and church was completely destroyed and there was only one building left standing. Anything that wasn’t destroyed was looted.

REV. SCOTT ALBERGATE (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church): It was clear right away the connection between New Orleans and Haiti. St. Paul’s is the most devastated of our churches in Katrina. And, with its story of rebuilding completely on faith and with the spirit too at the same time. Not just to rebuild themselves but to pay forward all of the blessings that this church received.

KATHY KORGE ALBERGATE (Red Thread Promise): When the earthquake hit in Haiti, I said, you know what, we need wheelchairs there. We need wheelchairs that are going to handle the terrain. We had over 24 churches in the United States contributing for one full container of wheelchairs, crutches, canes. Our Diocese reached out. They did it. Janie and Grant heard about the wheelchair program through church and they saw it in the hallway and they wanted to do a fundraiser. They came to us. We didn’t ask them. But, many children at St. Paul’s and in our school here, in the church and school came to us with different fundraisers.
We have given the children brand new wheelchairs, their own, that are fit for them. Little Diana went from an adult wheelchair that was falling apart to this teeny tiny little petite wheelchair. We saw her glow. We’ve given teenage boys an opportunity to play basketball now by having a wheelchair that they can twirl around in. It’s been incredible.

So if we do nothing else other than to make sure they have proper food, water and a chance to have a good education, we feel accomplished, we feel like we’ve paid it forward. We’re doing something to help.

YENCER: I think people can choose to grasp that red thread of destiny, choose to acknowledge that it’s there. That we really are connected. That these are our brothers and sisters regardless of the color of our skin or where we grew up. You know, it’s humanity that brings us all together.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It’s about midnight, the first of November, known in the world of Voodoo as the Day of the Dead—a time to visit a cemetery and the spirits of those who have moved on. This is New Orleans, and the Voodoo priestess leading the celebration is Sallie Ann Glassman.

SALLIE ANN GLASSMAN: We all have loved ones who have passed, and what a comfort to be able to visit with them and to know that they are there with you and to be able to tell them that you love them and know that your message is received and just be in their presence again. It’s a tremendous comfort.

SEVERSON: It’s been a long evening, starting with the ritual dancing, the beat of the drums—Sallie Ann in her element. There are other Voodoo priestesses in New Orleans, but she is one of the most popular, one of the most unlikely—a Jewish girl from Maine who says she knew as a child that there was something different about her.

GLASSMAN: I started to put things together and realized that particularly adults were a little taken aback by me, and they really seemed a little afraid of me, and then I started realizing I knew more about them than they were telling me.

SEVERSON: Those outside the Voodoo realm seem to have always been afraid of it. She thinks she knows why.

GLASSMAN: I think when you ask questions about why is Voodoo so vilified the clearest answer I can give you is that Voodoo recognizes an invisible world of great power and of spiritual power and that the surface reality is really just the surface of things. There is a vaster, more beautiful world going on inside, throughout, above, beyond, within all of that.

SEVERSON: A majority of the Voodoo practitioners are women, and many are Catholic, according to Martha Ward, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Orleans. She wrote a book on the queen priestess of them all in New Orleans, who was actually two women with the same name, a mother and daughter, each known as Marie Laveau.

PROFESSOR MARTHA WARD: They were good Catholics. They were married and buried within Catholic traditions.

SEVERSON: And there are other similarities, she says.

WARD: Catholics have a lot of saints. They lose something so they have a saint for losing something. They have a saint for battered women. Whatever you want, there’s a saint that will specifically help you.

SEVERSON: In Voodoo they’re called spirits, the spirits of ancestors.

GLASSMAN: There are all these myriad spirits that are really intermediaries, and first I should say that there is a supreme deity in Voodoo. There is a God called Bon Dieu. But in between God and humanity are these thousands of spirits. Maybe one time you’re possessed by Ogoun, the warrior spirit, and another time you’re possessed by Erzulie Freda, and you see the world through rose-colored glasses.

KAREN JEFFRIES: When I look at Voodoo, I see this is a group of spirits that are there to help us in everyday life.

SEVERSON: Karen Jefferies moved to New Orleans after divorcing her husband, a Lutheran minister. She says she grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home.

JEFFRIES: Christ is still my foundation of spirituality, but then I find that Voodoo acknowledges another spiritual realm.

SEVERSON: She now owns a bed and breakfast in the French Quarter.

JEFFRIES: Shortly after I purchased this house I heard about a Voodoo ceremony for the protection against hurricanes, so I went and out of curiosity it was really fascinating to me. So I ended up going back to all the bigger public ceremonies that Sallie Ann Glassman would hold.

SEVERSON: As the celebration of the Day of the Dead danced on, there seemed to be a discernable change in Sallie Ann’s countenance.

GLASSMAN: There are different levels of possession that a person can experience, and when I go into that kind of a state I have no idea what’s happened. I just know that when I come out of it people are looking at me funny, and then I’m in a different place than I was before.

SEVERSON: Sallie Ann says she has been accused of casting spells on people, something she says she wouldn’t do even if she could. She says using black magic can be risky business. Professor Ward says cursing someone in Voodoo, such as sticking pins in dolls, is not something to fool around with.

WARD: All religions are used that way, period, full stop. I’ve done it and you’ve done it. Have you ever cursed somebody? We’re all capable of bringing mild to big curses on others. In Voodoo, what goes around comes around, and if I curse you, I’ll get fixed.

SEVERSON: She describes Voodoo as a religion that can be shared with other religions. In New Orleans, back in the early 1800s, Voodoo was the widely accepted religion among slaves, until the slave uprising that threatened white slave owners.

GLASSMAN: If you were a slave living in captivity and hard labor, and your prospects were certainly very limited, this belief in an invisible world of great spiritual power would certainly be empowering, and if you were a slave owner intent on keeping a people down, oppressing them, and this belief would be terrifying and disturbing, and instead of saying that the situation or the institution of slavery was this terrible evil, it was much easier to say these people are evil and we’re just keeping them contained.

WARD: They said “slave rebellions” like the same way we say “crime.” They were terrified. Voodoo went from being an ordinary, accepted thing to a demonized, stigmatized, racialized, sexualized white ideology.

SEVERSON: Sallie Ann says she knows what it’s like to be called evil.

GLASSMAN: And I’ll say to them how can you possibly think that it’s alright to call me evil? How can you think that? I’ve certainly been called a witch, sometimes a good witch, sometimes a bad witch. I’m not a witch. I’m just a person like anybody else.

SEVERSON: But she’s not just anybody else when she walks through the neighborhood. Everyone seems to know her and like her.

GLASSMAN: Being a priestess is a demanding job, and I say job lightly because it doesn’t pay. People come to me and need things. They need help. I’ll try to be a mediary between these individuals and help them to those crossroads where human prayer meets spiritual presence and do all kinds of healings.

WARD: Sally has worked tirelessly here in the community. She makes the streets safer because that’s something the spirits can help us do if we ask them—make our streets and neighborhoods safe for us. Help people put on roofs after Katrina.

SEVERSON: The priestess says the spirits have always protected New Orleans from hurricanes, and Katrina would have been worse if the spirits hadn’t intervened.

GLASSMAN: As it happened, Katrina did not hit us over the head. It did turn to the east, and it did downgrade from a Category 5 to I think it was a Category 3 or lower when it hit, and it wasn’t the hurricane that kicked our butts. You have to spend a little time taking care of your environment or you’re going to get hurt.

SEVERSON: After Katrina she spearheaded the drive to build this multimillion-dollar health and healing community center to help those struggling to rebuild their lives, both physically and spiritually. Still, she says, there are people who say it’s not a good idea to have a Voodoo priestess involved in such a public project.

GLASSMAN: But I always say to myself, you know, Voodoo’s early ancestors endured slavery and captivity, and they kept their beliefs alive. Who am I to be upset over having to defend a practice? Who am I to say I can’t handle this?

SEVERSON: It seems improbable that Voodoo will ever be widely regarded as anything but scary and dark and, in Sally Ann’s view, misunderstood.

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

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: About 20 minutes outside New Orleans, worshippers gather at First Baptist Church in Chalmette, the largest city in St. Bernard Parish. It’s a pretty typical Southern Baptist Sunday morning service.

REV JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (Preaching at First Baptist Church, Chalmette, Louisiana): Lord, what’s going on? Lord, why?

LAWTON: But that belies the incredible journey this congregation has made since Hurricane Katrina. More than half of the churches in St. Bernard Parish still haven’t come back, and most of them probably never will. First Baptist is not only back, but reinventing itself to help a community still struggling to recover.

REV. JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (First Baptist Church, Chalmette, LA): The church is up. She’s not yet standing on her own two feet, if I can say it that way, but the church is here, and the church now has a hope and a future.

LAWTON: Hours before Katrina hit, Pastor John Dee Jeffries and his wife, Genny, evacuated to their daughter’s home near Baton Rouge. They expected to be gone a couple of days.

JEFFRIES: The hurricane had passed through, all seemed to be well—the initial reports, and then suddenly everything turned topsy-turvy.

LAWTON: The levees were breached, and within a half-hour St. Bernard Parish was inundated with water. The damage was incomprehensible, and First Baptist Church didn’t escape the destruction.

JEFFRIES: The church—the church was a heartbreak. It was as if everything that had substance, value, meaning, purpose, the things that form the backdrop of your life suddenly ripped apart, shredded before your very eyes.

LAWTON: The Jeffries’ home was also among the thousands destroyed.

GENNY JEFFRIES: That’s when I cried. I only cried one time, and that was when I saw my home.

LAWTON: They ended up living in a FEMA trailer near their daughter, 85 miles away from Chalmette. Jeffries started thinking about rebuilding.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Wasn’t a real long time before he decided he was going to come back.

LAWTON: Did you think he was crazy?

GENNY JEFFRIES: Mm-hmm. I mean, the church was devastated. We were devastated. Every house, everything in Chalmette was destroyed. Everything.

JEFFRIES: I certainly have no negative feelings about ministers who felt that they could not come back. But there was something inside of me that could not accept that as my future.

LAWTON: And slowly a plan started coming into focus. Then Jeffries connected with a faith-based ministry called Builders for Christ.

JEFFRIES: And the sound of them, their leaders standing and saying, “We have decided to build your church.” I can still feel that in here.

LAWTON: It was a huge project that still isn’t completely finished. More than 3,000 volunteers from 34 states and the District of Columbia helped out. Flags at the back of their new sanctuary serve as a constant reminder.

JEFFRIES: Every denomination imaginable including Jewish people have come and worked on our project—Assembly of God, Baptists, Presbyterian, Methodists, Catholics. They’ve all been here.

LAWTON: The outpouring was a huge inspiration to longtime members like Michael “Slim” Gillette, who’s the chairman of the deacons.

MICHAEL GILLETTE: The more the church was built, the more healing took place for me.

LAWTON: They held their first service in the new church in September 2009, four years after Katrina hit. Before the storm, about 400 people attended on a regular basis. Now they’re averaging about 150, but the numbers are steadily rising, with more than 90 new baptisms in the past year. Ninety-seven percent of the people who came to First Baptist prior to Katrina haven’t returned. There’s a new cultural diversity, with growing numbers of African Americans and Hispanics attending, and many of the new people didn’t previously attend church at all.

GILLETTE: We don’t have a church congregation now like we used to have. They don’t know the hymns. They don’t know the difference between Mass and worship service. We’re learning together what their needs are, and they’re learning what we have to give.

LAWTON: One of the new members is Leola Thomas, who, like most people here, lost everything in Katrina.

LEOLA THOMAS: When I came in and saw and heard, you know, how he teaches about Jesus and his love, and the love they showed to me, I said this is the place that I want to be in.

JEFFRIES: There’s something happening inside of the hearts and minds of people that has brought us all together, and it’s strange to see how God is making us the one body of Christ. There are challenges in that, but it’s happening.

LAWTON: And it’s happening in a community that still hasn’t fully recovered from Katrina. This neighborhood used to be a pretty typical middle-class subdivision with lots of houses close together. Now there are a lot of empty lots where houses have been torn down. Some homeowners have returned, but a lot of houses are still standing unrepaired and empty.

The financial stresses of Katrina, along with the recession and now the Gulf oil spill, have generated a severe economic crisis across St. Bernard Parish. About 40 percent of the First Baptist congregation is unemployed. First Baptist partnered with the nonprofit group Second Harvest to create a food pantry which distributes almost 20,000 pounds of food every month.

JEFFRIES: I’m absolutely astounded at how powerful this ministry is with so few people manning it.

LAWTON: First Baptist has set up a daycare center and after-school program to help working parents, and there’s also a Christian addiction recovery ministry, which is close to the heart of Tina Rivera. After Katrina, she, like so many, sought to numb the pain.

TINA RIVERA: A lot of people, we just started drinking, doing drugs. The pain was just too overwhelming, and for me, I got in a car accident, a head-on collision, and two people got killed.

LAWTON: She ended up in jail and rehab and turned her life around. Now she’s helping First Baptist organize ministries for other troubled women.

RIVERA: I talked to my church family and said, look, these are mothers and aunts and grandmas that are in our community, come from good families, and we just have to stay on top of them. We’ve got to get them back to where they were before the storm.

LAWTON: Another goal of First Baptist is to help repair the sense of community that was broken by the storm. A women’s group called the “Domino Divas” meets every week for lunch, Bible study, and yes, some aggressive domino playing. These women were all displaced from their homes, and not all of them have been able to rebuild. They talked to me about the storm with a touch of humor.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Katrina wasn’t totally bad, because she moved us and we didn’t have to pack. We didn’t have to pack a thing. We just threw it out of the window.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I told my kids they ought to be thankful for the storm, and they said, “Mom, are you crazy?” I said, “Well, now when I die you don’t have all that junk to go through.”

LAWTON: But they’re all too aware of the pain that still lingers.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Your house is gone, you didn’t get money for your life, all your stuff is gone, all your people are gone. It’s hard.

LAWTON: Genny Jeffries, who is a family therapist, says the emotional and spiritual trauma from the storm is deep-seated.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Katrina will always be in the back of our hearts, but we’re getting a little bit past it. But still there’s a lot of people, and a lot of circumstances that are there that really cannot, we can’t put it away, just can’t put it away yet.

LAWTON: First Baptist is doing what it can, but there is a shortage of established members who can lead the ministries, and because of the economic situation there’s also a shortage of tithes and offerings.

JEFFRIES: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the great challenge was to survive. We have survived. The church is here and will continue to be here. Five years later, the great challenge is to sustain ourselves.

LAWTON: The Jeffries have had personal stresses as well. Their home also had to be rebuilt through donations and volunteers, and shortly after Katrina, Genny suffered a brain aneurysm and then a post-surgical stroke.

JEFFRIES: God and I had some rather serious conversations about that. It seemed that in the midst of losing everything else I pleaded with the Lord. I pleaded for him to spare my wife.

LAWTON: Genny did recover, but Jeffries admits he wasn’t always as strong as he wanted to be in the midst of the crisis.

JEFFRIES: I also know what it’s like to lay in a dark FEMA trailer, hugging your pillow, your wife next to you, terribly ill, recovering from traumatic surgery, not knowing if she’s going to fully recover, and just ask those questions of God that have no answer: Why? Why? Why?

LAWTON: He may not have received answers, but he says he did receive assurances about his belief that God is there no matter what.

JEFFRIES: The real focus has been that the things that I’ve preached and that I’ve taught all of those years are true. You can count on it.

LAWTON: He says he’ll keep counting on it as First Baptist faces all the challenges still ahead.

I’m Kim Lawton in Chalmette, Louisiana.

Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard spoke August 17, 2007 with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly about his recent CD “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina)” when he was in Washington to play at Blues Alley. Produced and edited by Patti Jette Hanley.

TERENCE BLANCHARD: In the aftermath of Katrina, when you’re faced with that level of devastation, you know, and you’re frustrated beyond belief, you’re hurt beyond anything you can imagine, I mean it causes you to dig deep and try to find some answers.

And after I went through the whole thing of blaming man for his neglect in servicing the levees, and blaming man for their neglect in rescuing and helping people, you know, I had to look at the bigger picture.

And people were asking me immediately in all of my interviews, you know, are you going to write music, you know, based on the hurricane? And I kept telling them, I said man, this thing is so vast it’s hard to kind of assimilate everything, and I don’t hear anything right now.

I stood in front of my mother’s house, and it was amazing, because the only thing I heard was silence. I mean–and it was very bizarre–I didn’t hear any insects, no birds, no dogs barking, nobody cutting the grass, no cars moving, nobody moving around. Nothing. Only air. Only the wind.

In the Christian faith, you know, we have a saying, you know: God acts in strange ways. So for me, I think this is a way for God to get our attention, basically. You know, we haven’t been paying attention to a lot of things, you know. And we’ve been letting a lot of things slide. So maybe this is a way for us to kind of stop and take a hard look at what we’re doing as a community.

When I saw the large numbers of people who were struggling to survive in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane–that broke my heart. Then it also broke my heart to see how vast numbers of Americans came together to support and try to help people in need, you know, and that goes to the core of what I believe about human compassion.

With this album, you know, I mean, a lot of people have been talking to me and they’ve been saying the music has a lot of deep spiritual roots and it does. I mean, I grew up in a church. And that music has never–it’s always been a part of me, always, you know, and this album gave me a chance to kind of dig deep in that direction, you know. It gave me a chance to kind of not shy away from those issues but deal with them directly and just express how I feel based on my beliefs.

Recording it in a church–the thing I kept thinking about was, you know, I have to let my feelings go. I have to be honest. I’m not making an album for a certain demographic, you know what I mean? This is a project about human tragedy and the endurance of the human spirit, and I have to be true to that.

When we were listening to the playbacks, the thing that I kept thinking about with this music is that not only is it hopeful music but it embodies a number of other emotions: hopelessness, helplessness, anger, and frustration. You know, the piece itself, “Levees”–the strings represent the water that’s just everywhere, and the trumpet represents the cries for help that just went unheard.

What I hope for in New Orleans is the same thing I hope for the country, really. I mean, I really hope that, you know, as a society we really just ought to become more active, and I’m seeing it in New Orleans. The beautiful thing about being in New Orleans right now is that, despite all of the lack of support, you know, from the federal government there are a lot of people who are moving home, and a lot of people, a lot are doing it on their own. And granted we still have a very, very long way to go. There’s decades of work to be done to rebuild the city. But it’s really beautiful to see that pioneering spirit that we’ve always equated with being truly American.

In the aftermath of Katrina, when you’re faced with that level of devastation, you know, and you’re frustrated beyond belief, you’re hurt beyond anything you can imagine, I mean it causes you to dig deep and try to find some answers. I mean, you know, because just as humans we always want to know the answers to anything. And after I went through the whole thing of blaming man for his neglect in servicing the levees, and blaming man for their neglect in rescuing and helping people, you know, I had to look at the bigger picture. And I talked to some other friends of mine who are also Christians and believers and, you know, we all just started talking about it, saying, well, there has to be a bigger picture here, there has to be a bigger story. There has to be something for us to learn from this. So when it came time for me to do this album, I wanted to come up with a title that would not give the wrong idea about what had happened in New Orleans. I didn’t want people to think that everything was fine, but I wanted people to start searching for deeper meanings, and “a tale of God’s will” seemed to set the tone for that debate. In making this CD, I want to create debate about the topic. I don’t want people to think that New Orleans is fine and that, you know, we’re moving on to another issue. No, New Orleans is not fine, and the thing about it is, for me, New Orleans is just a symptom of a bigger issue. And, you know, this debate shouldn’t just be about New Orleans. It should be about what’s been going on in our country for a few decades now, in terms of how we’ve been turning a blind eye to a lot of things that are happening right in front of our face. And as citizens, you know, we always wait for someone else to correct things, but I mean I think it’s time for us to take the bull by the horns and make some serious change in this country.

I know a lot of people who are saying how could something so terrible be God’s will? Well, I think if you’re a Christian or if you’re a believer of any faith or sect, you would have to think, you know–in the Christian faith, you know, we have a saying: God acts in strange ways. You know, so for me, I think this is a way for God to get our attention, basically. You know, we haven’t been paying attention to a lot of things and we’ve been letting a lot of things slide. So maybe this is a way for us to kind of stop and take a hard look at what we’re doing as a community.

A lot of people have been talking to me and they’ve been saying the music has a lot of deep spiritual roots, and it does. I mean I grew up in a church, you know, I played in church every Sunday [at] Central Congregational Church [in New Orleans]. As a matter of fact, Andrew Young was a member of the church, and there were a lot of other local dignitaries who were part of that church. It is an amazing church. And growing up in that church, you know, my father used to tell me all the time, he says “I don’t care what time you get in from your gig, playing a gig Saturday night, you’ve got to get up and go to church and play on Sunday morning.” And so that was a big part of my upbringing, you know, and that music has never–it’s always been a part of me, always. This album gave me a chance to kind of dig deep in that direction, you know. It gave me a chance to kind of not shy away from those issues but deal with them directly and just express how I feel based on my beliefs.

What the entire event of Katrina has done for me, it’s made me realize that, you know, the country, it’s not a collection of sound bites we see on the news. The country is not the articles or interview that we read and see in the periodicals. It’s really the everyday people, you know, because when I saw the large numbers of people who were struggling to survive in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane that broke my heart. Then it also broke my heart to see how vast numbers of Americans came together to support and try to help people in need, and that goes to the core of what I believe about human compassion. And it frustrated me to see people politicize that, and it still does. I get very angry at that because you are attacking the very core of what a lot of people live their lives by, and you’re trying to manipulate that for personal gain. I think that’s the true travesty in all of this, and I think that’s what I’ve woken up to with this event. Because you have the war prior to this and a lot of other things that were going on, but when you see people who were not in the military, people who didn’t have a vested interest in Iraq or the oil business suffering, trying to survive, stuck on roofs, dealing with extreme heat, dealing with dehydration, and they weren’t being cared for for 4 or 5 days? You know, that speaks to such a level of arrogance, you know, and—well, arrogance is the only word I can think of right now, because those very people who were in charge of that are the very people who will say “In God We Trust.” And, you know, the thing that I keep thinking about is how can a person like that use that phrase, on the one hand, and then look at themselves in the mirror, on the other hand. You know, for me it wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about jurisdiction. It wasn’t about who’s going to take credit for the rescue. It was simply about saving lives, and I think a lot of people dropped the ball and exposed themselves for who they really are.

The interesting thing about making this CD, the irony of it is that, you know, we went to Seattle to do it, and Seattle has a beautiful church there that they actually use for a lot of their orchestral recordings. So while we were in this church recording this music, I kept thinking to myself, I was saying wow, what a fitting place to be doing this particular project, you know, given its title. Plus the people there, the orchestra, they were amazing, very lovely people who are also very committed to this project. I think a lot of people you know, that worked on this project, when they found out what it was about and they found out what we were trying to say, everybody was really eager to do 110 percent to make it come together.

I still have this reverence for the church. When I walk into any religious building or church, I still remember that feeling I had when I was a kid. It’s like, you know, there’s no place to hide. You’re there alone with your soul and your God, and you have to honor that and you have to be respectful of that. And I think, you know, in making this music and recording the music, you know, recording it in a church, the thing I kept thinking about was, you know, I have to let my feelings go, I have to be honest. I’m not making an album for a certain demographic, you know what I mean? This is a project about human tragedy and the endurance of the human spirit, and I have to be true to that.

When we were listening to the playbacks, the thing that I kept thinking about with this music is that not only is it hopeful music but it embodies a number of other emotions: hopelessness, helplessness, anger, and frustration. You know, the piece itself, “Levees”–it’s all about how, you know, there was water everywhere. You know, during [Hurricane] Betsy, I was a little kid when Betsy hit, and I was living in the Lower Ninth Ward at the time, and I remember being picked up from my porch and put in a boat, and looking around and seeing nothing but water, and the water was only maybe about 2 or 3 feet high but it was still a devastating thing for kids. So I kept thinking, if I was affected like that in Betsy, what’s going on with these kids and these people who were on the tops of roofs with 12 feet of water all around them? So “Levees” is all about that. The strings represent the water that’s just everywhere, and the trumpet represents the cries for help that just went unheard.

I had one friend tell me a story, he was rescued off a house in the middle of the night by some rescuers in a boat, and he told me, he said man, the rescuers said when we get to this section we need you to keep the kids quiet, and they cut off the engines and they let the boat drift, they said, because we can’t have the other people know that we’re here because they’re going to start crying for help, and we have to wait to come back to get them. They got to another section and the rescuers said we need you to cover the kids’ eyes because there are dead bodies all over this area. That’s in the city of New Orleans. It’s not in a war zone; it’s in downtown New Orleans that that happened. I’m still not satisfied, because I want to know what really happened. Who’s responsible? Don’t just give me a report. There’s somebody who’s responsible for not making the decision to really service the levees and maintain those levees the way they should’ve been maintained.

My uncle, the Reverend Andrew Douglas, he’s been a great inspiration for me for a long time. I mean he’s come into my aunt’s life; this is her second marriage. But having him around, it’s one of those things, it’s one of those sources of inspiration where you look and you see evidence of a strong African American male who’s not a basketball player, who’s not a pop star, who’s not a big political leader but who’s a person of conviction, you know, and a person of high integrity. I look at him as an example of what the everyday person can aspire to be, you know, so he’s been a great influence on my life in that regard, and he’s been great for my mom since my dad has passed, because my mom and her sister, my aunt, they’re very close. Before the hurricane, you know, I tried to get them to leave the city early. They wouldn’t leave. They left a little late, and then they got stuck in Mississippi, and I couldn’t find them for a little bit, but the three of them were together, that was the most important thing. They were sleeping on the floor of a church in Jackson, Mississippi. I was worried about it, but for them it was like an adventure, you know. They were laughing, saying it was very funny to watch each one of them get up off that floor each morning and to see who would struggle the most trying to get themselves upright. And then after the hurricane, my wife and myself, we owned a small house that my wife used to use as an office. We cleared it out and my uncle, my aunt and my mom, they stayed in that house for a little over a year while his house was being repaired, and now they’re over at his property.

When I think about my uncle I think about his devotion to his flock. I mean, the first thing he wanted to do was to get back into the city. The church had put together a trailer for him that was across the street from the church, so they stayed there for a little bit prior to moving into the house. But it’s been probably one of the most untold stories of this whole saga, about how faith-based groups have been coming to New Orleans and repairing homes, lifting spirits, working with people, worshipping with people, you know. I’ve seen groups out in the Lower Ninth Ward just out there praying. Again, it goes back to my whole issue in this country right now with where does the truth really lie? When you see people who are doing things from the bottom of their hearts, it’s not really reported the way it should be, because to me there are a lot of people around this country who believe and live their lives in the exact same manner, but people of similar beliefs, they’re not brought together in a way that some of these issues are brought together, as I should say, in the media’s eye.

A lot of people have been asking me how have I written pretty music for something that was so ugly, and the thing that I’ve been telling them is that for me it goes back to the documentary ["When the Levees Broke" by Spike Lee]. That’s where it starts. Well, let me back up. Even before then, when we went to my mom’s house, and after all of the cameras had left and everybody was gone, I stood in front of my mother’s house, and it was amazing, because the only thing I heard was silence. I mean, and it was very bizarre. I didn’t hear any insects, no birds, no dogs barking, nobody cutting the grass, no cars moving, nobody moving around. Nothing. Only air. Only the wind. And people were asking me immediately in all of my interviews, you know, are you going to write music, you know, based on the hurricane? And I kept telling them, I said man, this thing is so vast it’s hard to kind of assimilate anything, and I don’t hear anything right now. So when I was hired to do the music for the documentary, I was a little nervous, to be honest, because how do you write something, how do you write music for something that’s so tragic, so horrible, and still have the music service the story? Well, when Spike put together the first two hours of the documentary, the first thing I realized was it’s all about the story. You know, when you listen to those interviews, when you listen to those who were actually in the aftermath of the hurricane tell their stories of survival and struggle, the first thing that I thought was the music doesn’t need to be traditionally New Orleans music. It doesn’t need to be angry music because their anger is very prevalent in their stories. The music just needs to be the glue to kind of bring all these elements together and not get in the way of any of those stories. So that was my thought process in terms of creating the score for “Levees.” And then I just took those themes and just expanded the arrangements for those with band and orchestra.

I grew up in a church and I grew up with an interesting spiritual background, because my father went to a traditionally Congregationalist church and my mother was Baptist. So their thing was, you know, when the kid is born the gender is going to decide, you know, which church the kid would go to. So I started going to church with my father, but I would also go to church with my mom on occasion, so I got a chance to hear a lot of different styles of spiritual music, because at my father’s church they sing a lot of classically based spiritual music. In my mom’s church it was mostly gospel, and that music had a heavy effect on me. I mean, it had a profound effect on me, because at the core of that music is honesty, you know. It’s truth. You can sit down and you can break it down into its technical elements, chord progressions and all that stuff, but it’s really about the intent of what that music is trying to say. And that’s what stuck with me, you know, and that’s what I still have, and when it came time to record the music for this album that’s what I drew upon. You know, so it’s interesting that people make that correlation about spiritually based music hearing it in this album, because it’s not something I’d intentionally tried to do, but it’s always been a source of inspiration, you know, in my playing, and apparently it must be coming through in some of the things people are listening to.

What I hope for in New Orleans is the same thing I hope for for the country, really. I mean I really hope that, you know, as a society we really just ought to become more active, and I’m seeing it in New Orleans. The beautiful thing about being in New Orleans right now is that despite all of the lack of support, you know, from the federal government there are a lot of people who are moving home and a lot of people doing it on their own. And granted we still have a very, very long way to go. There’s decades of work to be done to rebuild the city. But it’s really beautiful to see that pioneering spirit that we’ve always equated with being truly American. You see it in New Orleans right now because there are people who are coming back. They don’t know what’s going to happen with the city. We hear all types of stories all the time, good and bad, you know, but despite all of that, you know, there’s’ a pioneering spirit amongst the people who are there, you know, and they are fighting tooth and nail to bring their communities back.

KIM LAWTON, host: Repercussions from the Gulf Coast oil spill dominated the news again this week. President Obama pushed BP to do a better job of resolving the crisis and taking responsibility for the damages. Meanwhile, religious groups have been holding a series of prayer vigils across the country. Participants are praying for an end to the environmental disaster. They are also offering prayers for those who have been most severely affected. The crisis has taken a devastating toll on people involved directly and indirectly in the fishing industry. Several faith-based groups have been mobilizing to provide assistance. Joining me now is Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Margaret, thanks for being here. Tell us a little about the needs you’re serving right now.

MARGARET DUBUISSON (Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans): Well, Kim, we have five centers set up in the fishing villages in the archdiocese of New Orleans. We’ve seen about 8,000 people so far, fishermen and their families who’ve come in just looking for help, looking for support, looking for financial assistance in some way. The BP claims process is a little cumbersome, and it is going to take some time. So Catholic Charities has been able to provide direct assistance and food much more quickly and put that in the hands of the fishermen through these five emergency relief centers.

LAWTON: What about the emotional needs, the spiritual needs? I imagine that those are very difficult as well.

DUBUISSON: Kim, it is. We have seen about 8,000 people in our five centers, as I said. Many of those people are receiving mental health assessments, where we ask very careful questions to see how they’re feeling and how they’re processing all of this. You may have heard this before, but this is much more than a loss of income for this particular group. This is loss of a way of life and a culture, and people are very fearful, very anxious, because no one knows how long this is going to go on, and the news just seems to get increasingly worse about it. So these fishermen and their families who for generations have made their living as fishermen, as a very independent group, they’re having a lot of difficulty dealing with the anxiety and uncertainty of the oil spill situation.

LAWTON: And what about for the broader community? Obviously, these people are directly—their livelihoods have been directly affected, but the greater area down there along the Gulf Coast, you all are still getting over Hurricane Katrina.

DUBUISSON: It’s been almost five years since Katrina and, yes, we are still definitely in the recovery period of that. So this was, this was an especially difficult blow at this time coming up on this five-year anniversary, when a lot of people felt like we were just beginning to get our heads above water, so to speak and, you know, making real progress toward the recovery, and then this oil spill comes. It’s almost like Katrina all over again and especially for the families of these fishermen, many of whom lost boats and homes in Hurricane Katrina and then in Gustav and Ike a year later. This has been, you know, a particularly difficult blow, a very, very anxiety-producing situation.

LAWTON: The churches down there are often the center for so much of the community. Do they have the resources they need to really deal with this crisis?

DUBUISSON: Well, we’re making the resources available, we’re gonna find the resources. We are reaching out to people who would like to help us in that, and anyone who would like to help can visit our website, which is ccano.org, and we have a secure website, and we’re set up to take donations there. But Catholic Charities and the archdiocese of New Orleans have been on the ground in these affected communities virtually since the beginning, like the archbishop went out the weekend that the spill occurred and met with parish leaders to find out, what do you all need us to do? He then gave Catholic Charities the green light to provide whatever services were necessary, and we’ve been doing that now for I think it’s fifty some odd days now since the spill first began, and we’ve been providing services to the fishermen ever since, and we will continue to provide services until it’s all over, and we’ll find the resources that we need to do that.

LAWTON: All right. Margaret, thank you very much.

DUBUISSON: Thank you, Kim.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Four years ago this weekend, Hurricane 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.