BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a special report on religion and the economy. According to new figures from the U.S. Labor Department, more than six million Americans are now receiving unemployment benefits. Every metropolitan area in the country has seen a rise in unemployment rates over the last year, and the biggest jump was in Indiana’s Elkhart County. Kim Lawton went to Elkhart to find out how the religious community there is responding to the crisis.

KIM LAWTON: In Goshen, Indiana, just outside Elkhart, it’s the annual Family Fest at Bethany Christian Schools. Usually, it’s a time of joyous community celebration. But this year there was a new note of anxiety as the area reels from one of the worst unemployment crises in the country.

Allan Dueck

ALLAN DUECK (Principal, Bethany Christian Schools): People are recognizing this as a widespread need and know that “there but for the grace of God go I.” It could be me tomorrow or my family member, and so I think there’s a real sense of pulling together in ways we can.

LAWTON: This is RV country, where more than 60 percent of the nation’s recreational vehicles have been manufactured. But in tough economic times when gas prices are unpredictable, when people aren’t buying luxury items and when banks are restricting loans, the RV industry has collapsed. Factories here have closed or made drastic cutbacks, and the ripple effect is touching virtually everyone.

According to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, since the beginning of this year the unemployment rate in this area has jumped to nearly 20 percent. That’s well over twice the national unemployment rate, and many believe the rate here is actually much higher, because the official numbers don’t include those who don’t file for unemployment benefits. In this area that includes large numbers of laid-off undocumented immigrants and Amish people who took factory jobs when they couldn’t make a living on their farms.

Derald Bontrager is president and COO of the Jayco RV company, which his parents started 41 years ago on his family’s farm. At Jayco’s peak two years ago, they were producing nearly 40,000 campers a year. Now they’ve had to cut that in half.

DERALD BONTRAGER (President and COO, Jayco): It’s a gut-wrenching experience to go from 2,200 employees down to 1,100, particularly in this environment, because you know that each one of those employees you lay off, that the chances of finding any meaningful employment in the near future is almost non-existent.

LAWTON: Bontrager, who is a leader in his local Mennonite congregation, says he’s dealing with a difficult moral equation.

Derald Bontrager

Mr. BONTRAGER: In many cases, the people that we’re no longer able to employ are the same people that I go to church with on Sunday. I see them at the basketball games on the weekend; I see them at the restaurants. But you really have to try to separate that from knowing that we have a real obligation to make sure that we survive as a company in this environment, because we still are employing 1,100 people.

LAWTON: Bontrager says he’s relying on his faith.

Mr. BONTRAGER: You need to draw strength from somewhere, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather draw strength from than God.

LAWTON: In this overwhelmingly Christian community with a significant Mennonite population, churches are being called upon more than ever to help meet physical and spiritual needs. One of the most prominent efforts is Church Community Services, a ministry supported by Mennonite, Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical congregations. CCS has several programs, including a food pantry that is seeing all-time highs in the number of requests. They also provide emergency assistance to people who can’t pay for rent, utilities, and prescription medicine. Dean Preheim Bartel is executive director.

DEAN PREHEIM BARTEL (Executive Director, Church Community Services): To me, it’s a way of Christians actually putting their hands and their feet to what they believe. So it’s not just something in their head, but it’s something they are actually doing. They’re putting their heart and soul into it.

LAWTON: The needs are now so great CCS is moving to a bigger space to better handle the situation. Resources are being stretched thin. The agency has been seeing between 300 and 400 new clients every month. Many have worked their entire lives and never needed outside help.

SHARLEE MORAIN (Volunteer, CCS): And these people, they’ve not been in the system before. They just got laid off, and they’re, like, “Ugh, I don’t know what to do,” and the system just beats you up.

Dean Preheim Bartel

LAWTON: The agency is sponsoring a job-training program for women called Soup of Success or SOS. It’s a holistic project that teaches women how to be good employees as they work in a small business packaging dry soup and cookie mixes into gift baskets. They learn life skills as well as job skills. Preheim Bartel says through it all CCS is trying to instill hope amid tough times.

Mr. PREHEIM BARTEL: Sometimes as an agency we can’t provide the tangible things people need, but what we can do is we can treat them with dignity and respect, and we can provide them with an atmosphere that’s hopeful.

LAWTON: Requests are also dramatically up at the Maple City Health Care Center, which provides sliding scale discounts for people who can’t afford medical care. Until now, they’ve always required patients to pay at least 10 percent of their costs.

Dr. JAMES GINGERICH (Family Practice, Maple City Health Center): When you start having families come in where the kids are only really getting meals at school for free lunches and breakfasts, and they’re choosing between food and healthcare, a 90 percent discount doesn’t cut it.

LAWTON: The health center has begun asking patients to volunteer at a local charity in exchange for $10 credit toward their medical bills. Dr. Gingerich says the program has been especially meaningful for the area’s growing number of unemployed Latino immigrants, many of whom are undocumented.

Dr. GINGERICH: Those people don’t have access to food stamps. They don’t have access to unemployment. They don’t have a safety net that other unemployed people do, and they’re often socially much more isolated because they don’t — they’re immigrants. They don’t have generations of connections in the community.

Dr. James Gingerich

LAWTON: The trickle-down effect of the unemployment crisis is hurting businesses and nonprofits across the board. Bethany Christian Schools is a Mennonite school for about 280 students in grades 6 through 12. They’ve been trying to provide tuition help so unemployed families can keep their kids in the school. Bethany’s main fundraiser is an auction at the annual Family Fest. People donate items to be auctioned off, such as handmade quilts and furniture. This year’s event fell short of what they made last year. Principal Allen Dueck says the school faces a tight budget.

Mr. DUECK (Principal, Bethany Christian Schools): Teachers are looking at a zero increase this year, and we hope that will be enough to make things work. We may have to reduce staffing a little bit, depending on how enrollment shakes down for next year.

LAWTON: Churches, which support these community ministries, are facing their own budget shortfalls at a time when they are being asked to do more. Many congregations have established job counseling programs and support groups for the unemployed. Church leaders say the situation has taken a heavy spiritual toll.

At Elkhart’s Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary they’re teaching future pastors how to counsel people affected by the crisis. Seminary president Nelson Kraybill says it starts with listening.

NELSON KRAYBILL(President, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary): You don’t come with quick and easy answers, and anyone who does, saying, “Well, this is what you ought to do” or “This is where you’ve made a mistake” — if you start with that I think you have defeated the entire purpose of the pastoral encounter.

LAWTON: Rick Yoder was laid off in September after working for a major RV manufacturer for 25 years. He’s in a church support group.

Rick and Joy Yoder

RICK YODER: Some people are executives. I come in as a laborer, forklift driver, truck driver, and we all say the same things. It’s about our identity, our livelihood, and changing. It’s the hardest thing to do.

JOY YODER: It’s probably the biggest challenge for me. I pray a lot, and I journal a lot, and it fluctuates from day to day, because I’m the main bread winner now, and I’ve never been in that role before.

LAWTON: Rick’s wife, Joy, works in the kitchen at Bethany Christian Schools, so she gets a discount to help with their daughter Jama’s tuition. But she doesn’t earn enough to cover all the family’s bills. Church friends have stepped in to help.

Mr. YODER: Right away some people come to me from our Sunday School class and said, “We know you need a roof on your house, and we want to do something.” That was so hard to accept, but I had to. But, you know, you do, and someday I’ll be on the other end giving.

Ms. YODER: We are used to giving and helping needy people here, and I think that’s been one of the biggest struggles, but also an area that I’ve had to learn to — the people want to help, and to say no you’re hurting them, and you’re taking that gift away from them.

LAWTON: Laid-off executive Michael Stevens says unemployment has made his faith stronger. A cradle Catholic, he’s spending more time at church and in prayer. He believes God will provide him the right job at the right time.

MICHAEL STEVENS: Even though it’s devastating to lose your job, as one door closes another one opens, and people should really embrace that and pray to God about that and look to go into that next open door, because that might be the door that he’s calling you to.

LAWTON: Kraybill says the entire community is learning important spiritual lessons.

Mr. KRAYBILL: When I have my bank account and my retirement and secure employment and my mortgage pretty well paid off, it’s pretty easy for me to get spiritually smug and think I don’t need God, and it’s in the people around us who are the most vulnerable where we are going to see the face of God.

LAWTON: Despite all the bad news, local leaders say faith and a strong community spirit are prevailing.

Mr. BONTRAGER: We’re still a very vibrant community, and people are committed to making it work—and we’re not going away.

LAWTON: They say that spirit will get them through this crisis. I’m Kim Lawton in Elkhart County, Indiana.

Originally broadcast June 13, 2008

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: From its location on the edge of the city, the North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis boasts a number of global ties.

Reverend KEVIN ARMSTRONG (Pastor, North United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, speaking to Joseph Okuya from Kenya): Joseph, please come here and join me as we welcome you.

DE SAM LAZARO: None are closer than those to Kenya.

Rev. ARMSTRONG (speaking to Mr. Okuya): As you know, we’ve been praying with and for you, for the people of Kenya. It helps us to know a little bit from you. How are things now?

DE SAM LAZARO: The honored guest told of the deadly post-election violence in his country.

JOSEPH OKUYA: Of course, we see that at the peak the leaders have made some kind of an agreement. But down in the grassroots, it’s still smoldering.

“We’re taking care of the poorest of the poor.”

DE SAM LAZARO: The Kenya connection traces back almost two decades to one couple from this congregation. In recent months, Joseph and Sara Ellen Mamlin have brought them news from the frontlines of a distant conflict.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin first visited here in the late ’80s to set up an exchange program between his employer, Indiana University School of Medicine and a med school in the western Kenyan city of Eldoret. He returned a decade later to a worsening AIDS problem here and decided stay on and set up a small HIV clinic — or so he thought.

Dr. JOSEPH MAMLIN: It grew to where I had 1,500 patients out of this one room and just lying all around on the ground. We had the largest village-based HIV clinic in Kenya, and we were just working out of this one room. And then I was home visiting my children and grandchildren years ago, and someone called my wife and asked to meet her at JC Penney at a shopping mall. And she just anonymously handed her a check and said, “Joe needs a clinic.” And this is what you see here. This is all from an anonymous donor in Indianapolis from the church.

We had the National Minister of Health and the U.S. ambassador dedicating, but that’s not the real dedication. Here I see a beautiful lady coming by here. This is Rose Beargen. She’s one of the very first patients I treated here many years ago and I’m the one looking sick now instead of her. And — but she was essentially dying of PCP pneumonia. She was almost a dead woman.

DE SAM LAZARO: Today she runs the clinic’s outreach program. The miracle of her recovery began in this pharmacy. It’s well-stocked with antiretroviral drugs for HIV, thanks to a major grant from the U.S government’s President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin with Rose

Dr. MAMLIN: Look what we have here. This is PEPFAR in action. People who’ve been in this business and watching people die in Kenya will walk in a room like this, they will cry. To see this umbilical cord to life made available by the American people free of charge for all of these patients is a miracle and it’s just simply wonderful.

DE SAM LAZARO : Today, some 60,000 patients receive care in 18 regional centers. Mamlin notes only two American doctors work alongside several hundred Kenyan colleagues and staff, a staff so dedicated, he says, that many were on the frontlines of emergency care during the turmoil. None of the acrimony from the ethnic violence that followed December’s elections spilled into the compounds of their clinics.

HENRY MUITIRIRI: I think in the organization we didn’t have any inciter who could come and incite us to fight. We work as one.

DE SAM LAZARO: Many employees took shelter in the project’s compound. Even though they were from tribes fighting each other on the outside, they drew on faith to stay together inside.

PANINAH MUSULA: We had a Christian group. We had prayers. We had to sing together. We had to pray together. That united us that we could not rise against one another.

SAMMY KIMANI: We need to believe that we can have peace back, and we need it. We had hope.

DE SAM LAZARO : But all around them the devastation did not spare even churches — the toll not just in death and property damage, but also interruption in the careful drug regimens for AIDS patients.

Dr. MAMLIN (talking with patient): You missed two days.

UNIDENTIFIED PATIENT: There was no means to come here.

Dr. MAMLIN: I want you to know that missing your medicine even two days is dangerous. I know you could do nothing. It’s not your fault.

A displaced Kenyan

DE SAM LAZARO: The most immediate challenge was in tracking down the thousands of patients who fled the violence, making sure they were supplied with their drugs. Many scattered into makeshift camps for displaced people, some of which still remain. Thirty-seven-year-old Purity Wambui took shelter in this church. She got a coveted indoor spot since she has a newborn. That makes life easier, but hardly easy.

PURITY WAMBUI: The health becomes deteriorated because you have nothing to eat. Before, we used to have balanced diet, but now it’s hard to get that balanced diet. We just rely on maize and yellow peas. Milk — milk is a dream.

DE SAM LAZARO: Nonetheless she’s grateful, not just for drugs that have kept her alive but for provisions the Indiana partnership distributes to her entire family. It’s the middle step in restoring patients, says Mamlin.

Dr. MAMLIN: When I first pick up a patient who’s wasted, they look up at me and you can tell, even if they say nothing, they just want the drugs so they can live. And about six or eight weeks, when they see that they’re living, they kind of look back at you and say, “I’m hungry!” And then let another two or three months go by as they are walking around and looking normal, they wonder how do I get back on my feet and become a whole person again?

DE SAM LAZARO: That takes clinics into matters far beyond the immediate medical needs. Each day there are tough calls to make on how to disburse limited funds.

Dr. MAMLIN (speaking to patient): You have no school fees?

DE SAM LAZARO: Mamlin turned down this mother’s request for school fees.

Dr. Joseph Mamlin

Dr. MAMLIN (reading request from patient): “To whom it may concern.” That’s usually my middle name. No, you have to see Diana, the social worker. There are so many of these it’s impossible for me to do all of them.

DE SAM LAZARO: The next patient, a tailor named Clement, was luckier.

CLEMENT (speaking to Dr. Mamlin): When I went out to vote, but when I came back they looted my house.

DE SAM LAZARO: Luckier, that is, for someone who’d lost all his belongings, including his sewing machine.

Dr. MAMLIN (to Clement): I have some friends in U.S., and they’ve donated a little bit money for me to use. So I’m going to qualify you for that, and I’ll get you a machine, and I’ll get you materials to get back in business.

CLEMENT: I thank you very much, sir.

Dr. MAMLIN: Do you want to reconstitute immune systems or do you want to reconstitute lives? And those are two totally different problems, and we’ve decided to go after lives. We’re taking care of the poorest of the poor.

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s a choice that may be rooted in faith, but faith is a matter Mamlin does not share publicly.

Dr. MAMLIN: I have much more concern about what needs to be done as an expression of whatever faith system we have. I guess I’m raised in tradition that tends to avoid putting things like that on your shoulder.

Rev. ARMSTRONG: There’s a wise old church leader who said preach the Gospel and, if necessary, use words.

DE SAM LAZARO: Back in Indianapolis, Pastor Armstrong says what began as a public health program has also spawned numerous exchanges between worship communities here and in Kenya. For the Hoosiers, he says it’s widened their understanding of a distant land and a complex epidemic, and it’s helped them spiritually.

Rev. ARMSTRONG: Who are the people you want your children to learn the Christian faith from? The Mamlins would be at the top of that list. And so for us to be able to find some way to be alongside them in their journey not only was a way for us to strengthen our friendship but also for us to deepen our own faith.

DE SAM LAZARO: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

OLIVER KISAKA (National Council of Churches of Kenya): Forty-five years for Kenya is very a short period of time for 45 tribes to have come together and meshed into one and perfected the art of democracy and common sharing of space. I think in that sense people should not be overly judgmental against any African country. They are trying to shift from systems they were used to, to a totally new approach when you are dealing with more than one culture. Democracy is not an African system. It’s a land system. It’s a good system, but it is not inherently African.

Most Kenyans are religious. The country would be about 95 to 97 percent religious, 70 to 80 percent of that being from one of the Christian traditions. Another sizable percentage, perhaps 15 to 20, being from the Islamic community, and maybe 2 to 3 percent being Hindu and others. So Kenya is generally a religious community. But how this religion works out in economics, how it works out in politics, how it works out in ethnicity, how it works out in aesthetics, how it works out in defining ethical values, how it works as a true worship, as a religion itself — those are the critical questions that we are now being called upon to engage. We have assumed we are a peaceful country. We have assumed that our religion is deep enough. The truth is that it is not deep enough.

When push came to shove, there were ministers who sided with their ethnic communities. In other words, they were not prophetic to their ethnic communities. The right thing would have been to tell the community “You cannot do this. You can’t burn other peoples’ property, even if you are aggrieved.” But they were silent.

Nobody in Kenya was not divided, doesn’t matter who — the teachers, the law society, the civil society organizations. Everybody was divided. It was a very difficult situation for the country, and we felt if someone was going to bring healing into the country someone was needed to take responsibility for their part. So we decided to go ahead and do so. We still hope the rest can actually come to that point, because anything else is really denial. We are in denial. We have treated one another as if we were not Kenyans, and there is no way we can heal one another if we are still pointing fingers across the table. We need everybody to say “I had a part to play in what this became.”

When we entered the crisis we decided, we analyzed it in three parts. We said it was a spiritual crisis, a political crisis, and a humanitarian crisis, because of the internally displaced people, and we then set up committees to respond to this: a humanitarian committee, a spiritual committee, and a political mediation committee. Each of these have been working since that time. We told the people we regret that we were divided and that our divisions were along ethnic lines. So we committed ourselves to be able to start afresh and do things differently for the sake of the country.

There has been a lot of call for healing, for renewal, and in a sense we are saying renewal for all of us. Without sounding careless, the Christian tradition is a tradition of renewal, is a tradition of redemption, is a tradition of forgiveness. The most difficult things for Christians to attempt to do is not to own up to what you are wrong about. If you are able to own up sincerely and turn around, there is forgiveness, and there is a new opportunity. So most of the ministers have dealt with this and are preaching healing, they are preaching reconciliation. They are using our experience as a lesson. They are saying we didn’t know it would get this bad. We have talked about Rwanda, but this is who we are. We cannot point fingers anymore. We must work on a new way of how we will live together. So the message is a message of reconciliation, is a message of “Let’s begin again,” a message of “We can’t pretend we were holier than others. Let’s own up, let’s face it, let’s address it.”

One of the sad things of the missionary experience, it outlawed African-ness. If African culture is seen to be anti-Christian and yet I cannot be a white, then what does it leave for me? It leaves me a big vacuum. I have forsaken my African values, I cannot quite live the Western values I lived, so where does that leave me? I think that the minister today, I as a minister must wrestle with that and help Kenyans develop new values that can allow them to be African and be Christian without feeling a sense of contradiction. Our preaching ministry cannot be business as usual for us to be able to address ethnicity. Somebody else must stand up and tell the people that although where we are today it seems that we can’t live together as tribes, that is something we can work out. I think we have the God-given capacity to address any human problems anywhere. Human beings are known for that. The first and second world wars were very bad wars, but Europe still lives together. Europe works together. They have just raised their stakes a little higher, determined how to live together. I think what it’s calling for is for Kenyans to develop a way of living together, and religion has a great path, because then it can give the right theological undergird for this kind of living together.

Religion in Kenya is not zero. It held at some point. It was pushed from the ideal, but it did not go beyond a certain point, meaning there is a deposit of it. We can easily be so negative about this situation that we paint Kenya as a country of hopeless people who don’t know where they are going. I think Kenyans are very hopeful people. I think that the problem we faced is that people were trying to say something, and nobody was hearing them.