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As much as the president sought to address the economic ills of the country, he did not, however, explore the spiritual and emotional anguish of those who are unemployed whose very sense of self-worth becomes a question mark in the absence of a job. The leadership of this country cannot focus exclusively on the financial bottom line when the jobless feel themselves to be faceless as well. They drop from our ranks and then drop from our universe of concerns. As we try to fix a broken world, we cannot only do the math. We also have to do calculations of the spirit and redeem the worth of those who struggle to find inner strength.

Dr. Erica Brown is a writer, educator, and scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us for this special report on the most important religion and ethics news of the year that’s almost over. Our panelists are E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University; also Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. We begin with a video reminder of the major events of 2010 assembled by Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: It was a challenging year for interfaith relations, as American Muslims faced new tensions on several fronts. Plans for an Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero generated a firestorm of debate and protest.

Protester: No mosque, not here, not now, not ever.

LAWTON: And the proposed construction of mosques in other communities generated opposition as well. A Florida pastor’s announced intention to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 set off an international furor, including violent protests in several Muslim nations. The pastor eventually backed off his plan, but controversy continued. Leaders from several faith traditions joined with Islamic leaders to denounce what they called “growing Islamophobia” across the country. Meanwhile, amid several high-profile arrests of American Muslims allegedly plotting terrorist attacks, US mainstream Islamic groups launched new campaigns to combat extremism within their communities.

Imam speaking to Muslim students: Nonviolence, the sanctity of life is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life, it’s the sanctity of all life.

Despite some limited signs of economic recovery, many American families continued to face unemployment and foreclosures. Religious institutions were called upon to do more to help the needy even as they dealt with their own sustained budget cuts.

On the political front, religious conservatives appeared to be reenergized by the Tea Party movement and its campaign for limited government. Although the focus of the midterm elections was on economics, many religious right activists were hopeful a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will provide momentum for their social agenda. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were criticized for failing to reach out more to religious voters. Many faith-based moderates and liberals were disappointed that President Obama did not employ more religious rhetoric when he discussed issues like health care and the economy. And according to one survey, growing numbers of Americans, nearly one in five, believe incorrectly that President Obama is a Muslim.

Issues surrounding homosexuality continued to pose difficult challenges for many in the religious community. Faith groups were on both sides of the issue as Congress debated lifting don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old ban on gays serving openly in the military. They also filed briefs on both sides in several court cases over gay marriage. The Episcopal Church installed its second openly gay bishop, Reverend Mary Glasspool, a lesbian.

The Roman Catholic Church confronted the ongoing clergy sex abuse crisis, this time centered in several European countries, and there were more questions about how high-ranking church officials dealt with the crisis. Pope Benedict XVI offered renewed apologies about the problem and promised new guidelines for handling allegations of abuse.

Faith-based charities scrambled to meet needs in the wake of several humanitarian disasters. Here in the US, social service groups tried to help people along the Gulf Coast after the devastating BP oil spill. In Pakistan, religious relief groups rushed to deliver aid after a summer of massive flooding that has left an estimated four million people still homeless. And for nearly a year now, faith-based groups have been actively working in Haiti, providing emergency aid and helping to rebuild after the January 12 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced almost two million. A rising cholera epidemic is complicating those efforts.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. To you and to Kevin Eckstrom and to E.J. Dionne, welcome. I want to get to churches and politics and economics, jobs in just a minute, but first, Kevin, what do you make of all this Islamophobia?

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s an extraordinary place for us to be in 2010. The most extreme example you can think of on this was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a zoning dispute over whether or not to build a mosque, whether they had the right to build a mosque, turned into a debate over whether Islam is actually a religion or not. And we saw it in New York in Ground Zero with the Park 51 mosque that Kim referred to in her piece. And what you saw this year was a fundamental debate over whether or not American Muslims are in a separate category or should be in a separate category from everyone else in terms of their rights, their responsibilities, and their place at the American table. And, you know, when you have a Florida pastor who can come out of nowhere and threaten to burn a pile of Qurans and get a call from the secretary of defense you know that we are not in …

LAWTON: … asking him not to do it …

ECKSTROM: That’s right. You know that we are not in an ordinary year when it comes to American Muslims.

ABERNETHY: But meanwhile there were legitimate threats. There was a Time Square bomber and others.

LAWTON: And this put a lot of pressure on the American Muslim community, as we saw, as they were trying to portray this message that Islam is not the same as terrorism. They are not mutually the same thing. But yet there were these arrests, and so they were really having to confront their own ideology and how they get their message across, and that was a big challenge for them this past year.

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, we as a country have gone through bouts of this before, and I think when we confront this now it’s worth looking back. We had a party in our country formed in the 1850s in response to the big Catholic immigration, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, and it took us a long time to work through anti-Catholic prejudice. It wasn’t until 1960 that John Kennedy was elected president. We had enormous fights over the Mormons and their role in our society. I think what may be most distressing about this year is that the issue of reaction to Islam has become politicized in a way that it wasn’t immediately after 9/11. You know, it’s worth remembering that right after 9/11 President Bush went out of his way to visit the Islamic center here in DC. It kind of took any political sort of edge off this. I think in this election you have more of it occurring on the right and among Republicans. It was used in the campaigns by some Republican congressional candidates, and I think you are going to need some spokespeople on the conservative side who are very much opposed to Islamophobia to speak out so we can sort of go back to the moment, oddly, that we had after 9/11 when their was a lot of opposition in the country to Islamophobia, because everybody understood our need for Muslim allies around the world.

LAWTON: Well I was just going to go on top of that to say that it’s also been a challenge for leaders of other faith traditions. Muslims are looking to them, saying some of you experienced this yourselves. Where are you? Are you supporting us? Are you supporting our religious freedom? And you have seen some high-profile press conferences and statements by some of the leaders of the national religious organizations. Some Muslims wish that there were more of that going on. But I also think in some local communities, as a response to this protest in the streets, there are more interfaith dialogues going on at the local synagogue and at the local church as people try to figure out what is going on within the religious community.

ABERNETHY: There’s a correlation, isn’t there, with what’s happening to jobs and the economy and the fear a lot of people have about everything. And E.J., I wanted to ask you to move from this into the election of 2010, the Tea Party, and how some of these things appeared in the election returns.

DIONNE: What was striking about the election overall is that it didn’t shift religious alignments very much. I mean the Democrats lost ground pretty well across the board, not only among more religious voters but also among more secular voters, partly because a lot of their people didn’t show up this time around. But the Tea Party is fascinating, because on the one hand the poll data makes it very clear that there is a substantial overlap between support for the Tea Party and support for the religious conservative movement. But there is also some difference between the two. The Tea Party is mildly more secular, but what I think it is even more than the Christian conservatives were is a kind of assertively nationalist movement, and that there is a feeling—I think there is a feeling in the country that we have lost ground as a nation in the world over the last 10 years. That feels part of it. There is certainly some uncertainty over the economy, and that feeds a kind of “let’s take care of our own first” feeling in the country. And so I think watching the relationship between this new Tea Party movement and the older religious conservative movement is going to be one of the most interesting stories between now and the 2012 election.

ABERNETHY: And there was this phrase that we heard often—“We want to take back the country.” How do you transpose that? How do you interpret that?

DIONNE: Many people interpret this depending on their own politics, you know. Some people look at it and say this is a reaction to immigration and it’s a reaction of traditionally white or Anglo-Saxon Americans to the growing diversity of America. I think some people might look at it in more economic terms and say, boy, did we feel more secure 30 years ago. There was less income inequality 30 years ago. Average people could count on sort of decently paying jobs no matter what their education level was. Some of it is connected to that, and I think some of it is this sense of who are in the world now compared especially to China, but to some degree compared to India, and a lot of politicians are speaking more about American exceptionalism, we are still an exceptional nation, and I think that comes from a desire to hold on to that sense and that it’s been threatened by the downturn, by a sense our power has been depleted by the two long wars we’ve been in. And so I think there is this spiritual element to what is a national discussion about our national standing.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, between the parties did we see a God gap again in this last election?

LAWTON: Well, that’s what people used to talk about, the God gap—that Democrats appeared to be less friendly towards religion than Republicans, and President Obama and his campaign in the last presidential election and the Democratic Party had really seemed to make an effort to change that and had really reached out to the religious community. I’ve been surprised at the difficulty of President Obama’s relationship with the religious community over this past year. A lot of religious moderates and liberals have been very frustrated with him and some of his policies. They’ve been disappointed he hasn’t been speaking more about religion, and a lot of their community were frustrated that the Democratic Party didn’t appear to be reaching out to them in the past midterm election, so some of that separation still seems to be there.

ECKSTROM: I think the most interesting God gap you saw this year was the gap between perception and reality on whether or not the president is a Muslim or not.

ABERNETHY: What do you make of that?

ECKSTROM: I think when people say that he is a Muslim or that they think that he’s a Muslim, they are certainly not saying it as a compliment. It’s a way of smearing someone now in America in 2010. If you don’t like them, you can say that they are a Muslim. It’s a way of saying that he’s different, that he’s other, that he’s not like the rest of us. But you know, you have a president who speaks in Christian terminology, who went to church on Easter, who talked about finding salvation at the foot of the cross and all this. And yet there’s this gap, this interminable gap that they can’t seem to quite get over. As much as he talks, as many places as he goes, people still want to think that he’s not quite like us, and the Islam label or the Muslim label is a way of expressing that.

DIONNE: And I think there’s another side to it which Kim talked about in that excellent piece—more information per second that any video this year—and that is that President Obama talked quite a lot about religion and his own faith and his own views on the relationship between religion and public life from 2006 to 2008 when he was running for president. I think he’s done a lot less of that in the White House. Now he might defend himself saying I had awfully big problems to deal with out there. Nonetheless, I think that was a missing piece in the way he talked about issues. It was a missing piece partly, I think, on the grounds of persuasion; that providing an underlying philosophical rationale for what he was doing would have helped him, I think, in these two years. But also it’s a sort of a missing piece of who he is, and I think he does need to talk more about it. And it’s not just that minority that sees him as Muslim. I think there’s a minority that dislikes President Obama that would say almost anything about him. But there’s a larger group that just doesn’t have a sense of exactly who he is in this area, and I think he addressed it really well, I think, his critics believed that, from ’06 to ’08. I think he needs to address is again.

LAWTON: And it showed up in issues such as the health care debate or the economic issues, where a lot of times during the campaign trail he would use the phrase “we are our brothers’ keepers, we are our sisters’ keepers.” He would frame issues like health care as a moral issue and use sometimes religious language to talk about that, and he hasn’t done that as much in the Oval Office, and that has frustrated faith-based activists on the ground who believe that and who use that kind of language to mobilize their own people.

ABERNETHY: The recession continues and hurts everybody, and not least churches. Anybody want to talk about what the job problem has meant in churches?

LAWTON: Well, they’re having to do more to help people in their congregations. A lot of food banks and faith-based social services are saying they are seeing more and more people coming to them. People, middle-class people who’d never gone to a food bank before in their lives are now having to do that because of the ongoing economic problems, and at the same time religious institutions, like everybody else, are making budget cuts and slashing staff because of the difficulties.

ABERNETHY: Pastors, assistant pastors, associate pastors out of work.

LAWTON: A lot of congregations talk about that, really cutting back.

ECKSTROM: And what I’m hearing from clergy is that the recession that began in 2008 is actually now sort of catching up in reality with people as they are making their pledge payments for 2011 or going forward, where they are saying I’d like to pledge the same that I did last year but my husband just lost his job or we just don’t have as much money this year. So there’s going to be some difficult choices facing American congregations going forward from here about how they balance lower income from the pews with demand increase for services.

DIONNE: I was so struck in Kim’s piece that she kept coming back to what religious institutions are doing in the charitable sphere, whether it’s for the unemployed here or the suffering folks in Pakistan, and I think sort of one of the good news stories of the year was the publication of a book called “American Grace” by Bob Putnam of Harvard, David Campbell of Notre Dame, where they found that American—first of all, there is an enormous amount of charity that comes out of the religious community in America and that people connected to religious institutions seem to have more of a proclivity toward doing that, and that there is a kind of built-in religious tolerance in the country because of our religious diversity. It was actually a very optimistic book about the nature of religion in America, and I think Kim’s piece kind of underscored that.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, social issues. Don’t ask don’t tell was repealed. Proposition 8—I don’t know where that stands; maybe you do. Talk about those a little bit.

ECKSTROM: It was a significant year for the gay movement in all of its various forms. Gay and lesbian soldiers will now be able to serve in the military openly. On the marriage front, you had a federal court strike down California’s ban on gay marriage, and I think the most significant and often overlooked part of that ruling was that the judge said that religious feelings about homosexuality, religious bias if you will, is not enough to legislate on—that whatever your religious feelings are on the issue, that that’s not enough when it comes to civil rights, and that’s a fairly significant finding, and he found it as a finding of law, a finding of fact—that it wasn’t disputable, and that’s going to be going forward. But you also see in the sort of conservative resurgence that there’s a lot of resistance to going too fast on this issue. And so you’ll see, like in New Hampshire, where the Republicans have regained control of the legislature, they might try to repeal the gay marriage law there that’s a couple years old. You saw judges in Iowa who lost their jobs because they voted in favor of gay marriage last year. So it’s—this issue is always sort of two steps forward, one step back.

LAWTON: It’s been a difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community whose religious beliefs teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that rubs up against civil rights and so you get to this very difficult place. So I was struck this past year by how people were examining their rhetoric, and you had the anti-gay bullying, the very tragic cases of young gay people committing suicide, and then people in the religious community looking at their rhetoric to say is it possible to oppose homosexuality without being a bully or appearing to be discriminating, and it’s a very difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community, and how that gets worked out in society has been a challenge and will continue to be so.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., we had this interesting split within the Catholic Church this past year over the health care bill and the bishops on one side and the Catholic Health Association on the other—a lot of nuns.

DIONNE: This was a huge split. I just want to go back to the gay issue for one moment. The passage of don’t ask, don’t tell—it’s hard, I think, to fully appreciate how big a move that is. Think of where we were 15 years ago, and it passed because a number of Republican senators decided that a) they were for it on principal, but b) this is now the more popular position in the country. So we still have a lot of arguments over gay marriage, but the status of gay people has changed radically in this country in a very short time. To go to your question, this was a huge fight in the Catholic Church, and it’s going to have repercussions, where you really had a dispute over what the bill actually said. You had the Catholic bishops insisting that the language in the bill could still lead to federal financing of abortion. You had the Catholic Health Care Association, which is pro-life, and quite a large group of nuns who are also pro-life, saying we looked at this language; this bill does not finance abortion. And I think this has sort of implications for which side will the Catholic Church be on in a lot of other fights. Catholic social teaching, there’s always been a kind of amalgam: very pro-life on abortion but very much in favor of social justice. In this bill those two kind of collided. The Catholic Health Association said there is no conflict here, and I think you’re going to see a lot more arguments in the church about this in the coming several years.

ABERNETHY: And back to what you were saying before, Kevin. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between being for don’t ask don’t tell and on the other hand having that spill over into gay marriage. There’s a lot of resistance to gay marriage.

ECKSTROM: That’s right. There has been a 30-point shift in the last 15 or so years on the question of gays in the military. The shift on whether or not gays should be allowed to be married is somewhere more like in the five to ten range. It’s still very on the border of being a majority or minority of Americans who support it.

DIONNE: Although you still now have a substantial majority who support either gay marriage or civil unions. Civil unions in a very short time has gone from being a rather advanced or very liberal position to being a kind of middle-of-the-road position.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, quickly, are the Episcopalians still divided over gay bishops?

LAWTON: Many, many mainline Protestant denominations have been very divided over issues surrounding homosexuality/ Not just gay bishops—whether gay clergy can be in the pulpit, and gay marriage, whether their clergy can actually perform a same-sex marriage. So this has been and will continue to be a very difficult issue for many religious groups.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. I wanted to ask each of you as you look back on the year whether you see something that we didn’t pay enough attention to—underreported. Who wants to begin? Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I was very struck by the Gulf oil spill and how that was an occasion for many conservative religious people to get a little more environmentally friendly. You saw Southern Baptists and others very struck by that tragedy and taking a look at some of their environmental positions.

ABERNETHY: Kevin?

ECKSTROM: I was struck by the change in rhetoric from the Mormon Church, actually, on the gay issue, where after the Prop 8 ruling came out and the gay bullying came, the church said, you know, we’ve been discriminated against in the past. We need to be much more careful about how we discriminate.

ABERNETHY: E.J.?

DIONNE: The decline of traditional culture-war politics on the one side and the rise of a different kind of cultural fight around immigration, Islam, Hispanics. I think that’s a shift we are going to be thinking about for a long time.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, many thanks. Our time is up. Many thanks to E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton of this program.

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s sunrise over Louisiana bayou country. Normally, this is when the fishermen here set out in search of shrimp and oysters and crabs. But things aren’t anywhere near normal. Instead of fishing, these men have been hired by BP to look for spreading oil, to document damaged wildlife, and to assist in the cleanup. There’s a safety briefing before they head out, and Pastor John Dee Jeffries opens the meeting with prayer.

REV. JOHN DEE JEFFRIES, First Baptist Church, Chalmette, LA (praying): Father God in Heaven, I pray that you will watch over these men, these women. Protect them today.

Rev. John Dee Jeffries

LAWTON: Jeffries is pastor of the Chalmette First Baptist Church. He’s one of several local ministers who have been coming out to the docks every day to support the fishermen.

JEFFRIES: Can’t solve all of the world’s problems, but sometimes just knowing that there’s someone who’s there who cares is more than sufficient.

LAWTON: Jeffries is concerned that despair is growing across the entire area.

JEFFRIES: Basically what I hear is a lament, a sorrow, because of what was and what now is. It seems to me to be too meager a choice of words to simply say that a lifestyle is at stake here. It is the entire context of a person’s life, the whole backdrop, the fabric, that is being torn asunder by this crisis.

LAWTON: So much in these communities revolves around the seafood industry, and that has been thrown into turmoil, from boat captains who can’t fish and therefore can’t hire deckhands to the mechanics who aren’t being hired to do repairs and the small businesses that aren’t selling supplies. According to US government figures, more than 6,000 vessels and 40,000 people have been brought in to help clean up the oil and deal with the crisis. But many in the fishing industry say they haven’t been able to get replacement work, and they don’t know when they’ll be able to resume their livelihoods.

Byron Encalade

BYRON ENCALADE, Louisiana Oystermen’s Association (speaking at meeting): And I know this is not going to end in one or two weeks, one or two months. May not even be one or two years…

LAWTON: Byron Encalade is president of the Louisiana Oystermen’s Association. He’s become a vocal advocate for the poorest fishermen, especially in remote bayous.

ENCALADE: Why must I always have to go through loops to get you to do the right thing toward my people?

LAWTON: He says after Hurricane Katrina, it was contractors and large, politically connected organizations that received most of the government grants and outside aid. He worries about the same injustices this time.

ENCALADE: If it takes every ounce of my breath, it’s coming out, the truth is coming out. And you’re not going to sit up here and hoodwink the system and think that you’re going to go around and pay your big salaries and all that to the people that works inside your organization and these poor people are suffering.

LAWTON: Many fishermen are having trouble filling out the complicated forms to get compensation from BP, or they don’t have adequate receipts to document their loss of income. People like Errol Battle are falling through the cracks. Battle is a deckhand on oyster boats. He lost everything in Katrina and has been living paycheck to paycheck. Since the oil spill, the boats he works on haven’t been leaving the dock.

ERROL BATTLE, oyster boat deckhand: It really hurts. The oil spill came. It really punished us. It really did.

LAWTON: Local faith-based groups have been trying to do what they can to help. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans has set up relief centers in churches around the region. At Saint Anthony’s in the fishing village of LaFitte, people packed in the church hall to receive bags of food and gift cards for groceries. Case managers helped people fill out BP claims and apply for government aid. A crisis counselor mingled in the crowd, offering emotional support and referrals for more intensive counseling services. And there were activities to help the children focus on something other than the oil spill. At this center, there was also specific help for the Vietnamese American community, which makes up more than 30 percent of the Gulf Coast fishing industry.

MARGARET DUBUISSON, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans: Those Vietnamese immigrants are a very independent group of people. Their culture is intact. I mean if you go out to certain sections of New Orleans East you’ll see entire neighborhoods where all the signage is in Vietnamese. For them to negotiate with the BP claims process, and food stamps, and a lot of forms that are only in English, and a lot of websites that are only in English, it’s very difficult.

LAWTON: In May, BP gave $1 million to Catholic Charities and the Second Harvest Food Bank, but that money has now been spent, and other potential donors seem to be holding back.

Margaret Dubuisson

DUBUISSON: One of the kind of astounding things that we’ve been hearing is that this is a BP problem and BP should pick up the tab. And you know we’re not here to assign blame, we’re just here to help people.

LAWTON: New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond has been visiting some of the hardest hit fishing communities, sometimes traveling by helicopter to get to the more remote places. On this Sunday, he visited Lafitte.

ARCHBISHOP GREGORY AYMOND, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans: Personally I wanted to be with them in solidarity, and also as the archbishop and their shepherd to reassure them that in times of challenge and difficulty God never abandons us.

LAWTON: Virtually everyone here at St. Anthony’s has been affected by the oil spill. And the archbishop says the situation has been especially difficult coming on the heels of Katrina.

AYMOND: What has happened through this is that all of the wounds and the fears and the discouragement, and the intensity of Katrina has reopened. I can see it on people’s faces, I can hear it when they talk. There is definitely post-traumatic stress, which has not yet been fully dealt with. And then this tragedy on top of that just reopens all of that stress.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond

LAWTON: Still, he says he’s been encouraged by the strength of faith that he’s seen.

AYMOND: They are an amazing people. They are resilient. They get discouraged, but they don’t give up. They become puzzled and questioning of God, as we all would in circumstances like this, but they are people of faith.

LAWTON: St. Anthony’s parishioner Tilden Perez, Jr. says he still trusts God, even though he and his entire family have been devastated financially. Perez says his life, past, present and future, is tied to the bayou.

TILDEN PEREZ, JR., commercial fisherman: I’m born and raised here. My people build boats all their lives. My people come from Canary Islands in Spain, which you know is how we got here in the first place. Because it’s Spanish boats that brought the people here in the first place.

LAWTON: Perez is a commercial fisherman, but he hasn’t been able to get work since the oil spill.

PEREZ: On a regular day, none of these boats would be here. Mostly everybody would be working. I’d love to be in the bayou. I want to be in the bayou, and I can’t be in the bayou.

LAWTON: He takes solace in prayer and worship music. He played us a song he says God put in his heart.

LAWTON: Even as people here try to hold on to hope, worries about the future seem almost overwhelming. In addition to the economic worries, there are concerns about the long-term environmental impact, not only of the oil, but of the chemicals being used to disperse it, chemicals that have been banned by other countries.

ENCALADE: That oil is still there. It didn’t just vanish away like people may want to think. It vanished from where you can’t see it from the TV cameras, but it’s down there, and that dispersement is down there. We’ve been asking from day one, we want to know what’s in that dispersement, we want to know about the carcinogens in it, we want to know. We have a right to know. And the people that’s going to consume this seafood have a right to know.

LAWTON: There are worries about what’s going to happen to the wildlife and the beauty of the bayous.

AYMOND: A part of our faith is that we have to take care of the environment, and the environment has certainly been changed and polluted, and we don’t know how long this will take. Is this going to be a change of environment for two or three years? Is this going to be ten years? Is this going to be twenty years? What will this do to the Gulf of Mexico?

LAWTON: And mostly, worries about what will happen to the people here.

JEFFRIES: Katrina was sudden, it was rapid, everything was gone in an instant. But now this is slow. We have time to build up worries, anxieties, fears. Before we were stunned. Now we’re filled with question marks in our minds.

LAWTON: Questions with no quick and easy answers.

BOB ABERNETHY: Kim, welcome back

KIM LAWTON (correspondent): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: It seems as if there’s not nearly as much help going from churches and other organizations around the country going to New Orleans as there was right after Katrina, is that right?

LAWTON: Well, certainly after Katrina there was this huge outpouring, people wanted to do things, although in the immediate aftermath of Katrina they were still trying to figure out what to do. I think that’s what’s happening here as we heard from so many of the people we interviewed. This is still unfolding, and you know people aren’t sure what the needs really are, what they are going to be. Also, things aren’t quite as obvious. With Katrina, there were houses, people could really dive in, you know, and with this the people who are cleaning up the oil have to be specially trained, so there aren’t that many hands-on jobs right now.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, BP is saying, well, we are going to do it all, we are going to clean up everything. Well, that can be a disincentive for people around the country who might want to help.

LAWTON: Exactly. We heard, you know, BP has the ads saying we are going to make this right. And so we heard from many of the local groups that are trying to give immediate help or intermediate help saying they’re not getting donations from the outside like they did from Katrina in part because there’s this feeling of, well, BP should be taking care of it. BP did give some money to charity, but the Catholic Charities, as we said, they’ve already used it up, and in this intermediate time people still are in need.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

JOHN STROPKI (CEO, Lincoln Electric): Welding builds America. I mean, what’s interesting is if you look around the slides and you see the various different industries…

PHIL JONES, correspondent: Lincoln Electric is the world’s leading developer and manufacturer of arc-welding equipment. It has rigorous performance standards. There is mandatory overtime, no unions, and virtually no paid sick days. So why would anyone want to work here?

JONES: What’s the biggest bonus you ever got at the end of the year?

CURT BALK (Employee, Lincoln Electric): I guess I could tell you. Gross? Gross bonus?

JONES: Yeah.

BALK: Probably my biggest was about $28,000.

ROB FULMER (Employee, Lincoln Electric): I don’t know all their ins and outs, but I know this: I feel solid and confident that this place will be here, and that I’m going to have a job ’til I retire.

JONES: That is because Lincoln’s employees don’t have to worry about this happening to them:

Movie clip from “Up in the Air”:

You and I are sitting here today because this will be your last week of your employment at this company.

Why me?

What am I supposed to do now?

Am I supposed to feel better that I’m not the only one losing my job?

This is ridiculous! I have been a fine employee for over 10 years, and this is the way you treat me?

Frank Koller, author of Spark

FRANK KOLLER (Author of Spark: How Old-Fashioned Values Drive a Twenty-First Century Corporation): Over the past 20-30 years we’ve come to understand how horribly destructive layoffs are for the workers involved, for their families, and for the communities at large.

JONES: Journalist Frank Koller has written a book about Lincoln Electric’s unusual management tradition.

KOLLER: Lincoln believes that it is not only possible to protect people as well as profits, but that in fact over the long term the best way to protect your profits is to protect people.

STROPKI: When somebody loses their job, and they’re sitting at home every day, I think they lose a good part of their dignity that’s associated with that. In our system they come to work every day. Maybe they go home a little bit earlier, or maybe their paychecks are a little bit less, but they don’t lose their dignity.

JONES: In 1895, after being laid off from his manufacturing job, John Lincoln decided to start his own company. He later brought in his brother James to manage things. When the Depression hit, Lincoln Electric suffered along with everyone else. Desperate to keep their jobs, workers went to James with this proposal:

KOLLER: If we promise to work harder, and we in fact can improve the productivity of the company, will you share the benefits at the end of the year with us in a fair manner? And James Lincoln, actually, directly said yes.

JONES: The profit-sharing, which began in 1934, has continued to this day. The Lincoln brothers were encouraged to have high moral standards by their father, an itinerant minister.

DONALD HASTINGS (Former CEO, Lincoln Electric): He preached so much the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

JONES: Over his career, J.F., as he was known, wrote frequently of his moral principles: “If we follow the philosophy of Christ…we shall have the proper answer to the problem of lay-offs. When we treat the worker as we would like to be treated, the answer is plain. Continuous employment is needed to secure the cooperation of the worker. It is also basically sound.”

STROPKI: The thing that I always talk about, and we’ve used this term before, is this brain drain that comes when you just let people go. We keep this young talent that we’ve worked so hard to bring into the organization. They know we’re not going to desert them in the bad cycle, and they become more and more committed as far as the company is concerned.

JONES: Under the guaranteed employment policy, no one at Lincoln has been laid off for economic reasons for more than 60 years.

STROPKI: If you are a full-time employee for three consecutive years, the company will guarantee you 75 percent of a normal work week of work and compensation in good times or bad.

JONES: In 2008, business was especially good. The company paid out the highest bonuses in its history, more than $28,000 per employee.

STROPKI (speaking to employees): Congratulations, you earned it.

JONES: But there was a warning.

STROPKI: I referred to comments that J.F. Lincoln had made when the bonus system started and cautioned people that 2009 would be a difficult year and be sure that they took a good portion of their bonus home and saved it for the rainy day that we knew was coming.

JONES: In 2009, those hard times hit. To survive, Lincoln reduced the work week from about 50 hours to 32. Some people were moved to jobs that paid less money, and there was an across-the-board salary cut. Also: a voluntary retirement plan. About 300 accepted, 10 percent of the work force. At the end of a very difficult year, Lincoln had ended up with a profit, and employees got bonuses averaging $17,000. But part of what determines those bonuses is the company policy of—with few exceptions—no paid sick days.

STROPKI: Look, you’re being paid when you’re working, and the company is successful when you’re working, not when you’re home. And it’s—with the bonus system, the way it’s structured, it’s difficult for an equal sharing of the bonus if you don’t have equal participation on the part of the workers.

JONES: Workers don’t get a paycheck just for showing up. Through a complicated merit system, employees know whether they’re performing up to standards. If they’re not, and if they’ve been at Lincoln less than three years, they can be terminated.

John Stropki, Lincoln Electric CEO

STROPKI: We separated the high performers from the low performers. We began to meet with the low performers, let them know what we needed them to do in order for them to survive the crises that were coming, and those that reacted positively made it, and those that didn’t were let go based on performance standards.

JONES: The concept of pay based on quality piecework was started by James Lincoln in 1914. At other companies, piecework has been controversial, but not here.

(speaking to Lincoln Electric employee Curt Balk): Are you a top producer here?

BALK: I think so.

JONES: Why do you like to be on piecework?

BALK: It’s the incentive of knowing that I’m doing the job, and I get paid at the end of the day for what I’ve done, and to make a quality part.

JONES: Why do you like to work under piecework?

Roger Dubose

ROGER DUBOSE: Piecework—it gives you a chance to—you’re not limited. Your hands are not tied. You’re not limited on the amount of earnings you can make.

JONES: No union?

STROPKI: No union in this factory. There’s never been a union in our Cleveland company.

JONES: And why is that?

STROPKI: I think because people feel they’ve been treated fairly and they’ve had it every bit as good or better opportunity than any union opportunity could provide them.

JONES: Another Lincoln policy—creation of an advisory board made up of representatives from all departments. It meets with management every two to three weeks, and any employee can have one-on-one access to the CEO just by making an appointment.

STROPKI: I have a picture of J.F. Lincoln up over my desk, and when I see that picture when I walk in the morning I recognize a responsibility to kind of adhere to the ideals of which he set out to run this company by.

KOLLER: Lincoln is successful by any metric that you can use on Wall Street. The stock does well over the long term. The company’s made a profit from every year from 1934. So there’s no question that in the business world Lincoln Electric is a success. The difference is that Lincoln Electric is also a success by any other measure that most of us, as ordinary people, would see as the right thing for a company to do.

JONES: So why aren’t more companies emulating Lincoln Electric? One reason: Lincoln policies are viewed, in business schools and on Wall Street, as inefficient.

KOLLER: Certainly on Wall Street the perception is that any kind of a guarantee for workers of any kind is a direct threat for shareholders.

JONES: Lincoln Electric does not presume to be a model for other companies, saying simply “this is what works for us, but it’s not easy.”

STROPKI: Companies have three stakeholders. They have their customers, they have their employees, and they have their shareholders. And which of those three stakeholders don’t want to be treated fairly? Treat people fairly. Treat people like you’d like to be treated.

JONES: The Golden Rule?

STROPKI: The Golden Rule.

JONES: Instead of laying people off in the current recession, Lincoln reassigned some of them to product development. As a result, the company has brought out more than one hundred new products. As one former CEO puts it, “When things pick up, I wouldn’t want to be a competitor of Lincoln Electric.”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Phil Jones in Cleveland, Ohio.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: South Africa has spent six billion dollars just on stadiums—money that could have gone to many pressing needs in a poor country. But that debate has been set aside for the celebrations these days. No one, it seems, has escaped World Cup fever—not even Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who came to our interview wearing soccer vestments.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Many of those who are celebrating are the very ones that you would have thought wouldn’t because they are poor. But the scriptures long ago reminded us that human beings don’t subsist only on bread. You need things that lift your spirit.

DE SAM LAZARO: For five decades, Tutu has been one of South Africa’s most prominent voices —a leader in the struggle against the white minority rule of apartheid, leader of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is widely credited for a mostly peaceful transition after elections in 1994 brought the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela to power. Now frail, the 92-year-old Mandela makes only rare public appearances. Tutu is also retired, but he keeps a much higher and often outspoken profile.

TUTU: God gave us an incredible start with a Nelson Mandela, and it would be very difficult to maintain that quality of leadership.

DE SAM LAZARO: After 16 years, the verdict on South Africa is decidedly mixed. It still has the modern infrastructure, built for its affluent 10 percent white minority. What’s new are places like this glitzy mall in the historically black township of Soweto. Not long ago, the only blacks in places like these would have been cleaning them. Today, few people can match the consumer appetite of people like Tim Tebeila, part of a new class of black industrialist. He recently came to the site of a multimillion-dollar home he’s building near Johannesburg.

CONTRACTOR (speaking to Tim Tebeila): We’re still waiting for the Italian chandelier to come in that you chose. I think it weighs, what, one-and-a-half tons?

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila was a young member of the African National Congress, or ANC, that was banned for fighting apartheid, which officially excluded the 85 percent black majority from all but the most menial jobs. All that changed after ANC leader Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994.

TEBEILA: My business career in 1994 I can say has improved dramatically.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tim Tebeila is a natural salesman who quickly found success in the insurance business. By 1995 came more opportunities.

TEBEILA: I then established a company called Tebeila Building Construction. Now that was also in response to a new trend in government in terms of trying to empower the blacks.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila is one of the most successful beneficiaries of new, sweeping policies to increase black participation in the economy: more ownership of shares in industry, affirmative action in hiring, and more government contracts. The problem, many experts say, is that such success stories are all too few. The new policies have many more people feeling hurt rather than helped. Coenie Kriel has spent four months scouring the Internet for a new job.

COENIE KRIEL: A lot of the adverts are stipulating AA. That stands for affirmative action, meaning that they prefer the AA candidate.

DE SAM LAZARO: The 45-year-old mechanical engineer was laid off from a mining company in February. Four years ago he left a previous job after being passed over for a promotion. In both cases, he says, affirmative-action considerations may have hurt him, even though he’s not entirely opposed to them.

KRIEL: You get in these phases up and down, and you feel why me? But then you realize that’s basically life, and between myself and my wife we believe that it’s the way of the Lord.

DE SAM LAZARO: And overall Kriel has reason to be optimistic and confident. Despite government programs, white South Africans are doing well. White unemployment is just five percent, and given the shortage of engineers, Kriel is confident he’ll soon land a job.

That confidence is hardly shared by blacks. Although living conditions have improved somewhat among black South Africans, black unemployment is officially 25 percent. In reality it’s likely much higher. Unlike their parents, young blacks like Nonthokozo Kubeka can visit shopping malls, but many can do little more than visit.

NONTHOKOZO KUBEKA: I think that the problem in South Africa is that we have the most brilliant policies, but they’re on paper.

DE SAM LAZARO: She got a government loan to attend college—the first in her family ever to do so. But the 24-year-old political science major hasn’t found a job 16 months after graduating.

KUBEKA: The situation is you are more likely to succeed if you know the right people, if you were in the struggle for some reason even. I’m too young to have been in the struggle.

DE SAM LAZARO: South Africans of all races complain about corruption, about high crime rates, about an education system in decline. Amid all this—amid political scandal surrounding the extramarital affairs of current president, Jacob Zuma, the ANC has continued to win elections, still trading, experts say, on its reputation as the party of Mandela. Archbishop Tutu says it will soon have to respond to growing discontent among voters. He’s urged the government to harness what he calls unprecedented national unity leading up to the World Cup.

TUTU: I haven’t seen so many people displaying our flag on their cars and every conceivable place. It’s just a fantastic thing, and we’re enormously grateful that it is there.

DE SAM LAZARO: Are you optimistic that it will reenergize South Africa? And if so, what gives you that optimism? You’ve expressed some reservations about the ability of this government to deliver the goods.

TUTU: I’ve always said I’m not an optimist. I’m a prisoner of hope, which is a different kettle of fish. Optimism is too light. Now to come to your question: I think that they do have amongst the cabinet people who are strategizers, people who are aware that there has been a kind of disillusionment among the people. I mean they’ve seen the protest demonstrations because people are upset at the slow delivery of services.

DE SAM LAZARO: Do you worry about the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s passing?

TUTU: It’s going to be a horrendous moment in the life of our country. But human beings do have a capacity for adjusting. I mean we’re going to become a normal society, and we will not always be looking to Colossus to lead us.

DE SAM LAZARO: At the end of the day, Tutu said, he pins his hope for South Africa and for the world on what he calls humankind’s intrinsic goodness, the subject of a new book he coauthored with his Anglican priest daughter, Mpho Tutu. They argue human beings are hard-wired to do good.

TUTU: Fundamentally we are good, for you see a good person make us feel good, too. We felt good just watching a Chinese student standing in front of tanks. I mean knowing that he was not likely to succeed in stopping the carnage, but for a moment he did. He made those tanks swerve, and looking at that image our hearts leapt with an exhilaration. That said, yeah, that is how we should be. That is how I hope I would respond.

DE SAM LAZARO: You’ve written that evil will never have the last word.

TUTU: No. Sometimes it takes long.

DE SAM LAZARO: What is the terminal point where you say the last word is being uttered?

TUTU: For the ones who are suffering, it’s forever it seems, but happen it will. Just ask Hitler. Just ask Mussolini. Just ask Amin. Just ask the apartheid guys here. They used to strut around imagining they were totally invincible. You say, where are they today?

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Cape Town, South Africa.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (guest anchor): For many people struggling through these hard economic times, the church has been a place to find solace and — for some — a food shelf. However, when it comes to paying the light bill, the phone bill, and the mortgage, some churches are finding themselves as hard-pressed as their congregants. While charitable giving to churches actually went up overall in 2008, many worship communities have been forced to lay off employees. Some even face the threat of foreclosure. Saul Gonzalez has this report from Southern California.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. GALLOWAY: Oh, no. Forget it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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