Author Archives: Fred Yi

James Wolfensohn on Religion and Development

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James Wolfensohn led the World Bank from 1995 to 2005. While he was at the helm, he pushed the Washington-based institution to develop an unprecedented relationship with religious groups. Wolfensohn recently returned to Washington to promote his new autobiography, “A Global Life” (Public Affairs Books, 2010). Kim Lawton sat down with him at the Aspen Institute.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: During his decade as president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn was a force to be reckoned with. And whether he was being praised for pushing new efforts to help the world’s poor or people were protesting against him for not doing enough, Wolfensohn sparked an unprecedented international conversation about poverty and development. I asked him if he believes the United States has a moral obligation to help poorer countries.

JAMES WOLFENSOHN: Personally, I believe so, and it is the stated intention of just about every president to make a contribution on the field of poverty and in the field of development. And I think they make the assumption that the nation agrees with that. That it is something that is part of the American ethic and that if we can help we should. What we haven’t done is to do it at the level of many other nations and I’m not sure we’ve done it always as effectively as we might. But in terms of intention and in terms of the right thing to do, I think we are absolutely where we should be.

LAWTON: Promoting international development is not only the right thing to do, he says, but the practical one as well.

post01-wolfensohnWOLFENSOHN: I regard it as a moral responsibility. I think also though in terms of peace and security on our planet, it’s important to have economic development because countries that are moving forward economically by and large don’t attack other countries. If you can develop a more peaceful and prosperous world, it makes opportunities for export, it makes opportunities for business, but at the other end of the spectrum, it makes less likely terrorist acts and wars.

LAWTON: But with a relentless recession and high unemployment rates, Wolfensohn acknowledges it can be difficult to convince Americans that they should still send aid to other countries.

WOLFENSOHN: And at a time like that it’s not surprising that we tend to look inwards to try and see how we can do something that would solve our own problems. But what you can’t do is just forget outside the country to deal with that.

LAWTON: During his tenure at the World Bank, Wolfensohn raised eyebrows by developing a new dialogue between his very secular institution and top leaders of the international religious community.

WOLFENSOHN: A very substantial part of aid to people in poverty goes through religious organizations. And secondly, the people that are in the field significantly, in addition to aid workers, are religious workers. And so it occurred to me that if we could get a dialogue between the people that were interested in development and religious leaders, we might have the basis for far greater cooperation and far greater understanding of the learning of each group.

LAWTON: Was that a hard sell within the World Bank itself, within that culture?

WOLFENSOHN: I think they all thought I was mad, to be quite honest. I won’t say all, but I don’t think I had a lot of support. But one of the great things about the World Bank is that if you’re president of it, you have quite a lot of discretion on what you do. And I would have to say that personally I found it amongst the most important initiatives that I took—very little talked about, by the way.

LAWTON: On three separate occasions, Wolfensohn and other bank officials met with religious leaders across the spectrum to discuss how they could work together to address global poverty.

post02-wolfensohnWOLFENSOHN: And it was sort of fun for me as a nice Jewish boy from Australia bringing together all these great religious leaders.

LAWTON: Wolfensohn says he believes the meetings accomplished a lot.

WOLFENSOHN: Once we got them talking, as you know better than I they don’t always share secrets with one another about what they’re doing because in a sense there is a competitive element amongst religious leaders. But when you get to the question of humanity and the question of poverty, I found that the competitive element disappeared and we were able to talk about these fundamental humanitarian issues on a very even basis, and it was one of the great experiences of my life was chairing those meetings.

LAWTON: The meetings planted seeds for religious activism that continues, such as a massive interfaith march in support of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Wolfensohn believes such efforts must continue.

WOLFENSOHN: The most broadly based access to the developing world is through religious people. There are more of them out there. They’ve been there longer. They know the countries. They’re installed locally. They don’t all sit in a big office in the headquarters. They’re out in the field. And so it is a tragedy if they are not embraced, in my opinion, in the overall development process.

LAWTON: After he left the World Bank, Wolfensohn was appointed by President Bush to be a Middle East envoy. He says there the role of religion can be important but difficult.

WOLFENSOHN: It is not as though Islam, Judaism, or Christianity are monolithic. They’re not. And so I think you can, at the fringes, and at the margins and on particular issues, you can get help from the religious community. But I don’t think it is very easy to get them to come up with the solution for you.

LAWTON: Wolfensohn is still active in international development issues. One of his priority projects is an initiative helping train young Arabs to get jobs. He says he’s also concerned that young Americans be prepared for a globalized future.

WOLFENSOHN: We have to really revamp our education system, not just in maths and science, which I think we should, but in terms of humanities, and in terms of where our kids are going in the world, and we’re just not training them.

LAWTON: The world is getting smaller, he says, and America can’t afford to ignore that.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.

Sudan Referendum

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FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It was an unusual sight at Mass last Sunday [January 9] in the dusty regional capital of Bentiu. There were empty seats. But Father Samuel Akoch didn’t seem to mind, because this was an improbable historic day in Southern Sudan. Most of the absentees were around the corner, lining up for the chance to vote for secession, to create their own nation

REV. SAMUEL AKOCH (Saint Martin de Porres Catholic Church): I know that each of you came here to pray. I also know that each one of us is carrying our voting card in our pocket.

DE SAM LAZARO: And as the service concluded, it took on the fever of a campaign rally. Those voting cards came out and Father Samuel led a bee-line to the polling center, joining hundreds already there. Their ballot choice was as simple as the set-up of this polling center under a tree: Stay as one Sudan or separate into a new republic of South Sudan. That was the overwhelming favorite here. Father Samuel imagined that nation.

post02-sudanREV. AKOCH: People will be free to express their own religion, they will use their resources without anybody telling them no, so it is really great help for us to see this day. It was many people have died and they never saw this.

DE SAM LAZARO: The predominantly Christian and traditionalist black African Southern Sudan has seen almost nonstop war with the Arabic-speaking and Muslim North since the country’s independence from Britain in 1956. Two million people are thought to have died in recent years in the battered South, an impoverished land even though rich oil reserves were discovered here in the 1980s. A few feet under this fading sign is a pipeline that conveys crude oil from here in the South north to the port of Port Sudan. It’s a metaphor for the South’s complaint. The pipeline, like the oil wealth, they say, is invisible here in the South.

Oil added a new intensity to the conflict in the ‘90s, a period which also saw the rise of the Islamist regime of Omar al Bashir. He’s since been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in the Darfur conflict in Western Sudan. But it’s the enduring North-South war that got the attention of evangelical Protestants in America. They saw it as a religious conflict.

REBECCA HAMILTON (Journalist and Author): The evangelical community has been pivotal in the battle of Southern Sudan for its freedom, and they framed the war with the North as a battle for religious freedom, and in many ways that was true…

post03-sudanDE SAM LAZARO: Religious freedom for Christians.

HAMILTON: Religious freedom for Christians in the South. In many ways it was true, because the Northern government was trying to Islamize the South, but it was also a very useful framing of the conflict for getting the attention of key members of the United States Congress.

JOHN ASHWORTH (Catholic Relief Services): I think in the United States you had the coming together of the right-wing evangelicals, the [Congressional] Black Caucus, and the liberal human rights organizations. There’s probably no other situation in the world where those three groups would have common ground. But I think we also have to say that 9/11 played a role in bringing about the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement]. On 9/11, the United States woke up to the reality that things happening in far-away countries had direct implications for the United States, and from that point we saw a much greater engagement with Sudan—Sudan, of course, having a history of being involved with so-called terrorist movements.

DE SAM LAZARO: Finally, in 2005 an American-brokered peace agreement was reached which called for this week’s referendum and also a sharing of oil revenues. At this church building—destroyed by fighting in the 1980s and now, ironically, a polling center—voters expressed hope that their sad history of slavery and exploitation would soon end.

KAFI ABUSALLAH: We have been mistreated by the Khartoum government, and we will show them that we want to stand firmly alone.

post04-sudanPETER PAL: The Northerners have made us their slaves for a long time, and we are ready to show them that we can lead ourselves. We are looking for good hospitals, good schools, good roads.

MARY DOAR: Our resources have never benefited us. Now we will get the benefit of our own resources.

DE SAM LAZARO: Managing voter expectations will be only one of several daunting tasks for the government of a new South Sudan. Keeping the peace is another immediate priority—not just with the North but within the South.

HAMILTON: South Sudan is itself a hugely divided community, and we haven’t seen for years because it’s been the greater enemy in the North, but I think once that enemy of the North is gone we will see all sorts of ethnic tensions rising inside the South.

DE SAM LAZARO: The Southern churches—Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, and others—have held ecumenical services for a peaceful referendum and will play a pivotal role in reconciling the South’s ethnic groups, whose rivalry stems mostly from land, water, and grazing rights for cattle. It’s a familiar role.

ASHWORTH: During the decades of war there was no infrastructure in the South except the church. There was no government, there were no NGOs, no UN, no civil society, and even the traditional leadership of chiefs and elders had been eroded by the coming of the young men with the guns. The church is the only institution which remained here with its infrastructure intact. It remained on the ground with the people. Now because of that we gained huge moral authority.

post05-sudanDE SAM LAZARO: Another key figure is former president Jimmy Carter. With Rosalynn Carter he’s been observing the polls and met with leaders from both North and South. On both sides the former president said he’d received assurances that religious minorities would be protected.

JIMMY CARTER: I met extensively with President Salva Kiir, and he assured me, first of all, that there would be absolutely no restraint on religious freedom in the South, that everybody, Islamic or Christian or Buddhist or whatever, would be free to worship as they chose. In the North, of course, they had had sharia law for many years, and there has been some accommodation for people of other faiths, Christians and others. President Bashir assured me this week that the same guarantees of the rights of other people to worship in different ways would be preserved, and they would not be harassed. He promised me personally that they would protect the churches and other things and protect the right of people to worship as they choose.

DE SAM LAZARO: There remain sensitive issues that could inflame tensions or worse: drawing borders, deciding on the rights of Southerners living in the North and vice versa, and a critical permanent oil-sharing revenue agreement still needs to be negotiated.

The new South Sudan, should that nation emerge, will be one of the poorest on earth. Paved roads, hospitals, and schools are virtually nonexistent, and the peace remains precarious. But all those worries have been cast aside by the euphoria of this moment—the chance, these people say, for the first time in their history for first-class citizenship.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Bentiu, Sudan.

Martin Luther King and Robert Graetz

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Although the social revolution led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. grew out of the black church, from even the earliest days of the movement there were white foot soldiers, too. King initially came to national prominence while leading the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was serving in his first job as a local pastor, and working closely with him there was a young white pastor named Robert Graetz.

REV. ROBERT GRAETZ: We were here because God brought us here, and in a very real sense this changed the character of the movement here, because it was not totally black then from that point on.

LAWTON: Graetz is now 82 years old and still active in the Montgomery community.

GRAETZ: Fifty years ago we were a praying people…

LAWTON: On this day, he’s participating in the unveiling of a new sign marking a site that was important during the bus boycott. He and his wife, Jean, still work for civil rights, reconciliation, and a vision that began more than 50 years ago, a vision they shared with King called “the beloved community.”

post07-mlkgraetzGRAETZ: We are all different, but we are still all together in this one relationship, and the key to that kind of a relationship was respect, which means I look at you and I say, you know, “I know that you have value. God put value in you.” You look at me and you say the same thing.

LAWTON: Graetz had grown up in an all-white Lutheran community in West Virginia. While he was in college in Ohio, he become aware of the injustices faced by African Americans and had what he calls his “race relations awakening.” Graetz and his wife got involved in ministries in black communities, and when he finished seminary, Lutheran officials asked him to pastor an all-black congregation in Montgomery.

GRAETZ: We had very few black pastors because we require the seminary training for all pastors. That’s why they needed some white pastors like me to serve in largely black congregations.

LAWTON: The young Graetz family arrived in Montgomery in 1955 and began their work at Trinity Lutheran Church. They soon met a neighbor named Rosa Parks.

GRAETZ: When we got into town she was one of the first people outside of the congregation that we met. She was the adult advisor to the NAACP youth council which met in our church, so we saw her regularly.

LAWTON: Graetz was also introduced to another new pastor, King, who had arrived the year before.

post08-mlkgraetzGRAETZ: I decided that anybody who sounded as smart as he was and was articulate as he was, and had the name Martin Luther, I had to get to know him better.

LAWTON: He also came to know the struggles of his congregation because of segregation and discrimination on every front, including the public transportation system.

GRAETZ: If you wanted to find one aspect of life here in Montgomery, and probably many other cities in the South, where people were really troubled about the way they were treated, it would be the buses. Everybody either experienced bad treatment on the buses or knew people who had been treated badly.

LAWTON: Several local activists, including the Women’s Political Council, had been talking about staging a boycott. Then came the final catalyst: the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat. When a boycott was called for the following Monday, Graetz says he faced an ethical dilemma because of concerns about what his denominational leaders might think.

GRAETZ: The church officials knew that I had been involved in things like this, and they said, “We want you to go to Montgomery, but you have to promise not to start trouble,” and so the question was, would my taking part in the bus boycott be starting trouble? Jeannie and I prayed about that a lot and finally decided the only way that I could continue to be the pastor here was to take part in the activities that our members were taking part in, and from that point on we were totally a part of what was happening.

LAWTON: On Sunday morning, Graetz stood before his church and expressed full support for the boycott.

post03-mlkgraetzGRAETZ: And I said, “I want you all to stay off the buses. I’ll be out in my car all day long. If you need a ride, I’ll be glad to come and take you wherever you need to go.” So I spent the whole day just driving people around, picking people up on the street, whatever.

LAWTON: Community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to oversee the boycott. King was the chairman, and executive committee members included Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, as well as one white member—Robert Graetz. Graetz says it was exhilarating to be part of it all.

GRAETZ: The feeling among the people across the community was that we were doing something that was changing the world.

DR. HOWARD ROBINSON (Archivist, National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture at Alabama State University): The Graetzs were really like one of the very few white people in Montgomery who took a very overt, obvious position in support of the boycott, and they suffered because of it.

post05-mlkgraetzLAWTON: The Graetz family became targets of the Ku Klux Klan.

GRAETZ: People would call us up and say, “I see your children out in the yard there. Are you sure they’re okay out there?” And the children would be in the yard, so that we knew that there were people who were looking at what was going on.

JEAN GRAETZ: I was scared to go out and take the trash out, because I knew that these people had been around our house and put sugar in the gas tank and slashed our tires, and I didn’t feel safe outside at night.

LAWTON: Their parsonage next to the church was bombed twice, once while no one was home, and once in the middle of the night when everyone was sleeping, including their nine-day-old baby. The house sustained some damage, but no one was injured. Supporters later planted a tree in the crater where the bomb went off. Graetz says he and his wife wrestled over the impact on their children.

GRAETZ: It was okay for Jeannie and me to put our lives in danger, but did we have the right to put our children through that? And we finally decided that we couldn’t control that—that God had brought us here, the children were in God’s hands, and if God wanted them to be protected, that would be his job.

LAWTON: Jean Graetz says African-American friends and sympathetic white supporters gave them strength.

post06-mlkgraetzJEAN GRAETZ: I felt that the Lord had put a circle of love around us, because we had wonderful friends, and I knew God’s love was around us, and I just pictured this circle around us so that the hate from the people that didn’t like us couldn’t get through.

LAWTON: Graetz says the civil rights movement had a strong spiritual underpinning. The weekly mass meetings held in support of the boycott were basically worship services, full of prayer, sermons, and lots of singing of traditional hymns.

GRAETZ: These hymns oftentimes took on new significance because of how they related to how people related to one another in the movement. Bible verses which we would think of—oh, that’s a nice thought—became deeply moving to us because of what we were going through here.

LAWTON: Graetz says this reflected the theological tone set by King.

GRAETZ: In effect, the church in the black community was reinterpreting what the Bible said about how human beings ought to treat one another, so that it was the black Christians teaching white Christians what it meant to be Christian.

LAWTON: After about a year, the boycott ended when courts struck down the bus segregation laws. At the last mass meeting, Graetz read the Scriptures—I Corinthians 13, the well-known passage about love.

GRAETZ: And I got up and started reading and in the middle of the reading, again, loud applause, and I thought, they’re not letting me finish. And I looked down at what I was reading and realized that what I had just read was, “When I became a man I put away childish things.” And people knew that we had matured in this process. We were different people.

LAWTON: The Graetzs have remained active in many civil rights causes. They are now consultants at Alabama State University’s National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture. http://www.lib.alasu.edu/natctr/ They give tours and discussions about justice and the work that still needs to be done in order to achieve their vision of the beloved community.

GRAETZ: People will say to us, “We really appreciate what you did,” and our response always is it wasn’t just us. It was 50,000 black people who stood together, who walked together, who worked together, who stood up against oppression. If it had not been for this whole body of people working together, this would not have happened.

LAWTON: And that’s a story they want to keep alive.

I’m Kim Lawton in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rev. Robert Graetz Extended Interview

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Watch much more of our conversation with Rev. Robert Graetz, who calls the Montgomery bus boycott a spiritual movement based on love and nonviolence that changed the hearts of people across the country.

 

Debbie Friedman, 1951-2011

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Influential and inspirational Jewish singer and songwriter Debbie Friedman, 59, died in California on Sunday, January 9. Her well-loved songs infused traditional prayers with spirituality and meaning for contemporary Jews, and today they are sung in Jewish communities across the country and around the world. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly interviewed her in 2000, and she spoke about her most famous prayer put to song, “Mi Sheberach,” used in healing services in many synagogues.

 

DEBBIE FRIEDMAN: When people are sick, when they are emotionally sick, when they are physically sick, there’s a feeling that nobody could possibly understand what it feels like to be in this body or in this mind, in this heart, and it is so isolating and so painful, and when people come together in a healing service the secret’s out. Everybody knows that every single person there is struggling with the same pain.

We are doing these healing services because healing isn’t being addressed, until recently. We can’t talk about spirituality, and we can’t talk about God, and we can’t talk about sickness. And I think that spiritually if you don’t have the opportunity to exercise your heart and soul, you don’t really fully understand all that you are.

I think that each one of us is here for a purpose, and that is really the focus of my work—that each of us needs to acknowledge what blessings we carry within us, that it’s up to each one of us to give all that we have to the world. I’ve said this before, but we are not here for a free ride. We are here to do a job.

Haiti Earthquake Recovery One Year Later

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Watch more video of relief, recovery, and reconstruction efforts in post-earthquake Haiti, and see more of correspondent Kim Lawton’s interviews with Nicole Peter, World Vision operations director in Haiti; Mary Kate MacIssac, World Vision communications manager in Haiti; Jony St. Louis, World Vision health coordinator; and Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission. Edited by R & E NewsWeekly news researcher Emma Mankey Hidem.

 

Watch more of Sunday morning worship services at Parc Chretien Free Methodist Church; in a tent next to the ruined Roman Catholic Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral; and in an open-air structure next to the destroyed Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and see more of correspondent Kim Lawton’s interviews with Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission, and Bishop Jean-Zache Duracin of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. Edited by R & E news researcher Emma Mankey Hidem.

Haiti Earthquake Anniversary

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Driving through downtown Port-au-Prince, it’s difficult at first to see much change since we were last here nine months ago. The presidential palace is still in ruins. Thousands are living in a massive tent city across the street, and according to aid officials, more than a million Haitians are still homeless. Around the corner from the palace, people are living in tents on the grounds of the destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral. There, piles of rubble and broken stained glass still fill what was once a beautiful hundred-year-old sanctuary. But despite appearances, faith-based workers who have been active here over the past year insist there has been progress in dealing with this humanitarian catastrophe.

NICOLE PETER (Haiti Operations Director, World Vision): The progress is slow, maybe not as quick as other emergencies, but we’re moving forward.

LAWTON: Nicole Peter is the Haiti operations director for the Christian group World Vision, which has already spent more than $100 million in post-earthquake work. They’ve been involved in a variety of projects including shelter, water and sanitation, job creation, education, and family support. One example of their work is the Corail displaced persons camp on a windy, flood-prone field outside the capital city.

post01-haitioneyearIn April, the government of Haiti moved almost 7,000 people to this location about an hour outside Port-au-Prince. But there were no preparations. There were no essential services or infrastructure, so nongovernmental agencies had to step in to help the people. World Vision and other agencies provided sturdy tents to help withstand the elements. Groups brought in latrines and clean water and set up schools. The government still hasn’t developed a long-term housing and resettlement plan for the people here, so World Vision has begun building even sturdier transitional shelters.

MARY KATE MACISSAC (World Vision): We had to negotiate with donors to convince them that timber frames were necessary. They said that those were perhaps too permanent, but we said no, these people need something strong.

LAWTON: The houses are designed to last up to seven years. They can withstand winds up to 100 miles per hour, and in typical Haitian style they all have a front porch. One of the residents, Jeanne, invited me to sit on her front porch with several of the seven children who live here with her. She says she loves this house, and she’s grateful the kids are able to attend school. She says she’d like to get a small business going, so she can feed her children better.

Mary Kate MacIssac says there’s been a lot of criticism from the outside media—and even some donors—that more hasn’t been done. She’s also frustrated by the slow pace, but she says people don’t fully understand the realities on the ground.

post02-haitioneyearMACISSAC: Haiti was a country that was facing humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake. Then you have a massive earthquake hit an urban center, the capital of a country, and it’s a complexity of urban disaster that agencies have not had to deal with before.

LAWTON: Adding to that complexity is a rising cholera epidemic. World Vision has set up cholera treatment units near various tent camps. Visitors are disinfected before they enter and when they leave. According to the official numbers, more than 150,000 people have now come down with cholera, and nearly 3,500 have died. Aid groups say the numbers are vastly under-reported. On this morning, 10 people have already been brought in for treatment, including a five-year-old boy who is also being treated for malnutrition.

PETER: It’s a new emergency within an emergency, so it’s basically heightening issues that existed previously.

LAWTON: Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission, is also all too familiar with the complexities here. After the earthquake hit, denominational officials asked him to get to Haiti immediately. The Free Methodist mission had suffered tragic losses. This multistory building on their compound was completely destroyed. The American administrator of the mission, Reverend Jeanne Munos, was killed. Two other American workers and a Haitian staffer also died in the collapse. Ireland had to oversee rubble removal, restore missions operations, and help coordinate relief and reconstruction.

REV. RICK IRELAND (Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission): Everything is just a little bit harder here, and that does get discouraging.

post03-haitioneyearLAWTON: The Free Methodists have been working through local churches like this one. Sunday morning services here start at 6 am. Shoe-shine vendors line up out front to help congregants look their Sunday best, while local taxis called “tap-taps” keep bringing more worshipers. With over 2,000 people, it’s standing room only. Ireland says this is the best resource to aid Haiti’s recovery.

IRELAND: They knew their community. The pastors, both their church people and the non-church people, were very aware of where the needs were.

LAWTON: They’ve been rebuilding churches and schools and training people how to construct something that will withstand any earthquakes in the future.

IRELAND: We trained Haitian civil engineers how to build earthquake-resistant buildings, and from that group the Haitian teams went out all over Haiti and did a number of seminars teaching people how to build earthquake-proof buildings.

LAWTON: Across from a UN displacement camp is one of those schools. It isn’t quite finished, but enrollment has already doubled from last year. They are also providing clean water for the entire community.

IRELAND: We really have tried to step alongside the Haitians and say, “Here are the resources we have, here’s the challenge. How do you think we can best do this?”

LAWTON: One local pastor who has been leading the Free Methodist efforts is Jean-Marc Zamor, who also has a larger vision for Haiti. He took us down bumpy roads heading to a remote location where he wants to build a Christian university that will focus on character and leadership development and train people to work in the public sector.

post04-haitioneyearREV. JEAN-MARC ZAMOR: After the earthquake, it’s become more and more difficult to find good professionals, and that’s give me even a higher conviction that this is what we need to do now. We need to train people that will carry on the work.

LAWTON: He and a team of other Haitian leaders used their own money to buy 200 acres of land. They’ve hired local workers to begin pouring the foundation of their first building, and they hope to have students by the fall. He gets frustrated that many outsiders see all Haitians as needy victims.

ZAMOR: There are a lot of people living with cholera, a lot of people in need. But Haiti is not only that. At the same time, there are a lot of people doing a lot of things, a lot of work going on. Otherwise, we would not survive.

LAWTON: Local leaders are also active in the response of Haiti’s Episcopal Church. Crowded Sunday morning services here are now being held in an open-air structure with a tin roof. It’s right next to the ruins of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, which was completely destroyed in the quake. The church had been known around the world for its magnificent art work. Once a month, the congregation takes a special offering for the reconstruction of the cathedral. Episcopalians have been active in post-earthquake recovery. I asked the bishop how they will decide whether money should go to helping people or rebuilding the cathedral.

BISHOP JEAN-ZACHE DURACIN (Episcopal Diocese of Haiti): It is a symbol. People may think that, people may say, oh, there are so people in tents and we are going to build big cathedral, and so on. No, it is a symbol of faith. It has always been so.

post05-haitioneyearLAWTON: And, indeed, for many in this predominantly Christian nation faith has been key to survival.

IRELAND: They’re filled with tremendous hope. It’s unbelievable, because it would be so easy just to give up, and they haven’t given up. They really believe that the future can be better.

LAWTON: At the Corail camp, World Vision’s Mary Kate MacIssac says she sees hope in the gardens people are planting near their temporary shelters and in the small businesses that are popping up—and in people like Jeanne’s daughter, Diana. She and her sister wrote a song that says despite the earthquake, they will always believe in God.

MACISSAC: People who continue to believe in a God that loves them is really quite remarkable.

ZAMOR: Haiti is not dying. I think we have taken a lot of time to get started. Once we get started, we will be well on our way, and we will be where we need to be in a couple of years. We are not dying.

LAWTON: Given the enormity of the problems that still exist, that hope is likely to continue being tested.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Kim, welcome back.

LAWTON: Thank you.

post06-haitioneyearABERNETHY: How representative, how typical are those people, those hopeful people you talked to?

LAWTON: Well, I was surprised to hear anybody even mention the word “hope,” given the enormity of the situation there, but I did hear people wanting to say we are moving forward. Yet no one is suggesting that things are great or things are where they should be. There’s a lot of frustration. A lot of people are tired. And so that is definitely the reality, but within that they are hopeful that they are laying the basis for some real long-term improvement.

ABERNETHY: But the general impression I have is that most people here think that these relief efforts, these emergency efforts, are not going very well and that they are taking an awful long time.

LAWTON: I kept hearing a lot of frustration in Haiti about that criticism. They are saying look, we’ve been doing so much but the situation has been so complicated. I talked to one relief worker. She’d been in Gaza. She’d been in Iraq. She just came from Afghanistan straight to Haiti, and she said Haiti is a lot more difficult than any of those other places, and people in the outside don’t realize that. They don’t realize the realities they are dealing with and the layer upon layer of complication that make things take time.

ABERNETHY: What are the worst problems?

LAWTON: Well, obviously the government. There’s been a government in transition. We are awaiting a new election. There’s been political unrest surrounding that. A lot of the international money is tied to the government having a plan, and so the donors from the outside don’t want to give money or legally can’t give the money unless the government has a master plan. Well, if there’s not a good government, a strong government, there’s no government plan, then that money can’t come in and people can’t move forward. That’s one problem. There’s corruption. Haiti was in a bad situation before the earthquake, very little infrastructure, and so all of those things piled together on top of they also had a hurricane and then the cholera epidemic. So it’s just complication upon complication.

ABERNETHY: There are two phases—the relief effort, the emergency relief effort which seems to be going on still a year later, and on the other hand long-term development, investment in new jobs and things like that. When are we going to get—when are the Haitians going to get to that second phase?

LAWTON: Well, some of it’s happening hand in hand, or the beginning of development is happening even as relief work is going forward. A lot of the Haitians I spoke with want to do it themselves. They want to be able to be self-sustaining, and they believe that for any lasting solution that’s the way it’s going to have to be. But they admit that takes time, and so that’s part of the problem as well.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, welcome back.

Seamen’s Church Institute

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SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: If you want to get up close and personal with the global economy, there are few better places to go than the Port of New York and New Jersey. Here, merchant ships arrive from around the world, delivering mountains of cargo containers full of everything from plasma screen televisions to blue jeans, all imports bound for store shelves across America.

Chaplain (speaking at religious service in ship’s galley): The Lord be with you.

Mariners: And also with you.

Chaplain: Let us pray.

GONZALEZ: However, this port and the ships that dock here are also where a group of chaplains operate an unusual maritime ministry: offering spiritual comfort and a helping hand to the world’s seafarers.

post01-seamenChaplains (speaking at religious service): In peace we pray to you Lord God. Oh Lord, we pray for all mariners, that you will guard and protect us in dangers at sea and temptations ashore.

GONZALEZ: The chaplains belong to the Seamen’s Church Institute or SCI, an Episcopal group that’s become the largest service agency for mariners in the United States.

REV. DAVID RIDER (Seamen’s Church Institute executive director, speaking to other chaplains): Okay, my friends, what’s up today? What’s in port and where do we need to go?

GONZALEZ: SCI’s executive director is the Reverend David Rider

RIDER: We serve the spiritual and humanitarian needs of seafarers through worship, through practical support like connecting the family back home, occasional human rights violations, occasional illness or death—those types of crises ministries we’re involved with to ease the burden on seafarers.

GONZALEZ: SCI has been part of life on New York’s waterfront since its founding in 1834, when it soon established a floating dockside chapel. It was a time when sailors’ lives at sea could be brutal and their earnings while ashore quickly blown on booze and brothels.

RIDER: The average lifespan of a seafarer from the day he started was 12 years. The natural calamities at sea and disease in the nineteenth century and dangers ashore did not bode well for a typical seafarer.

post02-seamenGONZALEZ: SCI now operates programs at both coastal and inland ports in the United States. Most of the chaplains’ work involves visiting ships and their crews—2,000 vessels annually in the New York area alone.

Chaplains greeting mariners on board ship: Good morning. Good afternoon. We have lots of gifts for your. Hello! Bonjour mes amis! Tu vas bien? Hello.

GONZALEZ: Once aboard, the chaplains both conduct religious services requested by the crew and, without proselytizing, give the men an opportunity to share their thoughts and troubles after a long voyage.

REV. MEGAN SANDERS (speaking to mariner): What’s your family like? Do you have mother, father?

MARINER: Yeah. I’m still single.

SANDERS: You’re still single? That’s good. You’re saving your money.

GONZALEZ: SCI chaplain Megan Sanders says her conversations with mariners often involve how they keep their faith at sea.

SANDERS: They don’t have a physical church that they can go to every Sunday or every Friday or every Saturday, and so we want to instill in them the knowledge that they carry their God and their relationship with their God with them, and that God enfolds the people that they love that they don’t have the privilege of being with every day.

post03-seamenGONZALEZ: Much has changed in the maritime industry since the days of wooden ships and cloth sails, but for seafarers an ancient problem still persists. It’s the isolation, sometimes loneliness, of life spent out on the open ocean. Freighter captain Diomedes Cabatic is familiar with those feelings. He’s been at sea for over 20 years but says he hasn’t gotten used to long separations from his wife and children back in the Philippines.

DIOMEDES CABATIC: Nine months.

GONZALEZ: Nine months you are away from home?

CABATIC: Nine to 10 months.

GONZALEZ: It’s a lot of time.

CABATIC: A lot of time, because we need to earn money for our family. That’s why we need to go away from our family.

GONZALEZ: But I imagine sometimes when you think about your wife and your three kids it’s difficult.

CABATIC: Yes, it’s difficult to be away with them.

Chaplains talking to mariner: Do you remember the last time you topped it off? When is the last time you talked?

Mariner: Three months.

Chaplain: Three monts. So it might still be okay. We’ll have to check it.

post04-seamenGONZALEZ: After weeks of being out of easy communication with loved ones while at sea, mariners in port, like the men of the freighter Zim Rio Grande, are eager to contact family and friends back home.

Chaplains: I think he’s looking for a T-Mobile SIM card. A SIM card? Okay, I have one right here.

GONZALEZ: The chaplains get many requests to help crew members make cell phone calls and get prepaid calling cards.

REV. MAJORIE LINDSTROM: So phone cards and top-off cards are very important. It gives them the ability to call when they are close to the coast, all times of the day. They don’t have to depend on going to a seafarers’ center or something else to make a call.

GONZALEZ: Vladimir Kurshenko, a young sea cadet from Ukraine on his second voyage, is still getting used to being away from home for so long.

VLADIMIR KURSHENKO: I am ready for this work. I’m ready to work like this, to have no contact with my family for a long time. What can I do?

GONZALEZ: It’s the life?

KURSHENKO: Yeah, it’s the life.

GONZALEZ: In the past, seafarers could have looked forward to several days of shore leave to unwind after a long voyage, but both increased post-9/11 security at American ports and the “time is money” pressures of international trade make it difficult for mariners to venture far from their ships.

post05-seamenRIDER: Now the turn-around time is much faster because of automation and cranes, and especially on the container ships they can be in and out of here in 18 hours, where in the old days it might have been four or five days. In 18 hours, you are still working because there is work to do during the time at berth.

GONZALEZ: If sailors do have a few hours of free time, SCI runs a seafarers welcome center in the heart of the port. Sailors can come to relax, use phones, and check in with families on the Internet.

Chaplain blessing mariner: Henry, I bless you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

GONZALEZ: Port chaplains like Marjorie Lindstrom say the public doesn’t appreciate the role sailors play in the global economy and the hard and dangerous work involved in getting goods across the sea.

LINDSTROM: You know, they think about goods, they think about the money, and the seafarers, the soul of those operations, are frequently ignored or forgotten or not even acknowledged, and they are the invisible. They go from port to port to port, and everywhere they go they are aliens. They are foreigners in a strange land.

GONZALEZ: Reverend Rider says his “on the waterfront” ministry reflects the spiritual dimension of seafaring and the comfort sailors have placed over the centuries in their faith.

RIDER: Cross the North Atlantic in January, feel your ship rolling as you are even in bed, and much like a soldier in a military situation, thinking about divine support and sustenance can become very basic. It is not an abstraction for a seafarer on a bad day. Being out at sea can be beautiful or haunting, and seafarers know both realities. Their experience of God can become very basic, either God’s presence or God’s absence, and they know that in the depths of their soul and, again, in some small way we’re privileged to hear their stories.

Chaplain blessing mariner: Beseeching Him to uphold you and fill you with His grace…

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly I’m Saul Gonzalez at the Port of New York and New Jersey.