Author Archives: Fred Yi

Ministering to Sex Offenders

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SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: With a buffet table topped with potluck dishes and guests catching up and sharing stories, this holiday gathering at Fresno, California’s Mennonite Community Church looks like a traditional church social. Traditional, that is, until you learn that many of the guests here tonight, like Robert Wilson, are convicted rapists and child molesters, all out of prison and on parole.

ROBERT WILSON: I had a lewd and lascivious act with a minor. It was my child. And when we get together like this, yeah, it’s a good thing. Nobody else out there on the streets are going to accept us and let us come into their little private parties and stuff because of who we are.

GONZALEZ: This gathering is the work of a faith-based program called Circles of Support and Accountability or COSA. It wants to create a new model for how society deals with sex offenders by offering the offenders help and friendship.

(speaking to Rev. Clare Ann Ruth-Heffelbower): You are working with men who society thinks of as the worst of the worst of the worst.

Rev. Clare Ann Ruth-HeffelbowerREV. CLARE ANN RUTH-HEFFELBOWER: Yes, it’s true, and even the worst of the worst of the worst are human beings, and they can change.

GONZALEZ: Clare Ann Ruth-Heffelbower, an ordained Mennonite pastor, is the founder of Fresno’s COSA program.

HEFFELBOWER: We believe that it is possible for people to change. We’ve seen people change, and we believe coming from a faith perspective, that people created in God’s image have that good in them that can be there if they are given an opportunity to let that develop.

(at COSA meeting): “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

GONZALEZ: First started by Canadian churches in the mid 1990s, COSA’s work with sex offenders centers on small discussion circles that meet weekly. In the circles, four to six volunteers from the community are matched with one sex offender, called a core member. In this circle the offender is named John.

JOHN: And I screwed up and I made some bad choices because I become careless and I become complacent, and that is something that anybody that’s in my situation cannot do.

GONZALEZ: The circles are intended to get recently paroled sex offenders to take responsibility for the crimes they’ve committed and provide them material and moral support as they attempt to reenter the community.

JOHN: I can talk about anything, anything.

GONZALEZ: Anything.

JOHN: Anything. I told them things about me that I wouldn’t tell my closest friend.

(speaking to group at COSA meeting): I don’t want to get into debates. That’s not being helpful for the core member.

GONZALEZ: John, who didn’t want his face shown or last name used, molested half a dozen children, including his own daughter. He says after decades of his making excuses, COSA has forced him to confront the ugliness of his crimes.

JOHN: I was the one that caused the harm. It wasn’t their fault. It was easy to pick up on children that were feeling abandoned, neglected, and unhappy, because I had…

GONZALEZ: You targeted the vulnerable.

JOHN: Yeah. I targeted the vulnerable. It was easy.

GONZALEZ: Most of the sex offenders in COSA, who all volunteer for the program, say while serving time they received little or no counseling.

BEN: They might call them correctional facilities and rehabs. There’s no correcting, there’s no rehabbing going on.

GONZALEZ: You didn’t get any help?

BEN: There’s no help going on in there.

GONZALEZ: This man, who we’ll call Ben, is a former teacher convicted of multiple child molestation charges. He says too many sex offenders come out of prison with the same urges they had going in.

BEN: They know if they are going to offend again or not. They know it, you know, and they can fool themselves and maybe think they don’t need any kind of support group. But they really need it.

GONZALEZ: There are more than 700,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, with more than 100,000 of them living in California. In California, like other states, paroled offenders are required to wear GPS ankle bracelets. Offenders must also follow strict residency restrictions, preventing them from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks. Unable to find apartments that don’t violate the residency restrictions, many men have wound up on the streets, creating entire tent cities of sex offenders. Parole agent Andy Mounts and his partner showed us one encampment. They introduced us to Michael, a paroled rapist.

(speaking to Michael and Andy Mounts): In this homeless encampment, what percentage of the people living here are sex offenders?

MOUNTS: Michael, what do you think?

MICHAEL: I would say almost all of them.

GONZALEZ: All of them. Almost all of them.

MOUNTS: One or two are not. If you see 50 tents, Michael—47 or 48 sex offenders?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Is it good for the public, please don’t take offense, Michael, but people like you and others are out here instead of in an apartment or a home or in a more stable living situation?

MOUNTS: I can’t tell you that it is.

GONZALEZ: You can’t tell me that it is.

MOUNTS: That it’s good.

GONZALEZ: It’s this reality that COSA says it’s trying to remedy.

HEFFELBOWER: As long as we keep pushing sex offenders to the edge of the community, we’re putting them at risk of reoffending. An offender who has positive, pro-social relationships is less likely to reoffend than someone who doesn’t have those relationships in place. Now that’s seems to me like sort of a, duh, everyone should know that. But that’s what COSA is about, to fill in the social gap.

GONZALEZ: And it appears to work. A recent study of COSA in Canada showed a sharp decline in recidivism rates among sex offenders involved in the program. COSA volunteers who help the sex offenders are often motivated by a combination of religious faith and a wish to protect their families and communities. Some COSA volunteers have also had a very personal experience with sexual abuse—as  victims.

Alicia HintonALICIA HINTON: I really want these men to know they are accountable to me personally for not creating another victim.

GONZALEZ: Until it became too emotionally taxing for her, Alicia Hinton, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, was a COSA volunteer. Although she stills sits on COSA’s board and believes strongly in its work, Hinton thinks some of COSA’s sex offenders still haven’t confronted their crimes and guilt.

HINTON: It was difficult for them to face me every week, and they didn’t want to talk about it with me.

GONZALEZ: They make excuses.

HINTON: They make excuses. They make lots and lots of excuses. It’s always somebody else’s fault, and it disgusts me. It disgusts me.

GONZALEZ: As paroled sex offenders return to communities and neighborhoods, one question often dominates. Can people who committed such heinous crime be rehabilitated to a point where they won’t harm others ever again? Unfortunately, it’s a question with no easy answer. For Heffelbower and many others who work with sex offenders, there’s no such thing as a complete “cure.”

HEFFELBOWER: It’s like an alcoholic. An alcoholic can be in recovery, but they can’t forget that they are an alcoholic, and so I think whichever perspective you take…

GONZALEZ: Meaning the impulses are…

HEFFELBOWER: Meaning the impulses may be there, but you learn how to manage them and keep them from acting on them.

GONZALEZ: COSA’s offenders acknowledge their struggles.

(speaking to Ben): You do have thoughts that still make you uncomfortable?

BEN: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: For younger men, for?

BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don’t like that. I haven’t approached them. But unfortunately I guess still working out some kinks and whatever happened in my past.

GONZALEZ: In spite of her own ambivalence working with sex offenders, Hinton believes more programs like COSA must be created.

HINTON: There is no other option. There isn’t. If we are going to just decide that somebody else, our government, is taking care of these men, and it’s not, we are fools. We are putting our children at risk.

JOHN: People trust me. That’s good. People trust me, and they can trust me for honesty.

GONZALEZ: John says he understands the fear and loathing surrounding men like him, but believes through COSA he’ll continue his journey toward some measure of redemption.

JOHN: I don’t want to die in prison. That’s no place for an old man. That’s no place for anybody if they have any sense at all. I want to be a good man, and a good man is someone that is accomplishing something worthwhile in life.

GONZALEZ: And who doesn’t hurt others.

JOHN: And doesn’t hurt others.

GONZALEZ: But whether John and other sex offenders can ever be fully accepted beyond these circles is a different question.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Fresno, California.

Christopher Evans: Civil Religion and Populist Angst

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post-evans-obamaPresident Obama’s State of the Union address was an interesting display of two often competing themes in American history, mainly, a combination of civil religion mixed in with discernible streaks of political populism.

On one hand, the president presented a masterful work of political theater (a term used repeatedly by media pundits to describe the State of the Union address) made more dramatic by the power of the president’s delivery and the substance of his message. Yet behind the staged applause reflecting the obvious partisan divisions in Congress, the president succeeded in providing a vivid portrait of what historian Martin Marty in the 1970s called “prophetic civil religion.” Marty saw this incarnation of civil religion as an understanding that America carried a unique destiny among the family of nations. The nation, however, was also under divine judgment to realize that destiny by working toward a vision of collective justice for all Americans.

Understood as the interconnection of secular and religious language in public life, the rhetoric of civil religion in American history connects the political purpose (or, to use a theological term, “mission”) of a nation to a transcendent, divine meaning. This tradition of civil religion cuts two ways. One path has led to an uncritical belief in the infallibility of the United States as a political entity. Its laws, and the presuppositions of its laws, are seen as permanently set in stone, and America, as a nation under God, as beyond reproach because its mission is part of God’s divine providence. (This belief is reflected in the frequent argument that America was founded as a Christian nation.)

On one level, Obama’s address was low on religious rhetoric. Besides the usual “God bless America” coda that is part of every major political address, there was little overt reference to America’s religious heritage. Yet part of Obama’s genius as a politician is the way he embodies this larger tradition of prophetic civil religion. The civil religious tradition of Barack Obama connects the theme of American uniqueness to the idea that the nation stands under some form of providential judgment. This was part of the mastery of figures such as Abraham Lincoln, who was able to articulate the theme of America’s unique political destiny while also holding the nation accountable for the sins of slavery.

Not since John F. Kennedy has an American president tied together as skillfully as Obama the persistent theme that Americans, for all their political differences, share a common destiny as a nation, challenging people to work collectively to realize this vision. Part of the power of this tradition, when used effectively, is that it holds in tension a faith in a shared national destiny with the theme of a future hope, that is, the promise that with hard work and perseverance the future will be better than the present. As he has done so many times in the past, the president vividly made that connection for his audience last night.

The tradition of prophetic civil religion Obama embodies is not unique to American presidents, and one can point to a wide range of political and religious leaders in American history who have used elements of this heritage in their public rhetoric. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was perhaps the classic embodiment of a public theology that affirmed the greatness of America’s past, while also summoning Americans to transcend the parameters of racism to realize a vision of justice for all.

Consistent with figures like King, Obama’s civil religion requires deep thought and meditation on the sacrifices of the past and the way these sacrifices are connected to creating hope in the future. There is a note of realism in Obama’s language (that came through loud and clear in his State of the Union), whereby lasting change is never easy but requires personal sacrifice as a means to reconnect with the larger meaning of the nation’s collective destiny.

I am sure the president is aware, however, that great leaders are ultimately judged not simply by their rhetoric but whether they can achieve results. Part of Obama’s problem is not simply the fact that he no longer holds a “super majority” in the senate. It is that his vision of America’s past and future has run headlong into a strong current of populist ideology. I am not against populism per se, yet for all the benefits of this tradition in communicating with a grassroots base (as Obama himself acknowledges), there is a dangerous tendency of this movement historically to define itself by what it is against, as opposed to what it stands for. Recent iterations (the much publicized Tea Party movement, for example) are part of a long line of movements in American history that play to the idea of a pristine past under attack. For all the power of Obama’s stress on the collective “we,” populism is a movement that often garners its strength from the importance of the individual “I.” While many on the left may want to dismiss the irrationality of populist angst, it’s a movement that lifts up another idiom of American political rhetoric: the sacred ideal of personal liberty. (In a number of ways, this populist theme has long been present in many traditions of American evangelicalism, long before the so-called reemergence of the Christian right in the 1980s and 1990s).

In the year ahead, it remains to be seen whether Obama will be able not only to negotiate the Democrat-Republican division, but whether he can connect his vision of prophetic civil religion, with its stress on the collective nature of America, to the very real economic hardships of millions of Americans who find in populist rhetoric a language that resonates with their immediate sufferings. In the past, Obama has understood that building a political movement requires more than a compelling vision of a collective identity. It also needs to speak to the concrete and specific hopes, fears, and dreams of ordinary Americans. As he contemplates the second year of his presidency, Obama’s legislative goals, in part, will need to hold these two competing ideals in creative tension.

Christopher H. Evans is the academic dean and Sallie Knowles Crozer Professor of Church History at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. He is also the author of Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition (Baylor University Press, 2010).

Brendan Sweetman: The Pluralism Problem

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post2-sweetman-obamaListening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, one underlying theme made a big impression: the problem of pluralism and how to deal with competing worldviews, ideologies, values, and political beliefs in the same country.

It is clear that the president is struggling with this question. Since he came into office he has been frustrated and perhaps baffled by the difficulty he and many leaders experience in actually trying to govern when they obtain political power in a democracy. President Obama is mindful of the fact that the American people have an extremely low opinion of Washington, that they blame Washington not only for the current mess we are in but also for not being able to do anything about it. We hear the president’s long list of proposals on issues such as the economy, regulation of financial institutions, health care, and education, and we all know from bitter previous experience that most of his agenda simply will not happen.

The president acknowledged the many differences people have on these and other topics, and he was clearly troubled by the fact that political agreement is difficult to achieve. Yet in an almost desperate attempt to find a way forward, he made a strong appeal to our “shared values” and the fact that both sides of the political aisle simply have to work together. He rightfully spent most of his time on the economy, and he is aware that our economic worries tend to overshadow our ideological differences, for a time at least, and they can bring us together as we try to find a way out of the mess that was created largely by human greed. He made the same point about national security: when we are under attack the nation is united. But he is also aware, although he made no mention of it, that a common purpose does not mean agreement on a common solution, as the bitter arguments about how to deal with security matters testify. The same is unfortunately true for our economic problems, as partisan debates about taxes, health care reform, and the economic stimulus package show.

The problem of pluralism, unfortunately, leads to very nasty partisan politics. It might help us to remember, as anyone who has studied the history of American politics will know, that it has always been like this in terms of political infighting, partisan attacks, and political corruption, though we are now more ideologically split than we have ever been before.

The president was inconsistent in his speech, however, because while he was asking us all to work together and to try to put our political differences aside in the interests of solving our problems and emphasizing our shared values, he directed a very pointed attack at the Supreme Court from this most conspicuous of forums, accusing it of undoing a century of law on campaign finance reform. This draws attention to another feature of an ideologically divided nation—that the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be above politics, is in great danger of actually becoming just another political body. One supports them when they deliver a judgment that is in accord with one’s worldview and criticizes them when they deliver a judgment that is not, and the “independence” of the law goes out the window. In our present climate the Court has lost its independence on many of the hot-button topics of the day. All sides have now realized that influencing the make-up of the Court gives one a better chance of shaping American society and culture according to one’s beliefs and values than the slow, difficult, and costly process of trying to get legislation through Congress.

Whether we like it or not, America is at times a divided nation. But I was struck by the fact that underlying much of the president’s remarks was a powerful theme: that we are all human beings, and that we have many shared values on the important things in life like morality, education, and the common good. Our economic and security concerns make us see from time to time that many of our disagreements are petty, and, as the president rightfully said, we all have a responsibility to strive to make progress as a country.

President Obama referred to a number of these shared concerns: we want a job that pays the bills, that allows us to get ahead, and that will help us give our children a better life. He drew attention to the fact that we share a stubborn resilience and a fundamental decency, strength, generosity, and courage that will always see us through in the end.

Every now and again an extraordinary individual comes along and helps us concentrate on our shared values, rise above our differences, and move forward together to solve our difficult problems. President Obama carried great promise into office, but his star has faded a little in his first year. It remains to be seen whether he can overcome the problem of pluralism, where so many have failed, to lead us forward as a nation.

Brendan Sweetman is professor of philosophy at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, and the author of Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity Press, 2006) and, most recently, Religion and Science: An Introduction (Continuum Books, 2010).

Mark Toulouse: The Ironic Rhetoric of a New President

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Using every syllable of his considerable rhetorical ability in his first State of the Union address, President Obama laid it on the line for a nation filled with skepticism. In some moments, he spoke with contrition about “political setbacks,” some of which “were deserved.” After speaking of massive, unheard of government financial deficits, he spoke openly of the growing “deficit of trust” in government and its leaders. He admitted the growing doubt in the country that he can “deliver” on his promise of “change” Americans can “believe in.” But he also told Americans how “hopeful” he was about the future.

With skill he reminded hearers, ever so subtly, about the mess he inherited. He spoke of solutions, some already in place, others in process, still others being frustrated by Republican insistence “that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town.” Perhaps in an appeal to regain lost support among independent voters and, at the same time, connect with those on “Main Street,” Obama clearly named some villains accountable for many of the country’s problems: those responsible for the “bad behaviour on Wall Street,” the politicians who “obstruct every single bill just because they can,” the “outsized influence of lobbyists,” the “banks that helped cause this crisis,” and “insurance company abuses.” He outlined steps for reform in all these circles of influence.  He renewed his vows to end the war in Iraq, increase effectiveness in Afghanistan, and multiply sanctions in North Korea and Iran if they continue to pursue nuclear prowess. His speech hit most of the right notes on terrorism, thankfully without the civil and religious piety too often found in the rhetoric of President Bush.

But one aspect of his populist rhetoric really left me cold—gave me a chill, in fact. Though I don’t think my response has anything to do with my living in Canada these days, I’m confident my friends and colleagues here would conclude Obama’s words were just “more of the same” from the neighboring empire to the south. I must admit to being profoundly disappointed precisely because I still believe in the change he has promoted. While near the end of his speech he spoke of advancing “the common security and prosperity of all people” in order “to sustain a global recovery,” the heart of this address shouted “We’re Number One!

I applaud Obama’s concern for both “energy efficiency and clean energy,” but his argument that the “nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy“ and that “America must be that nation” places “greening” at the service of a greedy desire to retain (regain?) control of the world’s resources.  What has American leadership of the global economy done for the world? What had it accomplished in Haiti prior to this devastating earthquake, for example? Studies like the one done by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University indicate that the bottom 50 percent of the world’s adults own around one percent of global wealth, while the world’s richest one percent of adults owned approximately 40 percent of the world’s resources. Or, as economist Branko Milanovic of the World Bank put it in 2002, “The top 10 percent of the US population has an aggregate income equal to income of the poorest 43 percent of people in the world.” Yes, by all means, let’s keep that going.

post-toulouse2-obamaIt is doubly ironic that the core of the first State of the Union address from a black president would contain such a profoundly affirmative nod in the direction of good old US economic imperialism—doubly ironic because, first, the history of slavery and racism is definitely connected to such classic American economic hubris, and, second, he made this particular case so clearly dependent on the rhetoric of Martin Luther King. “How long should we wait?” Obama asked. “How long should America put its future on hold? … Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America….It’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.”

Set over against Obama’s rhetorical lament, I prefer King’s use of it in 1965 in Montgomery: “How long will it take? … How long will justice be crucified?” As he put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Or perhaps Isaiah’s lament fits the irony better if the US continues on its path of economic domination: “For how long, O Lord? And [God] said: ‘Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate.’”

Mark G. Toulouse is principal and professor of the history of Christianity at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

Harold Dean Trulear: Of, By, and For the Middle

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While listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, I received two phone calls. I found each call unsettling as I strained to hear each voice, humbled by circumstance, while still trying to grasp the terms, tone, and tenor of the president’s message. I hurried each call, pushed them to the side, so I could concentrate on the historic message before me.

The president spent the overwhelming majority of his address on the economy. He spoke to the heart of America, the heart of America’s concerns, and the heart of American resolve. He addressed us as middle-class Americans, people reeling from economic loss and instability, and heirs to a legacy of resiliency. As he spoke, I continued to hear the voices from the phone calls.

post-trulear-obamaOne young man called because I know his father, and his father told him I work with people coming home from prison and their families. He had been home less than 24 hours, found a place in a local shelter, and reached out for help. The other gentleman who called is a highway maintenance and construction worker who has not had steady work since 1997. A combination of battling addiction (he won, and has been sober now seven years, one day at a time) and insurance companies (who refuse to provide adequate assistance for the two on-the-job accidents which left him idled) has forced this once proud homeowner and union steward to a struggling subsistence lifestyle. Ironic how both calls came during an address that was not for them.

Second chances may be biblical, but they are not popular. The president said so last night, only he called them “bailouts.” When the second chances go to the poor, our common penchant to overlook the plight of the least of society exacerbates our dislike of the “root canal” of restoration. No, our primary economic interest is in the loss of the middle class, not the ongoing plight of those already marginalized by society.

There is hope. My two friends squeezed their way into the address when the president acknowledged that in the midst of the current economic crisis, “For those who had already known poverty, times got harder.” His call for investment in community colleges as well as “world-class education” could open doors for these two distressed voices whose letters will not be read in any presidential speech any time soon.

Those letters will continue to come from Elkhart, Indiana and Galesburg, Illinois. The stories told will continue to echo from Allentown, Pennsylvania and Elyria, Ohio, because the address was of the middle, by the middle and for the middle, and those who rule must seize the middle before they can seize the moment.

So the State of the Union address is really more about how a president, totally aware of our middlin’ identity, could communicate and connect, inspire and challenge a nation rightly perceiving the loss of the middle. The address reflects the ongoing rush to center of post-Reagan electoral politics. And the president is right: every day is Election Day.

In the address last night, the rush to center took a step forward—uh, wait a minute. When you are in the center, how can a step take you in any direction but left or right? Biblical religion does not deal in left, right, and center. It does not assess the horizontal plane. Rather, biblical religion assesses society in vertical terms: who’s up, who’s down, and who’s in between.

Much of society votes horizontal but thinks vertical. Our political process offers choices of left, right, and center, but our assessment of social reality often stands in the vertical middle between top and bottom, constantly looking up in aspiration to power and blaming down in eschewing policies that affect the least of these. The president is right: service, not ambition ought to be leadership’s aim. But ambition is the aim of the American middle, which can never settle for being anything less than number one. Why should leadership be any different?

The painful awareness that those on the margins, for whom Hebrew and Christian scriptures declare God’s special affinity, could only peek through the cracks of the address says something more about us than it does the president or the address itself. Just as my two friends interrupted my attempt to participate in a celebration of Middle America, they interrupt our efforts at stabilizing the middle by providing a persistent presence from below. They do not speak from right, center, or left. They speak from beneath. Biblical religion assesses the state of the union from the bottom up.

Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC.

Andrew Finstuen: State of the Union, Statement of Faith

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President Barack Obama has faith in America. He both opened and closed his State of the Union address with remarks about his belief in the power of the American spirit, which he defined as our fundamental strength, optimism, generosity, and decency as a people and as a nation. He credited this spirit with pulling us through, among other things, the uncertainties of the Civil War, World War II, and the civil rights movement.

Many Americans share Obama’s faith in the American spirit, and thus they share in his American civil religion. Such a faith is in the tradition of the oldest political-religious narrative in American history. It is a variation on Puritan John Winthrop’s call for the settlers of colonial Massachusetts to be a “city on a hill” and a beacon to the world. Obama provided his most passionate articulation of this civil faith at the end of the speech, the only moment when the chamber fell completely silent, no doubt in homage to the “sacred” values of America. He noted that American leadership overseas “advances the common security and prosperity of all people,” and the United States takes such initiatives “because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right.”

Preaching this civil faith is a part of being president, and Obama is among the few presidents to preach it with a measure of humility. Like all good preachers, he implicated himself and his party in the sins that have led to the gridlock of Washington politics, prohibited the exercise of the American spirit, and reduced the federal government to a place “where every day is Election Day.” He also distinguished himself from some of his predecessors by explaining that the greatest realizations of the American spirit came as a consequence of making sacrifices in the face of enormous crisis.

This humility notwithstanding, President Obama’s civil faith in America clouded his judgment at a crucial point in the speech. He highlighted national security as the greatest source of unity in US history and lamented that the unity achieved after 9/11 “has dissipated.” It is one thing to suggest that war and armed conflict are permanent fixtures of history, as he did in his Nobel speech. It is an altogether different thing to champion the national cohesion that comes from it. That unity ushered in two wars, costing America trillions of dollars, thousands of precious American lives, and tens or even hundreds of thousands of precious non-American lives.

This curious advocacy of the unity found in national security would have dismayed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Obama has cited routinely as a shaper of his political vision. Niebuhr was deeply suspicious of such simple unities, and he was certainly suspicious of simplistic faith in American ideals. Late in the speech, Obama expressed just such a faith: “Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home.” Niebuhr understood American ideals to be not only our greatest strength, but also our greatest weakness. Pride alone in these ideals, thought Niebuhr, was extremely dangerous, since “a too-confident sense of justice,” as he wrote, “always produces injustice.”

Still, after a year as president of a nation in turmoil, President Obama’s first State of the Union address makes clear that his faith in the America spirit has not been shaken. Yet based on his frequent appeals in the speech to this spirit and to the better part of our political natures—and in light of the palpable sarcasm and sneering by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle as he spoke—it appears that he can be less sure about whether or not Americans will practice their civil faith with civility.

Andrew Finstuen teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is the author of Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)

Haiti and Chile Earthquakes: How to Help

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How can you make donations to charities involved in earthquake relief efforts in Chile and Haiti? We’ve compiled this list as a starting point:

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

United Church of Christ

Church World Service

Partners in Health

Islamic Relief USA

World Vision

AmeriCares

Direct Relief International

Doctors Without Borders

International Committee of the Red Cross

Save the Children

UNICEF

Lutheran World Relief

Episcopal Relief and Development

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance

Free Methodist Church of North America

Samaritan’s Purse

Convoy of Hope

Baptist Global Response

United Methodist Committee on Relief

American Jewish World Service

Mercy Corps

Oxfam International

Action by Churches Together

World Council of Churches

Yele Haiti

Catholic Relief Services

Haiti Gospel Mission

Haiti Aftermath

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: The news from Haiti remains grim. Officials are estimating the earthquake killed 200,000 people and left some two million homeless. The UN humanitarian chief said three million people have been affected. Foreign governments have pledged one billion dollars for recovery, but logistical problems on the ground are preventing much of the aid from reaching the most vulnerable. The US has sent in thousands of troops to try to help coordinate the relief effort. The UN is trying to take the lead in a country that now has a barely functioning government and where many religious institutions have been destroyed. But the UN, like other humanitarian and religious groups, is still recovering from its own losses. At a special memorial service for the dozens of UN workers killed by the earthquake, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it the “gravest single tragedy” in the organization’s history. People around the world have responded with an outpouring of donations. Americans have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars. At the Haitian Embassy in Washington this past weekend, workers were inundated with bags of clothes and supplies. One of the busiest centers of aid is in south Florida, which has one of the largest concentrations of Haitians in the country. Kim Lawton reports that church officials and volunteers are working tirelessly to provide food and medical supplies. They are also grappling with the often-asked question: Why did God let the earthquake happen?

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At a small airport in Fort Pierce, Florida, a Christian aviation ministry called Missionary Flights International (MFI) has been working around the clock trying to get desperately needed help into Haiti. Hundreds of volunteers from local churches are sorting and packing donations that have come in from across the US, from food and water to medical supplies, clothes, and even fuel, and MFI pilots are flying in the cargo and emergency personnel as fast as they can.

DICK SMOOK (Missionary Flights International): It’s a great feeling. You know, most people like to help each other, and we found that here. It’s just amazing the things that have come together here. People want to help do something, and you find out what they do and what they can do, and pretty soon you’ve got a job for them.

LAWTON: For more than 40 years, Missionary Flights International has been providing air support to missionaries and church personnel in Haiti and other Caribbean nations. They regularly fly in mail and supplies and help transport personnel.  Since the earthquake, they’ve been in all-out crisis mode.

SMOOK: Because we are well known by all the mission communities and all the churches that support these missionaries down in Haiti, they know that this is the place to call and to locate, so it’s not like somebody has to figure out who to call and what to do. They already know.

LAWTON: And MFI has been well-positioned to respond. Because of the type of planes they fly, they are landing on a smaller air ramp in Port-au-Prince, avoiding the massive back-up of military and other humanitarian planes on the airport’s main runway, and they say their longstanding local connections make them especially efficient in delivering the aid.

SMOOK: We also have a network of missions in Haiti that is distributing it for us, so our stuff gets out twhere it needs to go. It’s not being held. It’s out within a few hours after we get it down there.

LAWTON: For days now, people wanting to help Haiti have been lining up outside MFI’s hangar, hoping to get a spot for themselves and their relief aid. Haitian-born Israel Francois and a team from his Hollywood, Florida, church were among them.

REV. ISRAEL FRANCOIS (Sheridan Hills Baptist Church): Definitely, it makes a big difference, personal touch, just letting people know that we care. It’s one thing to say, but it’s one thing to go there and say we’re in this with you. It’s a calling for me. God called me to do this, and I’m going to do it.

LAWTON: On their return trips, MFI pilots have been bringing people out of Haiti, including injured earthquake victims and evacuated missionaries and, on some occasions, Haitian orphans. For three years, Brian and Karen Patterson from Omaha have been in the process of adopting two little girls from Haiti. After the earthquake, they were terrified about the girls’ fate.

BRIAN PATTERSON: The phones were down for the first day, and so it took quite a while before we even found out whether they were okay, so that was good news.

LAWTON: Then, with less than a day’s notice, they learned that the adoptions had been expedited. Three-year-old Carlina arrived in Florida Tuesday (January 19), with her sister soon to follow. Missionary Barbara Walker brought Carlina and several other children from their orphanages in Haiti, but she says the situation she was returning to is increasingly dire, with resources disappearing quickly.

BARBARA WALKER (Ruuska Village Orphanage): We get up in the morning, and we get together and decide who’s going to go looking for fuel oil. The generator has to be fed, and the truck has to be fed. And who’s going to be going for food?

LAWTON: She says fear is taking an emotional toll.

WALKER: We’ve got so many babies right now that are scared. These children are scared every time they hear a loud noise, and including myself, if I’m laying down at night and I hear a loud noise I jump up and run out of the house. You know, I’m sleeping in a house that is unsafe, but I have to get some sleep, so…

LAWTON: Fifteen miles outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti Gospel Mission is also scrambling for resources. Despite some property damage, their small medical clinic is still treating injured people, including many who made their way there from the city. They are also trying to help displaced people who are taking refuge in the mission compound. From here in the US, Jesse Hales with the mission has been able to get them some food and medical supplies, but not enough to meet all the needs. Hales has set up shop in an RV near Fort Pierce so that he can help coordinate more shipments, as well as teams of volunteers who want to go in. He says there are rising concerns about security, and the chaotic situation makes planning very difficult.

JESSE HALES: You can’t depend on anything right now. It keeps changing by the minute. You know, every minute I get a phone call, and we find out something new and it kind of throws another wrench into play.

LAWTON: And so many still haven’t gotten any help, especially in the hardest hit areas outside of Port-au-Prince. Sharen Deroseney has been desperately trying to get aid to her father and to some 200 people, including 50 children, at his church-run compound.

SHAREN DEROSENEY (The Good Samaritan Project): What’s happening now is that we are running out of food. The stores don’t have any, and they’re tripling their prices. I myself kept calling different places, different companies for help, and nobody has covered that area. To know that they’re okay I’m very glad, but to know that they may die of hunger, that’s not good.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, pastors are also struggling to meet spiritual needs in the wake of the earthquake. This group of Protestant pastors in Fort Lauderdale wrestled over how to help their predominantly Haitian congregations deal with the crisis.

REV. CLAUDE NOEL (Partners with Haiti): There is nobody that I talk to or that have called me who have not lost close relatives in Haiti, and so it hurts. It hurts a lot.

LAWTON: Reverend Claude Noel believes he’s lost his 22-year-old grandson.

REV. NOEL: He left to go to town just to buy some books two hours before the situation happened, and he never came back, and we have not found the body.

LAWTON: Churches are setting up counseling services to help people cope with the loss of loved ones and the loss of so much of their homeland.

PASTOR CALEB DELIARD (Victory of Grace Christian and Missionary Alliance Church): Everything is gone. Remember this is things that people worked hard for, years, for 200 years, and you look in one minute, just 35 seconds, it’s all gone. So deep down, you could call, it hurts us deep down. We are, as a people now, wounded souls.

LAWTON: Many pastors say their congregations are asking theological questions that don’t have easy answers.

REV. NOEL: They are struggling with this question: There is nothing that’s done without God’s permission. Why did God allow this to happen?

LAWTON: Churches beyond the Haitian-American community are grieving as well.

REV. JOHN LAWRENCE (Interim Rector, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, preaching): We realize our radical dependence on the God who alone can overcome the depths of our despair…

LAWTON: St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC has had a relationship with Haiti for nearly 30 years. St. Pat’s parishioners have gone on short-term mission programs there for decades. They supported a church and a school with a music and arts program. Those were destroyed, and they still don’t know what has happened to many of their friends in the area.

MARCY FERENCE (Haiti Partnership Program Coordinator, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC): I feel very much part of that community as a part of a family, and we don’t have any word, and it’s very hard. It’s very hard.

LAWTON: Despite the overwhelming tragedy, many churches are urging their members to focus on hope.

REV. DELIARD: To know that there is hope beyond the rubbish, there is hope beyond the destructions. The Lord will see us through.

LAWTON: Dick Smook of MFI says he’s already seen glimpses of that hope in the massive response to the crisis.

SMOOK: The church sometimes is thought of as the walls and the steeple and the people, that’s good, in our comfortable pews with the air conditioning going. But in reality what we’ve seen here in the last week is the church, Christians on the front line. That’s where we should be.

ABERNETHY: Kim, welcome back. What impressed you the most about what those volunteers are doing?

LAWTON: Well, I was impressed by the magnitude of the operations, you know, people, retired people, people from all over the country had gone there to try to be personally involved, and they were working day and night. They were working so hard. They’re so concerned about the situation there and trying to do whatever they can, whether it’s looking at expiration dates on food that had been donated or sorting and packing things. So it was that kind of grassroots effort that was really interesting to see. Also just the emotional exhaustion with the Haitian-American people, the pastors and churches here trying to provide comfort for their people while they themselves were grieving from everything that they lost themselves and everything that’s still happening in Haiti. People are worried, they’re exhausted, and that really came through in all those efforts.

ABERNETHY: That aid is not nearly as massive as what the governments are doing, but it sounds, from your piece, it sounds as if it was very effective, very efficient.

LAWTON: Well, these are groups that have been working down in Haiti for decades, and they know the people, so it’s, it’s again, it’s not just a relief operation, it’s helping their friends and their family, and they know that that aid, they know where it’s going. They know where to fly, they know where to land, they know who to give it to, and they know that when they give it to those people it’s going directly to the suffering, to the people who need it. So it was very efficient, but they just don’t have the capacity of the big operations.

ABERNETHY: But do they want to go there?

LAWTON: So many people I talk with are so frustrated to be stuck in south Florida. They’re desperate to get down there to help, to see their families, to do what they can, and right now logistics are just so difficult that they can’t do it, but they’re still down there in Florida doing what they can from there.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

Haiti: One Church’s Response

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On January 17, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly visited St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. The church has supported a sister parish, schools, and a music program in Haiti for three decades, and it has sponsored many work trips to Haiti. Watch the Rev. John Lawrence, interim rector; Marcy Ference, coordinator of the church’s Haiti partnership program; and parishioner Jean-Luc Princivil talk about destruction, suffering, loss, and hope in Haiti.