Author Archives: Fred Yi

New Archbishop of Canterbury on New Pope

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BOB ABERNETHY: The 77-million-member Anglican Communion is getting a new leader. Later this month, Justin Welby will take his seat as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader to Anglicans and Episcopalians around the world. Kim Lawton was in the UK this week and spoke with Welby about this important moment in these two Christian traditions.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the historic Coventry Cathedral, Archbishop Justin Welby was attending a conference this week about faith and reconciliation. Welby told me he’s watching the events in Rome closely. He says he believes Catholics and Anglicans have much in common, despite their sometimes tense relationship.

ARCHBISHOP JUSTIN WELBY, Archbishop of Canterbury: We have major differences over the ordination of women, things like that. We have historically different understandings of the nature of the church and the authority of the church. But we have a common basis around the need to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

LAWTON: He says he hopes dialogue between the two will continue. Welby will be enthroned as the next Archbishop of Canterbury on March 21, when he officially takes the helm of one of the largest bodies of Christianity. The former oil-executive-turned-clergyman acknowledges it’s interesting that the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church will both have new leaders within the next few weeks.

WELBY: I don’t read too much into it. Benedict XVI was a very remarkable, has been a very remarkable pope. He took over at the age of 78; that’s not the age which most of us would feel we wanted to take on a major new task, and he gave himself, he spent himself on this. But I do look forward very much to meeting the new pope later in the year, and I’m confident that we will find in each other a common love for Christ.

LAWTON: Archbishop Welby says he hopes to attend the installation ceremony for the new pope in Rome depending on when it takes places.

I’m Kim Lawton at England’s Coventry Cathedral.

ABERNETHY: We’ll have more of Kim’s interview with the new Archbishop of Canterbury in coming weeks.

Hurricane Sandy and Houses of Worship

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NOELLE SERPER, correspondent: Nearly five months after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast, causing massive destruction, West End Temple in the Rockaways section of Queens, New York remains empty. Much of the synagogue had to be completely gutted due to extensive wind and water damage from the storm.

RABBI MARJORIE SLOME: The line was right here. So this is how high the water came to.

SERPER: The temple’s rabbi, Marjorie Slome, says the building is still uninhabitable.

RABBI SLOME: There’s no electricity, there’s no heat. There’s no water. There are no toilets with doors on them.

SERPER: More than a hundred houses of worship in New York and New Jersey were hard hit by the storm and many are now lobbying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to change its policy and allow federal funds for their reconstruction. Despite an insurance policy of up to a million dollars, and some local fundraising, Rabbi Slome says more help is needed.

RABBI SLOME: My goal is just to get us to a place where we can be what we were before, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it without FEMA monies.

SERPER: Under current FEMA regulations, federal disaster relief funds can go to some religiously-affiliated non-profits, such as soup kitchens or homeless shelters, but synagogues, mosques, and churches are not eligible for government assistance to rebuild.

Reverend Welton Gaddy is a Baptist minister and president of Interfaith Alliance, a group that advocates for the separation of church and state.

REV. WELTON GADDY: If the FEMA people distribute that money to houses of worship, then there is an agreement between the government and that particular house of worship and where that agreement leads nobody knows.

RABBI SLOME: I always say that, you know, if there were a fire there would be no question that the fireman would pull up and put out a fire in our temple, and Hurricane Sandy is the same thing in my mind, as a fire.

REV. GADDY: There is a big difference between fighting a fire to put out a church and save its structure and having taxpayers buy a cross, buy a new organ to replace the one that was there, put a steeple on top of a building.

SERPER: Rabbi Slome says government funds would not be spent on religious items such as new prayer books for her congregation. The money, she argues, would go towards repairing the building, which she says is commonly used by the wider community. She calls the synagogue a community institution.

RABBI SLOME: The boiler we need to replace is going to heat the nursery school. The electricity is going to provide lighting for Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers and basketball and brownies. It’s not just going to provide heat and electricity for our sanctuary or for the rabbi study.

SERPER: But Reverend Gaddy and other church-state groups say despite other uses, houses of worship are first and foremost religious institutions.

REV. GADDY: I would just ask the question, “What is your primary identity? Are you a community house or are you a synagogue? Are you a recreation center or are you a church that has built a recreational building?”

SERPER: In a recent memo to Congress, FEMA officials raised similar concerns over having to determine what constitutes religious space and what doesn’t. That debate will continue as legislation making religious congregations eligible for federal disaster relief heads to the Senate after easily passing in the House of Representatives.

Faith-Based Responses to Natural Disasters

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Comfort Dogs

November 22, 2013 | Comments

Dogs, says Tim Hetzner of Lutheran Church Charities, are “a very gifted part of God’s creation.” In disaster situations they sense when someone is hurting, and together with their handlers they minister compassionately to the needs of victims. More →
Hurricane Sandy and Houses of Worship

March 1, 2013 | Comments

Should houses of worship damaged by wind and water receive federal money to rebuild? Rabbi Majorie Slome calls her temple in Queens “a community institution” as well as a house of worship, and she doesn’t think insurance money will be enough to cover the costs of repairing it. More →
Chabad Relief and Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

November 9, 2012 | Comments

The Chabad Center of the Five Towns in Cedarhurst, New York has been providing up to 2,000 meals every day. More →
Southern Baptist Relief and Hurricane Sandy

November 2, 2012 | Comments

The destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy “is just as much a physical crisis as it is a spiritual and emotional crisis for people,” says Mike Ebert of the Southern Baptist Convention’s relief arm. More →
Paul Farmer on Haiti after the Quake

September 16, 2011 | Comments

“Church groups, mosque-related groups, synagogue-related groups—it’s not necessarily their mission to go and promote water security, but if it’s their mission to help their neighbors, which it always is, then we’re going to have to think hard about how we’re going to work together,” says one of the founders of Partners in Health. More →
Japan: Humanitarian and Spiritual Responses

March 18, 2011 | Comments

The widespread crisis in Japan is marked by ongoing relief efforts and acknowledgment of the impermanence of life. More →
Jeffrey L. Richey: Disaster in Japan

March 18, 2011 | Comments

The Earthquake Thunder Fish, Yosuke Ueno Since its “opening” in 1854 by U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan often has been defined in the West by a single, simple image. Sometimes that image has been one of exotic, romantic tradition … More →
Humanitarian Challenges in Chile and Haiti

March 5, 2010 | Comments

With major earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, relief organizations have their work cut out for them as they help the people of these devastated countries. More →
Praying for Haiti

February 12, 2010 | Comments

Watch scenes from an early-morning memorial service in Port-au-Prince to mark the one-month anniversary of Haiti's devastating earthquake. More →
Haiti Relief Workers

February 5, 2010 | Comments

Local church leaders in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are waging a joint campaign to make sure aid gets to where it needs to go. More →
Faith-Based Help For Haiti

January 29, 2010 | Comments

A Lutheran minister who responded to the Haiti disaster says US religious communities must help, but "the strength of the future is in Haiti, not the United States." More →
Where was God in the Earthquake?

January 29, 2010 | Comments

How do religious leaders respond to questions about God's role in the face of human suffering and tragedy? More →
Post-Katrina Christmas

December 16, 2005 | Comments

A new report says this year Americans gave record amounts of private charitable donations. Another report says Americans donated nearly $3 billion to post-hurricane relief efforts. Yet nearly four months after Hurricane Katrina, the magnitude of the destruction is still difficult to comprehend. In the midst of it, many people here say the themes of Christmas are echoing in new and poignant ways. More →
Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts Update

September 9, 2005 | Comments

Although authorities have mostly focused on evactuating New Orleans residents, there were also a few people who had fled the city who were allowed back in. One of them was the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, Charles Jenkins, and correspondent Deborah Potter went with him. More →
Hurricane Katrina Faith-Based Relief Efforts

September 2, 2005 | Comments

As the Gulf Coast reels from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal government tries to speed up its much-criticized response to the crisis, especially in New Orleans, religious groups are playing a key role in emergency relief efforts. More →

None of the Above: Who Are They?

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BOB ABERNETHY: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us as we begin today a new three-part series we call “None of the Above.” It’s about the fast-rising number of people in this country who say they have no affiliation with any particular religion. According to a new survey released this week by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life in partnership with this program, that number is now the highest it’s ever been in any previous Pew polling.

When pollsters ask whether people are Baptist or Catholic or Jewish or some other religious tradition, more and more people say, in effect, “None of the Above.” So they have come to be called the Nones.

We wanted to know who these Nones are, why they are unaffiliated, and what that says about the future of American religious life. Greg Smith is a senior researcher at Pew’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Greg Smith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public LifeGREG SMITH (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life): Today in 2012 almost one in five American adults, 20 percent, describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. That equates to about 46 million adults in the United States, so this is a big, growing, important group in American society. To see its continued growth at this kind of rapid rate has been very striking.

ABERNETHY: Striking indeed. In the early 1990s just under 10 percent were unaffiliated. Since then that number has doubled. About 13 million are atheists and agnostics. Thirty-three million more describe their religion as “nothing in particular.” By education and income and other common measurements, the Nones are very much like Americans as a whole. Except for age.

SMITH: About one-third of all American adults under the age of 30 describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics or say they just don’t have any particular religion. And that large number is a big part of what’s driving the overall growth in this population.

ABERNETHY: Being unaffiliated means not being a member. It does not mean being a nonbeliever or being hostile to religion. Indeed, many Nones have kind words for places of worship.

SMITH: They say that religious organizations are effective in providing help to the poor and to the needy. They say religious organizations do a good job of helping bring communities together.

ABERNETHY: Two-thirds of the unaffiliated say they believe in God, or a universal spirit. More than a third, 37 percent, call themselves spiritual but not religious. About one in five say they pray every day, and the same number say religion is at least somewhat important in their lives. With all that religiosity, then, why do 46 million Americans say they are unaffiliated with any religious organization?

SMITH: They tend to be much more likely than the public as a whole, for example, to say that religion and religious organizations are too focused on rules, too concerned with things like money and power, too focused on politics.

ABERNETHY: We spoke with several young Nones, among them Rachel Mariman, a junior in college who was raised in a very religious home. But during her senior year in high school, she says, she turned away from all religion.

Rachel MarimanRACHEL MARIMAN: My church was actually pretty good, but I sort of just had issues with religion in general. Young people are becoming increasingly willing to tolerate people who are different. To tolerate different sexual orientation, different religion, different ethnic background, whatever. We don’t want to be told that we can’t accept gay marriage or that we can’t support birth control or abortion. You can still be moral and you can still be a good person without being religious.

ABERNETHY: Twenty-seven-year-old Kellen McClure describes himself as very spiritual. He believes in God and visits churches, but not for their worship services.

KELLEN MCCLURE: I don’t necessarily feel like I need to be guided through my relationship with, you know, the higher power or whatever you will call it. I feel like it’s a very personal relationship and I don’t necessarily need to be sitting in a church to experience that relationship. So that’s why I’ve never really been drawn to attending services regularly.

ABERNETHY: Instead, Kellen meditates, here in a basilica.

MCCLURE: Being spiritual to me means reflecting that maybe I’m not just a biological creature. It means that there’s something else and that something else could be a higher power, and it’s that something else that connects us to each other.

(praying): Thank you very much for everything that we have.

ABERNETHY: Kellen says he gives thanks daily.

MCCLURE: Every day my girlfriend and I sit down to dinner. I am insistent that we say a grace, and that grace is not necessarily a religious grace. It’s just a moment that we can both sit there and reflect on how lucky we are.

ABERNETHY: Kellen also said one reason he does not go to church often is that Sunday mornings are his only times to rest.

MCCLURE: We live very hectic lives. I work. I go to school. It leaves a very short amount of time to do things on my own free time.

ABERNETHY: Among religious leaders and social scientists, there are lots of theories about why there are so many Nones. Some say many people don’t want to join anything, religious or otherwise. Some think there’s a general softening in religious belief and commitment. Many of the Nones say they want no part of the conservative politics some churches embrace. Others say society in general has become much more tolerant of non-believers, so it’s easier than it used to be for some people to acknowledge publicly what they have long been in private, to come out of the atheist or agnostic closet.

But we spoke with a nonbeliever, Lauren Anderson Youngblood, who thinks discrimination against atheists has by no means stopped.

LAUREN ANDERSON YOUNGBLOOD: My mother taught us not to tell people that we didn’t have a belief in God because she feared persecution, and many atheists today are fearful of coming out because of that discrimination, and because of the fact that they very well may lose friends or family members, they may be shunned.

ABERNETHY: Many people of faith may be troubled by the findings in our survey. For instance, three-quarters of all the Nones say they were raised in religious homes. Very few of them say they are seeking a church that is right for them; they seem quite content to remain unaffiliated. Indeed, for people in any age group, the percentage of unaffiliated when they are young remains the same as they get old.

MCCLURE: I think that if I have children I think that’s the same thing that I would like to teach them is that religion is important, being spiritual is important. What’s not as important is to join and to go every week.

ABERNETHY: However people interpret our survey, Greg Smith insists the results are snapshots, not predictors.

SMITH: While the number of religiously unaffiliated people is growing, it’s also true that the vast majority of Americans continue to be affiliated with a religion and that’s even true of young people. If one-third of young people are unaffiliated it means that two-thirds of them do continue to identify themselves as members of a religious faith.

ABERNETHY: And if 20 percent of all adults say they are religiously unaffiliated, that means 80 percent are still connected.

Vatican-Nun Controversy

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Now a special report. Fifty years ago this fall, Pope John XXIII summoned church leaders to Rome for a series of meetings on how to make the church more relevant in the modern world. This Second Vatican Council, as it was known, produced some significant changes in Catholic life. Fifty years later, the legacy of Vatican II is still debated, and that debate has been evident in the current crisis between the Vatican and many US nuns. In April, the Vatican accused the umbrella group that represents the majority of American nuns of “doctrinal confusion.” But many of these sisters say they are just following the spirit of Vatican II. Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In Washington, D.C., Sister Maureen Fiedler hosts the public radio program Interfaith Voices. She tries to broaden interreligious understanding in order to further justice and peace, values she says come straight from her Roman Catholic faith.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER (Host, Interfaith Voices): This isn’t something peripheral. This is central to the preaching of the Gospel.

Sister Maureen Fiedler, Host, Interfaith VoicesLAWTON: Fiedler entered religious life 50 years ago, just before Vatican II got underway. She says the spirit of the Vatican meetings had a profound impact on how she viewed her calling.

FIEDLER: The Second Vatican Council had a marvelous document called “The Church in the Modern World,” which basically underlined the message of justice and peace in the Gospel.

LAWTON: Fiedler became involved in a series of social justice causes, including a 37-day fast in support of the Equal Rights Amendment and rallies in support of the ordination of female priests.

FIEDLER: It just all fit together as a piece for me, and it also fit together in my prayer as I tried to put this together with the Second Vatican Council. It simply made sense to try to alleviate the suffering of the poor, to end wars, to overcome discrimination. That for me was Christianity.

LAWTON: But some critics say many Catholic sisters have been using the Second Vatican Council to justify positions and activities that are in conflict with official church teachings. Colleen Carroll Campbell is a columnist and author.

Colleen Carroll CampbellCOLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL (Author, My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir): This idea that having this Second Vatican Council and pronouncing that there’s this amorphous spirit that gives us license to pretty much throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak, when it comes to Catholic doctrine—it’s simply wrong, and I think we’ve heard over and over from Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI that it’s wrong.

LAWTON: Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 in order, as he put it, to “open a window and let in a little fresh air.”

PROFESSOR COLLEEN MCDANNELL (Professor of History and Religious Studies, University of Utah and Author, The Spirit of Vatican II): Even though in the United States there were a lot of changes going on in the 40’s and 50’s after the Second World War, in worldwide Catholicism these changes really hadn’t occurred. And so in order to open up a window for the whole church, not just in modernized countries, this council was called.

LAWTON: Over the next three years, church leaders at the council produced 16 documents on a host of topics, from introducing local languages into the Mass to expanding lay involvement and promoting more interfaith dialogue. One of the documents focused on religious life. It encouraged Catholic sisters to reexamine their mission, their rules, even their style of dress.

FIEDLER: It called us to go back and look at our foundresses and the spirit in which they started the communities, and when you look at those women who were foundresses, none of them are pussycats, I’m here to tell you. They were strong women who did things and started ministries that were, in many ways, unheard of in their own day.

LAWTON: Many US sisters began modifying or even eliminating the traditional habit. The clothing changes for prioresses of the Dominican sisters in Amityville, New York, were dramatic.

SISTER MARY HUGHES (Dominican Sisters of Amityville): You’ll see in the early years it was very much the same, and then there were some modifications, and then right after Vatican II, immediately, Mother Francis Maureen Carlin is in the modified habit completely, Sister Irene Garvey is in a white suit, and then from Mary Ryan on you’ll see suits, you’ll see various forms of clothing.

LAWTON: Sister Mary Hughes is the current prioress. She says even more than clothing changes, Vatican II urged nuns to get out into the community.

HUGHES: I think that’s one of the great gifts of Vatican II—that it sent us back to study what the Gospels were saying, and over and over again it was about feed the hungry, visit those in prison, help the poor.

LAWTON: The Dominican sisters in Amityville have a variety of ministries designed to help those at the margins, such as literacy classes to teach new immigrant women English. There are homes to help women and children with nowhere else to live, and there’s even an organic garden, where about 20 percent of the produce is donated to an interfaith food network.

Under an umbrella organization called the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, many communities of nuns began shifting their ministries in the wake of Vatican II. For some sisters, it was an exhilarating time. But others were concerned.

MCDANNELL: There was a minority of women who didn’t feel that the changes were appropriate, that the adaptations to modern life, the moving out of the parish into the world, that these movements had gone too far.

LAWTON: Some nuns became part of a separate organization that holds more traditional views.

Sister Mary Joseph HeislerSISTER MARY JOSEPH HEISLER (Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus): The Vatican II documents are a pretty straightforward read. I think the difficulty comes when you don’t read everything in context, perhaps. I would find it difficult to read the documents, then come up with them saying something more than what they say.

LAWTON: The LCWR still represents about 80 percent of the some 57,000 American nuns. The group has increasingly taken on advocacy positions, including some that are controversial.

MCDANNELL: These are the sisters that publicly stated to John Paul II that women should be ordained, that women should be allowed to work in all the ministries of the church. This is the same organization that signed the New York Times letter which said that there is a legitimate, diverse opinion on the question of abortion.

LAWTON: Sister Mary Hughes is immediate past president of the LCWR and still part of its leadership team.

HUGHES: Are there persons who have divergent opinions? I think that’s true in the whole church; it’s not just true in religious life. I think sometimes there’s a concern if we raise a question that means that we are in defiance, and that’s not at all what happens. But I think we’re going to continue to raise the questions, because there might be areas that we would hope the church would look at.

Sister Mary Hughes, Dominican Sisters of AmityvilleLAWTON: In 2008, Vatican officials began an investigation into the lives and doctrine of US women religious. This past April, the Vatican released a report accusing the LCWR of having “serious doctrinal problems.” The assessment specifically criticized the group for being largely silent on right-to-life issues, and it mandated that the group come under the authority of some US bishops.

HUGHES: We’re stuck with a situation that a mandate that we are not happy about, that we answered all the questions that we’re given to us in the doctrinal assessment honestly, carefully, prudently, and when we didn’t hear back, I guess we thought that we were believed. And I think there are aspects of the mandate that make us wonder if our materials were read.

LAWTON: For example, Hughes says she believes there is more than one way to promote the sanctity of human life. She says her community’s ministries against domestic violence and in support of homeless mothers and children is also prolife work.

HUGHES: That’s about the sanctity of human life. It’s about doing it differently. I think it’s complementary. I don’t think you can have one without the other.

LAWTON: Others say that’s not enough.

Professor Colleen McDannellCAMPBELL: We’re talking about defending the sanctity of every human life from the cradle to the grave, defending the sanctity of marriage as the church sees marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and just generally promoting church teaching, and upholding that teaching and witnessing with joy to that, and that’s not what many lay Catholics have seen.

LAWTON: Professor McDannell says since the death of John the XXIII church leaders have appeared to be consolidating authority.

MCDANNELL: The new generation of men want a Catholic Church which is more traditional, which is more devotional, which is more willing to be obedient to the authority.

LAWTON: Some wonder if there is any room for dialogue and debate.

FIEDLER: This is not just about the Vatican versus the nuns. This really is about the future of how we interpret the message of the Second Vatican Council, and what’s going on right now quite frankly makes me sad, because I see certain people in Rome, in the Vatican, who want retrenchment, who want to go back to the church the way it was before the Second Vatican Council, when the church was essentially the hierarchy, and they determined everything down to sometimes the minutia of Catholic life.

CAMPBELL: Women religious need to stand with the Church, and if they don’t feel that they can in good conscience do that anymore then I think it would take more integrity to simply step back and say, you know, maybe we’re not called to be Catholic women religious anymore. Maybe we want to be something else.

LAWTON: Many lay Catholics have been rallying in support of the sisters. Hughes says they been getting letters of encouragement from across the country. She says she remains hopeful that, in the spirit of Vatican II, healing can prevail.

HUGHES: There’s always a blessing that comes with every conflict. Perhaps the blessing is that we continue to open up within the Church avenues for true dialogue and true dialogue isn’t about winners and losers. It’s about people truly being able to listen to understand the other perspective before making any judgments.

LAWTON: LCWR members will be meeting in St. Louis in early August to discuss their official response to the Vatican assessment.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.