Author Archives: Fred Yi

Richard Rohr

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RICHARD ROHR: There’s no place where you can’t pray.

JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest, is addressing a packed house at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon.

ROHR: I love beautiful spaces. But if creating beautiful spaces like this for one moment leads you to think that God is not equally out there on the streets of Portland, then religion is not doing its job.

VALENTE: For the past 25 years, Rohr, a Franciscan [priest], has run the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He calls himself a “radical traditionalist.” For example:

ROHR: It’s not correct to say Jesus is God. Now, don’t run and report me to the bishop, all right? It’s not correct to say that — Jesus is the union of the human and the divine. That’s different. I’ve been a priest 43 years. Most of the Catholics Christians I’ve met would for all practical purposes believe Jesus is God only, and we are human only. We missed the big point. The point is the integration, both in Jesus and ourselves.

VALENTE: Such provocative ideas make him an enigma to some, and a modern day prophet to others. Richard Rohr is one of the most popular spirituality authors and speakers in the world. His ideas appeal to people across faith traditions, and to spiritual seekers as well. Rohr argues that most organized religions dispense doctrine when they should be encouraging personal transformation.

post01-richardrohrROHR: Without transformation, you can assume you’re at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.

VALENTE: Rohr’s popularity may be surprising since his ideas are highly nuanced and draw deeply from mythology, philosophy and psychology. He’s lectured across the globe. And his books have been translated into numerous languages. His latest book is called “Falling Upward,” and addresses the importance of the spiritual journey.

ROHR: It feels like falling but it isn’t falling, it’s learning. It’s transcending.

VALENTE: In what he calls the first half of life, Rohr says we’re mostly concerned with everyday interests: building our self-image.

ROHR: Our culture is made to order for that. Defining the self almost entirely by external achievements, by external appearance, by skin color, by the car you drive, where you live, and so forth. You know, that… all great spiritual traditions will call that illusion. Illusion. Foolishness. There’s a further journey. There’s something more than, you know, accumulating more money in the stock market.

VALENTE: But in the second part of life, the spiritual part, we are more likely to see meaning in the losses, disappointments and failures we have suffered. It is not necessarily a chronological period. It can occur at any age, but is always characterized by a greater ability to appreciate mystery and paradox.

post02-richardrohrROHR: It’s the holding of tensions, of ambiguity, of pain, if you will, that in fact teaches us wisdom. There’s an increased capacity for compassion, forgiveness, love.

VALENTE: He calls himself a loyal Catholic, but maintains too many churches emphasize teaching, which can leave us stranded in a “religious comfort zone.”

ROHR: We ask Catholics to believe that Mary was a Virgin and Jesus is God and you know, that’s no skin off your back. I believe that. Believe that, believe that, believe that. So what?

VALENTE: Rohr says that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that religious doctrine has its place. But he maintains that a rigid adherence to doctrine is sometimes part of the problem.

ROHR: Without honest self-knowledge religion ends up, I’m going to say it, being more a part of the problem than the solution. I mean, we’ve seen it now for centuries, that people who call themselves Christian can be utterly racist, utterly sexist, utterly greedy, no questions asked. This is the kind of religion we end up with when you don’t do your shadowboxing.

VALENTE: Shadowboxing, to Rohr, means taking a hard look at our flaws, our weaknesses and biases. It’s an important first step, Rohr says, toward uncovering what he calls “the true self.”

post03-richardrohrROHR: The spiritual life is very much a matter of cleaning the lens, clarifying how you see. So the shadow is what you don’t want to see. Shadowboxing never stops, that you keep seeing the parts of yourself that are paranoid, angry, defensive, accusatory, fearful, attacking.

VALENTE: Rohr calls solitude “a cure for loneliness” and describes it as an essential element for living a more contemplative — and compassionate — life.

ROHR: Whenever you have a return to solitude and silence, you know that there’s been a rediscovery of the contemplative mind. I think we should close down every pastoral program in a diocese and just teach our people how to pray. It’s the built-in therapy to let go of your addiction to yourself and to your repetitive obsessive thoughts, which just screws up just about everything.

Without the contemplative mind, which at this point in history we have to be taught, you simply don’t have the wherewithal to deal with great spiritual truths.

VALENTE: According to Rohr, our society has plenty of elderly people, but lacks true “elders.”

ROHR: Elder is a capacity of soul that allows you to patiently understand things, and again I’m going to repeat our word for that is wisdom. It is not chronological maturity. It’s how you’ve dealt with the dark side and how successfully you’ve dealt with disappointment, betrayal, abandonment, failure, and rejection.

post04-richardrohrVALENTE: Do you think that the spiritual journey only begins in earnest when we hit rock bottom?

ROHR: Only at that point which they call powerlessness do you learn to draw upon a bigger source. There’s no other reason you will. And that’s what I would call the spiritual journey. Up to that point, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, but up to that point it’s largely religion. Religion isn’t bad, but until religion becomes actual spiritual experience, it is just religion.

I think of the Catholic parents who’ve demanded that their kids go to Mass every Sunday, but then they’re sitting there themselves bored to death and hate every minute of it and walk out early and, I mean, the kids knows by three, “This is not a good thing to go to Mass,” you know?

VALENTE: The things he sometimes says have, so far, not gotten him into trouble with the official church.

ROHR: You can’t just have Catholic truth, Methodist truth, Buddhist truth. If it’s true, it’s always true, and that’s what we mean by the perennial tradition. This desire to find the big patterns that are always true. I think that’s been my desire and right on the heels of that has been my equal desire to show that Christianity has always taught those truths. So in that sense I’m very traditional Catholic, even though I often say it in different ways that make people think I’m not.

VALENTE: He maintains he’s neither a skeptic, nor a rebel. He speaks of faith and mystery this way:

ROHR: I love to define mystery as not that which is unknowable, but that which is endlessly knowable. So you never get to the point where I know it all. And wouldn’t we assume that would be the nature of God? That God will always by definition be mystery. More knowability, more knowability, deeper experience, deeper surrender. So that’s the meaning of faith, and why faith has such power, not just to transform people but to keep them on an ongoing path of transformation and growth.

VALENTE: To take that path, Rohr says, is to choose a life of growth, over spiritual stagnation.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Portland, Oregon.

Mississippi Personhood Amendment

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Voiceover in video: Now we know, an unborn baby is a person. Mississipians! Vote Yes on 26…

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Proponents insist Mississippi’s Amendment 26 is not so much about abortion as it is about the sanctity of human life.

BRAD PREWITT (“Yes on 26” Executive Director): We’re fighting for the preservation of the unborn in the state of Mississippi…

O’BRIEN: But if passed, the Amendment could make any abortion in the state murder, drawing the wrath of abortion rights advocates like Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

NANCY NORTHUP (Center for Reproductive Rights): This measure is blatantly unconstitutional and we’ll be looking to stop it with the constitutional protections of the court.

O’BRIEN: Most birth control would still be allowed, but the Amendment could criminalize using the so-called “morning after pill” and put an end to embryonic stem cell research in the state.

post02-mississippi-personhoPREWITT: And we’ve stated unequivocally all along that if you’re intending to prevent a pregnancy, there is no problem with defining the personhood of the unborn. If you’re trying to end a pregnancy, then that’s another story.

O’BRIEN: Prewitt insists fertility treatment—in vitro fertilization—would not necessarily be banned, even though fertilized eggs are often discarded in the process.

PREWITT: That hit particularly close to home because I’m an IVF parent. And there’s nothing I would do as a leader of this campaign, uh, coalition, that would in any way seek to deny the joy that my wife, who’s a physician, and myself have had in our children.

O’BRIEN: It’s also unclear how the Amendment might be applied to ectopic or other dangerous pregnancies. There are, however, no exceptions for rape or incest. Without minimizing the horror of rape, supporters, including this rape victim, say abortion is not the answer.

Woman at podium: As a person who was raped and as a person who has had an abortion, I’m telling you that I’m am tired of using rape as an excuse. Who do we believe creates life? Did my rapist create the life inside of me? No. God Almighty created that life. (Applause) Do doctors and nurses in petri dishes create life? No! Jesus Christ creates life.

O’BRIEN: Amendment 26 has broad bi-partisan support in Mississippi and is expected to pass. Both the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor support it.

post03-mississippi-personhoThe Republican candidate, Phil Bryant—now the state’s lieutenant governor—is also a co-chairman of “Vote Yes on 26.”

LT. GOVERNOR PHIL BRYANT: (Speaking in recorded video) The Founding Fathers said that every American has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On November the 8th, we’re going to give that right to every child in America, beginning in Mississippi. We’ll see ya at the polls.

Now what we say in the law is for convenience sake, without due process, you can take that child’s life. I don’t believe that’s right. I think this is going to be a point for us to establish a concept, and the concept will be the rights of all human beings, including the unborn.

O’BRIEN: There’s no question the objective of Amendment 26 is to stop abortion. Campaign literature says as much, calling Tuesday’s election an “…opportunity to cast the vote the U.S. Supreme Court did not [in Roe vs. Wade.] We can stop abortion by declaring the unborn “persons” from the moment of conception.”

post01-mississippi-personhoNORTHUP: This is an alarming and extreme measure that should be taken seriously. What it does is reveal how extreme the anti-choice movement is in the United States. They would like to see the “personhood” of a fertilized egg in every single one of the fifty states.

O’BRIEN: This Amendment would appear to be squarely at odds with everything the Supreme Court has said about abortion. The Amendment itself may have a very short life. And what worries abortion opponents even more is that any resulting Court fight could possibly end up expanding the right to choose abortion, rather than restricting it.

That might be one reason the staunchly pro-life Catholic Church in Mississippi, is standing on the sidelines in this case. Bishop Joseph Latino of the Jackson diocese said in a statement, “The Roman Catholic Church and her bishops are unequivocally pro-life; however, we do not always publicly support every initiative that comes before us in the name of pro-life.“

The National Right to Life Movement, which has launched some of the country’s biggest anti-abortion demonstrations, is also withholding support. It’s legal counsel, Jim Bopp, shares the objective of Amendment 26 but says the measure is doomed in the courts and could do more harm than good.

JIM BOPP (National Right to Life): The immediate harm from the adoption of the Amendment is that we have people who are spending time, money and effort pursuing what we think is a futile strategy.

post04-mississippi-personhoO’BRIEN: And there is uncertainty about how the Supreme Court might rule. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a supporter of abortion rights, is among the critics of Roe versus Wade, believing abortion should be protected under the right to equality, which is broadly identified in the Constitution, rather than under the right to privacy, which is ambiguous.

What if Ginsburg were to have the votes for a broad ruling finding abortion laws discriminate against women?

BOPP: If the right to abortion was reformulated in that way, it would mean that all the current restrictions on abortions that are saving perhaps a hundred thousand or more lives a year—parental notification, abortion funding restrictions, informed consent, waiting periods and all—would be struck down. So, losing is not risk-free.

O’BRIEN: This has raised a philosophical conundrum for at least some abortion opponents: Do you stand up for what you believe is right, even if it means a step back for the cause you passionately embrace?

LT. GOV. BRYANT: We believe that it may not be perfect, but don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good, and we believe this is a good place to start.

PREWITT: I think we have to have a long view of history. I’m a history major, I think long. And I think that it may be that we don’t taste success with these endeavors in our lifetimes. But perhaps the next generation will.

O’BRIEN: Prewitt and other supporters of the “Personhood Amendment” say the ultimate goal would be a federal constitutional amendment and see a victory at the polls here Tuesday as a possible first step.

For Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Jackson, Mississippi.

Faith-Based Social Services in Brazil

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FRED DE SAM LAZARO, Correspondent: Among emerging nations, Brazil is a leading power. It’s booming economy is now the world’s seventh largest. Yet this nation of 200 million remains very divided. Its poverty is on display along the hillsides, not far from Rio de Janeiro’s glittering skyline, or along the sidewalks of Sao Paolo, despite recent government attempts to address it.

MARIVALDO DA SILVA SANTOS: There’s still great inequality in Brazil. There still are people who don’t have a place to sleep, don’t have clothes, any happiness in their lives.

DE SAM LAZARO: Santos works for a Catholic social services agency in Sao Paolo called Bom Parto. Brazil’s government has increased the minimum wage and created a social safety net, and it’s relied on several faith-based groups like Bom Parto in its anti-poverty efforts.

About 70 percent of Brazilians are Catholic. Church attendance has dropped sharply in recent decades, except in newer Protestant evangelical congregations. But the demand for church-run social services has not dropped.

Bom Parto, short in Portuguese for “our lady of good delivery,” is the biggest such provider in Brazil. It’s headed by Sister Judith Lupo.

post01-brazilsocialservicesShe grew up in a wealthy family, was educated in Brazil, the U.S. and France after joining her religious order, where she soon became its chief finance officer.

At Bom Parto, she combined government contracts with private philanthropy and built a single day care center three decades ago into an organization with 58 locations and 1100 employees, serving 10,000 people each day. It’s all pulled together with a modest $4.5 million annual budget—reflecting financial acumen; also a simple philosophy.

SISTER JUDITH LUPO: I think the first, first thing is to love people. They need money also to survive, but it’s not just to get money or to learn things, it’s to learn in a way that it’s with love.

DE SAM LAZARO: As an example of the approach, she says this homeless shelter provides much more than a roof and a meal for its 600-odd clients. There are baths, clinics and career counseling among other services—even entertainment, like this traditional dance called capoeira.

DA SILVA SANTOS: Bom Parto has given me continuity. It took me to college, it helped me understand public policies not only to help myself but others. It offers not just food and bathing services, it teaches about need to work, instruction, training, pleasure, culture. It enables you in a way.

DE SAM LAZARO: Thirty-six year old Santos is a poster child. He came here in 2002, an alcoholic down on his luck. His life is more than restored, he says. Bom Parto employs him and is also helping with part of the tuition to complete his degree in social work.

post02-brazilsocialservicesDA SILVA SANTOS: Sister Judith insists that people on her staff come out of places like this. She has this poem called “I Am You.” She’s put herself in our position, feeling our pain, feeling our situation. That’s how she’s able to help us and that’s the same thing she is getting us to do.

SISTER LUPO: I feel the young people and children, adolescents, all of them, they all need an opportunity. It’s, I don’t think poverty has to take them out of a normal life. They should not live always in a bad house. They should not be always in a favela. And to go out of those places, they need a good education.

DE SAM LAZARO: Poverty is endemic in Brazil despite its bountiful natural resources and a modern economy. Sister Judith blames much of it on an unequal education system that traces back to slavery, which was abolished in 1888.

Bom Parto serves a wide range of needs, caring for abandoned HIV-infected infants. Also destitute elderly. However the major focus is on education and training to enter the prosperous mainstream of Brazil’s economy.

On the outskirts of Sao Paolo, where many of the city’s poor reside, Bom Parto’s day care facility is at its capacity. It cares for 3,300 preschoolers across the city. Eventually, many of them will enter this school…

SISTER ADRIANNA APARACIDA ROMAO: Here in this place, we serve about 1,100 kids. And given our waiting list, we should have at least three spaces this big in order to serve all of our community.

post03-brazilsocialservicesDE SAM LAZARO: Public education is widely perceived as substandard in Brazil, and that accounts for the strong demand for schools like this one, run by Bom Parto.

SISTER ADRIANNA: In the 27 years that this school has been here, we’ve seen great change, improvement in the community and in the lives of these children. The evidence is when we’re watching them during recess. They’re calmly interacting with their friends, not supervised, not gated in like the public schools, where they’re still very unruly. Here they’ve learned to behave.

DE SAM LAZARO: Older students receive vocational training. Most are placed in good jobs and the school sends promising students into a college prep program. A few miles way, a Bom Parto-run program trains auto mechanics and machinists.

LEANDRO AGUSTO DA SILVA, Shop Teacher: Traditionally this eastern edge of Sao Paolo has been excluded, marginalized. The general view is that people who come from here are not going to be able to climb the economic ladder. But we provide opportunities to the kids who are leaving here that differentiates them from the rest of the population in this area. We’ve already had several examples of students from this program that have graduated and gone on to work in the elite areas, other areas of the city.

DE SAM LAZARO: Some graduates have returned as teachers and mentors.

post04-brazilsocialservicesSUELEN RIBEIRO DE CAMARGO, Teacher: In terms of vehicle repair, maintenance, et cetera, I’ve always been interested. In terms of being a teacher, I thought maybe but my sister really pushed me to consider this. I didn’t think it would happen so soon after finishing this program. I was able to get several different apprenticeships and while doing that, this job opening came and I was invited to come back and teach here, and my whole family told me to jump at it. It was an honor for the whole family.

DE SAM LAZARO: About 25% of students here are female, keeping with a trend in which women—from the country’s president on down—are in jobs historically held by men.

SISTER LUPO: If you can cook well, you can repair car well.

DE SAM LAZARO: If you can cook well you can repair a car well?

SISTER LUPO: If you learn, why not?

DE SAM LAZARO: Asked about her own outlook, 68 year old sister Judith Lupo offered few words. They come from the scripture, she says.

SISTER LUPO: It’s from the gospel. We have to give opportunity to everybody. Everybody was created to have life and to have life in fullness.

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro, in Sao Paolo.

Religious Pilgrimage

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VIRGINIA RAGUIN (Professor of Art, College of the Holy Cross): Pilgrimages are undertaken because people want to move beyond their normal, mundane life. They can be a one-day pilgrimage, from one town to another town, on a particular feast day. They can be a weekend. They can be actually years.

In the past, pilgrimage really was vital in Christian religion, certainly in Muslim and in Buddhist. Only Islam requires the pilgrimage — the Hajj — so that it is one of the five pillars of Islam. However, that is nuanced: only if you are financially and physically able.

On pilgrimage, people experience the same activities; therefore, it produces a sense of camaraderie, a sense of sharing.

post01-pilgrimageConstantly we see that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So that all three religions use handy objects to help focus people’s thoughts; and prayer beads are some of the most ubiquitous. Prayer rugs that were brought by people, especially on the Hajj, where they could kneel down and then pray during the days of their journey. Qur’ans, small ones, were often carried with people.

One of the most common kinds of souvenirs is absolutely the simplest: stones. Stones or dirt from the ground. People who have been on the Hajj and who have engaged in one of the rituals, which is the “stoning of Satan,” invariably they bring some of those stones home with them. You also have Muslims with clay from Karbala, or other holy places, pressed together, that they then use in prayer.

Although the doctrinal core of these religions differ, the practices that they use to help focus believers onto what is important, they are the same.

Often in these three religions, you have an experience of circumambulation, walking around a site. The Ka’ba is circumambulated during the performance of the Hajj; people walk seven times around this small building. Circumambulation, either of mountain or of a stupa or another holy site in the Buddhist religion is one of the most common ways of making a pilgrimage. And, for Christians, certainly they’ll circulate around the icons sometimes, or the statue, that they are venerating. People look for this physical activity that helps them find an interior focus. Physical hardship can be transformative. One of the things the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Muslims constantly come back to is humility. They make the effort, but God grants the grace.

Justin Bieber’s Faith and Challenges

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Seventeen-year-old pop superstar Justin Bieber this week released a new holiday CD called “Under the Mistletoe.” He also set a new YouTube record, becoming the first person to have two billion views on his music channel. He has more than 14 million followers on Twitter and more than 30 million on Facebook.

The release of the new CD came amid news of a paternity suit filed by a 20-year-old woman who claimed Bieber had fathered her three-month-old baby. Bieber’s lawyers said the allegations were “malicious, defamatory and demonstrably false.”

Bieber is an evangelical Christian who has been outspoken about his faith. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly Managing Editor Kim Lawton talked about the role of faith in Bieber’s life with Cathleen Falsani, author of the new book, Belieber!: Fame, Faith and the Heart of Justin Bieber (Worthy, Sept. 2011).

 

Survey on American Catholics

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BOB ABERNETHY: A new Vatican document this week called for sweeping changes in the global financial system in order, it said, to put “the common good” at the center of economic activity. One of the most controversial proposals would create an international political authority that would have broad power to regulate financial markets. The document was issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. It said changes are needed to address the quote “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.”

Giving to the poor was one of many issues raised in a new survey of U.S. Catholics. According to the results, 60% now believe you can be a good Catholic without donating time or money to the poor. That number was 44% in 2005. The survey also found that a majority of Catholics now believes that individuals – not church authorities – should be the ones to make decisions about abortion, homosexuality and other social issues.

Joining me now are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program and Kevin Eckstrom editor of Religion News Service. Welcome to you both. Kevin can you explain this astonishing figure that 60% of those surveyed, 60% of Catholics in this country say, they can be good Catholics without at the same time giving money to the poor or giving time to helping the poor.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s one of the great sort of paradoxes that this survey picked up. The other figure that was worth mentioning here is that two out of three Catholics said that helping the poor and the church’s teaching on the poor is important to me as a Catholic. So, they see it as core to the Catholic identity but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actually going go out and do something about it. And it’s sort of broadly reflective of this trend that the survey picked up that I’m a Catholic and I’ll go to mass because I want the Eucharist, I want the liturgy, I think that the core teachings are important but I am not going to do it because some bishop somewhere tells me that I have to. Weekly mass attendance is down to like 30% and the number of people who go to church once a month is actually higher than people who go to weekly. So people are doing it on their own terms.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): And, also, in that survey, it did find that a big majority, 88% of Catholics, said that helping the poor, it was meaningful for them that their church had concern for the poor. It’s just, again, what the church says and does and how it translates into individuals’ lives. As one author of the survey said, American Catholics like being Catholic but they like to do it on their own terms, as well.

ABERNETHY: And the confirmation of some other long trends. For instance, making up your own mind about social and moral concerns rather than taking instructions from the hierarchy.

ECKSTROM: Yeah the big number there was on homosexuality, which is sort of a flashpoint issue but I think it’s telling. The number of people who say the church and church leaders should have the final word on the morality of homosexuality or same-sex marriage has dropped by half in the last 25 years. No other issue has seen that sort of shift but I think it’s really telling where people say, you know what, I’ve got gay friends, I’ve got a gay brother or gay neighbors. There’s a disconnect here between what the church is telling me and what my life experience is telling me and so I’m not going to necessarily go along with the church on this one.

ABERNETHY: And what are the implications of a third of Catholics now being Hispanic?

ECKSTROM: Well, within a generation they are likely to be the majority of the Catholic Church in the United States. And what that means, in practical terms, is that Spanish language mass might become the norm and English language mass is going to be sort of what they do on the side, on Saturday nights.

LAWTON: And some of these economic issues may come to the fore, as well. And again, going back to the Vatican document, I mean, a lot of the input for that came from outside the United States as church leaders from Europe, but also Latin America, have contributions about what the church has to say about the poor. And sometimes American Catholics weren’t, there was a lot of mixed reaction among American Catholics to that Vatican document. I mean some religious conservatives, Catholic conservatives, really tried to dismiss it a little bit and say it didn’t have the full force of a papal teaching but it certainly did quote from popes who have raised concerns about the poor.

ABERNETHY: And reminded everybody about how very liberal the church teachings are about how the poor should be treated.

LAWTON: Catholic social teaching does have what many people consider very liberal values when it comes to the poor. Some of the folks this week tried to associate this document with the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Vatican officials said this was not a direct response to Occupy Wall Street. But I saw a lot of similar language. The Vatican document criticized excessive greed as being sinful and evil. Certainly that’s a big theme with Occupy Wall Street. Talked about social inequities being morally wrong and again, that’s in the Vatican document.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Kim Lawton and Kevin Eckstrom.

Religion at Occupy Wall Street

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KIM LAWTON, Correspondent: For the Occupy Wall street protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park, it’s become a familiar sight—religious groups offering spiritual and moral support.

VOICES AT SERVICE: We represent. We represent. The New York City communities of faith. The New York City communities of faith.

LAWTON: Growing numbers of leaders from across the religious spectrum have been supporting Occupy Wall Street’s protest against greed and economic inequity.

REV. MICHAEL ELLICK, Judson Memorial Church, NY: This is not just a jobs issue. This is not only a health care issue or a pension issue. This is also a spiritual issue of the nature of what has happened in the United States and how we function as a people together. And that is very, very, much a matter of moral concern, not only to my Christian tradition but to Islam, and to Judaism, to Buddhism.

post02-occupywallstLAWTON: There have been regular interfaith prayer services at the park. And religious groups are also providing practical help by donating tents, food and money. They’ve been opening their facilities to the protesters, giving logistical advice and helping to get the message out.

ELLICK: Churches are an excellent place to organize this kind of information because we’re under the radar of commerce or of government.

LAWTON: Many say there is a prominent spiritual dimension to what’s been happening. Inside Zuccotti Park is a makeshift community altar, where protestors of all faiths come to pray or meditate. In several cities, protest chaplains—many of them seminary students—minster to the protesters.

ERICA RICHMOND, Protest Chaplain: We are here to provide a religious presence. We are here to listen to people, to hear what’s on their hearts. And we’re here to pray with people. And people do come up to us and ask us to sit with them in prayer, because people are in crisis and that’s why we are all here.

LAWTON: On this Sunday, United Methodists led a communion service. Participants said concern for economic justice is a core teaching of their faith.

post03-occupywallstREV. K KARPEN, Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, NY: The Bible is all about just a fairer shake for people and God’s concern for all of God’s children, not just a small segment of the population.

LAWTON: Some religious conservatives have criticized the faith-based support of Occupy Wall Street calling it a 60’s style, leftist effort to redistribute wealth. The Family Research Council urged its members to pray that God would prevent what it called “these radical organizers from stirring revolution.” But faith leaders at the Wall Street protests deny any political agenda.

KARPEN: It’s a broad movement of religious groups to support what’s going on and really to support the conversation, not to take a particular side or another side, but just to say these are the things that we need to talk about.

And they say it’s only going to spread.

ELLICK: What’s very, very real is the frustration. And if people don’t think that’s real, if people don’t think that reflects a real existential reality for the majority of Americans, the faith communities see it. Because we are who they come to when mom can’t pay rent, when the immigration officers steal grandma and there’s no one home. I mean, we’re who they come to. So for us it is an obvious, immediate, moral imperative.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

Religious Voices from Occupy Wall Street

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Growing numbers of religious groups are offering spiritual and moral support to protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Watch excerpts of interviews in Zuccotti Park with Rev. Michael Ellick, minister of Judson Memorial Church in NY; Rev. K Karpen, senior pastor of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew (United Methodist), NY; and Erica Richmond, protest chaplain and Unitarian Universalist student at Union Theological Seminary.