BloomBytes

Providing help, hope in any disaster

2012-01-13T08:33:00.002-06:00

In recent years, my family has spent the New Year’s holiday with friends near Belleayre ski resort in New York’s Catskills region.

This year, as we drove around the area, two things were different: the lack of snow and the visible signs of the destruction wrought by Tropical Storm Irene four months earlier.

At least one insurance company, citing the earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, has called 2011 the costliest year yet in terms of losses from natural disasters, with a total economic cost near $380 billion, compared to the Hurricane Katrina-related 2005 record of $220 billion.

Those are big numbers to throw around, but they don’t tell the real story. As we made our way along Route 28 and traveled back roads between Phoenicia and Woodstock in the Catskills, the real story became apparent. It is the struggle -- for some of the people who live there -- to recover from another blow to their shaky financial existence.

That’s the story in Haiti, too, which is marking the second anniversary of a disastrous earthquake that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left up to 1.5 million homeless.

The good news is that United Methodists have committed themselves – through the United Methodist Committee on Relief and in other ways -- to assisting in that struggle in both places.

The denomination’s New York Conference, for example, had a firm commitment to Haiti before the earthquake, particularly in the farming village of Furcy, as my colleague Kathy Gilbert has documented. Conference teams have continued to fly to Haiti and the Rev. Tom Vencuss, who previously led the New York Haiti mission, is the on-site coordinator of all United Methodist Volunteer-in-Mission teams arriving in Haiti.

In August, after Irene’s floodwaters swept through the Catskills, pastors in the area were among the first to mobilize, and conference volunteer teams spent the next few months “mucking out” homes, churches and other buildings in towns like Margaretsville, Fleischmanns, Lexington and Prattsville.

“Thanks to each of you for all of your hard work and spirit as we try to help ‘Rebuild Prattsville’ with more than just shovels and sheet rock,” team member Jud Radmaker wrote in an Oct. 27 update.

As of this week, $304,365 had been raised for the New York Conference Catskills response, but as was pointed out, “the needs are far greater than this sum will address.”

The money helps, but the connections are more important – connections with skilled persons able to donate their expertise; connections with volunteers willing to lift a shovel or paint a wall; connections with trained case managers who can help survivors put their lives back together; connections with those simply available to share faith, love and support.

A "Nobel" achievement for women

2011-12-12T12:26:00.002-06:00

Can women turn the world around?

Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee answered that question in her speech during Saturday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.

“The world used to remember Liberia for child soldiers,” she said. “But they now remember our country for the white T-shirt women.”

In 2003, Gbowee organized a network of women determined to end Liberia’s long-running civil war. Dressed in white, thousands of women came to Monrovia’s fish market every day to make that determination known to Charles Taylor, then the country’s president and dictator.

“It was the first time in our history in Liberia where Muslim women and Christian women were coming together,” Gbowee observed in the excellent documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, shown recently on PBS. “We had a big banner that said ‘the women of Liberia want peace now.’”

In less than six months, the women accomplished their goal. That August, Taylor resigned from office and a peace agreement was reached. Three years later, the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Liberia’s president and the first female African head of state “was the icing on the cake” for the women’s peace campaign, Gbowee said.

Can women turn the world around?

During the Dec. 10 ceremony, Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said Gbowee, Johnson Sirleaf and Yemeni peace advocate Tawakkol Karman, were chosen to receive the 2011 prize because "we cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women acquire the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society."

It is fitting that Johnson Sirleaf, a United Methodist; Gbowee, a Lutheran; and Karman, a Muslim, were honored together because they clearly understand that interfaith solidarity is a crucial component of peace-making.

Karman – at 32 the youngest-ever peace prize recipient – keeps pictures of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Hillary Clinton in her home. A journalist and activist, she was one of the leaders of the democracy demonstrations this year on Change Square in Sana, Yemen.

The walls between human societies have collapsed, said Karman in her Nobel speech, and the world has entered “…a phase where peoples and nations of the world are not only residents of a small village, as they say, but members of one family, despite differences in nationality and race or in culture and language.”

As the peoples of the world draw closer, she noted, “…understanding will gradually replace dispute, cooperation will replace conflict, peace will replace war and integration will replace division.”

In her speech, Gbowee, who now heads the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, based in Ghana, reminded her West African sisters and “women in Asia, the Middle East and the world” that such a victory has yet to be achieved.

“We must continue to unite in sisterhood to turn our tears into triumph, our despair into determination and our fear into fortitude,” she said. “There is no time to rest until our world achieves wholeness and balance, where all men and women are considered equal and free.

Can women turn the world around?

Yes, declared Johnson Sirleaf, who was re-elected this fall to a second six-year term as Liberia’s president. She stressed that women and men alike must not be afraid to denounce injustice and demand peace.

“If I might thus speak to girls and women everywhere, I would issue them this simple invitation: My sisters, my daughters, my friends, find your voices!”

Interpreting Haiti's pain and promise

2011-12-08T12:19:00.004-06:00

With a year full of record-breaking disasters – the Japan earthquake, the tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., flooding from North Dakota to Thailand – it may be easy to forget the catastrophe in Haiti nearly two years ago.

In their new book, Rubble Nation: Haiti’s Pain, Haiti’s Promise, Chris Herlinger and Paul Jeffrey help us to remember, showing us the struggle of a people trying to rebuild their nation and the efforts of others to assist them.

Jeffrey, a United Methodist missionary and stellar photojournalist, and Herlinger, an outstanding journalist who now works for Church World Service, already collaborated on a previous book, Where Mercy Fails: Darfur’s Struggle to Survive.

Both Sudan and Haiti are complex and heartbreaking places where the situation can seem hopeless and hopeful at the same time. In both countries – and now in the newly-formed South Sudan – United Methodists have forged a connection with the people there.

The connection in Haiti runs long and deep, which is why so many church teams were ready to jump on the first plane available after the earthquake to do whatever they could. Some of those stories can be found at Haiti One Year Later. The denomination also raised more than $40 million for Haiti’s recovery through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

It’s kind of a cliché to say that Jeffrey and Herlinger “put a human face” in words and photos on the suffering in Haiti after the earthquake, but that’s exactly what they did. They are professional yet compassionate, experienced but not hard-bitten, possessing just enough cynicism to see through self-serving bureaucrats. Damn fine journalists, in other words.

Rubble Nation can be ordered through any religious or secular bookstore; any online bookseller; member stores of the Episcopal Booksellers Association or direct from Cokesbury Christian stores or from Cokesbury customer service at 800-672-1789.

Make it healthy, not hungry

2011-11-28T09:19:00.001-06:00

When the U.S. Congress decided recently that pizza contains enough tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable for school lunches, my college-age son emailed me a news link under the subject line, “I’ve been eating plenty of veggies. …”

Since I nagged him about the lack of vegetables in his diet, I had to laugh.

But there is nothing funny about the fact that nearly a billion people around the world – including 49 million in the United States – don’t even have regular access to vegetables, fruits and other healthy foods, according to WhyHunger, an organization working to connect people to nutritious, affordable food.

People who are part of these “food insecure” households sometimes live in “food deserts” -- neighborhoods or communities that may have fast-food outlets and convenience stores but few retailers selling affordable fresh produce and other nutritious foods. Take a look at the “deserts” in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s interactive “food desert locator” map (http://1.usa.gov/kJcR1U).

In New York State, a study (http://bit.ly/uIJLbi) endorsed by the American Cancer Society found food deserts in 32 of 62 counties. Of the 656,000 residents living in these areas, 86 percent are in urban neighborhoods and the rest in rural communities.

The child in Africa who literally eats mud pies to survive may seem a world apart from the American kid who fills a rumbling stomach with puffed bits of nothingness disguised as cheap snacks, but are they really so different?

That’s why solving the hunger crisis domestically will take more than just sending pallets of government cheese to food pantries. The New York study, for example, recommends a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks to help fund efforts such as childhood obesity programs, community gardens and grocery expansion loans.

At my church, St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist in Manhattan, the West Side Campaign Against Hunger schedules nutrition workshops and cooking demonstrations using food available at the pantry. The campaign’s “customer chef” training program teaches participants how to cook healthy meals and improve job skills.

On an international level, the goal of “food security” is to move beyond the provision of immediate food aid to finding ways in which local communities can sustain themselves during times of drought or other impediments to food production.

In a recent interview (http://bit.ly/sbDGfJ) with Chris Herlinger of Church World Service, Paul Weisenfeld, who heads the USAID's Bureau for Food Security, spoke about the immense practicality of investing in food security for all.

“Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ and we know that instability in one place in the world can affect our country, and disrupt our own economy,” Weisenfeld pointed out. “By contrast, stability helps us as a country.

“Three countries that once received U.S. foreign assistance, including food aid and agricultural development assistance -- Mexico, South Korea and Brazil -- are now among the top 10 importers of U.S. products. By what we do now, we can create stability around the world and help build the markets of tomorrow. But the key point is: we can make a difference now and address the root causes of hunger and poverty.”

That “key point” is exactly what U.S. religious leaders have been trying to tell Congress in its tussle over the federal budget. The only practical effect of cutting the minute portions of the budget that help the poor feed themselves is to undo the gains being made in the fight against hunger.

Maybe Congress should order in some pizzas while it ponders that dilemma.

Holding out hope for Afghan women

2011-11-04T13:33:00.001-05:00

Whenever I think the situation in Afghanistan is beyond hopeless, I am forced to remember the women and children there.

As the segment on Afghanistan in the five-part PBS series, “Women, War and Peace,” points out, women are struggling to maintain the rights they regained – at least on paper -- after the harsh Taliban rule ended a decade ago. You can check out the series at http://to.pbs.org/iyhB6t.

Much of the documentary focuses on the attempts by Afghan women to play a role in the 2010 peace process of the Karzai government. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a United Methodist, promoted their participation. “The work of Afghan women and civil society groups will be essential to this country’s success,” she says during one of the peace conferences. If women and civil groups are silenced and pushed to the margins, she adds, “the prospects for peace and justice will be subverted.”

David Wildman, a United Methodist who has visited Afghanistan numerous times, believes Afghan women are not benefiting from the continuing presence of U.S. and other international troops. The co-author of a 2010 book, “Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer,” Wildman told me this week that the three biggest threats to Afghan women are the warlords, the Taliban and the presence of foreign troops.

The majority of civilian casualties, he explained, are from roadside bombs placed in areas near troops. The bombs limit the ability of humanitarian organizations to reach communities and provide needed services, such as health care, to improve the lives of women.

But no one is giving up. For more than 40 years, United Methodists have worked with Afghan partners on community development issues. Current Advance projects (http://bit.ly/vgiI6a), for example, include the post-war rebuilding of homes, supporting an eye-care program and providing health care for mothers and children in the remote central highlands of Afghanistan.

As in other parts of the world, education plays a key role in moving women and girls away from the margin.

Wildman is particularly excited about an educational project in rural Laghman Province that promotes a leadership role for girls by getting the cooperation of male leaders in the area.

Writing in the July-August 2011 edition of New World Outlook (http://bit.ly/rMgOOc), he described the school, which has its own village education council, called a shura, to address particular problems.

“This year, the school leaders decided to invite two girls--one in eighth grade and one in ninth grade--to join the school's all-male shura in order to help with issues of low attendance and quality improvement,” he wrote. “The principal and teachers selected the two girls and then met with their families, the elders in each of their respective villages, and the district officials to make sure everyone approved of their participation in the shura. Now these girls are providing leadership among the students and helping to improve the school for everyone. One day they may become teachers themselves. Soon they hope their school will become a model for others in the district and throughout their province.”

Wildman – who spoke with the girls on the same day a district government office was being bombed a few miles away – noted that the arrangement is working because it respects the cultural context of the community.

“To me, that was a great community-based model,” he told me.

And it’s another reason why we must not give up on Afghanistan.

Stories of strong Liberian women

2011-10-06T12:52:00.002-05:00

I’ve been reminded this fall that strong Liberian women helped lead their nation on the path to peace.

Last month, I heard an energetic young woman, Lauren Selman Roberts, talk about "Rainbow Town," her 2010 documentary about a woman, Ma Feeta, who assisted children during Liberia’s civil war and now oversees a large orphanage. Roberts, who received a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council, is totally committed to promoting Ma Feeta’s efforts to educate these children, who light up the film.

Shortly after that, I saw a television interview with Leymah Gbowee, who has written a memoir with Carol Mithers called “Mighty Be Our Powers,” about her life as a peace activist in Liberia. The sponsor of her U.S. book tour – which includes an Oct. 7 book party hosted by the Women’s Ministries of the National Council of Churches at the Interchurch Center in New York – is Leonard Riggio, the chairman of Barnes & Noble, paying the costs from his own pocket.

Leymah Gbowee is a central figure in “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a documentary about the women who fought to end Liberia’s civil war. Gbowee, a Lutheran, formed the Christian Women’s Initiative, which then joined in coalitions with Muslim women, eventually creating Liberian Mass Action for Peace.

“Pray the Devil Back to Hell” will be shown Oct. 18 on PBS as part of a five-part series, “Women, War & Peace,” exploring the “changing role of women” in global conflict.

Abigail Disney, executive producer for the series and producer of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” will take part in a discussion about “Women, War & Peace” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 during the annual board meeting of United Methodist Women. The event will be streamed live online at http://board-meeting.umwonline.net/main.

Then, of course, there is the most prominent strong Liberian woman -- the president of that nation, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a United Methodist and the first female head of state in Africa. Johnson Sirleaf, now 72, who addressed the denomination’s top legislative body in 2008, is up for re-election on Oct. 11.

The key to success for these Liberian women lay in their mutual desire to claim a secure future for themselves and their children. As Gbowee writes, “…we had discovered a new source of power and strength: each other.”

Can we still honor our 'same difference?'

2011-09-15T11:24:00.002-05:00

A month after the Sept. 11terrorist attacks, I attended a meeting in the Los Angeles area designed to encourage communication between United Methodists and Muslims.

The United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns had contacted the Islamic Center of Southern California, which, as I wrote at the time, warmly welcomed our church members to its regular afternoon service that day in October 2001.

“People of God have to work together on a continual basis if you want to change the world,” Hassan Hathout, a medical doctor and the center’s founder, told us as he outlined the basic tenets of Islam.

Before the visit concluded, the Christian and Muslim groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, released a statement expressing grief over the tragic events of 9/11 and a call for greater understanding between the two faiths.

That was just one of many attempts to reach out across religious lines to promote peace and understanding. The United Methodist Committee on Relief provided $108,160 in grants through its "Honoring Differences in the Midst of Hate and Violence" program, a response to the terrorist attacks and attempts at religious stereotyping and hostility. Projects supported included open houses and dialogues among diverse faith groups in Rockford, Ill.; regular gatherings of Christian, Muslim and Jewish women in Greensboro, N.C., and “Same Difference,” a New York interview project that resulted in an interfaith play.

I know many United Methodists remain committed to interfaith dialogue. But how much progress has been made?

On Sept. 7, Faith Communities Today released results of a survey showing that the overall involvement of congregations in multifaith worship did double in the decade following 9/11. But that was only because such a small percentage were engaged in such worship to begin with – participation increased from 7 to 14 percent and the congregations involved in multifaith community service jumped from 7 to 21 percent.

In an online news conference about the project, David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, noted that, in practice, the most dominant religious attitude in the U.S. is “indifferent tolerance.” Religion is considered private, not public, and he thinks that’s a factor in why interfaith activities haven’t jumped significantly.

That type of tolerance may actually have decreased a bit, at least for Muslims. A survey of U.S. Muslims by the Pew Research Center, released Aug. 30, showed that 28 percent reported “being looked at with suspicion” and 22 percent said they were called offensive names. Twenty-one percent felt they had been singled out by airport security and 13 percent felt singled out by other law enforcement personnel. Residents of some communities have vocally and legally opposed the construction of mosques.

But I was heartened to find that, across the country, a number of religious groups planned interfaith activities to observe the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In my own congregation, we heard from Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders who greeted each other -- and us -- as friends. The theme for the service was forgiveness, but the feeling was one of solidarity.

And that’s what we need to carry forward with us into the second decade after 9/11.

Drying our tears and moving on

2011-09-09T10:14:00.001-05:00

For what seemed like months every day after Sept. 11, 2001, the New York Times ran an article that devoted several paragraphs each to victims of the terrorist attacks.

And every morning, I cried.

I couldn’t stop myself from reading about these people, familiar enough to be my friends, engaged in their regular routines that day, just as I had been.

I, too, was in an office building in Manhattan when the first plane struck the twin towers. But my office was uptown, not downtown, and I was on the 19th floor, not the 95th or the 104th. My windows faced the wrong direction. I could see only the smoking towers on the television set in my colleague’s adjacent office.

And, then, the towers were gone.

In a special 10th anniversary report this Sunday called “9/11: The Reckoning,” the Times includes those “impressionistic” pieces about roughly 2,500 of the victims in a section titled “Portraits in Grief.” The portraits will be online in that report, arranged alphabetically by name.

They were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses and friends. They were quiet or the life of the party; about to get married or a dedicated soccer dad; a scholar or sports nuts; quick with a smile or possessor of a big heart.

Like many others in this very big city, I did not personally know any of the people who lost their lives at ground zero. But we were still in a daze – for days -- unsure of how to react to a hate-filled attack maliciously designed to kill as many of us as possible and shake us to our core.

Downtown, covered in ash, seemed doomed. People talked about moving away; some did. At least one person I knew refused to ride the subway, fearing an attack underground. For a long time, I would search the sky every time I heard an airplane overhead, watching its path until it disappeared.

And, yet, sometime in early 2002, I noticed a difference, at least in the way I felt each day, as if we were emerging from deep mourning.

At the end of June this year, I took visiting family members to the Top of the Rock observation deck in midtown Manhattan. For the first time, the new tower – 1 World Trade Center – really registered in my brain as it rose on the southern end of the island.

Later in the summer, I saw the tower -- then a little more than 70 stories high -- close up as I walked a wide perimeter around ground zero on two separate occasions, the first to take a good look at the site (for the first time in five years) and the second to conduct an interview and scout for photographs.

To me, the new tower is a symbol of one of the ways that New York has moved on since 9/11 – not bigger or better, but renewing itself while being respectful of the past.

Because, of course, we will never forget.

From farm to table, submerged

2011-09-07T12:30:00.000-05:00

Greenmarkets are very popular in the New York area these days.

This summer, the Riverdale Y started a “Sunday Market” featuring Hudson Valley farmers at my son’s former high school, a few blocks from my apartment. So when I was buying eggs and cherry tomatoes there this weekend, I asked the young man taking my money whether his particular farm had been affected by Irene.

He didn’t think so. But many Northeastern farmers whose fields were flooded at peak growing season by the rains from Tropical Storm Irene will have less to bring to market over the next few months – including the well-known Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan.

In various news accounts, I have read about summer vegetables submerged under water; stored tomatoes splattered by mud, creating what looked like an inedible chili; chickens taken by canoe to safety; and goats who produced less milk because they were stressed out by the storm.

That may sound cute in an “Old MacDonald” kind of way to us city folks, but it’s been a catastrophe for the farmers.

The Rev. Carol Coltrain, who is organizing assistance in upstate New York on behalf of the United Methodist Upper New York Conference and the United Methodist Committee on Relief, has seen the devastation from Irene, both in the farm fields and the town of Middleburgh.

Last Thursday morning, she went to the Middleburgh diner, a regular community gathering spot that was dry on high ground, and ran into a sixth-generation farm couple who had lost everything to the water – their fields, the barns, the house.

“We’ve had floods here before, but this is by far the worst,” she told me. “There’s no one alive who remembers anything this bad.”

On Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited a farm near Middleburgh and other flood-damaged sites with U.S. Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack and other elected officials. The governor has created a $15 million Agricultural and Community Recovery Fund to assist the farming areas affected by Irene.

It’s not enough. According to the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union, (http://bit.ly/n9aQ0P) the agricultural toll from Irene is estimated at $45 million in New York State alone, with a loss of 140,000 acres of farmland.

United Methodists will be assisting farmers and others in the Eastern United States whose homes, businesses and livelihoods were damaged by Irene. You can make a donation, designated for Hurricanes 2011, at http://bit.ly/EsgDg.

Hurricane 101 for New Yorkers

2011-08-29T08:58:00.001-05:00

For those of us used to “snow events,” waiting for a hurricane is a lot like waiting for a blizzard.

Grocery shelves are emptied of bread and milk. Flashlights and containers of water are set out in case the power is cut. The vigil begins for the latest weather updates, either on TV or online.

The mounting anticipation becomes as much of an event as the storm itself. That was particularly true for those of us in New York City, where people living closed to the water were urged, for the first time ever, to evacuate; where all public transportation came to a screeching halt hours before Hurricane Irene arrived; where the local Starbucks shut down and where roads seem to close one by one.

And, since this particular storm was to fall mainly on a Sunday, there were advisories, from people such as the New York Catholic Archbishop and New Jersey United Methodist Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar, telling congregants to heed public safety warnings, as Devadhar noted, “even if it means not to have worship services on Sunday.”

That may seem like a no-brainer, especially given the lack of transportation options. But gathering in community is what we do, particularly in times of disaster.

In New York City, at least several United Methodist congregations decided in advance to connect in other ways on Sunday. New Day members in the Bronx were able to worship by video, phone or on Facebook Sunday morning. The Church of the Village in Manhattan arranged for its members to “gather in prayer by phone.”

By Sunday afternoon, we knew that “the worst” had not happened, although the winds on the backside of the storm were strong. A walk around my Bronx neighborhood revealed little visible damage, aside from a few downed trees. The Henry Hudson Parkway, in front of my building, officially reopened. Speculation began over what the Monday morning commute would be like and how soon buses and subway trains would be running again.

For most of us in the city, Irene had less of an impact than last year’s Christmas blizzard. But it didn’t take long to discover that we were the lucky ones.

The city of Yonkers, just north of my neighborhood, had widespread flooding, along with other towns up the Hudson. A large stretch of the Saw Mill Parkway, which I frequently drive, remained closed on Monday. A bit farther upstate, the student union and main administration building at the State University of New York, New Paltz, where my son moved in a week ago as a freshman, had flood damage.

What really broke my heart was learning about what has been called “catastrophic” flash flooding in the small towns of Fleischmanns and Margaretville (which has a United Methodist church) in the Catskills. We have friends with a second home in that area and have visited those towns on several occasions. While the sight of water flowing like a river down Margaretville’s main street may make for compelling video, it is an economic disaster for a region that already is struggling.

That’s where we, as United Methodists, come together in community once more. From the Carolinas to New England, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and the denomination’s annual conferences will be assisting those who didn’t escape Irene’s wrath. Donations for disaster response can be made to U.S. Disaster Response Advance number 901670 - Hurricanes 2011.

Transcending the trauma of Norway

2011-07-28T15:03:00.002-05:00

Back in the days when I still qualified for a youth Eurail Pass, I traveled across Norway, via train, bus and ferry, from Oslo to Bergen.

I passed by the newspaper office in Bergen and decided to go inside, introducing myself at the reception desk as a fellow journalist from the United States. A couple of reporters amiably showed me their newsroom, which looked remarkably like the one I had recently left in Indiana, right down to the messy desks and bulletin board covered with editorial cartoons.

I wondered this week whether those reporters still are in the business. If so, they’re covering the most difficult story of their careers.

Some are comparing the events of July 22 in Norway – which began with a bombing outside Oslo’s government buildings and ended with a maniacal lone gunman tracking and killing dozens of young people gathered for an island retreat – to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The confirmed death toll now stands at 76, including 68 in the island attack.

Anyone, whether in the U.S. or around the world, can relate to the horror, the pain and the lingering anxiety created by the acts of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s “homegrown” terrorist.

So how can we respond in simple ways that transcend security protocols and self-appointed fear-mongerers?

· We can embrace the reality that we live in a multicultural world.

· We can take the time to learn about a religion, a culture or a part of the world we know little about.

· We can visit a church, mosque or temple in a neighborhood outside of our own.

· We can expand our circle of friends to include at least one more of another faith, race or ethnic group.

· We can refuse to accept intolerance of others from anyone we know – family, friends, co-workers, church members – and explain why such behavior is not acceptable.

· We can raise our voices in protest – in person, online or on the air – when an individual or organization uses hateful speech to heighten public fears or pursue a political agenda.

In the end, it comes down to choosing love and hope over hate.

Putting some meaning into 'justice for all'

2011-07-08T07:42:00.003-05:00

Okay, I know the fact that women “continue to experience injustice, violence and inequality in their home and working lives” is not exactly news.

But, still it was rather depressing that The New York Times could devote only a single paragraph in its July 7 print edition to the report from which that fact was taken.

U.N. Women, a fairly new organization dedicated to empowering women, is trying to launch “a powerful call to action” with Progress of the World’s Women: In Pursuit of Justice, the report released July 6.

Yes, there has been progress compared to a century ago, when only two countries allowed women the vote. But, as Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and executive director of U.N. Women, points out, “full equality demands that women become men’s true equals in the eyes of the law – in their home and working lives, and in the public sphere.”

And, that just isn’t happening. A few “for instances” from the report:

Globally, 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.
More than 2.6 billion women live in countries where marital rape has not been explicitly criminalized.
Laws based on custom or religion still restrict women’s rights within the family.
In practice, women still are paid up to 30 percent less than men in some countries, despite the fact that 117 countries have equal-pay laws.
Some 600 million women work in jobs unprotected by labor laws.

Legal reform is only the beginning of the process. Laws need to be implemented to have an impact. “Changes in the law, when properly enforced, lay the groundwork for changing attitudes and improving women’s position in society,” U.N. Women says.

Some countries have taken creative, practical steps toward justice for ordinary women. In South Africa, “one-stop shops” offer justice, legal and health care services in one place. Mobile courts in the Democratic Republic of Congo assist women in remote rural areas who are under constant threat of sexual violence. Some Latin American countries have found that hiring more female police officers has led to an increase in the reporting of gender-based violence.

Progress of the World’s Women says it has 10 “proven and achievable” recommendations to make justice systems work for women instead of against them.

I would say that’s worth some study, especially at the local church level.

Read the full report at http://progress.unwomen.org.

When the cold, hard facts mean death

2011-06-28T12:05:00.003-05:00

The 1964 report from the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory committee connecting smoking with heart disease, lung cancer and other harbingers of an early grave had such an impact that I learned the study’s cold, hard facts in elementary school and never forgot them.

That’s why I was pleased last week when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration displayed the nine graphic warning labels that will be required on cigarette packages produced after September 2012.

Or, as the New York Daily News headline put it, “Labels of Death Greet Smokers.”

Back in the 1960s, most Americans didn’t want to accept the emerging scientific conclusions about smoking. My father, a cigarette smoker then, was one of them. And, he had no interest in his grade-school daughter telling him how to live his life.

For years, cigarette manufacturers have done their best to perpetuate the myth that smoking is a lifestyle choice that doesn’t really hurt you. The United Methodist Church – which has a long history of witness against the use and marketing of tobacco – has expressed outrage in recent years at the use of marketing techniques, particularly those aimed at children.

The media has been involved in the campaigns to encourage smoking. As a newspaper reporter covering health care in the 1980s, I wrote about lung cancer killing more women than breast cancer, which is still true today. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why women’s magazines weren’t alerting their readers to these statistics, until I realized that cigarette companies were among the magazine’s biggest advertisers.

Still, the good news is the accumulation of scientific data -- including the evidence of the effects of secondhand smoke -- hikes in the cigarette tax and government-imposed restrictions on where people can smoke have had an impact.

A study released last March from the University of California, San Diego, showed the number of “pack-a-day” or more smokers in the United States has fallen sharply since 1965. More importantly, the study found a major decline over the decades in the number of young people who take up the habit.

This trend needs to continue.

That’s why a warning label showing a comparison between healthy and diseased lungs -- with a toll-free phone number that smokers can call to learn how to quit – is good, not gruesome.

Speaking of (spiritual) Sisters…

2011-06-08T12:50:00.004-05:00

One of the things I’ve always admired about the actress Victoria Clark, now performing in her 11th Broadway production, is that she isn’t afraid to talk publicly about her faith.

Of course, when you’re playing a nun – she is now Mother Superior in the musical “Sister Act” – the topic of religion is bound to come up.

In a March 28 interview with Broadway Buzz on Broadway.com, she joked about the differences between her personal Protestant and professional Catholic experiences: “You know, I’m a United Methodist and I’ve been going to my church and feeling oddly out of place after wearing the habit. I’m not kidding! I was looking for the liturgy. I’m missing all the saints and saying, ‘Where’s my rosary, what’s going on?’ I guess she’s really getting to me.”

The church she is referring to is the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, a United Methodist congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where both of us have been members for years. For those who tuned in to the CBS broadcast of St. Paul and St. Andrew’s Christmas Eve Service, Vicki rocked the rafters with “O, Holy Night” and was instrumental behind the scenes.

Since I’ve seen “Sister Act,” I can report that Vicki makes a convincing Catholic – so much so that she was nominated this spring for a Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical. She and her fellow cast members will be performing during the Tony Awards broadcast this Sunday (June 12).

This is not her first Tony nomination. In 2005, Vicki won the Tony Award for Leading Actress in a Musical, along with rave reviews, for “The Light in the Piazza.”

When I interviewed her then, Vicki – a Dallas native with a music degree from Yale – talked about how church was “always the main venue for singing” as she was growing up. Her faith also helps her infuse meaning into the roles she plays. In “The Light in the Piazza,” for example, the “light” – to Vicki -- signified compassion, redemption, grace and even forgiveness for Margaret Johnson, the character she portrayed.

To prepare for “Sister Act,” Vicki visited Mother Dolores, who served as inspiration for 1992 “Sister Act” movie, at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn. Mother Delores, who later saw the show on Broadway with some of her fellow sisters, helped the actress “make my character real.”

"She said, 'Do me a favor, don't make her pious.' So we talked about humanity," Vicki told Celebrity Buzz: Diva Talk on playbill.com. "She was trying to teach us about how God wants our humanity, not our divinity."

Playing Mother Superior has allowed her to both examine her own religious beliefs and become, well, more ecumenical.

“I'm a United Methodist, where everything gets decided around the table, so there is food all the time, everywhere,” she said in the Diva Talk interview. “There is such a structure in Catholicism and so many different people that you can pray to. And learning about the saints, and learning about marriage intercession, and learning about all the different nuns and the orders, it's just fascinating how much there is to learn.”

Vicki is not the only United Methodist-related connection to a show set in a convent. The playwright Douglas Carter Beane, another Tony nominee, was brought in to provide additional book material for the musical.

“I’m getting all the liturgy down,” he told the New York Times in February. “If you’re raised Methodist, Catholicism is a bit of a workout. It’s sort of like you’re up, you’re down, you’re up, you’re down. It’s a continual hokey-pokey.”

Tornado damage of Katrina-like proportions

2011-05-24T10:16:00.006-05:00

Tornados were not uncommon in northern Indiana when I was growing up, but none of them ever touched down in my hometown of Fort Wayne.

According to Native American legend, or so I heard at the time, the three rivers that converged downtown – the St. Marys, the Maumee and the St. Joseph – protected the city from funnel clouds.

Then, years later, when I was visiting my family there over a Memorial Day weekend, a small tornado skipped across a shopping center and subdivision not far from the restaurant where we were eating dinner, causing some damage but no injuries. The protective spell of the rivers, apparently, was broken.

Everyone seems to be vulnerable these days. This spring’s tornado activity across the United States is setting new records for death and destruction.

Today, almost a third of the city of Joplin, Mo., lies in ruins as the death toll threatens to rise above 117, making it the deadliest U.S. tornado since the National Weather Service began keeping track of such things 61 years ago.

To date, 482 people have died this year – in Missouri, Alabama, North Carolina, and other states -- as the result of tornados, about eight times the average number in any given year, according to CNN.

Even the Rev. Tom Hazelwood, a veteran leader of numerous tornado and hurricane relief efforts for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, is surprised by the numbers of tornados that have hit highly-populated areas.

“Even with all the early warning systems, we have in place, theses storms still crop up,” he told me yesterday from the Detroit airport, where he was boarding a connecting flight to Missouri.

What has been left behind is damage of Katrina-like proportions.

And that is one of the problems for UMCOR. Parts of at least 14 of the denomination’s annual (regional) conferences have been affected by tornados, but only a little more than half a million dollars has come into UMCOR for 2011 Spring Storms UMCOR Advance #3021326 to help fund relief efforts in those conferences.

That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $66 million given for the church’s response to Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Please give to UMCOR.

Lara Logan and the use of rape as a weapon

2011-05-05T06:22:00.000-05:00

The frenzied attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which she bravely recounted in horrific detail during Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast, is, unfortunately, just one example of the terror suffered by anonymous women around the world.

Bosnia, Rwanda, Eastern Congo – these are just a few of the places where rape and sexual violence have been used in recent decades to intimidate, demoralize and destroy populations, particularly those of other ethnic or political groups.

Rape is a weapon that can be used by individuals, mobs or armies. And as long as women are considered to be of less worth than men, are thought of as someone’s property, or are simply considered expendable, they will be at risk.

In Logan’s case, she was just doing her job on Feb. 11 when a mob celebrating the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt suddenly turned hostile, pulling her away from her security guard and crew. Her clothes were ripped off, piece by piece, and she described how she was raped by the multitude of hands covering her body. Her attackers even seemed determined to literally tear her limbs apart.

Logan was certain she would die, until the crowd pushed her up against a group of Egyptian women near a fence. One of the women put her arms around her, and others hovered protectively until a group of soldiers was able to lead her away from the crowd.

Coincidentally, the attack on Logan took place the same month that a new series of rapes occurred in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo. While a few officers were punished for rapes committed by soldiers there in January, it was a rare outcome in a place where hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women and girls, have been sexually assaulted, despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers.

Like the international community, The United Methodist Church has acknowledged it is “challenged” to respond to the use of rape as a weapon. “The extent and frequency of the violation of women in war must not be allowed to deaden sensitivity to this gross injustice,” says the resolution on “Rape in Times of Conflict and War” in the church’s 2008 Book of Resolutions.

But this challenge is different from the challenge of planting churches or raising funds for flood victims or providing hot lunches for schoolchildren. The resolution actually has some good suggestions on ways to seek political and legal redress and otherwise support women in these situations, but real change can only take place when men are compelled to acknowledge women as equal partners in society.

Lara Logan said she spoke out about the sexual attack against her because she wanted to break the “code of silence” followed by other female correspondents on the topic of sexual assault.

United Methodists need to break that code, too, and spread the word that sexual violence against women is not acceptable – anywhere, any time or under any circumstances.

Connecting as one to achieve a miracle

2011-04-20T09:51:00.002-05:00

In the district that the Rev. Joseph Bishman oversees in southern Ohio, just at the edge of Appalachia, only two of the 159 United Methodist churches are what he would call “fiscally sound congregations.”

That’s a polite way of acknowledging the economic reality of the Shawnee Valley District, part of the West Ohio Conference. In two of the district’s counties, for example, the average income is only $18,500.

Still, while neither the churches nor their members would seem to have a dollar to spare, United Methodists there have miraculously raised nearly $650,000 over the past few years to support church planting half a world away in Vietnam.

That success, Bishman believes, started with a decision to regard the entire district as one large congregation, creating a sense of connection beyond the requirements of the denominational structure. The goal was to get them to move a mountain “one shovel, one basket, one cart at a time.”

After interviewing Bishman and hearing him speak at the recent Board of Global Ministries meeting, I have to wonder: is the idea of bringing together a whole district as if it is one congregation another possible way to address the rural church crisis in our denomination?

UMNS has spent considerable time looking at rural churches over the past year. Although such congregations still view themselves as the backbone of The United Methodist Church, on a practical level many are struggling to maintain old buildings, pay pastors and serve their communities with an aging, shrinking membership.

More significantly, many members of rural or small town churches are feeling abandoned by those in denominational leadership – from district superintendent to bishop to national agency staff. A 2010 survey conducted by the United Methodist rural fellowship showed these congregations are seeking encouragement and affirmation from the larger church to show their ministry is still valued.

Models to help renew rural churches are being implemented in some cases– I saw how a combined parish of five churches in northwestern Ohio seems to be working – but it’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Maybe the idea of the one-congregation mindset for a district of small churches would be a good fit in some conferences.

In the Shawnee Valley, that concept has led to a unique form of connectionalism that seemed to be missing before. And it supports what rural experts say is necessary for any congregations hoping to survive into the future: the ability to look outside themselves and be a mission presences in their communities.

Even communities on other continents.

A big wave stirs memories

2011-03-18T13:15:00.001-05:00

Two boxes sit on the top shelf of my closet. One holds a yukata, or Japanese summer kimono, that is navy blue with large pink flowers. The other box contains an obi, or kimono sash, and instructions, written on looseleaf paper in my teenage hand, on how to tie, fold and clean it.

My connection with Japan began years ago, when my church — First-Wayne United Methodist in Fort Wayne, Ind. — decided to host a group of Japanese young people for the summer through the Experiment in International Living. Miyuki came to live with us and a photo album holds a record of our excursions with her to the lakes of northern Indiana, the Indianapolis statehouse and Mackinac Island in Michigan.

A few years later, during the summer of my 17th birthday, I spent six weeks on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, courtesy of a Lions Club International exchange program. I lived with two different families, one in Kurume and one in Nagasaki, and quickly grew close to my Japanese “sisters” in each, who were college-age at the time. The next year, one of these sisters, Mariko, spent the summer with my family in Indiana.

I always meant to go back to Japan, but it didn’t happen, except for a quick stopover at the airport in Tokyo.

So I never ventured to northern Japan, where the March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused so much devastation and sorrow and where the threat of a wider radiation leak from a nuclear power plant is keeping everyone on edge.

Unfortunately, even without the news reports, I know exactly what a town looks like after a tsunami has swept through.

Eighteen days after the Dec. 26, 2004, Asian earthquake and tsunami that touched a number of countries ringing the Indian Ocean, I was standing in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, one of the hardest hit areas. Three of us from United Methodist Communications — Larry Hollon, Mike DuBose and I — had accompanied a Board of Global Ministries delegation there to be in solidarity with the Methodist Church in Indonesia.

Television screens, no matter how jumbo, cannot totally capture the aftermath of a tsunami’s incredible force. As I wrote then, the debris — and the destruction — went on for miles. The Rev. Henry Leono, a New Jersey pastor and former resident of Banda Aceh who was with us, literally could not believe his eyes. “This is beyond my imagination,” he said.

Homes and cities can be rebuilt. The human toll from the 2004 tsunami was awful — a final death count of 229,866 by the United Nations, including those whose bodies were never found. Of that total, nearly 130,700 were in Indonesia.

The pastor of the Methodist Church in Banda Aceh, the Rev. Tahir Wijaya, narrowly survived the tsunami by climbing a tree. The receding water deposited two corpses in the church and another 27 bodies in the yard outside. Forty-five church members were believed to have died and 50 families had homes that were damaged or destroyed.

Still, when we visited the church, Wijaya was starting a daunting cleanup process. He was determined to get his church, and the attached school, up and running as soon as possible, with plans for an extended ministry to the families of the 760 students at the school. He and his wife had even re-named their baby daughter. Born two days before the catastrophe, she was now Natalie Tsunami.

I remember that pastor’s determination now. I think of my experiences with the Japanese people and I know they will overcome this disaster, too. And, like those who suffered through the 2004 tsunami, they have the support of sisters and brothers around the world.

New warriors in the battle for equality

2011-03-08T13:03:00.002-06:00

Plenty of young women attended the recent U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meeting, and some of them, unfortunately, were telling the same old story.

Taurai Sandra Chinyerere, a 26-year-old United Methodist from Zimbabwe, was actively discouraged from pursuing studies in information technology that, in the eyes of some, were “meant for men.” Even after she achieved her goal, she had to take a long-used back-door route to employment in her chosen profession. She started as a receptionist before landing a position as an IT specialist within the same company.

Based on the hallway chatter I heard, other young women had similar experiences to share, which made the “priority theme” of the meeting — “access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology” — even more timely. You can read my story at http://goo.gl/yR9CH.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Fittingly, given the world’s focus on democracy demonstrations in the Middle East, Egyptian activists have called for a “Million Women March” to highlight their demands for “fair and equal representation for all Egyptian citizens.”

A century earlier, more than a million women and men attended rallies supporting women’s right to work, vote and hold public office. Through the decades, International Women’s Day has evolved from its socialist beginnings to “a global day of recognition and celebration.” Countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, Laos and Zambia mark it as an official holiday.

And yet, the voices from the Methodist delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women reminded me that the battle to achieve equality for women and girls must be fought over and over again.

Margarita Fatima Souza Ribero of Brazil talked about Anna, an illiterate mother of three, abused by her husband, who migrated to Sao Paulo in search of a better life and received training in the construction trades, despite the fact that “this is considered men’s work in Brazil.”

Fea Elizabeth Saffa described how she and the 50/50 group of Sierra Leone are training women to go into politics – fighting a mindset in the Kono diamond district that “the girl child is meant to be at home doing domestic chores.”

Ilia Vasquez Gaston discussed her struggle to incorporate domestic violence and gender issues into the curriculum of Puerto Rico’s primary and secondary schools, a task made more difficult by opposition from religious groups, among others.

But Gaston is another of those young women, like Taurai Sandra Chinyerere, who don’t take “you can’t do that” for an answer. In fact, she’s doing everything.

The coordinator of a violence against women prevention program for the 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico, Gaston also is a doctoral student, active member of the Puerto Rico Psychology Association, social activist and pastor’s wife. She is part of the national committee of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) in Puerto Rico and networks with other young professional women. Now, that network has extended to the United Nations.

There are battles to be won, but we have a new generation of warriors to fight them.

Forecast for South Sudan: Hope

2011-02-22T15:11:00.003-06:00

Victor Chol didn’t vote in the special election that has set the southern part of Sudan on the road to independence. But he spent a lot of time educating Sudanese on how to use the ballot so their votes would be properly registered.

For Chol, one of the 4,000 or so “Lost Boys and Girls” of Sudan who found a new life in the United States, it was a way to give back.

He is one of the many church people who are betting that the new nation of South Sudan can make a go of it, despite the formidable challenges ahead.

Some question whether the new country’s political base can hold together. A Feb. 12 Time Magazine article pointed out the disputes that exist within South Sudan. “During the previous civil war, more southerners died at each other's hands than were killed by their northern enemies, who funded and armed southern tribal rivals,” writes Alan Boswell.

But the intricacies of the conflict have not deterred religious leaders across the continent who were instrumental in bringing about the 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan and set up the referendum for independence.

Then – through such groups as the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, All Africa Conference of Churches and Sudan Council of Churches – they made sure the vote came off and sent 350 monitors to observe the process. The Rev. Sam Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, was involved as a special ecumenical envoy.

"If the church had not accompanied the Sudanese, the (peace agreement) would not have been possible and the referendum would not have happened,” Bishop Robert Aboagye-Mensah, a Methodist from Ghana and vice president of the All Africa Conference of Churches told the World Council of Churches Central Committee on Friday. “Now, as this new nation is built, the message of the Sudanese to the church is 'Please don't abandon us!'"

That seems unlikely to happen. African Christians have demonstrated a commitment to nurturing their Sudanese brothers and sisters and United Methodists elsewhere are making their own promises, including members of the U.S. Holston Conference, where Chol is now based.

The 32-year-old Tennessee graduate, who still has three brothers and two sisters in Sudan, is showing others what can be done to help, particularly in the area of education. His motivation is simple. “It has always been about trying to share what’s been given to me by my fellow Americans,” he told me when I interviewed him recently.

Surviving, and perhaps thriving, in rural Ohio

2011-02-10T08:23:00.003-06:00

At the turn of the 20th century, northwest Ohio was booming.

Lima was the locomotive capital of the world, building four 200-ton steam locomotives every week. A cigar factory produced a million cigars a month. Standard Oil had a refinery in the area. Agriculture was a mainstay of the region, with farmers cultivating land that their families would hold for generations.

Leipsic Methodist Church, built in 1894, immediately became a denominational flagship, growing with its namesake town.

In a way, it still is, although much has changed.

The farms are still there, but the economic decline in Putnam and nearby counties began in 1950, when diesels put steam locomotives out of business. Some new business has come in, but the boom times are long gone.

The story is familiar to those of us who grew up in the industrial north. What’s new is how the church is trying to save and, hopefully, grow its small churches in these areas.

Last September, UMNS photographer Mike DuBose and I spent a weekend visiting the folks at the Greater Leipsic Multi-Site Parish to get a sense of how this model for rural ministry is working. You can read the rural church series at http://bit.ly/hYRwo5.

The parish’s four pastors and five congregations welcomed us with a spirit of hospitality and connectionalism. The Rev. Tom Graves, our main contact in the parish, went out of his way to make sure we met with people from each congregation, had a chance to chat with the pastors, and were able to catch a sampling of community life through the parade and fair for the “Leipsic Days” celebration on that Saturday.

The Rev. Bill Patterson – who had just started a few months earlier as the new senior pastor but grew up 20 miles away, in North Baltimore – was generous with his time. He opened his home so we could have a sit-down discussion with him, Graves and the Rev. Amy Haines, who brought another perspective as a younger clergy member with two children and a spouse active in the parish.

We didn’t meet the Rev. Janet Lewis-Cattell until Sunday morning, when we arrived at Oakdale United Methodist Church for worship. But we had heard the concerns and prayers of the parish regarding her battle against cancer. Thankfully, her prognosis has steadily improved since then.

In true Methodist fashion, the congregations kept us well fed – we were included in a carry-in dinner, breakfast and lunch.

We couldn’t absorb everything or get to know everyone over a weekend. But driving along the roads of a region that was once part of the Great Black Swamp, we caught glimpses of the past, present and future and how the church is changing, whether it wants to or not.

As the Rev. Roger Grace, an Ohio native and president of the United Methodist Rural Fellowship, told me, this area had been a stronghold for the predecessor groups of our denomination – Methodist, Evangelical and United Brethren.

After the mergers, some places ended up with two United Methodists churches in very close proximity. In the village of Deshler, two congregations were literally across the street from each other – until it just didn’t make sense to maintain two separate buildings anymore.

As I sat in the basement fellowship hall with a few members of what is now the “New Beginnings” church, they admitted it’s been hard to let go of their separate identities.

Sandy Powell remembered the revival meetings typical of the Evangelical United Brethren tradition that St. Paul’s Church, now shuttered, held as she was growing up and said she misses the “sing-sperations” conducted several times a year.

“We’re still working out some things,” added Phyllis LaRue, who joined the Deshler Methodist Church in 1940, when she was 14 years old.

The truth is, they really have no choice but to make the best of it. But from what I experienced in northwest Ohio, that’s not a bad choice at all.

The Rural Backbone of American Methodism

2011-02-08T09:37:00.008-06:00

My sister, Laura, puts together the Sunday bulletin at Maple Grove United Methodist near Auburn, Ind., the rural church where she and her husband, Guy, belong. They also mow the lawn, shovel snow off the steps in the winter and generally keep an eye on the building, which is down the road from their house.

Theirs is the kind of hands-on dedication that’s essential for a small congregation where the worship service draws 20 – including the pastor – as it did the day after Christmas, when I attended.

These days, mega-churches with elaborate multimedia presentations, praise bands and in-house coffee shops often grab the spotlight. But the rural backbone of American Methodism, born of a pioneer spirit and nurtured by the circuit riders of old, remains intact alongside cornfields and small-town main streets, even if it’s weaker than it used to be.

Often, these rural churches are anchored by families whose membership dates back for generations. For example, in the northwest Ohio town of Gilboa, 92-year-old Thelma Gratz grew up in the Methodist Episcopal congregation started by her great-great grandfather, Samuel Hall, around 1833.

That congregation merged in 1938 with the Methodist Protestant congregation where her future husband was a member, and it eventually became Gilboa United Methodist Church. “Methodist Protestant Church” is still spelled out in the stained glass above the main entrance.

Thelma continues to worship at Gilboa, where I met her one Sunday morning last September. Her sons are members, too.

Other long-timers include Dorthea Wilkinson, 78, and her brother, Wayne Hector, 70. “I used to sit up in the balcony and count ladies’ hats,” Dorthea told me. Now she helps run the Chapel Belles, which raised money for an elevator in the church by serving meals every Friday.

Some rural churches, especially those lacking younger members, are slowly dying. But Gilboa United Methodist Church isn’t one of them.

Its members recognized that if they wanted strong pastoral leadership, fulfilling worship and better mission opportunities, a change had to be made. So when the denomination’s West Ohio Conference offered them the chance to join the Leipsic Multi-Site Parish – now a network of five congregations – they agreed.

And most have found the arrangement to their liking, especially the opportunity to enjoy the various preaching styles of the parish’s four pastors. “I think it’s great,” Dorthea said. “In fact, I don’t know if the church could survive if we weren’t in a parish. It would be tough.”

Unfortunately, as we’ve learned while gathering information for United Methodist News Service, “tough” describes the situation that a number of rural churches find themselves in. The United Methodist Church needs to offer resources and develop new models, like the multi-site parish concept, to assist them.

But the real key to survival, those involved in rural ministries tell us, lies within the congregations themselves and their ability to look outward rather than inward.

It’s a matter of maintaining vitality, rural expert Bill Kemp told me. “As soon as the rural church fails to connect with its community, that church loses its vitality.”

The challenge of living with HIV/AIDS

2009-12-01T10:30:00.005-06:00

Twenty years ago this month, I wrote a five-part series on AIDS for United Methodist News Service.

Cecile Ahimin Aya (left) has an HIV test during a screening at the Jerusalem Parish United Methodist Church in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, in November 2008. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.

When I reread those stories this week, I was struck by the number of churches and individuals already involved in ministry to people with AIDS or "PWA" - a popular term back then. In fact, some 22 resolutions on AIDS education and ministry were passed by the denomination's annual conferences in 1988.

Terry Boyd, a 39-year-old gay man with full-blown AIDS, was the subject of one of my stories. A former Catholic, he and his partner, Richard Glodo, were members of Lafayette Park United Methodist Church in St. Louis.

Terry made it clear that the support he received from his congregation not only helped him in the battle against his disease but also strengthened his faith in God - to the point where he was offering prayers of thanksgiving during what could have been the darkest period of his life. He even wrote a book on his experiences, "Coping with AIDS: A Christian Perspective."

"I truly feel that even in the face of AIDS, I have been blessed tremendously," he told me.

Terry died on April 17, 1990, four months after my series was published. The real challenge, he had said, was not dying of AIDS, but living with AIDS.

By the end of 2008, an estimated 33.4 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS. On this World AIDS Day 2009, and all the days afterward, United Methodists can take actions to help them deal with that challenge. One way is by contributing to the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund.

BloomBytes: Report shows ‘frightening’ rise in U.S. hunger

2009-11-19T10:28:00.003-06:00

Growing up, we Baby Boomers often heard our parents urge us to clean our plates because children were starving in China, or India, or some other far off country.

But we’ve known all along that hunger is a real issue in the United States, too. A report released Nov. 16 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that 49 million people live in households where there sometimes isn’t enough to eat.

That’s not only the highest number reported since the government began tracking “food insecurity” 14 years ago, but an increase of 13 million from just a year ago.

This has to be one of the most frightening statistics related to the recession. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called these numbers “a wake-up call for the country.”

More than half a million of the U.S. households with “very low food security,” where meals are being skipped and portions cut, include children.

It’s not hard to put two and two together. Too many children are going hungry.

"Child hunger is not just a casualty of the recession,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, in a statement about the report. “It was a problem before the recession, and unless we take the necessary steps, kids will continue to suffer after the economy recovers.”

Involvement in Bread for the World, which is releasing its own annual hunger report on Nov. 23, is just one of many ways in which United Methodists can address the issue of hunger.

It’s time to step up our efforts to fill the empty plates of others.

The 'clean plate club' revisited

2009-11-19T09:54:00.003-06:00

Growing up, we Baby Boomers often heard our parents urge us to clean our plates because children were starving in China, or India, or some other far off country.

But we’ve known all along that hunger is a real issue in the United States, too. And a report released Nov. 16 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that 49 million people now live in households where there sometimes isn’t enough to eat.

That’s not only the highest number reported since the government began tracking “food insecurity” 14 years ago, but also an increase of 13 million from just a year ago.

This has to be one of the most frightening statistics related to the recession. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called these numbers “a wake-up call for the country.”

More than half a million of the U.S. households with “very low food security,” where meals are being skipped and portions cut, include children.

It’s not hard to put two and two together. Too many children are going hungry.

"Child hunger is not just a casualty of the recession,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, in a statement about the report. “It was a problem before the recession, and unless we take the necessary steps, kids will continue to suffer after the economy recovers.”

Involvement in Bread for the World, which is releasing its own annual hunger report on Nov. 23, is just one of many ways in which United Methodists can address the issue of hunger.

It’s time to step up our efforts to fill the empty plates of others.

The vertical commute of a naval chaplain

2009-11-10T14:23:00.001-06:00

The Rev. Laura Bender has a vertical commute to her church.

Her living quarters aboard the USS New York, where she is the ship’s chaplain, are seven decks above the chapel. That means traveling between the two locations via six ladder wells, two hatches and a scuttle.

After walking the decks of the New York myself last Thursday, both vertically and horizontally, as she led a private tour, I can attest that Lieutenant Commander Bender must stay in pretty good shape since she makes that commute at least several times a day.

I also can attest to the affection she feels for the 360-member permanent crew, the ship itself, and the symbol of healing that it represents as a positive outgrowth of the 9/11 attacks, carrying the very steel of the fallen Twin Towers within its bow.

At 50, Laura Bender is eight years older than Commanding Officer Curt Jones, another United Methodist. She is both counselor and mother to the crewmembers, who tease her about tucking them in at night with a “Good night, New York” signoff from the bridge after evening prayers.

This is her first shipboard assignment, but in her 10 years as a military chaplain, she has spent time in places like Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. As part of a medical unit during the 2003 Iraq invasion, she helped tend to the dead and dying – both American and Iraqi alike – and lived under primitive conditions. It was a “rough period,” she says.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that she actually knows how to eat fire. It’s a skill she doesn’t demonstrate on a regular basis, but she admits the U.S. Marines like to see her do it.

On the USS New York, Bender is assisted by another United Methodist, Religious Program Specialist Edmond Garrett of Mississippi. He also is her bodyguard because chaplains do not carry weapons and are protected by others in conflict situations.

She compares him to a church secretary, but asks me to imagine a church secretary “being fully qualified with weapons.”

The USS New York was commissioned on Nov. 7 on a dock next to the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan and there was much fanfare in the week leading up to the event. As the ship’s commissioning coordinator, Bender worked tirelessly to both promote the ship and respond to requests from the public and 9/11 families.

She worked so hard that her husband, Kenneth Anderson, who was in New York with her, was concerned that she was not getting enough sleep and not eating enough. However, she seemed to be enjoying it. After all, how often does one get to eat breakfast at Tiffany’s?

Her most important task, it seems, has been to provide a sympathetic ear – listening to the stories of loss, survival and healing by those touched by 9/11 who are now touched by the mission of the USS New York.

And that makes her a special Navy chaplain.

After H1N1, looking at malaria

2009-11-04T08:42:00.002-06:00

Like many other parents, I’ve been a little anxious about when my son will be able to get the H1N1 vaccine.

The New York City school system is making the vaccine available for free, but as a high school student, he will have to go to a November weekend clinic somewhere in the Bronx to get it. We don’t really know yet whether there is enough of the vaccine or how much demand there will be.

At least we can expect to have access to protection from a potentially serious illness. If Jack lived in Africa, on the other hand, he might already have survived a case of malaria.

Or not.

Every 30 seconds, a child in Africa dies from a malaria infection. Of the more than a million people killed by malaria each year, 90 percent are African children.

Four years ago, I covered the TIME Global Health Summit in New York, where United Methodist Bishop Joao Somane Machado of Mozambique – who has contracted malaria a number of times himself -- said the world needed to pay attention to the fact that children in his country were dying each day from malaria. It was not an African issue, he added, but a global one.

Since then, United Methodists and other groups have done an admirable job in responding to this issue, particularly in providing mosquito bednets and education about the disease at various locations in Africa.

But it’s not enough. So The United Methodist Church has officially declared that it wants to “Imagine No Malaria.” The goal seems almost impossible – raise $75 million to expand programs aimed at eradicating the disease around the world by 2015.

The big question: do we collectively have enough imagination to achieve the goal?

Look at your own children before you answer.

The sin against women in Congo

2009-10-26T12:48:00.000-05:00

The larger-than-life portrait of Thérèse, an 11-year-old orphan in the Democratic Republic of Congo, says it all.

She sits on a cot, head bowed, staring down at her hands, a small bag of possessions resting beside her. She looks as if she is trying to be as still as possible, so no one will notice her.

Or maybe she's just trying to forget that several men raped her while she was out gathering firewood near the refugee camp where she lived, that she is among the tens of thousands who have been victims of sexual violence in her country.

The photograph of Thérèse is part of an exhibition on gender-based violence called

"Congo/Women: Portraits of War," on view in the north gallery of the public lobby at the United Nations through Nov. 12. Information and essays on the topic also can be found at http://congowomen.org.

"This is not a natural disaster; it is our disaster as a global community," write Leslie Thomas and Jane Saks, co-directors of the exhibition.

Through photos and text, Congo/Women salutes the courage of these women while doling out some grim statistics. The average life expectancy for a woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo is only 46 years. In addition to sexual violence, women and girls are threatened by a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and little access to health care.

The World Council of Churches believes violence against women is a sin.

In a public statement issued in September, the council's Central Committee urged its member churches "to publicly condemn violence against women" that has become pervasive in Congo because of armed conflict.

The brutality of the atrocities, the statement said, "go beyond rape and aim at the complete physical and psychological destruction of women as sexual slaves, with implications for the entire society."

These women must know they are not alone, the council says.

The photograph of Thérèse was taken in 2006. By now, I hope, she has found some peace in her life.

Faith in United Methodist legislators

2009-10-20T12:29:00.001-05:00

The recent UMNS story about the fact that 53 United Methodists are among those in Congress struggling with the issue of health care reform reminded me of an article I found in an old United Methodist newspaper when I was sorting through my father’s papers after his death two years ago.

The article, in the April 1969 Indiana Area news edition of “Together” magazine, counted 31 United Methodists in the Indiana General Assembly that year. Among them was my father, Allan E. Bloom, who was president pro tem of the Senate.

In a story headlined: “UMs in Assembly Agree: Religion, Politics ‘Do’ Mix, writer Robert L. Gildea noted that while a certain “breed of Christian idealists” continued to believe that all politicians must be corrupt, these United Methodists begged to differ.

“Those queried were unanimous in their insistence that not only do religion and politics mix but that they must mix if the church is to achieve many of its ‘this-worldly’ goals. It is the how of the “mixing” which divides them,” Gildea wrote.

The legislators pointed out that they brought a moral dimension to the shaping of legislation. “Hopefully, I’m doing the work of the universal church when I come here to promote good laws,” my father said.

In fact, those legislators back in 1969 – a time of tremendous political and social tumult – said the church wasn’t doing enough to make its influence felt.

Allan Bloom thought that clergy needed to discuss political issues from the pulpit. “Any minister who doesn’t concern himself with the political process is being negligent,” he said. On the other hand, he added, “Any minister who discusses nothing but politics is being negligent, too.”

That doesn’t mean my father agreed with everything a minister preached from the pulpit. I particularly remember one Sunday, probably around the same time period, when he was so upset by our pastor’s anti-Vietnam War sermon that he declared we might just start going to a Lutheran church instead. But that was a heat-of-the-moment reaction – he and the pastor remained good friends.

Whether in 1969 or today, the impact the denomination’s official positions may have on its member politicians really depends upon the individual. But, like my father, I have to believe that faith matters.

A Methodist Nobel Peace Prize winner

2009-10-13T11:08:00.001-05:00

Plenty of opinions have been expressed, pro and con, about whether President Obama is deserving of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

It made me wonder what the reaction might have been in 1946, when a Methodist layman, John R. Mott, received the peace prize, sharing it with another American, Emily Greene Balch, a professor who had worked with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Surely, in the year following the end of World War II, the prize committee might have found any number of heroes to honor with the award. But it recognized the efforts of a man who united “millions of young people in work for the Christian ideals of peace and tolerance between nations.”

Mott, who died in 1955 at the age of 89, was one of six founders of the World Student Christian Federation in 1895 and then its chief executive, and he served with the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations.

In his acceptance speech in Stockholm, Mott noted that he had spent 60 years traveling the world. “In this worldwide effort, I have concentrated on successive generations of youth,” he said. “If I were to add a word, it would be a word of abounding hope.”

The current generation of youth, he said, was responding to the Nobel Prize ideal “and are planning, as no previous generation, for a great united advance in the furtherance of peace and good will throughout the world.”

Mott had a saying about planning: “Plan as if there were no such thing as prayer. Pray as if there were no such thing as planning.”

He used both strategies to push for the creation of the World Council of Churches, which occurred just two years after he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He preached at the opening service of the council’s inaugural assembly in Amsterdam in 1948.

Mott’s real legacy is the number of Christian young people who are still advocating for peace around the world.

Feeding one small part of the Bronx

2009-10-09T11:01:00.004-05:00

I have a confession to make: I live in the Bronx, but my church home is in Manhattan.

When I first moved to New York, more than 20 years ago, I joined the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, United Methodist, at 86th and Broadway. I continue to commute to the Upper West Side for worship services.

The Rev. Denise Pickett commutes in the opposite direction. Because there is no parsonage for Woodycrest United Methodist Church, she lives in Harlem, on the east side of Manhattan, and travels to the Highbridge section of the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium.

This week, Woodycrest is marking 99 years as a congregation with a three-day revival and Sunday anniversary celebration. But the church has been working hard at reviving the neighborhood as well.

A month ago, to gather information for my story on Woodycrest, I visited the church’s Bread Basket Program. This outreach provides a hot lunch on Wednesdays, prepared in the small basement kitchen by Bertha Burke and Cathleen Ralph and served by other volunteers.

The menu that day was meatloaf with corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, a dinner roll, an apple and a Danish “because we like to give them a little something sweet,” Cathleen told me. They insisted that I eat as well. I did, and it was delicious.

About a hundred people come each week to take advantage of the free meal. They seemed to enjoy the food, but, more importantly, they seemed to enjoy the company – both of their fellow diners and the church members who treat them with respect and kindness. Like a neighbor.

It’s clear that Denise Pickett is a key part of the relationship between the church and the neighborhood. Olive Venzen, who came to eat lunch, remembered how the pastor helped see her through breast cancer surgery. Ardythe Bryan, who was arranging food on serving trays, joined Woodycrest church because she felt so welcomed by Pickett. Despite being in chronic pain, she believes her volunteer work at the Bread Basket “is a sacrifice I have to do. It’s God’s work.”

The Bronx is a huge place. But this church is making an impact in one small part of the borough.

Striking the right tone on HIV/AIDS

2009-10-02T10:17:00.001-05:00

It was one of those “good news-bad news” moments.

The United Nations reported this week that the number of people being tested and treated for HIV/AIDS had doubled in a number of countries, undoubtedly saving or at least prolonging countless lives.

Unfortunately, the number of new HIV cases remains high – an estimated 2.7 million in 2007 – which means too many remain uneducated about the disease.

One of the earliest champions of HIV/AIDS education and advocacy in The United Methodist Church was Cathie Lyons, who led the Health and Welfare Ministries unit of the Board of Global Ministries. Back in the days of creaky computer dialup connections, she and Charles Carnahan, another staff person, decided to launch an electronic bulletin board for HIV/AIDS ministries.

They asked Nancy Carter – who retired Sept. 30 as the board’s Webmaster – to oversee what became known as Computerized AIDS Ministries. After its launch in June 1993, CAM became a refuge for people looking for acceptance and support from the church. “Our ‘CAM-munity,’ as we called it, became a lifeline for people who were homebound or isolated for various reasons, not only from AIDS,” Carter writes in the September/October 2009 issue of New World Outlook.

The technology may seem antiquated now, but, to me, one of the most important aspects of CAM was that it set a tone for the denomination to follow. The early condemnation of AIDS sufferers by some in the church was wiped away.

“CAM was run on the principle of Christian hospitality,” Carter writes. “Our community guidelines included an affirmation from Health and Welfare’s ‘Covenant to Care’ program: ’If you have HIV/AIDS or are the loved one of a person who has HIV/AIDS, you are welcome here…’”

That tone now carries through in the denomination’s Global AIDS Fund and a variety of HIV/AIDS-related projects supported by the church around the world.

South African youth lead a new protest movement

2009-09-25T09:55:00.002-05:00

Last night, my husband, Paul, and I participated in the “open school” night at the public high school Jack attends near our home in the Bronx. We were impressed with his young, committed teachers and the rigor of the curriculum for the coming school year.

Abongile Ndesi, a ninth grader in South Africa, wants to learn, too. She was one of thousands of children who thronged the city hall this week in Cape Town to demand libraries and librarians, according to The New York Times. “We want more information and knowledge,” she said.

In New York, Jack is taking an advanced placement course in biology that offers him the potential of earning credit for college. In Cape Town, students at Chris Hani High School were finally successful in their demands that the school hire a science teacher.

South Africa’s educational system is failing its young people. Students are so desperate to learn that they tutor each other for exams and attempt to teach classes when the adult instructors fail to show up. For those of us in the United States, fretting over standardized test scores and student dropout rates, it’s almost hard to imagine such zeal on the part of students.

Education has been one of the cornerstones of mission for The United Methodist Church, particularly in Africa. Nelson Mandela was educated in a Methodist school, along with many other African leaders.

The United Methodist-related Africa University in Zimbabwe has become a beacon of hope for that part of the continent. “Bible Women” being trained by the Women’s Division, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, teach literacy in their communities in Angola. The church-led Operation Classroom focuses on everything from providing pencils and notebooks to building schools in Sierra Leone and Liberia. At the end of October, United Methodists in Minnesota will celebrate their 20th year of ministry with Operation Classroom.

Younger South Africans are now taking the organizing lessons learned from the apartheid struggle and applying them to reformation of the education system. Equal Education, a citizens’ movement, had a campaign to fix broken windows in schools last year and is leading the charge on libraries.

Many United Methodists were actively involved in the long fight against apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps it is time to expand on this legacy and help that country’s youth secure their dreams for the future.

Achieving 'lasting change' for girls and women

2009-09-17T14:26:00.002-05:00

It was a small article, condensed to a one-paragraph news brief inside the Sept. 15 print edition of The New York Times. The United Nations General Assembly voted to “create a new, more powerful agency for women,” Reuters reported.

At a time when Afghan girls literally risk their lives to get an education, when more than 60 percent of those in sub-Saharan Africa living with HIV are women, when women and girls around the globe fall victim to slavery and prostitution rings, such an agency obviously has work to do.

Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. Secretary-General, hit the mark when he responded to the Sept. 15 decision to create this superagency for women. “Only by standing up for fundamental rights everywhere can we expect to achieve lasting change,” he said.

Through its agencies and area church bodies, The United Methodist Church has worked for years to support such rights, as witnessed by its Book of Resolutions. But the church itself is not immune to discrimination against women, as our denominational surveys on sexual harassment have demonstrated.

Despite repeated attempts by some to abolish the church’s Commission on the Status and Role of Women, the agency is still needed: for its leadership role on church policy and its ability to offer a sounding board for the concerns of women in the church. Just ask my former news-writing colleague, Garlinda Burton, the commission’s top executive, who frequently receives calls for help from individual women.

The commission is meeting this week in Evanston, Ill. As part a continuing effort to reflect the global nature of the denomination, the group’s vice president, Chita Millan, will lead a discussion about lay women and clergywomen in her own country, the Philippines.

We must continue to pay attention to how women and girls are treated -- both in the church and in the world.

The Eighth Anniversary

2009-09-11T11:32:00.001-05:00

You might think that the rain predicted for New York today would create a fitting atmosphere for the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the weather was beautiful the day the Twin Towers crumbled and so many people lost their lives. It seemed impossible that such horrific events could occur on such a nice day.

I remember interviewing someone who was working close to the towers who told me how disconcerting it was to finally catch a bus home and emerge in uptown Manhattan, covered in ashes, only to find normal-looking people carrying on with their daily routines.

Of course, nothing was normal. That day, it seemed as if our routines were disrupted forever.

I cried every morning, for weeks, as I read the vignettes in The New York Times about the individuals who died in the towers or on the airplanes or as they tried to rescue those in the towers. I’m crying now as I write this.

I didn’t personally know anyone who perished as a result of the attacks. But whenever I see Christine Lee, who works at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, I am reminded of her sister, who was last seen on the 95th floor of Tower 1.

Nancy Yuen Ngo was then 36 years old, with a husband and two daughters, ages 2 and 6. She was a network consultant for Marsh & McLennan, which lost 295 of its 1,908 employees that day. One was on a hijacked plane and the rest were in offices at the World Trade Center.

When I was working on a series of stories for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, I went to the memorial Marsh & McLennan erected to its lost employees adjacent to its offices in midtown Manhattan at 1166 Avenue of the Americas. I found Nancy’s name, along with the name of William Bethke, the brother of the Rev. Myrna Bethke, a United Methodist pastor in New Jersey.

Some people have expressed the fear that each passing year will diminish the magnitude of the tragedy, that we will forget the loss of those innocent lives and the absence of their impact on the world.

We have not forgotten.

Connecting with the Lutherans

2009-08-24T15:22:00.004-05:00

My friend, Jackie, and I have a lot in common. We both moved from the Midwest to New York. We both married New Yorkers and started raising a family in the same part of the Bronx. Our children have attended the same public schools. We share similar interests, have the same political viewpoints and our families often spend the New Year’s holidays together.

Now, we have something else in common. Jackie is an active member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which voted Aug. 20 at its churchwide assembly in Minneapolis to enter into “full communion” with The United Methodist Church. Our church approved the same agreement last year.

One of the distinct features of United Methodism is its connectional system. That connection has just officially expanded. Partnerships between United Methodists and Lutherans have existed in the past, but the potential of this new relationship – exchanging pastors, working more closely together on specific social programs, delving deeper into theological questions – is just beginning.

At the end of May, I went to a Sunday service at Jackie’s church – a small congregation that worships in the chapel of the Seafarers & International House in Manhattan – to witness her daughter’s confirmation. While there were some obvious differences, most notably the singing of some parts of the service in a cantor-like fashion, I felt comfortable there.

I hope Jackie will feel the same way in any United Methodist church.

Misery in Eastern Congo

2009-08-13T12:40:00.002-05:00

It started with the genocide in Rwanda.

Fifteen years ago, nearly 4 million Rwandan refugees crowded into camps in eastern Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Methodist Church and its relief agency were among those who spent two years supporting the refugees. More than 200 church volunteers visited over that period, providing health care, distributing supplies, building a church and guesthouse, starting a primary school and renovating two health clinics. An orphanage, the United Methodist Children’s Village, was created in Goma.

But that mission work ended abruptly in the fall of 1996, when the area fell to rebels, and violence continues to this day. This time, it is the Congolese who suffer.

Eastern Congo is a place of darkness. Residents have been massacred, villages burned. And with a targeted, deliberate kind of violence, women in Congo have been raped by the hundreds of thousands, according to the United Nations.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, visiting Goma on Aug. 11, announced a $17 million plan by the U.S. government to help Congo fight what she called “evil in its basest form.” Those who use rape as a weapon against civilian populations “are guilty of crimes against humanity,” she said.

All churches in Congo, and their communities, must acknowledge this violence, the Rev. Sam Kobia said last month when he led a World Council of Churches delegation there. Women asked the delegation how many stories of pain they needed to tell before the church began to listen.

The United Methodist Church’s resolution condemning “Rape in Times of Conflict and War” includes Bible verses referring to the use of rape as a weapon. That’s how ancient a tactic it is.

Until women’s lives are universally valued as much as men’s, bringing such hateful practices to an end – in Eastern Congo and anywhere else -- will be difficult.

The faces behind the numbers

2009-08-10T13:23:00.002-05:00

The human faces behind July’s unemployment statistics can be found at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

Or could have. Among the 247,000 positions cut by U.S. employers last month, as estimated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, were 45 positions at the mission agency. Some of those employees had opted to take a buyout, but 26 involuntarily lost their jobs.

I’m afraid they’ll take no comfort in the fact that July’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate was slightly better than June’s, an uptick that has been hailed by some as a sign that the U.S. economy is beginning to recover from the financial crisis.

Other denominational agencies also have trimmed staff. Most recently, United Methodist Communications cut seven staff positions in early August.

The average person in the pew probably doesn’t know the names of these former church employees, some of whom had devoted years of service to The United Methodist Church. As someone who has interacted with denominational staff for years, I can verify that many of them are drawn to that work as much from a sense of calling as for a paycheck.

So, it was not a surprise that a veil of sadness has hung over the New York offices of the Board of Global Ministries this summer. More than one staff member used the word “despair” when describing the mood to me during this period as the agency restructures itself.

There’s no doubt the work of the church will continue. But the loss of experienced, dedicated employees cannot be discounted.

The minister's daughter

2009-08-05T12:53:00.001-05:00

I’m always intrigued when I learn that a historical figure or a present-day celebrity has Methodist roots. It makes me wonder what impact the church might have had on that person’s career or contributions to society.

So when I visited the Limberlost State Historic Site in Geneva, Ind., last weekend and the tour guide mentioned that Gene Stratton-Porter’s father was a Methodist minister, I wanted to know more.

Porter -- a writer, naturalist and early, avid photographer -- was famous in her time and two of her Indiana homes, in Geneva and Rome City, are open to the public. Her many books, including “A Girl of the Limberlost,” were selling in the millions of copies before her death in 1924. I have a tattered first edition of that book, which is marking its centennial in 2009.

From a reprint of “Gene Stratton-Porter: A Lovely Light,” by Rollin King, I learned that Mark Stratton, Gene’s father, was ordained a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1857 and donated a portion of his farmland near Wabash, Ind., for the Hopewell church, cemetery and school. An “expert on the Bible,” Stratton also was a circuit-rider, traveling “by horseback to many other settlements and churches not having a regular minister.”

Stratton and his wife, Mary, passed a love of nature on to their daughter, first known as Geneve. But what about faith? In his eulogy during Stratton-Porter’s funeral at her California home, the Rev. Benjamin S. Haywood, a Methodist minister, quoted her as saying that while she rarely attended church, “I have grown accustomed to do my worshipping wherever I am and to putting my religion and my testimony into the works on natural history, into the nature stories and the editorials I wrote.”

For this woman, who would be considered an environmental activist today, God and nature were interchangeable. While she could not exactly describe who God was, she wrote, “I do know that the further I advance in the study of evolution of nature, the more I see a guiding hand, a controlling power, and a marvelous brain behind everything.”

When not to shoot from the hip

2009-07-27T14:14:00.002-05:00

My father was proud of his gun collection. When my parents added a family room to the house, he had lighted glass cases built in around the stone fireplace to display the guns.

Not surprisingly, he was a member of the National Rifle Association and we didn’t have the same opinions about gun control. But he also served as a city police commissioner and police chiefs were among those advocating for the July 22 defeat of an amendment proposed by U.S. Senator John Thune, R-S.D.

So I believe he might have opposed this NRA-backed legislation, which would have allowed residents of states that permit people to carry loaded, concealed weapons to do so anywhere – regardless of restrictions in other states.

Jackie Kuhls, a board member and former executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, explained to me that while supporters claimed the amendment would pose no danger, the opposite was true. “In fact, the amendment would have reduced the permit requirements to the lowest common denominator of the weakest states' laws,” she said. “Some states allow even individuals with a violent past to hold a conceal/carry permit.”

The United Methodist Church is quite clear about the need to strictly regulate guns. The denomination’s official position on gun violence, as outlined in the 2008 Book of Resolutions, urges church members to advocate “for the eventual reduction of the availability of guns in society, with a particular emphasis upon handguns, handgun ammunition, assault weapons, automatic weapons, automatic weapon conversion kits and guns that cannot be detected by traditionally used metal detection devices.”

The church also supports federal legislation “to regulate the importation, manufacturing, sale and possessions of guns and ammunition by the general public,” covering such areas as registration and licensing, appropriate background checks and waiting periods before a gun can be purchased.

Congress hasn’t been doing a very good job of that lately – witness the lapse of the assault weapons ban in 2004 – but at least enough senators recognized that the Thune Amendment just didn’t make sense.

The defeat of the Thune Amendment will save lives. I think my father would have agreed.

Hillary's excellent adventure

2009-07-22T14:24:00.000-05:00

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has made a point of connecting with people in other countries, especially women, during her diplomatic missions abroad, sometimes exposing her United Methodist roots along the way.

In India this week, she met with top business leaders and government leaders, but one of her early stops was at a Mumbai shop called Hansiba run by the Self Employed Women’s Association, a 37-year-old trade organization of poor women who earn a living through their own labor or small businesses.

“To the casual passersby, this may look like any other shop, but it is so much more than that,” she told those assembled. “It is a lifeline for thousands of women across India with valuable skills, but too few opportunities to use them and to realize income from them.”

Clinton also had enthusiastic meetings with women during her first Asian tour in February. In South Korea, she received a standing ovation from thousands who gathered at Ehwa Womans University as Bae Yong Lee, the university’s president, named her a “distinguished honorary Ewha fellow.”

It seemed appropriate for a school that was founded 123 years ago by an American female Methodist missionary. Lee said that Clinton’s life and work “reflects the founding spirit of Ewha itself, namely its commitment to the enhancement of women’s rights and the realization of human justice.”

Later on that tour, she showed her support for Chinese Christians by worshipping on Sunday morning at Haidian Christian Church in Beijing, which used to be associated with the Beijing Methodist Church. United Methodists now support work in China through the Amity Foundation, a Chinese Christian initiative to promote education, social services, health and rural development.

Back at the shop in India, Clinton, who has supported the association since a 1995 visit to India as first lady, bought a kurta, or traditional shirt, a quilt, a scarf and a corset-top for daughter Chelsea, it was reported.

But her words were probably more important to the women than her purchases. “I have long argued that women are key to economic progress and social stability, and that is as true here as it is anywhere in the world,” she said.