Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

At the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, President Obama said his faith plays a large role in his approach to public policy, including the economy. He quoted scripture to explain why he supports eliminating some tax breaks for the wealthy:

President Barack Obama: I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”

The president pointed out that Islam and Judaism have similar teachings.

That same morning in Washington, a group of interfaith clergy associated with the Occupy movement held what they called the People’s Prayer Breakfast. They said their event was open to everyone, not just the rich and powerful, and they prayed for an end to economic inequality.

Religious opposition continued this week to the Obama administration’s recent decision to require all health insurance policies to cover contraception. Houses of worship are exempt from the requirement, but several faith-based groups argued that religiously affiliated organizations like charities and hospitals should be exempt as well. Criticism has been particularly strong from the U.S. Catholic bishops, many of whom wrote letters that were read at Catholic churches around the country. In a particularly stinging letter, the bishop of Pittsburgh said the Obama administration has told Catholics, “To hell with you.”

The contraception controversy became an issue in the ongoing GOP presidential primaries. At recent campaign stops, Newt Gingrich accused President Obama of waging a “war on religion,” especially against the Catholic Church. As for the Catholic vote, in last week’s Florida primary, Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, got 56 percent, while Gingrich got 30 percent of his fellow Catholics. Evangelicals in that race divided their votes almost evenly between Gingrich and Romney. Rick Santorum picked up 19 percent of their votes, and Ron Paul, 4 percent.

Prominent Jewish groups are spearheading an effort to persuade the Obama administration to take stronger action to head off an impending humanitarian disaster in Sudan’s border region. American Jewish World Service and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said the Sudanese government must allow food aid for hundreds of thousands of people facing starvation in the region between Sudan and the one year-old state of South Sudan. Some 400,000 people have been displaced in ongoing border conflicts.

There’s a debate over whether the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to the wrong people. In Oslo, Norway, where the prize is given out, a prominent peace activist says the award has been going to human rights campaigners and environmentalists in violation of the intentions of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. In 1895, he wrote in his will that the prize should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations.” The Norwegian critic contends that the last qualified person to get the Peace Prize was then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2001. President Obama got the prize in 2009.

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the former archbishop of Philadelphia, died this week. He was 88 and suffered from dementia and cancer. Bevilacqua led the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1988 to 2003. His death comes amid a high-profile sex abuse case there involving two priests and a church official who served under him.

This weekend (February 4) Muslims celebrate Mawlid an Nabi, marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

For Jews, Wednesday (February 8) is Tu B’shvat, the New Year for Trees. It has become a special day for efforts to protect the environment.

 

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: There are few images of war’s destruction in the eastern Congolese city of Goma. Little was built in the first place. For two decades, regional militias have clashed over the minerals here. U.N. troops have brought some order but their reach—and mandate—are limited. So is the Congolese army’s effort to assert control.

A series of peace agreements and two democratic elections have brought some stability here, although very little development. There’s still virtually no paved road in this whole country. What has continued unabated is an epidemic of sexual violence. The United Nations says the Democratic Republic of Congo is the worst place on earth to be a woman.

One place where you get an idea of what that means is a refuge called HEAL Africa.

Women work to shake off unspeakable atrocities they have faced. The trauma has left most of them with injuries that render them incontinent. This woman wears a mask to conceal her maiming at the hands of militiamen who raided her home one night about a year ago.

ANNONCIATA: My older daughter escaped from them. they told me to go get her. And I said she’d escape from you, how could I ever catch her. Since I wouldn’t give them my daughter, they hit me on the head with a machete and after I fell down they used the same machete to cut off my lips.

DE SAM LAZARO: A volunteer health worker brought her to HEAL Africa. It is the only specialty care hospital in all of Eastern Congo.  It was started 12 years ago by British-born Lyn Lusi and her Congolese husband, devout Christians who’d served the region for years before that as medical missionaries.

LYN LUSI(Co-Founder, HEAL Africa): Well, my husband was an orthopedic surgeon. He finished in Belgium in ‘84, and to this day he’s still the only one, the only orthopedic surgeon in the east of the country.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Jo Lusi has performed thousands of surgical operations—fixing everything from club feet and cleft palates to fistulas, the vaginal, sometimes rectal tearing that comes from rape trauma or obstructed labor. HEAL Africa has trained nearly 30 young Congolese doctors, paying for their education elsewhere in Africa. Its bare bones emergency and intensive care are the only such services in a region of eight million people—supported by various private and international government grants. Seven hundred children with HIV get life-saving antiretroviral drugs here. But Dr. Lusi says all this is just one part of a much larger idea.

DR. JO LUSI (Co-Founder, HEAL Africa): When you serve human, I don’t see you here like a human. I see you like an image of God, so to do that you have to be holistic. You have to be total, you have to know what about the spirit, about the flesh, about the soul. Here the people are lacking everything. They don’t have food; absolute poverty. They are exploited. They are perishing because of lack of knowledge. They are perishing because of the lack of justice. So me and my wife said OK, how do we do a holistic system?

LYN LUSI: HEAL is an acronym, it stands for health, education, action in the community, and leadership development, and all of those are components of a healthy society.

DE SAM LAZARO: For many patients who come initially for medical care, healing is a years-long process of rebuilding a life. This shelter serves women whose fistulas have not healed—about a quarter of such cases.

BASENYA BANDORA: It is very different here from back in village. People were laughing at me: “She’s smelly, she was raped.” Here people know I am a complete person.

DE SAM LAZARO: Women are taught to sew, make baskets, and raise small animals, and they are allowed to dream.

BANDORA:  I want to have a little shop, and I will make bread and I will sit there with my sewing machine and people will bring me things to sew.  I will make baskets.  If I can have a little house, that would be very nice.

DE SAM LAZARO:  For now, for practical purposes, such dreams are pure fantasy, thanks to lingering health problems and also militiamen who continue to raid villages with impunity. Annonciata frequently sees the men who maimed her, but she reacted viscerally to a suggestion she might report them to the police.

ANNONCIATA: Uh uh uh uh! I’m terrified, they would kill me. Only God can punish them for what they did.

DE SAM LAZARO: But HEAL Africa has begun working to bring a more immediate justice to victims of rape. In partnership with the American Bar Association, local lawyers work to apprehend suspects and put them through the legal system here. It is flawed and corrupt but Lyn Lusi says only when Congolese begin to buy into it will it begin to work for them.

LYN LUSI: I would always encourage our legal aid to work ten times more on the issue of bringing the community in line with the law so that they appreciate what the law is trying to do and that they agree with it and that there’s social pressure, there’s a a desire within the community for zero tolerance of sexual violence, of any sort of violence.

DE SAM LAZARO: That’s what brought this 15-year-old girl and her father to the legal clinic to bring charges against a young man who raped her while she went to collect water for the family.

PATRICE KIHUJHO: I want him not only to be put in prison but I also want him to pay for the damages he caused. Last year, I turned 75 years old. When we were growing up, we never saw this kind of behavior. When you liked a girl, we would get married. I am really astonished. I’m not sure what’s going on, how they can take little girls and assault them.

DE SAM LAZARO: Lyn Lusi thinks it’s a consequence of fighting that has raged for two decades in Eastern Congo, destroying any sense of community.

LYN LUSI: You have seen your village destroyed, you’ve seen your people killed, you’re a young man with no future, I mean you have every reason to fight and every reason to go off and join the militia. There are also those militias that will kidnap children and take them into their armies and just to reinforce their ranks. Children are extremely good soldiers in that they have no fear, and they have no conscience.

DE SAM LAZARO: Where does one begin to repair this? The Lusis say they have worked to tap the enduring faith of most Congolese.

LYN LUSI: Here is a mandate to care that’s in the Muslim community, that’s in the Christian community, and it’s present in every single locality in Congo. You could say that probably 95 precent of Congolese will go to a place of worship once a month at least. So this is an amazing power within the community, and if we knew how to mobilize people correctly, around their mandate to care, then you can make a big impact on a social problem.

DE SAM LAZARO: HEAL Africa has gathered religious leaders and other community elders into so-called Nehemiah Committees. These gatherings address sources of violence early on, mediating local business disputes or competing land claims before they escalate. Lyn Lusi says it’s a start.

LYN LUSI: I have no illusions that we’re dealing with major issues that are pulling Congo apart. I don’t think HEAL Africa is going to empty the ocean, but we can take out a bucketful here and a bucketful there. There is so much evil and so much cruelty, so much selfishness and it is like darkness. But if we can bring in some light, the darkness will not overcome the light, and that’s where faith is. We believe that.

DE SAM LAZARO: For her work, Lusi was awarded the 2011 Opus Prize, a one million dollar award given by the Minnesota-based Opus Foundation to a faith-driven social entrepreneur.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“If we can bring in some light, the darkness will not overcome the light, and that’s where faith is. We believe that,” says Lyn Lusi, who has spent her professional life in medical care for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/02/thumb02-healafrica.jpg

 

BOB ABERNETHY, host: For decades, religious organizations such as the National Council of Churches, the Catholic bishops, and others have been working with labor organizers to try to improve conditions for farm workers, and there’s been some success, most recently in the tomato fields of south Florida, where immigrants harvest nearly all the winter tomatoes this country grows. Our report is from Saul Gonzales in Immokalee, Florida.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Florida may be better known for its oranges, but it’s tomatoes that rule in the farm fields surrounding the small town of Immokalee. In fact, during the winter months, nearly all of America’s domestically grown tomatoes, still green when they are picked, come from this part of south Florida, and it’s a large and poor immigrant workforce that’s essential in getting that crop from plant to plate.

Tomato harvesting is still very much a “by hand” work? There is no machine that exists that does this?

STEVE MCHAN: That is correct.

GONZALEZ: Steve McHan is harvesting manager for Pacific Tomato Growers, a major producer in Florida.

MCHAN: The production volume from here is somewhere around 1,200 to 1,400 boxes per acre, and we pack 25-pound boxes is what we’re averaging.

GONZALEZ: So it’s industrial scale?

MCHAN: Industrial scale, correct.

GONZALEZ: However, Florida’s tomato industry is a business that’s long been accused of exploiting its workforce through overwork, underpay, and mistreatment. That’s turned these fields into the frontlines of a high profile national campaign to improve the lives of farmworkers.

JORDAN BUCKLEY: People who work in agriculture are among the least paid, least protected workers in the whole country.

GONZALEZ: Jordan Buckley and his colleagues are with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, CIW, and the Interfaith Action Network, which works with faith groups to help farmworkers.

BRIGITTE GYNTHER: For people of faith, for us this is a moral issue. You know, how the people who pick our food our treated.

GONZALEZ: Now to understand the plight of farmworkers you have to know something about their place in America’s industrial food economy.

BUCKLEY: They are some of the poorest workers here in our country, and yet not for a lack of hard work. It’s not some dearth of industriousness. In fact, the reason is because the increasing consolidation of purchasing among retailors. So where you have the fast food and food service and supermarkets squeezing their suppliers and demanding ever cheaper costs for their tomatoes, that’s resulted in growers squeezing their farmworkers, and that’s why farmworkers haven’t seen a real wage increase in upwards of three decades.

GONZALEZ: Florida’s tomato workers are usually paid by how much they pick, traditionally getting about 45 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket they fill. That means to make a day’s minimum wage, each worker has to pick two-and-a-half-tons of tomatoes a day. What does that kind of work pay mean for the daily lives of farmworkers and their families? Twenty-eight-year-old Darinal Sales struggles to support his wife and two girls on what he makes in the fields. Because four other farmworkers live in the same dilapidated trailer, his whole family shares one small room.

GONZALEZ: Ustedes viven aqui?

DARINAL SALES: It’s because of the situation at work that we live like this. Our pay just doesn’t last and allow us to live in better way.

GONZALEZ: Immokalee is a town full of young men from Mexico, Central America, and Haiti, many undocumented, who have come here to scratch out a better life for themselves by harvesting Florida’s tomato crops. Some of them end up victims of the industry’s worst abuses, including incidents of modern day slavery.

BUCKLEY: There have also now been nine federally prosecuted slavery operations in just the last 14 years here in Florida agriculture.

GONZALEZ: Slavery?

BUCKLEY: Yeah, literal slavery. Right here on Third and Boston we go down four blocks. That’s the site where workers were locked in the back of a cargo truck, literally shackled. We saw bruises on their wrists where they had been literally restrained by their employers.

GONZALEZ: Yet despite the dangers and pay, farmhands are eager to work. To see how eager, you’ve got to get up very early. Every morning in the pre-dawn hours this parking lot in downtown Immokalee becomes a giant open-air labor market. Hundreds of farmworkers come here looking to make contact with labor bosses. If they’re lucky they’ll be picked for another hard day of work in the tomato fields. The men and women selected are the ones boarding buses that take them to the fields. It’s in this parking lot that we met Aurelia Hinajosa, who’s worked in Immokalee’s tomato fields for nearly 30 years.

AURELIA HINAJOSA: Americans really like their vegetables and fruits, and who is going to pick it? The people born in this country have better kinds of work, and they’re not going to go to the fields.

GONZALEZ: But things are slowly starting to get better for Florida’s tomato field workers. Last year, after more than a decade of patient organizing work, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers reached a landmark agreement with growers and corporate tomato buyers like McDonalds and Burger King. The agreement gives farmworkers a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they pick. Now that doesn’t sound like much, but that one cent increase translates into an additional 32 cents for every bucket picked by workers. That in turn will boost each farmhand’s pay by about $5,000 a year.

BUCKLEY: We are basically on the threshold of entering into this new industry in having rights protected and their being this consensus among buyers that we demand humane labor conditions in our supply chain.

GONZALEZ: The agreement has also made some in Florida’s powerful tomato industry question their past actions and attitudes.

SARAH GOLDBERGER: Historically, it has not been the poster child for good behavior and good treatment of its workers.

GONZALEZ: You admit to that?

GOLDBERGER: Yes.

GONZALEZ: Sarah Goldberger is a spokesperson for Pacific Tomato Growers. She says the agreement between workers and the tomato industry has replaced tension with cooperation.

GOLDBERGER: It has been so non-adversarial. It is a pleasure, quite honestly.

GONZALEZ: That’s a big change?

GOLDBERGER: Yes.

GONZALEZ: Other changes in the fields, like this one owned by Pacific Tomato, include greater access to drinking water and more rest periods, regular bathroom breaks, and a zero tolerance for verbal abuse and sexual harassment by field bosses. Now that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and it allies have an agreement, they’re spreading the word about it. The small community radio station they run in Immokalee regularly tells workers listening about their rights, pay, and future organizing plans.

Radio (In Spanish): The campaign to improve the work conditions and pay in the state of Florida.

GONZALEZ: Worker advocate and former field hand Lucas Benitez met us at the early morning labor gathering to talk about how important these changes are to the men and women who pick America’s tomato crop.

LUCAS BENITEZ: That’s what we want, work with dignity. Where every worker, every person who goes to the fields feels pride in being part of the agricultural industry that is putting food on millions of tables every day and that the worker is getting paid enough to put food on the table of his own home.

GONZALEZ: However the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and its allies in religious and faith groups say they have much work left to do. That includes a new national campaign focused on  supermarket chains which have declined to  participate in the penny-per-pound pay agreement.

BUCKLEY: There are three principal sectors of tomato retail: fast food, food service, and supermarkets, and now the leaders of the fast food industry are on board. The leaders of the food service industry are on board. All that remains are the supermarkets.

GONZALEZ: To keep pressure on the stores and to make sure gains are protected, farmworkers regularly reach out to religious leaders and congregations.

And so I’m joined by Darinal and Oscar from the CIW.

GONZALEZ: This morning, Jordan and workers from Immokalee, including Darinal Sales, are addressing a Presbyterian church in Naples, Florida. These speaking engagements are part of a sustained campaign to get people of faith thinking about their fairness and justice when they sit down to eat. Brigitte Gynther of Interfaith Action has been working in Immokalee for eight years on behalf of workers.

GYNTHER: You know, there are many times when we say grace we are grateful for the food on our plates. But where did that food travel? Who picked it? How did it get to us? And that is something we don’t often think about. But I think as people of faith we are called to think about the connections between us and the people who toil in the fields day in and day out to put food our plates.

GONZALEZ: For the men and women who pick Florida’s tomatoes their most important harvest has been some measure of justice and respect.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly I’m Saul Gonzalez in Immokalee, Florida.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/02/thumb01-farmworkerjustice.jpg “When we say grace we are grateful for the food on our plates. But where did that food travel? Who picked it? How did it get to us? As people of faith we are called to think about that.”

Listen to this episode now:

Download this episode as an MP3.
Files can be saved to your computer or opened online with your favorite MP3 player.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2009/10/ListenNow.jpg Listen to this week’s show.

 

BOB ABERNETHY, host:  In Egypt this week, one year after the beginning of protests that toppled President Mubarak, tens of thousands again took to the streets. Meanwhile, the lower house of the new parliament was sworn in. The majority of members are not young demonstrators, but members of two Islamist parties, which now hold almost three-quarters of the seats.

We talk today with Kate Seelye, recently back from Egypt. She has reported from the Middle East for many years, and is now a vice president at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Kate, welcome here, and it’s great you’re back, and how did it feel when you were in Cairo this time? What did it feel like?

KATE SEELYE (Vice President, Middle East Institute): Well, you know, I sensed, Bob, a kind of empowerment and excitement that I haven’t seen in Egypt for a very long time, and I’ve been reporting there for years. Egyptians overthrew a dictator. They’re now politically empowered. They found their voice. They’re engaged. But at the same time there are new fears and anxieties. The country has been very unstable the last year. The tourism industry has collapsed. Investment is down, and people are hurting economically. In fact, there are people today who are much worse off than they were a year ago. So there are fears.

ABERNETHY: In those demonstrations that we saw pictures of, there were divisions, weren’t there? Some for one thing, some for…

SEELYE: Yes, it’s interesting. We’re seeing sort of a different take on the revolution. There’s one group that came out the other day, and they were celebrating, celebrating these newfound freedoms, and those were many of the people who did very well in the recent parliamentary elections. But there was another group, the young protesters who triggered the demonstrations last year who feel that the revolution is not over, the goals of the revolution have not been met, the ruling military council is still in office, and they are determined to keep protesting, so two different views of the same revolution.

ABERNETHY: What does it imply about the future for people there that in this new parliament there are three-quarters of the members who are Islamists? What does that say?

SEELYE: That’s right. Well, first let me explain who they are. There are two groups that did very well, the Muslim Brotherhood, a mainstream Islamist group that has been around for 80 years doing charitable work and is very popular among the Egyptian electorate and got 47 percent of the seats, and then a hardline, very conservative Islamist group, the Nour Party. Together, as you said, they make up nearly 75 percent. There is a concern that they will impose an Islamist agenda on Egypt. But the hope is that once in office, once held accountable they will both move more to the center, and that won’t be the case.

ABERNETHY: What about the minority of Christians in Egypt? What’s the future for them?

SEELYE: Well, they are worried. They have been facing more sectarian divisions. They’ve been the victims of more attacks on their churches, and they’re worried with an Islamist-dominated parliament in office. Their hope is that when Egypt starts to draft a new constitution, which it will do over the course of the next six months, that their rights and their freedoms will be guaranteed in this constitution, they will be safeguarded, and that is their best hope for the future.

ABERNETHY: And the women are a little nervous, too, aren’t they?

SEELYE: They’re a little nervous as well, and once again they are looking at this constitution and saying this is the chance to safeguard our rights.

ABERNETHY: Kate Seelye of the Middle East Institute. many thanks. Welcome home.

SEELYE: Thank you so much.

Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections have raised concerns about the imposition of an Islamist agenda by Islamist groups and parties, but Middle East expert Kate Seelye says “the hope is that once in office they will move more to the center and that won’t be the case.” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-egyptanniversary.jpg

 

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At a megachurch in Orlando, evangelical Christians gathered to pray for the nation. The meeting was organized by a group called The Response, which has been holding similar sessions in other early primary states. They say they’re praying because they are well aware of the importance of the upcoming election and of their own role in helping to choose the Republican nominee. According to exit polls, two-thirds of the GOP primary voters in South Carolina last week described themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. Forty-four percent of them voted for Newt Gingrich. Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each got 21 percent of the evangelical vote. Here in Florida, conservative Christians make up about 40 percent of likely Republican primary voters.

STEVE STRANG (CEO, Charisma Media): It is important just because there are so many of us. But we don’t all think alike. We don’t all support the same person.

LAWTON: And that division among evangelicals has been a major factor this primary season. Although one-time presumed frontrunner Romney does have some support within the evangelical community, so far many rank-and-file conservative Christians haven’t rallied around him. Some believe it’s at least in part because of Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—the Mormons.

WARREN COLE SMITH (Associate Publisher, World Magazine): Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is a concern of mine because I have a concern as an evangelical Christian that I should not promote what my faith teaches is a false religion.

LAWTON: Warren Cole Smith is associate publisher of the Christian news magazine World. He wrote a blog in which he said if Romney believes what the Mormon faith teaches, he is “unfit to serve” as president.

SMITH: You could start with the doctrine of the Trinity, what theologians would call their Christology, in other words their understanding of who Christ is. And you wouldn’t have to go any farther than that to identify very quickly some differences between orthodox Biblical Christianity and Mormon theology.

LAWTON: Mormons hold several views which set them apart from Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians. Not accepting the doctrine of the Trinity, Mormons believe that Jesus and God were separate physical beings. Founder Joseph Smith taught that traditional Christianity had fallen away from the teachings of Jesus, so additional and continuing revelations, like the Book of Mormon, were needed to restore the true faith. The LDS church may hold different views from the mainstream, but Mormons are deeply offended by the suggestion that they are not “real” Christians. Joanna Brooks is senior correspondent for ReligionDispatches.org, an interfaith online magazine.

JOANNA BROOKS (Senior Correspondent, Religion Dispatches): The name of Jesus Christ is in the name of our church. So, you know, Mormons do tend to feel like we’re being profoundly misunderstood when we’re classified as not being Christian.

LAWTON: And does it matter in a presidential race?

SMITH: It is a position of such high visibility in the world that, yes, having a Mormon in that particular chair would have the effect of promoting Mormonism, of normalizing Mormonism culturally both here in the United States and around the world.

BROOKS: Mormons are actually pretty cautious about the scrutiny that might come to faith as Romney runs and if he were to win the presidency. At the same time, you know, perhaps over the course of a Romney presidency people would finally get used to the idea that Mormons are fairly normal members of American society.

LAWTON: The LDS church has not commented on Romney’s campaign because it doesn’t want to appear to be interfering in the election. However, the church has released a series of ads highlighting the variety of people who hold the Mormon faith. This primary season, Romney has avoided direct discussion of the faith issue. He has been doing a lot of outreach to evangelicals.

MITT ROMNEY: I am convinced that if we have a president who will tell the truth and live with integrity and who knows how to lead and rebuild an economy, who will then draw on the patriotism of the American people, we will be able to restore those values and keep America as it has always been, the hope of the earth.

LAWTON: In Florida, evangelical Republican Cathleen Kwas is supporting Romney largely because of his economic experience.

CATHLEEN KWAS (Evangelical Voter): I’m not electing him to be the pastor of my church or anything like that. I think he’s a moral man. I think he’s a strong husband, a good father, and I’m sure we share a lot of the same, you know, ethics and values. And you know, the Mormonism isn’t—I don’t even think about that.

LAWTON: Charisma Media CEO Steve Strong is among other evangelicals who say they are reluctant to support Romney because of his policies, not his faith.

STRANG: I have no criticism of Governor Romney personally other than the fact that you have to question how conservative he is by some of the things he did in Massachusetts. Thankfully his flip-flopping, in my opinion, was flip-flopping in the right direction. That is a factor, but for me that is more of a factor than what church he goes to.

LAWTON: If not Romney, who? In the South Carolina vote, many evangelicals appeared to accept Gingrich’s argument that he is the candidate with the best chance of winning.

NEWT GINGRICH: We must have somebody who knows what they believe, is prepared to defend what they believe, and will do what it takes to defeat Obama.

LAWTON: Evangelicals appear divided over whether Gingrich’s marital past will be a factor.

STRANG: I think Newt Gingrich’s past is a huge issue, and it isn’t so much that he could be forgiven. Forgiveness is the essence of Christianity, and we’ve all been forgiven. But it shows his character, and not once, but a couple times. I have no doubt he’s changed. No doubt. But it is troubling.

KWAS: I don’t hold Newt Gingrich’s past against him. I do believe he made mistakes in the past, and that’s not influencing me now. I think he has had a change of heart, but I just believe he’s not steady and calm, and I think he’s fairly progressive, and so the moral thing isn’t what’s going to sway my opinion.

LAWTON: Earlier this month, a group of conservative Christian leaders urged unified support for Santorum. Strang decided to join them.

STRANG: Because I want to make a statement that character is important and not think that we have to give it to somebody just because all the pundits say that they have the election wrapped up and they are the ones that can beat president Obama. I think that it is unknown.

LAWTON: But given his low standing in the polls, many evangelicals do wonder about Santorum’s electability. Susan Berdet says she wrestled a lot before finally casting her absentee ballot for Santorum.

SUSAN BERDET (Evangelical Voter): I do want someone to beat our present president. Badly. But I want it to be the right person. I just felt that Rick Santorum represented my beliefs.

LAWTON: Santorum has been urging other evangelicals to also vote their values.

RICK SANTORUM: It’s not about winning or not winning, it’s about how you want to win. Do you want to win by being just a little better, or do you want to win with a mandate?

LAWTON: Polls show that despite any misgivings in the primary, in a race between Romney and Obama the majority of evangelicals across the country would vote for Romney. But they may not be enthusiastic about it.

SMITH: The real question is will evangelicals both turn out in large numbers and be energized as volunteers and financial supporters of Mitt Romney? It doesn’t take a majority of evangelicals to stay home. It just takes a few million evangelicals to stay home or to choose to not get as actively involved in this race, to cost Mitt Romney the presidency, should he become the Republican nominee.

LAWTON: With all the decisions looming, many evangelicals say they will continue to pray for wisdom.

I’m Kim Lawton in Orlando.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-evangelicalvote.jpg “Will evangelicals turn out in large numbers and be energized as volunteers and financial supporters of Mitt Romney? It just takes a few million evangelicals to choose to not get as actively involved in this race to cost Mitt Romney the presidency,” according to evangelical journalist Warren Cole Smith.

“Mitt Romney has studiously avoided the subject of religion whenever possible. He’s a technocrat. He’s very careful. He’s highly managed in his public presentation. He knows that bringing up Mormonism conjures a host of associations he’d like to avoid,” says Joanna Brooks, a senior correspondent for ReligionDispatches.org, an interfaith online magazine.

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-joannabrooks.jpg “Mitt Romney has studiously avoided the subject of religion whenever possible. He’s a technocrat. He’s very careful. He’s highly managed in his public presentation. He knows that bringing up Mormonism conjures a host of associations he’d like to avoid.”

“I would say that Mormon culture, Mormon doctrine, Mormon belief have been well outside the mainstream of both American culture and Christian culture for many years,” says Warren Cole Smith, associate publisher of the Christian news magazine World.

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-warrencolesmith.jpg “I would say that Mormon culture, Mormon doctrine, Mormon belief have been well outside the mainstream of both American culture and Christian culture for many years.”

 

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: There are big churches, and then there’s the Yoido Full Gospel Church here in Seoul, South Korea. It’s the mother of megachurches, with the largest congregation in the world. On a typical day 200,000 will attend one of seven services along with another two or three hundred thousand watching them on TV in adjoining buildings or satellite branches. While some other churches may be losing members, this one just keeps growing. The main sanctuary here holds 21,000 worshipers packed to the rafters seven times every Sunday. Each service has its own orchestra, its own choir, its own pastor. There are hundreds of assistants. There need to be. Each service is translated into 16 different languages for visitors. Karen Kim is a pastor with the church’s international  division. She says she was shocked when she first moved here from Australia.

KAREN KIM: I think when you’ve got people this size, like you have to have structure, and you have to have organization, because otherwise people would be getting killed. Like you can’t just let it all just take care of itself. Like there has to be like organized rosters of volunteers and things like that to get people in and out of the service, or these people will literally die and get crushed.

SEVERSON: The level of organization here is striking. Senior pastor Reverend Young Hoon Lee explains it this way.

REVEREND YOUNG HOON LEE: Our church operates like orchestra. Every day we make perfect harmony and fantastic symphony.

SEVERSON: Even though the first Christian missionaries arrived in Korea in 1784, the so-called Hermit Kingdom continued to be Buddhist until about 60 years ago. That was about the time Pastor David Cho founded what became the Yoido Full Gospel Church, which now has missionaries of its own in 67 countries.

REVEREND DAVID YONGGI CHO: People don’t come to our church because I’m holy person, I’m spectacular Christian. No. They come because I supply their need. I meet their need through the word of God.

SEVERSON: Actually, Pastor Cho is one of the most revered evangelists in Korea. He was a Buddhist until he rejected his religion when he was near death from tuberculosis. He says that’s when Jesus Christ appeared to him in the middle of the night and told him to preach the gospel. So he did. When the country was suffering in poverty and desperation after the Korean War, he preached the gospel of hope through prayer.

REVEREND CHO: Every morning at 4:30 people come to church, and they pray for one or two hours, and all-night prayer meeting on Friday evening.

SEVERSON: Prayer seems especially important to this congregation. Each day buses leave the big church for the ride up to Prayer Mountain, which includes a sacred cemetery on a hillside. It overlooks a complex of buildings with a church, a hotel, and tiny, individual prayer rooms barely big enough to kneel and pray, which some do for hours. From a distance you can hear the sound of wailing coming from  the top of the cemetery and people speaking in tongues.

KAREN KIM: It’s very important to their faith, and speaking in tongues is a way that they communicate with God and that they allow God to communicate through them, and it’s evidence of the Spirit working in them and then being filled with the Spirit.

SEVERSON: From only five members in 1958, Yoido Full Gospel, which is affiliated with the Pentecostal movement, grew to be the largest congregation in the world with over 800,000 members. Some satellite congregations have been released to become independent branches, although they’re still connected to the big church. There is more than one reason Yoido grew so big and so fast, but Pastor Cho believes women have a lot to do with it.

PASTOR DAVID CHO: God gave me the idea because until that time women were despised, actually, in society. They were not given any important position, and the Spirit of the Lord said why don’t you use women? So I announced that I would start cell ministry and use women as the leader, and many men protested. They felt very bad about that, but I forced my idea. The women were so very happy,  and they dedicated—they were excellent workers.

KAREN KIM: They make up the majority of the membership in the church, and they really like to do a lot of volunteering. Historically, in church history Pentecostalism has been one of those areas and those branches of Christianity that has been more open to women pastors.

SEVERSON: One reason Yoido has grown so big is because of its fundamental message, that if members give to God, he’ll give them prosperity, the same message found in numerous megachurches in the U.S.

REVEREND CHO: Many people are accusing me that I’m preaching the gospel of prosperity, but I’m not afraid of being accused, because if gospel could not bring prosperity to other people, suffering people, what can you do for them? Because gospel must bring prosperity in our spirit, soul and body and lives. If gospel bring destruction to us, why should we believe in prosperity?

SEVERSON: But Pastor Cho says personal prosperity is good only if people become rich as well in their spirit and soul.

REVEREND CHO: People try to bring happiness from their circumstances by being rich, by arriving their position in society. But those things soon pass away. They need eternal hope that is coming from inside out, not from outside in.

SEVERSON: Tithing is a fundamental part of church doctrine.

REVEREND LEE: Most members give tithes to the church—10 percent. With that money we help all the poor people in our society.

SEVERSON: With so many members and so much in tithes, the church could be a powerful political influence in South Korea. But Pastor Lee says the church does not want to become politically active and instead puts more emphasis on the social gospel—helping the poor, like this project outside the church where  volunteers collect and dispense clothing for those in need.

KAREN KIM: They have a lot of those projects. I think not just in our church, but I think churches around the world are starting realize that the debate between, you know, the social gospel-just the gospel—you can’t have one without the other, because you both, and they need to work hand-in-hand if you’re going to make a difference in our world.

SEVERSON: In the 1960s, Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual per capita income of about $60. Today it’s around $30,000. South Korea is prospering. Pastor Cho says he knows one reason why.

REVEREND CHO: Jesus Christ. That is the only answer we can give. You come and try to study the reason of prosperity. You can’t find out any reason, because we don’t have a good politician so far. We don’t have great business people.

SEVERSON: And if Christianity is a factor in the prosperity of South Korea, Yoido is a significant contributor. Sixty years ago there were about 50,000 Christians in South Korea. Today it’s more than 10 million, and almost one-in-ten were baptized  in the Yoido Full Gospel Church.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Seoul, South Korea.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-yoida.jpg “Our church operates like orchestra. Every day we make perfect harmony and fantastic symphony,” says Yoido Full Gospel Church’s senior pastor, Rev. Young Hoon Lee.

Listen to this episode now:

Download this episode as an MP3.
Files can be saved to your computer or opened online with your favorite MP3 player.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/files/2009/10/ListenNow.jpg Listen to this week’s show.

GOP presidential candidates are campaigning heavily in Florida this week, many reaching out to religious conservatives ahead of Tuesday’s primary (January 31). Evangelical voters are expected to have a smaller impact there than they did in South Carolina, but they still play a key role. The majority of evangelical Christians are politically conservative and Republican. Political analysts agree a candidate can’t become the GOP presidential nominee without strong support from evangelicals. But so far this primary season, conservative Christians have been divided over which candidate to support. Some evangelicals say they can’t support Mitt Romney because of his Mormon faith, and as the Florida primary approaches, many are still undecided.

Watch our report on evangelicals and the primaries.

In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama spoke of an economy based on the American values of fairness and shared responsibility. The president said he would work to cut trillions from the federal budget. He also said the wealthiest Americans must pay more in taxes:

President Obama: “Now you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

In the Republican response, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels accused the president of trying to divide the American people.

Read commentaries on the State of the Union address by history professors Andrew Finstuen and Matthew Avery Sutton and by law professor Howard Rhodes.

Thousands of anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington this week for the annual March for Life. It marked the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion nationwide.

Several prominent religious leaders blasted the administration’s recent decision to require contraception coverage in the new health care law. Religious institutions like churches are exempt from providing that coverage, but the Obama administration refused to extend the same exemption to religiously-affiliated organizations such as hospitals, charities, and universities. Catholic Archbishop soon to be Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, vowed to fight the requirement. He called it unconstitutional and said it will force people to choose between violating their consciences or giving up their health insurance.