Posted on 09/18/2005 6:11:48 AM PDT by Crackingham
While some traditional disaster responders have been faulted for their pace in the face of Hurricane Katrina, many religious organizations in Mobile and Baldwin counties have quickly welcomed, clothed and fed thousands of storm victims. Their no-red-tape response follows a trend of faith-based organizations playing an increasing role in functions traditionally performed by the government and secular charities. And it has local church leaders and some government officials -- emboldened by the large role houses of worship assumed after the storm -- saying they want congregations to do even more.
"We have seen a paradigm shift," said Chip Hale, senior pastor at Spanish Fort United Methodist Church. "Before in America, since the 1930s or'40s, we've thought the government was going to do it. Now we realize the church is going to have to do it."
Some members of Congress have proposed making it easier for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund faith-based groups. Congress has approved more than $60 billion in spending for Katrina relief, and some estimates for total relief spending have reached $200 billion. State Sen. Bradley Byrne, R-Montrose, said the post-Katrina relief efforts have shown the government it should give churches a larger role in future disasters.
"This would be a lost opportunity to build for the future if we don't," he said.
In the days following the Aug. 29 storm, churches in Louisiana and Mississippi welcomed people who lost their homes. Churches not only provided a temporary haven for storm victims to sleep and shower, they chauffeured the stranded to safe cities and connected hundreds to medical care, job opportunities and long-term housing.
Congregations from across the country rushed to join the relief effort. The New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colo., took two vans, an RV and $140,000 to evacuees sheltered in Baton Rouge, La., according to a Wall Street Journal report. Closer to home, religious organizations in Mobile, Baldwin and other counties have taken on all kinds of relief work. Among those programs are:
Shelters set up by numerous churches. Some are operated by the American Red Cross, while others are run by church members.
"We saw the crisis of literally thousands of people being displaced in Mississippi and New Orleans," said Bob Terrell, family life minister at Church of Christ of Spanish Fort, which opened its shelter Sept. 1. The church runs the shelter without Red Cross support.
Collections of goods and money. Many churches and religious organizations have gathered food, clothes, household items and more and are giving the supplies to evacuees or shipping them into the affected areas.
The United Methodist Church's Disaster Recovery Ministry has set up five distribution centers in south Mobile County. The Spanish Fort United Methodist Church has converted its food pantry into a distribution center, and last week sent 28 17-foot-long trailer-trucks filled with food into Mississippi.
Setting up help stations near affected areas. The Christian Life Church in Orange Beach, Genesis Church in Foley and Gulfway Assembly of God in Gulf Shores set up a makeshift camp in a K-Mart parking lot in Waveland, Miss., to offer food, water and other supplies to hurricane victims. The center, nicknamed Camp Katrina, has aided thousands.
Transporting evacuees. St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Fairhope hired several charter buses to transfer hundreds of victims from Mississippi to Baldwin County and even to Georgia.
One of the evacuees bused by St. Lawrence, Sharon Harvey of Pascagoula, said she and 12 family members were in East Central High School before the Baldwin church group arrived to take them to First Baptist Church of Robertsdale.
"They have treated us so wonderfully. Thank God for the church," Harvey said. "They showed us so much love and affection. At East Central, we were sleeping on the floor, but they made sure we all had cots at the church."
"New" role?
bttt
Some good news.Regular folks pitching in.Do ya think the msm will cover this?
It just seems new. It was burried under all the homosexual agenda and tolerant, new age crap. All that merely is appearing to take a back seat for now. Don't be fooled.
Yeah, something about a new paradigm - freeing the prisoners, releasing the oppressed. It's a whole new concept!
My reaction exactly. Jesus said "Feed My sheep." He never said "force the government to feed My sheep."
I have the feeling that it's not the uptown churches that are buckling to and doing the Lord's work; they are still mired down in sniffing each other's underwear and bashing the American 'rubes'. This is the Real Church at work.
I've seen a lot of these kind of articles lately and I'm a little disturbed at the tone of some of them.
I'm very religious and I'm so happy to see that so many churches have stepped into the gap that this unprecidented disaster has caused, so please don't think I'm putting down the efforts of fellow Christians.
What I'm disturbed about is the tone from most of the articles suggests that they stepped in because the Red Cross, Salvation Army and FEMA aren't doing their jobs right. I just keep getting kind of a let's toot our horn at how good we are for stepping in because THEY are doing such a lousy job tone.
I guess I should find some other articles to illustrate what I mean better than this article, even though I still get a little bit of that feel from this one. I think it's the way the reporter's that are writing these articles are wording them.
I don't think I'm doing a good job of expressing what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that it seems like even Christian good works are being slanted to send out the wrong message. Has anyone else out there gotten this feeling when they were reading articles like this about the church shelters and volunteers?
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