Dr. Muhammad Qatanani, left, is Imam of the Islamic Center just a few blocks from our home.  He is a highly respected moderate Muslim leader with wide credibility among Jews and Christians alike in our area, where he has been serving for the past ten years. He is considered a major bridge-builder between Muslims and other groups. A Palestinian, he was briefly detained by Israel 15 years ago but quickly released.  He applied for permanent residency here in Paterson in 1999 but his application was rejected because of the Israeli incident.  Now the federal immigration authorities are preparing to deport him and his family.  This has aroused loud and prolonged protests in our community.  Supporters have collected more than 15,000 signatures on petitions to the Department of Homeland Security. A Patersonian who works for AAA said the case "makes me feel a little embarrassed as an American, that they would target such a man."  Many of us feel the same way.

        

 

 

         

          This is a follow up to the blog I wrote about U.S. prisons the other day.  The Women's Prison Association reports that there are more than 200,000 women currently incarcerated, and their numbers continue to rise.  Nearly two-thirds of women in state prisons are there for nonviolent offenses; most are mothers.  Their children face the emotional and developmental effects of separtion, and the public incurs additional costs related to the child welfare system. The U. S. can't afford to remain the world's most ardent incarcerator.  The cost to the individuals and their families is just too high. The Association recommends that the U.S. should increase its investment in community-based alternatives to incarceration.  Community programs provide treatment and support services under court supervision.  This is an alternative advocated also by Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship and many other concerned Christians.  However, many U. S. prisons today have been outsourced to the private sector, which makes a fortune off the backs of prisoners, so constructive alternatives face great opposition.

         

 

 

 

          If you can afford an hour to listen to truth, I recommend you try to find a re-run of the Bill Moyer Journal of April 25th on PBS in which he interviews the infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  The interview is outstanding.  Moyers sets the context by describing Wright's family background, his six years of service in the U. S. Marine Corps, his call to the ministry and his becoming the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ -- "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian" is the church's motto -- back in the early 1970s.  At that time Trinity was a struggling congregation of 87 members.  Today it is the largest church on Chicago's South Side and Wright has just retired.  Then Moyers plunges into the interview, replaying not 30-second sound bites, but relatively lengthy extracts from Wright's two most controversial sermons, asking Wright to explain the contexts and the point of the messages.  As Wright explains the sermons, they appear entirely relevant and make perfect sense.  Of course, perfect sense is not what today's media commentators are after, Moyers being an obvious exception. 

 

          A young lady, 20 years old and dear to Georgia and me, committed a relatively innocuous crime in the state of Georgia when she was 18 years old.  She went to trial this week.  The trial was short and she was found guilty.  The prosecutor asked for a sentence of 60 (!) years.  The judge indicated he thought 30 years would do, but eventually relented and sentenced her to 20 years, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.  From 60 to 10 -- we are so grateful and are convinced that the Lord moved in the judge's heart in answer to the prayers of so many of our friends in Paterson.  "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will" (Proverbs 21:1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Yechi HaMelech -- Hebrew for "Long live the King!"  The Lubavitcher leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Scheerson (left), died in 1994.  Yet thousands believe, as he himself did, that he is the promised Messiah.  A recent Declaration posted as an advertisement in the New York Times calls on readers to attach their signatures to this declaration:

         

 

 

 

          Pope Benedict XVI was in New York City today and will be staying on tomorrow as well.  I He spoke at the United Nations, at at ecumenical gathering, and at a Jewish synagogue.  I watched the latter two on TV.  The ecumenical meeting was held at St. Joseph's church in the Yorkville section on the upper east side of Manhattan.  That was of interest to me because my paternal great-great-grandfather, James W. Scott, born in 1799 in Philadelphia, lived for some time in Yorkville, NY before emigrating west to Illinois.  Yorkville at that time was a village, not part of what we know as Manhattan today.  The pope's visit to the synagogue, also located on the upper east side, was historic.  No one expects the visit to resolve all the tensions between Christianity and Judaism, but it was certainly a welcome step forward. 

          After six weeks of relief from presidential candidates debates, ABC sponsored another one tonight -- and lost my respect in the way they handled it.  That's not easy for me to admit, because ABC has long been my favored news network, ever since Peter Jennings was the anchor.  To be honest, I was disgusted by the fact that the two moderator-questioners wasted the first 50 minutes of the time I had set aside by focusing on trivia.  I felt insulted.  Whether Hillary Clinton misspoke on Bosnia, or Barack Obama on rural Pennsylvanians is something I've had ample time to consider and reach a conclusion on.  It was inexcusable for the network to use up half of the total time available to pursue these matters.  That left another 50 minutes or so for Obama and Clinton to lay out their views on the really important issues: the two wars America is engaged in, our collapsing economy, the health care crisis and our aging infrastructure, just to name a few. The candidates should have been alloted the full two hours for these subjects.

 

          Georgia and I have just finished watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talk about their personal faith.  Senator Clinton was the more comfortable of the two, which is to be expected, since she grew up in an active Christian family, attended Sunday School, etc.  Senator Obama is a relative late-comer to Christianity, having been raised in a non-church going family, and having not made a professsion of faith until he was in his twenties.

 

          Even the poorest of Americans spend only one-sixth of their incomes on food.  Not so elsewhere.  In Nigeria, for example, families spend nearly three-quarters of their income on food.  Last year the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent -- prices not seen in a generation.  Corn doubled in price; wheat rose by 28 percent.  This morning's newspaper carried a story about food riots and looting in Haiti where people are starving.  Food riots have occured recently in Egypt.  Last week the New York Times reported World Bank president Robert Zoellick as warning that 33 nations are at risk for social unrest because of rising food prices.

 

 

 

          Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is said to be 80% Catholic, 20% Protestant, and 100% Voodoo.  Max Beauvoir, left, has just been named Voodoo's supreme master, a newly created position. Voodoo priests, who are called houngans, came together recently as a national federation and elected Mr. Beauvoir, 72 years old.  Their hope is that he will be able to improve their public image.  Over the past few decades Haiti's elite has marginalized the houngans.  Today they are at the bottom of Haitian society. In an interview reported by Mqarc Lacey, the Sorbonne-educated Beauvoir insisted that Voodoo is key to Haitian identity and that if Haitians are to move forward in life they must recapture their identity.  Voodoo is a combination of the animism slaves brought with them to Haiti from West Africa, and Christianity. It is widespread among the poorer peoples of Haiti.  When I spent some time in Haiti nearly 60 years ago I found that Christian missionaries were violently opposed to Voodoo.  But they have been largely unsuccessful.  Haiti doesn't have Catholics and Protestants, Beauvoir observes.  It only has voodo-Catholics and voodoo-Protestants. 

 

 

 

          I took 10 days off from writing my blog to concentrate on writing a chapter in my new book, but I'm back again now.  The photo at left shows the University of Maryland Navigators groups that spent five days last month ministering with us here in Paterson.  We're on top of Garrett Mountain, which overlooks the city.  I'm second from the left, and to my right is Matt Nichols, the Nav representative that led the group.