When faith hits the streets in L.A.

Who knew that the Los Angeles Times had a Religion section online? At any rate, in this article, “Religion as a force for good,” opinion writer Ian Buruma expands on the notion that “it is often the faithful who are inspired to do great things.” As seen from the Burmese rebellion, Buruma also draws on this religious inspiration from other faiths and their historic impacts on the international front. At the same time though, Buruma touches on the public intellectual’s tendency to downgrade religion, linking it to “backwardness” and the principle reason for all of society’s ills. Thus, Buruma cites, “It has become fashionable in certain smart circles to regard atheism as a sign of superior education, of highly evolved civilization, of enlightenment.”

Similarly, Stephen Mack illustrates this idea in his article “Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as the Public Intellectual.” Focusing on the makings of American democracy Mack states, “Nearly every significant movement for social reform in American history was either started or nurtured in the church.” But while Mack cites national movements, from labor reform and women’s suffrage to prison reform and Civil Rights, Buruma goes abroad. Thus, he gives credit to Catholicism for “People Power” in the Philippines, in opposition to Ferdinand Marcos’ regime in the 1980s. And after attributing Poland’s communist rebellion to Pope John Paul II in the 1980s, Buruma also cites Islam as a basis of resistance against mostly secular dictatorships in the Middle East today.

But in terms of Los Angeles, it seems that this type of convergence between faith and politics is more obscure in passing. Other than the sexual abuse scandals and millions of dollars in fines that forever stigmatize the Los Angeles Archdiocese, how else can Angelenos come across these poignant moments of faith-based movements and community organizing? However small or large, these events and movements are history in the making, all occurring in our own backyard.

One recent example is this past Saturday. Just a few months before, Mac Arthur Park was the setting of chaos – mothers frantically searching for their children, teenagers trying their best to avoid baton blows from police, and protestors lost in confusion as rubber bullets penetrated into the crowd. But still scarred by the May Day March that ended in mass panic, Mac Arthur Park embodied peace on Saturday.

Over 1,000 people walked and listened to the chanting and singing of monks and nuns in a march led by Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. Marchers joined the Nobel Peace Prize nominee in a peace walk that brought healing and “the art of community building” back to Pico-Union, a neighborhood that has recently experienced yet another increase of violence and homicide.

But in this most recent story found in the LA Times, NPR-KCRW and Downtown News, we see once again where faith meets civil action in Los Angeles. After being forced to move his main facility four times, most recently from a fire eight years ago, Father Gregory Boyle finally opened the new headquarters for Homeboy Industries.

Originally started as a job placement program nearly 20 years ago, Boyle and parishioners from Dolores Mission sought to provide gang members with a chance for a new life. Now in a more upscale facility in Chinatown, Homeboy Industries houses a new bakery, cafe, office building and rehabilitation center, still thriving on the same idea that “nothing stops a bullet like a job.” But aside from job placement, Boyle rehabilitates his clients – both female and male – through free tattoo removal, classes, workshops, and counseling. In fact, here’s Tuesday's class schedule: Financial Literacy, Decisions for Healthy Living, Computer Basics, Anger Management, Alcoholics Anonymous and College Corner.

For Father Boyle, a Jesuit priest, it’s a big change from what he painfully recalls as the “decade of death” – the years from 1988 to 1998, when unprecedented gang violence led Boyle to bury 156 of his L.A. gang ministry. Yet at the same time, in the welcoming of the new headquarters, this change entails even more promising ones just around the corner.

Of course, these aren’t the only instances in which significant local, social movements are born from faith (or at the very least, associated with religion). From the South Central Farmers and School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), to the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-LA), the list goes on and on. But the process toward social reform remains an ever-long, winding and tumultuous path – after all, movements don’t produce change overnight. So as many of these groups continue to struggle for positive change, it would be foolish to perceive their religious backgrounds as any indication of backwardness.

And yet “certain smart circles” continue to easily throw in the towel, forfeiting faith and (ironically) damning it all to hell. But what is somehow lost in this process is the acknowledgement that for most of the time, it is even more difficult to believe in something rather than nothing at all. Because what is harder than believing in what you cannot see, hear, or touch, is transforming this faith into something tangible. It’s finding the inspiration and strength from the elusive unknown – whatever or whoever that may be – and using it to create something that serves everyone, believers and non-believers alike.

For myself, it’s difficult to imagine Los Angeles without religion – just as it is difficult to imagine American democracy without its religious origins in the English Puritans. Whether I’m in Pico-Union, Boyle Heights or even Hollywood, I always seem to come across social institutions that have been founded first on the premise of a need in the community, but largely on faith as well. From after-school programs to parks, and free healthcare clinics to food banks, the faithful often take it upon themselves to fulfill the community’s void and provide what the government has failed to do.

So Buruma says it best in that the “Moral power of religious faith does not need a supernatural explanation,” nor does it have to be in a supernatural being, “Its strength is belief itself, in a moral order that defies secular or indeed religious dictators.”

Thus, as Buruma clarifies, in circumstances when “secular liberals are impotent,” moral power from religious faith remains. This is when the visionaries, romantics and true believers are willing to take the plunge and sacrifice much more than what politicians can offer in time, money and advisors. These are the thinkers, movers, and leaders that do it because no one else will. And collectively, this is what faith-based organizations and movements can and do accomplish. It’s their specialty.

Americans as religionphobes with the public intellectual caught in between

In the way that American democracy operates today, whenever religion is thrown into the mix (or rather, the ever-daunting platform of political discourse) Americans always seem to get their panties caught up in a bunch. Okay, so maybe this is not exactly the case and just a more figurative example. But as Stephen Mack so blatantly points out in “The Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as the Public Intellectual,” there is some truth in the “old adage that religion and (liberal, democratic) politics don’t mix.” However, as Mack suggests, this is not because the two are polar opposites in any ideological and metaphysical sense. But rather, religion and politics are both “vying for the same space in the human imagination” – that is, in the way that we see ourselves in the larger cosmic or social order, ultimately defining how we as humans relate to others and everything around us.

So from where religion and politics meet, what typically results among liberals, the democratic left and even public intellectuals is a “secular bigotry,” as Mack so deems it. Believed among these groups is the acceptance of religion in its influence on your moral values (this of course, has to be positive). But once you bring those religious beliefs into the political forum, uh oh, wait. No, you must stop there and abandon your faith, grounding public arguments solely in reason and evidence. Thus, in an attempt to promote a “diverse democracy” in which a common political language exists, theology cannot speak as people of faith are demanded to “be other than themselves and act publicly as if their faith is of no real consequence.”

Interestingly enough, where does one draw the line between this secular bigotry and fear of religion? Just watch the film "Jesus Camp" or simply read the title of Christopher Hitchens’ recent best-seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And while works such as those from Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins link religion to backwardness, I’m beginning to sense a hint of religious phobia here. At the same time though, how can Americans not play into this fear? In an era where the word jihad is immediately associated with suicide bombers and the Los Angeles Archdiocese is coughing up $764 million for victims of sexual abuse, there exists the pressing need for public intellectuals to take the high road (or safer one for that matter) and distance themselves as much as possible from religion.

In a recent TIME article by Michael Kinsley, current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is cited for trying to play the J.F.K. card among voters. In seemingly opting out of his Mormon faith, he tries to persuade the American public in that his religious beliefs are of “his own private affair.” But what Kinsley demonstrates is that “these days presidential candidates are required to wear their religion on their sleeve.” And if religion is so central to their lives and moral values, it cannot be limited to just a private prayer/ personal reflection time before bed – as is the case for many presidential candidates on the left and right.

As Kinsley states, we need to know in what ways a candidate’s religious doctrine forbids or requires action and how she or he must deal with these religious improbabilities. Must we refer back to the times when Bush had said that God led him to his Iraq policy? We deserve to know the extent of which a candidate believes in the doctrines and perspectives of their faith, as this reveals much about their character. After all, a candidate’s “leap of faith” may be admirable or even essential in voters’ minds. On the other hand, some may find it offensive when a candidate’s religious beliefs – and actions based on such values – fail to agree with their own.

But what are Romney and other presidential candidates (Obama, Clinton, McCain, etc.) really doing? When it comes down to it, other than standing on deep religious convictions, candidates seem to be playing on the public’s fear toward religion, or apprehension at the very least. In the case of Romney, Kinsley sums it up rather nicely in that:

It will be amusing if Romney is done in by a fear of his religious values because, as near as we can tell, he has no values of any sort that he wouldn’t abandon if they become a burden. But in politics, you are who you pretend to be.

So while candidates seem to be playing on both sides of the fence, the current race to the White House continues to feed into the public’s phobia of religion. Continuing with this fear, of course, is the wicked paradox of the religious public intellectual.