- $1 billion Empire State Building IPO: why it won't be like Facebook IPO
- In surprise move, GOP leaders admit defeat in payroll tax battle
- More than 30,000 Germans turn out against anti-piracy treaty ACTA
- Does Obama blueprint reduce budget deficit fast enough? (+video)
- Pentagon budget: Does it pit active-duty forces against retirees? (+video)
- Murdoch media crisis deepens with five new arrests
- How Pinterest combines the best parts of Facebook, Tumblr, and Etsy
- US, China face 'trust deficit' as China's heir apparent visits
US churches rush to fill void from tsunami
Believers have raised funds and packed boxes while struggling to understand why disasters happen.
The people of True Bethel Baptist Church have always felt that international disasters from Rwanda to Sudan were out of their reach.Here the immediate inner-city needs on their doorstep in Buffalo, N.Y., routinely come first.
But last week, a deacon heartbroken by pictures of far-off devastation broke the mold by asking the Rev. Darius Pridgen if the congregation could take up a collection for tsunami victims in Asia. With the pastor's blessing, a ministry to the other side of the world was born.
"If this had been a war situation, we would have been less responsive to help," the Pastor Pridgen says. "But they [in Asia] didn't participate in anything that caused this. It's almost the innocence of the situation that makes it touch everybody."
As death tolls from the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami climb above 150,000, people across the United States are grappling with the spiritual aftershocks. Death and destruction on an epic scale have triggered a search for meaning inside a bleak narrative of water, rubble, and untold suffering.
Satisfying answers to philosophical questions of "why?" are proving almost as hard to find as survivors in remote places that were all but washed away. Yet where many feel the heart of God has for days seemed hidden, the faithful are determined now to reveal it themselves.
"Do I have answers because I'm religious? No," says Ellen Goldberg, an Orthodox Jew who lives in South Florida. "I don't think we necessarily get answers, but we do get direction. This to me is an action call."
Other believers have sensed a similar mandate to act. The nation's 155 Jewish federations have raised more than $3 million for tsunami relief. Catholic Relief Services has collected more than $14 million toward its goal of $25 million. Islamic Relief USA is on its way to raising $10 million for the hard-hit region.
All this effort comes amid spirited discussion within faith communities about their views of God's role in the disaster. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, made headlines Jan. 2 with a post-tsunami column in London's Sunday Telegraph titled "Of course this makes us doubt God's existence." The Anglican dean of Sydney, Philip Jensen, meanwhile touched off his own tempest by describing the wave as a "warning of God's judgment." In the Jakarta Post, Muslims debated what might have been God's message in sending the tsunami.
In the United States, religious gatherings from Bethesda, Md., to Anaheim, Calif., are bringing concerned believers together to raise funds and prayers simultaneously. For some, it seems the great void left by the disaster has beckoned believers to fill the chasm with good deeds of their own.
"I don't want to spend any time dealing with that [philosophical question of where was God] when people need assistance," said Al Hooper, director of social ministry for the Archdiocese of Denver. "To move forward - that restores dignity in ourselves, and it certainly honors the Creator."
Page: 1 | 2 
