July 2, 2009

During a rare gathering of Jews and evangelical Christians, Fuller Theological Seminary Doctor of Ministry Program Director Kurt Fredrickson said some Christians believe in the Rapture – the notion that God will supernaturally remove them from the earth prior to the end of the world.

Although Fredrickson doesn't believe "that's the way it's going to work out," the former senior pastor of a Simi Valley, California church used to wonder if the doctrine was true and his congregation vanished if the community would even notice they were gone.

"My sad conclusion was quite negative," Fredrickson mused. "I really had this sense early on in my ministry at Simi Covenant Church that they wouldn't notice that we were gone, and if they did notice we were gone, they would probably be happy that those crazy, crotchety Christians weren't here anymore."

The penetrating comment came during a recent luncheon sponsored by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and Fuller Theological Seminary that brought together rabbis, pastors and professors to talk about ways to work more closely together to help the poor and homeless. The meeting is part of a new movement by the faith community nationwide to do more to help the "least of these" amid an economic tsunami that is radically changing the way people think about life.

The luncheon, "Caring in a Caring Community: Doing the Right Thing in Bad Times," was designed to bring Christians and Jews together because of a mutual sense of call to care for those who are marginalized by society. While the Jewish community engages in many "significant dialogues" with Catholics and mainline Christians, luncheon participants noted Jews and evangelical Christians have traditionally lacked a strong partnership.

"It's a complex relationship," says Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis. "This program between Fuller and the Board of Rabbis is an attempt to build bridges and realize that we have much in common. We have a joint mandate as people of faith to partner with God in caring for those in our community who are most at risk – people who are homeless and people who don't have enough food to put on the table - and this is an effort to address those needs."

Following a time of soul-searching, Jews and Christians across the country are stepping up to help the growing number of families – even middle-class ones – that are joining the ranks of the poor and homeless as people lose jobs and homes in the financial downturn. As the face of homelessness changes, shelters and government agencies across the nation are reporting unprecedented increases in the number of families losing their homes. A new report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates an extra 1.5 million Americans are likely to experience homelessness during the next two years. That's in addition to the 2.5 million who are already expected to become homeless during the course of this year.

"We are both people of the Book and good Jews and good evangelicals take the Book very seriously," says Fuller President Richard J. Mouw. "Some of us may have a bigger Book than the others, but we share a lot of the basic text that tells us we need to be concerned about the homeless, the marginalized and the oppressed. This is a new stage of evangelical and Jewish cooperation."

Putting their faith into action, a growing number of churches and synagogues are participating in a new, concrete program to help the homeless. Known as Imagine LA  (ImagineLA.org), the goal of the innovative program is to mobilize the faith community to sponsor and mentor homeless families to get them into long-term housing and become self-sufficient. With 8,000 houses of worship and 8,000 homeless families in the Los Angeles area, program founder and Bel Air Presbyterian Church Pastor Mark Brewer imagines a day when no child sleeps on what are some of the nation's deadliest streets. So far, more than a half-dozen churches and synagogues have "adopted" homeless families, but Brewer expects the number of sponsorships to grow to about 200 by 2011. The program is attracting interest across the country and he hopes the idea will catch on nationwide.

As statistics show 80 percent of the population is only two paychecks away from potential homelessness, Imagine LA Executive Director Jill Govan Bauman says the issue of family homelessness is now touching many people's lives.

"I think what's happening is that people really want to be part of the solution, not another Band-Aid, not another soup kitchen, clothing drive or food bank, but how can they help a family get back on their feet and stay on their feet," Govan Bauman says.

This interfaith effort to help the poor and homeless comes at a time of growing secular and statist attacks on charities.

Rabbi Elliott Dorff, a rector and distinguished professor in philosophy at the American Jewish University, says this growing interfaith movement may prove vital in saving houses of worship and other charities that depends on tax-deductible contributions to operate. Despite Newsweek's recent cover story proclaiming "We Are All Socialists Now," Dorff says the United States is still a capitalist system and part of the reason why it works and is not "completely inhumane" is because it offers tax deductions to those who give to charitable institutions as a way of supplementing government programs for the poor.

"The presumption in the way the American government functions is that a lot of the care for the poor and homeless is not going to fall just on individuals and families, but also on institutions within society that take on these obligations and faith-based communities are a very important part of that," Dorff says.

But the current financial crisis has focused lawmaker's attention on tax-deductible giving.  Specific proposals are being floated to reduce or eliminate this deduction, especially for those in the upper-income brackets.

Brian Rooney, an attorney and spokesman for the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, family values and the sanctity of human life, says this proposal is very troubling because the most wealthy individuals tend to give more to houses of worship and other charities. The proposal seems to indicate that some lawmakers have more faith in the government's own ability to help the poor than it does in the ability of houses of worship and other charities.

"This is quite a paradox where you have state governments cutting back on welfare programs, but the federal government is not enabling charities to pick up the slack," Rooney says.

In an effort to ensure they would be missed just in case the trumpet does blow, Fredrickson's church took to heart the advice of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer that the essence of sin is a heart turned inward. They are now reaching out to their community in love. This summer, the church plans to ask several faith communities in the Simi Valley to join them in partnering with Imagine LA to sponsor homeless families.

"We want to be a church that if we ever were gone that the wider community would say, ‘We're sorry that they are not here anymore because they really were doing good in the community.'"