c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Four decades after winning 10 Academy Awards and inspiring countless young lovers, “West Side Story” captivates my family with its powerful music and tragic retelling of “Romeo and Juliet.”

I had forgotten how cogently the film presents the tragedy of immigrant gangs in Manhattan fighting furiously over nothing _ tattered tenements on West 110th Street, trash-strewn sidewalks, bleak turf beneath highways _ and yet conveying the oddly hopeful message that they fight over everything worthwhile: love, hope, respect, belonging, freedom.

The story is told without any nod to the “American Dream” and its rags-to-riches social mobility. Unlike other movies of that optimistic era, “West Side Story” offers not one glimpse of the “good life” beyond poverty. It promises no escape from bleak streets. If there is hope, it lies in lovers finding safe places. In the end, men die, women don the black scarf of mourning, and everyone stays poor.

At the time “West Side Story” appeared (1957 on Broadway and 1961 on film), social mobility seemed to be in full swing. Study hard, get good SAT scores, go to a good college, and the world could be yours. It didn’t matter where you came from; in this meritocracy, all roads led upward for those willing to work. Houses, shiny cars, leisure time, retirement at 65 _ all were possible, and life was good.

As it turned out, “West Side Story” was more prescient than we realized.

Today’s gangs have different names and more powerful weapons, and they operate well away from West 110th Street and its $3,000-a-month two-bedroom apartments. But they show the same hopeless rage. What is America to the film’s character, Bernardo? “Lots of doors slamming in our face.”

In fact, the sound of doors slamming is reverberating across America and reaching deep into the middle class. The rich get phenomenally richer by awarding themselves huge salary increases while laying off employees, cutting medical benefits and reneging on pensions. They take home the lion’s share of tax cuts supposedly meant to help all, while older and middle-class workers step down in class, not up. They are so heavily mortgaged and indebted that economic survival seems tenuous. Younger workers find the job market tight for all and closed for many.

Few even pretend that an open-to-all meritocracy still prevails. The wealthy consolidate their gains by pushing for more government largesse and by bidding up housing prices and educational costs so that only they can play. It is like a scene from the 1880s, when robber barons’ greed and political clout nearly destroyed the nation, or the corrupt aristocracy’s grabbing in the Roman Empire’s final days.

This moment is forcing an identity crisis on American religious institutions. Religion tends to reflect its culture, not lead the way. Preachers learn early not to meddle. Most congregations dare not stray far from their leading members’ preferences, even when members’ actual interests run counter to those preferences.

I see a lot of fulminating about sexuality and family values, but little public concern about the vast and corrosive gap between rich and poor. Or the societal crisis that looms when social mobility vanishes. Or the corruption of the family that occurs when a few benefit at the direct expense of the many. Or the societywide decay that ensues when unbridled greed and haughty attitudes triumph over common sense, idealism and democratic principles.

When some are feeling betrayed by society and a few are crowing in victory, it is a grave disservice to suggest that either Angst or accountability will be resolved by condemning someone else’s sexual morality.

Like the battling immigrants in “West Side Story,” people need to focus on love, hope, respect, belonging and freedom, and to look without flinching at what God truly wants in a just society.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His forthcoming book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” will be published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

KRE/JL END EHRICH