The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has mobilized religious organizations to offer prayers, collect funds and send volunteers to help those affected. In Wednesday’s RNS report, Adelle M. Banks and Jason Kane write about these groups’ efforts and offer a list with contact information for those organizations. The Rev. John McCullough, executive director and CEO of Church World Service, predicts the needs will last for years and lessons learned from the South Asian tsunami will be quickly applied. “Just the magnitude of the area that’s been impacted alone suggests that this is going to be a situation that’s going to take probably close to a decade for folks to fully recover,” he said in an interview before heading to the ravaged area.
Greg Garrison reports on the success of Lakewood Church Pastor Joel Osteen of Houston: In August 2004, he filled the 18,000-seat Philips Arena in Atlanta beyond overflowing. His book, “Your Best Life Now,” came out last fall and reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list. In July his church moved into the 16,000-seat Compaq Center, former home of the Houston Rockets. His current speaking tour includes stops around the country. Osteen, who took over Lakewood from his father, has steered the church more into mainstream Protestantism. His messages are light on doctrine, heavy on self-help psychology. “It’s giving hope, giving encouragement,” Osteen said. “For so long, people have been beat down, just by life in general. God is good, he’s for you. You can be happy.”
And Hugh S. Moore writes about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ use of controversial religious imagery in its campaigns: A billboard depicted a gaunt Holocaust prisoner next to a picture of a laboratory monkey, noting that both were “experimented on.” It’s an old but, according to PETA, effective strategy. For the last 10 years, PETA has used Jewish and Christian images and symbols in its effort to equate animal and human suffering.
