c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) As residents of an area stretching from Louisiana to Alabama reel from the force of Hurricane Katrina, religious organizations are mobilizing relief efforts to aid them.

Baptists, Muslims, Orthodox and others are collecting emergency relief funds, sending volunteers and offering prayers. Experts with disaster relief say past efforts with hurricanes _ including the four that hit Florida last year _ will help them organize. Lessons learned from December’s South Asian tsunami will also be 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,” said the Rev. John McCullough, executive director and CEO of the New York City-based Church World Service, in an interview before heading to the ravaged area Wednesday (Aug. 31).

The Rev. Richard Greene, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette, La., said people in his area _ 135 northwest of New Orleans _ have responded to requests from authorities to provide small boats to help rescue stranded hurricane victims.

“Parishioners called asking for me to pray for them,” Greene said in an interview. “They’re leaving their families and homes to help rescue people. When I asked them how long they would be gone, they said, `However long it takes.”’

Representatives of 30 Southern Baptist churches and associations have sent units to the affected area, where they will work with the American Red Cross in providing mobile kitchen and shower facilities as well as volunteers ready to use chain saws, disinfectant and other supplies to help with the cleanup.

“We have additional units on standby,” said Martin King, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. He said about 300 people have reached sites in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and close to 1,000 are expected by the weekend.

“They can only send us where there’s not water standing,” he said, anticipating that units will be moved to locations where displaced people have arrived.

“We’ll probably be a main resource for feeding those refugees,” he said.

Staffers of a United Methodist Committee on Relief depot in Baldwin, La., which traditionally sends supplies across the country and the globe, are finding they are needed most right where they are. Some 900 Katrina refugees have entered their town and lack money and other resources, so staffers and volunteers have been distributing toothbrushes and deodorant.

“People from Louisiana and surrounding areas sought refuge there and now they’re going to be there for a while,” said Michelle Scott, a spokeswoman for the New York-based relief agency. “They’re handing them out in their own community because that’s what’s needed right now.”

Students from Seventh-day Adventist Church-related Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., an inland city not nearly as hard hit as areas close to the Gulf of Mexico, headed to New Orleans to help victims.

“We will reach out to the people who are stuck there, give them food, blankets, whatever they need,” said Carolyn Bishop, a student member of the National Association for the Prevention of Starvation. “And we’ll bring along stuffed animals to give to the kids so they have something to play with.”

Those who aren’t handing out physical aid are offering spiritual comfort.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco called for Wednesday (Aug. 31) to be a statewide day of prayer.

“I know, by praying together on Wednesday, that we can pull together and draw strength we need _ strength that only God can give us,” she said in a statement.

Religious leaders from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano to Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America called for prayers for those who died in the hurricane as well as those who are grieving their loss.

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Gerald B. Kieschnick reported in a letter e-mailed to his congregations about the damage reports he had received and urged prayer and financial support for those in need.

“St. Paul’s steeple fell on its school building, causing major damage to these historic structures,” he said of St. Paul Lutheran Church in New Orleans. “Atonement Lutheran Church in Metairie had five feet of water in its buildings.”

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Washington-based Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, expected mosques to play a role in the recovery efforts.

“In addition to offering our prayers for the safety of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina, we are encouraging the Muslim community and mosques to do all they can to assist those who are affected by this tremendous natural disaster,” he said in a statement.

McCullough of Church World Service said the tsunami had taught him and other religious relief workers the importance of not only meeting physical needs, but giving people time to grieve over their personal losses.

“We want to be careful that we don’t just simply rush in to begin reconstruction but to really provide adequate time to deal with the human dimension,” he said.

Wendy Lococo, an administrator of Our Lady of Wisdom Healthcare Center in the New Orleans suburb of Algiers, helped transfer retired priests and lay people from the flooded metropolitan area to a Catholic high school in Alexandria, La., 200 miles away.

“We are all now care providers, regardless of what our responsibilities were before _ since we don’t know when or if we can go back to New Orleans,” she said.

MO/PH END BANKS

_ The Huntsville Times contributed to this story.

Editors: With sidebar listing religious relief organizations collecting donations to aid hurricane victims. Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos of devastation caused by Katrina.