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TO NATIONAL DESKS, ASSIGNMENT EDITORS & PRODUCER NEWS UPDATE
‘Children of Chernoybl’ Author Tells Disaster Responders to Bring Their Faith to Work
Children, Farmers, Fishermen, Other Vulnerable Groups Are Focus of Annual Church World Service Disaster Preparedness Forum
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY– Tues March 28– Faith based organizations should take advantage of their faith to bring hands-on spirituality and compassion to the work of providing relief for disaster survivors, according to a leading disaster ministry specialist and academician speaking in Princeton yesterday.
“Don’t just write the position papers, roll up your sleeves,” says Michael J. Christensen, director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Drew University and professor of spirituality and religious studies there.
Christensen, author of Children of Chernoybl, spoke to professionals, scholars and interfaith disaster ministry leaders gathered for the March 25 – 28 national Disaster Preparedness Forum, “Building Human Security,” presented at Princeton Theological Seminary by global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS).
Church World Service associate director for capacity building Bob Arnold said the agency holds the national forum annually to share and gather information that will inform CWS’s interfaith colleagues in preparedness for and responding to natural as well as human-caused disasters. “The forum’s findings also help inform our agency’s public policy initiatives, training programs, and resource development.
“This year’s forum on disaster preparedness and human security is focused on support for vulnerable populations,” Arnold said, “including children, racially and ethnically vulnerable groups, and the poor.”
Drew University’s Christensen told the Princeton forum attendees, “Don’t let the fear of proselytizing keep you from praying with people” following a disaster. Faith organizations, Dr. Christensen says, often try to respond to disasters with “social action and advocacy and leave the compassionate work to evangelicals. We must work together and do both.”
He made the remarks during his Monday seminar about the work of CitiHope International, a humanitarian agency he chairs, with victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
CitiHope has been delivering pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to hospitals in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, where some five million people still live in areas contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl accident.
“A mother with a sick child would love a hand, a hug, a hope and a prayer,” he told the interfaith forum of some 60 scholars, theologians and disaster specialists Church World Service convened to discuss ways in which the religious community can help to make people and communities less vulnerable to disaster.
Christensen explained that
following disasters– particularly ones like Chernobyl and, “to some extent” Hurricane Katrina, where government actions have come into question– “the church needs to be prophetic as well as compassionate” in its response.
But it not enough to do one without the other, because as Dr. Christensen explained in an interview following the session, a holistic approach that deals with both the body and the spirit is more effective.
“Confronting systemic evil with advocacy and position papers is not enough, nor is simply responding with an open compassionate hand. You’ve got to do both and you’ve got to do it in the name of Jesus,” he said.
The forum, which concludes Tuesday, will feature panel discussions focused on the faith community’s role in organizing vulnerable communities, in assisting mass evacuations, and in meeting the needs of economically vulnerable farmers and fishermen, “the farmers and fishers who feed us,” as the panel is titled.
New York City-based Church World Service is a global relief, development, and refugee assistance agency. CWS is one of the first agencies called to respond to natural and human-caused disasters in the U.S. In addition to its emergency relief efforts, Church World Service focuses on assisting community-based long-term recovery for vulnerable and under-served populations.
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