'Survivor' castoff's prize helps finance church hall

January 9, 2008 Wednesday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

The first person to be booted from the television show "Survivor" has parlayed her $2,500 consolation prize into a cache large enough to finance the expansion of a Walnut Creek church.

Seven years after the show, Sonja Christopher's nest egg has grown to $1 million, and the Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church will break ground on its new Fellowship Hall on Sunday.

Christopher, a banjo player who serenaded her island-mates with a satiric ukulele version of "Bye Bye Blues" on "Survivor," told CBS officials that if she captured the $1 million booty, she would sock it into bricks and mortar at Mt. Diablo.

Alas, Christopher tripped during one of the show's challenges and pocketed the booby prize instead.

Christopher, 70, lost out to Richard Hatch, a Rhode Island competitor who performed the required feats in his birthday suit. He was last seen publicly in a different kind of suit -- an orange one with a federal prison imprint on it. The motivational speaker was sentenced to 51 months for failing to pay tax on nearly $400,000 in earnings.

Greed plus arrogance plus celebrity equals bad karma, Christopher, a Rossmoor resident, said Wednesday.

"He so infuriated the IRS, he told me they wouldn't settle for anything less than jail time," she said.

In a Sunday talk at the Eckley Lane church after her unceremonious exit from the show, Christopher said she would use her winnings -- or losings -- as seed money for an expansion fund.

"I apologized for not winning the million dollars," she said. "When I came down from the dais, there were several families who said, 'We're so happy with what you're doing, we are going to match it.'"

In true Unitarian fashion, she said, they prevailed on her to lead the drive.

The church is not the only beneficiary of her stint on "Survivor." Christopher, who has rappelled down a 50-foot cliff and hit steep terrain on her mountain bike, also speaks to groups about beating breast cancer.

"We 'Survivors' were in demand to make public appearances and endorsements and things," said Christopher, in remission for 10 years. "NBC was so overwhelmed, they said, 'You need to get an agent.'" She donated her honoraria to the Fellowship Hall fund.

As rain tore through the Bay Area on Tuesday, she nursed a sore throat -- the result of her first gig in the new year.

But she will be ready with a shovel Sunday for the groundbreaking.

"I would have eaten bugs to see the darn thing built," she said. "I'll tell them, I didn't stay on the island long enough to eat a bug, but now I will."

That may call for some sleight of hand, she said.

Juvenile hall chaplain seeks to 'rebuild the kid'

Contra Costa Times

March 24, 2008 Monday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1995, and the Rev. Charles Tinsley brought films on the civil rights movement to Juvenile Hall to show to the teens in lockup.

The sight of Birmingham police turning dogs and firehoses on peaceful demonstrators enraged a 15-year-old named Darrell Jobe. He lashed out at the white inmates in the audience, blasting them with profanities.

"I took him into another room and I told him, 'They chose to be here, and that's very important to me,'" Tinsley recalled. "You're circumventing the good we're doing.'"

It was the first, but would not be the last time he experienced Tinsley's transformative support and attention.

Today, Jobe is educated, well-spoken and well-paid, a consultant to corporate clients. The Brentwood father of four said lessons from Tinsley have nurtured his own parenting.

Statistically, he shouldn't even be alive, Jobe said last week.

"I was gang-banging in Richmond," he said. "He tried to show us another way to go. In custody, everybody dogs you, the counselors. They don't realize you're a child and you're hurting."

In his 13 years on the job as juvenile justice chaplain, Tinsley has helped send some 200 detainees to college, buried 150 and taken over the rearing of "dozens and dozens."

Many of his charges call the Presbyterian minister "Rev," but plenty call him "Dad" or "Pop Tinsley." He earns a modest salary with no benefits, prays with the youths and tries to point them to a life beyond one that doesn't seem worth living.

He drives them to look at colleges, helps them find work, and does "a lot of filling in the blanks" for the usually fatherless teens. As an employee of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, he has the freedom to push his program beyond the center's walls and into the young offenders' futures.

An average day? There is none. He files papers, goes to court with children, sees them after school. He helps former offenders chart a course for themselves. The telephone is on 24/7. He gets calls from probation officers and from detainees' relatives with news of a death.

"It might be a grandparent, but more often it's siblings, cousins, best friends," he said.

With Tinsley's prodding, a network of givers helps secure tangibles. The Juvenile Hall Auxiliary pays thousands of dollars for eyeglasses, scholarships and removing gang-related tattoos.

"Churches know when I call I'm calling for money, and they know it's not for me," he said, chuckling. He is working to get two teens into boarding schools. Churches provide airfare and care packages.

When he met Jeremiah Huntley, the 13-year-old couldn't read or write, Tinsley said. "I put him in a Christian school for kids with learning difficulties. He's come an awful long way."

Another alumnus, now 30, remembers his first meeting with Tinsley: He was 17, waiting in the nurse's office for an intake exam. Tinsley came in to get a chair.

"He said, 'Young man, you look like someone I need to have a conversation with,'" said the Arizona real estate agent. "He's very Midwestern in that regard; comes straight to the point. It wasn't like, 'I'm going to correct you.' It was like, 'You seem a little lost. Maybe I can help you.'"

Where would he be had he never known Tinsley?

He shouted with laughter.

"I shudder to think about that," he said. "Lost out there in the world."

Tinsley was going for a Ph.D. in higher education administration when he made a turn into the seminary. Aiming for campus ministry, he angled again, into Juvenile Hall.

Today, "I'm a counselor, social worker, pastor, surrogate parent," he said.

Tinsley and his wife, software engineer Linda Tinsley -- "she's the unsung hero in our home" -- have taken in boys from the hall.

"One kid, his mother was in prison, his father was in prison, his grandmother was schizophrenic and his uncle was an alcoholic," Tinsley said. "The kid was turned out into the street at 13."

It's said there are no atheists in foxholes. Likewise, few appear in juvenile custody. Of the 200 or so at the hall and 100 more at the Orin Allen Youth Rehabilitation Facility, most have a Christian background.

But not all. Tinsley helped one boy prepare for his bar mitzvah. Purple paperback Qurans share shelf space with Bibles in his office.

"We get Mormons from time to time," Tinsley said. "Every now and then Buddhists, and kids who have no background. I'm here to share the idea that God loves them and so do I.

"It's about comfort and concern," he said. "This is a juvenile jail. Everything they have is taken away and they are put in a concrete room."

Survivors say Tinsley gave them the tools for a life beyond the streets. Don't chew on a toothpick in public. Don't talk on a cell phone at the table.

"They practice cluelessness with style," Tinsley said of his wards. "I take people out to eat. I tell them, you don't sing at the table. You put your napkin in your lap. If the waitperson asks you if you want another Coke, you don't say, 'I'm cool,' or they'll think you're saying the air conditioner is on too high. If you want to compete, you don't do it with ebonics and your pants hanging off."

Graduates in their 20s and 30s continue to follow Tinsley's lead. When they trek into a Hometown Buffet in Concord for a reunion dinner, he points them toward the restroom to wash up.

All join hands to say grace before sitting down to plates heaped with breaded chicken, corn muffins, mashed potatoes, salads and weighty desserts.

Terrance Carter explains how attention in his birth family came in the form of a slug or a put-down.

"That's love," he roared, pointing at a grinning Tinsley.

With Tinsley's help, Carter went to Knoxville College in Tennessee. "He paid for school for me out of his own pocket," he said. "I got a 4.0 for this man."

Badly injured in an auto accident in 2004, Carter came out of a coma in a Tennessee intensive care unit to find Tinsley at his bedside.

The burly, 6-foot-2 Tinsley wears a cleric's collar under a light blue short-sleeve shirt. He proffers a gentle shake with a lineman's hand.

Born in Indiana to a family of attorneys and teachers -- including Cincinnati's first black attorney -- he keeps photos of his relatives on his office wall. Among them: his great-great-grandmother, a former slave. His mother's family founded the African Methodist Episcopal church.

"His mantra has always been 'rebuild the kid,'" said Lionel Chatman, the county chief of probation. "I've seen him come into a situation where a kid had deteriorated psychologically, where he worked closely with that kid and seen him rebound. I think he's a remarkable man."

The men around the table say they've never heard him raise his voice.

"Rev's got a lot of patience," said Edwin Hackett. "When I met him, he wasn't half that gray. I know we contributed to some of that."

The mea culpa drew a chuckle from Tinsley.

He loses patience only with the criminal justice system. On principle, he says he never attends ribbon-cuttings for new penal institutions -- including Juvenile Hall. The money could be better spent elsewhere, he says.

"I had a problem with their spending $33 million on this building. I could send 550 kids to college on that. But the people here are not a problem. There's an 800-pound gorilla out there that makes those policy decisions," he said.

Nonetheless, he celebrates the successes that cooperation brings. He is pleased because instead of scrapping worship services, the probation department agreed to hold a live service with one group at a time, while other wards watch a Webcast.

His adoptive son Leland Johnson has yet to hear Tinsley say he doesn't have time when someone calls.

"I don't know how much he sleeps," Johnson said. "I think four to six (hours)."

In November, a heart problem landed Tinsley six weeks of bed rest.

He turned down a chance to oversee a similar ministry in San Francisco. "The politics," he said, rolling his eyes and laughing. He also said no to an offer to lead his own church.

Not every kid he helped enroll in college graduated. But they are better people for having gone, he said. They return home, get jobs, see the world differently.

Tinsley keeps a photo spread of his kids in his office. In one, Jeremiah, wearing a light-colored suit, smiles broadly during his appointment to the countywide youth commission.

There's one of a group Tinsley took to Oroville's Butte College and another of a group at the gates of Knoxville College.

"This young man in the cap and gown got his diploma at CYA," he said quietly. "He got murdered."

Richmond priest working to get mom out of Kenya

January 3, 2008 Thursday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

RICHMOND -- As tribal foes descended upon neighborhoods in Kenya, a worried Richmond priest tried frantically Wednesday to wire money to get his mother out of a rural village.

Mobs had already set upon her community, torching neighbors' homes.

"She is in a church, but she doesn't have any food," said the Rev. James Kimani Kairu. He had urged her to take refuge in the parish earlier this week. Soon, some 10,000 desperate Kikuyu had packed in and around it, he said Wednesday, his voice quivering.

More than 5,000 Kenyans have fled into Uganda, and tens of thousands of others have left their homes to escape the chaos wracking the nation. Dozens of people who sought shelter in another church met a fiery death when mobs torched it Tuesday.

His three brothers and two sisters in different areas of the country could not travel because of the unrest, he said. Cell phones in Kenya require a prepaid calling card, but all the stores had shut down.

"They can't call each other, so I am the one organizing," said Kimani Kairu, who practices at St. David of Wales Catholic church in Richmond. He has been in this country for a year and a half while studying for his master's degree at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

Wednesday, some army units reached Aldoret to rescue people, Kimani Kairu said at sundown.

But Kalenjin tribal members "are coming to kill all the Kikuyu. I am trying to send money to my brother in Nairobi to get my mother out of there, but how to get her to the airport, that is the problem."

Terrified villagers poured onto the roads but found roadblocks en route to the airport, he said.

Luo and Kalenjin tribes believe incumbent Kikuyu President Mwai Kibaki rigged his Dec. 27 victory over Raila Odinga, a Luo challenger. Kenyans of all tribal backgrounds fear a backlash if a planned meeting between the two comes off in Nairobi today.

"The two are just playing a blame game on each other," Kimani Kairu said. "No one is willing to go a step further and stop it. I don't think any of the candidates is worthy of being president."

An ethnic Kikukyu, the 37-year-old Kimani Kairu said tensions disrupted the peace in 1992 and 1997, once forcing him to sleep in the forest. But he said the usually stable country has never experienced the kind of explosive violence that has erupted in the past several days.

He said his mother built a home on what some Kalenjin tribal members have recently claimed is their ancestral land.

Kikuyu have taken refuge in churches and police stations, he said. Without intervention, they could face slaughter, he said.

"This the world must know."

Presidential campaign: What's faith got to do with it?

Contra Costa Times
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
May 12, 2008 Monday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

When Michigan Gov. George Romney ran in the 1968 Republican presidential primary, no mention was made of his Mormon faith.

But by 2007, his son, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ran smack into a wall of doubts from a nation uneasy about his religious allegiances.

With each election since Jimmy Carter publicly proclaimed he was a born-again Christian, the pulpit has held a prominent place in the public sphere. A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press last summer found that almost seven in 10 Americans said it was important to them "that a president have strong religious beliefs."

In the East Bay, voters differ widely about how their faiths will play out in the November vote.

A devout Mormon said religion had no place in the voting booth. An Episcopal gay rights leader said there was no way to check faith values at the door when casting a ballot. A Christian said her faith background not only influences her values but has caused her to feel deeply conflicted about the November election.

"If they believe in a supreme being, they're 90 percent of the way with me," said Ed Stevenson, a Bay Point Presbyterian.

"I don't think anyone's faith should have any bearing on what I'm thinking," said Susan Randall, a Mormon who lives in Martinez. "I don't like the way George Bush uses God."

"It's such a hot topic," said Jay Johnson, senior director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the Pacific School of Religion.

"So many people seem to be wondering what faith and politics have to do with each other at all."

In fact, abolition, women's suffrage, labor and the civil rights movements all grew out of faith roots, he said.

Protestant clergy launched the social gospel movement "at a time when we had a seven-day work week, child labor, working conditions that were absolutely awful," he said.

"You can say 'separation of church and state' until you're blue in the face, but people will take their religious values with them into the voting booth. If you are going to take your values with you, take that clarion call for social justice with you."

Discussion of faith "is more intense this time around," said John Green, senior fellow with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

"We have strong religious appeals by all the candidates."

In talks to religious groups, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has sounded a social justice call. Her former minister recalled how Clinton's "heart responded" to human rights themes in his Methodist ministry.

Sen. John McCain says little about his faith. Raised an Episcopalian, he became a Baptist.

He supports the reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Sen. Barack Obama has said voters are not seeking "a litmus test on faith" so much as "an assurance that a candidate has a value system and that is appreciative of the role that religious faith can play in helping shape people's lives."

Obama, a longtime member of the United Church of Christ, told an audience at an April "Compassion Forum" in Grantham, Pa., that "what those of us of religious faith have to do when we're in the public square is to translate our language into a universal language that can appeal to everybody."

Religion has been the province of Republicans since the Moral Majority helped sweep Ronald Reagan into office. That is no longer the case, experts say.

"Clinton and Obama have spent a lot of time talking about religion and talking about their faith," Green said. They have also moderated stands on some social issues, playing up the importance of preventing abortion, for instance.

The growing progressive evangelical movement has helped wash away the bank that divided the parties. Its voters place high priority on healing the environment, assuaging hunger and ending the war, but may also hold conservative views on such issues as abortion. Many East Bay faith voters say the divide between religious conservatives and progressives has never been as pronounced as pundits claimed.

"Thinking Christians don't fall neatly into categories," said the Rev. Mary Holder Naegeli, a Walnut Creek Presbyterian.

"I'm this hybrid political person," she said. "I really care about issues related to life: abortion, end of life, even the topic of the death penalty. My struggle is what does the Scripture say about life?

"On the other side, I want to make sure I am part of a society that takes care of the poor. I've got concerns about health care and all that. I am asking, who will do the least damage?"

The economy has spurred many of the faithful to become more active in politics, pushing aside some of the social issues that divided faith voters.

People of faith must "become more aware," said C.M. Smith, who works in a soup kitchen after church.

"What goes on in the economy impacts the church," said the Rev. Andre Shumake, president of the Richmond Improvement Association.

"You have parishioners making tough choices. With gas prices being so high, whether to go to church Sunday morning or, for those who have a job, to work Monday morning. We haven't even talked of food prices. All those issues directly affect parishioners."

The Catholic faith commands compassion for those who struggle, Sandra Gutierrez said. Issues critical to many Catholics, including abortion, do not resonate with her and others of her generation.

"I'm Catholic, but I feel (abortion) is a personal choice," the El Cerrito woman said. "I might not do it, but it's a personal choice and I respect that. A lot of the people who go to the church I go to feel the same way. If you talk to the older people, they would be against gay marriage, but again, I feel it's a personal choice. They are two people who care for each other. Who are they hurting?"

Camille Giglio of Walnut Creek also worries about harm but does so through the lens of more conservative Catholic values.

"You have to choose the person who will do the least harm to the human person," she said. "I've got some reservations about McCain but ... he has a good record as far as protection of human life goes."

Candidates ignore the Catholic vote at their peril, Green said: It is as sizable as the evangelical vote, but more evenly divided between parties.

McCain "needs evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, and all kinds of supporters," and "a lot of them haven't liked McCain," he said. "One thing McCain has going for him is that voters who are skeptical of McCain like Clinton and Obama even less."

That was the view of one Moraga woman. "The two Democrats are very disturbing to me, but parts of John McCain are disturbing as well," Lisa Disbrow said.

"I don't like his wiffle-waffling on immigration, but I like his position on the war on terrorism," she said. "All this nonsense about going green is not science-based."

But she favors his consistently anti-abortion voting record, she said.

"Anybody of any religious persuasion is frustrated by the process," Naegeli said. "Every candidate is a mixed bag. It's tougher this time."

Rebecca Rosen Lum covers religion. Reach her at rrosenlum@bayarea newsgroup.com.

'Emerging church' seeks the justice Jesus sought

June 5, 2008

Contra Costa Times


By Rebecca Rosen Lum

In an apartment a few steps below street level in San Francisco's Mission District, several people -- most in their 20s -- sat in a horseshoe of couches to consider the meaning of service.

In black high-tops, Crocs, hoodies and jeans, they looked much like the hipsters who wait in line Sunday mornings for a table at Boogaloo's a few blocks away on Valencia Street.

This group of Christians gathers each week to grapple with seven intangibles: service, simplicity, creativity, obedience, prayer, community, and love. A young man in a cap reads Colossians I aloud while some look down, others into the distance. Midway into the evening, all take to the streets, battling an icy wind to pick up trash, scrub graffiti and post signs in shop windows exhorting people to honor their neighborhood with cleanliness.

The group is part of the decade-old emerging church movement, an eclectic wave of change propelled by the Internet and peopled globally mainly by the young.

Their Jesus is a radical. They have little use for the institutional church, with its buildings, budgets and boards. They meet in homes. Their aim is to live like Jesus, compelled to service among the poor. They eschew congregations for communities. Their faith is not a doctrine but a conversation -- fluid and evolving.

"Experiment is a word we use a lot," said Adam Klein, who helps lead the loosely organized San Francisco community that calls itself reIMAGINE. "Nobody has lived in 2008 before and lived the way of Jesus, so you have to figure out what it means to you."

Their expression of faith harkens back to the early days of Christianity, he said.

"Part of Paul's job was to encourage people to continue on but without the dogma. When Constantine came around and nationalized the church it became a place where power and control were brokered."

Estimates place the number of emerging church communities at several hundred and growing. The Internet has figured hugely into the movement's growth, "not only in connecting, linking, promoting, recording and communicating, but also in the new media mind-set that it is creating," said Andrew Jones, a New Zealand emergent who blogs from Czechoslovakia under the name tallskinnykiwi.

"The net affects the way we think and relate and store knowledge. It is creating a new set of values and a new hierarchy of leaders. We haven't seen the half of it yet."

They know they are not the first believers compelled by faith to give to the needy. Their difference is that traditional Christian charity may involve compassion but not always a commitment to justice, said Brian McLaren, one of the early emergent thinkers and the author of several books, including "Adventures in Missing the Point," which he wrote with Tony Campolo.

"Eventually, we have to deal with the people causing injustice," McLaren said.

That kind of comment has stirred dismay among some conservative Christians, who say McLaren is a political progressive. He has countered that he is not politically progressive if that means living a secular life with government meeting all human needs.

The emergent church emphasizes Christ's message of social justice, seeks the kind of spirituality that flows from that and creates a community that supports that spirituality, he said.

Some emergents embrace ancient ritual, including the Eucharist, and they evangelize, although in social action they may not necessarily talk about their faith at all.

"St. Francis of Assisi said it best: Go preach the gospel and if necessary use words," said Darin Petersen of Oakland, who travels frequently to Philadelphia for community projects. "The best evangelism is living a contagious life."

"The problem with (traditional) evangelizing is that it is delivering answers to people who are not seeking them," he said. "We need to be a peculiar people. Jesus gives the order of what that looks like and what that means."

In an early project, Petersen and 30 others invited homeless people to a cash give-away on Wall Street after receiving a legal settlement.

"It was a beautiful expression of sharing this abundance," he said. "We walked away thinking, what would a daily rhythm of this be like?" After studying the Jewish tradition of using tithes to help care for widows and orphans in the community, they developed a global community of people who share one-tenth of their earnings with those in need. "Jesus was political," said Klein, whose community helped pay for his recent trip to Africa to build mobile medical clinics. "If it was all about the life after, he wouldn't have been killed the way he was."

Some reIMAGINE participants just bought a duplex on an East Oakland street that has been rocked by sideshows and three murders over the past few weeks. They want their new Shalom community to love, serve, and engage the troubled neighborhood, said Nate Milheim.

"What I've been excited about is taking Jesus more seriously as a teacher as well as a savior," Milheim, 30, who is cleaning up the house with his wife, their two daughters and a couple who will share it. "Let's learn from this master, Jesus, this revolutionary, radical guy. I want to explore what it would be to live like him."

"I realize we have a lot to learn," he said. "If the things happen that I dream of happening, it will take a while."

King's work permeates issues of race

Contra Costa Times (California)
April 4, 2008 Friday


By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., another preacher has ignited a national discussion about race.

This time, the preacher is Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently retired from the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Many whites heard Wright's cries of "God damn America" -- in a 2003 sermon -- as combative and incendiary, but for African-Americans, the language sprang from the gospels and the sermon from a tradition of pulpit political oratory.

"The use of the word 'damn' in the Bible, in the Old Testament, is a sacred usage," said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a member of Trinity.

"Yahweh damns ancient Israel for moving away from the greatness it could be, through various prophets like Jeremiah, to bring the nation back to the righteous path -- to be the city on the hill," he said.

Americans confused the expression with the profanity "God damn it," he said.

"People don't know the flow of the black sermon," Hopkins said. The speech followed the classic pattern of black church oratory, which stuns with references to injustice and then soars in an uplifting ending.

"To think it would end in anger is an insult to those people," he said.

Obama condemned Wright's words, saying they do not reflect the strides the nation has made in overcoming a past that includes slavery, lynching and segregation. Wright had long been Obama's pastor.

But in a speech that has tallied tens of thousands of hits on YouTube and evoked praise around the nation, Obama also celebrated Wright's sermonizing, which helped him see "the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekial's field of dry bones."

Wright is a contemporary voice of black liberation theology, which took root in the mid-1960s as a reaction against a historical message to look to the next life for salvation. The movement surfaced in 1966, when the 51-member National Committee of Negro Churchmen took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on the ministry to wage war against racism in Biblical terms.

"A prophet's job is to bring God's judgment within a particular context and that's as old as the religion itself," said the Rev. Dante Quick, who spoke at a candlelight vigil Thursday night honoring King at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

"When one reads Revelations, you are reading the words of a man in prison condemning the Roman empire," Quick said. "Many readers of the Bible narrative can point to Jesus as a political victim."

Biblical texts "include rather heated rhetoric that excoriates the dominant powers," said Vincent Wimbush, a professor of religion and director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures at Claremont Graduate University.

"There is a very long tradition of that. One style is a direct, prophetic, politically aware style," he said.

Clergy in many primarily white congregations have pointed out they also excoriate racism and other social evils from the pulpit.

And black liberation theology founder James Cone wrote in his seminal "Black Theology & Black Power" that the black in black theology encompasses all who are in concert with the oppressed.

"To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are," he writes.

If King is revered today for his eloquent calls for equality and his courage, he endured scorn in his day, and not just from Southern white racists.

When he was assassinated April 4, 1968, King had moved beyond a call for black equality and begun challenging the nation's economic and political institutions. He lost the support of many by condemning the Vietnam War and advocating passionately for workers and the poor, Quick said.

The Rev. Cone embraced King and Malcolm X to forge black liberation theology. He said Malcolm X challenged him about his blackness, King about his Christianity.

Hopkins said the two leaders moved toward each other philosophically as their lives neared their ends.

Malcolm X, a Black Muslim minister and spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was shot down Feb. 21, 1965, during a speech in Manhattan.

The primary surprise for Wimbush is that 40 years after King's death, "we are still segregated along the lines of the 18th century in these Christian churches. "We ought to be asking, what accounts for such ignorance?" he said.

The Pacific School of Religion will take up that discussion throughout April -- Advancing Racial Justice Month -- McKinney said.

"There is a willingness across the board for people to resume the conversation that has been too difficult for too long," he said. "People have feared that (engaging in it) would only lead to conflict. From a theological perspective, conflict precedes reconciliation."

For many black theologians, the gap remains wide.

Wright has been berated for sowing dissension, but the white establishment has done it with impunity, Quick said.

War-scarred children embrace new life

February 24, 2008 Sunday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Kate's smooth brow buckles when she thinks about the soldiers who muscled their way into the house in rural Myanmar where she lived with her grandmother -- plundering belongings, forcing their attentions on her and ordering them to prepare meals.

"The soldiers make me too sad," said Kate, discriminated against as an ethnic minority. "I don't like."

Finally, one day Kate, now 16, fled to the home of sympathetic friends in a neighboring town. She learned soon afterward that the soldiers killed her grandmother in retaliation.

After a desperate flight through underground channels of Southeast Asia, Kate has found a lasting safety: She now lives with a family in San Jose. "Baba" and "Mama" are the Rev. Ben and Anne Daniel; she has three siblings.

As rain pounds on the roof of Ben Daniel's church, Kate sits comfortably between her new parents, a delicate girl with shiny black hair and a wide open smile. She has been here little more than a month, but she says this is home.

"Everything OK," she said. "Not tired. Not scared. I happy."

Kate is one of a trickle of refugee orphans finding homes with Bay Area families through a special program of Catholic Charities, one of two agencies that contracts with the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees to place the children.

In such countries as Liberia, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal, children have been driven out by armed conflict or pressed into service by government militias and rebel groups -- as combatants, sex slaves and virtual pack mules.

If an adoption always includes risk and reward, these adoptions offer a double dose of both.

Preparing food is now a source of surprise and delight for Kate. She likes oatmeal with hot sauce. At first, she dissolved in giggles at the sight of Baba popping up a skillet of popcorn on family movie night (Men don't cook in Myanmar). Now they fix dinner together.

Kate dropped out of school after her fourth year to help her grandmother farm corn and beans. She asked to start school the morning after she arrived: "I want right now," she said, laughing. She studies music with Anne and says she hopes to become a minister, like Ben.

Kate's odyssey hardly seems likely for a child, but it is mirrored throughout countries where war and strife have made homelands unlivable. Many have been persecuted for religion, ethnicity, or political affiliation. They have been separated from their parents, or seen them killed. The children escape brutality by guts, wit and luck, walking for miles, hiding in jungles, riding on the backs of sympathetic elders to safety -- mainly, in refugee camps.

More than 10 million refugees have fled their homelands, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. If one includes those who are trapped in their home country, such as in Darfur, that number balloons to as many as 32 million. They can't go home in many cases because home is no more; their villages have been destroyed.

Tracy Weiss read all she could get her hands on about the conflicts that racked the Eastern coast of Africa after she agreed to adopt three siblings from Monrovia, Liberia.

When she picked them up from the San Jose airport, Sadiki, the eldest and tallest, stood in front, "scanning everyone, looking for danger in every direction." His sister Maryama tucked in behind him, holding a bag, the U.N. signal for a refugee arrival. Antimana, called "Ansu," crouched behind his two siblings. They wore donated clothes -- Ansu, a 1930s-era man's suit.

"I said, 'Hi. I'm your new mom,'" Weiss remembered. "Ansu was the first to break into a grin."

The trio has been living with Weiss in Los Altos for three years and -- Maryama counts on her fingers -- six months.

Rebels executed the children's Mandinga father, as well as Sadiki and Ansu's mother. The children and Maryama's mother ran from rebels, living in the bush, moving constantly, sometimes getting separated. They settled for a time in Bo, a village in Sierra Leone. Sadiki -- he thinks he was 3 or 4 -- made many friends there.

"Then things got bad if you are not a citizen," said Sadiki, now 18. "We had to find a way to stay alive."

Sadiki's earliest memory is of a village in chaos, with people running everywhere to escape the approaching rebels. Alone, he held up his arms in hopes someone would carry him to safety. Someone did.

He thinks the family spent five to seven years on the run.

Chatting one afternoon, Sadiki's new mother asked him if he had any photos from his earliest years.

"Mom," he said evenly. "You are running with a whole stack of things on your head. You step and you fall in the river, everything gets ruined."

They eventually made their way to the Bandajuma refugee camp, where his stepmother died from complications of diabetes.

It took them some time to get used to the idea that they could make the four-block walk through their wooded suburban neighborhood to school without getting mugged, that loud pops were not likely to be gunshots. Weiss had to quickly abort a July Fourth trip to see fireworks in San Francisco when the multiple blasts badly shook the children.

Maryama, 19, delighted Weiss with her cooking, but she had to learn not to turn the burners on the stove full blast. She had only cooked over an open flame in the refugee camp.

While in the camp, all three children watched movies on a projection screen. They were astonished to get to California and see that "Schwarzie," the star of action films, was its governor.

Maryama hopes to become a nurse and is applying to St. Mary's College in Moraga and to San Jose State. Sadiki has applied to five colleges and wants to work for the United Nations "when I reach the stage where I look like I can wear a tuxedo." Ansu dreams of becoming an international soccer star.

In their first school pictures, they scowl with open mistrust at the camera. In their newest photos, they smile fetchingly.

Toasting bagels after school in Weiss' cozy Los Altos kitchen, the brothers and sister chatter and joke in Mende, their home language. All three wear glittering studs in their ears. Ansu sports a closed-cropped haircut with a pinwheel shaved on the side.

One of the most popular students in his school, the quick-witted Ansu can reduce anyone to howls of laughter, Weiss said. But he made a quiet escape when a visitor arrives to talk about his background.

Maryama, willing to talk, nonetheless keeps strangers at bay.

Did she feel safe in the camp?

"No one is ever safe in a war country," she said with a straightforward stare.

Weiss mentioned that the children's aunt has taken in many orphans.

"We don't have this word, 'orphan,' in Africa," Maryama said, correcting her. "Once you take someone as your children, they are yours."

Weiss recently bought a van; her new sons are too tall to sit comfortably in her trusty Volvo station wagon.

But for all the adoptive families, time has proved even more critical than space. Weiss cut down to part time, then finally quit her job last year to devote more time to them.

"You can't just put them in school," she said. "You have to talk to each teacher. They are teaching a person who is really bright but who has never seen a map."

After Ansu injured his knee while playing soccer, Weiss brought him to a round of doctors -- then haggled with their insurer to approve the required surgery.

For the first few weeks, Anne tutored Kate, who eagerly worked six to 10 hours a day. Ben ruled out her assigned public school, Independence High -- the state's largest public high school. The couple found something more to scale, a small school that serves students who are behind but want to go to college.

"It's a nurturing place, a safe place," Anne Daniel said.

While life here brings a sense of safety, negotiating the social minefield of a new culture can prove dicey.

Language is a separator at the outset. Then come the mutual misconceptions of American kids and the newcomers.

The refugee orphans are surprised to see all Americans aren't wealthy and white. Alternatively, few Americans have had to run for their lives.

"One kid said to me, 'Did you ever fight a lion?'" Sadiki recalled, howling with laughter. "I said, 'Yes, two.'"'"

Many don't even know where Africa is, Maryama said, and they know much less about the violence that devastated her homeland and scarred her family.

"I can't be angry at them," she said. "They don't know. When they know, they care."