— Jonathan C. Bergman

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of
Haiti just sixteen miles outside the capital city, Port-au-Prince. The quake
left approximately 200,000 dead, more than a million displaced, and an
infrastructure in tatters. The relief campaign started with a torrent of
public, private and non-profit aid and personnel flooding into the country.
American and N.A.T.O. troops, United Nations relief workers and Doctors
without Borders appeared prominently on the scene. But an important part of
the relief program includes the ongoing efforts of church groups, diocesan
offices of social concerns and individuals moved to action through faith.
These efforts provide a unique opportunity to discern the modern face of
religious disaster relief.

Religious relief has long been a feature of the post-disaster environment.
Matthew Mulcahy ¢â‚¬â„¢s *Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean,
1624-1783* considers the impact of disaster on colonial society and the
diversity of extant relief regimes. A component of that relief included
faith-based solutions to rebuild stricken parishes, extend aid to the
displaced and minister to hard-hit communities. My own work demonstrates a
landscape filled with religious aid and assistance after the “Hurricane of
1938” hit the northeastern United States. Parishes formulated relief
strategies to rebuild damaged churches, provide aid to the Native American
community, and empanel ad hoc committees for outreach and fundraising.

The past year in Haiti has seen religious groups providing a wide array of
disaster aid and assistance. The techniques utilized demonstrate both the
practicality and potency of faith-based initiatives. Through a preexisting
network of churches in the United States, the United Methodist Committee on
Relief (U.M.C.O.R.) provides volunteer services for reconstruction and
ministry development. U.M.C.O.R. effectively leverages local intelligence
and personnel supported by a modern infrastructure. The Church World
Service, whose presence in Haiti began in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel
in 1954, coordinates development aid, food security programs, training and
technical assistance. They also provide cutting edge agricultural programs
and sustainability measures thus enabling Haiti to provide for the needs of
its own citizens.

Neither has the disaster relief effort been confined to Christian
organizations. Islamic Relief USA and the International Red Crescent
constitute a major part of the response campaign. Volunteers from these
groups shored up damaged structures with parent organizations providing seed
money for local rehabilitation strategies. The Jewish Distribution Committee
has a long history in Haiti going back to World War II when the island
nation provided a safe harbor to Jews fleeing the Holocaust. It currently
offers medical and counseling services for the injured and amputees in a
brand new rehabilitation center.

A common feature of all religions has been donation campaigns and
fundraising drives. Some have even tried inventive strategies. For example,
the Grace Christian Reformed Church of Welland, Canada, which sponsored the
 ¢â‚¬Å“Gotta Get a Goat ¢â‚¬  campaign providing goats to Third World families,
followed up with the  ¢â‚¬Å“Bundle of Bricks ¢â‚¬  drive. With a donation of $30 per
brick, the church aims to put a deserving Haitian family into a newly
constructed home.

Religious groups have a record of adopting modern solutions to secular and
religious concerns. Paul Boyer notes in an article for *Church History *that
a prominent feature of American religious groups has been their  ¢â‚¬Å“embrace of
the latest in technology and management techniques. ¢â‚¬  He observes the
organization, efficiency and advertising campaigns utilized by churches from
the nineteenth century to the present. The practice appears to be alive and
well on the front lines of Haitian relief.

But religious relief amounts to more than a tally of personnel mustered, aid
delivered and homes rebuilt. It also encompasses the spiritual health of the
Haitian people. With an estimated three out of every five religious
practitioners in Haiti identifying themselves as Catholic, the Catholic
Church and the United States Conference of Bishops formulated the Program
for the Reconstruction of the Church in Haiti. The program seeks to rebuild
the Catholic Church system and perform needed outreach to restore Haitians ¢â‚¬â„¢
sense of purpose and religiosity. Far away from Haiti, in a modest corner of
Queens, New York, the Church of SS. Joachim and Anne tends to the needs of
the Haitian immigrant and expatriate community. The practice of charismatic
Catholicism, which includes boisterous sermonizing and vigorous prayer,
gives individuals touched by the earthquake a renewed sense of faith.

Faith-based relief appears valuable on at least another front. A common
criticism of disaster relief is the displacement of indigenous personnel and
solutions in favor of outside sources leaving victims of disaster unable to
provide for themselves once relief workers depart ¢â‚¬”the so-called  ¢â‚¬Å“aid trap. ¢â‚¬ 
Faith-based solutions actively utilize homegrown resources and participate
alongside the Haitian community offering the potential of a more complete
and long-term solution to the island ¢â‚¬â„¢s problems.

As this brief survey demonstrates, religious disaster relief embodies the
old and new, traditional and modern, practical and spiritual. If the Haitian
example is any indication, and I think it is, faith-based aid and assistance
will continue to be a vital part of modern disaster relief.

*References*

Jonathan C. Bergman,  ¢â‚¬Å“Church, Community, and Religious Disaster Relief:
Three Case Studies from the Hurricane of 1938, Suffolk County, Long Island,
New York<http://www.stonybrook.edu/lihj/IssueFiles/V21_2/Articles/Bergman/bergman.html>, ¢â‚¬ 
*Long Island** History Journal* 21 (Spring 2010) 2.

Paul Boyer,  ¢â‚¬Å“Two Centuries of Christianity in America: An Overview, ¢â‚¬  *Church
History*,* *70 (Sep., 2001) 3: 544-556.

 ¢â‚¬Å“Islamic Relief to Send Aid to Colombia ¢â‚¬â„¢s
Victims<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/islamic-relief-to-send-aid-to-colombias-flood-victims-112256079.html>, ¢â‚¬ 
PRNewswire, December 21, 2010.

Burton Joseph,  ¢â‚¬Å“Church World Service Special: Religion ¢â‚¬â„¢s Response to
Disaster<http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=10393&news_iv_ctrl=1361>, ¢â‚¬ 
*Church World Service*, November 23, 2010.

Matthew Mulcahy, *Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean,
1624-1783 *(Baltimore, M.D.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

Maura R. O ¢â‚¬â„¢Connor,  ¢â‚¬Å“Does International Aid Keep Haiti Poor  ¢â‚¬“ The Most
Dependent Independent Nation in the
World<http://www.slate.com/id/2279858/entry/2279854/>, ¢â‚¬ 
Slate, January 4, 2011.

*Jonathan C. Bergman* is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M
University  ¢â‚¬“ Commerce. He holds a J.D. from Touro Law School and a Ph.D. in
twentieth-century American Political History from the University at Buffalo.
His research interests include disaster and the relief process and the
meeting ground between culture and calamity.

———-

In this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic
interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a
surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both
men, she contends,  ¢â‚¬Å“employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask
the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human
powers. ¢â‚¬  The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation
against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor
and the famous combativeness of Barth’s theology as part of this

single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The
Religion and Culture Web Forum is at:

http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Center<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/>at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

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