Taking faith to the streets

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2006/oct/31/taking-faith-to-the-streets/

Think of it as Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman’s God Squad.

With the mayor’s blessing, the city is joining with a newly formed interfaith council to better address the seedier side of “Sin City” – what happens when one overindulges in the vices Las Vegas and Goodman so heartily promote.

Founded in July at the request of Neighborhood Services specialist Maria Castillo-Couch, the Community Interfaith Council brings together people of all faiths who are already actively engaged in community service – helping people get off the streets, get off drugs, rebuild their lives from prison or stay out of gangs.

By combining resources, including money, staff and volunteers, religious and civic leaders hope to respond to the growing need for social services in the Las Vegas Valley.

“There is a lot of holes in the dam of social services and what this council hopes to do is fill those holes in,” said Randall Birk, Interfaith Council member and campus ministry pastor at University United Methodist Church.

In four months, the council has gathered a diverse group of 21 members with representatives from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist communities and sent communications to 700 local houses of worship.

Nearly 200 of those have agreed to participate in the council’s work, which includes a massive prayer rally at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Las Vegas City Hall rotunda to kick off the effort.

Starting in January volunteers from religious groups will join with the city’s neighborhood services department to clean up problem areas. On designated days, volunteers will remove graffiti, pick up trash, work with the homeless or destitute and clean up abandoned buildings.

“People will see things happening all over the city,” Interfaith Council member Troy Martinez said. As senior pastor at East Vegas Christian Center and founder of the secular nonprofit 10,000 Kids, Martinez is involved in gang prevention efforts.

“It will give people a glimpse of what we could really do if we lived up to our faiths, if we quit arguing and debating about our faith and actually lived up to it,” Martinez said. The council is already working to establish task forces to coordinate efforts on homelessness, addiction treatment and gang prevention.

The council plans to establish a Web site listing the social services offered by government entities and secular and religious nonprofit organizations.

In the past, lack of coordination among those three has left the needy confused about where to go for help, local religious leaders said.

A combined effort would also increase the chances of winning state and federal grants.

Just as with national faith-based initiatives pushed by President Bush, the Las Vegas partnership will have to walk a fine line to ensure separation of church and state, city officials said. Goodman’s staff members say that taxpayer money will go only to the nonreligious, community service aspects of the faith-based groups. But that distinction isn’t important to Goodman.

“I don’t care who has a problem with it,” Goodman said. “It’s good for the city.”

Religious leaders say they are impressed with Goodman’s sincerity.

“I think he sees that something has to be done and he can’t do it and … the city can’t do it,” said Gina McIntosh, administrator for Jesus Is the Answer Ministries, which has been working to rehabilitate the destitute of Fremont Street for a decade. “He is looking for solutions and sees that faith-based organizations are making a difference in the city.”

Joining with elected officials is a problem for many faith-based groups, particularly evangelical Christians wooed by Bush’s faith-based initiatives, said Ted Jelen, who specializes in religion and politics as a political science professor at UNLV. Separation of church and state issues aside, Jelen said the greater danger of mixing the two is that churches can find themselves corrupted by politics.

Republican support among evangelicals has been dropping for months as concerns grow about the war in Iraq and about the party’s failure to make progress on moral issues.

Evangelical views of the GOP took a further hit last month when a former White House staffer came out with a book detailing how the Bush administration patronized religious leaders in public and mocked them in private.

David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, wrote in “Tempting Faith” and his beliefnet.com “J-Walking” blog that while the president was sincere in his desire to help, he often sacrificed faith-based initiatives for other policies, such as repealing the estate tax.

The end result is that the White House made it easier for religious nonprofit groups to apply for funding without broadening the pool of money available for charities.

That baggage weighs on the mind of Interfaith Council leaders, who said it was important to them that they not be asked to compromise their faith in working with the city. But they believe the collaboration is worth it.

“We have nothing to lose with this partnering, but we have everything to gain,” Martinez said.

archive