For more than 30 years I have been developing programs that help young people see new relevance in their respective religious traditions. Most of that work took place under the aegis of the PANIM Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, an organization that I founded in 1988. In this, the second of three articles (read the first here), I share some insights that may be valuable to others who are struggling with the same challenge.
With the passage of the Serve America Act in March 2009, President Obama made good on a campaign promise to grow the number of opportunities for young people to serve America. The bill grows the number of service opportunities under the Corporation for National and Community Service from the current 75,000 to 250,000. These volunteers will be deployed on initiatives as varied as education, health care, energy and poverty relief.
To be sure, this is an initiative that had broad bipartisan support. In fact, during the heat of the presidential campaign, one of the few joint appearances of Barack Obama and John McCain was at a 9/11 rally in New York City convened under the auspices of ServiceNation. Both candidates spoke of the centrality of service to the health of our nation's democracy.
The symbolism of 9/11 for that joint appearance was poignant. The day conjures up the fear that religious commitment can too easily be turned into intolerance and acts of violence between ethnic and faith communities. But one of the most promising developments in American society is the growing realization that faith communities can inspire and support the kind of citizen behavior that is the goal of the Serve America Act.
Let me provide one small illustration:
Twenty-two years ago I founded an organization called PANIM, whose goal was to inspire young Jews to a lifetime of leadership, activism and service based on the teachings of the biblical prophets. Tens of thousands of young people have been touched by our programs and have gone on to engage in acts -- sometimes small and sometimes grandiose -- to make a difference in their communities, their country and the world.
In 2005 PANIM launched J-Serve as the Jewish manifestation of Youth Service America's Global Day of Youth Service. For the past couple of years, over 10,000 Jewish teens joined millions of other youth around the world in working in food pantries, nursing homes, inner-city schools, homeless shelters, green projects and more.
Admittedly, the Jewish sampling with which I am most familiar is just the tip of the growing iceberg of community service. Yet for those who question all the fervor surrounding the growth of youth service, let me offer a small testimony. Service, properly implemented, plants the seeds for a lifetime of civic engagement.
Studies like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone give evidence of the progressive deterioration of America's civic fabric. And for those who think it doesn't matter, I believe that the growing coarseness and partisanship of the public debate in this country is a direct result of the fact that fewer and fewer Americans have a sense that their well-being is linked to the well-being of other Americans who might not share their race, class or political ideology.
Community service is not a panacea to the breakdown of America's sense of common purpose, but it may be the best response we have to the problem. We have seen alumni of our programs go on to organize divestment campaigns in local jurisdictions in an attempt to halt the genocide in Darfur; create opportunities for middle-school girls in at-risk communities to engage in after-school arts programs; coach the children of immigrants to take college entrance exams and help them gain entry into colleges that they believed were beyond their reach; and raise money through benefit concerts to help homeless families.
And PANIM is only one small organization advancing a social responsibility agenda in the Jewish community. Hillel is sending thousands of college students to serve communities on alternative spring break. Many more service opportunities for young adults in developing countries are being created by the American Jewish World Service. AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps places college graduates in cities where for a year they work with organizations seeking to combat poverty.
Nor is this phenomenon restricted to the Jewish community. Churches across America send delegations of young people to help with the rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans. Habitat for Humanity has mobilized thousands of people to build homes all over America and their work has been infused with the teachings of the Gospels. The Interfaith Youth Core is an international project based in Chicago founded by Eboo Patel, a Muslim with a vision for a world in which faith can be a force for social good. Auburn Seminary in New York has a groundbreaking program called Face to Face, which brings together young people of many faiths from conflict-ridden areas around the world (e.g., the Middle East, Ireland, the Balkans, etc.) in order to learn the art of dialogue and coexistence.
Central to the work of all these groups are three core principals that come from the Bible.
Precisely at a time when the world seems to be spinning out of control, it is heartening to see the emergence of a new global ethic of social responsibility capturing the minds and hearts of young people all over America. While the movement toward global service may be relatively new, it is worth remembering that the teachings are among the oldest known to civilization.
Rabbi Sid Schwarz is a senior fellow at Clal: The National Jewish Center for Leadership and Learning and the author of Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World.
Working in the various groups, I have seen much devotion and belief but have also seen how some turn their vollunteerism into self-glorification and even some who use the treasuries for their own purposes. Human nature at its best and worst - one can only hope that the young people who volunteer today will continue and be examples of human nature at its best.
The only challenge they should have is to try to free themselves from been indoctrinated into the supernatural. Religion is the curse of man, and youth everywhere should be aware of wolfs like yourself that pray on the young.
Turns out they were students from a local Bible college and some from local Catholic schools. The shools were giving them COMMUNITY SERVICE CREDITS needed for classroom hours. One kid get his ipod in and laughed when I made fun of a protestor that told me I was a nazi. He didn't want to be there and knew it was a joke.
So other than interfering with a woman's constitutional right to choose, men and women getting birth control and singing a few songs......what was socially responsibile about it The mixture of religion and politics can be very ugly.
only need empathy, the rest shall follow.
recently protesting the war on a very large university campus not one college student joined that protest.
they all were too busy talking and texting on their cell phones.
now during the nam war they were out there in the hundreds of thousands.
now I know it was not about the illegal war or the million vietnamese we were killing but about the draft.
selfishness defined.
we have raised a generation of very selfish materialistic young adults.
that cares little if any about our imperialism.
capitalism left unchecked will create such a society.
and the more religious the more imperialistic a society is.
this idea of teaching young minds they are sinners born into sin and they have failed their look alike man made god is very destructive to a young mind.
our prisons are overflowing from the effects of a religious capitalist society.
It's a fallacy to assume that because a person has a belief system you do not share that their motives are based on something worse than your own.
This is not a religious organization and all children are welcome to participate.
Here are some of the things some former club members (now adult) are doing in life--one is a social worker, three became teachers, one is a pharmacist, one is a carpenter and donates his skills to the seniors of the community, most still volunteer in their communities.
It is not necessary to believe in a god to be a good person and do good in one's community.
The article isn't saying otherwise.
Keep up the good work.
Nor am I.
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These are two very interesting sentences. Together, the sentences convey the empirical truth that religious commitment is much more readily exploited for bad (violence) than for “good”. For “good”, there is only the “the growing realization that faith communities CAN inspire…”. For turning unto acts of violence, there are already concrete examples.
Why then insist on using religious commitment and faith to inspire good citizen behavior?
In my view, good citizenship should be taught independent of any religion - if for no other reason, because it would then have a more solid basis than what was written in some books of fiction, thousands of years ago, by people much less knowledgeable about the universe and nature than we are.
By expecting religion to provide social engagement parents are just letting someone else do one more thing they should be doing themselves. For all of those wonderful people the rabbi has turned on to social work how many have actively involved parents?
The rabbi is talking about his experience fostering meaningful, enriching activity for kids whose parents have encouraged them to participate in something apart from under their direct supervision.
Your assuming that it means parents have abdicated responsibility appears to be based on bias toward "religious structure." Teaching your children about being responsible and caring citizens should also include withholding judgment and jumping to conclusions based on little more than your personal preferences.
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I rescind the above comment only if the kids are 100% free to keep the 10% without any negative consequences.