coming up -- churches and the disabled. congregations where even the most severely disabled are welcomed and put to work. a hands-on reformer in rural thailand -- economic and community development from the bottom up. plus, an art exhibit on the buddha's legendary 500 disciples, known as "the worthy ones."

welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. religious groups had strong reactions this week after president obama publicly announced his support for same-sex marriage. speaking to abc news, the president said although he had in the past opposed the practice because of religious concerns, his new position is rooted in his christian faith. he cited the golden rule, saying it was important to quote "treat others the way you would want to be treated." many modere and liberal religious groups praised the president's decision as a matter

of justice. but others, including the u.s. catholic bishops and evangelical groups said this would undermine what many call the sacrament of marriage. experts are debating the political implications. although polls show growing public support for gay marriage, opinion is almost equally divided, and the most religious remain the most opposed. in north carolina, on tuesda a majoritof voters 61% -- approved a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman. several religious leaders campaigned for the amendment, among them 93-year-old evangelist billy graham. also this week, gop presidential hopeful mitt romney reaffirmed his opposition to gay marriage and civil unions. romney, who is mormon, is this weekend's commencement speaker at the evangelical liberty university.

some conservative catholics arurging georgetowuniversity to cancel a graduation address by health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius. sebelius, who is catholic, was invited to participate in a commencement awards ceremony on may 18th. opponents say she should not be allowed to speak at the jesuit school because of her support for abortion rights and her role in issuing the mandate requiring health insurance providers to cover birth control free of charge. these stands put her at odds with chuh leership. >>meanwhile this week, pope benedict the xvi renewed his call for america's catholic colleges and universities to ensure theological orthodoxy. the pope told bishops visiting from the us that the academic institutions must affirm their fidelity to the church's distinctive mission and beliefs. he cited several recent cases of professors and speakers who

dissent from church teaching. it's said that the disabled in this country can often have a hard time finding and then feeling welcome in a typical house of worship. but lucky severson reports on congregations that are not only getting over their feelings of awkwardness in the company of the severely disabled but welcoming them and putting them to work. >> reporter: among traveling evangelists nick vujicic is a rock star. he's packed them in in churches around the globe. this is his second visit to the northland megachurch in orlando, a preacher with no arms and no legs who wants no sympathy. >> why does a man without arms and legs have a smile like this? it surpasses the understanding of the world, because i should be depressed.

i was, until christ came in. >> reporter: he travels with another message -- that churches need to be more inclusive of people with disabilities. >> to me, in my mind everyone has a disability. everyone needs god. but definitely it is said again and again and again, we need to go out and reach out to those people who are in need. >> reporter: it's not surprising that nick vujicic would be invited to northland. this is a church with about 15,000 members that goes out of its way to welcome and accommodate people in need, including the disabled. one program the church offers is a class for physically and mentally disabled children. >> we're going to read the bible story that we just heard. >> reporter: laura lee wright has cerebral palsy. she runs the program. >> they could go into regular class, but they might not really

get the message of jesus and the message of hope, because our volunteers are trained to accommodate their special need and their conditions. >> can you all show me how you pray? >> reporter: unfortunately, northland's attitude toward the disabled may be the exception rather than the rule. over the years, america's millions of physically, mentally, and emotionally disabled have made great strides in the workplace, but places of worship have lagged behind. jim hukill was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was only two. he has made it his life's mission to open more churches to the disabled. >> we are still very much in an infantile state with the faith and disability movement. i think that we have seen over the last decade a significant advancement, but we are nowhere near what has to happen. >> reporter: places of worship and the disabled is the subject of a new book called amazing gifts by author mark pinksy.

he says one stumbling block for people, whatever their faith, is that at first they feel awkward around people with disabilities. >> they say, "i don't know what to say. i don't know what to do. should i tell my kids not to stare?" all these things are okay, and people in the disability community recognize that there's going to be some unease, some initial discomfort. that's okay. that shouldn't discourage you from plunging ahead. >> reporter: he says it's not that churches, synagogues, and mosques deliberately ignore people with disabilities. >> we have a sort of "zen of the normal" in most of america. most of us worship with people who are like us racially, economically, and physically, and so if we don't see people with disabilities we just don't think about them. it's not that we actively excluded them, because i don't

think we did. it's just the fact that they weren't there. if they weren't seen, they weren't considered, and because they weren't there, people thought they didn't exist. >> reporter: one of the 64 stories in pinsky's book is about linda starnes. she and her husband have two children, both with disabilities. her daughter, emily, has asperger syndrome, a form of autism. her younger son, mac, was born without a lower jaw and has lived his life connected to breathing and feeding tubes. when he was a baby, the doctors recommended that the parents sign a "do not resuscitate" order. >> and so we said we need to talk about this. we're not going to place that order right now. we need to pray about this, and we need to talk to our pastor, and decided that we would allow the course that god had for mac to take place, and so we said we will not make that decision. you do everything you can for our son, and so they said this means a life on a ventilator, and we said that's okay. we're going to be up for that

challenge. >> reporter: her daughter, emily, is now a freshman at the university of tennessee. mac plays the xylophone in the school band and has dreams of becoming a motivational speaker and/or a preacher. stanley hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at duke divinity school who has lived and worked with the disabled, says the stories in pinsky's book help them and those who care for them overcome feelings of isolation. >> one of the aspects of disability is the kind of loneliness that it creates that your not sure is shareable with other people. one of the things mark's book does is help you share stories in a way that you recognize you're not alone. >> i think for people with disabilities their hunger and their desire is for someone to look past the hardware and to be able to embrace them as individuals, for someone just to

share a cheeseburger together with them. >> most of these things don't cost money. that's the thing that was kind of a surprise for me. it's not just about ramps. it's not just about elevators. it's about attitudes and programs. it can just be asking people with down syndrome in your congregation if they'd like to be greeters. it says this congregation values people with disabilities and the contributions they can make. they are not just people who need help, but they are people who can help. >> reporter: professor hauerwas says caring for the disabled is fundamental to the message of christianity. >> people that you could think might have been disabled in terms of how they were depicted in the gospel, but they are seen as mad or possessed by demons and so on, and jesus cured them. he drove the demons out. >> there's this wave coming demographically of people with

disabilities who will be looking for spiritual homes. we'll find people returning from the wars with ptsd, with limbs missing, and finally there's the aging cohort of which i am a part, which is the boomers who are in large number aging into infirmity more or less, and the churches that are ready for that wave demographically are going to be the ones who help fill pews. >> reporter: over the years, linda starnes has become a major force behind the welcoming nature of northland church. she says the bigger payoff for inclusive congregations can't be measured in numbers. >> i think you become actually a congregation that's more blessed, in all honesty, because you grow a heart towards being responsive to people you feel like may have needs and that you are there to perhaps serve.

in the end, i believe many people realize not only am i serving, but i am receiving. >> reporter: and her son mac, who can't speak, has become a church favorite. here he is on youtube with northland pastor joel hunter. >> i look at mac, if you had an afternoon with him you'd be totally mesmerized. you would, you would, you would because he's like that, see? yeah. >> if kids see this, if kids see people with disabilities ingrated and involved in the congregation, that sends a message that's imprinted on their brains, and that's something that's incredible in terms of its value to the congregation. >> reporter: pinsky says making a congregation inclusive for people with disabilities is more a matter of what's in your heart than what's in your budget. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm lucky severson in orlando.

have a sty toy about one man's high-spirited development campaign in rural thailand. the man is mechai viravaidya, and his recipe for success is a mix of family planning, intensive agriculture, small-business loans, good schools and the idea that everyone has to pitch in. as fred de sam lazaro reports, it's economic development from the bottom up, and it is working. >> reporter: it looks more like a theme park than a school, and it's not just the location in one of thailand's most impoverished regions that's unusual. the buildings are built of bamboo, a fast-growing, renewable resource, including a geodesic dome. >> well, just to show that you can do things people don't normally think can be done, such as getting underprivileged kids to be at the top of the scale of many, many things, of being good, being decent. >> reporter: the mechai pattana

school is the cornerstone of an idea to attack rural poverty and stereotypes and to instill a new kind of learning. >> this is our sex education wheel. >> reporter: the wheel of fortune game teaches about various sexually transmitted diseases. >> green is a safe color, of course. aha! oh, aha! hiv, oh boy, just missed that. then they have a good laugh, because hiv is explained up there. >> reporter: mechai has long relied on good laughs to explain hiv and sex education in this conservative southeast asian nation. he comes from a prominent family and was trained as an economist. but mechai became a tv persality who spearheaded family planning campaigns in the '70s and, two decades later, condom use to prevent hiv. in this predominantly buddhist nation, he invited monks to bless the efforts. >> and in the buddhist scriptures it said many births

cause suffering, so buddhism is not against family planning. and we even ended up with monks sprinkling holy water on pills and condoms for the sanctity of the family before shipments went out into the villages. >> reporter: mechai is credited with bringing down thailand's soaring hiv infection rate and its high birth rate, work that wohim merous intnatial awards, including the $1 million gates foundation prize for global health. >> in 1960, thailand and the philippines had about the same population, about 60 million people, 50 million people. today, the philippines has 94 million people, and there's a lot of poverty. thailand has 1.8 children per family, it's got about 68 million people, and it's making progress. >> reporter: dr. malcolm potts, former head of the international planned parenthood federation, was an early collaborator with mechai. he says population stability has yielded many economic benefits. >> i think it's a seamless evolution. mechai, at least in the past, used to talk about fertility-led

development, and once we had these contraceptive distributors in most villages, you know, after three or five years they were the people who had intensive chicken rearing, or who had a sewing machine, or had a microloan. >> reporter: thailand is no longer considered a less developed country, but there's a growing gap between the bangkok area, where the factories are, and rural farming regions whose young people have to migrate to the city for work. mechai has tried to develop sustainable ideas that would be accessible in rural settings. on a beach resort once owned by mechai's family, it's now run by a nonprofit group he founded, is a garden of so-called "intensive agriculture." >> this is the new style condom. this is the poverty eradication condom! >> reporter: the unusual metaphor aside, he says these recycled bags of potting soil can grow produce, in this case, cantaloupes with a minimum of water and space and maximum

profit. >> you'd grow it four times a year, so that's 24,000 baht. that's just under $1,000 for this much space. nearly as good as marijuana. might be even better. don't have to share with the police, either. >> reporter: joking aside, he says thai staples like mushrooms, limes, poultry, and hydroponic produce could be grown in rural enterprises. to demonstrate, he took us to buriram province, about four hours from bangkok. he's worked here for two decades, introducing new ideas like intensive agriculture. several older initiatives have taken off independently. >> you have a factory in the middle of nowhere here. >> reporter: this shoe factory was started with international grants. it now provides work for 140 to 200 people, producing mostly for the multinational bata shoe company. >> we helped, from canadian money again, to provide a loan to establish a factory building,

and then helped to get bata to come in, rented the machinery and then bought the machinery, and they've been on their own for about 15 years. >> reporter: a short distance away are buildings that were once used to train people to raise livestock. those activities have since shifted to people's backyards and, in the buildings they vacated, more factories making brassieres in this building, ice skates in the next. >> how could you imagine an old chicken pen and an old pig pen making this stuff, or brassieres? >> reporter: was it really a tough sell at first? >> oh, yes, took seven visits. they did it out of pity at first. then they realized that it worked. and when we bring someone new down they can't quite fathom it how it can be done because they're so used to the perception that you do everything like this in bangkok, in the city. >> reporter: these factories provide livable if not lucrative wages and social benefits. but to truly transform rural communities, mechai says it will

take new approaches in education, which is where the bamboo school fits in. it is now three years old and serves grades seven through ten. building funds came from profits from mechai's resort, the gates prize money, and corporate donations. longer term, the school is developing its own vegetable farm, a key part of the business strategy. so when this is up and running and flourishing, the cantaloupes and the limes will be paying the teacher salaries here? >> amongst other things, yes. >> reporter: the motto here is "the more you give, the more you get." quite apart from academics, for every student there are strict work requirement >> the parents do community service, and the kids do community service, and for every lunch time or meal time you have to do one hour's community service, so that payment is in providing help to other people, plus their school fees.

>> reporter: as part of their service, these students were preparing lesson plans to teach younger children in a nearby government school. it's part of their training in leadership and critical thinking and a departure from the rote learning standard in most thai public schools. >> the teachers are here to teach us, but they're also like friends, like an older friend that you can go to for advice, not just about what you're learning. >> my parents are rice farmers, and i expect my future to be quite different, because i want to become a doctor, and i believe i can do that. i've learned new ways to help my parents, who are used to doing agriculture the traditional ways and i can help raise their income. >> reporter: and because students at this school regularly volunteer, they feel connected to their rural communities, says teacher nantina saninchai. she says two-thirds of them will be able to create or find jobs

here. >> so a number will stay here. they have computers etc., similar to what they would in the city. >> reporter: ideas from the mechai school are catching on. on weekends here, children collect litter in exchange for spending time online in a new community center or in a toy and book library. parents and elders prepare food for the children. the village chief says one reason this community thrives is that parents are around for their children. >> eight years ago, migration was rampant. everybody would leave, and you only had children being brought up by the grandparents. now it has very greatly improved. >> the only road out of poverty is through business enterprise, and this is what we're doing. teach them, train them, lend them the money, not give them the money and the business skills. but probably very, very important to go with it too is community empowerment.

>> reporter: and you need to start young? >> yes, start them young. when you start learning how to give when you're young, when you are older it is second nature. just like stealing. start young and you keep on stealing forever. ask my politicians. >> reporter: mechai says he won't mind if more people steal his self-help model of building community and nation. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," this is fred de sam lazaro in buriram province, thailand. finally, early buddhist texts say that during one of the buddha's famous sermons, 500 followers received instant enlightenment. these disciples became known as "the worthy ones." today, we look at an exhibit of 19th century scroll paintings called "masters of mercy: buddha's amazing disciples." our guide at the sackler gallery

in washington was james ulak, senior curator of japanese art for the smithsonian institution. the artist was kano kazunobu, and his paintings are not only interesting to look at but also reminders of basic buddhist ideas. >> these are the designated closest disciples of the living buddha in the time in the fifth century before the christian era when he preached his message in what is now northeast india. these close followers who later received the canonical number of five hundred became known as the "worthy ones." in sanskrit, the language of the day in india, sanskrit calls these people arhats. you hear different names applied to these 500. the point of buddhist fascination with these five hundred followers is that they take the role of intercessors and messengers from the buddha,

teaching compassion, showing that the buddha's life can be lived on earth, and they take on throlef supeen. the idea was that they were enlightened but yet living among us. and so they were able to show us how to live but yet also conduct these intercessory miraculous acts to save us from our sufferings. the ancient purpose of painting these one hundred paintings of the 500 followers was to give a kind of approachable, easy to see buddhist catechism. now i use that phrase very loosely, but it became a vehicle to show to people the basic modes for living a good buddhist life. the buddha's message, of course, was that to achieve enlightenment one has to tear

away from the bonds of any attachment to essential experience. the notion in buddhism is that everything is changing, everything is in transition, nothing is permanent, and everything we see, everything we grasp for in the material world is ultimately deceptive. the primary question at least for the general population of his day who were in the midst of all of this we can have hope that there is, that the buddha dwells among us an in us. you see that in all of the paintings. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. you can follow us on twitter and facebook, find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smarthones. the's also mh more oour web site. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available.

join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, buddhists in several parts of the world this week celebrating the buddha's birthday and enlightenment.