coming up, a report from india, it's officially illegal, but many indian families still manage to seeto it, that they have more boys than girls. also, activist jim wallace on overcoming the country's problems by serving the common good. and for this family, no computers, no cell phones, no errands, no work -- judy vallenti on keeping the sabbath. >> announcer: major funding for

"religion and ethics news weekly" is provided by the lily endowment, an indianapolis-based privateami foundation dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development and education. additional funding also provided by mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome, i'm bob abernathy, it's good to have you with us. president obama hosted the annual easter prayer brkfa at the whithouse friday, nearly a week after western christians celebrated the holiday. leaders from many christian traditions attended. the president called easter a time to remember the sacrifice of jesus and recommit to following his example. he reflected in particular on caring for the needy. >> when we tend to the sick,

when we console those in pain, when we sacrifice for those in need, wherever and whenever we are there to give comfort, and to guide and to lo, th christ is with us. >> the former anglican archbishop of capetown, south africa, desmond tutu is this year's recipient of the templeton prize, given to those who affirm life's spiritual dimension it comes with the world's largest annual award, $1.7 million. tutu was chosen for his work quote advancing spiritual practices such as love and forgiveness. tutu was an outspoken critic of racial apartheid and later chaired south africa's truth and reconciliation commission. in a 2010 interview on this program, tutu said he has never called himself an optimist. >> i am a prisoner of hope,

which is a different kettle of fish. optimism is too light. >> at the vatican, pope francis this week paid homage to several of his papal predecessors, on tuesday the pope prayed before the tomb of john paul ii, on the eighth anniversary of his death. the day before he became the first pope to visit excavations of the tomb of saint peter, under the basilica named for him. also this week, the vatican responded to questions about why pope francis usually speaks prayers rather than singing or chanting them. the spokesman said he believed it was due to a hoarseness in the pope's voice, in an earlier interview francis called himself tone deaf. we have a sry today about lecting bies bex in india. the practice may be illegal, but many indian families

consistently manage to have fewer girl babies than boys. for some months puja, a 22-year-old mother of three has been coming to this crisis counseling center in a lower middle class neighborhood of delhi. puja is trying to keep her family together, her husband and in-laws with whom she lived in the common tradition here, threw her out of the house, the problem? all three of her children are girls. >> translator: the family says they need sons to carry on their name. and since i have only three daughters, they tried to trick me into signing divorce papers so that their son could marry again. that led to some violence when i refused. and i had to run away to my mother's house for safety. >> the preference for boy children dates back centuries, driven by religious custom. >> only boys can look after the parents. they are the only ones who can perform the last rites. they're the only ones who will

continue the family lineage. if all that is there, then why would anybody want to have a girl child? and also on top of that, you have to pay a dowry. >> this woman has studied the dowry system, which she said is mistakenly believed to have roots in hindu scripture. >> this is never a practice anywhere prescribed. it said where the princess goes she must carry a number of horses because she's used to certain level of comfort. and so it is, it is the duty of the king, to show the daughter you know, given. and that gets distorted now even the poorest of the poor, who can't afford a square meal aday, will have to buy things for the wedding of the daughter. >> dowries were outlawed half a century ago, but the system remains pervasive and adds a huge commercial dimension to marriage in india. with rising aspirations in a rapidly-growing economy,

socialologists says it's become a political liability. >> they don't want to pay dowries, they don't want to give dowries, they want to give more education to the boys. >> india's census bears that out. for every 1,000 male babies born, there are just 914 females. far fewer in some regions. in nature, the numbers are about equal. the gap began to widen in the 1990s, with the advent of ultrasound. allowing early detection of a fetus's sex. that's been blamed for the idespread abortion of female fetuses. abortion is legal in india, but it's illegal when done for sex selection. however, cracking the intent is almost impossible. as gynecologists admitted with startling candor in a story i reported in 2001, he does them routinely. >> you freely admit that you do

basically contraveneed law? >> yes, most of us do. >> do you face any legal -- >> there's no legal sanction, because there's nothin on paper. who can ask you? >> the lopsided sex radio has spread in recent years, two decades ago it was mainly in the northern farm states where many families were entering the middle class, thanks to india's green revolution. now caller says it's in areas where a new middle class is emerging. >> places like behar, are becoming more prosperous there will be a greater availability of technology and more incomes in the hands of families. they will tend to shape the family and sex-select. >> as these areas become more affluent, fertility rates, the number of children born per woman are declining. that's welcomed by people concerned about population growth. these are some of india's most densely populated regions.

but when it comes to gender balance, it's not good news. >> when you want a smaller family, the squeeze is on the girls, because suppose you are moving from a fertility of four to three. then you want two boys and one girl. so if a lot of famies in popular states nt two boys and one girl, then obviously there's going to be a great excess of boys. >> she says the social consequences of this demographic shift are already visible in those northern farm states where there's a growing shortage of brides. >> as a result, men in these states have been importing brides from let's say the east of india, the south of india. sort of going shopping for brides wherever they can. and many people call it bride trafficking. >> these marriages across india's diverse cultural andscapes can be frght with sial complications. but at the same time, he sees an ever so slight improvement in

the gender ratio in those states that saw early prosperity. >> once people reach the higher rungs of the middle class, which i call the stable middle class, they don't sex-select. then they tend to view girls and boys as being of equal value. so they don't really care whether they have two girls or whether they have one girl, one boy, et cetera. >> but for many years, india will present a patchwork of progress, a worsening gender balance in many places, slight improvement in some. the center for social research's kumari sees one more positive development, that's a consequence of india's growing and urbanizing middle class. more girls are going to school. >> as i said, india is full of contradictions, on the one side you see women in the villages, still very disempowered. but on the other side there's a brighter picture, where we have a large numb of doctors, lawyers, professionals, the education level is going up for girls. when you look at the new economy, girls have got a lot of

new opportunities, you know. media, i.t. industry. banking and entertainment. whichever sector you see, women are filling the ranks in a very major way. >> counseling center client puja never set foot in a school but she wants an education for her daughters and that's why she says she needs her husband's help to provide it. >> translator: women are progressing more in society and i need the support of their father so that they can grow up in a proper family. so that they can get a good education, so that they can grow up and have good marriages. >> she'll have an uphill battle, socially if not legally to provide her daughters with the family structure she calls ideal. but she says, the best dowry her daughters could have, is an education. for religion and ethics news weekly, this is fred desa desam lasaro, in new delhi.

now, a conversation with jim wallace, about his new book, it's called "on god's side." andt's anppea to verce the country's problems by serving the common good. wallace is a religious activist, preacher and editor of "sojourner's magazine." he joins us from new york and our managing editor, kim lawton is with me in the studio. jim, welcome. what is your definition of the common good? >> you know people are asking me what the common good is and what it means to be on god's side. and neither has certain answers, but i think they're the right questions. let me give you my favorite from the book, this i from catholic social teaching. i'll read it right from them. the common good is the whole network of social conditions, which enable humans and groups to flourish. all are responsible for all. so taking a sabbatical to write this book and watching the news at night. and saw we had forgotten this

idea of the common good. >> jim, who says what the common good is? >> the common good is found in all of our faith traditions, like the catholics, the black churches, i found it back to john in the fourth century. it's deeply in all our traditions and the moral foundation of it is to love your neighbor as yourself. in secular democratic traditions it's also there in the golden rule. treat others the way you want to be treated. it's a fundamental principle of how you treat your neighbor and who your neighbor is. >> jim, one thing i've noticed, is that different people will say they have different ways of reaching the common good. so for example, in some of the budget debates that i know you were involved in, you have some people saying the common good is served this way and other people still using that language, but coming up with a very different

policy position. how do you reconcile that? >> mike person, a "washington post" columnist, who was a george bush speechwriter has a comment on the book he says, jim and i might disagree on some policy decisions, but his call for an active consideration of the common good is more timely and urgent than ever. i'm saying let have that dete. the principle, the budget that you raise, the principle from all our traditions is you have to protect the poor and vulnerable. you can't reduce a deficit by increasing poverty. people on both sides could make that pledge. and then we could find a way to reform the public sector and private secretarior in ways that protect the poor and vulnerable. >> jim, within many of the churches, there has been a kind of a split between those who emphasize salvation, and on the other hand, those who emphasize rying to build the kingdom on earth now.

where are you on this? on both sides? >> i'm an evangelical. it means i want to take what the bible says seriously. if you look at the early chapters of matthew. you see a kingdom breaking in that's supposed to change the world and us with it. in the book i've got a long conversation about your question. it's the kind of jesus we believe in. will determine the kind of christians we're going to be. so i'm critical of what i call the atonement only gospel. where there's no kingdom. there's no teaching, there's no change of anything but ourselves, that's not what the scriptures teach. but that's certainly in the church i grew up in. so a balance that changes individuals, i want to be changed in my life. but also we're supposed to change the world. jesus came and changed the world and us with it. >> jim, along those lines, in your book you do talk a lot about the common good is served, not just through policies and politics, but also an individual

decisions people make in their families, their lives, how does that, how does how i live my life in my personal life affect the common good? >> i'm so glad you asked that question. because a lot of people say i can't change washington or wall street. i'm saying the choices we make about lou we treat our neighbors, those around us, are poor neighbors, those we may have to reach out to, our immigrant neighbors, our muslim neighbors, our gay neighbor, those choices will change the culture. we're seeing the one place washington is getting it right is around immigration reform. and why? because from the outside you're hearing faith communities say this for us is a moral issue. it's a gospel issue. it's changing our politics, we're going to get that all we're going to get this year i think is that. it's going to happen because of the common good being practiced outside of washington. it comes last to washington. >> but is it a movement, jim, that you're trying to put together? a movement that essentially is a

national lobby? or is it as kim was talking about, what people do in our own lives? >> no, it's what people do in our own lives, like william wilburforce, led the abolitionists, but it wasn't the parliamentarians, it was the movement that swept the country. i've got dads, moms, parents, and i'm a little league baseball coach. those kind of life choices are what build social movements and that's the only thing that ever changes politics. what we do in our own lives is what the book is about and how that can change politics and culture and just the, the first sentence of the book ss, our life togethercane better. and that's the hunger i think people are feeling now. >> jim, just very briefly. you've been talking about some of these ideas for a long time. other people have been talking about the common good, what makes you think things are different now, that there's a new receptivity now? >> well first of all, watching

the political narrative at night after being all day on sabbatical i took quiet and reflection and study and writing, the more i watched it at night, i wasn't engaging in it, the more depressing it was, polarized, paralyzed, hate, fear, nger. we've lost something very fundamental. i think this can take us back to this ancient idea that can bring us together and find common ground for the common good. and especially a new generation, wants to give their lives for the common good. our audiences are half under 30. everywhere i go. and they want to give their lives for this and that's what i think is going to make a difference long term. >> jim, thank you very much. the book is "on god's side." ♪ >> i oth news onur calendar this weekend, april 7th is holocaust remembrance day, it's a solemn tribute to the six million jews put to death by the

nazis during world war ii. >> it may be difficult to imagine abandoning our cell phones and computers one day a week, or deciding not to run errands or do anything that resembles work, but for a family in a suburb of washington, that's how they've chosen to keep the sabbath. to get in touch with the sacred, to be close toach other, and just to be. judy vallenti reports. >> there was a time in america when sundays meant a day for worship. for leisure, for spending time with family and friends. but that was before the advent of round-the-clock shopping, cell phones and email that placed us on call 24 hours a day. >> people are feeling theburden and the pressure of a fast-paced world and wanting to find some alternatives. new rhythm of being and how sabbath is a part of that conversation. >> it's an idea as old as the

bible. recorded in the book of exodus. one of the ten commandments, in which god is said to have told moses, remember the sabbath, to keep it holy. in it thou shall not do any work. >> we'll just take a few minutes to share, tell the people at your table about that and why is it, why it creates sabbath for you, why it helps make sabbath happen for you. >> now, a growing number of pastors are trying to help people reclaim at least one day of the week for sabbath. time set aside for spiritual, mental and physical renewal. whetheris sunday or even another day. it's been described as the most precious present mankind has received from the treasure house of god. >> these clergy members are here to explore realistic ways that people can observe the sabbath. despite all of the distractions and interruptions families face on a day that's supposed to be holy time. >> sabbath is the great leveler.

i mean if we take that seriously as a culre, it means that no matter what your life situation, whether you are bill gates, or the person who cleans bill gates' office, you have an inherit dignity and for a time each week you do not need to defend your existence. to prove your worth in the culture and in the marketplace. >> there is a sense of boy i'm important, i've got 35 emails and i got ten text messages today. god didn't say, gee you should take a da off. god said -- remember the sabbath and keep it holy. take a day, sure, take a day. no, it was do this. this is my commandment. >> we can think about it in a very fixed way. one day where we don't do any work. but we can also think about sabbath in i think a lot of different ways and i think we can help our parishioners think about sabbath in a different

way. >> mary anne mckiben dana, a presbyterian minister from virginia, chronicled her own family struggles to set aside one day a week, in a book called "sabbath in the suburbs." now she leads workshops across the country, trying to find others find some sabbath time during each week. >> we all left things undone to be here, let it be. and i also find this a helpful way to start my sabbath is to say what has been done has been done, what has not been done has not been done. let it be. >> mckiben dana has workingfull me as a pastor and pregnant with her third child when she decided something in her hectic life had to change. she and her husband vowed to set aside one day of the week where they didn't work, run errands, shop, or return emails. >> a lot of people asked me, how did you do this?

people do this. the jewish tradition still have a very strong component of sabbath-keeping to it. >> it wasn't easy, because she is a pastor and had duties on sunday, she and her family decided to observe their sabbath on saturdays. >> i'll knock it down. >> no, that's not how you play the game. >> we realized that in our own faith, we really have a resource in the sabbath as an invitation from god, a command from god, to say one time a week, you set all that aside and you just enjoy one another and you enjoy god. we don't have to be anywhere. and, they love to hear that. they call it the sabbath, but they also call it the stay at home day. we'll light a candle to sort of remind ourselves that this is a time set apart. and we don't make a big deal out of that. we just have it there. we also may have music playing

in the background, which puts us in a different kind of frame of mind. >> the giant tv screen in the basement remains mute. the computer is turned off. the family doesn't use the phone to make calls, but it will accept calls from friends. >> the church really has called i think to be a countercultural voice, to say -- y are enough, you do enough, there is a time each week where you can just stop. >> i wonder if margaret and carolyn can get out the ingredients that are listed there, okay? >> mckiben dana stresses that observing sabbath doesn't mean doing only things that are traditionally religious or holy. but making holy the acts of ordinary lunch. ♪ for health and strength and daily food ♪ ♪ we give you thanks oh lord >> for some people the idea of taking off an entire day either feels overwhelming or it really

is logistically impossible. i tell people to start where you are. a lot of us don't have an entire day at our disposal, but we might have one morning on the weekend. >> i see ducks in the water. >> we love physical activity as part of our sabbath. we love going to the state park near our house. and we've been able to see the changing of the seasons. and having the time on sabbath to do that, has really been very special for our family. >> psalm 90 is one of those beautiful psalms about time and the package of time it says teach us to count our days that we might have a wise heart. and i think that's something that the sabbath helps us to do. to be mindful about the passage of time. sabbath helps us count our days, and makes them count. and not just be about doing and producing and more more more. but to be content and to appreciate the gift and the beauty of this day that we have.

>> and perhaps reclaim something from scripture that says on the seventh day, even god rested. for "religion and ethics news weekly" this is judy vallenti reporting. in a study of 189 u.s. metropolitan areas, the gallup poll has identified the most and the least religious places in the country. the provo-orren area in utah had the highest number of people who said they're very religious, 77%. the lowest number was in burlington and south burlington, vermont, with just 17%. nationwide, 40% of americans said they are very religious. that's our program for now, i'm bob abernathy, you can follow us on twitter and facebook and watch us any time on the pbs app for iphones and ipads. there's much more on our website, you can watch more of our interview about keeping the

sabbath and read an excerpt from mary ann's book, "sabbath in the suburbs." audio and video podcasts e als available. join us at pbs.org. >> announcer: major funding for "religion and ethics news weekly" is provided by the lily endowment an indianapolis-based private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development and education. additionalundinglso prided by mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting.