coming up, 50 years ago in birmingham, alabama, thousands of school children braved police dogs, fire hoses and arrest to march against segregation. >> it was about having a dream of a better day. and is there a connection between god and baseball? bob faw reports. major funding for "religion & ethics news weekly" is prov e

provided by the lily endowment dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development and education. addition funding prod by mutu ofamerica, designing customized individual group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome, i'm deborah potter, sitting in for bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. u.s. muslim leaders this week condemned the deadly bombing in boston as more details emerged about the suspects. officials have described the tsarnaev brothers as motivated by religious extremism, but said they did not have ties to terrost orgizations. some attention has focused on a boston mosque where the suspected bombers occasionally prayed, after reports of heated exchanges between the older brother and an imam there. in a statement, the islamic society of boston cambridge

denounced the suspects' views as counter to its moderate american islamic theology. the imam of a mosque in washington, d.c., said what happened in boston was a criminal act, not a religious act. other faith groups appealed for calm after last week's attack. boston cardinal sean o'malley urged catholics to be a people of reconciliation, not revenge. and representatives of the sikh community expressed concern over possible retaliation against members of their faith who are sometimes mistaken for muslims. also this week, religious leaders warned against derailing efforts to pass immigration legislation because of the boston attack. cardinal timothy dolan, president of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, called it "ridiculous" to allow the actions of two people to affect all immigrants. although concerns have been voiced over certainarts of the bill pending in the senate, faith groups are widely

supportive of immigration reform. president obama attended a memorial service in texas for the 14 people killed in the explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of west. the president praised the strength of the small community and he quoted a local pastor whose congregation worshiped outside after its church was destroyed in the blast. >> what happened wednesday was awful. but god is bigger than all of this. god is bigger than all of this and is here wh yoin west. he is bigger than all of this and he is here with you. >> relief groups are helping with the massive recovery. the southern baptist convention is providing assistance. several chaplains were deployed to offer spiritual counseling. the sbc and other groups have also sent volunteers to the midwest, where people are dealing with widespread flooding from the mississippi and surrounding rivers. at least four people have died. workers are helping with cleanup, while volunteers

prepare hundreds of meals a day to feed emergency crews and those who have been left homeless. a landmark vote in heavily catholic rhode island this week put the state on track to allowing same-sex marriage. the bill approved by the senate is expected to clear a procedural vote in the house next week and be signed into law. rhode island will be the tenth state to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry. despite protests that turned violent, france this week became the 14th country to legalize same-sex marriage. the measure was backed by socialist president francois hollande. opponents of the new law, including religious groups, immediately appealed to the country's highest court to strike it down. two orthodox archbishops were kidnapped in syria this week, caught up in the country's civil war. they reportedly were seized on the road to the northern city of aleppo, where pro-government and rebel forces have been engaged

in heavy fighting. in rome, pope francis prayed for the release of the two archbishops and called again for an end to the violence in syria. a legal victory this week for women who want to lead prayers at one of judaism's holiest sites, the western wall in jerusalem. an israeli court ruled that police have no grounds to continue arresting women who pray at the wall wearing prayer shawls that many orthodox jews believe are reserved for men. the court also refused to grant a restraining order to bar the women from the wall. next week marks the 50th anniversary of a key campaign in the civil rights movement -- the children's march. beginning on may 2nd, 1963, in birmingham, alabama, thousands of elementary and high school students braved police dogs and fire hoses to march against segregation. many of them were arrested and put in jail. their crusade galvanized the nation, and ultimately helped to end segregation. kim lawton has our story.

>> at the civil rights institute in birmingham, alabama, local students are on a field trip learning how 50 years ago, kids around their age played a pivotal role in the struggle against segregation. one of them was freeman hrabowski, who is now president of the university of maryland, baltimore county. he was 12 at the time and a math whiz. >> i was not a courageous kid. i did not get into fights. the only thing i would attack was a math problem. and so, this was not about courage at all, it was about having a dream of a better day. >> in 1963, birmingham was considered one of the most segregated places in the u.s. >> children knew, children of col were well aware we were consired second clas. >> reverend martin luther king, jr. came to birmingham in january 1963 to support local efforts to end segregation through nonviolent protests. but the campaign didn't take off as he had hoped.

>> he prepared for three months and started the demonstrations in april. they fizzled quickly, nothing went according to plan. >> while king was trying unsuccessfully to inspire adults to march and get arrested, civil rights leaders, including reverend james bevel and dorothy cotton, were holding special meetings for birmingham elementary and high school students. >> we knew that they were curious about what was going on in their town. we were not there to recruit them. they just started hanging around, coming around and it swelled. >> when dr. king was about to retreat from birmingham, the people running the children's workshops said, "don't do it because we're out of people. i got plenty of foot soldiers." >> it was a controversial prospect. birmingham's police commissioner bull connor was notorious for his efforts to stop any protests. movement leaders argued among themselves about whether this

was the right strategy. >> dr. king was severely criticized for allowing the children to be involved, but the children insisted themselves. the children were their own self-initiators of their own freedom. sai "this is our future and we want to help shape it." >> reverend carolyn mckinstry was 14 and volunteering in her church, 16th street baptist, when she overheard the ministers calling on children to march. >> it was such an excitement in the air, i knew i wanted to be part of it. >> she didn't tell her parents, especially her strict father, about her decision. >> i know if i had asked he wld have said no. >> hrabowski came from an educated middle class family. he says his parents dragged him to a civil rights meeting, and he was sitting in the back of the church doing his math homework when he heard king give the call. >> and i'll never forget listening, but doing the math and hearing a man say, "if the children participate in this demonstration, in this peaceful demonstration, all of america will see that even children

understand the difference between right and wrong and that children want the best possible education." >> afterward, he told his parents he wanted to march. >> and they said, absolutely not. and i was very upset, and i said to them, "then you guys are hypocrites. you told me to go and listen to the minister. i did. i want to do what he suggested and you're saying no." but at that time, you did not say that to your parents. so my father said very calmly, "go to your room." >> he says the next morning, his parents came in and sat on both sides of his bed. >> i could tell they had been crying. i'd never seen my parents cry. and they said they'd been praying all night. and they said this to me, "it wasn't that we didn't trust you. we simply didn't know who'd be responsible for you and how you'd be treated if you were placed in jail." and so they thought about it and they said, "but we have decided to leave it in god's hands." >> before they could march, the young people were trained about the importance of nonviolence. >> we were told what to expect

when we marched, if we did encounter the police. they might hit you, they might spit on you, they will have dogs and bill clubs but the only propriate response eveis n response, or a prayerful response. >> on thursday may 2nd, the children's march began. students left their classrooms midday and gathered in 16th street baptist church. they came out marching and singing, row after row after row of them, some as young as 6 years old. waiting police arrested them for parading without a permit, but the kids kept coming, and when the paddy wagons were full, the police had to get a school bus to take them all away. nearly 1,000 children had signed up to march, and more than 600 were taken into custody on that day. >> as hundreds and hundreds more children showed up to demonstrate and face possible arrest, bull connor was anxious to restore order. he instructed his forces to bring out the fire hoses and the

dogs. some of the most shocking confrontations happened in kelly ingram park, across from the church, where monuments to the marchers now stand. officials aimed the water hoses full blast at the marching children. mckinstry was among those hit. >> the water came out with such tremendous pressure, and it's a very painful experience, if you've never been hit by a fire hose and i thought, whoa. you know, i got knocked down and then we found ourselves crouching together and trying to find something to hold onto. people ran, people hid, people hugged buildings or whatever they could to keep the water hoses from just knocking them here and there. >> then, bystanders watched in horror as the police used dogs to try to control the crowd. news reporters captured images of young people being attacked by the german shepherds. the marching, and the arrests, went on for several days. energized by the children, adults soon joined in. >> people felt -- they felt it

and their actions and their involvement came from that feeling that we were on to something that needed, that was right and that was to change this society. >> hrabowski was in a group of children who marched to city hall. >> the police looked mean. it was frightening. we were told to keep singing these songs, and so i'm singing -- ♪ i ain't gonna let nobody turn me round keep on a walking keep on a talking ♪ ♪ marching on to freedom land and amazingly, the other kids were singing, and the singing elevates when you can imagine hundreds of children singing and you feel a sense of community, a sense of purpose. >> he says he had a direct confrontation with connor. >> there was bull connor, and i was so afraid, and he said, "what do you want little nigra?" and i mustered up the courage and i looked up at him and i said, "suh," the southern word for sir, "we want to kneel and pray for our freedom."

that's all i said. that's all we wanted to do. and he did pick me up, and he did, and he did spit in my face, he really he was so angry. >> hrabowski was arrested, and like hundreds of other children, held for five days. when the jails got full, the kids were held in the fairgrounds. >> i will never forget, dr. king came with our parents outside of that awful place. we're looking out at them, if you can imagine children encaged -- it was, it was worse than prison. it was like being treated like little animals, it was awful, crowded, just awful. and he said, what you do this day will have an impact on children who've not been born and parents were crying, and we were crying, and we knew the statement was profound, but we didn't fully understand. >> news reports and pictures of what was happening in birmingham were transmitted around the world.

according to pulitzer prize winning auth taylor branch, those reports had a dramatic impact on public opinion. >> millions of americans who had been seeing demonstrations for years and saying, "well, there's something wrong about that and we should do something, but it's not for me, it's for somebody else," that broke down those emotional barriers when they saw those children suffering it and millions of people said, "i need to do something about this." >> branch says the children's march touched him personally as well. >> i was 16. and doing my best to avoid the fearful civil rights movement, and when i saw the pictures of those kids half my age singing songs, just like the ones i sang in church, marching into those dogs and fire hoses, it had a tremendous effect on me. >> upset about the image of their city, white leaders negotiated a plan with movement leaders to start ending segregation. the kennedy administration was also prompted into action, and on june 11th, citing the events

in birmingham, president kennedy announced his intention to introduce new federal civil rights legislation. >> it led me to bieve, especially after the laws were changed, that there were many things that were worth fighting for. >> mckinstry, who became a baptist minister, continued to fight for civil rights. and today, she works to keep the story of the struggle alive. >> it is disappointing to me when i meet people, young people especially, whatever culture they are, and they don't know the story. we've been in some very difficult places, but we've come a long way, and we continue to grow and to learn. >> hrabowski says in his work with students, he also continues to draw on the lessons he learned in the children's march. lessons, he says, about the power of community, discipline and faith. >> the message is this -- the

world doesn't have to be the way the world is. that good people can act and the world can be better and so can we. >> i'm kim lawton in birmingham. >> anotheseminamoment ith civil rights movement was remembered in congress this week. the house of representatives voted unanimously to award the congressional gold medal, one of the highest civilian honors, to the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th street baptist church. how would you define "god"? for theologian turned lawyer john sexton, god is the sense that there is meaning in our lives, meaning that goes beyond us -- transcendence, beauty and truth. oddly enough, he uses those same words to describsomething quitdifferent baseball. how exactly are the two connected? that's what correspondent bob faw wanted to know. >> new york university president

john sexton oversees more than 40,000 students and a $2.5 billion budget. he's expanding the university at home and abroad while contending with some faculty members who oppose his high-powered management style. >> we're going to do just a little bit of a wrap up. >> and yet, like few university presidents, sexton also finds time to teach four classes. he is famous for greeting his students and anyone else, for that matter, with a hearty hug, and demanding nothing less than their absolute best. >> eugene o'neill famously said he who stops at mere success and does not press on to glorious failure is a spiritual middle classer. i don't want you stopping at the easy. none of you. >> now the former law school dean and distinguished legal scholar has written a most unusual book -- "baseball as a

road to god." that's right, baseball. >> the similarities between baseball and religion abound. the ballpark as cathedral, saints and sinners, the curses and blessings. but then what i'm arguing is beyond that surface level, there's a fundamental similarity between baseball and religion, which goes to the capacity of baseball to cause human beings, in a context they don't think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence. >> john sexton says that what happens here is more than just a game, that it reveals a dimension beyond the eyes and mind letting us, in his words, "see through to another, sacred space," what john sexton calls "the ineffable." >> "ineffable" is the word we

use for things we can't capture in our language. the ineffable is the character of this religious dimension, sometimes labeled god. we're talking about this place where the depth of being is. >> and baseball can be an avenue to that? >> baseball is an avenue to that in the sense that there is this dimension that we experience in baseball of that which can't be put into words. >> in baseball, as in religion, says sexton, the seemingly impossible is part of the game. in 1956, when hard-drinking urneyman pitcher don larsen went from sinner to saint by hurling the only perfect game in world series history, when willie mays made that seemingly impossible catch and throw in the 1954 world series, and in 1955, when sexton's beloved brooklyn dodgers, after decades of coming oh-so-close, won their first and only world series with

an extraordinary catch made by sandy amaros. those moments in baseball, like religion, says john sexton, give a glimpse of something beyond. >> the beauty and the experience in the intensified heightened sensitivity of the moment that comes with the amaros catch, that comes with the mays catch and pivot. the ecstasy of those moments can for some transport one to this transcendent plane. >> the excellence of brooklyn dodger great jackie robinson, now celebrated in a major motion picture42 sparked sexn's infatuation with baseball. now he's had robinson's number 42 sewn into his academic gown, and in his old office, there's one of robinson's original jerseys and a battered glove jackie robinson might have used, although true believer sexton isn't about to check to see if robinson actually did.

>> i chose to live in ignorance. this was the equivalent of saying, "don't tell me that the world's not flat," because i would rather -- my stories, my feelings e much more comfortable in this world of heaven above, earth in the middle, flat as it is, and hell below. >> you gotta believe? >> yeah, you gotta. there's faith, and there's ignorance, and in this case, i chose ignorance. >> sexton says he chooses baseball over other sports because, like religion, it has its own sacred relics, prophets and rituals. and like religion, there is a kind of timelessness. >> baseball encourages, almost requires in its most meaningful moments, an appreciation of living slowly and in the moment, the kind of differentiated

experience that separates the sacred in life from the profane. this experience is where religion begins. >> it's an insight, and an avenue to religion, which he imparts every week to a small class of undergraduates. >> this is the essence of this religious experience, the phenomena that we are going to study. >> initially, some of the students, most of them juniors, were skeptical that baseball was the avenue to anything. >> to be completely honest, when i read the title of the course, i thought, "well, this sounds a little hokey, but, you know, i took one course with him. it was great. i'll give this one a shot." but, you know, he really does make his argument well. >> the students are personally approved by sexton. they are assigned a long list of books and essays, some about religion, some about baseball. >> i feel i have a more open mind as to what religion can be. i no longer see it as something that needs a deity.

it can be something that helps someone better themselves, something that gives them a reason to be moral or ethical. >> he uses baseball as an example, but a point he's been hitting again and again is that baseball is just one possible road to god. the fact that it's not academic and not typically thought of as religious is what makes the point so effective, is that there is a way to find god and the ineffable, you know, the divine, in everyday life, and it can really be anything that takes you there. >> what this devout catholic is trying to do here is fuse lessons from the diamond to the underpinnings of faith. >> the objective of the class was to get students to think about religion differently. so by using the study of religion and getting them to see it in the context of baseball caused them to go back to their thinking about religion in a different way, that maybe made it less dependent on dogma and more liturgical. leading some of the students to the fact that they touched the

transcendent plane in ways they hadn't before, or at least underood it was possible to do it in unexpected places. >> when he's not running a major university, this is what john sexton teaches -- that this quintessential american game, just like van gogh or beethoven, can sometimes give a glimpse of what matters most. for "religion & ethics newsweekly," this is bob faw in new york. on our calendar this weekend, orthodox christians begin observing their holy week in preparation for pascha, easter, on may 5th. because they follow a different calendar, eastern christians usually perform the series of traditional rituals leading up to easter at a different time than western christians. finally, a prominent liberal christian leader, the reverend bob edgar, died suddenly this week. he was 69. edgar, a united methodist

minister, served six terms in the house of representatives and went on to lead the national council of churches, where he was an outspoken advocate for the poor. >> when 80% of the world lives in substandard housing, 70% of the people in the world can't read or write, and 50% will go to bed tonight hungry, we in the faith community, jews, christians, muslims and other faith traditions, ought to address those issues. >> edgar also campaigned against the war in iraq and the use of torture, among other issues. at the time of his death, he was head of common cause. that's our program for now. i'm deborah potter. you can follow us on twitter and facebook and watch us anytime on the pbs app for iphones and ipads. there's always more on our websitetoo. audio d video podcts a also available. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, hinuds in india mark the lunar eclipse by

bathing in the ganges river. major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly" is proviewed by the lily endowment, dedicated to its founders. additional funding also provided by mutual of america. designing customized individual, and group retirement products that's why we're yo retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting.

barry kibrick: today on "between the lines," what life in a foreign prison can teach you about success, with mack dryden. i'm barry kibrick. mack is a stand-up comic, former writer for "politically incorrect," and a compelling motivational speaker. but it wasn't always that way. as a young man, mack was thrown into a moroccan prison, accused of murder. with his book, "fluffing the concrete," he shows us how to make the most out of even the worst situation. linda ellerbee: i'm a writer today because i was a reader when i was 11 years old, and it was... deepak chopra: you do not need to prove your state of happiness to anybody. warren christopher: most of these speeches were as much as a month in preparation. stephen j. cannell: the characters, the heroes of this book are seekers of truth in a sto