also the strain and the satisfaction of becoming a caretaker for someone you love. >> this is the deal you made when you got married. the deal was to be there for that person. >> and who can build the most creative outdoor shelters jews are told they should build? the finalists in the international competition.oñ additional funding by mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. also by the henry louis foundation and the corporation for public broadcasting.

. welcome. i'm bob abernathy. it's good to have you with us. there was evidence that atheists, agnostics jews and mormons know more about religion than protestants and catholics. the pew forum on religion and public life did a representative telephone survey of 3,400 people. out of 12 questions about the bible and christianity, mormons got more correct answers than everyone else, including white evangelicals. of 11 questions about world religions, jews, atheists and agnostics did best. and on four questions about religion and the law, atheists agnostics and jews also scored higher than all other groups. the number one predictor of the scores was how far people had gone in school. many observers pointed out when it comes to religion, knowledge isn't everything. greg smith is a senior

researcher at pew. >> many people are religious themselveses in the way they live their life and the way they approach faith. but that doesn't necessarily mean they have perfect knowledge of religion or even of their own faith. >> the survey also found that many people think the restrictions on religion and public schools are tighter than they really are. on whether teachers can lead classroom prayers, 89%, the highest of all responses correctly said they cannot. but substantial majorities also thought wrongly that the law forbids teachers from reading the bible as literature or teaching about world religions. among other surprises. of all 3,400 people surveyed, only eight got all 32 questions right. for more findings or to take the test yourself, there's a link on

pbs.org. as middle east peace talks threaten to break down this week, an inner faith coalition of religious leaders urged the obama administration to press for continued negotiations between israel and the palestinian authority. more than a dozen representatives from jewish, muslim and christian groups called for u.s. leadership that is fair and firm, while reiterating their support for a two-state solution and a halt to settlement construction. the religious leaders said cynicism must not replace hope. the plea came less than a week after allowing the moratorium onset lment construction in the west bank expired. the obama administration imposed personal financial and travel investigations against eight civil leaders in iran for alleged rights abuses. u.s. officials said they wanted

to express solidarity. the u.s. commission on international religious freedom applauded the action. some activists have criticized the administration for not taking enough action to defend human rights, including religious freedom. also this week during a campaign appearance, president obama spoke explicitly about his personal faith. at a backyard discussion in albuquerque, obama asserted that he was a christian by choice. >> understanding that, you know, jesus christ died for my sins spoke to the rue millty we all have to have as human beings. we're sinful an flawed and make mistakes. and, you know, we achieve salvation through the grace of god. >> the president added that the

beliefs of nonchristian americans must also be respected. in other news in india dh week a verdict was issued over a piece of land claimed by both hindus and husband -- muslims. a court ruled they must split the territory where a mosque once stood, but which hin dues say is the birthplace of their daily rahm. in 1992 a hindu mob tore down the mosque, inciting riots. secular leaders are appealing for calm after the ruling, which both sides said they'll appeal. it's been said if you want to be happy in your work, become a priest or minister. research has shown that job satisfaction is highest among clergy. but paradoxically, surveys have also found that there's some major negatives in the life of clergy.

including stress. and a growing number of programs now address those problems. deborah potter reports. >> let us stand and continue our morning worship. >> serving god and ministering the people is deeply fulfilling, pastors say. yet studies found protestant clergy suffer from depression and obesity at higher rates than the population as a whole. >> researchers like to joke that their satisfied and stressed. >> joe is a priest who teaches pastoral counseling and studies why clergy are more stressed than most of us. >> what makes the clergy vocation different is you work for god ultimately. if that work environment isn't meaningful to you, you're doing a lot of things like, you know, doing budgets or checking spelling on a bulletin, or office management, that's going to really hit home, because you think your job should be about god. >> reporter: add to that a new

source of stress for many pastors in mainline protestant denominations, as church membership dwindles they feel pressured to reverse the trend. >> and a lot of pastors think that church growth is really the measure of their success, you know, and a lot of people are having to learn to deal with shrinking numbers, shrinking budgets, even closing churches. >> lord, we thank you for your grace and your mercy today. >> reporter: lynda ferguson is pastor of salem united methodist church in rural bostic, north carolina. >> in jesus' name we pray. amen. >> reporter: she's the church's only pastor. most protestant churches have just one, ministering to a congregation of about 300. >> used to be the churches were filled, and now today we have to play a role of going out and bringing people into the church or actually taking the church to people. >> reporter: in the past three years, ferguson has put 90,000 miles on her car, visiting the sick. >> i ask, lord, that you would just fill her with your holy presence and that your healing power will just consume her body. >> he brought a lot of joy into

this world. >> reporter: consoling the bereaved. >> i appreciate you letting me be part of your life. clergy are different in that we are called to go to many dark places. we enter into sacred places with people, places that often are very difficult and, you know, we don't do that from a distance. jesus didn't sit off in a corner and say "i feel your pain" from over here. jesus very much reached out and touched, and he felt intensely for people, and we do, too, and so when you do that on a day-after-day basis, it is a lot of stress. >> reporter: today's technology just adds to that stress. >> i couldn't do my job probably without my laptop and my blackberry but i'm on call 24/7, 365 days a year.

i receive probably an average of 30 to 35 phone calls a day, 60 to 70 emails a day, and just taking care of that takes a lot of time. >> reporter: feeling called to serve, not to be served, ferguson hid her stress from the congregation. she worked 60 to 70 hours a week for more than five years and took little time off. and then one sunday night it hit her. >> i came into the parsonage, and i put my things on the kitchen table, and i sat down and i -- my body, i just felt like i couldn't move, and i just sat there, and i was emotionally and physically exhausted. >> reporter: for years, clergy stress was a little bit like the weather. everybody talked about it, and nobody did anything. but now, more than 50 programs across the country are working to improve clergy health, from foundation-paid sabbaticals to

peer groups and retreats sponsored by church pension plans. here in the mountains of north carolina, the episcopal church brings groups of clergy together for eight days to de-stress and re-center themselves. this program started a decade ago with one workshop. it's now held more than 20 times a year. >> the official theme for today is "where am i going?" >> reporter: the sessions cover everything from finance to vocation, giving clergy who are often isolated in their work a chance to share their stories and learn from each other. >> i was left alone in a very large parish and i was doing everything, everything, all the six or seven services during the weekend, running to all the hospital, home visitation. the doctor said, "you must be stressed out." i said, "you think?" >> reporter: for many, the session on work and meaning was revealing. >> what this has helped me realize is that i've sort of

been feeling starved in my primary position. >> i realized that at work i spend the bulk of my time doing the things i hate and not the things that i love to do. >> reporter: trying to do it all can take a toll on a pastor's spiritual life. >> i often carry the burden of being stressed from work because of such nasty emails and stuff, i bring it home, and i can't even prepare myself to pray. >> reporter: kym lucas has four small children and ministers alone to a busy parish, a classic recipe for clergy burnout. >> i felt like i had been burning the candle at both ends for a long time, for at least a year-and-a-half. and there was a part of me that felt a little guilty about taking this time, but i'm glad i did, absolutely glad that i did. >> reporter: for nicholas porter, the retreat was a reawakening. >> i love my job. do i love all of it?

no. at any given moment, if you were to have a little camera in my office, no. but i love my job. healing lives, connecting people to eternity and eternal life and love, i mean this is great stuff. his is great stuff. >> that can be hard to remember when the stress of the job gets to be too much. sometimes i'll hear clergy, other clergy, not just methodist clergy but other clergy, say to especially young people when they're discerning a call to ministry, they will say to them, "if you can do anything else, do it." >> reporter: after nearly collapsing from exhaustion and overwork, lynda ferguson finally took time off for a mission trip to nicaragua and reset her priorities. she takes fridays off now. sometimes when her cell phone rings she doesn't answer, and she's lost weight in part by resisting the temptation to

sample every dish at every church gathering. >> bill caught me this morning running a little bit. >> i saw you jogging. >> hey, she runs, she don't jog. >> just because i love the people, and i truly do, i cannot be there for everything, and they understand that, and they know that, and it is part of our job to set those boundaries, but it is very, very difficult to do so. >> reporter: difficult, but essential for clergy to manage the stress that comes with the job and focus on the work they really feel called to do. >> there's a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves as clergy because of what we're doing, and we don't want to let god down. >> reporter: for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm deborah potter in bostic, north carolina. we have a story today about a family caregiver.

one of the millions of americans, most unpaid women, who do the every day task of looking after the elderly. with families smaller and more dispersed around the country and more women working at paying jobs, the supply of caregivers for seniors seems to be going down, but the demand is going up. more people are living longer, and that means more of them become sick and need help. those who study the situation call it unprecedented. we profile today one particular caregiver, a medical doctor and professor who knew about ca caregiving in theory but learned firsthand how hard it is and how much it can mean. >> reporter: at harvard university, arthur kleinman is a medical doctor, a professor of both psychiatry and anthropology, and the director of harvard's asia center. until 2003, life had treated him well.

he was widely respected professionally, and he and his wife joan, a china scholar, had a happy marriage, with grown children and grandchildren. and then -- calamity. joan kleinman developed a form of alzheimer's disease that brought both dementia and blindness. arthur kleinman became her caregiver. >> it is love. it's about the fact that you are there. there was the deal you made when you got married. the deal was to be there for the person, them for you. i helped her bathe, helped her dress, helped with feeding. and the feeling i had, i would say, was generally one of empowerment, to my, which was remarkable especially at the onset, that i just felt that as i learned to do the things and did them i felt a hell of a lot better. and i felt that i was really contributing. over time, though, i think it drains you emotionally and physically, and you begin to

constrict your life, you are constricted as the other person really begins to disintegrate in front of you. and so my wife's dementia led to a delirium in which not only di% she not recognize me and the like but she would be at times incoherent, flailing wildly, very paranoid about me and others because of the sense that she could not see and could not understand what was happening. >> reporter: but kleinman says his wife's essential personhood did not disappear. >> the memory may go, they may

not recognize who you are, may not remember from minute to minute what you said. but you can still see in the way they respond to you feelings, deep feelings that represent the fact that they know you're important in their life even though they're not quite sure whether you're the husband or the son or what your name is and the like. >> reporter: did you ever feel angry? >> absolutely. and i think that anyone who says they're not angry in a situation like that at times is not fully honest. >> reporter: but there was much more than anger. >> i think it's the sadness, the sense of a deepening despair that you realize that this is not going to go away, this is going to get worse. you realize that this is a terminal illness. >> reporter: as dr. kleinman balanced his work and his

caregiving he found great meaning, he says, in the chinese, confucian traditions he and his wife had both studied. >> one of them has to do with the respect you have for somebody else. that your own humanness deepens as you engage the humanness of someone else. i found that that relationship became increasingly tied to my moral view of things. that i had enormous respect for her. that i felt it was crucial for me to help her maintain her dignity. there is something remarkable about that feeling of being present with someone else. and i felt that for a long time in our relationship and i felt that deepen as there were acts for me to do in this. it was in the doing that i was actually a caregiver. not in thinking about it, not in talking to people about it, but actually doing it. the acts themselves i saw as

moral acts. >> reporter: between the years 2000 and 2050, it's estimated that the number of people 65 and over will more than double, and the number 85 and over will quadruple. and the longer people live the more likely they are to suffer failures of the body and the brain to need care. >> we have never seen the situation around the world, not just the united states, look the way it is. >> reporter: kleinman recalled last year's debate about health care reform. >> how much attention was given to the nitty gritty of caregiving, the content of caregiving? >> i would say almost zero. almost no attention to that. and yet this is what families are going to face in the future. we have left out of our thinking one of the cornerstones of society.

>> reporter: because he had bought long term health insurance, kleinman was able to hire a home health aide to help when he was not there. she covered 9:00 a.m. to 5:00. he took 5:00 p.m. to 9:00. but by last summer he decided his wife needed more care than they could give. so, reluctantly, he moved her to a nursing home. >> that was the most difficult thing. that is, i had made up my mind that i would take care of my wife until the end. and i did it for seven to eight years until a point at which i realized i could not do it anymore. i could not handle, and i'm a psychiatrist, i could not handle the agitation part of it, when she became so agitated and so disturbed and she really needed a safe place to be, et cetera, where she would be less paranoid and less threatened by things. >> reporter: but then, new questions. how close to joan could he continue to be? how often could he visit? how long should he stay?

>> when you've been deeply in love with someone for 45 years and greatly enmeshed together, that issue of distance is a recognition that someone is dying. that this is approaching the end, that you yourself are preparing yourself for the end. and i think it's very difficult. i think it's very, very difficult. >> he said one thing that helped him was his realism. his acceptance of ailments and suffering, a normal part of his life. he also spoke to his children. sometimes the stress of caregiving can tear a family apart. but in his case, he said gratefully his family had never been closer. finally, as the jewish holidays of sukkot ended this

past week, a jewish organization called rebuke showed off the winners of a creative design competition for sukkahs. the outdoor shelters jews are told they should build. 11 finalists were put up in new york's union square. we got a tour from the religious consultant to the competition. >> the major ritual component of sukkot is dwelling in booths, in these temporary houses for seven days. we learn that from the torah, from the bible, where we are told b'sukkah teshvu shevat yamim, you should dwell in a sukkah for seven days. we leave our permanent dwelling, our home, and we move to this temporary dwelling to remember the transience of the israelites and their journey from egypt to israel, and also to remind us that in some ways all of life is really temporary, and all of life, life is very fragile, and so that is what we do.

we dwell in these sukkahs. we eat in them, we sleep in them, we try and spend as much time as possible within them. the fundamental laws about a sukkah that make it kosher, it needs to have two and a half walls. just about anything can be used for walls. it can't be material that will ultimately smell, which would cause someone to want to leave the sukkah, or can't be something that will fall over in the wind. but aside from that, any material can really be used. there is a big distinction made between what's allowed to be used for the walls and what can be used for the roofing material. the roofing material needs to be kosher roofing material, which is basically organic growth which has been cut from the ground. it needs to provide more shade than sunlight, and it also needs to be somewhat temporary, so it can't be a full plank or a full roof. there is a custom to be able to see the stars through the roof.

so we're pretty careful to be sure that one can, at least in some way, see the stars. there are minimum sizes for the sukkah. it has to be a minimum of about 28 inches by 28 inches. it has to be 40 inches tall. we see that here in these sukkahs that they conform to jewish law. they conform to these strict, rigid limitations. at the same time, they don't look like anything conventional because of the individual creativity and inspiration of the architects. >> so last night, in keeping with the tradition, i slept in one of the sukkahs, the one behind me. these structures commemorate a homelessness that occurred in a desert 3,000 years ago, and the idea of taking that and dragging it into one of the most urban places in america was exciting. actually sleeping in a sukkah in union square park was not only fun but a little bit scary. >> the winning was supposed to suggest impermanence. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernathy.

there's much more on our website. including more of my interview with dr. kleinman. audio and video podcasts are available. and you can find us on facebook and follow us on twitter. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, music from t center in north carolina. ♪ # ♪

first >> david, i love it in your but, "comeback america