churches that welcome the mentally ill. >> their families might be alienated from them or estranged or whatever. they might not have work communities. what do they have left but their faith in god? also, 50 years after its founding by the late cesar chavez, the united farm workers union is a shadow of what it used to be. >> there is no doubt that we have a lot of work to do but at the same time we've made a lot of gains. major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private family foundation, dedicated to its founders and christian religion, community development and education. additional funding provided by

mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement product. that's why we're your retirement company. the estate of william j. carter. the jane henson foundation and corporation for public broadcasting. welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. an historic vote by the southern baptist convention this week. the nation's largest protestant denomination elected new orleans pastor fred luter, jr. as its first african-american president. the emotional vote was hailed as a significant step for the sbc, which was founded in 1845 in support of slavery. luter told us he hopes to address the sbc's declining number of baptisms and members -- >> we need to find out what happened and we need to fix it. because that's something this convention has been very proud about, about the fact that we've always made evangelism a priority.

in other business, sbc delegates narrowly approved an unofficial alternate name, great commission baptists, which can be used by churches that are uncomfortable with the word "southern" in the denomination's title. delegates also approved a resolution opposing same-sex marriage and saying gay rights are not civil rights. in a landmark case, a jury in philadelphia found monsignor william lynn guilty of child endangerment for covering up allegations of sexual abuse by other priests. the jury found him innocent of conspiracy. this was the first time a catholic church official faced criminal charges for how he handled the abuse crisis. lynn was not accused of committing abuse himself. he said he gave a list of accused priests to then cardinal anthony bevilacqua, who did not take action. bevilacqua died in january. lynn faces up to seven years in

prison. a group of catholic nuns has begun a two-week bus tour across the country to highlight their opposition to federal cuts to social services. in the nine states on the so-called "nuns on the bus" tour, the sisters are speaking out against representative paul ryan's proposed budget, which they say would hurt the poor. they are also visiting various catholic charities they claim would be affected. also this week, the catholic bishops kicked off their two-week campaign called the fortnight for freedom. the bishops are urging local congregations to hold special masses, talks and events calling attention to what the bishops see as growing threats to religious freedom at home and abroad. they are particularly concerned about the obama administration policy requiring insurance coverage of contraception. republican presidential hopeful mitt romney is also rallying supporters around the

religious freedom issue. romney spoke by satellite to a meeting of religious conservatives organized by the faith and freedom coalition. he said several obama administration policies are burdening the free exercise of religion. >> the principles of the declation of independence and the constitution, i believe, are frequently under attack and they are again today. the decision by the obama administration to attack our first freedom, religious freedom, is one which i think a lot of people were shocked to see. >> president obama denies any attacks on religious freedom and accuses republicans and others of try to use the issue for partisan gain. charitable giving grew in the united states last year but only modestly. according to an annual report entitled giving usa, donations to all charities increased by 4% in 2011.

the total is now $298 billion, but that figure still remains below the pre-recession level. researchers say a full recovery could still be a decade away. the largest percentage of individual giving goes to religious organizations although that amount dropped by nearly 2% for the second straight year. decreased attendance at houses of worship was mentioned as one of the factors. there is growing international concern for northern nigeria, where a radical islamic sect has been targeting christians in a series of church bombings which have been going on for months. more than 20 people died in attacks on three churches last weekend. at least 100 were killed this week in fighting between muslims and christians following the attacks. religious leaders have condemned the violence. pope benedict xvi said those responsible must stop shedding the blood of innocent people.

the pope also called for an end to the fighting in syria and urged the delivery of humanitarian aid. the international committee of the red cross has been trying to evacuate sick and wounded people in the heavily shelled city of homs. meanwhile, the syrian government expelled an italian jesuit priest for protesting against the assad regime. reverend paolo dall'oglio was head of a prominent syrian monastery known for its interfaith work. he left the country last weekend. it's estimated that one american in ten will suffer severe mental illness at some point in their lives. a report today from deborah potter about churches that have learned how to minister to those almost everyone else rejects. >> reporter: on tuesdays and thursdays, the vans from holy comforter episcopal church make

the rounds in southeast atlanta. >> today we'll pick up between 60 and 70 people. >> reporter: the church provides a day center for people with mental illness and other disabilities. >> good morning, everybody. >> reporter: at first glance, it looks like any other assistance program. people line up for free clothing and toiletries from a stockpile of donations. >> do you need a toothbrush? >> yeah. >> reporter: they share meals prepared by volunteers, breakfast and lunch. >> is this your first time here? >> second. >> well, i'm mike. >> reporter: while some participants go to counseling or therapy, others work with their hands in a supervised art program. >> i really love this church. it's awesome. it makes me feel good about myself. >> you come, you read, you get to know people better. you get to understand your illness, you know, just have a good time. >> reporter: but the heart of the program isn't the handouts or even the activities. >> the prayer and the inspiration from the prayers

inspire me to come. >> when i pray it makes me feel better, makes me feel like things will be all right. got to calm down and pray instead of being worried, anxious like i used to be all the time. >> reporter: the church garden grows and sells vegetables and plants to help defray the cost of the day program, which is mostly paid for by the episcopal diocese of atlanta, foundation grants, and donations. >> what i see coming to us and joining us is a group of people who have been knocked down all their lives and who are just remarkably joyous and remarkably full of faith. they get it that god loves them and that their suffering is just part of life, and god loves them through it, and they love each other through it. >> reporter: one out of every ten people will experience a severe and persistent mental illness at some point in life,

experts say. for decades, society shut those people away in institutions. but now they're more visible on the streets and in group homes, and faith communities have been challenged to respond. holy comforter responded 15 years ago when a group home opened nearby and the priest at the time invited the residents to church. today, almost two-thirds of the congregation is made up of people with mental illness, including bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and schizophrenia, who worship together. >> lord, we thank you. >> reporter: and pray together. >> father god, we ask that you wash us clean and keep us safe and protected. father god, protect each and every member of our church right now, in jesus' name. amen, amen. >> reporter: services like this are rare for many reasons, including fear that people with mental illness will be disruptive or disturbing.

>> we have a lot of things that we imagine about mental illness that aren't true. we imagine that people with mental illness are more violent than the rest of us. they are not. they are less violent than the rest of us. they're more vulnerable than the rest of us, but we're afraid. >> reporter: the stigma attached to mental illness keeps many people silent about their suffering, and researchers at baylor university found in a limited study that a third of those who seek help from their pastors don't get it. >> they might say that it's from an evil spirit. it's an evil spirit and it has to be cast out. you have to pray more. and that approach, of course, would only result in that illness never being, you know, the core of that issue never even being touched. >> reporter: at this government-sponsored conference in washington, faith communities were encouraged to partner with mental health groups, a recognition that both medicine

and spirituality have a role to play in dealing with mental illness. >> faith can give us a sense of hope. it provides a horizon of possibility in our lives. faith speaks to what's deepest and best in us each, and faith helps us to explore our connections with one another. >> reporter: craig rennebohm ministers to people with mental illness in seattle. he's a former pastor in the united church of christ. >> i think all of our traditions talk about loving our neighbor. virtually every religious, spiritual tradition has scriptures about compassion and about healing. so it's not a matter of whether we do these things. it's sort of extending our capacity to support healing and respond to suffering by including those who experience mental health issues. >> reporter: inclusion is the key at st. catherine/st. lucy roman catholic church in suburban chicago. twice a month for more than 30 years, people with mental illness have come together here for prayer and conversation with volunteers.

>> it's also time to give praise and worship to our god because we're here. we made it. whatever our day brought, we made it, and without him we never would have made it. >> reporter: connie rakitan founded the program and still runs it today, helping to design worship that's welcoming to all. >> walking into a church with a long service and a long sermon and lots of music and lots of people could just be so overwhelming that it's just not doable. >> praise our god, who lavishly loves us. >> we would never, ever use a healing passage, because we would not want to set somebody up for an unrealistic disappointment, because the fact is not everybody gets cured. so it's not like, you know, just join a church and everything's going to be hunky dory. >> reporter: but programs like faith and fellowship do help some people.

>> their families might be alienated from them or estranged or whatever. they might not have work communities. what do they have left but their faith in god? >> i fought depression for a long time, but i've gotten through that, and i just seem to take it day by day. >> reporter: and the faith part of it helps? >> faith helps. faith helps greatly. and coming to the church where everybody knows me, acknowledges that you're there, that helps. >> why i feel so comfortable here? because we all one family and we love each other. >> we love it, too. you know, it feels like home. i don't know how much better to say it, but everyone's welcome here, you know, and it's a marvelous, marvelous spirit. i don't know if you can feel it, you know, but it's palpable. >> reporter: more faith communities are beginning to reach out to people with mental illness.

but change comes slowly, partly because many pastors feel unprepared to lead the way. >> not every pastor has to be the out-front leader. i think in every congregation there are families and individuals who have experienced mental illness or mental health issues who can be the champions in their local faith community. >> i think that there's a long way to go, and i think one of the keys that's going to move us even more forward is for churches to recognize that relationships are the key and people want to be needed, wanted, loved, and appreciated. >> reporter: here they are. >> amen, amen. >> reporter: for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm deborah potter in oak park, illinois.

in california, the united farm workers union is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding by the late, charismatic cesar chavez. but saul gonzales reports that the union has come upon hard times, facing a dramatic loss of membership and sharp criticism of its present leaders. >> reporter: in a packed convention hall in bakersfield california, members and friends of the united farm workers recently celebrated this legendary labor union's 50th anniversary. they also came to honor the legacy of the ufw's founder, the late cesar chavez, one of the most famous figures in organized labor history who during his life some saw as a dangerous radical, and others, as a kind of saint. >> you know, cesar passed away 19 years ago. to some of us it was like yesterday. >> reporter: arturo rodriguez is

the president of the united farm workers and cesar chavez's son-in-law. >> he taught us. he nurtured us. he made sure that we understood really the importance and the criticalness of doing what we're doing. he lived the ideals of the farmworker movement. ♪ >> reporter: it was in the 1960s and '70s that chavez, who worked in the fields himself as a teenager and never received a formal education beyond the eighth grade, organized poor and immigrant farmworkers, first in california and then across the southwest. >> you've got to get out there with a picket sign and get some action going. and when you put all of those things together, then nonviolence works. >> reporter: through strikes in the fields and the organization of national consumer boycotts of table grapes and lettuce, chavez and the ufw forced big growers to the negotiating table, where

the union won historic concessions. >> what chavez did was put farmworkers, who had really been sort of invisible, into the public consciousness. >> reporter: miriam pawel, the author of a critically acclaimed history of the ufw, is now writing a biography of cesar chavez. >> it was the first successful labor union for farmworkers. it was the first time that farmworkers were able to have contracts, to have health insurance, to have basic minimum wages. it was very much the civil rights movement of the west in many ways and that's really how it started. >> reporter: and chavez became a labor and civil rights superstar, courted by national political figures like robert f. kennedy. and in 1969, he became the first mexican american to appear on the cover of "time" magazine. nearly two decades after his death, chavez is still a potent symbol, especially to america's growing latino population.

streets, schools, and monuments across the country carry chavez's name. and every year thousands visit his gravesite at the national chavez center 30 miles east of bakersfield. chavez and the ufw often achieved the union's greatest victories in partnership with religious groups. it also relied heavily on religious imagery, such as marches featuring a banner of the virgin de guadalupe and chavez's tactic of fasting to bring attention to the plight of farmworkers. >> the religious symbolism was central to the ufw. >> reporter: chris hartmire, a protestant pastor, was in the 1960s the director of a ministry for farmworkers, a position which led him to become one of cesar chavez's closest confidants. he says chavez understood working with churches could bring his union practical benefits. >> because of the power of the

church to communicate its message out there and the fact that the church is everywhere. and because of the credibility it gives the movement. the growers say "he's communist." people believe a lot of things about the church, but they don't believe we're communist, so it helped to defeat that kind of propaganda. >> reporter: at the chavez national monument, several displays honor the role of faith in the ufw's history. yet even as the ufw celebrates its past achievements and the legacy of cesar chavez, many are asking troubling questions about this union, namely, does it still remain relevant, and is it doing all that it can to help today's generation of farmworkers? >> people need to realize that the ufw is not helping farmworkers today and whatever it did in the past really is history. >> reporter: pawel says because contracts with growers have been allowed to lapse and the union

hasn't been aggressive with recruiting, the ufw's membership has plummeted from more than 80,000 members in the 1970s to fewer than 6,000 today. and with that decline has come a loss of clout and the ability to represent farmworkers. pawel traces the union's problems back to chavez himself and his increasingly heavy-handed leadership of the ufw before his death. is it fair to say, according to your research, that chavez starts cultivating a cult of personality? >> yeah, it certainly becomes a cult of personality. things get very ugly in the late '70s. there are a lot of people who are purged, they're purged in very ugly ways. there are a lot of people who believed that they were going to spend their lives doing this and who had committed themselves and get cast out in very ugly ways, denounced as spies and traitors in ways that decades later really haunt them.

>> reporter: there are criticisms of the nonprofit chavez foundation, an offshoot of the ufw run by his son paul chavez. >> the chavez foundation reported in 2010 taking in $30 million. it's an enormous amount of money. that is mott money being spent on farm workers. >> reporter: they build affordable housing. and running spanish language radio stations in the west. paul chavez says it's all in keeping with his father's vision. >> this is a part of who we are. it's providing services to workers in the community and at the work place. it doesn't stray. it's keeping and adhering to the original principles of the movement. >> reporter: what about the farm workers of today, decades a after the greatest victories? much of what the union fought

for like rest periods, water and shade still exist. the vast majority of field hands in california's san joaquin valley are as exploited and vulnerable as they were when the ufw first formed. >> one of the biggest problems that we see every day is the wages, the low wages that they get paid. >> reporter: fausto sanchez is a community worker with the california rural assistance league, which advocates on behalf of farmworkers. he says big growers still keep tight control over their workers through a system of foremen wh fire farm hands at the first sign of organizing. >> they don't want any people to be organized, and they say people who are organizing themselves, they are so political, and they are very political, and they don't want anybody who is political working in the field. >> reporter: how many people that you talk to are in a union then, whether it's united farm worker or some other union. any of them? or a very small number? >> a very small number. i would say about 1% or 2%. >> reporter: 1% or 2% of farmworkers you see are involved

in organized labor? >> yes. >> reporter: cesar chavez's friend and ally, chris hartmire, wishes the union was more active in the farm fields. >> from an outsiders perspective it doesn't seem like there's a lot of new organizing going on, and i wish there were, but i also know it's extremely difficult. workers in the fields now don't know who cesar chavez is. they think he's a boxer from mexico, julio cesar chavez. >> the reality, it is tough. >> reporter: ufw president arturo rodriquez acknowledges his union's declining influence but says it's refocusing its energy to organize farmworkers, including labor agreements benefiting field hands picking mushrooms and strawberries. the union is also fighting for immigration reform. >> there is no doubt that we have a lot of work to do, but at the same time we have made a lot of gains, we've made a lot of victories, and we're very thankful for what we've been able to accomplish, and we look forward to continue working as hard this next 50 years as we did this last 50.

>> reporter: the union delegates and friends who gathered in this hall hope the ufw's best days are still ahead of it and not in the history books. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm saul gonzalez in bakersfield, california. finally, on our calendar, special events are being held to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the book of common prayer, the prayers and readings used in the liturgies of anglican and episcopal churches. the book has been revised many times over the centuries, sometimes amid great controversy. its poetic language has been incorporated by other protestant traditions as well. and in india, millions of hindus celebrated a popular chariot festival.

richly-decorated chariot processions symbolize a journey of three hindu deities. one of those deities was lord jagannath, and during the chariot festival, hindus seek his blessing. 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 smart phones. there's also much more on our 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, music from the southern baptist convention's annual meeting, held this week in new orleans. ♪

major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly" is provided by lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private foundation dedicated to its founders interests in religion, community development and education. additional funding provided by mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. the estate of william j. carter. the jane henson foundation. and the corporation for public broadcasting.