tensions in ferguson, missouri, over the police shooting of an unarmed african-american teenager, we look at some of the broader moral issues. and fred de sam lazaro with the moving story of one american woman's campaign to bring love into the lives of some of china's millions of neglected orphans.

welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. amid ongoing tensions in ferguson, missouri, faith leaders continued to pray for peace and call for justice. local clergy have tried to maintain calm after the fatal shooting of an unarmed african-american teenager, michael brown. the shooting sparked two weeks of protests and sometimes violent confrontations with police. interfaith groups have sponsored peaceful marches and prayer vigils in ferguson urging an expedited grand jury hearing as well as long-term changes in police procedures. several churches hosted town hall meetings for community members to air their frustrations. across the nation, many faith groups are holding special services to show their

solidarity with ferguson. we'll have more on some of the broader moral issues highlighted by the events there in a few minutes. meanwhile, religious leaders in new york continued to raise concerns about the case of eric garner, a black man, who died last month after having been placed in an illegal chokehold by a white police officer. on wednesday, new york mayor bill de blasio met with a group of prominent faith leaders, including roman catholic cardinal timothy dolan. the mayor said he wanted to rebuild trust between the police department, political leaders and the community. in other news, there was international shock and outrage over the videotaped beheading of american journalist james foley by islamic state militants, or isis. foley was abducted in syria in late 2012. he had not been heard from until this week when isis released the

video of foley's death, along with demands that the u.s. cease airstrikes in iraq. muslim groups including the council on american-islamic relations denounced the killing, saying it violated islamic beliefs. president obama condemned the act and pledged to continue fighting isis. >> their victims are overwhelmingly muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. no just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. >> foley was a catholic and had been kidnapped before in 2011 while reporting in libya. after that ordeal, he wrote in the magazine of his alma mater, marquette university, that "prayer was the glue" that enabled his freedom. leaders of some of the most ancient churches in the middle east issued a joint statement denouncing the emergence of

armed extremist groups, which they say are threatening the existence of christians throughout the region. catholic and orthodox patriarchs this week visited christian refugees in northern iraq who were brutally forced from their homes by isis. tens of thousands of iraqis have been displaced by the fighting, adding to an already burgeoning international refugee crisis. according to the united nations, there are nearly 50 million refugees worldwide, the highest number since world war ii. >> pope francis surprised some this week by lending his measured support for military intervention in iraq. >> on the trip home from a visit to south korea, he said it was permissible to use force to stop a "unjust aggressor." the pope also said he had cleared the way for oscar romero to be beatified. romero was the archbishop of san salvador and an influential figure in the liberation theology movement.

the pope was coming off a busy week in south korea, where he beatified 124 korean martyrs in a mass before a crowd of 800,000. he also met with many lay people and visited a home for disabled adults and children. there was good news for the two american missionaries who were infected with ebola while working in west africa. dr. kent brantly and earlier nancy writebol were discharged from the emory university hospital in atlanta after they were said to be free of the virus. they had been in liberia with the christian aid groups samaritan's purse and s.i.m. meanwhile, there were growing fears that the ebola outbreak in west africa is spiraling out of control. the world health organization announced that more than 1,300 people have died, many of them in liberia. this week liberian officials

quarantined a slum in monrovia where 50,000 people live, provoking violent clashes between residents and police. we want to talk more about the events in ferguson now with our managing editor kim lawton, dr. alton pollard iii, dean of the howard university school of divinity and dr. russell moore, president of the ethics & religious liberty commission of the southern baptist convention. welcome to you all. let me begin with a question to both of you, please. dr. pollard, what are the messages from ferguson for the whole country and especially people of faith? >> i think the message from &

our own congregational life, when we have congregations where reconciliation is modeled within the pews of the church. >> you wrote something to that effect on your blog this week and i noticed there was a lot of pushback from some evangelicals who didn't like the idea of suggestions of racial disparity continuing or bristled about the notion of white privilege, those kinds of things. to what extent do you think evangelicals in particular, christians in the pews, are open to talking about things like systemic injustice? >> i think most evangelicals are, but i think where you see white evangelicals who are most concerned about this, it's in

contexts where they know people and are serving together in congregations with african-american and asian and latino people. and so the more that we have congregations that aren't neatly segregated up into white churches and black churches and white-collar churches and blue-collar churches, the more you're going to see people recognizing, "this affects me. i am part of a body of believers who have a very different experience that i have." i remember having a conversation with an african-american southern baptist pastor who said to me, "you know i was going through applications for my son to go to college, and there were certain schools that i was praying, 'lord, please don't let him go to those schools, because i didn't think it would be safe for him.'" and i realized i had never had to have that sort of prayer. those sorts of conversations, i think, spark a beginning of an awareness of what's going on in ways that we need. >> dr. pollard, at howard, what are the students saying? what are they saying to you?

go ahead. >> students are filled with rage. they are angry. there has long been a simmering sense of injustice in our society, and for our theological students as well as our undergraduate students, there's a recognition that we cannot simply wait for our society to take these matters seriously. >> is there a place for another look now at something like the civil rights movement? is what is needed in your view now something like that? a mass movement? >> yes, absolutely. obviously we'll have a different format today because we are in the age of social media, so for young people, there's a recognition that marching and protesting matters. however, they don't always have the skill set to go with having that same kind of nonviolent sensibility of the '50s and '60s. and those things have to be taught, but they do have great savvy when it comes to social media, and so they can take our

movement for our common humanity in a very different direction. >> dr. moore, what about for your folks in the southern baptist convention? would they be ready for another movement like the civil rights movement to do something about police contact? >> well, i think you'd be surprised by the southern baptist convention, one of our fastest growing demographics is among african-american churches, so this is our problem, too. and we also have, the southern baptist convention passed a resolution last year talking about sentencing disparities, for instance, and minimum sentencing and prison reform. so i think there's an awakening across evangelicalism to see that we have a legal problem, we have a systemic problem, we have a cultural problem, and then behind that, we have a spiritual problem. social media can serve to bring awareness, but social media also has the danger of reducing things down to slogans and to simple answers, when this is going to be a very complex one.

>> would the young people that you talk with, would they be open to nonviolence the way the civil rights people of the past were? >> with teaching. with instruction. with education. and so much of that has not happened, i think, in our day and time. in our theological context, i think, persons preparing for ministry, absolutely. but for our larger rank-and-file students across the board in every discipline, many of them have not had exposure to those kinds of thoughts, and so as a society i think we've gotten away from that, but every study, every survey, every statistic, not just the u.s. but across the globe, has indicated that when there's a nonviolent movement, the success rate is so much greater, and not only that, but it tends to bring about a broader demographic of the social order, and it lasts m

centeredness, rather than thinking about our larger social context, thinking about our communities as a whole, our schools, our educational system, our legal jurisprudence. they don't think always about that, the systemic. >> and i would argue that there's a danger in the other direction as well. one of the reasons why martin luther king was able to speak to white people, especially white evangelicals, letter to a birmingham jail, is because he was able to speak to the conscience, a conscience formed with certain biblical ideas, such as the fact that every person is made in the image of god, jesus died for every person, the gospel is to go to every person.

and so when there's a lack of seeing the humanity of another person, that personal recognition, then there's a conscience that is lost. i think we have to retain that element as well. >> just very briefly, amid all the headlines of violence, all of that, there were also things going on both in ferguson and elsewhere in the country where people were coming together across races because of this crisis. do you see this as an opportunity for positive things as well? >> i think without question. when russell was talking a moment ago about the letter, we also have to remember that the very people he wrote that letter to rejected it out of hand, all of these white christians. today we still are wrestling with the implications of that. we haven't always been able to figure out our way to each other, recognizing our commonalities, our similarities, even with all of the issues that continue to divide. but back to your question, this is absolutely the day and time. there is no better day than now to do even greater things than

these, to put it in good biblical language, for we who are people of the christian faith to demonstrate the good news, the commonwealth, the reign of god. >> and very briefly? >> it's difficult for people to see what's happening on the ground in ferguson and everywhere else where you do have people working together, being reconciled, seeking to minister. but i think that's going to happen, and we should pray for it to happen more. >> dr. moore, dr. pollard, kim, many thanks to each of you. >> thank you. >> thank you. we have a moving story today from fred de sam lazaro about the campaign of one american woman, jenny bowen, in berkeley, california, to bring some loving care into the lives of millions of chinese orphans, most of them girls. she and her husband began by adopting one girl.

then another..wp now, she leads a foundation to bring responsive care to all china's orphans. >> reporter: for the bowen family, this was a huge day. >> she got the international baccalaureate diploma, and then she got the bi-literacy medal, as opposed to bilingual. she can read and write and talk. >> reporter: that 18-year-old maya bowen can talk let alone graduate with honors seems both natural and unlikely, given her early childhood in a distant orphanage. richard and jenny bowen adopted her when she was 2. >> no one had ever talked to her and, you know, language develops when people talk to you. that's how you learn to speak, so she had no language at all. >> reporter: the bowens were moved to adopt -- first maya and later anya -- after reports in the late '90s of child neglect on a vast scale in china.

this film, shot undercover, called "the dying rooms," showed orphanages filled with girls abandoned in a country that had begun restricting families to one child in a culture that traditionally favored boy children. >> we thought the thing we could do is save one life. so that's what we did. we went to china to save a life. >> reporter: but she found it impossible to ignore the conditions maya would escape, but where millions of others still languished in the custody of indifferent or untrained workers, invisible in a nation focused on industrializing its way out of third-world poverty. sixteen years later, jenny bowen heads a group called the half the sky foundation that's helping transform the way orphans are cared for across china.

her agency -- whose name derives from a chinese proverb that says women hold up half the sky -- has trained 12,000 teachers and nannies in 27 provinces across this vast nation. we visited this facility in the northeastern city of shenyang. >> all these children are abandoned. many of them are abandoned because they have what are called special needs. before half the sky, children were tied to their chairs. they were lying in bed. you could see the tragedy. you walk into a room, and you were just confronted with the tragedy. here it's invisible. these children are going on with their lives. they're being treated like their lives matter. they know it, and they know they're loved, so they thrive. >> reporter: she says children need a sense of being part of a family, in whatever shape family takes. >> it doesn't mean that they have to be back with their birth families or permanently adopted

or anything. they just need to have the love that a family gives naturally to a child, and to me it was like a no brainer. >> reporter: it was not a no-brainer to get her ideas across in an opaque state-run welfare system. what's more, the publicity about orphanage conditions was deeply insulting to a government highly sensitive about china's image. zhang zhirong works for half the sky's china offices. >> china always want to tell the world she is the best. everything perfect. we are serving the people, we are helping the people. that's china politically. at that time it was difficult to let people, especially foreigners, to come in and see some of the problems, to see some of the dark side. >> reporter: zhang was a key early ally. an english professor and official interpreter well-versed

in the culture and politics of the bureaucracy, zhang was convinced of bowen's sincerity. >> i really felt she had the heart. she wanted to help. no other intentions. >> reporter: did it help that she had chinese daughters as well? >> she always says, "i'm half chinese. my daughters are all chinese." >> i know that resonated. the international criticism certainly let them know that something had to be done. i was probably the least threatening of the options out there. >> reporter: bowen began by seeking guidance from child development experts. she raised funds in hollywood where she'd worked as a screenwriter, and from american couples who'd adopted chinese daughters. she organized volunteer trips to train caregivers and transform the environment in which orphans spent their days. children who once sat

impassively are now in busy preschools. walls that had generic cartoon images now display the children's own artwork and pictures. >> children in institutions, traditional institutions, they move in packs. they all eat at the same time, they all sleep at the same time, they all pee at the same time, and they don't separate themselves from each other. so we use a lot of mirrors, things like this, where they can identify themselves, their friends, and it's a way for them to start knowing who they are, and that's the beginning of developing intellectual curiosity and opinions. >> i can tell you already have opinions. >> teacher lin lin says half the sky's approach, called "responsive care," is tailored to children's individual learning interests -- a far cry from the previous rote learning. >> kids were asked to recite a lot of things, old poems and

literature, which they did not understand, they weren't interested in. now we're doing things that are interesting to them. gradually you build a trust with these children, and they begin to consider you as part of their family. >> reporter: that's a key goal -- to make such caregivers part of the child's understanding of family. but half the sky is also building so-called "family villages," a more traditional setting. couples, most with grown children, are given housing and a small stipend to raise their young charges. it's an easy sell in a country where large families used to be the tradition. >> these are like my own children, like my grandchildren. my husband likes children even more than i do. that's why we decided to apply for this program. >> reporter: they'll live here until adulthood, unless placed in adoptive families. in today's wealthier, more urban china, bowen says fewer healthy

female babies are abandoned. anywhere from 1 million to 3 million children are in state custody. they are more likely to be from impoverished rural areas and more likely to have congenital or medical conditions their families cannot afford to treat. many are unlikely to be adopted. for them, half the sky runs a care center in beijing. supported in part by the government and corporate donations, it has medical supervision and nannies for children awaiting or recovering from surgery -- or, as in the sad case of 4-year-old pin pin, chemotherapy. >> cancer in both eyes? >> yes. and eight times chemotherapy. >> reporter: for the weeks or months pin pin will spend here, a teacher will help her adjust to the loss of her sight. >> reporter: you need to have a teacher, because you have a lot of things you need to learn. we don't just worry about your

eyes. we have to worry about your brain. >> reporter: maya bowen plans to become an elementary teacher. she and anya, a high school junior, have gone from being thankful to impressed. >> i did a paper at school, a research paper, and we could do it on anything, so i chose my mom, because i thought that would be an easy topic. so then, when i started researching and learning everything she did, i was like, wow, like this goes way farther than i thought. she has like a much bigger influence than i ever thought. >> reporter: jenny bowen recently published her own epic called "wish you happy forever," the happily-ever-after story of a 50-something screenwriter turned adoptive mother turned ceo of the $7 million half the sky foundation. for "religion & ethics newsweekly," this is fred de sam lazaro.

on our calendar this week, hindus around the world celebrate ganesha chaturthi. the ten-day hindu festival marks the birthday of lord ganesha, the popular elephant-headed god of prosperity and wisdom. clay figures of the deity are made and venerated. in some places, the figures are paraded through the streets and immersed in water. finally, the man credited with bringing yoga to the west, indian guru b.k.s. iyengar, died in india this week. he was 95. iyengar stressed the spiritual components of yoga and inspired a devoted following across the u.s. in 2004, "time" magazine included him on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. in 2006, kim lawton reported on iyengar and his impact. >> reporter: fifty years ago, yoga was little known in the

u.s. then americans started hearing about a guru in india who could fold his body in amazing ways. he said the benefits were spiritual as well as physical. >> yoga is a union of the body with the mind, mind with the soul. the still state of mind, one-that is what yoga gives us. >> what he did for yoga was revolutionize it by making the mysterious aspects of yoga understandable. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. you can follow us on twitter and facebook and watch us anytime on the pbs app for iphones and ipads. and visit our website, where there is always much more, and where you can listen to or watch every program. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, more scenes from the pope's trip to south korea.

>> charlie: welcome to the program. i'm charlie rose. the program is "charlie rose: the week." just ahead, ben brantley of the "new york times" on the great modern performances of hamlet. >> i have been in this job or at least been going to the theater long enough now so that i can see actors progress through the generations of, you know, it's romeo, hamlet, macbeth, now everyone's doing king lear! >> charlie: and broadway's audra mcdonald on being billie holliday. >> it's like having a new co-star every night. there's no fourth wall. i go in and amongst the audience, i talk to them, they're all different every single night, sometimes they're afraid of me, sometimes they lean in, sometimes they talk back to me. >> charlie: those stories and more on what happened and what might happen. funding for charlie rose was provide bid the following.