Interfaith Worship Service – “The Healing of Hawaii”

Please join us for a service to pray for the reform of Hawaii’s healthcare system.  The sermon will be delivered by Rev. Samuel Domingo of Keolumana United Methodist Church.

Wednesday, April 29th 2009

5:30-7:00 p.m.

Central Union Church

1660 South Beretania St.

For more information, contact us at face.office@facehawaii.org or (808)522-1304.

Rally in the Valley – Maui

Join us on land which was donated to the Maui County Council for development as affordable housing.  There will be prayers, speeches, and songs as we kick off our postcard campaign in support of affordable housing on Maui!  There will be bubbles and balloons for the kids!

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

9:30 – 10:30 a.m. event, registration starts at 9:00.

At the end of Kamehameha St. in Kahului, next to Pomaika’i Elementary school, parking along the street.

Church people worthy of regular coverage

By Mary Adamski 

Parking lots were crowded this week outside hotels where Passover Seder meals drew hundreds of members of the island Jewish community. The same is true today at Kapiolani Park, where the Thai community hosts a New Year festival rooted in Buddhist observance of Buddha’s birth. And thousands of members of the majority religion will flock to Easter services tomorrow.

We’re small-town people, and religion is held important by a lot of us. And in our well-mixed cultural climate, most of us are tolerant of or curious about or even open to sharing the other folks’ experience. We may have strayed from Grandma’s place or style of worship, but we go back when it’s time to mark our family and ethnic roots. Invited to an event, we’re not afraid to set foot in the other guy’s temple or mosque or chapel. And who offers better old-fashioned food treats than the church bazaar, festival or luau?

Some of the best opportunities to hear new, provocative ideas from famous, inspiring, sometimes bizarre speakers are provided by religious organizations.

Some of the best music in town reverberates in those peaked roof venues, from Kawaiaha’o Church’s weekly jazzfest during Lent to the Lutheran Church of Honolulu’s grand concerts of the work of great classical composers.

If you don’t think religion is a political force down here at the grass roots, you haven’t been watching the alternating faith-based crowds chiming in on the civil-union issue at the state Capitol — and the lawmakers’ response.

My favorite perspective on church people has been their impact on the social problems and challenges of our society. It has been a pleasure to tell about them, from the many, many tireless volunteers who take hot meals out to homeless people to the activists for affordable housing and fair wages and government accountability like Faith Action for Community Equity, a band of faith-filled folks who engineered keeping Kukui Gardens as low-income housing.

We read daily about the dysfunctional parts of our society, people killing and hurting and cheating and endangering others. But there are peacemakers at work in Hawaii every day, and now and then it’s been a privilege to chronicle some of their attempts to understand each other, to honor the host culture in Hawaii, to keep neighborhoods safe, to “speak truth to power,” which is a favorite modern mantra. So often those efforts begin in a church or temple.

Religion is news. See the sophisticated worldview of Newsweek magazine with its cover story this week. The “Decline and Fall of Christian America” says that the American Religious Identification Survey found people who identify themselves as Christians declined by 10 points since 1990, and those who don’t identify as religious at all now total 16 percent of the population, double what it was in 1990. It’s a periodic telephone survey of 50,000-plus people by a pair of Trinity College professors.

What’s most notable about it is that a top news magazine considers a story about religion to be front-page news. And of course, they timed its publication for a religious holiday.

This column hasn’t been a worldview, but we’ve tried to tell the story of your neighbors, how their beliefs drive them, what magnificent, predictable or curious things they do. Especially we find how much alike we all are, no matter what our spiritual niche might be.

Well, this “View from the Pew” won’t be part of the new look of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, which will be unveiled Monday. You’ll still find religion stories when they measure up as news. This e-mail address will remain open to ideas. So please keep telling us your stories.

Mary Adamski can be reached at madamski@starbulletin.com.

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Immigration raids protested

Church leaders say federal officers violating civil rights during searches

By Eloise Aguiar, Advertiser Staff Writer

Clergy from Maui and O’ahu yesterday presented a letter of protest to the office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over what they say are overly aggressive tactics used to find illegal residents.

The group said it supports American laws concerning illegal entry into the United States, but that it does not condone it at the expense of anyone’s civil rights.

Federal officers are increasingly pulling cars over for no apparent reason and walking into people’s homes without consent or search warrants, said Pastor Susana Arvizu of Maui. Once inside, they question everyone even though they say they are looking for one specific person, Arvizu said.

“They’re stopping people’s cars … just because they look Hispanic,” said Arvizu, adding that Hispanics seem to be targeted on Maui. “They don’t even ask for license or insurance card. They just ask: Do you have papers? Do you have a green card?”

An agency spokeswoman, Lori Haley, said its personnel are sworn to uphold the law.

“We do so professionally, humanely and with an acute awareness of the impact enforcement has on the individuals we encounter,” Haley said in an e-mail. “ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) expects its officers to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct and personal integrity.”

About a dozen clergy members, including five from Maui, met with Clarence Wagner, chief counsel for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hawai’i. They presented a letter and asked that it be delivered to President Obama, asking him to stop the raids, said Drew Astolfi, state director for Faith Action for Community Equity, a faith-based social activist group.

Wagner did not respond to an Advertiser request for comment.

“We’re hoping he can soften the way (raids) are conducted, but we would like to see the raids stopped altogether,” Astolfi said.

Pastor Tasha Kama said Wagner will meet with her group and that she will bring people who were wrongfully detained and traumatized by the raids.

“He (will) see that what we have said is not just hearsay or third party,” Kama said. “It’s people who have actually been involved.”

To report allegations of misconduct, write to: Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C., 20528; Attention: Office of Inspector General — Hotline.

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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Group decries treatment of migrants

A group of religious leaders from Maui and Oahu held a demonstration in Honolulu to deliver a letter asking President Barack Obama for immigration reform.

Standing near the building that houses U.S. immigration officials on Ala Moana Boulevard yesterday, some in the group of 16 people complained of alleged racial profiling by Maui police and a lack of compassion in federal enforcement raids that have split families.

The letter bore the names of more than 50 religious leaders.

“The raids on Maui are done inhumanely,” said the Rev. Tasha Kama, chairwoman of the immigration committee of Faith Action for Community Equity. “Separating mother and child, husband and wife — these things are morally wrong and should not happen in the aloha state.”

Kama charged that immigration enforcement officials have also harassed a Hispanic person who had a proper visa by repeatedly visiting his home while looking for an undocumented worker.

Group member Susana Arvizu charged that Maui police have been stopping immigrants to find out whether they have proper immigrant papers, and are targeting Hispanics. “They don’t ask for licenses and registration,” she said. “They ask for papers.”

The Rev. Eddie Kelemeni, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church, said Tongans who are undocumented workers have turned themselves in to try to resolve their status. He said the Tongans are usually sent back to Tonga but that he would like them to be able to obtain work visas.

Maui Police Chief Tom Phillips said Maui police officers have been instructed they do not have the authority to enforce immigration laws.

Federal immigration enforcement officials were unavailable for comment.

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