Faith among the ruins

The Rev. Rob Dewey saw them on the streets of New York after Sept. 11, 2001, and he is seeing them again amid the wreckage of the Gulf Coast — everywhere, signs of faith.

Religious groups posting signs offering spiritual support. A man walking through the area with a piece of paper that says "clergy" stapled to his shirt. Churches turned into shelters.

Religion can be found in every dimension of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina: in descriptions of an "apocalyptic" storm of "biblical proportions"; in the tens of thousands of volunteers from religious groups helping the homeless; in the local congregations wiped out and the countless others nationwide opening their doors to evacuees; and in prayer — from survivors and from those who witnessed their suffering.

Dewey is a strong believer in the solace of prayer: He has prayed with relatives of murder victims during 15 years as a law enforcement chaplain in his Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, and with families identifying their dead as chaplain for the U.S. Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team.

But he understands that not all survivors appreciate a heavy emphasis on religion, and he is careful to be sensitive to those who reject prayer as a means of coping.

"Down here, I've seen a lot of religious groups come and offer ministry," said Dewey, in a phone interview from the Gulfport, Miss., area, where he is with the morgue team. "But as I tell my chaplains back in Charleston, offering prayer too quickly is going to hurt the person (who doesn't want it) and hurt the family, and we want to be very, very sensitive to where those spiritual needs are."

Frank Phinney, a volunteer with PRC Compassion, a pastors' group aiding hurricane victims, went to the New Orleans airport at the height of the evacuation to pray with people fleeing.

But when he arrived and saw the chaos, he and the others with him switched gears. Over two days, they took out garbage, changed diapers of elderly patients and sat with the dying in a black tent set aside for the worst-off evacuees.

It's not traditional prayer, perhaps, but Phinney saw this work as making a connection with God. He called it, "washing people's feet, in a figurative sense."

"They were being herded like cattle through the airport," said Phinney, who is studying counseling at Southeastern Louisiana University and was eventually able to pray with some of the homeless. "The humanity had been lost because of the overwhelming amount of people. Just to be there and express some encouragement and warmth was important."