 This program is brought to you by Emory University. Good evening. My name is Frank Alexander and I'm delighted to welcome you all to Emory Law School this evening. Thank you very much for coming out and being with us. Tonight's program is on where do the children live. This is the fourth in a series of presentations that are part of our family forum series of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion. The first in the series was in the early fall focusing on who cares for the children with presentations by Don Browning and Martha Feynman. We followed that with a presentation on what happens to children in peril by President Jimmy Carter in conversation with Professor Martin Marty. The third in the series was children will we ever get it right with conversation by Dr. Bill Fagey and Professor Martin Marty. Tonight's presentation is on where will the children live with conversation by Dr. Martin Marty and Mr. Millard Fuller. Tonight's presentation is also part of the Decalogue lecture series of the Law and Religion program. The Decalogue lecture series was established a few years ago by Professor Marion Coons in honor of her late husband, Professor Paul G. Coons. Prior Decalogue lectures have included John Noonan, Mark Jordan, and Robert Bella. For over a decade prior to his early death, Professor Coons was working on a magnum opus on the Ten Commandments. Shortly before his death, he had completed a rough draft of this work focusing on the Ten Commandments, not only in Judaism and in Christianity, but across cultures and across societies. We are delighted that after three years of editorial work with the manuscript and guidance by several individuals, particularly Thomas DeEvlin and Colonel McNair, that this book has now been published and just is being released this week. So I commend it to you, the Ten Commandments in History, Mosaic Paradigms for a Well Ordered Society. It is outside in the Hunter Atrium and Order Forms are there. We're particularly dedicated to Professor Marion Coons for making this possible and for the superb introduction she has written to this volume. Tonight we have with us in conversation Professor Martin Marty and Mr. Millard Fuller. Brief biographical sketches of each are found in the materials you have before you, so I will add just a few words. As a Robert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Religion here at Emory, and also the Fairfax Cone Professor, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Chicago, Professor Martin Marty is a person without peers. The author of over 70 books, the recipient of over 70 honorary degrees, Professor Marty is described aptly as the foremost commentator on religion in the United States today. I classify myself now as one of the many, perhaps 10,000 or more students of Dr. Marty's, having been able to sit and participate in a seminar of his last fall. One of certainly the high points of my education in working with him. Millard Fuller comes from a very different place. Since I'm a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I can share with you that Millard Fuller is born and raised in a little town called Lynette, Alabama. Now those of you that are not from this part of the country may not be aware of where Lynette is. It's very important for you to understand that it is just across the border, as we refer to it, the Georgia border down near West Point. As you're heading down 85 towards Montgomery as you cross the state line, Lynette's right there on your right. Growing up in Tuscaloosa, we consider that what Millard Fuller did was sort of a mixed kind of education. He went to that school called Auburn University, but then he had the good sense to come to Tuscaloosa to the University of Alabama School of Law where he received his law degree. Following his graduation from law school, Millard entered into the practice of law with one of his law school classmates and a small firm known as Fuller and Dee's in Montgomery. Finding the practice of law not sufficiently challenging, Millard and his law partner decided to create a business where they started doing direct mail publishing of books, direct mail sales of books. This business was quite successful, ultimately sold to Times Mirror, freeing up Millard and his law partner to do some other things with their lives. His former law partner, Morris Dees, went on to found the Southern Poverty Law Center. During that period of time, Morris and Linda decided to pay a visit to Conania Farms in America's Georgia. Conania Farms was an intentional Christian community created by Clarence Jordan. At the time that they were able to spend with Clarence Jordan throughout really the mid to late 60s, Clarence was able to influence them in ways that perhaps no one else ever had or ever will. Millard began building his first house on behalf of the Conania Farms communities in 1969, the year that Clarence Jordan died. Many of you hopefully are aware of Clarence Jordan and if not, I encourage you to become aware of him. He's perhaps most widely known for his cotton patch version of the Gospels, the Cotton Patch Gospels. Those of you who are considering going to see the forthcoming movie Passion, I encourage you to see it perhaps to read at the same time Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch version of the Gospels. You will see a very different picture and one that's equally powerful, I suggest to you. Not necessarily contradictory, but one that paints the Gospels quite differently. After creating partnership housing through Conania Farms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Millard and Linda decided to head to Kenya and that's where I just missed crossing paths with Millard once again, not just in Alabama, but in 1973. I had read Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospels. I was moved, I was inflamed in many ways with the passion that Clarence Jordan could express for those and I had left college early and was headed to America in 1973. To visit with at that point had Millard Fuller, Clarence had died, and on the way to America I found that Millard and Linda had left for Kenya. So I stopped here in Atlanta to visit with another friend, Jim Laney, who sat me down and shared with me that he indeed also had a plan for my life. I never made it to America so I'm still here at Emory and I'm delighted to be able to still be here. I'm delighted also to be able now finally after decades for me to meet Millard Fuller. When Millard and Linda returned from Kenya in 1976, they founded what we now know as Habitat for Humanity, Habitat for Humanity and then later on Habitat International. As the brief information you have indicates, Habitat now has been responsible for providing housing to over three quarters of a million people. They have built over 125,000 homes. Within the next 18 months, they anticipate having built homes that will house over a million people throughout the world. Home ownership in America is at the highest rate it's ever been and I suspect that is due in no small part to Habitat for Humanity. This work of Millard Fuller's and Habitat for Humanity, I'm sure Millard would admit, is not his work alone. It is certainly the work of God through Millard but it's equally important in many ways it is the work of Linda. Now where is Linda? There, there you come in. Linda has been Millard Fuller's partner for 35 years. She is the one who has edited the book. She is the one who has refined the vision for Habitat for Humanity and I'm particularly delighted Linda that you're willing to be with us tonight and I would like for all of you to join with me in thanking and congratulating Linda and celebrating today her birthday. The format for tonight is not a lecture. The format we follow in this forum series is by way of conversation. It is a conversation about how we are going to house our children and our families in America and throughout the world. How are we the most affluent nation in the world going to meet the simple needs of providing housing for our children? Over 50 years ago the United States Congress declared the goal of providing safe, decent and affordable housing for every American. In the years since then we have put somebody on the moon. We have eliminated smallpox. We have eliminated polio. We have created nuclear power. We have created the silicon chip. But we also have this year somewhere between 900,000 and 1.4 million children who will be homeless in the United States this year. Say a million, a million homeless children 50 years after Congress declared the goal. It's a donning task, so I'm delighted that we have Dr. Martin Marty and Mr. Millard Fuller here to help us think through these issues and these questions. Please join me in welcoming Professor Marty and Mr. Fuller. In a preface to one of your books recently I saw that you talked about habitat for humanity and you wanted them to be filled with habitats. I had not heard that phrase before, but we're talking tats tonight. Children, children, children. And in the four family forums, our public ventures in this project on the child, we've talked about lax, the lack of food, children apparel, the lack of justice, the lack of health, and tonight the lack of a roof, a roof over their head. And I sort of envy you when you go to bed at night and can think through soon a million people under a roof because of this. And in almost every publication I've followed it for years, I've had a son who's worked for Habitat and volunteered, and children, children, children are always there, habitats. So we want to focus on that. Somebody at my visit there today said, it's interesting to work for a company, he was from the industrial world and corporate world, a company that doesn't have a product, it has ideas. But I think of you even more as having stories. I think a good way for us to get launched here, I'm going to trust you to come up with a good one, because you took us on a little tour this morning. And there are a lot of pictures of you with dignitaries, presidents, ambassadors, but you mean you fixed on a little boy in Romania? That's right. Why? That is a great story. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest stories in the Habitat Ministry. Linda and I were privileged to be in Romania on Saturday, June 21st of this past year. And we were there for a very special reason. We were in Romania to dedicate the hundredth house built in that country. Habitat is now building in about 3,700 cities in 92 countries. But it was not only the hundredth house in Romania, it was the hundred and fifty thousandth house that we have built worldwide. And we arrived at the site. And it was a very dramatic site because the old house that the family had been living in was visibly a poor house. And when we went inside, we could see even how much worse it was than it appeared from the outside because the house had been leaking obviously for years and was filled with black mold. And we were told that this family, which consisted of a father and mother and five children, we were told that the children were perpetually sick because of this mold. And Habitat Humanity had built a new house literally about this far from the old house. And it was in contrast to the old black house falling apart with the windows broken and the tiles broken and leaking and full of mold. The new house was white and bright and light and beautiful and completely appropriate for a family to live in. Well, the service of dedication was out in the yard and we gathered there on a platform. It was a very large crowd. And I looked over at the family when it came time for me to speak and there was the mother and father and the five little children. And the baby of the family was this cute little boy who I had learned was named David, David Bako, four years old. I had just met David a few moments earlier and that was a Hungarian family living in Romania and I don't speak any Hungarian and this little kid didn't speak any English but I just beckoned to him and he came to me and I took him in my arms. It was one of those sort of magical moments and he just accepted me and I held him in my arms and for my whole 20 minutes of my speech he helped me make it. When I would say something funny he would laugh. When I would say something serious he would look serious. And what I said that day was that I had just met this little boy, I had just met the family and that I might never see them again in my life but I knew something that we were giving that child a better chance when he moved out of that old moldy house into his new house he wouldn't get sick anymore because he was living in a healthy house and I said in a couple of years when he starts to school and his teacher gives him some lessons he'll have a good place to go and study his lessons and whatever he becomes in life and I don't know what that will be we are giving him a better chance a chance to be all that God created him to be in life but I said I do happen to know what happened to another child the child that moved into one of the children who moved into the very first house that we built that Frank mentioned down at Cornelia Farm interestingly enough the first house we ever built was for a mother and father and five children exactly the same composition of that family in Romania and in those early days when we were just getting started it was very much a mom and pop operation so I went to Auburn as you heard and I learned how to survey so I surveyed off the streets and being raised up in Lynette, Alabama my dad was a small town businessman he had some rental houses I was always out there repairing rental houses putting on roofing, putting in new doors and windows and even in college I worked one summer in construction so I helped build that first house when it was finished I'm an old furniture mover from Chicago I used to work for a goldblast department store and moved furniture so I helped to move the furniture in you might have moved stuff into my house and then I may have if you ordered a sofa and lived on the third floor I did but being a lawyer I closed the sale for that first house and when we came to the time of signing the mortgage that father who was a very, very intelligent man but he had never had an education and he couldn't read and write so he had to sign the mortgage with an ex and in that family as I said were five children and one of the children was a little girl whose nickname was Cookie and Lynette and I had the privilege of watching little Cookie grow up in that house over the years and today that child whose father couldn't sign the mortgage is writing mortgages because she's a lawyer and she has her own law firm in Washington D.C. and she writes mortgages and takes care of other legal matters so I said I know what happened to that first child we gave her a chance and she grabbed it and ran with it and the other children in that family have all done well but to me the symmetry of that story is so beautiful going back to the first fast-forwarding to the hundred and fifty thousand knowing what happened to one of the children in the first family is not knowing what will happen to this little boy in Romania but knowing that we gave him a chance and I think that's what we ought to do for all children, give them a chance I was so moved by that picture I'm going to stick back with David Bako for a minute yet I love children and I have grandchildren great grandchildren and I can't ever remember any time that I've held one that they haven't wiggled within twenty seconds even twenty minutes so let's go back to this you have a trustworthy looking face and all that but somehow he was prepped for this he must have seen his family in sweat equity or how do you suppose he got ready to know that that ceremony was opening his future I don't know it was an amazing thing that happened to be a law firm there who had been working all week from London and they told me afterward they said we are dumbfounded that David let you hold him because we've been trying to hold him all week and he won't let any of us hold him so I thought maybe the moral of that is American lawyers are better accepted by British lawyers you've got to go a fur piece away to get the acceptance but the family had been doing sweat equity not the little four-year-old but that's the whole modus operandi of Habitat for Humanity is the family's help build the houses and even smaller children to the extent they're able to participate we strongly encourage that tell me about that a little bit because child labor laws so you can't have in the U.S. you can't have the child working can she pick up the hammer with daddy and pitch in are they involved in the assertive agent form or are they the passive characters? First of all we try to deal with the family as a unit and encourage the whole family to participate obviously you don't give a four-year-old a power or so you don't even give a ten-year-old a power or so but within the framework of what is safe to plant shrubbery to do painting to do other tasks which are suitable for any particular age group but we do have the sweat equity component which is typically several hundred hours so that the family when they move in they don't only know that they are a homeowner because they got a piece of paper that says you're a homeowner you have a connection with that house we also want them to gain practical skills of how to repair a broken window if they have one or to put on a shingle that's blown off in a wind storm so there are practical reasons why we do the sweat equity but one of the underlying fundamental reasons is as I said to give them a connection with that house so they bond with their own house and know that it's their house they help build it and we want the children to participate I'm going to back you up with childhood a little bit then I have a friend a composer in Boston who wrote an oratorio for Children's Choir on the story of Abraham and Isaac the binding of Isaac from the child's viewpoint and it looks so different Isaac thinks it's a game here I am daddy I'm behind this tree here you dropped this knife and it's chilling because you see that and also some of the best stories positive story that's a good story of a bad scene to get the child's angle picture yourself because you know so many of these children you're a child and you're seeing your parents and their neighbors and their friends going about it and you've been in a rat hole and nothing else what's going on in your mind well again I might tell you a wonderful story there was a little boy living out in Olympia living out in Olympia, Washington his name was Charlie and he was homeless his father lost his job and they lived in a car and little Charlie was about 10 years old he hated that fortunately they were able to get out of the car and moved into a very derelict apartment which was still very inadequate and they learned about Habitat for Humanity there in Olympia and they applied for a house and little Charlie just at age 10 was very very aware of what was going on well one night the family selection committee visited their home Jerry and Cindy Schultz who are good friends of Lynn and me they were on that committee and they told us this story and the dramatic story of going in passing the pleasantries of the day and then saying the magic words your family has been chosen to get a new Habitat house little Charlie who was all eyes and all ears he started jumping up and down on the floor like a rubber ball saying we won we won we won and he participated in building the house and got complete with a tree house in the backyard and the beautiful thing about that story is that the new house was in a different school district and little Charlie when they moved went to a different school and they somehow didn't transfer his records and so they didn't know that he was a slow learner six months went by and the teachers of Olympia Washington had a teachers conference and somehow the two teachers got together Charlie's old teacher and Charlie's new teacher and the new teacher said how is Charlie doing he said oh he's a solid B student what do you mean he's a solid B student in the regular course she said that couldn't be possible he's a slow learner he's not a slow learner in my class and the only thing that they could conclude was that the two things had changed in that little boy's life he had a good place to live and he had received a huge dose of encouragement and affirmation and it had a profound impact on how he performed in school I've read some of your things in the first to live in the house they are so the dignity theme is big for them absolutely I hear that as much as anything we know and I personally know of children who come home from school and will not get off the school bus where they live because they don't want their fellow students to know that they live in this terrible house so they'll ride an extra block or two and get off so that their little buddies don't know where they live I remember going to a house there in America Georgia this homeowner she was a single mother with four children named Annie and I went in to see her soon after they moved in and I just said to her Annie what is it about this house that means the most to you and just like that she said my boys are no longer ashamed for their friends to know where we live when you hear stories like that I said I envy you that you can sleep at peace knowing all these people in houses you built what are your biggest frustrations what are the biggest problems what dreams go unfulfilled when you came down today to visit with us I was sorry that I couldn't spend more time with you because I was filming and what every year I put out what is called an annual message to the affiliates I get in front of a camera and send out a message and I'm filming my message just going out to all of the affiliates in the 3700 cities where we work in 92 countries and I filmed it at what we call Habitat for Humanity University which is a new creation that we have created down there for the growing movement of Habitat for Humanity and in a larger context to try to train leadership to end poverty housing and homelessness in the world and so the question is asked in that video which will be released in a few weeks what is Habitat for Humanity's greatest need and the answer is leadership leadership we have some great leaders in Habitat Larry Dale Martin is here tonight very talented director of Habitat for Humanity in Atlanta but the need is so great and the laborers are so few we have many more people out chasing the next dollar and trying to figure out how to build a bigger mansion for themselves then we do have people out trying to figure out how to build another modest house for another Charlie and Cookie in the world who so urgently need it so leadership is absolutely the greatest need that we have in this work and it's my greatest frustration when I see so many talented people who are not using their God-given talents to help others as much as they are to help themselves are the stories of children good recruiting agents this seems to me that I'm a little old for this but I have a son involved with it and he always would come home with stories of the children involvement do they also help recruit leaders kids say grandpa or grandma what are you doing if people will allow themselves to be influenced by the children we build barriers to keep ourselves away from unpleasant things that we maybe don't feel like we want to get involved in quite yet we build neighborhoods and put walls around it so we can keep people out and we make sure we don't go to certain places because we might see a suffering child and that might hurt our consciences so you know just make sure you don't go experience that but I think if if a person will allow himself or herself to get into proximity with these children their hearts will be so touched as you know former president Carter and miss Carter Rosalind Carter are our two best known volunteers in Habitat for Humanity they just completed their 20th annual build with us in Aniston, Alabama and LaGrange and Valdosta, Georgia but I've heard president Carter say on numerous occasions that he has learned more about the problems of the poor working with Habitat for Humanity over the last 20 years and he ever did as governor or president because he has come face to face and he has gotten to know personally the mothers and the fathers and the children who live in those houses and it has touched his heart as it will touch the heart of anyone who will get close and come to understand what the real problems are well I got a glimpse of how subversive you are today because we toward the global village you might describe that a bit and there are places where you have a replica of a little school from Africa and so on with little benches but we have a lot of kids come here and they can picnic here and so on and I think it's subversive to get them there they must go home and spread the word, right? What you're talking about of course is our global village and discovery center which we've built there in America so on six and a half acres and you go across as you saw that today our recognition plaza and then into the visitor center and then you go through a slum this is a typical generic slum that you might see in Bombay India or Manila the Philippines and you see the kind of actual living conditions of poor people around the world and then you walk out of that into Central America and into Africa and into Asia and see the kinds of houses that we're building but one of the, and we had the official dedication for this new place in June but we are thrilled that we are having literally hundreds of school children go through there and they are being impacted by it, I remember we had a little boy go through with his parents recently and he was looking in one of these miserable little hovels and he said mama do babies live here? and she said yes babies live in those kinds of conditions and die and die and that, you could see that little child was so impacted by that and he was thinking babies shouldn't live in these kinds of conditions children shouldn't have to live like this Charlie jumped up and down when he heard we won what about the kid next door that didn't win how does habitat extend itself to those who can't make that minimum investment and so on is your example in other words you're not the only organization in the world, you're in teamwork with good governments, where governments are good and NGOs and so on you can't touch the poorest of the poor in a way well habitat for humanity has a niche we build houses with and for families who are too poor to go to the bank but we don't build houses for people who don't have any resources you know there's some people right here in Atlanta they are homeless people if you gave them a house as a gift they couldn't handle it, they couldn't handle that responsibility but what we advocate in habitat for humanity is that every human being I don't care who they are should have a decent place in which to live that means some of them will be homeowners others of them should have a decent place to live with some other arrangement habitat for humanity has never said we are the be all and do all and we will take care of everything we work harmoniously with governments we work harmoniously with other agencies other homeless agencies other agencies that are involved with housing but that's why for example in our home county of Sumter County, Georgia we created what we call the Sumter County initiative back in 1992 and we set a goal to end all standard inadequate housing by the year 2000 and we accomplished that but habitat for humanity was in the equation the housing authority was in the Sumter County initiative some for profit builders were in there all the churches in our city and county were in there and it was a collaborative effort and by working together I was able to stand in front of the Thomas House on September 15th of the year 2000 and lead 100 people singing the old Southern Gospel song Victory in Jesus because that house symbolized our victory over substandard housing and that successful effort and I might say quickly as I'm going along that doesn't mean we've quit building houses in Sumter County you can't eliminate poverty housing and quit building any more than you need a big meal and quit eating so we keep building back into poverty housing but that successful effort has given birth to what we call the 21st Century Challenge where we challenge cities and we challenge Atlanta we challenge Lairdell Martin and the Atlanta Habitat Organization to do a study find out all of the children in Atlanta who don't have a decent place to live and figure out a comprehensive plan of how you can bring all of the agencies together and buy a certain date in poverty housing now we've done that in Aniston, Alabama, LaGrange, Georgia and Val Duster, Georgia and in June of this year with President Carter and with 4,000 volunteers in five days we built 92 houses in those three cities and in all three of those cities they've done a comprehensive plan and they have a definite date by when they plan to have eliminated poverty housing you don't leave any child out you don't say to some families you're the lucky ones you won but the loser is over next door we want every child to be a winner we don't think any society is so well-off that it can afford to squander a part of the next generation we think every child should have as a minimum a good, simple, decent place in which to live what percent of everything that's done in this nation has children under roof some of your housing is for almost near retirees most of the houses that we build I'm sure that's true in Atlanta are for families we don't build 100% for families we will build for couples without children or in some cases single people but overwhelmingly habitat to humanity is building for families and that means children in almost every picture I see that's right what have you, it's a double question what have you learned about children through humanity, habitat to humanity what have you learned about habitat to humanity through children with the special eyes they bring special voice the volunteers give you stories the staff give you stories how do children show up different because you see this well it's amazing there are so many fights and the sophistication of so many children children are constantly surprising us like little Charlie he was totally aware of what was going on totally engaged and we know for example when children and especially the older children when they get in their teen years and participate in the building process they build they gain tremendous self confidence I know of one child that built a habitat house he was a failing student in school and in the process of building his house he learned that he had this incredible aptitude for building and so he began to pursue that as a career and his performance in school just totally blossomed because that was what turned him on that was what excited him we see time and again that children realize their aptitudes and that is learned and discovered and is helpful to the children and it's a two way street the children learn from the adults and the adults learn from the children Labor Day weekend Linda and you and Harriet and I had some meal together and I remember the most exciting thing in your mind is something that raises questions for me that I think you can pick up interestingly children love ritual and they're gathering and singing these songs about Jesus and so on and they sing it best but you were so excited about that you're moving into the Islamic world Jordan and Lebanon and you're an explicitly Christian organization and we're in a time of great tension with some Islamic forces how does that work out are you accepted there or is there suspicion in some cases originally there is suspicion Linda was in Egypt which is a heavily Muslim country we've built more than 4,000 houses in Egypt almost all of them for Muslim families we've built some for Christian families but more for Muslim families and we do have a presence in Jordan Linda was there in Jordan working helping build more than 100 houses in Lebanon we have an extensive presence in Tajikistan in Indonesia we're in many Muslim countries and have built literally several thousand houses for Muslim families we do operate as a Christian organization but we don't put any pressure on anybody and from a strong theological reason we believe that God's love extends to everybody God's love doesn't just extend to Baptist God's love extends to Methodist God's love extends to Catholics God's love extends to Muslims God's love extends to Buddhists so we don't look to the religious profession of people determining who gets a house and who doesn't get a house if you're poor and you're in need you qualify to be considered for a habitat house whether you're here in Atlanta or whether you're in Jordan so we go in and what we built in Jordan is very near the old Biblical city of Gadara which is in the northwest part of Jordan near that big cliff where the pigs jumped off into the sea Jesus sent them into the sea and gained great disfavor with the hog syndicate but when we moved in that a build every single family in that community of Al-Hemmah was Muslim except the grocer and there was a certain amount of why are you people here but now we just have wonderful, beautiful relations you go into a community and start building houses for people and they catch on pretty quick you must care for them and that's the message we try to deliver so I'm a chief in one of the stands Kurdistan or Tezikistan or let's say I'm an oil rich sheikh and there's a lot of poverty out there a lot of poor children I haven't been noticing it and I'm giving you five minutes please what's cost benefit analysis will we have a better country I ask this question and I do a lot of public speaking and I don't care whether I am in this country whether I am in a republican group a democrat group, a christian group a non-christian group you ask this simple question would your city would your area if all families had a decent place to live and everybody will say yes I don't care who you are whether you're a christian or not any community would obviously be better off if all families who live there had as a minimum a simple good decent place to live and that's what we advocate so we say that's our agenda that's why we want to come here that's why we want to work with you for every family who lives here to have as a minimum a good simple decent place to live suppose we could boost 500 new leaders of the kind you're looking for turn them loose what's the resistance not in my backyard you have some of that resistance so there's the fear of the unknown we've had it here in the Atlanta area where people say oh habitat is a great program but we're housing somewhere else because we know these poor people are going to throw trash in the streets they're probably going to rob us and they're going to make our property values go down so we wouldn't want that we're good Christians but we certainly don't want our property values to go down so do your good work in another neighborhood go over there where the Lutherans live don't work over here with a good Methodist and so we run into that fortunately that is not a typical situation overwhelmingly we are able to go into communities and work harmoniously but again referring to Atlanta I know there's one neighborhood here in Atlanta where there was some resistance because the people who owned the property there had these dreams of it becoming an upscale neighborhood and so it was not in their perceived best interest to have affordable housing built there because they wanted the slums to be torn down and then really expensive houses going in they can sell their property for a big profit I'm not an oil rich shake I grew up in a house in Sioux City, Iowa that was moved down the street and redone by Habitat for Humanity and it was upgraded so it improved the neighborhood and I think maybe my moving out helped too but I was a little boy I couldn't do that much damage it was interesting to me that you described Habitat for Humanity as having a niche next year 200,000th home 200,000th and a million people that's a niche what else is out there well we are constantly expanding the borders of what we do and we are expanding the borders in numerous ways since we advocate for all families all people whoever they are to have as a minimum a good, simple, decent place to live we realize that we can't afford to leave anybody out in terms of those who are helping so we have created and Linda was very much a part of this we've created a women bill department Dorothy Beasley said tonight who's a dear friend women lawyers here in Atlanta and in other cities have helped build Habitat for Humanity houses something over 500 of these houses have been built just in the United States and we've expanded out but traditionally construction has been considered a man's activity but not in Habitat for Humanity it's in everybody's activity women are equally at the table with men in terms of building these houses we've created a prison program where we don't leave prisoners out unfortunately in Georgia the laws are such that it's almost impossible to get prisoners to be able to build Habitat houses but in states like Wisconsin, Michigan Illinois and Texas and a growing number of other states prisoners who are not eligible for release are making component parts of Habitat for Humanity houses and those who are eligible for release are going out on the site and building them we have a wonderful program now called Ability Houses where we don't leave people out who are disabled we built our first one in Birmingham every single person on the site was disabled that whole house was built by people with disabilities we call those Ability Houses we do it in partnership with Ability Magazine which is the official publication of people with disabilities and so we don't want people with disabilities left out and we've just started we have an incredible program called Campus Chapters and Youth Programs where we create Campus Chapters of students at colleges and universities and at many colleges and universities today Habitat for Humanity Campus Chapter is the largest student organization on campus and starting next week 11,000 students have signed up this year to use their spring break to build Habitat houses in 135 cities and they've raised over a million dollars to take with them building materials and they fan out across the country and they're doing it in the Philippines they're doing it going out from Japan they're going out from Korea and the 11,000 figure is just US students and now we've gone down even lower age we've started a program called Youth United where children as young as 5 to 25 are organizing programs to raise money and participate in the building process as much as possible and we have created a program called First Shelter the methodology of Habitat for Humanity is helping people help themselves sweat equity making a monthly payment back every month for the house that no profit and no interest but now we've created First Shelter which we call in Habitat terminology the John the Baptist component of Habitat the First Shelter program it's not Habitat for Humanity but it points to Habitat like John the Baptist was not Jesus he pointed to Jesus so we go into places like Afghanistan and we have built about 500 houses in Afghanistan but for people who are too poor to even make a tiny payment so we just set up little stores and provide materials and help them build and in some cases repair their houses with no payback provision but it's leading to a full scale Habitat program where eventually they will start making their payments back and it will become a full scale Habitat program but we transition into it that way and Ed Brown is here tonight his wife Joyce used to work in Angola and we're going to start a First Shelter program in Angola where there's been so much devastation by warfare over the years so in these ways we're expanding our horizons I'm going to go back to one of the groups you just talked about I don't want to install any undergrads but it wasn't very long ago they were children what about Habitat for Humanity makes it so attractive to people who are ex-children in our seminars the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion I get to toss in questions I'm a co-director of this and naturally we study abused children and victimized children and imprisoned and all that another question we should address is where do all the good kids come from I was chair of the Board of the College of Minnesota St. Olaf 2700 students and there were 315 Habitat for Humanity I was mentioning to some folks I was with today when I was in college not only did we not volunteer we didn't even know what it meant and the seniors all say the kids are going to seed and yet there aren't any good kids out there what about Habitat for Humanity there are a lot of young people who are not as collegiate who may not be highly involved with politics or other things as it means to change the world what is it I believe there are several components as I think everybody here tonight knows a lot of young people are not flocking to traditional church services but they are coming from traditional Christian homes in many cases but they don't like going to the traditional services and I think Habitat for Humanity gives a conscientious faith concern, faith oriented child an opportunity to give expression to what he or she feels religiously in a non-traditional way and they go out to these sites and I might say while Habitat for Humanity is not a quote evangelistic organization we are having numbers of young people become converted and request baptism because of the experiences that they are having on Habitat construction sites it's a very profound religious experience for a lot of people not only young people but for some older people as well but it's also very it's very quantifiable you go out and at the end of the day you see what you have done not only see the house but you meet the family and they come up and they hug you and they cry with you and you get to meet their children and it's a very very deep spiritual experience to go out and extend a helping hand not to reach down to help someone but to reach over as a partner we are here to work with you not for you and that's a powerful thing for the giver and the receiver sometimes again I'm going to get back to these college kids I've watched children a lot and sometimes they'll leap into the arms of someone who's a few years older but they interact wonderfully with 18 to 22 year olds that's right is that part of the part of the mix? absolutely absolutely we'll send these 11,000 college students out to beginning next week and over the next six weeks during spring break and they will make thousands and thousands of friendships with the little kids and they'll write letters to them when they get back to the college and they'll share Christmas presents with them and in some cases they will go visit one another we might be on to one of the main things that I've been after all evening what do we learn about children from this what do children learn from this they have models in these college kids who are on the way to making something that's right can there be foreign after stories of children? there are many I told the one about Kuki of course but our daughter Faith was down in Florida just last week interviewing a young man named Noelle Garcia Noelle Garcia was raised up in the second habitat home that we built in Florida was for the Garcia family when he graduated from high school he was valedictorian of his class went on to college had a very fine career in college and is now a youth minister in an Hispanic church in Orlando, Florida he says he has his dream job but he was raised in a habitat house and you know he's not a kid that's probably going to get his picture in the paper he's not a spectacular success but just a good solid citizen who was given as a three-year-old raised in a good environment by a good family in a good neighborhood the whole neighborhood was all habitat homeowners and today he is a leader of young people a leader of youth in his church in Orlando, Florida when President Carter was here in this series it was noon hour so there were more students around than there are late in day there were a lot of law students divinity students and so on and he challenged the law students to only read books go downtown and get involved in some of these projects he said that right after he'd handed me his own 19th book so books he might catch up with you one day he's a very very littered person he's but there was a challenge you know why don't you do this why don't you do that if you have law and divinity people in front of you you slip past a couple of things and I'm a little nervous about this ending because some people say it was soft edge I didn't get into governments I've said collegians aren't as much involved with politics as they are with hands on things like this is government in this country and elsewhere local government state government everyone you have to work with and are national policies are they helpful or irrelevant or both sometimes helpful sometimes irrelevant sometimes obstructionist but Habitat Humanity we are often asked is Habitat Humanity an advocacy organization we do advocate what we advocate for is every child to have a decent place to live what we advocate for is every family to be able to afford as a minimum a good simple decent place in which to live now how do you get the best government policies to make that happen well one of the ways that we advocate is by putting public officials face to face with these families many of them don't ever have that experience that's the idea behind the Global Village that you visited today is most people won't ever go walking around on a slum in Manila or in Bombay or Calcutta, India so we bring the slum to them so we're trying to do that to public officials we have a program going on right now called Congress Building America we were able to get a resolution through the United States Congress which calls for every United States representative and every senator to participate in building a Habitat Humanity House and they voted that resolution 100% and we've got an office in Washington DC and we bug the heck out of them until they actually do it and they go out and they get to personally meet a low income family they get to go and I'll tell you an interesting story how this came up the forerunner project was the houses that Congress built where we got every member of the House representatives to build and we got 377 out of 435 to build a Habitat House and then we wanted to get a program called the Houses that the Senate built and you and I are in common attending Renaissance Weekend and in the year 2000 we had Renaissance Weekend at Hilton Head, South Carolina and we were able to get the Renaissance Institute to sponsor the building of a Habitat House to be dedicated at sunrise on the first day of the year 2000 and there was a senator there attending Renaissance Weekend named Kent Conrad the Democrat Senator from North Dakota and Linda and I were having brunch with him on New Year's morning about 10 o'clock and I asked him if he had participated in this Habitat House he said no I was busy with seminars and so forth and I didn't get to participate I said well the house is finished now and the family is moving in this morning would you like to see it so they said yes I said it's only 10 minutes away from this very swank hotel so I drove him out there went into the new house here was the family moving in joyous kind of situation everybody was happy to find he was getting moved in walking around the senator was walking around saying oh this is a nice house oh this is beautiful I said would you like to see where they moved from I said it's very near he said oh could we do that I turned to the home one I said could he see and that was a single mother with three daughters, three older daughters all four of them worked and four paychecks still couldn't afford to get a house through conventional means so we built a Habitat House they could afford it but we walked over in the house was as bad as any property you would expect to see in a slum of Haiti and they walked through the house and when they came out the senator was ashen colored I'm not kidding and he was muttering under his breath I had no idea and his wife Lucy was weeping I knew I had him at a weak moment and so I said senator do you think other senators should have this experience he said absolutely I had no idea I said would you introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to have every senator build a Habitat House he said I'll do it and then I went and got me some Republicans and I made it I made it bipartisan and it passed the Senate unanimously and that has now led to Congress building America where we're going to do it together and build Habitat Houses all over the country and the public officials face to face like senator Kent Conrad was put face to face is an experience that helps them creatively think about what policies we should have to ensure that all families do have as a minimum a simple decent place to live Is the enemy apathy indifferent or do you have enemies do people say why do they bug us or what are they about to pay attention to the core teaching of our Judeo-Christian tradition is to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself the problem is that people don't love their neighbors much as they love themselves that's the problem if we could get that put into actual practice then you can change the world that's the way to change the world that simple thing love your neighbor as much as you love yourself Habitat affiliate in Sarasota, Florida and I was down there recently to dedicate their 100th house 100 churches went together and sponsored the 100th house when I was there I learned that the Sarasota affiliate has a full-time crew that does nothing but salvage light fixtures commode sinks, lavatories cabinets out of big houses that are being torn down to build bigger houses and when I was there I was salvaging materials out of a million dollar house that had never been lived in that was being bulldozed to build a 10 million dollar house I know you enough to know that you're not a great fan of big big big houses including even big houses for Habitat building right we think modest is better I spoke to a bunch of preachers at Pittsburgh Theological Seminaries one time and there were about 200 preachers and since you are a bunch of theologians I have two theological questions for you I said first of all is it possible to build a house so big that it is sinful 200 hands went up I said now a more difficult theological question exactly at what point does a house become sinful because it's too big dead silence and then a little voice from way in the back said when it's bigger than my house okay I've worked you hard already but we're going to work you a little more yet Dean Alexander is going to come up and I'm confident there are people here who have questions stored up and you have Atlanta representative friends here wherever you go you have friends and maybe somebody is living in Habitat house as we open this up to questions from all of these started which is my understanding has been reluctant to accept the public of government funds that the funds come primarily from donations from the private sector that there have been a few we and that's the correct terminology we are reluctant to get too entangled with government we want government support HUD housing and urban development and ministers of fund which is appropriated by congress and Habitat has received almost 100 million dollars in funding from the government to buy property we aggressively seek government funding for what we call setting the stage and setting the stage can take many forms but we want the we want the grassroots involvement in Habitat for Humanity and you get that grassroots involvement through a private program and we think it's a good partnership of government limited to setting the stage and then using private funds churches, individuals, businesses and so forth but we want that limitation for two primary reasons number one we do not want to lose the grassroots character of Habitat for Humanity these students I was at Notre Dame recently Habitat for Humanity the largest student organization at Notre Dame 1200 kids are members of Habitat for Humanity campus chapters at Notre Dame and they're just finishing their 10th house right now they're going to finish up in a few weeks they wouldn't sign up if you went into Notre Dame and said there's a government housing program that needs some volunteers they said go hire a contractor go hire a contractor so we don't want to lose the grassroots character of Habitat and secondly we don't want to lose our ability to function as a Christian ministry we sing amazing grace and pass out Bibles at house dedication services and if you just throw open the doors and start taking every dollar you can get from the government the ACLU is going to show up on your doorsteps and say quit passing out Bibles quit singing amazing grace you can't have any of this Christianity or any other elements of religion out here and that is the heart and soul of what we do is our religious Christian motivation and we don't want to lose that thank you Millard alright let's open it up questions from y'all yes sir let me Millard before you do that repeat the question the question directed to you Millard is would you share with us some of your own religious journey your own pilgrimage your own sojourn and the practices that sustain you guide you in your own work in case he's too modest let me also throw in I think your newest book is out there which has a lot of clues to the answer but I want to hear the answer live but he does give a good record of it so Marty mentioned a while ago in one of his comments about a certain subversive nature to my character but when I was raised in Lynette, Alabama I was a member of what was then a congregational Christian church today it's a part of the United Church of Christ and I had a subversive pastor who saw in me a young person with leadership ability and he directed me to a number of youth conferences at places like Doane College in Crete, Nebraska Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut Doane Salisbury College in North Carolina and I got exposed to some ideas to some ways of thinking about the Christian faith that I wouldn't have gotten going to youth conferences in Alabama I'll be honest with you and I attribute my more liberal orientation and my more liberal understanding of the gospel of having a social implication and my experience as a young person in the congregational Christian church that had a profound impact on me and I've continued to appreciate that to this day Ed Brown here's a fellow member of the United Church of Christ and I have a great appreciation for that denomination I now am a Baptist I love Baptists, I married one but I tell people I'm barely Baptist I'm hanging on just getting your toe wet get my toe wet maybe if I can pursue them do you have a daily discipline I have a certain daily discipline and my discipline in a lot of ways is quite simple I don't eat a meal without saying a prayer whether I'm in a public place or at home I try never to eat a meal without saying a prayer and that's a simple thing but I think it's a certain discipline and then another part of the discipline is that Linda and I try to go off to quiet places two or three times a year where I'll have two weeks of uninterrupted I don't have a cell phone I don't want a cell phone I see you have one but I like I like I turned it off for you but I like to have times when I'm not interrupted so that I can think I wonder if we would have had a lot of the writings that we have in the scriptures if the people in those days had cell phones if they had tape recorders we wouldn't have any saints either they'd know their stories yes over here and where are you located the question is what advice can you give us on developing homes building homes for medically fragile children I'll give you this word of advice Linda and I were privileged to go last year and again this year to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland we were designated by the Schwab Foundation Klaus Schwab who founded the World Economic Forum created a foundation to ignite certain people that's what they call social entrepreneurs and they give social entrepreneurs all expenses paid to go over there and hobnob with all these big business folks in hopes that some of them will dribble some crumbs over the edge of the table for our work but I met with some of these social entrepreneurs and they see Habitat for Humanity as a very successful program and it's spread all over the world now and they ask me the question what is your secret what word do you have for us these younger social entrepreneurs and you're a young social entrepreneur and I would say to you as I said to them you got to figure out what is going to be your support base Habitat for Humanity ran up the Christian flag from day one and we've said we are a Christian ministry and so we look to the Christian church 350,000 churches and we look to the Christian church to be our primary partners we have other partners many many other partners but our primary partner is the Christian church and a lot of social entrepreneurs like yourself see the need very clearly but you don't see equally as clearly where you're going to get the money the resources to do something about it so you've got to see clearly not only the need but your resource base who's going to support you who are the logical people to support you and what you want to do and you better learn how to talk their language or they won't give you any money yes right here the question again I'm interrupting Miller for purposes of the simultaneous webcast that couldn't pick up the question the question really looks at the evolution of the family as you've now looked at Habitat Homes for 30, 35 years that have evolved from perhaps a two parent structure with dependent children to a single parent structure and how has that influenced what you're doing and what kind of support mechanisms are also being put in place well first of all I have not I have not seen any studies or any evidence that shows that two parent families move into Habitat House and then somehow the man mysteriously disappears what we are seeing in this country especially we are building so many houses for single parent families mostly single mothers some single men but overwhelming at single mothers that seems to be a phenomenon pretty unique to the United States you don't see that nearly as much in other countries it's a tragedy because children need two parents to help raise them and especially if you've got a single mother who's struggling sometimes working two and three jobs to make ends meet the children are unsupervised and children are children and they get into trouble if they are unsupervised so it's a serious problem but I would say a single parent mother is a whole lot better off in a decent house with her children than she is in a miserable dump somewhere so you just do what you can in a less than desirable situation and provide a good house and also we try increasingly to build clusters of housing Atlanta Habitat has built over 500 houses and a lot of those houses have been built in clusters so the families can be mutually supportive and that's particularly important when you have a lot of single parents living there that mutual support from neighbors is very very important and helpful other questions the way at the back yes sir we'll have a few minutes after the formal portion of this session Millard will be in the atrium for book signing and for visiting with him at 8 o'clock at the end of the session yes ma'am you just address me as Millard I'll be looking at somebody else let me try to pull that together as a question for those who are not in the room tonight but who need to hear the question let me try to pull it in a short form for you Millard very short without doing able to do justice to your question which is how do we how do you how do we together begin to communicate the conception of love for ourselves as a way then of dealing with our own insecurities as a way of building our own sense of pride as a way of then being able to reach out to others I think I might and I won't be able to do justice you brought up so many interesting ideas and thoughts but let me tell you a story to respond to your specific question which is a synthesis of what she has been asking I was at Cornelier farm a number of years ago and a very handsome young man came in my office and he started pouring out his woes to me he had just come off of his second divorce and he was very distraught and he told me at the end of his litany of all of his troubles and worries and problems he said I think I'm just going to go get a gun and shoot myself and I told him the guy's name was Jim I said Jim before you shoot yourself I wonder if you would let me take you on a little visit and he said he was surprised at that response from me and he said oh sure so I took him out to a shack where a fine woman lived and someone had been stealing her social security checks and she was literally hungry and the house was falling down and she had nothing to eat the house was bare and I could see he was shocked to see that pitiful situation and when we walked out of the house I said Jim this woman has real problems I want you to help her solve her real problems and you'll be able to deal with that and you know he got very involved in that woman's life and I never ever heard another word from him about suicide I think you can learn how to love yourself I think it's tied up with loving yourself and it's obviously important that you love yourself if you don't love yourself and you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself you're not going to do your neighbor a favor so you've got to how do you love yourself and I think reaching out and loving neighbors increases love of self that has been my experience that to the extent that we're able to reach out to others and love them in real tangible specific concrete ways our love for ourselves grows almost in an exponential way one more question vision vision children might be the question is does not the concept of vision constitute the starting point for action at least in so far as habitat has been a part what the question suggest is that vision was at the start and that perhaps the key for habitat is children give the opportunity for vision as well as being part of vision is that the question Ted Swisher is still at habitat he heads all of our work in the United States I saw him today he's doing a great job for us but I think that's correct and I would be interested in Marty's response to this also but I think what we must do as a society and when I mean society I'm talking about Atlanta, I'm talking about Georgia and the United States and ultimately the whole world we must cherish the children it starts out with cherishing the children we must fall in love with all of our children with all of our children and if we really cherish and love the little children we will listen to them Jesus told us very specifically to pay attention to the little children because of such is the kingdom of heaven and if we will cherish the children and we will appreciate them then maybe we will start listening to the little children and the little children will lead us to a better place I really believe that I love children I love that little David Bako in Romania and he could sense that I loved him even though I just met him and I think the more that we learn to cherish and appreciate the little children we will not be willing to consign them to some other part of town in some inferior substandard, miserable place to live we all want all of them to have as a minimum a good, decent place to live what would you say Marty? I'm more interested in what you're saying than what I'm going to say but I'll say something because he asked me it was about vision and children catching it and I think a big part of the secret of Habitat for Humanity is children don't learn through moralism button up your coat go to bed on time and they don't learn from philosophy or theology they learn from story which your parents are living and you're living Robert Wuthnow made a study some years ago over half the American adults volunteer for something or other 60% of them through religious institutions he asked what was it about religion that did it and it was story both an old story Good Samaritan story, a prodigal son's story a Gadarean swine's story we can skip that one and an exemplification of a story and he said I can't tell you how many of these collegians will say I know somebody from our fraternity who was pounding up drywall in Philadelphia next to him was a former president of the United States the way these stories go there's this more and that's where I'll close with back in the 50's I was on the editorial board of World Book back when people got their reference books instead of the screen it was the best selling hard bound book in America 5.5 million volumes every year and one year the editor Roy Fisher, a Methodist Sunday school teacher editor of World Book said you know Rachel Carson has written a book about the environment and we're not doing anything about that if we want to change America let's do it through the children and he said he's worried about the sky being polluted and the water being polluted and Bucky Fuller everybody liked that we laughed so it came out with a lot of glassy pages of what happens along there it went at every school and all these homes and you track it down and we had more kids catching imagination of what's happening to water than any adults so I think that's why I said he's kind of creatively subversive if kids catch it think of how many adult Americans quit smoking because the kids bugged them because somebody could talk health to them in a different way got a lot of dumb kids who started too but basically if they catch the vision I think that's the big part that's why he's propagandizing back to you but in this newest book that I've written Building Materials for Life Volume 2 there's a chapter in there on a bold new idea and this is in line with what you're talking about the children can lead us to a better place you know in most societies there's no transition from adolescence to adulthood in Jewish culture they have bar mitzvah they have bat mitzvah in traditional Messiah culture in East Africa a young man has to kill a lion there's some adult circumcision in certain tribes in Africa here in the south among wealthier families you have debutant balls to present a young woman at an age about 16 you know she's no longer a girl as she's a woman but in most cultures you just drift from adulthood from adolescence into adulthood so I'm proposing that between ages 12 and 18 and I wrote about this in this chapter in this book a child in the world should participate in building a house for someone else who's not a member of their family and if you could begin to get that adopted that's a way to transition from childhood to adulthood is participate in building a house for someone else you can end poverty housing I'm sorry that we must draw to a close but we must tonight our time has run short I want to express my deep appreciation to Millard Fuller and to Martin Marty the phrase that you have just concluded with both of you I think is a phrase that most powerfully exemplifies the life and work of both of you in doing it which is the possibility that through children and with children we can indeed catch a vision you have given us a vision indeed perhaps God has given the vision we begin to see through you and through your work opportunities for doing that perhaps the message that all of us could take is simply to catch the vision and to be able to do it and with others I also want to express my deep appreciation to Professor Marion Coontz for helping make the Decalogue lecture possible to Amy Wheeler for all of her work in April Vogel, Dennis Wiggins and others at Corky Gallo in making this evening possible administratively I thank you very much please join me in expressing our deep appreciation to Millard Fuller and Martin Hartman in your programs there is a gold card if you could fill out that gold card and just share with us how you found out about the program and turn it in at the back and volume two of building materials for life is available right outside the door and Millard and Linda will be joining you out there shortly thank you the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University