welcome. i'm kim lawton, sitting in for bob abernethy. thank you for joining us. faith-based constituencies were once again a factor in the republican primaries. on super tuesday, catholic voters continued to gravitate toward mitt romney, who is mormon. and the catholic rick santorum continued to do better with evangelical voters. we'll have more analysis in a few moments. a range of jewish groups rallied at the white house this week, as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu arrived in washington. talk of iran's nuclear program dominated his meeting with president obama. earlier, in a speech to the pro-israel lobby group aipac, obama said the jewish state does have a right to defend itself. but he also cautioned against "loose talk of war." most jewish groups praised the president's support for israel, but some also argued against any preemptive military strike in iran. during his visit, netanyahu gave obama a copy of the book of esther. this past week, jews celebrated purim, which retells the biblical story of queen esther stopping a plot in ancient persia to annihilate the jews. since persia is the modern day iran, many saw a very relevant parallel to current events. attorney general eric holder this week broke the administration's silence about its justifications for a drone strike in yemen last year that killed u.s.-born al qaeda cleric anwar al-awlaki and another american. holder said the killings were justified as part of the war against terror. he outlined three criteria for targeted killings of american citizens abroad if the citizens pose an imminent threat to the u.s., if capture is not feasible, and if the killings are consistent with the laws of war. some ethicists have raised moral concerns about such targeted attacks. as violence continued in syria, there was intensified debate about possible military intervention. thousands of syrian refugees have fled to neighboring lebanon. humanitarian groups including the catholic caritas, are racing to provide shelter and food. an ancient christian monastery was also caught up in the violence. masked gunmen stormed deir mar musa, demanding money, destroying property and briefly holding its inhabitants captive. prior to the uprising, the monastery was a center of interfaith dialogue. the vatican has ordered the roman catholic diocese of cleveland to reopen 13 of 50 churches closed between 2009 and 2010. the bishop of cleveland cited financial difficulties and a shortage of priests in his decision to shutter the buildings. parishioners appealed. and the vatican, in a rare move, reversed the bishop's decision. catholics around the nation have been fighting parish closings. leaders of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints warned mormons to stop baptisms-by-proxy of "unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and jewish holocaust victims." the warning came after recent reports that church members had posthumously baptized individuals including anne frank, gandhi and slain jewish journalist daniel pearl. in a letter read to mormon congregations worldwide, church leaders said only the names of deceased lds ancestors should be submitted for the baptisms. the spiritual practice is done to offer non-mormon souls the opportunity of salvation. now more on religion and politics with kevin eckstrom, editor in chief of religion news service. >> kevin, we've seen since the very beginning of this primary season that mitt romney has consistently done best among the catholic voters in contrast to rick santorum who is catholic and this really helped him out of course last week in ohio where about a third of the republican voters were catholics and he got the majority of them and that helped him win. >> why do you think that catholics are really gravitating toward romney as opposed to santorum? >> well, i think it's because rick santorum is sort of a very particular kind of catholic that is a bit actually outside the mainstream of the american catholic church. you know, the surveys indicate that the american catholic church, or the american catholics, don't buy the line that the contraception mandate, for example, is an attack on religious freedom, which is what rick santorum and the bishops have been saying. they don't buy that. americans catholics by and large use contraception. rick santorum thinks it's a moral evil, and so there is a disconnect. he is a particular kind of catholic that i think is a little bit out step with the mainstream, rank and fi catholic church. and so i think when they look to him, a lot of them don't see themselves in him. and a lot of people actually don't even know that he's catholic. most people assume he's an evangelical. >> and he also generated controversy when he criticized john f. kennedy's speech where he talked about the separation of church and state and santorum was very critical of that. he said that speech shows a philosophy that wants to keep religion out the public square. he wants to have more religion in the public square of all stripes, he says. and that also affected perhaps some of the catholic views of him. >> right, again, you know, there are rick santorum catholics and john f. kennedy catholics and i think most catholics, when they look at the two, they sort of identify with john f. kennedy. they are fine with the separation of church and state. they actually think it's a good thing. rick santorum thinks it's kind of a bad thing. but, what you see, i think, is rick santorum, in a lot of ways, is the tea party candidate in this race. i mean, he's talking about issues of freedom and liberty and big aggressive government and that's really not in line where most catholics are, sort of the rank and file. they're just of a different stripe. and, so he's going after the base of the party and that's really not where the catholics are. >> rick santorum has done extremely well among evangelicals. of course, there are evangelicals who do support mitt romney but by and large santorum's been getting the majority of those votes and especially in states where there are a large number of evangelicals. that's made a big difference for him. we have a couple states coming up, mississippi, alabama, where that may be a factor for santorum. >> right, and in a place like tennessee, which rick santorum won, i mean, he won the evangelical vote decisively. and the thing to watch, i think, in the southern primaries coming up, in alabama and mississippi, is how well he does among evangelicals and how well newt gingrich, who also has strong appeal among some evangelicals, how they do. and one of them is going to get that vote and i think if santorum gets it, i think newt gingrich is pretty much done. but you know, one of them is going to be the evangelical candidate, because clearly mitt romney is not, and i think the next coming week will tell us who that's going to be. >> and of course, there's been a lot of jockeying already, everybody calling on the other one to get out of the race, saying that if it were more of a two man race that that perhaps it would be a more interesting competition. >> right, and i think as we've talked about, newt gingrich really has two roles he can play here. he can be a kingmaker and step aside and throw his support behind one candidate or the other. or he can be a spoiler, and prohibit, you know, drag out this contest among conservatives even longer. >> well, we'll keep watching. thank you so much, kevin eckstrom. >> thank you. there was more evidence this week of the incredible power of social media. an advocacy group called invisible children released a 30-minute video with celebrities, including prominent people of faith, calling for the arrest of ugandan militia leader joseph kony. kony's lord's resistance army abducts children and forces them to become soldiers. the video was posted on youtube monday, and with the help of twitter and facebook, it went viral. by week's end, it had been viewed more than 67 million times. according to a hartford seminary study, the vast majority of american congregations are now using online technologies including social media to expand their reach. but what impact is this having on beliefs, practices, and religious authority structures? on any given weekend, some 15,000 people worship with the evangelical northland church, but about a third of them never set foot in the building here in longwood, florida. they're worshipping online via the web and facebook and smartphones. >> we call ourselves a church distributed because we don't want to be confined to this space. we want to be everywhere, every day, and technology is a great tool for us to be able to do that. onsite, worship leaders always welcome the online participants on this sunday, that includes a small gathering at a nearby prison and people from as far away as japan. as the main service progresses, online minister nathan clark connects with his virtual flock. >> i provide pastoral care. i provide direction and really help them connect to other people around them as well ultimately to connect them to god while they are in the worship environment. sometimes that includes offering an online prayer. >> for a long time, i said "i will pray for you right now' and in 20 seconds later, 'ok, i'm done.'" but i don't think that has the punch. i type it all out, and i e-mail all the prayers. a lot of people have told me that the prayers that we exchanged together, they actually took and they printed out and carried them around with them afterwards. and it's cool because it ended up giving that prayer shelf life far beyond what you and i would experience if we did it out loud. >> with the explosion of online technologies and social media, religious institutions across the spectrum are finding more and more creative ways to connect with their members and reach out to new audiences. the vatican, for example, has its own channel on youtube, while the dalai lama tweets updates through twitter. the innovations are providing new ministry opportunities, but some wonder if they are also changing fundamental beliefs and practices. northland church and its prominent senior pastor joel hunter have been on the cutting edge of using new technologies, and they are helping others follow suit, especially churches in other parts of the world. their online worshippers, they say, are demographically much like those who attend the main service. but the online ministry allows northland to connect with people who wouldn't have been comfortable attending a church. at the same time, clark says northland has created a worldwide church community. >> the relationships the apostle paul had that we see throughout the new testament were often carried out by letter and i don't think there's anything that substantially different than what we are doing here. still, some question the nature of a virtual religious community. >> there's a level of trust and support and accountability that you get in a face-to-face relationship with someone which i don't think is possible online. reverend henry brinton of fairfax presbyterian church in virginia believes that, especially in the christian tradition, there are limits to how much worship can really occur online. >> there is something powerful about coming into a sanctuary and being with others. we still require that baptism be done with water and that communion be a community meal where real bread is consumed where the fruit of the vine is received and people do feel a very strong connection with god and with each other through those physical acts. >> northland leaders say they try to build face-to-face connections as well. >> our goal is not for someone to log in and watch a service and hey i'm done. we want them to be in community with other people where they meet together and have a meal together and go out and serve others together. >> one way of doing that has been through roku set-top boxes that enable people to watch web-streamed video on their tvs. northland created the first church channel on roku, which allows people to gather in places from bars to prisons to homes to watch the livestream of the service. about 150 miles away from northland church, a small group gathers every sunday to watch on marcy and ron burth's 53-inch tv. >> the main reason why we bought the big tv was for sports. >> we were going to watch tennis, call the balls, be down on the football field. god had other plans. >> the burths hadn't been able to find a church they liked in their own neighborhood, and they invited neighbors who weren't part of a church either. >> we have a closeness that you don't have when you're in a large congregation, but we really do have the benefit of the live service coming into our home. >> it seems to be unorthodox, but yet it's really the early church that did meet in homes initially. >> would you go back to a traditional church having been through all of this? >> probably not. >> outside boston, the daughters of st. paul are also making active use of new technologies. their order was founded almost a hundred years ago by an italian priest who believed the media would have a profound impact on culture. >> he said look at the churches. he said "where are the people? the people are not in the pews. where are they?" so it's our job to go out to wherever they are and make that place a church, a sanctuary, a place where they can meet god and god can meet them. >> whereas maybe people before might have thought they had to go to church to do religion, they are doing it in the comfort of their home, having religious theological discussions with their friends. maybe even a lot more fun because people like to get on their computer and go on facebook. >> many of the sisters have blogs, twitter accounts and facebook pages. and they have developed a series of mobile web apps, such as the rosary app, that people can use on their smartphones and ipads. >> sister sean mayer is an administrator of the facebook page for the award-winning daughters of st. paul choir. she says the tool allows them to interact with their fans almost instantaneously. >> i try to put up something every two to three days. when we are actually recording, or when we're on the road, it's every two or three minutes practically. >> their most active site is the "ask a catholic nun" page on facebook, which has more than 12,000 followers. >> the site was founded not to be a place for debates, but more for information so that people who have questions about the faith or who would like to connect with a sister and may not have the opportunity in their local parish could get on and ask a question. >> people from all over the world ask questions about the christian faith or catholic church teachings. some ask for opinions about difficult relationships. recently, there were some questions from muslims trying to understand the concept of the trinity. >> are there sometimes you're not sure what the right answer would be? >> the good thing about google is anything you want to know you can google. so i have my reliable sources the catechism of the catholic church. there's certainly scripture. there's other reliable places where you can search out answers. >> she recognizes the limitations and tries to direct people to a local priest or counselor. but this format, she says, also has its place. >> sometimes people need to first venture into a safe place where they are unidentified and they just connect with someone and i consider it a blessing with me and not some other kook that will lead them astray. >> pope benedict xvi has encouraged the church to use social media, but he cautioned catholics to make sure they are authentically representing the church online. >> professor stephen o'leary at the university of southern california's annenberg school for communication says the grassroots character of social media does pose challenges to traditional religious authority structures. >> in many cases, members of the congregation are acting as media producers and are functioning independently of their own local church. so the authorities from the church, pastor up the line to the denominational heads, no longer have the kind of control that they once did. >> o'leary likens social media to the invention of the printing press, which made the bible and theological debate more accessible to everyone. this, he says, paved the way for the protestant reformation. >> it was the innovation which had changed everything and challenged the authority of the church in a way which was never possible before. i think that today's media technologies from the internet to twitter and all these things are having a similar effect on the church. >> o'leary and other experts agree it's still too soon to know what the ultimate impact of social media will be on religion. still, many groups say there is no choice but to move forward. >> i think we have to have a little more faith in god that somehow he knows what's happening and that he himself, god himself is actually using this means to bring some of his love and peace into the world. >> and whatever the impact, there's no going back. the weak economy continues to take a toll on millions of americans, with the gap between rich and poor widening on many fronts. we have story today about a coin dealer in montana and his wife who have earned and given away millions of dollars to help the poor, especially the homeless. their ministry is called "god's love." lucky severson reports. >> i sold a silver dollar about three years ago for $525,000. >> the book of matthew says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. wayne miller takes that scripture seriously. >> i have a concern for these people when they go up, and i believe in a heaven and a non-heaven, when they go up there how are they going to explain, you know, what they've done with their money? >> miller knows about money. he's made enough of it. his little coin shop in downtown helena, montana has done more than $325 million in business since it opened 45 years ago. this is his son, dave. >> seriously, when they get any money their first thought is who can we bless? who can we give this money to? i say that out of every $1,000 my dad gives $999 of it away without even thinking. >> over the years, miller has given away millions of dollars to charities all over the world, especially to the people of helena. he knows that some have taken advantage of his and his wife's generosity but says they would rather err on the side of love. >> god doesn't ask you about your ability or your inability. he asks you about your availability, and we happened to be available at a time when people were wanting to start a shelter. >> they called it god's love, and as homeless shelters go this one stands apart. >> unconditional love- you know, everybody talks about that, but what that means to us is that before they ever walk in the door the first time, we already love them. we don't wait to see who they are or how they act or what their problem is or if they're lazy. we already love them. >> joe wojton, one of god's love managers, has worked in other shelters around the country. >> everybody who comes through our door are people with problems, not problem people, and we treat everybody with love when they come through our door because we realize the people we're seeing some have never been homeless before. this is a very scary experience, and we try to love them up the best we can. >> the shelter usually accommodates about 40 homeless downstairs and has rooms for nine families upstairs. but most of the people they feed here are not homeless. they have jobs and live in the community. >> people rely on us in the middle of the month to eat down here. they know the food stamps and the food boxes are only going to make it a couple of weeks, so they rely on us to come down, on their ability to come down and eat. >> it doesn't take a lot of misfortune to be on the street these days. i think everybody in america knows that right now. >> dave miller runs god's love and gives 10% of his salary back to the shelter. >> yeah, we've seen a big change. every day we have families that come in and say, "my husband had a great job making a lot of money. he got laid off. we can't make next month's rent." unfortunately, it used to be just couples. now we're seeing them with children. >> people like john and krista loweman, who is pregnant. both were employed in south carolina until they lost their jobs and came west looking for work and landed here. so you came here looking for work? >> yes, looking for work, anything, just a better life for me, my wife and my baby. >> but there was no jobs? >> no, sir. >> nothing, not even for me, and i've been to school. >> we tell them that they can have three days no questions asked, just rest, eat, do their laundry, but after that they have to have a plan, and their plan usually is to find a job. but they can't find a job. >> but if they can't find a job, it doesn't mean they have to leave, as long as they keep looking. >> you have to put in five applications a day at least, and i do that every day but, you know, it's kind of hard. >> it's better than living in a car, though. >> better than living in a car. you lived in a car for how long? >> six weeks. >> darcy pfeiffer and her husband and baby boy live here. he works but can't afford the rent. brenda rutecki's husband died a year ago. she had no income, couldn't get a job, came here while she attended school to become a certified nursing assistant. >> you can't get a job if you don't have a phone. you can't get a job if you don't have a car. you can't get a job if you don't even have an address. so this is like our holding spot. we're all good families. we're all good people, but you've got to have a start, and that's what they give us. >> one of the first things the millers did was create a park next door to god's love just for the homeless. having a homeless shelter and a park near the center of town was not exactly pleasing to local businessmen. but toby dewolf, owner of bert and ernies, says any opposition has faded away. >> i've been here 25 years, and i have never seen a better run shelter. i don't think there's a problem. i don't think that anybody has seen an issue with any kind of violence or crime or anything by any means with having a shelter down here. >> the millers both graduated from catholic university in washington, d.c., with master's degrees. they have nine children, four of them adopted, and all of them, according to their father, are involved in one charity or another. >> he provides the bulk of the funding for god's love, millions of dollars over the years, but the shelter also receives a federal grant, money from the united way and from other private donors. >> it's amazing when i go out to a church or to the local college, and i speak, and i hear from people, and they say, "oh, we just thought the millers pay for everything," and that's not the case. wayne and ann are wonderful, and wayne donates a lot of money to god's love, but we need the entire community effort to keep god's love up and operating every year. >> the millers are also helping in various ways about 150 helena families who don't live in the shelter. altogether, he gives away about one-third of his gross income and is firmly convinced that it's what god wanted him to do. >> i can't imagine what it's going to be like. i'm fascinated to learn what it's going to be like, but i am as certain as i can be that there is an afterlife and that i'm really going to have fun. >> the truth is he's having a pretty good time right now. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm lucky severson in helena, montana. finally, ethicist rushworth kidder died at his home in florida this week. he was 67 years old. a former journalist, kidder was founder of the institute for global ethics. the institute said his lifetime goal was to bridge the gap between moral philosophy and daily life. kidder appeared on "religion and ethics newsweekly" several times and was also a longtime member of our advisory board. that's our program for now. i'm kim lawton. you can follow us on twitter and facebook, where i have a fan page, too. find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smart phones. there's also much more on our web site. please comment on our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, music from the daughters of st. paul choir. ♪