Religi religion, Community Development and education. Additional funded provided by mutual of america. Were your retirement company. Welcome, im bob abernethy. Warning that west africas ebola crisis is spiraling out of control president obama announced a ramped up u. S. Response including the deployment of 3,000 american troops to fight the deadlyrf disease. The military will help dwibt supplies, build new Health Care Facilities and develop training for local workers. The plan was praised by many faith based groups working in the region. At a congressional hearing american missionary dr. Kenten brantly who has recovered from ebola urged that the military assets be mobilized immediately. It is imperative that our government response be conducted in Close Partnership with nongovernmental organizations on the frontlines of this epidemic. Brantly said the u. S. Military should not march in and try to completely take over from people who understand the local complexitie complexities. This unprecedented out break believed to have killed 2,600 people although the numbers are much hiring. In other news, the u. S. And other world powers continue to debate how to confront isis. Leaders from 30 countries including 108risc arab states convened in paris and pledged to help iraq fight isis by any means necessary. U. S. Secretary of state john kerry was also there to Gather International allies for the u. S. Offensive. Here in the u. S. , andrew white, the vick kor of baghdad received the anne frank special Recognition Award for his efforts to promote reconciliation and religious tolerance in iraq. He raised concerns about atrocities committed by isis, especially the groups persecution ofk christians. There was almost a genocide. Theyre being killed. Theyre being removed from their homes. Things are very bad. Rabbi david sapersteinq3 lon time director of reformed jude ditch received the ann franks award for dignity and tolerance. Nominated by president obama to be the new ambassador at large for International Religious freedom. Several religious groups have been pushing for his rapid confirmation. Pope francis this week strongly condemned what he called indifference to the madness of war. Marking the 100th anniversary of world war i. Francis visited a northern italy memorial where more than 100,000 shouldiers are buried. Amounting to a piecemeal world war iii. Humanity needs to weep, this is the time to weep. Francis asked for prayers for his one day visit to muslim al bannia this weekend to highlight interfaith cooperation. It was a lighter occasion at st. Peters last sunday when francis married 20 couples including some who have Children Together or who cohabited before marriage. Francis highlighted the beauty of marriage,i although he said married life can be quote, burdensome and often nauseating but he added jesus can enable couples to resist discouragement, infidelity, weakness and abandonment. A special report from the arizona desert where many would be immigrants die. The disappearance of these people can mean their families never learn whether their loved ones are alive or dead or whether they were buried according to their churchs practices. Unless theyre helped by robin rinaky. She is a compassionate anthropologist who has been trying to identify the missing dead. Reporting now. Reporter the unforgiving desert along arizonas border is now getting known more and more as the desert of death. Undocumented immigrants to attempt crossings in the bleakest of terrain while many volunteers leave out water and food, a steady number of them will die. The desert is a harsh place without the rightz preparation it could be extremely deadly with triple digit temperatures often. Robin is an anthropologist with a special interest in arizonas border crosses. But in the winter, we get a fair amount of case of people who have died from. [qc the cold. Well over 2,000 corpses have been recovered since the year 2000 and more thought to have died and never been found. She has set up the center for human rights. clabri is spanish for humming bird. A messenger between the dead and living. The center compiles missing person reports and works of finding out what may have happened to the one who is disappear including the many who have met their deaths. The most important and sacred baseline for our work is providing the service to the families of the missing. Care of the dead is such a key part of the catholic faith. Remembering, honoring the dead is extremely important to these communities. There are so many rituals and traditions after someone die that is you cant go through if you dont have a body or you dont truly know if the person is dead or alive. Doubt whether san frisco is dead or alive weighs heavily on his daughter. Her father has been missing three years. Along with her mother, amanda, shes been turning to her faith. I pray every day. Whats it been like . Hard. Not knowing what had happened t him. You know, it stinks. That he might not come home ever. Amanda is now divorced from him but they coop prated well in bringing up their daughter. He lived and worked for 20 years in the u. S. But that ended when Police Stopped him for suspected drunk driving and ended up being deported. He found his exwife in mexico where he had been sent saying he wanted to come back. He wanted to come back because joseph had just turned 13 and he wanted to be here for her birthday party. Setting off through the desert contact ended with his family. A fellow my grant told amanda later that he had begun to tire and stopped to rest. His companion went on only to get caught. When he was caught by border patrol, he had stayed behind and that was it. They didnt ask him where, how far behind did he stay so they could go and do a search and rescue. Trying to check for themselves what may have happened hadnt been easy for the family. Though amanda may have had some clues to work on, government officials have not helped with her search. Its nervewracking when you get some kind of hope. Saying im one step closer to finding him and they push me 20 steps back by saying they couldnt help because he wasnt a citizen here in the united states. Tracing noncitizens is made harder by the scale of the problem. The desert is situated in arizonas pema county. Not a densely populated jurisdiction. But the county medical Examiners Office has to cope with a disproportionate amount of bodies in its morgue. Theres evidence of pema countysi countys distinctiveness. The nations highest numbers of unidentified human remains are to be found in pema county. Dr. Bruce anderson leads the countys an throw polg team. We only identified about 60 of the migrants. There remains 800 unidentified people. Thats a huge increase compared with unidentified deaths 20 years ago. We are not prepared for this 10 fold and 20 fold increase of migrants][ deaths. We dont have a prot cole dealing with migrants. We do what we think is a thorough postmortem examination. Here is likely of a male between ages of 20 and 30. Multiple layers of clothing. Layers of pants. Multiple shirts. Fairly common. Putting in the backpack you could carry other things. If we suspect its a migrant we look at the missing migrant dwipgss. Better communications with the families than many other Government Agencies can achieve. Relatives are often unwilling to make a report to law enforcement. She and her team pieces together the information overlooking details that can leadcl to a corpse being identified. Not always easy in. It can be things as individualizing as a very specific tattoo. An aztec sun on the shoulder or jesus christ on the arm. Circumstances where many of these people are dying is not possible a lot of times. The decomposition process is harsh on remains. A lot of the cases, the tattoos are no longer visible. In the case of francisco ramero only to go missing in the desert, tattoo details were useful. They were described by his niece and other relatives. They said there was a jesus image on the left arm. After several cases where i was looking at a possible match, this one really stood out and it did in the end they recognized the toattoo and he ws positively identified and returned to the family. Once a burial ceremony could be held his relatives can feel relief and gratitude as his niece expressed it. We found him not as i wanted it. At the same time, i felt happy because so few families find loved ones they have lost. Case of the other deporch tee who tried returning to the u. S. His family is putting great faith in rinaky and her staff. What they do, i think, is amazing. She is an angel. And her whole team is. Rinaky has taken a dna sample and is looking for a match with her father among the many human remains shea has to work throu. But the family knows it may still take a long time until they find if they ever do a resolution to their agonizing uncertainties. We might not know the whole truth. If we dont ever find him we wont know exactly what happened to him. How he died. My best hope that he comes home, that Nothing Happened to him, that hell be fine or maybe hes up in heaven watching over me. He probably wont make it home anymore. I would just like to give my daughter that closure. Whenever her team has successfully identified some human remains as a particular missing migrant she experiences mixed feelings. Im working with feelings who are tremendously relieved when the new Television Series black jesus on the Cartoon Networks adult swim channel has generated controversy on many fronts. It portrays jesus as a modern urban black man. Throughout history visual representations z of jesus have prompted both devotion and debate. Kim lawton explores the pit falls and potential spirittial impact of depicting jesus. For 2,000 years depictsing jesus whether in sacred art or pop culture has been a complicated controversy endeavor. We invest so much emotion into the figure of jesus, whether its love him, find our redemption through him. Whether its animosity towards jesus that you live in a culture that prizes jesus and you dont believe in him. The stakes are so high. The emotions are so high. San Diego State University history professor is coauthor of the book the color of christ. Whenever we give bible figures visible bodies that complain to our own problems. Bloom says jesus pose as particularly interesting challenge because for hundreds of millions of his followers he was both human and devine. Jesus matters so much because of the incarnation, because of the belief that hes the fleshed body of god. And so if god take as particular body with particular hair length and particular eye color, then that says something about the value of thatwn body. The gospels give no indication of what jesus may have looked like. Many christians have been reluctant to portray him at all. When we go back to the renaissance, often times their jesus is quite feminine with really long hair and typically pretty emace yated. Pretty small physically. In ways he looks like a renaissance painter, kind of like they saw themselves. Here in thepl u. S. , believin images of jesus were unbiblical. After the colonial period jesus became an icon. Groups that are not considered white have often looked at these white jesuss and said he doesnt look like me. He doesnt look like someone from the middle east that i might have interacted with, it kind of looks like white people made jesus to look white for their own power. A prophecy says the son of god would have no beauty. But American Christians have been conflicted about how attractive portrayals of jesus should be. Most church goers have been women and they wanted jesus that could appeal to women. So its often we get the long hair and the rosy cheeks. This kind of domesticated jesus. Some christians rejected that and said no, he was a carpenter son. He was gritty. He was tough. So they want jesus with you know, a muscular jesus who sweats because they want to appeal to men. Especially in the era of pop culture, christians have questioned whether jesus should be sexy. They want their jesus to be attractive enough but not so attractive that all of a sudden his sexual charisma becomes too potent. He seems less than devine and less than sacred somehow. Bloom says Many Americans have seen images of jesus before they learned how to67 read much less wrestle with complex theological ideas. Therefore, he believes the visual has a profound impact on spiritual perceptions. Most people say it doesnt matter what jesus looks like. When i ask audiences, like shut your eyes, what does jesus look like, they all instantly immediately have a sense in their heads and that impacts individuals when they pray, when they sing songs together. It colors how we see. Im kim lawton reporting. On our calender hindus around the world are celebrating the nine day festival honoring the female. Ending with a celebration of endiama. Ith a celebration of also on our calender the jewish high holidays beginning on wednesday with are shah shah that with the new year and ending with yam ka pore, the day of atonement. We have a segment about the essence of the holiday observanc observances. Repence tans. Last year for the service we visited a Jewish Community in h los angeles. Its spiritual leader and guide was a former addict who time in prison and believes deeply in the importance of repentance to the recovery process. Coming into the world before the world was created because god new we would screw up and would need a way back. When i first learned about it in prison, i found it exhilarating. Because now i had a way. I connected to something that was 3,000 years old. So i knew it worked. Wy so chuba is repentance, return and new response. Chuba is change. Change is possible and change is mandatory. Our tradition teaches do chuba one day before you die and do it every day. What did i do well and not so well. Are there any people here who have trance gressed in the past year . Okay. So then were all the same. I cant ask for chuba from god until i go to other people. C not only to i make amends and restitution but i speak to them about my plan on how im not going to do this again. I ask them to help me. Some people accept it. Sometimes i have to go back more than once. But in the jewish tradition after three times its any other person. I here by forgive whoever has hurt me and whoever has done me any wrong for the deliberately or the accidentally, whether by word or by deed. Then i go to god and i do my chuba with god because any time i harm a human being im also harming god. Ye the gates are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year because god wants our return. We let what happened in the past, we repair it and we let it go. It no longer, no longer rules my life. Rather, i use it to enhance my life. The tradition you hold it close to you that the letters go through the parchment and they form on your heart and then they come into your heart and they make the right words. The words that your soul needs to share. Religion is here to help us grow, to give us the answer to those questions that say whats it all about . What does god want from me . What did life get out of me today . And chuba allows me to suit up every day and give life the best i can. And i meet got and i recovenant with god and its like a marriage. So when youre involved in chuba, all of sudden this becomes the greatest day, its a celebration. And the prayers are all meant to do that. A lot of people look at it as if its a very solemn, heavy, kgoh oh no. After this recovenanting i am so energized, so excited, so ecstatic that what i get is hope. What i want from my community is that they have hope and vision and passion and purpose for how life is going to be, just that much better. In this coming year. Thats our program for now. Im bob abernethy. You can follow usaon twitter and facebook and watch us on the app for iphones and ipads and visit our website where you can listen to and watch every program. Join us at pbs. Org. And a program alert, late next week on many pbs stations, a documentary called the rule tells how benedict and monnings in new jersey changed the lives of many young men in that troubled city. Announcer major funding for religion and ethics news weekly is provided by the lilly endowment. Dedicated to religion, Community Development and education. Additional fundingaprovided by mo mutual of america. [train whistles] as were looking through our boxes and looking through the pictures, and the memories of trips all come flying back to us. And theres little stabs of, oh, i remember when we did that. But you know what was what is hard is when you are the only one who can remember. [instrumental music]