DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: The Boy Scouts of America has long argued that homosexuality is incompatible with its basic principles. As a private organization, its right to exclude gays was upheld by the Supreme Court a decade ago. But the issue has remained divisive.

Pascal Tessier, for one, hopes the scouts will lift the ban.

PASCAL TESSIER: I’ve had wonderful experiences with all the other boys and learning all my life skills and becoming a leader and all that.

POTTER: Pascal is now 16 and just a few steps away from becoming an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in scouting. He’s also openly gay.

TESSIER: Right now I’m on the line. I could get a letter any day saying I’m not part of scouts anymore. I’m kicked out. I would…that’s it, that’s the end of it. That’s the end of ten years of scouting.

POTTER: The policy change proposed by the Boy Scouts of America would affect more than two-and-a-half million boys. Most of them—70 percent—belong to troops that are sponsored by religious organizations. And the reaction from faith-based groups has been mixed. The Mormon Church, the largest single sponsor of scout groups, is on record as saying that homosexual acts are sinful. But it surprised many by giving its blessing to the Boy Scouts’ proposal just weeks before the vote. United Methodist churches, like Metropolitan Memorial in Washington, DC, supported the change from the start. Senior Pastor Charles Parker is a former scout and father of a seven-year-old boy.

CHARLES PARKER (Senior Pastor, Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church): I think the scouts are actually wrestling with the same thing the church is wrestling with in terms of an erosion of membership over the years, and if they really want to communicate to a new generation of folks, my son is not going to understand bigotry towards homosexuals and wouldn’t be part of a group that was bigoted. So if we want a new generation of scouts, we’ve got to do this.

POTTER: Opponents of the proposal to accept gay scouts say it flies in the face of a basic tenet of scouting: the oath boys take to be “morally straight.”

Boy Scouts reciting oath: “To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.“

Family Research Council video: “Over 100 million boys have taken the scouts’ oath.”

POTTER: The Christian conservative group Family Research Council produced a national webcast to rally the opposition.

CHRISTIAN SACRA (Eagle Scout) (from “Stand With the Scouts” video): Changing the scout policy on homosexuality really brings up concerns of making sure the scouts live by the scout oath and law, when really we’re supporting an idea that goes against it.

PASTOR ROBERT HALL (Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho, NM) (from “Stand With the Scouts” video): The problem is that we as churches are setting a moral code in people’s lives, as we’re the conscience of the nation. And we have all our scout volunteers sign our statement of faith. And it’s within that environment we’re all in agreement of what we believe, that we’re training our boys and teaching them to honor God and to be, as you say, “morally straight.” And that would be incompatible with this change in scouting. We could not continue our relationship with them.

POTTER: To Pascal Tessier, the concerns makes no sense.

TESSIER: Sexuality does not have a place in scouts. It’s about having good morals and be able to be a good person. So I think that bringing sexuality into it doesn’t have any effect. Your sexuality doesn’t affect your morals.

POTTER: And some supporters of admitting gay scouts say the policy change doesn’t go far enough. The Boy Scouts have drawn the line at 18, still refusing to accept gay adults as scout leaders.

PARKER: I think the issue of trying to intellectually justify that being gay and being a scout is fine, but being gay and being a leader is not fine is an odd one, because on some level you’re training scouts to be leaders, and so if you’re training gay scouts to be presumably gay leaders, but then you don’t want gay leaders in the scouts, that’s sort of an odd message to send.

POTTER: Some troops undoubtedly will leave the Boy Scouts of America if the new policy is approved. But the organization faces a possible economic backlash if it retains the ban. Measures are under review in several states to withhold funding or tax breaks from the scouts unless the ban is lifted.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Washington.

Boy Scouts reciting Scout Benediction: “May the great Scout Master of all great scouts be with us until we meet again.”

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Head Start kids, three and four years old in Baltimore. They’re singing now, but will they be singing when the much-ballyhooed sequestration fully kicks in? Come July this particular Head Start program will lose over 100 thousand dollars in government funding.

ERIC STEGMAN: It’s an enormous setback and I think a lot of what we’re seeing now is that sequestration is real.

SEVERSON: Eric Stegman is an analyst for the Center For American Progress and an expert on sequestration and poverty.

STEGMAN: You’ve got so many different cuts hitting families from so many different directions it’s going to be really hard for families to stay on their feet especially if they have trouble finding employment and other things they need to do to support their family.

SEVERSON: The sequestration is the law approved by Congress and the president to cut 85 billion dollars out of federal spending. The cuts will affect only discretionary spending, like defense, government agencies and a lot of programs that will impact low income families in particular. It’s the cities that will bear the brunt of the cuts and few big cities will be harder hit than Baltimore, Maryland.

MAYOR STEPHANIE ROLLINS BLAKE: All of the things that are put in place to hold up the families are, you know, slowly one by one being pulled out.

SEVERSON: This is Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rollins Blake.

MAYOR BLAKE: Every time we talk about a cut you’re talking about many people who don’t have an expensive lobby that is in Washington, DC. It’s an economic justice issue, a social justice issue, this is about what’s right for our country, and that we are a country that doesn’t just pretend to care about the vulnerable but that actually cares enough to do what’s right.

SEVERSON: Baltimore is by no means the poorest big city in the U.S. but it’s poorer than many. Bill McCarthy is the Executive Director of Catholic Charities in Maryland.

BILL McCARTHY: If you think about the city of Baltimore, 20 percent of our city lives in poverty. One of every four children in our city lives in poverty. We have an unemployment rate of about 11 percent. And if you go to segments of our city like West Baltimore the unemployment rate is 60 percent.

SEVERSON: There are a number of churches trying to help the poor in Maryland, but by far the largest aid organization is Catholic Charities with over 2000 employees and 15,000 volunteers like these working here at Our Daily Bread pantry that will serve over 300,000 meals this year. When paychecks run out, the line is a block long.

MAYOR BLAKE: Many of these people are the working poor. I mean coming out of the great recession has been tremendously difficult because you have people who had once been employed and many of those people found themselves out, you know trying to figure out what to do.

STEGMAN: Throughout the year, the average recipient of long term unemployment insurance is going to see their checks cut through the year by about $450 dollars and when you’re already living on very little and trying to find a job, you do end up going to the food banks and other places to get assistance.

McCARTHY: There’s a story behind every number, there’s a face behind every number. I see those faces everyday.

SEVERSON: The number of people in Baltimore waiting for public housing, which faces huge cuts, is already 35,000. Education for poor and disadvantaged kids will be cut several billion. Funding for public safety is on the chopping block.

MAYOR BLAKE: That would be devastating, you know, as we are finding the resources to become a safer city. We need more resources not less.

SEVERSON: Nationwide over 600,000 women and children will be cut from the special supplemental nutrition program. These are only a few of the hits on the poor. Cuts also for Meals on Wheels.

STEGMAN: For most of the recipients, this is the only food that they get. And I think another thing that people don’t understand is that Meals on Wheels is a program for very hungry low income seniors and people with disabilities.

SEVERSON: For people like Michelle Rositzky sequestration is like a train barreling down the track straight at her.

MICHELLE ROSITZKY: Ever since we heard about it, it’s been weighing on our mind and worried about it every single day, wake up and find out one day we won’t be able to bring our kids to Head Start and we have to worry about everything else.

SEVERSON: Each day she picks up her little girl Natalie from Head Start about 2 in the afternoon which allows both Michelle and her husband to work. Without Head Start, she would have to stay home. Funding for day care help for low income moms is also targeted.

ROSITZKY: Our bills are pretty big as everyone’s bills are. We won’t be able to pay our electric bill, we won’t be able to pay our water bill. It will be hard to make sure we have food in the house for the kids, and with four kids you know, it’s a lot.

MARY GUNNING: In the morning, when the children, some of the children when they come in, they’re very hungry. They will eat several bowls of cereal. I mean for a three-year old that’s fairly unusual. I mean they depend on us for the food.

SEVERSON: Mary Gunning is the director of St. Jerome’s Head Start program where Michelle brings Natalie. She’s already reduced her staff hours and other programs to meet the sequestration cuts.

GUNNING: I don’t think people understand already that, you know, you talk about being down to the bone, well we are, whatever is inside the marrow, that’s where we are. I mean we have made massive cuts in our program already while trying to still be able to retain services for families and children.

SEVERSON: Studies have shown that a greater percentage of kids who go through Head Start go on to college.

MAYOR BLAKE: The cuts that we’re making to the most vulnerable will have long term personal impact but they’ll have extremely long term economic impact if we don’t insure that someone graduates from high school then we should start to prepare for the likelihood of them being in the justice system and that’s far more expensive.

SEVERSON: When sequestration first became law, the intent was it could not be tampered with. That changed when air traffic controllers were forced to take a day off and there were flight delays, passenger complaints and Congress was just about to board airplanes to go home for recess. Suddenly, in a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress fixed the delays.

STEGMAN: It really says something about Congress’s priorities and I think a lot of struggling families in the country are asking Congress where are they in their priorities. Because air travelers are important but struggling families across the country are every bit as important.

MAYOR BLAKE: It seems almost trivial you know that that would rise to the level of requiring an emergency session while families in need, it seems like their voices go unheard.

McCARTHY: Our budget is a moral document, it sets those priorities in terms of what we value as a society as necessary and important. Whether it’s a project in the Defense Department or putting our airline traffic controllers back to work at the same schedule without considering the poor and those that are marginalized is frankly immoral and very concerning.

SEVERSON: Congress is now considering the possibility of tinkering with the defense budget so the sequestration won’t hurt critical Pentagon programs. There has been very little debate about easing the cuts on programs that are critical to the poor.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Baltimore.

BOB ABERNETHY: This commencement season, when graduates are encouraged to go out and change the world, we have a Belief and Practice segment on a man with a new graduate degree who wants to do nothing less than change the political climate of Washington, D.C. He is Mike McCurry, an old Washington hand, and we caught up with him last Monday as the Washington National Cathedral opened its doors for the commencement ceremony of the Wesley Theological Seminary.

Choir singing: “The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace.”

ABERNETHY: Mike McCurry is a United Methodist who was press secretary for President Clinton at the White House in the 1990s. Later, he worked in public relations and also served on the board of the Wesley Theological Seminary.It was then that he decided to get a graduate degree, a Master of Arts, and try to change the way Washington works.

Commencement Ceremony Announcer: Michael D. McCurry, with honors.

MIKE McCURRY: i think the single biggest missing ingredient in our political system right now are real relationships of trust, you know, human relationships where people really think about and care about each other. And that’s right where the church has to be. To me, that’s what the church is about.

I’m a guy who comes out of the world of political communications and how we express things in the media. I think we have got to tone it down a lot.

I want to be very clear. We’re not talking about taking church dogma and putting that front and center in the way we do policy-making. We’re not saying there ought to be a theocracy here. But I think there are ways in which people who are guided by the spirit, and who have a deep respect and love for God, treat each other a little bit differently.

Part of the study of scripture is that business about loving your neighbor as yourself. Well, there’s not a whole lot of that kind of love in Washington. But we are a community, and I think there are ways and with various faith traditions—Christianity, obviously, in my case, but others as well can bring us to a point where there’s a little more spiritual bonding that can happen in this town.

ABERNETHY: I asked him whether he could imagine that happening in Congress.

McCURRY: It’s hard sometimes, you know, it would require a lot of prayer, probably.

ABERNETHY: Later, McCurry acknowledged his sense of mission.

McCURRY: I wanted to take courses at the seminary, first and frankly, out of intellectual curiosity. But the more I did it, the more I felt some sense of call, that God was putting on me a challenge to see if I could do something about this broken world of politics that I’ve worked in for so long, to do something to create a little more civil discourse in this country.

ABERNETHY: And that’s what you’re going to do?

McCURRY: That’s what I’m going to use my degree to do.

SURINDER SINGH (Sikh Foundation of Virginia): Today we arranged a turban showdown. The idea behind it was to let the parents see their children in the turbans and, you know, how glorious they look, how eventually beautiful they become when they tie the turban on their head.

Sometimes parents don’t know how to tie the turban on their children and, you know, they seek help from outside, so we’ve tried to bring the opportunity to them, that bring your children, we’ll dress them up, and they’ll walk on the runway and then you will see them, you know, with the turbans and you will get their pictures clicked.

Traditionally speaking in India it used to be a kind of part of the life that when a father died the son took his place wherever he was in the life and then the turban was given to him as a part of responsibility that now you’re carrying the responsibility on your head. Similarly when gurus gave the guruship to the next guru, the next teacher, they also gifted a turban with it.

The Guru’s teachings were that being as natural as possible, as, as we are born. Religiously we’re never supposed to cut our hair on any part of the body,

It’s basically a lengthy, very soft cloth which becomes a turban and we kind of wrap it up a little bit in the beginning to make it more neater and then we start tying it one step at a time, it’s like one layer at a time. It’s a stretch cloth so it just kind of keeps it easy to tie it up neatly. Because our idea is that when you’re carrying something on your head it has to look good, it has to be clean, it has to be inspiring others.

Women have not been participating that much, for a century or so I would say. They used to but it’s kind of becoming a less of a fashion and we’re trying to bring that back. We’re trying to encourage them as well to tie the turban just like men do all the time where they go.

We’re not restricted in any color, that you cannot tie this color or you cannot tie this color on this occasion or something but again, colors do have significance. For example, white color is considered more like peaceful, you know, so when there’s a death in the family or you go for a death ceremony we try to tie lighter colors, not bright, vibrant colors, but again, on the opposite, too, when we go to weddings and all we try to tie, you know, the more vibrant bright red colors.

We did have many situations in the schools where they were being bullied around for even tying the small, like the patka type, they do the small cloth they warp their head with nowadays when they go to school, but any type of turban or any type of head gear basically I would say they were being bullied for and we have talked to the school administrations, we have gone for to, you know, take our part, that okay, how we can educate these people? We can bring them out of that ignorance that this is a part of our religion.

The pride I carry when I tie it on my head in the morning and I, you know, have to walk outside. I’m carrying myself like a king. I’m walking out of my door like I’ve some responsibility on my head today and I’m going somewhere to do something better with my life and that courage is, you know, that inspiration comes from my turban.

It’s a mark of pride for us to carry the turban with us and it’s a mark of respect, it’s a mark of responsibility, so you want to see your child growing up and, you know, taking that responsibility.

LUCKY SEVERSON: They live conspicuously pious lives in a secular world, especially in enclaves and suburbs of New York. Ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jews observe the strict rules of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and its 613 commandments.

Their structured lifestyle seems to work for the majority. But, for some, the lack of choices is too rigid, so they choose to leave, even though doing so can be very painful. Hasidic groups remain some of the most insular religious sects in the U.S. Sol Feuerwerker knows, he was one of them.

SOL FEUERWERKER: I think that’s what surprises most people, you know, most outsiders, is that how can something this insular be happening right here in the middle of New York City. You know, as I’ve moved farther away from it, it kind of shocks me too actually.

CHANI GETTER: When I tell people that I grew up 30 miles north of New York, that I went into the city and I had never seen a movie before I was in my 20s, they think I’m insane.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter grew up, married and had three children before she broke away from her Hasidic community. Those who leave Hasidism paint a picture of a very puritanical and sheltered way of life.

GETTER: When I left, I moved into my own apartment and I started driving, and as a woman who was driving, my parents disowned me. In our sect, women did not drive. And so, for eight years, they didn’t talk to me.

SEVERSON: In Hebrew, the word Hasidim translates to mean the “pious ones.” They are defined by their devotion to a hereditary leader known as the “Rebbe”, by their distinctive clothing and Yiddish language. Professor Samuel Heilman is a Jewish scholar at Queens College.

PROFESSOR SAMUEL HEILMAN: They have everything that makes up a culture, social norms, language, a career pattern in life. Even the ones who leave say that there are aspects of their lives that they left behind that they miss. To go to a Hasidic gathering and to sing the songs and to dance in the circle and to be enfolded into the community, and to hear your voice in a chorus of other voices. This is a tremendously exciting experience and when you leave and you’re all alone, all alone in the city…

SEVERSON: Professor Heilman says there are as many as 350 thousand Hasidic Orthodox in the U.S. and Canada, and an even larger population in Israel. And the numbers are increasing fast, he says, because Hasidism strongly encourages very large families.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They don’t believe in birth control. They believe that the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply” is incumbent upon all Jewish people and they practice it. Not only do they have large families but they are the poorest of all Jews because they don’t go to college, so they lack often some of the skills that are necessary for high income. They are all literate in Jewish education, but their secular education is limited. That is not to say there are not some who are successful…in the diamond business, electronics business, in trading on Wall Street.

SEVERSON: Relatively few leave, in professor Heilman’s view, because they’ve been taught to shun the secular world.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They’ve been told that the world outside their own is demonic, corrosive, dangerous, they wouldn’t want to be part of it, that they live a superior kind of life.

GETTER: One of the things that they teach you is that we get to choose what we allow our eyes to see. We get to choose what we allow our ears to hear. And so when you go into the city, you make a conscious choice not to allow your eyes to see.

FEUERWERKER: There’s this whole, like belief or narrative in the community that if you, if you try to break away or change you will fail and you won’t be happy and you’ll just end up on drugs.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo is the Executive Director of a non-profit group called Footsteps, founded in 2003, not to proselytize but to provide counsel and support to those who want to explore life outside the confines of the world in which they were raised. They’ve assisted over 700 altogether so far, a majority are young men.

FOOTSTEPS GROUP DISCUSSION: “I mean my mother still hasn’t called me. My mother hasn’t spoken to me this whole time.”

LANI SANTO: We are seeing a lot more, just in this year alone, we’ve seen a 60% increase in our membership and in new people coming to us, and that’s compared to a 35% increase that we’ve been on for the last few years.

SEVERSON: In the past, it was easier to shelter those in ultra religious communities from the outside world. Television, magazines, radio, even libraries were off limits. Then along came the internet.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: The internet is a real problem for them. There has been, there have been efforts, for example there was a recent gathering at Citi Field here in New York that was against the internet. But it’s a case of trying to close the barn after the horses are out.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo says those who do leave suffer serious bouts of loneliness and guilt.

SANTO: It’s more about guilt in terms of impacting their families. If they have younger siblings, the fact that they’re leaving is putting at risk the marriage prospects for their younger siblings and that’s a real challenge.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: Marriage is critical. And it’s all by matchmaking. Finding single people in this community is rare, and if they’re single then it means they’re problematic…and problematic can be that you have someone in the family who’s not Orthodox or that there’s some mental or physical ailment in the family or that there are, it can even be somebody has too many people with red hair in the family.

SANTO: Any mark of difference is a mark of shame. So whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s leaving the community, whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s sexually abused or whether there’s some sort of ailment in the family, um, or someone who’s committed suicide, all of that will be covered up.

MICHAEL JENKINS: The first thing that really struck me was the courage in the room.

SEVERSON: Michael Jenkins is Footsteps’ senior social worker. He says he’s amazed at the risks young Hasidim are taking by even walking through the front door. He conducts group therapy and private counseling, says a number of people he meets with lead dual and deeply conflicted lives, with one foot in their Hasidic community and one foot out.

JENKINS: There’s things in the community that I love, that work for me, family, friendships, relationships … this is where I’ve always been and this is where I want to be, yet there are things that I disagree with…and I want to be able to talk about that or express that somewhere else.

FOOTSTEPS GROUP DISCUSSION: “I want to be who I want to be. And if I find God, I find God on my own, you know? I don’t go any more according to what I was told as a kid.”

SEVERSON: In Hasidic communities, young men study the Torah in Hebrew at least 7 hours a day and spend only one hour on secular education. So those who leave are woefully unprepared to go out on their own. Sol was 19 when he broke away.

(to Feuerwerker): What was your education level at that point?

FEUERWERKER: If I had to estimate it would probably be, you know 4th or 5th grade.

SEVERSON: Was that pretty standard for most of the men of your age?

FEUERWERKER: That’s the norm, yeah. And in fact I believe I was actually a little bit more advanced than some of my friends at the time.

SEVERSON: Another consequence of the insularity is that if a crime is committed, it often goes unreported.

FEUERWERKER: I have many friends, men and women who have been abused, sexually, physically, emotionally…

SEVERSON: Sol is now in his 4th year as a pre-med student. He says it hasn’t been easy. Some old friends speak to him, some don’t. He says he has a message for others who are worried about leaving the sheltered world of Hasidism.

FEUERWERKER: My point is it’s challenging and it looks really, really scary at the beginning. Um, but it’s, it’s possible.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter says Footsteps has made leaving the Hasidic community a little less scary.

GETTER: Since Footsteps opened the thing that I saw different is that when people used to leave the community before it would be through alcohol and drugs. In order for them to leave, they had to become a total outcast.

SEVERSON: When Chani left, her parents were traumatized, and then she announced that she is gay. Now she’s studying to be a rabbi.

GETTER: They’re hurt by the fact that I will not live, you know, that kind of life, because my soul is in danger. And yet they don’t understand why my eyes sparkle and why I’m so happy.

SEVERSON: As the world continues to shrink because of access to modern technology, like the internet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone or any group to shield their families from the outside world.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in New York.

KATE OLSON, correspondent: For most of its 160 year history, San Quentin has been known as a tough place to do hard time. But over the past two decades, this has begun to change.

Thanks to thousands of engaged citizens in the surrounding community, a growing number of innovative programs aimed at reducing violence and recidivism are having an impact.

One of those programs was started by this man, Jacques Verduin.

JACQUES VERDUIN (Psychologist): There’s a growing alienation and a lack of sense of belonging for most people in society. It seemed that nowhere else stronger than in our prison system had we turned our backs on each other.

OLSON: A psychologist who has practiced meditation for many years, Verduin created a program called GRIP—Guiding Rage Into Power. The year-long initiative seeks to help prisoners address the root causes of their violent behavior and make the journey of transformation from violent offender to peacemaker, from the inside out.

VERDUIN: (to inmates) Is home just four walls and a roof on the outside? Or is home a state of mind as well? Can you go home before you leave? Can you leave prison before you get out?

ELIZABETH SIGGINS (Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation): The reality is that the parole board does not grant parole very easily. So for many of them they don’t actually know when they will get out of prison. And I think what the GRIP program has done is offered them a way to not be trapped by that, to realize that they’re living their lives now, that they’re still part of a community. It’s not the community outside the prison but it’s the community inside the prison.

OLSON: Elizabeth Siggins, who visited San Quentin the day we were there, is a senior policy adviser in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for the state of California.

SIGGINS: When you work in a prison system, you don’t think that you’re going to go sit in a group of offenders and close your eyes. And when I was sitting there today I thought, I feel safe…

OLSON: Creating this safe environment is the responsibility of the prisoners who understand that the program belongs to them.

ROBIN GUILLEN (Inmate): (speaking to group) My name is Robin, and I’m a peacemaker.

OLSON: Fellow inmates, like Robin Guillen, who are graduates of the program, guide the weekly sessions.

GUILLEN: (speaking to group) That’s part of what we explore here and discover about ourselves on why we acted violently.

OLSON: Guillen has served 40 years in prison—20 of them here at San Quentin—for a murder he committed at age 17. After witnessing a stabbing outside his cell, he made a decision to turn his life around beginning with facing his painful past.

RICHARD POMA: (to Guillen) Can you go back to the very first time, the very first time that you witnessed trauma or pain in your life?

GUILLEN: My father and my cousin were in a fight in the living room. My father stabbed the cousin in the living room many times. And I’m sitting there, crying, blood curdling cries, out of sheer fear, terror. That was the first experience of original pain.

OLSON: To help the new class of prisoners understand how pain and suffering from their past can trigger violent behavior, Robin prompted others to share their experience.

GUILLEN: How many of you suffered from trauma early on in life, as far back as you can remember, as an adolescent, as a little one?

BYRON HIBBERT (Inmate): Early on in my life, you know, everything you do you get hit. It was just something to me that happened just normal. If you go to school late, you get a whipping. If you come home late, you get a whipping. Those things taught me how to be aggressive and hurtful towards another human being.

VERDUIN: See if you can connect the emotional feeling with some sensation in your body.

OLSON: Through a practice called “sitting in the fire” the inmates learn to face painful emotions from their past.

VERDUIN: (speaking to group) So breathing in, I welcome this feeling. I feel this fear, this grief, this anxiety.

VERDUIN: In my experience in working in San Quentin, I saw that it was often difficult strong emotions that propelled people in a life of crime and addiction and trying to medicate what you could otherwise process. “Sitting in the fire” in essence, basically is a movement of responsibility, where you say, “The causes and the origins of this feeling lie within me,” so you can stop blaming.

GUILLEN: And see that’s the whole piece, is to be able to feel what’s going on, to be able to really address, internally, what is this feeling? Where is it coming from? And how I’m going to respond versus react.

OLSON: Focusing on the breath, this practice draws on the contemplative tradition in many of the world’s religions.

VERDUIN: We talk a lot about breath and spirit being the same thing. So to sit in the portal of feeling the movement of breath, of spirit as it enters and passes through, is a practice that orients us on a very deep level.

GUILLEN: It’s kind of like you know sitting with myself and allowing God to love me. You know, things may not be all good all the time, but you have something to draw from. You can ground yourself and breathe.

OLSON: Making amends to families of their victims is also part of the journey in GRIP, and to the experience of inner freedom for Guillen.

GUILLEN: I have character defects, flaws, and I’m imperfect. But I have a walk and I have a commitment to honor. And to honor those people that I’ve hurt. And I have something to give. And I could either give it in here, or I could give it out there.

SIGGINS: This is 52 weeks of very difficult self-exploration. Not only do the facilitators hold the men accountable, they do hold each other accountable, and ultimately, the success of the program is whether or not after they’re done they really do stick to that commitment of non-violence.

VERDUIN: I think it’s an enormous gift to a community to bring back groups of men that have been imprisoned and the gift is to say, these are safe men. Not only will they not create conflict and violence in your community, they can help resolve it and de-escalate it.

OLSON: This gift was evident in the testimonies at the graduation ceremony of last year’s GRIP class.

VAUGHAN MILES (Inmate): My name is Vaughan. I’ve been incarcerated for 18 years for taking the life of Kneeck. Through all that hurt and you accept that responsibility for that, they got a part in there called “sitting in the fire,” so you sit through all them emotions and I got to see all the ugly that I did. Also what it helped me do is to look back and find my authentic self, to look back at that kid that used to cry when his hamster died and allow that person right there to come forth and shine and guide me. And if I can stop another Kneeck from being murdered and another Vaughan from murdering somebody, then I did my job.

VERDUIN: Derrick Cooper…

OLSON: The “diploma” the graduates received is their pledge to a code of attitudes and behavior to turn a life of violence into being a peacemaker.

In a closing ritual, supporters welcomed the graduates into the community as peacemakers, ready to give back.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Kate Olson reporting from San Quentin.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Amid the continuing investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing, President Obama this week spoke of the threat of self-radicalized individuals here in the US and the difficulty of identifying them. He said his counterterrorism team has discussed ways it can engage communities where such radicalization can occur. In recent years, American Muslim groups have launched their own efforts to combat extremism.

For more on this, I’m joined by our managing editor, Kim Lawton, and Haris Tarin. He directs the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Haris, welcome. The president referred to self-radicalizing. What—how does that work, and what can the Muslim community do to prevent it?

HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): Well, the phenomenon of self-radicalization is where individuals who do not find a place in mainstream Muslim institutions, places like mosques and organizations, they don’t find a place for their fiery rhetoric, for their violent, extremist rhetoric, so they go online, and they listen to sermons, and they listen to individuals like Anwar al-Awlaki or Adam Gadahn or other folks who misinterpret the religion to give it a violent, violent ideology, and they fall prey to these individuals who are basically online predators, and they get influenced by these individuals to address their grievances through violence.

ABERNETHY: And then what can you do about it?

TARIN: I think what we can do, number one, is to ensure that there’s a counter-narrative, that there’s a narrative of life, of positivity, that even if you have a grievance or you have a disagreement on policy, whether domestic or international, you can address those policy grievances through civic and political engagement and change that— maybe not overnight, but eventually you have the power to change policy.

KIM LAWTON: I know the Muslim community has been trying to offer these kinds of counter-narratives. Has that just not worked, or what do you need to do differently in order to combat this online issue?

TARIN: Well, I think, you know, I said before, I think to overwhelming extent the American Muslim community has not fallen prey to this. It’s individuals who are radicalized online, but I think what needs to happen is that we need to ensure that we have a narrative that goes viral. A lot of these videos, they are very emotive. These sermons they use violence and gruesome images to tug at the emotion of young people. And so we also need to ensure that when we put out the counter-narrative it’s as savvy, it goes as viral and addresses the same issues and that we’re not afraid to address some of the same policy grievances that they address, but to make sure that the outcome is positive and not negative.

LAWTON: And how do you deal with the perception that many outsiders have that the more religious someone, a Muslim, gets, the more prone he or she is to being violent or being an extremist?

TARIN: Well, I think that notion, fortunately, is false. There’s a notion that the more religious you get it leads to acts of violence. The studies have shown that when people go through rigorous religious training and understanding, they’re less prone to violence, but that people who skip that religious understanding part and have an awakening and then go straight to politics, that’s where they become more prone to violence and twisted ideologies and perverted interpretations of the religion.

ABERNETHY: Is there a special role here for young people? I mean, the perpetrators are young. Does that invite, then, or say that the people who can best correct that are young people?

TARIN: The first thing you have to understand is a lot of young American Muslims, they deal with everything else that all young Americans are dealing with—college tuition, jobs, but there is a place for them to ensure that their peers on college campuses and youth groups are having a conversation that’s positive, that when they see a negative conversation that they step in, and they interfere and ensure that they move the conversation towards a more positive aspect.

ABERNETHY: O.K. Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and Kim Lawton, many thanks to you both.

TARIN: Thank you.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: It’s these kinds of images that have defined Iraq over the past decade, as America’s 2003 invasion was followed by a long insurgency against U.S. forces. Brutal sectarian violence among Iraqis followed and continues to this day in the country.

At least 100,000 Iraqis have died in the conflicts. And fears of violence and religious persecution have led more than a million and a half Iraqis to flee their country, with most settling in other Middle Eastern nations.

Thousands of these Iraqi refugees have wound up on the very distant and unlikely shores of San Diego, California, a place better known for the tanned and toned southern California good life than its connection to turmoil in the Middle East.

(to Milheer El Anny and his wife Hebba): When did you get here, may I ask?

MILHEER EL ANNY: About 42 days ago.

GONZALEZ: You got to the United States only 42 days ago?

EL ANNY: Yeah. (laughs)

GONZALEZ: Iraqis Miheer El Anny, his wife Hebba, and young daughter Jumana are trying to adjust to their new life in the U.S. after leaving Iraq and then spending a year in Turkey as refugees.

EL ANNY: We left Iraq because there was a direct risk on our lives. It is very risky, especially for us because our lives are in danger. So, for the time being we can’t go back to Iraq.

GONZALEZ: We met the El Annys in the San Diego offices of Catholic Charities, a nonprofit group which helps new Iraqi refugees resettle in the community, regardless of their faith.

MIKE MCKAY: They are what we call the unintended consequences of the war.

GONZALEZ: Mike McKay is Catholic Charities’ Director of Refugee Services in San Diego. He says because of America’s long and controversial military involvement in Iraq, the U.S. has a moral obligation to help the Iraqis now here.

MCKAY: Just like we help the veterans who come home from the wars, and they have a lot of challenges, so also we have a responsibility and a need to help these folks as well.

GONZALEZ: In the early years of the Iraq War, the United States only accepted a trickle of Iraqi refugees. But that changed in 2007 when resettlement restrictions were loosened.

In the years since, more than 64,000 Iraqi refugees have been allowed in to the United States, with thousands of them coming to the San Diego area.

That migration has transformed some communities, like El Cajon, where a quarter of it’s 100,000 residents are now Iraqis, and where on some streets it’s easy to feel like you’re in the Middle East.

For the Iraqis who come to the United States, they’ve traded the violence and desperation of their own country for the relative peace and prosperity of the United States. But for many it can be like traveling between two worlds and that creates its own problems.

MUHAMMED: My name is Muhammed, and I’ve been in the United States since 2009 as a refugee.

GONZALEZ: Muhammed is like many in the Iraqi expatriate community when he requests that we don’t reveal his identity. He fears it could put family members back home at risk, either from militants or criminal gangs.

MUHAMMED: They kidnap one of your family, thinking that because you are living in America you are a millionaire or something and asking for a ransom. That happens many times.

GONZALEZ: Muhammed says he was forced to leave Iraq. He says just because he was an English teacher, militants thought he was working with the Americans. Many Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military or private contractors as translators have been killed.

MUHAMMED: They start targeting teachers, educated people. So we received a threat note to leave or you will be killed.

GONZALEZ: And why did so many Iraqis, like Muhammed, choose to come to San Diego? Well, many of them had family connections here because of an older, established Iraqi community that’s been in the city for years.

That’s especially true for Iraqi Christian Chaldeans, who have put down deep roots in San Diego.

Local Chaldean churches, along with mosques and groups like Catholic Charities and the International Rescue Committee offer aid and orientation to the Iraqi refugees.

INSTRUCTOR: …By using the three techniques at least. Apply online. What else? Networking.

That help often comes in the form of classroom instruction, where the newly arrived Iraqis learn survival skills for everyday life in America.

Erica Bouris is a resettlement manager for the International Rescue Committee in San Diego.

ERICA BOURIS: We provide cultural orientation. We help with housing and, you know, making sure that kids are immunized, kids enroll in school, those are the kinds of things that we are doing with folks in the first couple of months.

GONZALEZ: Really nitty-gritty things?

BOURIS: Very nitty-gritty things. Absolutely. Get your driver’s license. Do you know how to take the bus? We just saw in the class practicing how to write a check. Do you know how to pay your rent and pay your bills?

GONZALEZ: Some institutions which try to help the refugees, such as San Diego’s most prominent Iraqi Christian church, acknowledge providing assistance has stretched resources.

Father Michael Bazzi is the church’s pastor.

FATHER MICHAEL BAZZI: We used to have them coming to us a thousand, two thousand every year, three thousand every year, and lately, more than five thousand people. And I established here a committee to show them how to live as Americans here, and we have many committees that take them to the schools and to, you know, insert them into American society.

GONZALEZ: Although grateful to be here, many Iraqis complain that settling in the United States has been difficult, especially when it comes to jobs. According to Catholic Charities, only about a third of Iraqi refugees find employment during their first year in the United States. Anecdotally, the refugee agencies say long term unemployment or underemployment continues for most of the Iraqis. Muhammed blames the refugee resettlement process for many of the Iraqi community’s problems.

MUHAMMED: We didn’t get any orientation about life in America or even the law, so we were lost. It’s not about the person himself. It is about applications and system software that you have to fit in. It doesn’t matter what your life was. But for me no one can sit and talk to you.

GONZALEZ: Mike McKay of Catholic Charities empathizes with the Iraqis.

MCKAY: They have very conflicted feelings. They’re grateful about being out of harm’s way and have a chance to start a new life and seek the American Dream. But at the same time, not unlike the Hebrew people who left the slavery of Egypt, when they got in the desert, they said, “Oh, Lord, Moses, why did you bring us here? Take us back. Life is too hard in the desert.”

GONZALEZ: For the El Annys, freshly arrived in this country, the choices and freedoms America offers is both confusing and exciting.

EL ANNY: These 42 days, it’s like introducing for a new world because the system here is different than the system in the Middle East, especially the option things. Here in the United States, everything, there are options.

HEBBA: There are many options.

EL ANNY: Yeah. Many options. Everything, there are options.

GONZALEZ: A little fear at times, do you feel a little fear?

EL ANNY: Sometimes we feel fear. Yeah, sometimes. But, you know, with all the support we have, things will be fine, I think.

GONZALEZ: When we left Catholic Charities, the staff were preparing for new refugees from Iraq at the airport in the coming days.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in San Diego.