Two months after the Rev. Lance Eden arrived as pastor of First Street United Methodist Church, Hurricane Katrina struck.

Mr. Eden, newly ordained, quickly picked up skills few in the pulpit typically need. He learned how to restore a church whose roof had been peeled off and whose bell tower had been knocked askew. He played host to hundreds of volunteers who came to gut and rebuild. And most recently — and reluctantly — he took on the role of developer.

“I’d rather be doing something else,” Mr. Eden said. “But when you hear stories like the Good Samaritan or about how Jesus walks into the temple and overturns the tables of the money-changers, it charges us as a church to make sure justice is done for all people.”

First Street’s community development corporation owns 28 properties in Central City, a neighborhood of candy-colored bungalows, and Mr. Eden said he would like to acquire 20 more for moderate- to low-income housing.

New Orleans’s patchy recovery has largely bypassed places where the working class and the poor lived, like Central City and the Lower Ninth Ward. Many former residents lack the means to return. Instead, churches and groups with religious affiliations, citing Scripture’s call to help the stranger and the neighbor, have taken on building affordable housing.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Hurricane Katrina • Religion & Culture

1. Juandeveras wrote: Perhaps the author of this piece, who has an Indian name { Banarjee}, will welcome the newly-elected first Indian-American/Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, to clean up the giant-perpetually-corrupt-Democrat-since-the-beginning-of-time-mess-called-Louisiana and finally graft it into the rest of the country. What a task that will be. Maybe this preacher can finally get his money. October 29, 1:57 am | [comment link]

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