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The law allows FEMA to help rebuild destroyed houses of worship, but the agency would rather not. Trump should fix this now.
Daniel DiNardo, Barry Gelman, Thomas Wenski and Efrem Goldberg
By now, most Floridians and many Americans have heard of the chainsaw-wielding nun, Sister Margaret Ann, who was caught on tape by the Miami-Dade police clearing debris after Hurricane Irma.
When police told her that others would come clear the trees, the sister and school principal responded that the trees were dangerous and couldn’t wait to be cleared. “We teach our students: Do what you can to help other people, don’t think about yourselves. That’s what I wanted to do,” she told reporters.
In Texas, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, staff and congregants of the United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston rescued dozens of people — of all faiths — from their homes and brought them to non-flooded homes and shelters. The UOS itself is flooded and mostly unusable for the High Holidays this week.
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Sister Margaret and the congregants of UOS are emblematic of the role that houses of worship and religious communities play in helping our communities clean up after natural disasters. We don’t wait for the local or federal government to step in. We just start helping those in need.
But when we are in need ourselves after a disaster, the federal government tells us we cannot receive aid because we’re religious.
Through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, non-profit organizations that are open to the public are eligible to apply for federal aid to rebuild structural damage. Non-profits from botanical gardens to octopus research centers have received this aid.
But for decades, FEMA has excluded houses of worship — churches, synagogues and mosques — from eligibility simply because these institutions are religious. There is no law passed by Congress that requires FEMA to take this position. On the contrary, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill in 2013 to allow churches to apply. The ban is simply FEMA’s misguided and unfair internal policy.
Churches that have applied despite the bar of funding to houses of worship have been caught up in years of waiting and red tape that has led only to denial in the end. Take, for example, Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church, which was submerged under about 20 feet of water from Hurricane Katrina. The church applied despite FEMA’s policy, and almost 10 years after being flooded, was denied aid.
But mold waits for no one, not even the federal government.
St. Peter the Fisherman Church in Big Pine Key, Fla.,  sustained such significant damage in Hurricane Irma that no one is currently allowed in the church. St. Peter was the center of recovery efforts after Hurricane Georges — a Category 4 hurricane that inflicted nearly $10 billion in damages in 1998. Among its many ministries, the parish runs a food bank that serves an average of 500 men, women and children each month, regardless of their religious affiliation. St. Peter members must now figure out how to rebuild themselves, even as they look to serve others in need.
FEMA’s refusal to help churches like St. Peter on an equal footing with other non-profits isn’t just unfair, it is also religious discrimination, plain and simple. And by refusing aid to the very entities so engaged in helping others, FEMA’s policy by extension also hurts the broader community.
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Individuals, families and communities nationwide are reeling from the combined blow of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. As the archbishops of Galveston-Houston and Miami, and the rabbis of synagogues in Texas and Florida, our parishes and synagogues are among the recovering. They’re also among those who are trying to help others recover.
If a house of worship meets all the criteria for aid, it should be eligible to receive that aid on par with everyone else. Regardless of how FEMA treats us, however, we will still be present in our communities. We will feed the hungry, care for the orphan and elder, shelter the homeless, and welcome the immigrant.
Firefighters don’t refuse to put out a fire because the fire is at a synagogue. The police don’t refuse to investigate a break-in because burglars targeted a church. And FEMA should not refuse houses of worship the same aid that it offers other non-profits.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo is the archbishop of Galveston-Houston. Rabbi Barry Gelman is the rabbi of United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston. Archbishop Thomas Wenski is the archbishop of Miami. Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the senior rabbi of Boca Raton Synagogue.
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