The men who live at Taste-N-See Outreach Ministry in Bridgeport have been praising God in song and scripture for a good hour when Pastor James Jennings urges them to their feet shortly after 7:30 a.m.
There are about a dozen ex-cons here, their histories muddy with violence and drugs and shame, but they stand and embrace each other with awkward grins and thumping backslaps, one after the other, as Jennings looks on.
“Sometimes we think love is what we say, but love is what we do,” Jennings says.
When I lived in CT, I was a parish representative at the Episcopal Diocese of CT Diocesan Convention in which the diocese voted overwhelmingly to show their displeasure with faith-based programs. I think I may have been the only voice that went to the microphone to speak against the vote. (I was working at that time at the largest homeless shelter in CT–a faith-based shelter run by Roman Catholic sisters–and pointed out that this vote would not help organizations like the one I worked for.)