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Mainers celebrate our Four Freedoms
In his 1941 State of the Union address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke about four types of freedom that people should be able to enjoy: Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. We speak to four Mainers who represent those freedoms.
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Stephen Reynolds Sr., freedom of speech
Stephen Reynolds Sr. was just 7 years old when he first stood on a Portland sidewalk and professed his love for Christ.
That was in 1967.
Now 55, Reynolds, of Scarborough, has devoted his life to public ministry.
In conversation, his demeanor is quiet and direct. When he is on the pulpit or on the sidewalk, however, his voice crescendos and the words rise and fall in rhythm, a rapid-fire arc of Scripture.
As head pastor of the Deliverance Center on Congress Street, Reynolds has spent his life on street corners, proselytizing a fundamentalist brand of Christianity.
Reynolds believes the Bible is the literal word of God, and that its teachings are the only way to find salvation and rid one’s life of evil and sin, which he says are pervasive in modern life. He opposes abortion and homosexuality, and believes that if America does not repent for its sins, the nation will crumble.
All around him, Reynolds sees a society embracing sin. It motivates him to spread what he believes is the truth about God.
But not content to spread his faith only inside the confines of Sunday morning worship, he’s choosing to exercise his right to express what are often unpopular views in a liberal enclave, making his mission the “public” part of his ministry.
Outside of his church at 1008 Congress St., Reynolds’ second home is Congress Square Park, where he is a regular presence in the evenings. Sometimes he and supporters hold signs. Other times it’s just a Bible in his hands.
He is almost never bashful, he said, but is also conscious of the difference between exercising his right to free speech in public, and cornering a captive audience.
“I don’t like going into a crowd and preaching at them,” he said. If people want to stop and listen, they will.
“It’s not so much that I get people to believe what I believe. It’s that I have peace in what I say.”
Reynolds has led the ministry at the Deliverance Center since 1977, when the church’s mission focused more on helping alcoholics and drug addicts find salvation. Now, along with the street preaching, he holds Sunday services for several dozen congregants, and also runs periodic revivals.
Still, in a city recognized by many as Maine’s most politically and socially liberal, Reynolds’ message does not always strike everyone as inspirational.
Most people ignore him. Others interrupt, yell or argue, calling him names.
But that does not bother Reynolds, who receives most of his critics with patience, he said.
“I want to make sure my heart is always tender,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me what people say about me or think about me. I can deal with that.”
When people want to argue, he listens.
“If someone approaches you, they’re probably upset,” he said. “If you just listen to someone, they will usually give you the same respect.”
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Debbie Camire, freedom of worship
In Debbie Camire’s family, religion meant only one thing: the Roman Catholic Church. Considering an alternate faith was unthinkable.
And for Camire’s grandmother, attending Mass every week was like an invasion by the Marines.
“She was the first in the church and the last one to leave,” Camire said. “I don’t think there’s a place in our family tree, on both sides, that doesn’t come from the Catholic Church.”
Before she broke from the church in search of a faith that resonated – and drew the scorn of some family members – Camire was a good Catholic, too.
“In this very French, very Catholic community, to have anything out of the norm meant to be wrong,” said Camire, 44.
In the fifth grade, she took her first communion, nervously confessing her sins (Camire told the priest that she was mean to her sister). Then came after-school catechism classes, and confirmation. But by Camire’s teenage years, instead of a deeper understanding of God, she felt guilt, shame and fear.
“I always felt like I was one sin away from going to Hell,” she said. “I never felt like I was part of a church family.”
When she got married in 1993, the family expectation of her Catholic faith only grew stronger. Her husband, Craig, and his extended family were all Catholic, too. As the marriage sailed along for years, and the couple had three sons, their faith waned. The parents would drop their kids off for catechism class and go out to breakfast.
“I used to say I went to Saint Mattress,” Camire remembers, shaking her head.
By 2006, Camire and her husband began to drift apart. The couple had even made plans to split up, each hiring a divorce attorney. A judge gave them 30 days to attempt to reconcile.
In the midst of the court battle, Camire said she ran into an old friend.
“I knew she was a Jesus freak,” Camire said. The friend said she was praying for Camire. “She invited me to come to New Life.”
Established in 1983, New Life Church in Biddeford espouses an evangelical view of born-again Christianity that felt foreign to Camire and the scores of other Catholics who, like her, found refuge in its congregation and practices.
When she went, Camire told no one. But soon, Craig started going, too. They both got saved in the church in 2006, to the chagrin and bewilderment of her family.
It was a step outside of her family tradition that she needed to take. And now, Camire, her husband and her children have never felt so free, she said.
Yet Camire’s mother was skeptical then, and remains so now.
“She was not supportive,” Camire said. “She still thinks it’s a different God, a different Jesus.”
Breaking with her family’s tradition was not easy. Neither was adopting the temperance of her new faith.
Now both sober, the Camires long ago dumped out their liquor bottles, and have had to make new friends. But some family members are starting to attend New Life, too, she said.
And Camire has found a peace, of sorts, with her mother.
“Maybe she hopes it could be different,” Camire said. “Maybe she would like to be sitting beside me in church. I don’t need her to convert for me to love her and for her to love me.”
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Richard Afuma, freedom from want
Where Richard Afuma grew up in the West African nation of Cameroon, he had no running water or sanitation, and his home was made of mud and thatch.
He slept on a bamboo cot, wore rags for clothing, and faced nightly invasions of roaches, mice and rats. He bathed out of a bucket, or waited for the rain to wash him clean.
Afuma doesn’t remember how old he was, but he remembers the moment he identified his life’s goal.
“My earliest memory is of seeing a white person and modern technology and inventions,” he said. “Seeing them transformed my life.”
Whatever future he would have, Afuma wanted it to be in the United States.
“I remember thinking that Americans have no want,” he said. “That they are all independently wealthy. Whether I succeed in America or not, I needed to come here.”
His journey began when he was only 8 years old, when his mother sent him away to live with distant relatives who could afford to pay for his schooling.
Afuma devoured anything he could find out about American culture and life. He converted to Christianity, and sought out the help of a local American cultural center.
One of 11 children, Afuma, now 48, said he was the only one to reach secondary school, and as he gained an education, his drive to succeed and escape Cameroon only grew.
When he began attending university classes in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé, he used to walk by the U.S. Embassy day after day, looking up at the American flag.
At an American cultural center at the university, an American woman suggested that he look into attending an American college.
“She gave me the brochure to Westbrook College,” he said, which has since merged with the University of New England.
When he landed in the United States in 1987, he was shocked to find poverty and homelessness here, too.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d come across a homeless person in America,” he said.
Now a naturalized citizen who has lived in the United States for more than 25 years, Afuma has learned that much of what he believed about the United States was a fantasy. Still, he cannot forget the poverty of his childhood, which has kept him grounded and thankful to live here.
Since his first years in the United States in the late 1980s, Afuma has earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and now works as a life coach to people with developmental disabilities.
Although Afuma, who is living with another family, is still struggling to find a career that can support him, he is happy to do it in the United States.
“I prefer American problems to Cameroon problems,” he said, reminding himself of what his life could have been like in Africa.
“Sometimes I feel like Americans are unhappy with the most minor inconvenience,” he said. “They have everything in the world.”
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Lois Reckitt, freedom from fear
It was the fall of 1979 when Lois Reckitt first walked into Family Crisis Services as its recently hired executive director.
She was met with a terrifying sight.
“The first client I saw, the first victim, was black and blue from head to toe,” said Reckitt, 70. “I swear to God, I don’t know how I didn’t spin around. But I didn’t.”
Instead, she stayed for 36 years, spending the time working tirelessly to grow an organization that helps mostly women who are victims of domestic violence.
From a staff of five when she came to lead the organization, Family Crisis Services employs 30 people today and runs a permanent, full-service shelter for victims of domestic violence in Portland. When people have no place to go, Family Crisis Services is their home, helping to counsel, house and provide support to people in their most vulnerable moments.
The clients that come to Family Crisis Services have endured abuse and fear that is unimaginable to many. Tormented by those who are supposed to love and care for them, Reckitt’s clients have chosen to abandon their previous lives.
Approaching the shelter alone takes enormous courage, she said.
For them, “it’s total fear,” Reckitt said. “Fear of retribution. Fear of consequences. Fear of not being able to hold their own. Fear for their kids.”
What her clients probably don’t know is that Reckitt, when she took the job so many years ago, was grappling with her own fear.
In the midst of her second marriage to a man, Reckitt came out to herself in 1976 upon realizing she is gay.
Even as a career activist used to facing down authority, it was her own sexual identity that struck in her the deepest of personal fears.
Public acceptance of homosexuality has grown in the last few years, cemented with a ruling June 26 by the U.S. Supreme Court that affirms the legality of same-sex marriage.
But back in 1976, homosexuality had only recently been removed from medical textbooks, where it had previously been classified as a psychological disorder. Gays and lesbians were still subject to violence, harassment and marginalization by mainstream America. As much as race or religion, sexual orientation had the potential to mark many as unemployable and unworthy.
“I was afraid I’d lose my job. I was afraid I’d lose my house,” Reckitt said.
But the board of directors recruiting her at Family Crisis Services knew about her sexual orientation and didn’t care. They hired her for her skills at managing staff and helping people, she said. In taking the job, Reckitt said she was finally without fear for her future.
“I’m not a particularly religious person,” she said. “But I do feel like I was put on this planet to do this work.”
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