COLUMN ONE : Churches Take Up Drug Fight : Congregations are teaming up at city and regional levels to target the roots of the problem. They close down crack houses and mobilize to retake whole neighborhoods.

Members of a church in southeast Washington, D.C. locked themselves in one night last year during a prayer service as drug wars raged in the streets outside. When the pastor of Shaw United Methodist Church went to investigate, he found two teen-agers shot dead on the doorstep.

Partly because of that tragedy, the United Methodist Church has started a drug program that is becoming a model for religious groups around the country.

The 9-million-member denomination has assigned a bishop full time to the drug effort, and 14 of its Washington churches staff “saving stations” offering a variety of anti-drug programs around the clock.

From Los Angeles to New York, Chicago to Baton Rouge, La., religious coalitions are teaming up at city and regional levels to combat drugs. And the National Council of Churches has planned a summit conference in Washington this fall, the first time the giant umbrella agency has called leaders of its 32-member bodies together specifically to map an attack against drug and alcohol abuse.

While churches have long helped people to overcome addictions, their new activism marks a more unified and innovative approach--addressing the roots of drug abuse, emphasizing prevention and implementing strategies to retake whole neighborhoods.

“The plan is to work together much as we did on civil rights during the ‘60s,” said Felton E. May, the burly, energetic United Methodist bishop who is on a year’s special drug-busting assignment. “This is basically a spiritual warfare.”

Members of the True Vine Baptist Church in Oakland fought the spiritual battle by driving pushers out of a large housing project after praying and marching around it seven times, imitating the trumpet-blowing Israelites in the Bible who circled the city of Jericho before its walls tumbled.

In Detroit, churches joined forces to rehabilitate seized crack houses, turning them into low-cost family housing.

In Dallas, a church-organized anti-cocaine coalition has closed down crack houses and raised money to open a center for teen-age drug users.

But how much impact is the anti-drug effort by religious groups really having?

Observers of the war on drugs agree that some neighborhood battles are being won; prevention programs do keep many teen-agers off drugs; spiritually oriented treatment groups report high cure rates. But, overall, they say, successes represent only a small dent in one of America’s most pernicious problems.

Reggie B. Walton, associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, said churches are generally effective in changing “the morals and values” of those involved with drugs. But all too often “churches don’t seem able to come together and work cohesively,” he said, adding that community-wide efforts are essential for long-range success.

Some critics doubt that church actions make much headway, given the continuing ready availability of drugs and the escalation of drug-related crimes. Other observers note that many pastors and parishioners fear involvement in an unpredictable and potentially violent ministry.

“They don’t want to get their hands dirty,” said the Rev. Andrew Robinson-Gaither, pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in South-Central Los Angeles, where four recovery programs, including Cocaine Anonymous, meet regularly.

“Sometimes,” he added, “church folk don’t want to deal with the tough issues. . . . The pastor has got to take the lead.”

Bishop May, for one, isn’t afraid to wade into the thick of drug wars. He is the first high-level church official to head a nationwide grass-roots assault on drugs and violence.

The idea, says May, who was freed up from his regular post in Harrisburg, Pa., on Jan. 1 to work in the Anacostia section of Washington, “is to build solidarity in terms of life and death with folks right where they are.”

May seems an ideal man for the job. He grew up on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s and assisted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement and anti-poverty programs of the 1960s. For the last several years, he has headed the board that directs the denomination’s national programs.

His role in combatting the drug culture, May said, is to be “a catalytic servant who gets the ball rolling . . . to love the hell out of all humankind.”

That’s exactly what Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco tries to do in its approach to addiction. In January, 800 members and supporters marched into the Valencia Gardens housing project in the drug-infested Tenderloin district, proclaiming “unconditional love” and announcing that “recovery time” had arrived for addicts and their families.

Rather than simply forcing drug dealers to move a few blocks away--a “drug-busting” technique that Glide’s effervescent pastor, Cecil Williams, doesn’t favor--”We told the pushers, and the users, ‘You stay here,’ ” he said. “ ‘The total community needs recovery. We’re coming in with unconditional love. We’re your family.’ ”

“Most dope addicts feel lost, ashamed, rejected and empty,” Williams continued. “They’ve lost all their friends and family and relationships. So what I did was fix them a new family.”

Williams’ remedial approach--faith and resistance--has successfully liberated many from drugs, according to Charles Jackson, counselor for San Francisco’s Substance Abuse Referral Unit. Jackson particularly praised Glide’s program for “young crack mothers.”

Williams, who is a close friend to May, has hosted several national conferences bringing thousands of church and community drug-abuse workers together at Glide church. And three years ago he started an informal daily rap session at the church called “Open Mike.”

Almost immediately, 800 addicts came forward to share their stories, and out of that forum seven recovery groups were formed, Williams said. About 800 people have since completed the program and joined what Williams calls the church’s “extended family.”

Williams said about 93% of those completing the church recovery program stay off cocaine.

Glide’s marches into Valencia Gardens and, later, the violence-prone Army Street Dwellings in the Mission District, enlisted the support and presence of social service agencies, the police, the city’s health and recreation departments, other recovery groups and community activists.

Police Capt. Michael Hebel of the San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station reported that in the four-month period after the Glide “takeover” at Valencia Gardens, crimes of all types decreased significantly and there was “a resurgence in pride and hope” throughout the neighborhood.

Particularly important, Hebel added, was the message to area crack dealers: “Help in overcoming their addiction is available, and this (housing) project is not their turf.”

That message also has been proclaimed loud and clear at Crest-Moore-King United Methodist Church in South Dallas, where Williams’ brother is a member.

The pastor, Rev. Patrick Williams (no relation), put together a citywide coalition to crack down on cocaine. More than 100 marchers, including the mayor and several state legislators, closed down three crack houses. And a grant of $534,000 has been obtained to open a center for teen-age substance abusers early next year.

Patrick Williams said effective drug programs usually involve religious coalitions that often include Jews and Muslims (the Nation of Islam). Religious task forces are at work in Detroit, Chicago, New York and Baton Rouge, among other cities, he noted.

Several church-related ministries have been working to save abusers for a long time.

The interdenominational Teen Challenge ministry, founded in 1969, staffs 114 highly successful recovery centers throughout the country--seven are in Southern California--where young people can get off drugs and out of gangs. A survey found that 86% of those who completed the program were drug-free five years later, said Phil Cookes, director of the Teen Challenge office in Los Angeles.

Toberman Settlement House in San Pedro, founded in 1903 to provide social services, food and clothing for the needy, has operated a substance-abuse diversion program during the last decade.

Funded by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, the interfaith house is headed by a Jewish layman. Counseling, in cooperation with county law enforcement authorities, and job training and placement are provided for about 70 recovering addicts each year.

On a recent evening at Toberman, about 15 men and women of varying ages and races shared their stories with a visitor during their regular group session.

“I can talk about my feelings here,” said a young man named Jay, who preferred not to use his full name. “It’s like a family. You can lay everything out on the table.”

Tra, 21, who had recently spent three days in jail after his first cocaine arrest, was just beginning the 20-week court-mandated course at Toberman.

“People here are like your big brother,” he said.

“They’re down to earth. It’s working for me,” added Mario, 32, who said he’d failed other drug diversion courses.

Manuella Villejas, 33, a former heroin user for 10 years, said that “the one-on-one counseling and personal care” at Toberman gave it an edge over diversion programs that lack “the religious component.”

Villejas not only completed the course; she is now the secretary at Toberman House, which was named after J. R. Toberman, mayor of Los Angeles in the 1870s and ‘80s.

Villejas said the counselors, who also present programs at schools and “work the streets” in the Harbor area, helped her acquire office skills and schooling that led to a high school diploma. She said they also helped negotiate the return of her baby, placed in foster care by the court because of her addiction.

Toberman’s success rate for people one year after treatment is 65% to 70%, according to director Howard Ullman. All clients are tested for drug use on a random basis, he said, and Toberman’s five counselors are certified by the Los Angeles County Probation Department and other education and treatment agencies.

Declared James Davis, the counselors’ supervisor and the son of a minister in the Church of God in Christ: “People have only been helped if they can reach back and help someone else in a living chain of progress. . . . God is the strength you have to go to.”

In this vein, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is launching a national program, Wings of Hope, to involve churches in substance-abuse programs and provide support to one another. A Los Angeles chapter with perhaps a dozen cooperating churches is being contemplated, according to Faith United Methodist pastor Robinson-Gaither.

Meanwhile, Cecil Williams and Bishop May have announced that the first-ever church-wide conference on drug abuse will be held in October or November, featuring a “top-level think tank” of church, political, community and therapeutic leaders.

The government seems unable to muster “an all-out assault” on drugs because of bureaucratic sluggishness and the “horrendous problem of coordination,” May said, adding that he believes churches can do a better job of “reaching people on the street.”

The United Methodist Church alone has more churches than the U.S. Postal Service has post offices, he noted, suggesting that recovery groups could meet in church facilities and also at retreat centers and closed Army camps and hospitals.

But chances of funding such a grand plan seem unlikely, given the fact that the United Methodists are having difficulty funding and staffing just the 14-church project in Southeast Washington through the summer.

And some within the church question whether May’s effort can succeed where local churches, the police and the government have made only isolated progress.

“I’m just not sure what one bishop can do,” said Robert Wilson, a professor of Methodist history at Duke University.

May nevertheless remains optimistic, though he characterized the “human misery” in drug-torn sections of Washington and New York as “overwhelming” and “too painful to talk about.”

Shedding a ray of hope, he said, is a United Methodist program asking all members to keep an electric candle in their window.

“This is a symbol of a family in a drug-free home,” he explained. “When you’re out (walking the streets) you see those candles burning and, you know, things are better than we thought. . . . We may not be able to save an entire community, but we can save some.”