When a foot-long chunk of water-damaged plaster fell from the domed sanctuary ceiling at Wilshire Boulevard Temple last year, shattering in front of the pulpit below, the room was quickly cordoned off.
Had the incident last October occurred during Saturday Shabbat services instead of three days earlier, the story might have been different.
"Fortunately, it happened when the sanctuary was empty," Rabbi Steven Leder said.
The historic synagogue already had launched a major building program that included the restoration of the 1929 edifice with its distinctive sanctuary and Moorish dome. To date, $71 million has been raised. But in the last eight months, the campaign has slowed significantly, Leder said.
The plaster incident could be a metaphor for what is befalling synagogues, churches and other religious institutions nationwide in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. If the roof isn't falling in, it may, at least, be cracking.
With donations slowing, religious groups across the theological spectrum are reporting millions of dollars in reduced income that is resulting in staff layoffs and program cuts.
Jewish and Christian seminaries also are feeling the pinch. Eight seminaries for the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, are undergoing staff reductions and budget cuts.
In Los Angeles, consideration was given this spring to closing the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a seminary serving the Jewish Reform movement. Ultimately, college officials opted to keep the campus open, but only after cutting staff and entering into cooperative arrangements with other institutions and seminaries.
But college officials confirmed there is ongoing discussion of how millions more could be saved, including preliminary talks about selling the campus to the adjacent USC and leasing it back.
Meanwhile, 69 long-term foreign missionaries and 350 short-term missionaries for the Southern Baptist Convention will remain home this year because of reduced giving by local congregations to the denomination's cooperative program. Southern Baptist officials also report a $29-million drop in an annual Christmas offering on which half the program's budget depends.
These and other examples of retrenchment by religious organizations from coast to coast have, inevitably, prompted some soul searching. How to reconcile the reality of reduced income with the moral imperative to serve others?
