The Centers for Disease Control estimates 44 million Americans, under the age of sixty-five, went uninsured in 2008. Grim new figures report that another 6 million would lose their coverage this year.

Stirring statistics like these were the focus of an All Faiths’ Festival (AFF) interfaith forum last week in Warren, MI.

Members and spiritual leaders representing the three Abrahamic faiths held a lively discourse concerning religion’s role in reforming America’s health care.

“It was the best faith forum the AFF hosted,” organizers, Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Totty of Southfield, said. “It was refreshing to hear the truth and faith’s role in a fresh dialog that seemed all but dead.”

Ringing in on reform was Rabbi Mordehi Waldman of Beth Tephilath Moses in Mt. Clemens, who told of his own personal challenges with fourth stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the financial strain the required treatments and operations “a living, walking, dead man” posed on him and his family. “The Talmud tells us to give and we will be blessed,” Waldman echoed, who lives in Berkley, and is eighteen years in remission.

“The Prophet Muhammad taught, if a person is not your brother in faith, then he is your brother equal in humanity,'” spoke Imam Husham al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Educational Center and Interfaith Museum. “Compassion rules…,” the passionate imam, whose congregation serves the destitute Iraqi refugee community in Dearborn, concluded. “We, like the prophets of the children of Abraham, must reach out and help those without health insurance.”

“It is urgent that the need for health care for the poor be addressed this year,” remarked Rev. Priscilla Tucker, executive director of the Metropolitan Christian Council Detroit-Windsor in its ninetieth year now, who introduced clergy members of the AFF. “The compassion of Jesus Christ admonishes us to care for the poor.”

Social worker and Catholic Caucus of Southeast Michigan member, Beverly McDonald, said: “Catholic social teaching demands that something comprehensive be done. The present system is unsustainable on both public and private sides leaving the uninsured in a wake that also seriously threatens those covered by insurance.”

A reporter queried participants about their opinion on HB 3200 while photographers snapped away. Ferndale St. Michael Media senior producer, and former Channel 2 reporter, Michael Voris, lamented all the millions of abortions that, having been born, monies would be available for health insurance for all. Urging guests to become informed beyond superficial sound bites, Voris touted the Catholic church’s long tradition of lifting up the most vulnerable with its more than 600 U.S. hospitals.

The group seemed united with physician, H. John Barkay, D.O., in opposing tax-funded abortions. A Detroit family practitioner for more than forty years, and co-founder of the Imago Dei Crisis Pregnancy Center, he demanded that “abortion be removed from the health bills.”

We agree. Unless we have meaning for life at the start and its conclusion, how will we give meaning midway? The forum was adjourned after frustration was obvious in the heated and hostile question and answer period.

If this nation is to stand behind its pledge “under God,” those present represented a democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Long overdue, amid momentum unseen since the Medicare and Medicaid enactment of Lyndon Johnson’s, insurance reform for health is a necessity now — one that dictates the reproach of petty political partisanship and lobbyist links, for the greater, common good.

The All Faiths Festival (AFF) that was founded by metro area clergy in the Spring of 2008 aims to build bridges, create dialog, foster recognition and respect among all faith traditions, religions and cultures, and support families and people in crisis.

Omar Saloum is enrolled in a Master’s program in Islamic Studies with Middlesex University in London. Lawrence Ventline has been a Catholic pastor for 33 years and is a mental health counselor and author, on special assignment for the Archdiocese of Detroit.