SOUL FOOD:

On a recent Tuesday morning as I sat talking with Aron David Berkowitz, rabbi at Congregation Adat Israel on Warner Avenue, he explained to me that Judaism is a way of life rather than a religion.

I was tempted to tell him how often I hear this from people in every religious tradition. Like Berkowitz, they usually give me the impression that they think it’s unique to their faith.

Sumbul Ali-Karamali, a Muslim, made the same point about her faith when I interviewed her in April while writing on women’s rights in Islam. In her book, “The Muslim Next Door,” she writes: “Islam is a religion of orthopraxy, practice-oriented rather than doctrine-oriented.”

On the Sunday morning after I spoke with Berkowitz, the associate priest at my own church began his homily by reminding us that Orthodox Christianity is a way of life. He did, however, also remind us that many religious people, even many Orthodox Christians, daily marginalize their faith and live as though that were not true.

I’d been contemplating this detachment the week before while at the Religion Newswriters Association conference in Washington, D.C. In particular, I found myself wondering how what is said to be the most religious country in the world could produce the kind of financial crisis we are watching play out.

There, among several hundred religion journalists and scholars, I felt for a time as though we were hapless counters of angels on the heads of pins while our nation was going to hell in a handbasket. We were scrutinizing American Islam, multimedia in journalism, immigration, atheism, Lincoln’s religion, faith and religion and politics, and statistics about “What Americans Really Believe,” among other topics, contemporary, curious and evergreen.

I found myself looking for the speakers and panels on faith and religion in business practices and chief executive compensation. But this year, they weren’t on the agenda.

Not that these issues have gone wholly un-addressed. Last year at a workshop Michael Lindsay, author of “Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite,” was a speaker.

In his thankfully well-indexed book, Lindsay challenges evangelical executives who receive exorbitant annual compensation “while the inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for wage and salary workers in the private sector languish.”

He questions Les Csorba, an evangelical partner-in-charge of an executive search firm. Csorba tells Lindsay his industry has been silent about excessive executive compensation because, “Our fees are tied to the … annual compensation of the placed candidate. So we’ve been reluctant to speak out about the abuses because it affects us.”

This year, I found “Good Intentions: Nine Hot-Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith,” written by Charles M. North, an associate professor of economics at Baylor University, and Bob Smietana, a contributing editor for Christianity Today. It, too, takes on CEO compensation.

The title of each of 12 chapters is a question. The first asks, “Is the Road to Economic Hell Paved with Good Intentions?” The fourth – alluding to Deut. 15:11, John 12:8, Matt. 26:11 and Mark 14:7 – asks, “Must the Poor Always Be with Us?”

At www.GoodIntentionsBook.com you can read news stories related to all nine “hot-button” issues – gas prices, immigration, family values, environment, minimum wage, education, capitalism, CEO compensation and poverty – and a blog by North and Smietana dealing with them.

Viewed through the eyes of faith, the view is not simplistic. With the help (I hope) of local people of faith, I plan to tell you more about them in future columns.

Of particular interest to me, too, were three other books and one DVD. “Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama,” written by Douglas Kmiec with an introduction by Martin Sheen, argues a Catholic can. I’ll tell you more about Kmiec’s perspective before the election.

Kmiec also wrote a chapter titled “Same-Sex Marriage and the Coming Antidiscrimination Campaigns Against Religion” in “Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts,” a book edited by Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Ricarello Jr., and Robin Fretwell Wilson.

A professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, Kmiec was one of several scholars I interviewed in June while writing about the California Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. I asked him if he thought we’d be seeing more legal challenges to religious liberties following the legalization of same-gender marriage.

I had in mind the California Supreme Court case to decide whether a doctor in private practice could deny artificial insemination to a lesbian couple. The lawsuit won against a Methodist group in New Jersey that had refused to rent its wedding facilities for a same-gender commitment ceremony. Kmiec said he expected these kinds of conflicts to increase.

Early in September, though, at a meeting of the Episcopal Fellowship of Lesbians, Gays and Straights at St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church in Huntington Beach, the idea was scoffed at. Later this month, I’ll explore both views further when I write about Proposition 8, which aims to make marriage in California legal only between a woman and a man.

I got a Green Bible while in Washington, D.C., as well. In it, more than 1,000 verses related to ecological concerns are highlighted in green. Expect more on this book at some point, too.

At a vegan lunch sponsored by The Humane Society of the United States, I watched its 20-minute documentary, “Eating Mercifully.”

I came home with a copy of the film.

Though the meal was gourmet vegan — prepared by Lex Townes of Veg Advantage and Jim Swenson, chef for the National Press Club, where the luncheon was held — the factory-farming cruelty shown in the film still ruined a lot of appetites.

In November, Californians will have the chance to stop these abuses in the state by voting “Yes” on Proposition 2.

Count on more from me on this before November. Meanwhile, if you and others at your place of worship would like to see “Eating Mercifully,” let me know; I’ll make it available to you.

If you, your pastor, your priest, your rabbi or anyone in your faith community is involved in, speaking out on or interested in any of the issues mentioned in this column, I’d like to hear from you. Please e-mail me at the address below.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].