NEWS FEATURE: Habitat’s Fuller plans big Houston push

c. 1998 Religion News Service HOUSTON _ Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, has never been intimidated by big names or big money. After all, he’s working to build _ literally _ the kingdom of God. And in a recent visit here, Fuller said he wants to do something his famed housing program […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

HOUSTON _ Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, has never been intimidated by big names or big money. After all, he’s working to build _ literally _ the kingdom of God.

And in a recent visit here, Fuller said he wants to do something his famed housing program for the poor has never done before in the United States: build 100 homes _ a small piece of the kingdom _ in a week.”Together, we can do a miracle,”Fuller told civic leaders as he urged them to rally behind his 1998 Jimmy Carter Work Project.”And that’s what it will be.” This summer, 3,500 Houstonians and 1,500 out-of-towners will build 100 homes at four inner-city sites in a week.”This is a historic project,”Fuller said in an interview.”One hundred houses in a week has never been done in the United States.” It will be done in the classic Habitat way.


Under Habitat’s rules, client families must contribute 300 hours of sweat equity by helping build their homes or working at the local Habitat office. Homes are sold to qualified families at no profit and at no interest. The mortgage is paid back over a fixed time period, with all funds channeled back into building other homes. Less than 1 percent of Habitat’s clients default on their loans, compared to a 4 percent default rate nationwide.

Fuller began his religious life in the civil rights South where racial barriers often seemed unbridgeable but he has made his name bridging those ethnic divisions and in not being intimidated by obstacles.

When Habitat needed a big-name backer, he recruited former president Jimmy Carter, who now devotes a week each year to helping Habitat build houses. When Habitat needed to expand, Fuller hit the road, racking up thousands of miles on domestic and international flights traveling to speaking engagements for Habitat.

And while he insists it is God who saves souls, he is equally insistent Southern religion’s traditional preoccupation with the sweet bye-and-bye _ the religion in which he was reared _ is out of kilter with the gospel’s focus.”One of my favorite songs goes, `This world is not my home. I’m just passing through. If heaven’s not my home, then Lord, what will I do?'”The idea is, I’m getting ready for heaven,”he added.”But if that’s what you’re orienting yourself on, then why build houses for poor people? That orientation is an incorrect understanding of the teachings of Jesus.” Instead, Christians are called to follow Jesus’ admonitions to his disciples, he said.”What did he teach his disciples to pray?”Fuller asked.”(He told them to say) `Thy kingdom come.’ What Jesus is saying is: as you envision it in heaven, work for it to be like that on earth. Jesus is head of Habitat for Humanity in heaven.” He heralds Habitat’s ability to build relationships transcending traditional divisions. How else, Fuller asks, might Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican, end up driving nails last summer at a Habitat work site in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountain region alongside Jimmy Carter, a Democrat?

Sometime, somewhere, Fuller says, Americans must embrace what he calls”the theology of enough.”Maybe then, he says, giving to the poor will be more fashionable that acquiring millions of dollars, driving lavish automobiles and living in sumptuous homes.

And while commending many Americans for their generosity, he insists more must be done for the nation and the world to even begin solving problems including hunger and substandard housing.

Fuller knows what he’s talking about. He has built Habitat into an international nonprofit that built 60,000 new homes for about 300,000 people over the past 21 years.


His success is no small achievement for the grandson of a sharecropper who grew up dirt-poor in Alabama’s cotton-planting regions. Fuller’s metamorphosis began on a civil rights road, a path he shares with a small circle of Southern religious leaders. Reared in the United Church of Christ, the generally liberal mainline denomination, Fuller was still on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle. A chance phone call redirected his course, he said.

He was 29-years-old, practicing law in Montgomery, Ala., and building a multimillion-dollar company with friend and law partner, Morris Dees. A pair of UCC ministers, one from Colorado and one from Pennsylvania, called Fuller in Montgomery, asking him to drive them to Selma, where people were marching for civil rights. He and Dees agreed, undertaking a trip that would take them past lines of wary, shotgun-carrying state troopers.

The drive proved providential and costly. Fuller and his partner lost money, one of his neighbors, a diehard, churchgoing segregationist, never spoke to him again.

But coupled with the moment a few months later when his wife, Linda, left him, Fuller says it changed him. Linda Fuller departed when her husband had time for business but little time for her. He pursued his wife to New York City, and they eventually reconciled.

A radical decision followed. The Fullers decided to give away all their possessions, donating the money to the poor. They withdrew to Koinonia Farm, an experimental Christian community in Americus, Ga., where people were seeking practical ways to live out Jesus’ teachings. And there, in a chickenshed in 1976, Habitat for Humanity was founded.

DEA END HOLMES

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