But these faith organizations are also focused on a longer-term goal: to make sure the impoverished city, where U.S. President Barack Obama last weekend declared a state of emergency over its poisoned water, is never so neglected again.

“The most important role the church can have is to be the ethical watchdog for the welfare of the community,” Bob Bruttell, chairman of the InterFaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit, said Jan. 19.

Religious people — from black congregations within the majority African-American city to evangelicals hundreds of kilometres away — have responded with time, money and other donations to alleviate the water crisis threatening Flint, where officials had long declared its discoloured water safe to drink.

But, Bruttell said, “the problem of treating those sickened by the water and building a new, safe water system for the city is so enormous … that all the religious groups working together won’t be able to solve it.”

Scientists and engineers say supplying Flint with water uncontaminated by lead and other pollutants won’t be quick or easy. In the meantime, public health officials want to test the thousands of children who have drunk and bathed in the city’s water, because they may suffer developmental and emotional disabilities associated with high lead levels in the bloodstream.

Dr. Muzammil Ahmed, chairman of the Michigan Muslim Community Council, said his group — as part of a larger secular and religious coalition now forming in Michigan — will stay focused on Flint.

“The water issue will be there a long time, because the infrastructure itself has been significantly damaged,” he said, adding: “The giving of water is the highest form of charity for Muslims.”

“It’s a grassroots outpouring,” Bruttell said of the faith community’s response to the Flint crisis, “but not an organized effort.
“Everyone recognizes that the community has an ethical responsibility to these families and these children.”