October 29, 2001
Habitat for Humanity celebrates 25 years of building
___By Judith Cebula
___Religion News Service
___AMERICUS, Ga. (RNS)--There's a good chance Habitat for Humanity wouldn't exist if Linda Fuller hadn't had the courage to leave her husband.
___One Saturday night in 1965, the 24-year-old mother of two sat on the edge of a king-size bed in her lavish Montgomery, Ala., home and told Millard Fuller she was leaving.
___"It wasn't courage," she insists. "It was self-interest. I was miserable."
LINDA and Millard Fuller
___That self-interest ended up breathing new life into a marriage and leading the Fullers to create one of the world's best-known Christian charities. As they look back on its 25-year history, Linda and Millard Fuller say the healing of their own relationship became a metaphor for healing the world--one home and one family at a time.
___After six years of marriage, the Fullers were living large. They had a maid, a vacation home, fancy cars and a boat. But Mrs. Fuller rarely saw her husband. A young lawyer consumed with getting rich, Fuller routinely worked 12-hour days. After accumulating $1 million in cash and assets, he set his sights on earning $10 million more.
___"Me and the kids were on the fringe," Mrs. Fuller said. "That wasn't my idea of family."
___So she fled to New York. Fuller followed and discovered the root of his wife's anguish--his unquenchable thirst for wealth. In order to reconcile, they decided to become poor.
___They sold their homes and the silver-gray Lincoln Continental Fuller had bought with cash. And they gave their money away--to missionary projects, a historically black college in Mississippi and to a Christian commune in rural Georgia called Koinonia Farm.
___The Fullers moved to the farm in 1968 with their children and helped launch Koinonia Partnership Housing. It was an early incarnation of Habitat--Christians building houses with and for their neighbors in need.
___The only child of an Alabama sharecropper, Fuller grew up wanting to be rich. He believed human worth could be measured in wealth, especially if hard-earned. But a radical born-again faith changed him.
___"I don't consider myself a socialist, but I don't believe in unbridled capitalism either," he said in his office at Habitat for Humanity International headquarters in Americus, Ga.
___Fuller is surrounded by artifacts from world travels--among them a dozen walking sticks from Africa, Latin America and Asia. There are photos of his wife and their four kids. There are books about the civil rights movement, leadership, utopian communities and Jesus.
___Fuller offers a simple lesson in Christian economics. "Unbridled capitalism allows the rich to gobble up the poor. That isn't right. All of humanity is precious in God's sight. And we have come to the conclusion that all of humanity ought to have the minimum of a decent place to live."
___Tall, lanky and tan, the 66-year-old talks like an evangelist. He locks eyes with whomever he's speaking to, making it hard not to pay attention.
___It's easy to hear in his rich Alabama accent the persuasive lawyer he must have been back in the 1960s when he lived to get rich. In contrast to those old ways, his lifestyle is relatively simple. As president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, he earns $75,000 a year. He wears chinos and polo shirts. He drives a Ford Taurus.
___Last year, he gave his wife a "retirement" home (though he says he has no plans to retire, ever)--a modern three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Americus.
___But until they moved a year ago, the Fullers had spent 23 years in a house without air conditioning close to the earliest Habitat homes in Americus. Living there was walking the walk, he said. "Most people on the planet do not have air conditioning. So we didn't either."
___The Fullers began to learn this reality in 1973, while working in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. They went there to build houses and test the theory that safe, simple homes bring hope. Church leaders in Indianapolis with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) supported the Fullers' work for three years, hiring them as missionaries.
___In September 1976, the Fullers took what they learned about building houses through Koinonia and in Zaire and created Habitat for Humanity .
___Seven years later, the first national Habitat celebration took place, also in Indianapolis. It was a publicity stunt, said Fuller, ever the salesman.
___"We walked to Indianapolis, 700 miles, because we needed a visible way to put the ministry on the map," he said. "We wanted publicity, and we got it."
___Newspapers and television news crews covered the caravan. Habitat repeated the high-profile demonstration throughout the '80s and '90s, criss-crossing the nation. But the biggest public relations windfall came in 1984 when Jimmy Carter became its most famous volunteer.
___It made perfect sense to Fuller. The 39th president of the United States lived nine miles from Americus in Plains, Ga. A devout Christian, Carter believes passionately that faith requires service in God's name. So Fuller wrote him a letter and kept up the letters and phone calls until Carter said yes. In September 1984, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter took part in their first Habitat project--the restoration of a tenement building in New York City.
___Each year since, they have been part of the Jimmy Carter Work Project, a high-profile week of home building designed to inspire volunteerism. It also gets media attention, showcasing Fuller's talent for marketing and his business sense.
___That talent is one dimension of the founder that makes Habitat work. The other is deep faith, said Jerome Baggett, author of "Habitat for Humanity: Building Private Homes, Building Public Religion."
___"He is a salesman," Baggett said. "He's also committed to a belief that getting people to work together and connect will make a difference."
___Despite his business sense and Christian faith, Fuller's tenure at Habitat has not been without difficulty. In 1990, he resigned from daily management of Habitat after allegations that he was inappropriately affectionate with some female employees at headquarters. No charges were filed, and Fuller retained the title of CEO.
___"It was a very painful time, but the matter was resolved," he said. "Everything was handled internally between me, the women involved and the board of directors."
___Within a year, and after pressure from Carter, Fuller returned and took up the role as chief ambassador of the Habitat cause.
___With the passion of an evangelist, he is convinced Habitat for Humanity International will end poverty housing around the world, and it will happen through personal relationships.
___It was no coincidence that Habitat began when God began to mend Fuller's own broken marriage, he said. He did not begin to truly see the poor and otherwise marginalized people of the world until he saw his wife and children receding to the margins of his life.
___"There's a Jewish saying that goes something like this: 'When you save one person, you have saved the world.' I believe that," he said. "When you finally see your own wife and children as precious people created in God's image and you understand the pain, it sensitizes you to the whole world."
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