One cold morning the week before Christmas, I found myself huddled with a group of homeowners and religious leaders on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the shadow of the White House and the Treasury building. The homeowners, who had all worked hard to buy their first homes, and most of whom had put enough money down to qualify for fixed-rate mortgages only to be persuaded into more exotic mortgages, were facing imminent foreclosure. We had come to stand with them.

I have been talking with people in similarly desperate circumstances more and more these days, as have pastors around the country. The foreclosure crisis has become both a personal and a pastoral issue for us, and we are struggling to make sense of the fundamental unfairness that underlies it. The banks and other financial institutions whose behavior is most responsible for this crisis have been saved from failure by the American taxpayers, while many of those least responsible are losing jobs and homes.

As I grapple with this contradiction, I keep coming back to the concept of grace. When the government tried to save the economy from meltdown, real grace was extended to the big banks — but now the banks seem unwilling to extend grace to anyone else, including homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments.

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