A Muslim taxi driver pulls over on Riverside Drive, steps out into the early evening rain, spreads a prayer rug beneath the beams of his headlights, kneels, kisses the ground and begins to pray.
An Orthodox Jewish trauma surgeon on weekend call at Bellevue Hospital Center trudges up 15 flights of stairs, rather than desecrate the Sabbath by riding the elevator to the intensive care unit.A Mormon architect spends years on the road working on giant development projects abroad, then returns home to New York to realize that he has neglected his family, the very thing his church values most.
Every day in New York City, tens of thousands of people struggle quietly to live by two separate sets of rules - the rules of their religion and the often countervailing demands of high-pressured, secular, urban life.
They are investment bankers and accountants, sidewalk vendors and politicians trying to live devout lives in a city often seen as a latter-day Sodom where ambition and opportunity conspire to corrupt the pure.
Yet in interviews, many say they find New York a strangely hospitable place - perhaps now more than ever, as openly religious people move increasingly into mainstream jobs and each wave of immigration makes the city and its myriad houses of worship more diverse.
Some said they believe New York tolerates, even accommodates, their choices in a way they could find in few other places. Others said the city's constant moral and ethical challenges actually fortify their faith.
"New York is a wonderful place to live a religious life," said Ariel Bybee, 52, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a mezzo-soprano with the Metropolitan Opera. "The differences between good and evil are stark here. You have to make a choice."
The choices range from logistical to broadly philosophical:
- What does an ambitious summer associate in a big Manhattan law firm, who happens to be an Orthodox Jew, order for lunch when a senior partner takes him to his stuffy club and even the house salad is sprinkled with bacon bits?
- How does a Mormon who runs a television-network department that produces promotional photos for locally produced shows come up with enticing pictures for steamy soap operas without violating his moral code?
- Can a young Muslim student offered a place at Fordham Law School take out a bank loan to cover the price of her education, even though Islamic law technically prohibits the paying and collecting of interest?
Juggling principle and practicality, they muddle through. They consult rabbis, imams, priests and bishops. They make their choices (and sometimes regret them). More often than not, they say, they find life or religion bends.
Yet some conflicts cannot be resolved.
Joseph Owusu, 40, an accountant and immigrant from Ghana struggling to raise a family in the Bronx, spent $35,000 in 1989 to buy a small grocery store on 204th Street, using personal savings and a loan from his boss.
But Owusu, a Seventh-day Adventist, decided not to sell cigarettes and beer. And, in order to spend the sabbath in church, he took to closing up shop late Friday afternoon and not reopening until Saturday evening.
Longtime customers stopped coming. They were used to shopping at week's end, right after getting paid. Others abandoned their groceries at the checkout counter in disgust when they could no longer buy a pack of Marlboros.
"It was almost like I was helping kill the neighborhood," Owusu said sadly, remembering how people stopped playing dominos on the shop's stoop. After just six months, he closed the store. He had lost everything.
Moral conflict is not, of course, exclusive to religious people. Nor is New York City the only place where values are tested. But the city specializes in certain secular seductions; and most religions prescribe a rigorous moral code.
New York is competitive and expensive. Vice is visible and the stakes are high. People are confronted daily with conflicts between personal desires and the values by which they say they live.