On a bitter cold recent afternoon — in front of the central bus stop in Bangor, Maine — about a half dozen people surrounded a folding table covered with handmade signs offering free clean syringes, coffee, safe drug-injecting supplies and Narcan, the most common brand of the drug naloxone that reverses an opioid overdose.
They're with a group called the Church of Safe Injection and they say their gospel is harm reduction, helping people use drugs safely and creating a community of people who are often at the margins of society.
"Each church articulates its own principles and ideas about faith," said a volunteer who goes by the name Dave Carvagio, though it's not his real name. "We do draw a lot on the gospel of the poor from Christianity because we do believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a radical and believed in compassion toward what's referred to in the Bible as 'the least among us.' "
[For more on this story by Deborah Becker, go to https://www.wbur.org/news/2019...ch-of-safe-injection]
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