Off the Shelf July 2010

OFF THE SHELF FRIENDSHIP AT THE MARGINS

personal friendships with some of the most economically distressed people on the planet, to overcome our consumer

By Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl myopia and be mindful of these people InterVarsity Press as we make our daily choices in the global economy. In a penetrating discusReviewed by Steven McNerney sion of Isaiah 3:14-15, which warns that “the plunder of the poor is in your house,” Friendship at the Margins: Discovering the authors ask us to consider the posMutuality in Service and Mission awakens sibility of our complicity in worldwide our spirit and challenges our feeble for- poverty. They admonish us to rediscover ays into the prophetic calling of shalom. “our ability to blush” at our individual Authors Christopher Heuertz, inter- and societal consumerism. national director of Word Made Flesh Simultaneously, they acknowledge (a Christian ministry among the world’s that there are no easy outs. Total abanslum dwellers), and Christian ethicist donment of the economy is no option.

Christine Pohl argue a simple thesis: Heuertz shares one of his strategies: He Friendship is a vocation. Only genuine invests in a US clothing company that friendship can turn cause-driven missions hires overseas workers, and then he gives into life-changing ventures. the stock dividends to his friends in India Christians often set out to minister to who actually sew the clothes, so that they the poor, but the authors call us to some- might enjoy more of the company’s profits. thing much more difficult and more It’s hardly a perfect solution. Justice advorewarding: ministry with the poor. cates might wish for Heuertz to protest According to the authors, when we truly the company’s wages, which fail to lift his invest in others’ lives, seeking radical friends from poverty, but Heuertz knows vulnerability and equality, we cease com- the wages are relatively high and that his modifying our relationships with them friends are proud of their jobs. His response and thus free them from the category showcases the complexities of these issues. of “other.”

Word Made Flesh pursues a genuine They invite us to learn from their equality between the rich and poor: Its members live in the slums with the poor they befriend. Nonetheless, tensions and ambiguities mark the relationships; after all, the Westerners still possess assets and networks far beyond those of their impoverished friends. But this drives people like Heuertz into deeper commitment to friendships based not on helping but on sharing daily life. To those who wonder whether the book is light on evangelism, the authors pose a challenging question: Why would others show interest in our Savior if we display no concrete concern for their situations? Sharing life, for them, comes prior to sharing Jesus.

As the book’s subtitle emphasizes, any sharing that takes place is genuinely mutual, and the authors take pains to discuss why the rich really do need the poor.

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We must abandon preconceived notions of what we have to offer and grasp more clearly what we have to learn. Like our Jesus who embraced poverty and pursued deep relationships, we can respond to the groans of the oppressed and offer friendship. Our hearts, more than our wallets, will be stretched as we pursue a deeper vulnerability, humility, and holiness.“The journey will take its toll,” the authors admit,“but together with friends we find a way to move forward, stumbling into the open arms of a loving God.” Q Steve McNerney is the director of student activities and physical education at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Va., where he volunteers his writing/ researching skills at the Center on Faith in Communities.

TENDING TO EDEN

By Scott C. Sabin Judson Press Reviewed by Ruth Goring In the prolonged wake of Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake, a book offering insights from an organization that has been reversing deforestation and working on community development in that suffering nation is particularly welcome.

Scott Sabin’s Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People is a good tool, with well-chosen stories, serviceable prose, and an appropriate tone for calling Christians (and others) deeper into earthcare and service to the poor.

According to the mission statement of Plant With Purpose, the Christian nonprofit Sabin runs, the goal is to “reverse deforestation and poverty in the world, by transforming the lives of the rural poor.We plant, we teach, we create enterprise, and we share the gospel.”

A great strength of PlantWith Purpose (formerly known as Floresta) is its refus-

al to take the “giver” position — that is, arriving as outsiders to dispense money, food, clothes, and construction and then departing.While acknowledging the need for relief after disasters and in other circumstances, Sabin points convincingly to the dependency that ongoing missions in that model create: “If we do for others what they can and should do for themselves, we rob them of their dignity and reinforce the lie that they have nothing to offer.” According to Sabin, Americans, with “our take-charge, cando culture,” have been slow to learn that there is an inverse relationship between subsidy and sustainability.

“Small farmers are a vital part of the [earth’s] future,”writes Sabin.“Migration off the farm and into the overcrowded cities of the developing world, where unemployment rates skyrocket, is ultimately unsustainable.” PWP works mainly with subsistence farmers in Haiti and other developing countries. Such farmers, Sabin says, have significant, detailed knowledge of their land and its creatures — knowledge that must be put to use in reforestation and the movement toward sustainability. Partnerships among local communities and organizations and international agencies can draw on this knowledge to discover creative solutions for deforestation, erosion, soil degradation, and poverty.

Although Sabin is honest about projects whose results have been mixed, most of the stories he tells are inspiring. In Kavanac, Haiti, residents were shocked when PWP arrived and announced,“We are not going to give you anything.”

But PWP and its local partner organization stayed, and within three years a credit group had been formed, trees had been planted, rainwater was being collected and used, and families were buying the land they had been sharecropping.

PWP did similar work in the community of El Porvenir, Mexico, whose hillsides had been entirely denuded of trees in order to obtain firewood. El

who need good tools and talking points to discuss environment and sustainability with others. Give it first to evangelical friends who understand that Christians should care for the poor but who are not yet convinced of the biblical mandate to care for the earth. Second, consider giving it to not-yet Christians, people who are well aware of environmental problems and are considering what it would mean to follow Jesus, like a friend of mine who was helped over the threshold of faith some years back when I gave her Restoring Eden’s compilation of scriptures on caring for the earth and the poor. Q

Porvenir now has thriving local businesses (sewing, bakery, fish farm) and a number of agroforestry and vegetable farms. Residents started a tree nursery and have planted thousands of trees on those once-barren hillsides, and some who had left to seek economic opportunity elsewhere have been able to return.

Though many of the global issues Sabin cites require public policy responses, Tending to Eden offers no more than a couple of paragraphs on policy. Sabin devotes much more space to lifestyle choices and the way we do missions. I wish he had given some attention to NAFTA’s dire consequences for small farmers in Mexico or to the ways advocacy organizations can be hijacked by corporate structures.

One of the strengths of Tending to Eden is its brief, accessible, but informative discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of various forestry, farming, and microcredit models. A bonus is its sidebar essays by other creation care leaders, particularly those by Mark Labberton and Tony Campolo on how justice and earthcare nurture worship.

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Ruth Goring wrote one of the first Bible study guides on earthcare — Environmental Stewardship (IVP’s Global Issues series, 1990). Currently she recycles and practices vermicomposting in a Chicago condo, edits books at the University of Chicago Press, writes poetry, and worships at a neighborhood Mennonite church.

GREEN LIKE GOD

By Jonathan Merritt FaithWords Reviewed by Peter Illyn Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet is not a theological treatise on environmentalism, nor is it an attempt to create an apologetic to confound doubters and detractors. More accurately described as a trail guide or a road journal, this readable book is the author’s candid personal journey, one that began as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid (his father was president of the denomination) who, certain that he was on the right side of this issue, celebrated a cavalier disrespect for the earth.

Merritt’s about-face occurred when, as a seminary student, he heard a professor state that “there are two forms of

for God’s creation.” Merritt winsomely weaves a discussion of the critical issues — consumerism, climate change, environmental degradation — into the narrative of his own journey.

This is not the book for skeptics with arms crossed demanding an irrefutable case for environmentalism, nor is this a complex theological defense to force a critic to surrender. Instead it is an easy read, insightful and telling, the story of an honest quest to reconnect a personal faith to a world in crisis.Written with the gratitude of a blind man restored to sight, Green Like God will inspire some to leave the safe confines of a utilitarian worldview of nature. I predict that, like Merritt, they will find the journey worthwhile. Q divine revelation: the special revelation in Scripture … and the general revelation we receive through nature. Both are from God. When we destroy creation, which is God’s revelation, it is similar to tearing a page out of the Bible.”

Suddenly Merritt understood that environmental stewardship was a vital, but missing, part of his Christian walk.

As a jaded environmental evangelist myself, I realize that statistics, data charts, or even logical self-interest seldom cause one to prioritize creation care. It is almost always a change of heart — a born-again-againagain moment when the eyes of the heart open and the ear pricks up to the subtle song of praise sung by the rest of creation.

Sadly, most people never slow down enough to listen nor choose to join in the choir, but Green Like God may help change that.

Treading the dangerous middle ground, Merritt makes comments such as “Forcing environmentalism into a leftright dichotomy harms us all. If you consider yourself conservative, you can remain a solid supporter of biblical values like the sanctity of life, but you should expand your political interest to include historically progressive issues like global poverty, human rights, and aggressive care

Peter Illyn is founder and executive director of Restoring Eden, a ministry dedicated to serving Christ by working with God’s people to be a voice for God’s creation and all those who depend on it, advocating for natural habitats, wild species, and indigenous subsistence cultures.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

By Shawn Teresa Flanigan Kumarian Press Reviewed by Benjamin L. Hartley Bad news:This was a disappointing book.

Good news: there’s a real need for a book like this and for the research it represents.

For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World analyzes secular and faith-based NGOs across a wide spectrum of world religions in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to discover whether and to what extent NGOs reinforce existing ethnic and religious tensions.

The author does this by analyzing interviews she conducted with 100 management-level staff in NGOs providing healthcare and other social services.

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Comparative studies like this one of countries that have roughly similar histories of ethnic and religious violence are useful for NGO workers and policymakers who are trying to better understand the role of religion in complex sociopolitical contexts.

A great deal can be learned methodologically from interviewing professionals in a wide assortment of NGOs, and Flanigan seems to have done well with this important, time-consuming work of interviewing, transcribing, and data coding for her dissertation, on which this book is based.

But good dissertations do not necessarily make good books, and this one contains some poor writing and dismissive generalizations. But beyond that, as a seminary professor I was disappointed that the author didn’t probe more deeply the nuances of interviewees’ faith beliefs.

Flanigan notes that she herself is not a person of faith, but while a secular stance may have helped in some aspects of the interviewing process, it also likely inhibited how far she could probe in her conversations. Not surprisingly, in her final chapter she recommends strengthening secular NGOs in countries that have a history of religious violence, but having failed to fully understand the role of her interviewees’ faith, she lacks the data to

make that case. I am not at all convinced that secular NGOs can necessarily do a better job than faith-based ones in places that have experienced ethnic or religious violence.

Flanigan concludes her book by noting that “fair and balanced restrictions on proselytization” should be created but that freedom to change one’s religious beliefs is also something that must be preserved. In light of this most valid concern, I found it curious that Flanigan mentioned the Red Cross Code of Conduct, which sets important limits on faith-based NGOs’ work, in only one sentence. I know that most NGOs strive to follow this code very carefully, but she does not explain how it might be strengthened or changed in order to further protect persons from being denied “services” by faith-based NGOs. This book represents some good dissertation research on a very important and timely topic and does so in about 150 pages — a remarkable feat in itself for a book that tries to tell the story of three different countries. In spite of my disappointment with the book as a whole, I do believe that NGO leaders especially will find the final chapter of the book worth reviewing.The bibliography could also point to some useful sources for further reading. Q Benjamin L. Hartley is associate professor of Christian Mission at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

INTO THE MUD

By Christine Jeske Moody Publishers Reviewed by James Thomas Africa is a magazine ad for a child support program.Young brown eyes pleading for help. Africa is a film about an American swept up in events beyond his

family money for food, not just once but monthly.

With food to sustain him, Madondo sought out agricultural extension workers and a nearby university to come to his village to teach him and his neighbors how to increase the yield of corn from their fields. Over time they saw it increase sevenfold.

With food on his table, he was still poor. Some would say to him,“If you are poor, you are not with Jesus, because Jesus would make you rich.” Madondo would answer, “Just because someone is blessed with wealth doesn’t mean he is blessed in his heart. God is not thinking like us — he does things his own way. In those years when I had nothing, I realized this: God was training me to not just folcomprehension as warlords battle with low the blessings of God but to follow machine guns and machetes for power or God. To know Jesus — that’s a blessing!” diamonds. Africa is a place that American Madondo has taught me something church youth groups fix a bit at a time about faith and abundance. I want to sit in two-week visits. at his feet or work next to him in his Africa is a cliché. It stands for bro- field and learn more.And Jeske has helped kenness and hopelessness. It allows us to me to better understand holistic ministry. feel generous and strong as we write a Her stories encourage me with small check. miracles, but they also confound me with But Christine Jeske won’t let us live paradoxes and unanswered questions just in that clichéd two-dimensional world. as life does.This refusal to settle for easy She introduces us to 11 Africans, one at answers and clichés, to walk into the a time. In Into the Mud: Inspiration for mud, sets this book apart from scores of Everyday Activists, she tells stories of how others on Africa. each person touched her life while she Jeske also holds back from sweeping was living in South Africa. In those sto- conclusions and prescriptions for what we ries, she gives them and us an invaluable should all be doing. She lets the details gift — their humanity. of the stories seep into our lives and Meet Madondo, for example. One day speak to us with their own voices. For when his wife complained that they had some, this will be frustrating. This book no food for the table, he said “You say is not for those seeking answers. But for we have run out of food and money. I say those seeking to transcend clichés, and we have run out of faith.” In obedience even to be changed by the remarkable to him, though perhaps also with a hint stories of ordinary people, this book is one of mockery, she cleaned the house, set to read and to discuss with others. Q the table, and prepared the ground for a cook fire — though they also lacked wood. James Thomas is an associate professor of In the meantime, Madondo went to epidemiology and director of the public health neighbors, asking for food. When he ethics program at the University of North came home, he found a Zulu pastor Carolina. He is also the founder and presiwho had felt called by God to give this dent of Africa Rising (AfricaRising.org).

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