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Contents A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 / VO L U M E 2 7 , N U M B ER 1 6
cov e r s to ry
34 Our parched land
Farmers contemplate mowing cornfields, water reservoirs are sinking, and crop prices are skyrocketing as the United States swelters through its worst drought in a half-century f e at u r es
38 Cashed out
The National Association of Evangelicals backs off its million-dollar subsidy from pushers of contraception for the unmarried
42 Art for community’s sake
The Culture House, an arts organization in suburban Kansas City, brings a Christian ethos of excellence for the sake of others and cultural leadership for its students
46 DOMA’s day of reckoning
Obama administration reversal over the Defense of Marriage Act adds weight to a likely Supreme Court showdown over the law in the high court’s next term
48 Miracle surgery
Success and sadness proceed from a dramatic decision to separate conjoined twins, abandoned by their parents, at a 122-year-old mission hospital in India’s central highlands
52 Work and faith, connected
dispatch es
2012 compassion award: Our South region winner is full of practical help for former prisoners looking for jobs— and is full of Christ ON THE COVER: Marion Kujawa looks over a pond he uses to water the cattle on his farm on July 16, 2012, in Ashley, Ill.; Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
5 News 14 Human Race 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes
23
revi ews
23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music notebook
42
59 Lifestyle 61 Technology 62 Science 63 Houses of God 64 Sports 65 Money
drought: Scott Olson/Getty Images
voices
38
46
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3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 71 Mailbag 75 Andrée Seu Peterson 76 Marvin Olasky
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KRIEG BARRIE
If you are a committed Christian, you do not have to violate your faith by purchasing health insurance from a company that pays for abortions and treatments of conditions resulting from other immoral practices. You can live consistently with your beliefs by sharing medical needs directly with fellow believers through Samaritan Ministries’ non-insurance approach. This approach even satisfies the individual mandate in the recent Federal health care law (Sec. 1501 (b) of HR 3590 at pg. 327, 328).
Advertising Office .. Director of Sales and Marketing Account Execs • • The World Market
Joel Belz
Sell it in a bottle
Wanted: Gifted and talented people to help change the culture
KRIEG BARRIE
>>
I this unusual commodity we sometimes call “Christian worldview thinking,” put it in a bottle, and sell it in the contemporary marketplace, what would it look like? If your goal with this exotic elixir were to encourage folks in every walk of life to learn how to put God smack dab at the center of their experience, would the contents of the bottle look more like medicine or a zingy soft drink? If you wanted to help all kinds of people focus their thinking processes, their goal setting, and their value systems on God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible, would you be inclined to do it with a few sips and a tiny tablet now and then through the day—or with a long and hearty quaff from a half-gallon jug? Here at WORLD, we think about questions like that day in and day out. We know what’s in the bottle—and we know it’s good stuff. We know it’s got the capacity to change the lives of men and women and boys and girls—and we know how those changed lives then also have the capacity to change the culture around them. It’s the possibility of such change—no, let’s call it the prospect of such change—that excites us about the future. Now we are looking for new help in bringing about that kind of change. The bottling of so power-
Email: jbelz@worldmag.com
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ful a substance is a grand opportunity to bring God’s truth to hundreds of thousands of minds and hearts. To buy up that opportunity, we’re looking for a gifted person to join us as Director of Marketing. This new Director will coordinate all our efforts to double, triple, and even quadruple our reader base over the next few years in print publishing, digital platforms, broadcasting, and education. Kevin Martin, our CEO, says this new Director of Marketing needs to be an experienced man or woman “able to develop and execute a branding and marketing strategy for the entire company during a period of high growth (we hope) and great change (we’re pretty sure). The person will be expected to organize disparate, disconnected marketing efforts into a unified, holistic program.” Ideally, this person will have experience working with outside creative, advertising, and marketing businesses. He or she will have experience working in a nonprofit environment. The candidate will have successfully managed a budget, will have managed other people, and will be able to demonstrate a record of building consensus within a team that knows where it’s going. Our CEO is at the very same time also launching a search for a new Controller for our organization— someone who has enough experience to oversee accounting, accounts payable, and payroll functions. He or she will manage the budgeting process, the monthly reporting to the CEO and the board, the audit process, and the reporting of taxes. Two years’ experience elsewhere as a controller with at least a mid-size business, and eight years’ financial experience overall, would be ideal. Even if you’re not this person, is it possible you know someone of world-class abilities who strikes you as a good fit? To see a complete description for either position, or to recommend someone you know, email Hannah Kaminer, Mr. Martin’s executive assistant, at hkaminer@gwpub.com. Important and specific as technical skills might be for both positions, no one should inquire or send a resumé until he or she is ready to contribute concretely and imaginatively to the conversation I described above. We don’t expect anyone to have all the answers about how to bottle this thing we call Christian worldview thinking. We do expect some robust ideas with the capacity for shaping, reshaping—and then reshaping again—this most important conversation. A AUGUST 11, 2012
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Dispatches News > Human Race > Quotables > Quick Takes
Decisive fight As Syria’s civil war escalates, threats of a wider, more threatening conflict grow
BULENT KILIC/AFP/GettyImages
by mindy belz
>>
After Russia and China again vetoed UN Security Council action against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, the frustration and failure of the international community to respond to the latest crisis in the Middle East was undeniable: “The Security Council has failed utterly in its most important task on its agenda this year,” said a visibly angry Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the UN. Seventeen months into what began as a protest movement to bring down Assad, and over 10,000 dead later (some estimate the dead as high as 16,000-19,000), Arab League peace plans and UN resolutions have failed to check a civil war that now threatens the entire region. With a July 18 bombing that killed Syria’s top security officials and nearly daily defections of its ambassadors overseas and other officers, even Assad’s allies readied plans for his 12-year tenure to end and the 46-year-old leader to step down. Instead, his forces brought in heavy weapons and aircraft to beat back rebel gains in the key
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cities of Damascus and Aleppo on July 24, and retreat did not seem imminent. On July 22 alone, one opposition group (the Local Coordination Committees of Syria) reported 111 civilians killed. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters, “The battle for the capital, the decisive fight” is underway. As threatening as the current situation appears, it is nothing compared to what a postAssad Syria may look like. While the opposition is composed of legitimate, longstanding groups like the Syrian National Council, they are increasingly co-opted by outside forces, including al-Qaeda-linked terror groups. The potential for such groups to acquire Syria’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which include some of the largest chemical and biological stores in the region, plus nuclear capability, is critical, according to former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton: “The global threat to innocent civilians is tremendous, including not just actual weapons, but also critical precursor materials and manufacturcivil war: Syrian ing equipment. We must rebels attack the not permit terrorists like municipal building al-Qaeda or Hezbollah in of Selehattin, near next-door Lebanon, rogue Aleppo on July 23. A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Dispatches > News
If all goes well, NASA scientists will spend the early morning hours of Aug. watching over the landing of another rover on Mars. It’s taken more than eight months for Curiosity to reach the Red Planet, but safely landing might be the hardest part. The newest Mars rover, which will join Opportunity on the nearby planet, will have to slow from , miles per hour to zero in under minutes.
LOOKING AHEAD Men’s basketball gold medal game If the U.S.
The damaged Im Al-Zinar church in Homs
making them targets of government-led bombardments. One Christian family of five from Homs told Barnabas Fund that rebels drove them from their home, and looted or destroyed most of their property, even as one of the daughters was wounded by rebel gunfire. Another Christian family was reported targeted and killed by al-Qaeda-linked gunmen on July in Bab Touma, a largely Christian neighborhood at the end of Straight Street near the Old City of Damascus. Perhaps not surprisingly, the work of Christian missions in the war-torn country continues. The Aleppo-based Armenian Christian Medical Association, which runs medical clinics throughout the region, last week prepared for mission trips to Turkey and Moldova even as closer-to-home needs escalated. Asked how the group could depart amidst fighting and instability, one lead doctor (who is not named for security reasons) told me, “We don’t combine the crisis in country with our missions. We combine it with our zeal and burden of the Lord and expansion of His kingdom.” A
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Tyson Chandler
men’s basketball team performs as most expect, it should be playing for a gold medal on Aug. . The men’s basketball finale will close out the London games. At the closing ceremony, officials with the London games will pass the torch to officials heading up Rio de Janeiro’s efforts in .
PGA Championship
The world’s best golfers tee off at The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Course on Aug. for the opening rounds of the PGA Championship. The major’s normal scheduling date of early August will likely be put in quadrennial jeopardy beginning in when golf returns as an Olympic sport.
Puerto Rican vote Puerto Rico will hold a
status referendum on Aug. in which voters could decide to ask for statehood, complete independence, or a continuation of territorial status under the United States flag. Voters narrowly rejected statehood in a referendum, but this time could be different. Puerto Rico’s governor, Republican Luis Fortuño, supports the measure. If the Caribbean island votes for statehood, lawmakers in Washington would have to clear the way before statehood could occur.
Kenya voting exercise
In an attempt to avoid the violence of the Kenyan presidential elections, the African nation will conduct a massive new voter registration exercise on Aug. . The exercise, which will target some million Kenyans, is part of the nation’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s attempt to smooth out the voting process. An estimated were killed in the violence that followed the widely disputed election.
CHURCH: YAZEN HOMSY/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • CURIOSITY: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/AP • CHANDLER: ALEX BRANDON/AP • PGA TROPHY: MONTANA PRITCHARD/THE PGA OF AMERICA • FLAGS: TIPHOTOS/NEWSCOM • KENYA: STEPHEN MORRISON/EPA/NEWSCOM
states or a radical Syrian successor regime to acquire these capabilities. The time available is short, and the risks we face in attempting to secure or destroy Syria’s WMD are high.” Already Syria’s Christians, who number about percent or more of the population, know that many in the rebel contingent are no patriots. Last week Christian workers in Syria provided photos to WORLD of widespread damage to churches in Homs. Contrary to other media reports, clergy in Homs claim that the churches came under direct attack from rebel fighters, and that fighters took up positions in the churches,
Mars rover landing
AUGUST 11, 2012
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Dispatches > News
Nightmare and narrow escapes For victims of the Colorado theater shooting, the early minutes of watching The Dark Knight Rises held both By Ruth Gibson
WORLD August 11, 2012
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sullivan: Barry Gutierrez/ap • Pourciau: handout • prayer: Matthew Staver/The New York Times/redux CREDIT
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wheaton and ryken: handouts • webb: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images
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Elizabeth Sumrall was driving home cross-country from Seattle to Baton Rouge, but didn’t want to make the trip by herself. She asked her friend Bonnie Kate Pourciau, also from Baton Rouge and just back from a three months’ mission trip to Haiti, to ride along. The two ended up stopping in Denver for the night and decided to go to the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Theater 9 at the AMC Aurora Century 16. The two first sat in the front row, but moved to a back row just before the film started—narrowly escaping the gunman who released teargas and began firing into the crowded theater minutes into the July 20 showing. When Pourciau heard the shots she grabbed Sumrall and they ducked under the chairs, but Pourciau’s leg felt like it had been hit by a two-by-four. When the shooting stopped, the room filled with screams and moaning. The toll: 12 theatergoers dead and 58 wounded, including Pourciau. A bullet embedded in the bone of her left leg required 17 hours of surgery to save the leg from amputation. In a theater crowded with young people, the dead included a man celebrating his 27th birthday, a Navy sailor, a 6-year-old girl, and two men who shielded their girlfriends from the gunfire. Police arrested 24-year-old James Holmes at the scene with an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and a .40 caliber Glock handgun. Police found another Glock in the theater. Holmes bought the four guns legally from local gun shops and ordered more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition online. Pourciau likely took her hit from the assault rifle. Holmes told police there were additional explosives in his apartment, and authorities evacuated five apartment buildings as the FBI, ATF agents, the Aurora police and fire departments spent three days disarming the suspect’s apartment. Holmes made his first court appearance July 23, with formal charges scheduled July 30. The incident recalled another Colorado shooting spree targeting young people, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 12 students and one teacher. Pourciau, who is 18 and the oldest of seven children, was homeschooled and hopes to pursue missions work. Two days after the shooting she had hospital visits from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and President Barack Obama. She faces further surgery but said of Holmes: “Part of me is really angry … that someone would do such a thing and take so many lives and hurt so many lives and affect so many lives. But at the same time, I feel so much for him and feel compassionate for him and I just hope and pray darkness and light: he will come to know forgiveness and Tom Sullivan, father of the mercy that God has and that his slain victim Alex Sullivan, mourns with family heart will be changed.” members; Obama visits —with reporting by Sarah Padbury, Bonnie Kate; people pray in Denver; Ruth Gibson is an intern at a cross near the Century 16 movie theater. with World on Campus
Senate hold
Damage control
SULLIVAN: BARRY GUTIERREZ/AP • POURCIAU: HANDOUT • PRAYER: MATTHEW STAVER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX CREDIT
WHEATON AND RYKEN: HANDOUTS • WEBB: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Wheaton College sues federal government over contraceptive mandate Wheaton College, the most prominent evangelical college in the country, joined a chorus of Catholic and Protestant institutions suing the federal government over the contraceptive mandate. The lawsuit, filed July in D.C. District Court, says the federal government’s requirement that the college provide insurance coverage for abortifacients and related counseling violates Wheaton’s religious freedom and free speech. Under the mandate, the college would have to provide full insurance coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptives, which include Plan B, the “morning-after” pill, and Ella, the “week-after” pill. The Obama administration now faces lawsuits over the mandate. Wheaton President Philip Ryken wrote letters to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius beginning in September registering the college’s objection to the mandate. He said the college’s board made the decision to file a lawsuit in May, but wanted to wait until after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its healthcare decision in case that would resolve their complaint. “Most of the discussion and deliberation hasn’t been, ‘Should we file a lawsuit?’ Our convictions around this have been pretty clear,” said Ryken. “We believe at this point we don’t have any other options. … The only other options are ones that are damaging to our institution.” Paying the penalties would cost the college an estimated . million. And paying for insurance that covers abortifacients, he explained, would compromise the college’s integrity: “That shows that the federal government has put us in an untenable position.” Asked about the Chicago-area college’s lawsuit, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he hadn’t heard about it, but repeated that President Obama “was committed to finding a balance between religious liberty ... and the need to ensure that women had access to important preventive services, including contraception.” Ryken said he’s been in conversations about the mandate over the last year with other Christian college presidents, and he expects more lawsuits by the end of the summer. He couldn’t recall any time in Wheaton’s recent history when it had filed a lawsuit against the federal government. “That in itself is a sign,” he said. “We’ve never felt the need to defend our religious liberties to this extent.”
The Senate is holding up a bill establishing a new State Department envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East, provoking outcry from religious freedom groups that have been pushing for the new position. Those advocates think the position will help focus the U.S. government’s attention on the worsening situation in that part of the world. The legislation passed overwhelmingly in the House, -, last summer. But Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. (below), placed a hold on it, citing the State Department’s opposition to the new position. The State Department says it duplicates the work of the ambassador for international religious freedom, and that the agency would have to redirect money for the new position away from current religious freedom efforts. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who was the chief sponsor of the envoy bill, wrote Webb last month to urge him to change his position: “Will a special envoy guarantee [religious minorities’] survival—and even flourishing—in the lands they have inhabited for centuries? I do not know. But I am certain, that to do nothing is not an option—lest on this administration’s and this Congress’ watch we witness a Middle East emptied of ancient faith communities, foremost among them the beleaguered Christian community.” If the Senate doesn’t pass the bill this year, the legislative process would have to start over in Congress’ next term.
AUGUST 11, 2012
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WORLD
7/24/12 2:49 PM
Dispatches > News
Protecting ‘monsters’
Monsignor William Lynn on July 24 received a sentence of three to six years in prison for one count of felony child endangerment. Lynn, 61, was secretary of the clergy in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and is the first Roman Catholic Church official convicted for covering up clergy sexual abuse in the United States. Lynn protected “monsters in clerical garb who molested children” when he transferred priests accused of sexual abuse to other parishes without warning the parishes, said Judge M. Teresa Sarmina during sentencing. “You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong.” Lynn’s attorneys had sought probation for Lynn, and they promise to appeal the conviction. Another Catholic official, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, will stand trial in August on a misdemeanor charge of failing to report suspected child sexual abuse.
Not Gates’ girls
FAMILY PLANNING: A health worker administers a contraceptive injection to a woman in a health clinic in Busia, Uganda.
Worthy of respect
After a two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) on July 17 reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest campaigns by pro-homosexual groups and media. An 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, unanimously concluded that the exclusion policy “is absolutely the best policy” for the 102-year-old organization, a BSA spokesman told the Associated Press. Critics raged but profamily groups praised the decision: “Whether it’s learning how to sharpen a knife, cook a meal, or help a neighbor, the BSA has invested billions of hours into creating generations of responsible citizens,” said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. “But more importantly, the Scouts are teaching boys something our culture doesn’t: how to become men worthy of respect.”
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Lynn: Brynn Anderson/ap • Contraceptives: SHASHANK BENGALI/MCT/Lando • Beijing: Imaginechina/ap CREDIT
A July 12 family-planning summit in London drew $4.6 billion in pledges to further the use of contraceptives, targeting 120 million poor women in the developing world. The largest donors included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—lead private sponsor of the one-day event—along with a handful of European countries. In the United States, the Hewlett Foundation and Packard Foundation pledged to fund political advocacy to stress the “unmet need” for contraceptives around the world. But not every woman in a developing country is a fan. “We need justice, not drugs” begins a video presentation featuring African and Asian women who denounce the dangerous side effects of contraceptives and point out that Gates’ partners include “the largest abortion providers in the world.” Contraceptives “do not help us get what we really need,” they said in a presentation sponsored by Human Life International, “and they are not good for our health. ... Ms. Gates, we can do better.”
waterlogged A July 22 rainstorm that dumped six inches of water on Beijing in a few hours claimed 37 lives and left nearly 2 million people in the Chinese capital waterlogged and without electricity. Parts of major expressways remained under several feet of water a day later, and many residents blamed the government: “China has been investing heavily in construction in recent years, and the glossy appearance of the cities is eyecatching,” said one writing on a micro-blogging site. “However, the huge loss from the rainstorm in Beijing has exposed the flaws of the city’s infrastructure, which should raise an alarm for the policy makers.”
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Dispatches > News
looking for work. The results were significant: increased employment for single mothers, the lowest poverty rate for black children in U.S. history, and a welfare caseload that had been cut nearly in half four years after the law was enacted. Before the Clinton-era reform law, individuals remained on welfare for an average of 13 years. Today the average is less than two years. Fiscal conservatives fear that number may rise again in the aftermath of the Obama administration’s decision. “They will be recreating the old system that said, ‘It’s fine if you spend a lifetime on welfare and in poverty,’” said Kiki Bradley, the former associate director of the federal welfare program, now with the Heritage Foundation. “Saying that people do not have to engage in work steals away dignity from the welfare recipient.” A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office highlighted the need for stringent work requirements. The GAO found that numerous states had defined as work for those seeking welfare such activities as bed rest, personal care, massage, exercise, journaling, motivational reading, smoking cessation, weight loss promotion, participating in parent-teacher meetings, and helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands. —Edward Lee Pitts
(USA) in its General Assembly meeting in Pittsburgh last month voted narrowly to maintain a traditional definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. (A marriage issues committee earlier recommended changing it to a union between “two people.”) After the final vote, moderator Neal Presa acknowledged in prayer, “Some of us weep while some of us rejoice. We are a divided church.” The Episcopal Church in its General Convention took another step toward “full inclusion” of homosexuals, overwhelmingly approving a liturgy to bless same-sex couples. The rite does not actually use the words “marriage,” “husband,” or “wife”—The Episcopal
hatch: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images • mother and child: istock • Food Assistance: Joe Raedle/Getty Images CREDIT
Congressional Republicans on July 18 introduced legislation to block the Obama administration’s recent decision to ease long-standing welfare work requirements—six days after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new directive informing states they may request waivers from the work mandates written into the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. That law moved 2.8 million families off welfare rolls. “Gutting welfare work requirements with the stroke of a pen and without congressional input is simply unacceptable and cannot be allowed to stand,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the sponsor of the bill, also introduced in the House, that would stop the executive branch from unilaterally weakening the welfare work rules. But the measure faces an uncertain future in a Senate controlled by Democrats. Sixteen years ago the work obligation became the heart of the reform movement designed to end welfare’s status as an open-ended entitlement by requiring those seeking welfare payments to devote at least 20-30 hours per week working or
The Presbyterian Church
Church still defines marriage as a heterosexual union—but dubbed the ceremony “The Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant.” Priests may use the liturgy whether or not gay “marriage” is legal in their state.
Food stamp bubble A battle over the growth of food stamps has halted debate in Congress over the new five-year, $958 billion farm bill. With the current farm bill set to expire on Sept. 30, the Senate and House remain more than $12 billion apart on reductions to the farm bill’s nutritional assistance program known as food stamps. With loosened eligibility requirements, nearly 46 million Americans are on food stamps today. That’s a 64 percent increase from the 28 million participants in 2008. The cost of the program totaled $72 billion in 2011, a 70 percent jump from 2007. House Republicans originally called for $33 billion in cuts to the program, but now have advanced a bill that includes cuts of $16.5 billion. The Senate’s farm bill includes just $4 billion in food stamp cuts.
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tom mills/genesis
Welfare unreformed
The church & marriage
Alan astray? Statements from leader of ministry to gays raise concerns By Jamie Dean
hatch: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images • mother and child: istock • Food Assistance: Joe Raedle/Getty Images CREDIT
tom mills/genesis
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Alan Chambers still believes that change is possible for homosexuals, but he says he’s realistic about the process: It’s usually a lifelong struggle. The president of Exodus International— a Christian ministry that helps people grappling with homosexuality—surprised many in June by announcing a change in the organization: The group would no longer endorse reparative therapy—a form of counseling that aims to help a person change his sexual orientation. Chambers says reparative therapy has some helpful elements but he’s wary of claims that the approach could “cure” a person of same-sex attraction, and worries such claims could set up unrealistic expectations for those seeking help. He says a person could battle homosexual temptation the rest of his life, and sees Christian discipleship in a local church as the key to confronting sin and pursuing holiness over a lifetime. At least 12 affiliated organizations have left the Exodus network since the announcement. More than 200 remain. For some, the biggest controversy hasn’t been over Exodus’ break with reparative therapy but over recent comments that Chambers has made about homosexuality and Christianity. In January, Chambers spoke on a panel at the Gay Christian Network, an organization that describes itself as “a nonprofit ministry serving Christians who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.” Chambers defended Exodus’ work to the group, but also told attendees: “We’re Christians, all of us,” and “we all love Jesus.” In an interview with The Atlantic in June, Chambers reaffirmed that homosexuality is a sin. When asked
if a person living a gay lifestyle would escape hell as along as he has accepted Christ as his savior, Chambers replied in part: “… while behavior matters, those things don’t interrupt someone’s relationship with Christ.” Those comments led Robert Gagnon, an associate professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, to call for Chambers’ resignation. Gagnon, who has written about homosexuality and spoken at Exodus events, says it’s unbiblical to assure people living in lifelong, unrepentant sin that they will go to heaven. “Alan’s approach of providing assurances of salvation to those actively engaged in sexually immoral intercourse is a very different approach than Jesus’ and Paul’s warnings that immoral sexual behavior, among other offenses, can get one excluded from the kingdom of God and thrown into hell,” Gagnon wrote in a 35-page paper in July. In a phone interview in mid-July, Chambers—WORLD’s 2011 “Daniel of the Year”—said he believes that persistent, unrepentant sin isn’t compatible with mature Christianity, but emphasizes that Christians struggle with sins of all kinds without losing their salvation. But what if a person doesn’t struggle? What if he claims Christianity but doesn’t believe that his homosexuality
is sinful? Could the fruit of a person’s life indicate the state of his soul? Chambers replies: “Sure. I think the Scripture is clear that there are people who will say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and Jesus will say, ‘I never knew you.’ But I can’t judge someone’s salvation. … If they say to me that they are believers … I can’t tell them that they’re not.” Chambers’ central argument: If a person is saved, he can’t lose his salvation. His critics’ central response: If a person is unrepentant, it could be sign that he was never saved at all. In that case, Gagnon says: “The actual result is to leave such persons deceived by giving them a message of ‘peace and security’ when instead danger hangs over them.” Despite weighty theological questions, Chambers, who lived an active gay lifestyle for years before leaving it behind, says he hasn’t changed the message that homosexuals should leave their sin: “It would be impossible to look at my life and say that I am condoning anything other than a life surrendered to Jesus Christ.” Exodus supporters will be watching to see if the group’s work continues to include the message that Chambers told a small gathering in Orlando last year. “Is change possible?” he asked. “If you know Jesus, anything is possible.” A A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Dispatches > Human Race
APPREHENDED Authorities arrested on July a -year-old suspected Nazi war criminal described as being “particularly sadistic” in his treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Laszlo Csatary, who had lived under his real name in Hungary for many years, now faces war crime charges of “unlawful torture of human beings” stemming from his work as the police chief of an internment camp that deported Jews to death camps. In a Czechoslovakian court convicted Csatary in absentia and sentenced him to death for war crimes.
WORLD
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allows Seth and Melinda Moser to move forward with again adopting Jamison, now .
PROTECTED An Arizona law set to take effect on Aug. protects unborn children from abortion once weeks have passed since a woman’s last missed period. That’s about weeks after fertilization. That’s the earliest deadline in any state, and abortion advocates have filed a federal lawsuit that claims the law is unconstitutional. Laws in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Oklahoma protect unborn children weeks after fertilization. Don Grady
DIED Motivational self-help speaker Stephen Covey, author of the best-selling The Habits of Highly Effective People, died July at age . In his Covey Leadership Center merged with Franklin Quest to become the Franklin Covey Company. DIED Else Holmelund Minarik, the Denmark-born author who enchanted young readers with her Little Bear series, died July at age . Minarik penned her first book about Little Bear after she became dissatisfied with the reading options for her first-grade students. Harper & Row first published Little Bear, with illustrations by the late Maurice Sendak, in as the inaugural title in the company’s I Can Read! series. DIED My Three Sons actor Don Grady, who played Grady Robbie, the elder son of Fred MacMurray’s widower character, died June at age . The former Mouseketeer was also a musician and composer who created the theme song for Phil Donahue’s talk show.
WOODLIEF: HANDOUT • ROMERO: TAMMY LJUNGBLAD/THE KANSAS CITY STAR/AP • COVEY: RIC FELD/AP • GRADY: CBS/GETTY IMAGES CREDIT
MATCHED When Jonathan and Caitlin Woodlief got married last October, the prospect of a long life together was bleak. Jonathan, suffering from lupus, needed another kidney transplant after a kidney his mother gave him began deteriorating. Doctors warned him his chances of finding another perfect donor match were as likely as winning the lottery. A few months after their wedding, though, the couple was stunned to learn Caitlin was a perfect match. Earlier this summer the seminary graduates underwent surgery for the transplant and are recovering at home.
DENIED A Missouri judge ruled that the son of an illegal immigrant should remain in the custody of his adoptive parents who took him in after his biological mother’s arrest on immigration charges in . After her release from prison, Encarnacion Bail Romero sought to regain custody, arguing that parental rights were unfairly terminated. In the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial after agreeing that adoption laws weren’t followed. The July ruling, which reaffirmed the original decision,
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Dispatches > Quotables
‘What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?’ Jim Holmes, 52, of Aurora, Colo., after Brian Ross (left) of ABC News suggested on Good Morning America that Holmes, as a member of the Colorado Tea Party, may have been the Aurora, Colo., killer. A different James Holmes, age 24, was the real killer. “How do we take a journalist seriously,” said the non-murdering Holmes, “when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?”
‘Guilty as charged.’ Dan Cathy, president of the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain, on the company’s support for “the biblical definition of the family unit.” The statement generated strong opposition, including a promise from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to make it difficult for the chain to obtain licenses to open restaurants in his city. 16
Penn State students react as the NCAA sanctions are announced
‘$60 million’ Fine imposed by the NCAA on Penn State University for covering up the sexual abuse of children by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The NCAA on July 23 also reduced the number of football scholarships at Penn State, banned the football team from postseason play for four years, and vacated the team’s victories from 1998 to 2011. A report by former FBI director Louis Freeh concluded that the late Penn State coach Joe Paterno and other school officials had known about Sandusky’s crimes for years.
‘It was on the second bite.’ Delta passenger James Tonjes on discovering a needle inside his sandwich on a July 15 flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. Tonjes underwent treatment after the needle punctured the top of his mouth. Five passengers discovered needles on flights from Amsterdam the same day. The FBI opened an investigation, but Dutch officials said they did not suspect terrorism.
cathy: White House Official Photographer/WENN/newscom • holmes: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/getty images • ross: Jennifer Graylock/ap • penn state: Gene J. Puskar/ap • Tonjes: Jim Mone/ap CREDIT
Former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman on the gunman who killed 12 people and wounded 58 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20. Colorado, a state with a death penalty, has executed only one person since 1977. District Attorney Carol Chambers on July 23 said authorities had not decided whether to seek the death penalty for Holmes (above): “It will be a conversation we have with the victims before we make that decision.”
WORLD August 11, 2012
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CREDIT
‘If James Holmes isn’t executed, Colorado may as well throw away its death penalty law.’
CREDIT
cathy: White House Official Photographer/WENN/newscom • holmes: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/getty images • ross: Jennifer Graylock/ap • penn state: Gene J. Puskar/ap • Tonjes: Jim Mone/ap CREDIT
7/24/12 9:35 AM
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Dispatches > Quick Takes
Ray Crockett thought he was getting a deal when he pulled his car into a Mapco gas station reputed to have some of the cheapest unleaded in Nashville—at . per gallon. Then, he checked his bank statement. His receipt from the filling station indicated he was charged for the July fill-up, but bank records showed his debit card was billed ,.. After calling Citibank, a service representative confirmed to him that the bank had indeed paid ,. to the gas station, leaving his account more than , overcharged. Worse still, the service station claimed it never received the overpayment, meaning Crockett lost access to his banking account for six days until the dispute was finally resolved. Mapco, which according to local reports has overcharged people for gas, later accepted blame for keying in the wrong numbers.
It’s the type of find that people dream of. An Ohio man digging through his grandfather’s attic unearthed a soot-covered cardboard box containing century-old baseball cards worth an estimated million. Karl Kissner of Defiance, Ohio, made the find earlier this year while administrating the estate of his late aunt. Kissner’s grandparents lived in the home until their death, when his pack-rat aunt took it over. Not knowing the value of the card collection, Kissner sent a sample to the Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, which specializes in such items. The collection, found to be in nearly pristine shape wrapped and bundled in twine inside the box, was part of a series likely distributed to Kissner’s grandfather, a butcher, as part of a promotional deal with a candy company. Inside the collection were cards of Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, and other hall-of-famers. “We guess he stuck them in the attic and forgot about them,” Kissner said. “They remained there frozen in time.”
Angele Hardman of Sandy, Utah, allegedly had an elaborate plan to pilfer and then pawn a ring from a jeweler. According to police, Hardman visited the jewelry section of a local Macy’s to try on an engagement ring. According to store employees, the -year-old claimed she couldn’t get the ring off her finger. When a store employee turned away to get help, Hardman quickly slipped off the ring and pulled a cheaply made replica out of her pocket, informing the attendant she’d managed to slide it off. Wise to the scheme, the employee recognized the fake and called security. But after searching Hardman for the real ring—and not finding it—authorities released her. Only later in the police investigation did Hardman reveal how she made the ring disappear: She swallowed it and waited for the “natural digestive process” to take its course before pawning it.
’ A Charlton, Mass., resident will soon be out a few thousand dollars after the city ordered her to erect a fence to stop her Corgi from herding passing joggers and walkers. After complaints stretching back to October when Charley the Corgi was just five months old, the city’s selectmen ordered owner Cynthia Anderson to put up a suitable fence to curb the dog’s herding instinct. Anderson, who is complying with the order, says the fence will set her back ,.
WORLD
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ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • SICKLES: WASHINGTON, PA POLICE DEPT. • COBB CARD: HERITAGE AUCTIONS/AP • RING & PLATE: CREDIT GRANT FAINT & JEFFREY COOLIDGE/GETTY IMAGES • FENCE: STOCKBYTE/GETTY IMAGES
Police in southwestern Pennsylvania familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretel didn’t have much trouble finding a burglary suspect. Washington, Pa., police say they arrested -year-old Benjamin Sickles after following a trail of empty potato chip bags from a Subway restaurant where earlier on July authorities say someone broke in and stole nine bags of chips. According to police, the burglar broke a glass door before trying to get cash from the register. Failing that, the suspect allegedly grabbed as many chip bags as he could carry before trudging home. Officers arrested Sickles when his bag trail led officers to discover him and his badly cut hand.
WORLDmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views
7/24/12 4:18 PM
BLOWTORCH: COMSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES • RUSSELL: ANDREW BUCKLEY/FORT WORTH CREDITSTAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/LANDOV • JORDAN: MIKE POWELL/ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE
ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • SICKLES: WASHINGTON, PA POLICE DEPT. • COBB CARD: HERITAGE AUCTIONS/AP • RING & PLATE: CREDIT GRANT FAINT & JEFFREY COOLIDGE/GETTY IMAGES • FENCE: STOCKBYTE/GETTY IMAGES
BLOWTORCH: COMSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES • RUSSELL: ANDREW BUCKLEY/FORT WORTH CREDITSTAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/LANDOV • JORDAN: MIKE POWELL/ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE
Some people remove spider webs with dusters while others use vacuums. On July , Eiliya Maida used a propane blowtorch to try to remove cobwebs from the exterior of his Chico, Calif., home. The result: Maida accidentally ignited some brush, which in turn set off an attic fire. A neighbor’s quick call to the fire department ensured that the blaze didn’t get too far out of control.
More than four decades after reporting it stolen, Texas resident Bob Russell finally found his beloved Austin Healey sports coupe—for sale on eBay. Russell says his Healey was stolen in when he lived in Philadelphia. Ever since eBay became popular, he’s been searching for his long-lost prized possession. So when he spotted a Healey for sale on eBay in May with a matching vehicle identification number, he pounced, calling the dealer. “I hate to sound indelicate, but you’re selling a stolen car,” Russell told a representative with the Beverly Hills Car Club, which posted the ad. But despite having the original key, title, and sworn affidavits from friends, the reseller wouldn’t budge. So after locating the original stolen car report from Philadelphia police, Russell was able to have Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies impound the antique car on June . Two days later, Russell and his wife drove out from their Dallas suburb to lay claim to the Healey after paying the impoundment fee. “I couldn’t get the credit card out of my pocket fast enough,” he said.
If you ask Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant to compare the Team U.S.A. basketball squad with the much-ballyhooed Dream Team, Bryant will tell you his team would win. In the run-up to the London Games, Bryant claimed his team featuring himself, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, among others, could take down the star-studded roster that included Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, and Charles Barkley. When asked about Bryant’s comments, Jordan laughed it off, saying it was “not one of the smarter things he ever could have done.” But, through his Twitter account, hall-of-famer Larry Bird allowed that Bryant was probably right: “They probably could. I haven’t played in years and we’re all old now.”
’ Armed intruders into a blind and elderly Pennsylvania man’s home may have expected an easy robbery. But the Beechview, Pa., homeowner, whose name has been withheld by authorities, had other ideas. After the two assailants entered his home posing as utility workers on July , they quickly thrust a gun at the -year-old man’s face. The elderly homeowner knocked the gun away only to be attacked with a stun gun. After escaping to his kitchen, the blind man grabbed a pot to fend off the attackers and yelled out, “John, call the police,” in an attempted ruse to scare the two assailants. The trick worked, and the armed men fled from the home. AUGUST 11, 2012
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WORLD
7/24/12 4:18 PM
Janie B. Cheaney
Of things and men
A tangle of rules and administration is creating a new and troubling kind of government
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WORLD
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AUGUST 11, 2012
revolution would clear the way. When violent revolution came, and failed to eliminate the state, the authors of The ABC of Communism () counseled patience: Once all adult members of society were actively participating in production, “the government of men will be replaced by the administration of things—of machinery, buildings, locomotives and other apparatus.” Stalin had other ideas, which included the elimination of the authors of The ABC of Communism. In the United States, the administration of things has taken a more benign path, with “things” retaining the broader sense of desirable goals, like security and well-being. But the effects are not benign. Modern administration is a computergenerated digitocracy, doubling or tripling the paperwork of the old filing-cabinet system. For responsiveness, a computer is no improvement over a filing cabinet, as anyone who has tried to dispute an EPA ruling knows. The healthcare law is a milestone of “thingness.” Nancy Pelosi’s famous dictum that we must pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it is only partly true: We’ll never know its full potential for mischief. Already it involves over agencies and bureaus, levies new or higher taxes, requires , IRS employees, and has generated , pages of regulations—so far. The phrase “the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] shall determine” appears , times in the bill, and what this unelected autocrat shall determine is limited only by her ambition. The president may call it Obamacare, but he knows no more about it than the average congressman—it’s the work of nameless staffers. When ,-page legislation is passed with few if any of those who voted for it having actually read it, we might deduce that no one is really in charge. Engels was right, in a way: Government as we know it is withering, its original form barely discernible in the tangle of administration, like trees in a kudzu forest. What seemed like a good idea to Saint-Simon is actually a headless beast, and the administration of things threatens to become the thingification of men. A
AKG-IMAGES/NEWSCOM
R - , where we learned the three basic forms of governance? If not, they are democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy; government by the many, the few, and the one. Our own government is becoming harder to classify. While officially it’s a democracy (or a democratic republic), rumors persist about an imperial president or a cabal of elitists who really run things. But another form of government begs recognition: bureaucracy, or “rule by a piece of office furniture.” That metaphor comes from The Administration of Things: a Genealogy, by Ben Kafka of New York University. The title of his essay is a phrase attributed to Claude-Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon, a French aristocrat who barely survived the Reign of Terror to become a political philosopher. The job didn’t pay much, but had its perks, including a circle of admirers who popularized the principle attributed to him: that “the government of men must be replaced by the administration of things.” This idea from a little-known intellectual has had an interesting history. Originally “the administration of things” was supposed to mean human emancipation. Saint-Simon and his followers defined “things” in the broadest possible sense: goals, traditions, principal products, even weather. These were to be administered according to science rather than metaphysics, by what could be known as opposed to what couldn’t. Religion, whatever benefit it was to the soul, had no place in government. Science measured real, objective stuff—“thingness.” Things could be administered for the good of man without religious interference. When Friedrich Engels, colleague of Karl Marx, encountered Saint-Simon’s formula, he tied it to communist theory. Government was the ruling class’s tool of repression. When, in the natural course of history, workers took over the production of things (material goods, by his definition), the state would have nothing to repress, therefore its function would disappear and government as we know it would wither away, leaving only administration. That made sense to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, but he didn’t see it coming about naturally—violent
Email: jcheaney@worldmag.com
7/19/12 3:29 PM
AKG-IMAGES/NEWSCOM
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Reviews Movies & TV > Books > Q&A > Music
WARNER BROS. PICTURES/DC COMICS
Going there MOVIE: The Dark Knight Rises powerfully portrays the logical results of relativism and socialism BY MEGAN BASHAM
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I with a film blog two weeks before The Dark Knight Rises released on July , screenwriter Jonathan Nolan commented, “What I always felt like we needed to do in a third film was, for lack of a better term, go there.” He meant, he explained, that though the previous two films threatened the collapse of all social structure on the streets of Gotham, the threat was always averted (thanks to a certain caped billionaire). But while watching the final film of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, where law and order do indeed collapse, you can’t help thinking that he may have meant something else as well. He
Email: mbasham@worldmag.com
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may have meant that he and his brother decided to demonstrate the logical conclusion of ideas held up as virtuous by almost everyone else in their industry. One such idea is the currently in-vogue income equality. There’s no doubt that The Dark Knight Rises (rated PG- for action violence and language) presents a vigorous defense of the free market and private enterprise (those mainstream reviewers who claim the film’s political themes are muddy are dishonest, blind, or still struggling to come to terms with their disappointment in Nolan). The most persuasive piece of evidence on this point is the character arc of “cat” burglar Selina Kyle. Delightfully played with old-fashioned wit CLASS CONFLICT: and verve by Anne Bane (Tom Hardy) Hathaway, Selina begins and Bruce Wayne as a fervent parroter of (Christian Bale). AUGUST 11, 2012
WORLD
7/24/12 5:02 PM
Reviews > Movies & TV
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WORLD August 11, 2012
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Box Office Top 10 For the weekend of July 20-22 according to Box Office Mojo
cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
S V L 1̀
The Dark Knight Rises* PG-13................................2 7 3 2̀ Ice Age: Continental Drift* PG............ 1 3 2 3̀ The Amazing Spider-Man* PG-13..................3 6 4 4̀ Ted R...............................................8 5 10 5̀ Brave* PG.....................................2 4 1 6̀ Magic Mike R.............................8 4 10 7̀ Savages R....................................8 9 10 8̀ Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection PG-13....4 4 4 9̀ Moonrise Kingdom* PG-13....5 4 3 10 ` To Rome with Love R............6 3 5
*Reviewed by world
7/24/12 5:07 PM
White Collar: David Giesbrecht/USA Network • Weaver: Andrew Eccles/USA Network
Oldman), that the homicidal politician Harvey Dent was a virtuous crusader murdered by Batman. This brings me to a small moment, but one I believe worthy of comment when placed within the context of Nolan’s entire body of work. Throughout the film, young detective John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) maintains, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Batman is innocent and will save the city. Yet, at a pivotal moment, when someone asks him, “Do you really believe he’s coming back?” Blake doesn’t give the answer we expect. He doesn’t say, “I have to believe,” or “I choose to believe,” or any of the other lines we’ve heard in movies like this
hundreds of times before. Instead he says, “It doesn’t matter what I believe.” Of course we know from his previous dialogue that he does believe, so why not say that? He doesn’t say it because whether Batman will or won’t return isn’t decided by what he feels. He cannot create his own truth simply by believing it. There is a terrible sort of irony—given the events in Aurora (see p. 8), Colo.— that how darkness, disease, and mutations fester when human beings try to define reality for themselves is a theme that has informed all of Nolan’s films. We know little about James Holmes at this point, but we do know he did not see himself or those whose lives he took in the light of truth. As we see from Batman’s generous deception regarding Harvey Dent, attempting to live in anything other than objective truth creates sickness of the soul and sickness of society. The good commissioner moves like a haunted man, knowing what a weak foundation the city’s newfound peace is built on. Bruce Wayne cannot find life worth living in the confines his lie has created, leaving his butler Alfred to beg him to “stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day.” There is other weighty symbolism in The Dark Knight Rises that there isn’t the space to treat here. The lengths Selina goes to in her attempt to possess a device that will wipe out all records of her criminal life is particularly worthy of attention. (I hope it isn’t a spoiler to say that none of her efforts secure her the clean slate she seeks, and she only obtains it when she accepts it as a gift.) Likewise, much could be said of how Bruce Wayne must become like a child to escape Bane’s prison. But taken together they bring Nolan’s trilogy to a satisfying conclusion—one with a hero who has at last turned his back on moral relativism and rises indeed. A
Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics
the villain Bane’s socialist banalities. “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,” she purrs, “and when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” Later, however, when Bane has rounded up the wealthy and their spoils have been divided, equality looks nothing like the utopia she imagined. Standing in a burned-out house where squatters abound, she stares at the shattered portrait of a happy family and murmurs, “This was someone’s home.” “Yeah, well, now it’s everyone’s home,” her recalcitrant accomplice replies. Comfort and luxury haven’t been redistributed, but chaos and filth certainly have. Other, smaller moments reinforce Selina’s conversion, such as the scene where Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), who has become a shut-in since the events of the last film, demands to know why his corporation has stopped funding a private Catholic orphanage. His colleague explains that those expenditures are financed by Wayne Industries’ profits—no profits means no charity. When Bruce Wayne, the great Atlas holding his city together, decides he no longer cares about his business, people far down the ladder from him suffer as a result of his shrug. This alone would mark an unusual amount of “going there” for a super hero movie, even a super hero movie directed by Christopher Nolan. But The Dark Knight Rises goes further still to take on ideological sacred cows that were first introduced in Batman Begins and at last find their culmination. It turns out the hulking, masked Bane (Tom Hardy) is, like so many revolutionaries before him, merely striking a populist pose for his own ends. He has no interest in bringing social justice to the masses, but instead wants to carry out Ra’s al Ghul’s (Liam Neeson) plan from the first film to punish a decadent Western culture. To this end, he recruits young men so devoted to his cause, they willingly, reverently even, give up their lives so as to take the lives of others. Part of what allows them to do this is the fiction, created by Batman and covered up by Commissioner Gordon (Gary
strong support: Selina Kyle (Hathaway) and John Blake (Gordon-Levitt).
TELEVISION
Political Animals
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TELEVISION
White Collar
WARNER BROS. PICTURES/DC COMICS
WHITE COLLAR: DAVID GIESBRECHT/USA NETWORK • WEAVER: ANDREW ECCLES/USA NETWORK
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T White Collar,, in its fourth season on USA, is a refreshing break from the standard grizzly television dramas. Drawing from classic prototypes, the show centers on two characters. Charming and likable art thief Neil Caffrey (Matt Bomer), a younger, modern version of David Niven’s Pink Panther, is completing his prison sentence as the criminal informant or “CI” for squeaky clean WHITE FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), an all-star STUFF: white collar investigator who spent three years DeKay, left, chasing Neil before putting him behind bars. and Bomer Much of Agent Burke’s success stems from (above); Thiessen his happy marriage to Elizabeth (Tiffani (below). Thiessen), a supportive and secure wife who loves her husband and encourages him in his work, particularly when it comes to Neil. Neil and Peter make an ideal team. The crimes they solve involve stolen art, stolen Stradivarius violins, stolen diamonds, and sometimes stolen people. Neil’s weakness for beauty often gets them entangled with gorgeous women, but most of the explicit action is left off-screen, and thus far hasn’t involved adultery on Agent Burke’s part. The criminals they deal with are bad, but not sadistic, and they always get caught, oftentimes with the help of Neil’s good friend and confidant Mozzie (Willie Garson). Mozzie is a con man par excellence, and deeply distrusts Agent Burke, who he feels is pulling Neil to the “dark side.” Caught in the middle, Neil is torn between his old life as a con man and his new life as a valuable member of society. He envies Peter’s law-abiding life, but still finds a good heist scintillating. He longs for a wife and family, but can’t resist kissing a beautiful woman. This tension between crime and respectability, or more importantly evil and good, is Neil’s ultimate struggle, adding a deeper level to the storyline, and mirroring the daily battle everyone, this side of Heaven, fights. See all our movie reviews at worldmag.com/movies
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S and a take-no-prisoners personality, Ellen Barrish Hammond, convincingly played by Sigourney Weaver, is the U.S. secretary of state and former first lady in USA’s new cable mini-series Political Animals. The show begins where Ellen’s presidential bid ends: the night she concedes the Democratic primary to her male rival, Paul Garcetti. Her political hopes crushed, Hammond divorces her pompous and philandering husband (Ciarán Hinds), and throws her political fervor behind Garcetti’s campaign. When he sets up shop in the Oval Office, Garcetti taps Hammond as secretary of state but her rise to individual prominence is shackled by family drama and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist by the name of Susan Berg. Intent on ferreting out the truth from a woman she views as a traitor to feminist ideals, Berg leverages her knowledge of a protected Hammond secret—their openly homosexual son’s suicide attempt—in order to shadow the secretary of state for a week. Berg discovers the reality behind the former first family’s televised façade is a labyrinth of family politics and sex (of which a fair amount is shown on screen). Hammond still has a weakness for her womanizing ex-husband, Bud, and a Tiger-mom’s passion for their youngest son, T.J., who throws himself into drug use and rampant same-sex affairs to drown his depression. She leans heavily on her elder son and chief of staff, Douglas, who is trying to balance the demands of a new fiancé and life in a political family. Affairs of state consume very little screen time, which primarily focuses on the Hammond family’s relationships and how their obsession with politics impacts or distorts them. Though the acting is well done, the writers work too hard to make Ellen Barrish Hammond a relatable and sympathetic character and to portray her family troubles as collateral damage from a life devoted to public service. The result is a politically correct puff piece for Democratic women in politics, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is clearly the inspiration for the show. AUGUST 11, 2012
WORLD
7/24/12 5:07 PM
‘Well-ordered souls’ Atheist notes atheism’s failings, Christianity’s wisdom BY MARVIN OLASKY
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De Botton sees religions not as poison but as “repositories of a myriad ingenious concepts with which we can try to assuage a few of the most persistent and unattended ills of secular life.” Atheism, he suggests, fails in providing real community, education, and perspective. It does not foster kindness or tenderness. It produces pessimism and fails to create a true appreciation of art, architecture, and important institutions. Christians, of course, should not spend our time defending religions in general, because some are poisonous. What about
are knowledgeable.” That’s the mood we must be in before true learning takes place. De Botton also praises a Christian understanding about the deeper purpose of art: “To guide us to what we should worship and revile if we wish to be sane, good people in possession of well-ordered souls. It is a mechanism whereby our memories are forcibly jogged about what we have to love and to be grateful for, as well as what we should draw away from and be afraid of.” He creatively proposes that museums not group their works of art in galleries organized by centuries or genres, but by the emotions about which they hope to teach: He hopes to see separate galleries of suffering, compassion, fear, love, and so forth. Yet, for all his good analysis, de Botton ends up sticking to his atheism and following the th-century French sociologist Auguste Comte, who tried to create a religion of humanity with its own rituals and saints, such as Cicero and Goethe. De Botton proposes fellowship dinners and other ways to build community, but he’s asking readers to drive cars from which the engines have been removed. De Botton, from a Sephardic Jewish family, was born in Zurich but resides in London. He argued in a BBC broadcast last August that pessimism is the key to happiness, because the gap between aspirations and reality will kill us unless we reduce our worldly aspirations as Christianity does. True—but Christians are cheerful pessimists because we are optimistic about resurrection. A
DE BOTTON: HANDOUT
S think we must sue for peace with rampaging New Atheists, but their extremism may already have peaked. Five years ago I debated Christopher Hitchens and was amazed at his insistent defense of an untenable position: “Religion poisons everything.” Now Pantheon, a left-wing publisher, has come out with Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists (), which notes, “The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed.”
Christianity? De Botton calls the Christian church “uniquely clear-eyed and unsentimental about earthly reality. It does not assume that politics could ever create perfect justice, that any marriage could be free of conflict or dissent, that money could ever deliver security, that a friend could be unfailingly loyal or, more generally, that Heavenly Jerusalem could be built on ordinary ground.” He admits that “the secular world has been too sentimental and cowardly to embrace” such an understanding: “It is the secular whose longing for perfection has grown so intense as to lead them to imagine that paradise might be realized on this earth after just a few more years of financial growth and medical research. With no evident awareness of the contradiction they may, in the same breath, gruffly dismiss a belief in angels while sincerely trusting that the combined powers of the IMF, the medical research establishment, Silicon Valley, and democratic politics could together cure the ills of mankind.” De Botton notes a good reason for suffering: “Christianity hints that if our bodies were immune to pain or decay, we would be monsters.” He eviscerates secular education, noting the inadequacy of standard secular lectures when compared to deeper understanding: True Christian education “has no patience with theories that dwell on our independence or our maturity. It instead believes us to be at heart desperate, fragile, vulnerable, sinful creatures, a good deal less wise than we
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
7/20/12 1:14 PM
WEISGARBER: HANDOUT
Reviews > Books
NOTABLE BOOKS Four recent crime novels > reviewed by
Northwest Angle William Kent Krueger Retired sheriff Cork O’Connor decides a vacation will help bring happiness to his family, still mourning the death of his wife. A violent storm, called a derecho, sweeps through the northern Minnesota lake area, separating family members and stranding Cork’s daughter on an island where she finds an abandoned baby and the body of the baby’s murdered mother. A cat-and-mouse chase between the girl and the murderer ensues. O’Connor’s mysteries combine a deep appreciation for the Minnesota wilderness and Indian culture, which he blends with a strong Catholic sensibility. In this novel, that sensibility manifests itself in the way characters risk their lives to protect the baby, who has a cleft palate. The book contains some obscenities.
An Unmarked Grave Charles Todd As Spanish influenza spreads across France, British battlefield nurse Bess Crawford tends the World War I sick and wounded. An orderly shows her a suspicious body hidden among the dead, but Bess falls ill with the flu before she can investigate. Back in England to recover, she remembers the body and learns that the orderly apparently hanged himself. As Bess tries to figure out what’s going on, an unknown assailant puts her life—and the lives of those she talks with—in danger. Bess is a fun protagonist: skilled at her job, compassionate, and brave. Todd’s historically detailed settings provide a vivid backdrop for the story. Readers looking for clean stories with historical interest will enjoy this book—even if its author cheats a little in the mystery’s resolution.
Beastly Things Donna Leon For years Donna Leon has been writing mystery novels featuring Guido Brunetti, Commissario di Polizia of Venice. Venetian politics, culture, and food play starring roles in all her mysteries. In this latest outing, pollution fouls the canals, tourists cram the streets, and new businesses crowd out the old and familiar. Even Brunetti seems weary as he seeks to solve the murder of an unidentified corpse. Once he discovers the victim’s identity, Brunetti follows the trail to a veterinarian clinic and slaughterhouse. Wistfulness for the past permeates the book, weighing down the plot and sapping Brunetti of the vitality that made him such a fun character in the past.
SPOTLIGHT In Ann Weisgarber’s haunting story, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (Penguin, ), an African-American woman falls in love with her employer’s son, Isaac DuPree, a proud man with ambition. Together they stake a land claim in the Dakota Badlands, many hours away from any other black family. Fourteen years later, it’s and Rachel is hugely pregnant with their eighth child, as the land suffers a terrible drought. The book opens as Rachel watches her husband lower their screaming -year-old into the dark, dry well to scoop the last cupsful of muddy water into buckets. Isaac’s ambition—his willingness to sacrifice anything to hold onto the land—used to make Rachel proud. That changes and a rift develops between them as Rachel’s hope withers, making it hard for her to see beyond the parched land and loneliness. —S.O.
WEISGARBER: HANDOUT
DE BOTTON: HANDOUT
The Expats Chris Pavone Kate Moore leaves her job at the CIA and heads to Luxembourg with her children and husband, who has a new job there. The expat life, consisting of rounds of school meetings, lunches, and cocktail parties, couldn’t be more different than her previous, secret life that she carefully hid from her husband. He also has secrets, and gradually she uncovers some of them. A new couple arrives in Luxembourg, behaving in ways that threaten Kate’s new identity. Humor flows from the juxtaposition of Kate’s dual identities—mother and spy. Energized by twists and doublecrosses, the plot involves large sums of money, computer hackery, and deception. Some obscenities and violence. Email: solasky@worldmag.com; see all our reviews at worldmag.com/books
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WORLD
7/20/12 1:10 PM
Reviews > Q&A
The conscience o Long-time human-rights activist Rep. FRANK WOLF wants U.S. foreign policy to focus on freedom of thought and human rights more than free and fair votes
MICHAEL TEMCHINE/GENESIS PHOTOS
BY MARVIN OLASKY
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F of his years, Rep. Frank Wolf has represented Virginia’s th Congressional District, which runs from the Washington suburb of McLean to the West Virginia border. He was elected initially as a transportation expert, but trips to Ethiopia and Romania in and opened his eyes to assaults on human rights and religious freedom: He tells that story in Prisoner of Conscience (Zondervan, ). Here are edited excerpts from a recent interview at Patrick Henry College. The growth of Christianity in China has made that country a frontline in the battle of freedom vs. oppression. What’s happening there? Hundreds of pastors are under house arrest and in prison. The faith community is growing dramatically. A lot of change is taking place. Demographics in China have not been very favorable to the Chinese. They are becoming an older nation. They have the one-child policy. You are finding many Chinese men who can’t find Chinese wives.
the space program have come from industrial espionage. Do you distinguish between the Chinese government and the Chinese people? The Chinese people are wonderful. There’s a basic cavity freedom fills and they want it. They are making economic progress. In my lifetime or shortly after we will see dramatic change in China—but the Chinese government is not our friend. Could the growth of Christianity in China make life better there and also be the saving grace in China-U.S. relations? That’s my hope. That’s my expectation. Quite frankly, that’s my prayer. I pray for that every single night. I was at an event in . There was an elderly lady with an Eastern European accent. She asked me why I thought the Soviet Union failed. I gave her a classic Republican answer: Ronald Reagan put the cruise missiles in and Ronald Reagan did this and Ronald Reagan did that. She said to me, “No, I don’t think that was the reason. The reason is that millions of us have been
MICHAEL TEMCHINE/GENESIS PHOTOS
e of Congress Th at’s because of abortion generally, but particularly the abortion of girl babies? That’s correct. There are many abortions to get to the point where a boy is born. So, China has a lot of problems. And some Chinese leaders would like to give the United States lots of problems? China is as much a threat to us today as al-Qaeda is a threat to us today. Economically, it’s a major threat. Spying. Two months ago Mike Rogers, the chairman of our intelligence committee, said there are two kinds of companies in America: those who have been hit with a cyber attack and know it, and those who have been hit with a cyber attack and don’t know it. The Chinese came in and took everything off my computer. How’d they do that? Cyber attack. They took my schedule, every human-rights case I worked on. Seventeen members of Congress, including myself, and the International Relations Committee: stripped. They have a very aggressive cyber program not only for military aspects but for industrial secrets. A large portion of their gains in
praying for the fall of communism and the defeat of the Soviet Union.” All of the sudden it hit me. As a kid, every night before going to bed, I would pray for the defeat of the Soviet Union. I think prayer will have a great impact on China. How can we help Christians imprisoned in China? By adopting prisoners of conscience and their families, as the faith community did regarding Soviet prisoners from the s through the ’s. Back then, the warden in Camp could not understand all the mail he was getting about a particular prisoner, but he thought, “I ought to care about this guy, make sure he has enough food, that he’s not hurt so I don’t get in trouble.” Writing letters to the dissidents, meeting with their families, and praying for them can make a tremendous difference. Why are we acting so differently toward China than we did toward the Soviet Union? I think it’s because so many businesses are doing business with China. American businesses were not doing business with the Russians. Today, communist China has a large number of some of the
very best law firms in Washington representing them. Economically, we have become so entangled with China. Politically, you have neither Democratic nor Republican leaders speaking out about these issues the way Reagan, Scoop Jackson, and others did. Turning to the Middle East, are you optimistic or pessimistic about our attempts to bring democracy to Afghanistan? I led the first delegation to Afghanistan with Congressmen Joe Pitts and Tony Hall when the war broke out. You can’t just replicate American democracy in Afghanistan. It’s just not going to work. Here’s a question not just about the Obama administration but about the Bush administration as well: Did we make a mistake in making elections rather than making religious liberty our primary goal? I haven’t heard the question asked just the way you did, and never thought of it in that way to be honest—but looking at it, the answer is yes. You may very well have a free and fair election in Egypt that brings in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists who implement Sharia law: Once they get in it is similar to the way the communists took over certain countries. Maybe we should have been advocating for freedom and human rights and religious freedom more than the free and fair vote. And one political question: Why did you recently criticize Grover Norquist and the no-tax pledge that just about every Republican candidate is obliged to sign these days? I never signed the pledge. The pledge I take is to my constituents: I serve them. They’re my boss. And, the interpretation of the no-tax pledge is so strange. In GE paid no taxes, no corporate taxes. Everyone out here paying their taxes paid more than GE paid. Well, that’s a tax earmark. That’s a loophole that ought to be closed. The no-tax pledge says if you raise taxes on GE, you’re raising taxes. Well, all of you Patrick Henry students pay taxes; they should pay taxes. The interpreter of the pledge is Grover Norquist. Now, who made Norquist, never elected, the interpreter of a pledge? He’s a lobbyist in Washington. He says he puts the pledge in a safe. To sign a pledge to a lobbyist that he puts in his safe, and he represents a number of groups that he manipulates this pledge for, I think is absolutely wrong. I think it’s a mistake for any member of Congress to sign a pledge on anything like this, particularly to a lobbyist. A AUGUST 11, 2012
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WORLD
7/17/12 4:50 PM
Reviews > Music
Out of Many offers an impressive overview of reggae—minus the genre’s biggest and most influential voice BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
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AUGUST 11, 2012
I’ on Worshipping the Dollar (Sunday Best), the latest album by the bi-racial, London-based, progressive-reggae group Dub Pistols. In “West End Story” the featured rapper Akala says global poverty goes
SKA’S THE LIMIT: Marley (left); Dub Pistols.
unnoticed because “we’re too busy blingin’,” so one gets the impression that Dub Pistols oppose monetary idolatry. Then again, the hedonistic, cocaine-fueled fantasy narrated in “Mucky Weekend” by the rapper Rodney P could only come true with lots of surplus cash. So call Dub Pistols ambivalent about the filthiness of lucre (and bad language) in general but sure about its cleanliness when used to finance crisp, Jamaica-rooted beats. Then remember that, had he defined “reggae,” Ambrose Bierce would’ve been at least partially correct. A
MARLEY: AP • DUB PISTOLS: KAI TAYLOR
I A B had lived most of his life in the th and not the th century, his Devil’s Dictionary would’ve probably included an entry for “reggae” that read as follows: “A style of Jamaican pop music predicated upon the rhythms into which one’s body naturally sinks after smoking enough ganja to think Haile Selassie is God.” And, as with Bierce’s definition of “accordion” (“An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin”), it would’ve been only partially accurate. True, many reggae songs have extolled Rastafarian religious ideas and arisen from within a haze of marijuana smoke. But many reggae songs celebrate nothing more than the boy-meets-girl pop-music universals. And it’s doubtful that many of the musicians involved in the production of the last half-century of Western pop would’ve passed drug tests either. Jamaica celebrates the semi-centennial of its independence this year. And, in keeping with that anniversary’s spirit, VP Records has released Out of Many: Years of Reggae Music. A three-disc set, the collection contains one “iconic [Jamaican] hit” from every year since . As none of the songs were hits in America (Nicky Thomas’ “Love of the Common People” made the U.K. top in ), Out of Many will comprise an ear-opening, and mostly pleasant,
the absence of anything by the musician responsible for why anyone cares about reggae in the first place: Bob Marley. Licensing fees being what they are, the omission is, on a pecuniary level, understandable. Still, as Marley is to reggae what Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones are to rock ’n’ roll, his absence on what purports to be a representative overview comprises a black hole of monumental proportions. And, Marley’s dope-smoking and womanizing ways notwithstanding, he took what he considered to be his calling seriously. On the otherwise commendable Out of Many, his soulful gravitas, however misguided, is sorely missed.
Email: aorteza@worldmag.com
7/20/12 1:44 PM
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What about Bob?
experience for all but the most ardent U.S. reggae fan. Bridging the familiarity gap are songs that were either covers of U.S. hits (Ken Boothe’s version of Bread’s “Everything I Own”) or thinly veiled rewrites of the same (Dennis Brown’s transformation of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” into “Westbound Train,” Marcia Allen’s transformation of Barbara Lewis’ “Hello Stranger” into “I’m Still in Love with You,” Krystal & Shabba Ranks’ transformation of Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” into the gold-digger anthem “Twice My Age”). Out of Many is mind-opening as well. Hearing Jamaican music’s transition from imitation R&B to ska and then full-blown reggae has never been easier. Neither has being grateful for the existence of woofers. Without reggae, the bass guitar might have remained under-appreciated by those who prefer to enjoy music in the privacy of their own man caves. But the collection does have a problem, and it’s big—namely,
NOTABLE CDs
Five recent pop-rock releases > reviewed by
I Can See the Future Eleni Mandell If there’s a silver lining to Eleni Mandell’s resorting to single motherhood via anonymously donated sperm—besides the resulting “Bun in the Oven” (a song title), that is—it’s that Mandell has stopped short of recording songs extolling fatherlessness or other emotionally incomplete conditions. Rather, the mellow surfaces of her latest compositions strain with barely suppressed disappointment—mainly with men for not proving as true in the end as they seemed at the beginning. “I don’t know what love is all about,” she sings. She doesn’t sound happy. Murdered Love P.O.D. Christian rock’s mongrel-metal masters return with almost too much of a vengeance. Three of the first five tracks feature guest metal and hip-hop vocalists (lest anyone forget the group’s street cred), and Track , “Eyez,” couldn’t be more rapture-obsessed if it had been written by Harold Camping. Eventually, though, the high-volume pummeling gives way to hooks, which in turn give way to lyrics of surprising sensitivity. A poignant anti-suicide plea is just one of the good things that the song “Beautiful” is. California 37 Train Patrick Monahan, Train’s wordsmith and singer, is like the too-clever-for-his-own-good conversationalist who can ruin a perfectly good party by leaving no punchline unpunched and no pun unturned. The runaway name dropping, for instance, that makes “You Can Finally Meet My Mom” as funny as it is sweet would be a lot funnier and sweeter if Monahan hadn’t used the identical approach five tracks earlier on “This’ll Be My Year.” And, speaking of identical, his singing every song in the same piercing register gets annoying.
MARLEY: AP • DUB PISTOLS: KAI TAYLOR
WILLIAMS: JOHN RAOUX/AP
Americana Neil Young & Crazy Horse Neil Young has become so prolific that keeping up with his output is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth. So when a project like this one— hoary folk songs rearranged for bass, drums, and ragged-glory guitars—comes along, practically flaunting its accessibility, fans will naturally pay attention. For the most part, they’ll be glad they did. And if “This Land Is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie’s rejoinder to “God Bless America,” feels excessively humanistic, “My Country ’Tis of Thee” done as “God Save the Queen” balances the scales. See all our reviews at worldmag.com/music
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SPOTLIGHT Make what you will of Hank Williams Jr., Jr. the ol’ boy sure knows how to capitalize on an opportunity. Before he was fired from Monday Night Football by ESPN last October, he’d been perceived for years more as a lovably eccentric American icon than as a still-vital country musician. Then, one clumsy Obama-Hitler analogy later, and he was front-page news again, a tongue-tied-conservative martyr. Well, on the evidence of Williams’ latest release, ESPN picked the wrong bronco to bust. On Old School New Rules (Bocephus), the -year-old rabble rouser unloads. “Takin’ Back the Country,” “We Don’t Apologize for America,” “Who’s Takin’ Care of Number One,” “Stock Market Blues”—not even Ted Nugent has ever gone so politically ballistic all in one place. It’s less politics or anger, however, than five-o’clocksomewhere humor (a little of it crude) that characterizes most of the songs. The anti-eHarmony.com “Three Day Trip” is a bipartisan riot.
AUGUST 11, 2012
WORLD
7/20/12 1:45 PM
Mindy Belz
An underground railroad A network of groups and individuals is working to combat China’s one-child policy
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AUGUST 11, 2012
KRIEG BARRIE
F leading up to the Civil War, blacks in the South who found it impossible to endure slavery took the hard way out, making their way north to freedom along what became known as the Underground Railroad. They learned the lingo and the routes to freedom, “following the drinking gourd along the River Jordan to the Promised Land”—or, following the North Star along the Ohio River to Canada. It was not the mapped-out journey from safe house to safe house the storybooks portray. Fugitive slaves headed into the great unknown—living in swamps, trusting their lives to strangers, risking capture, punishment, and death—only because the known had become equally full of mortal danger. Today something of a similar underground railroad has come alive in China, driven by the mortal danger of enduring more than years of the nation’s onechild policy. The controversial rule, at first meant to last - years in order to curb China’s population growth, has entered its fourth decade—having “prevented,” according to the communist government’s own statistics, the birth of over million babies. Many of the millions result from forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and infanticide. Nearly onethird of Chinese women in their s have already had an abortion, and likely they will have more than one. Elaborate regulations exist to punish women who want more than one child, and to create incentives for those who inform on families attempting to do so. It’s not surprising that China is the only country in the world where the suicide rate for women is higher than it is for men—three times higher.
But unbeknownst to many of us until recently, an underground network of aid for these women in some cases may be outrunning one-child policy enforcers—or at least throwing more drastic light on their practices. And it can involve outsiders like you or me making a sacrifice to help women who are determined to keep their babies. Feng Jinmei is the latest well-publicized victim of the one-child regime, forced to abort a baby she’d carried for seven months because her family was unable to pay the , yuan (,) fine the government imposed on her for an additional child. Feng fought family-planning officers who forced her into a car while her husband was at work, but a photo of her aborted baby lying dead next to her went viral, sparking condemnation throughout China. This summer the case of Cao Ruyi also caught global attention: She escaped officers who tried to force her to abort her baby and now faces a , fine—called “a social burden compensation fee”— she says she and her husband cannot pay. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, and just as the “conductors” along the Underground Railroad saw that their “cargo” was safely shipped from “station” to “station,” today inside and outside China are “conductors” offering real help to save babies. In some cases that’s help to escape. For others, it’s aid to pay fines to keep more than one child. The fines for additional children vary from rural areas to China’s large cities. In Shanghai a pastor and his wife face this month an outrageous fine— ,—to keep their second baby. Advocates are helping this couple raise the money, and still have , to go. (If you are interested in helping this couple or others like them, contact me.) Several groups do this kind of work above ground, and accept U.S. help. One is ChinaAid, the Texas-based human-rights organization that helped Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng get to America in May. (Chen himself got into trouble for trying to expose forced abortions in China.) Another is All Girls Allowed, a Boston-based group involved in fundraising to rescue mothers and their babies threatened with forced abortions. And Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is an international coalition working to stop forced abortions in China. It also runs a Chinese-language website exposing the realities of the one-child policy. These, and many dedicated others, are steadfastly helping babies to be born in China who otherwise would die. A Email: mbelz@worldmag.com
7/23/12 8:47 AM
The Medieval World Taught by Professor Dorsey Armstrong purdue university
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1. The Medieval World 2. The Legacy of the Roman World 3. The Christianization of Europe 4. After the Roman Empire—Hybrid Cultures 5. Early Monasticism 6. From Merovingian Gaul to Carolingian France 7. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance 8. Byzantium, Islam, and the West 9. The Viking Invasions 10. Alfred the Great 11. The Rearrangement of the Medieval World 12. The Norman Conquest and the Bayeux Tapestry 13. King Arthur—The Power of the Legend 14. The Three Orders of Medieval Society 15. Pilgrimage and Sainthood 16. Knighthood and Heraldry 17. The Gothic Cathedral 18. Piety, Politics, and Persecution 19. The Persistence of an Ideal 20. Late Medieval Religious Institutions 21. The Magna Carta 22. Daily Life in a Noble Household 23. Daily Life in a Medieval Village 24. Medieval City Life 25. Food and Drink 26. Music and Entertainment 27. Dress and Fashion 28. Medieval Medicine 29. The Black Death and its Effects 30. Childhood in the Middle Ages 31. Marriage and the Family 32. Art and Artisans 33. Science and Technology 34. Weapons and Warfare 35. Revolts, Uprisings, and Wars 36. Toward the Early Modern Period
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LAND Farmers contemplate mowing cornfields, water reservoirs are sinking, and crop prices are skyrocketing as the United States swelters through its worst drought in a half-century by Daniel James Devine in Kosciusko County, Ind. p h oto b y S c ot t O l s o n /G e t t y I m ag e s
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he corn stalks in north central Indiana stand thin and pale, like rows of prison camp inmates. They’re short—about chest height, when they should be 7 or 8 feet tall this time of year. Their leaves are curled and limp to the touch, sometimes browned near the tips. They ought to be stiff, sharp, and deep green. The problem is there’s no water here. At least not enough to replenish the sandy gray soil. Though scattered clouds flung raindrops here and there on a mid-July day, they were just teasing. “We’ve had little showers come through,” said Matt Roberts, who runs a fourth-generation family farm in Syracuse. “It’s all been less than an inch.” As of midsummer, the largest downpour Roberts had seen since the growing season began was seven-tenths of an inch, in June. “It dried up the next day. You couldn’t even tell it rained.” Rain has been in short supply at many farms this summer. It’s steered around entire states as mountains and plains stretching from California to Michigan have experienced severe drought. Prolonged hot weather is shriveling crops, fueling wildfires, and sapping rivers and water reservoirs. Kosciusko County, Ind., is one of nearly 1,300 counties in 29 states that the U.S. Department of Agriculture listed as natural disaster zones this summer—the largest disaster declaration in the agency’s 150-year history. Federal meteorologists say the drought is the most widespread the United States has endured since 1956. As corn and soybeans wilted under the sun,
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THIRSTY: A corn plant struggles to survive in a droughtstricken farm field on July near Shawneetown, Ill.
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market prices for the two crops spiked, threatening to shoot up food prices in local grocery stores and foreign markets. In the meantime, farming communities in Indiana and elsewhere will have to cope with unforeseen losses. “I know that the good Lord is going to take care of us,” said Roberts, , who has been praying for rain at the dinner table with his wife and -month-old son. Roberts expects to lose an entire cornfield this year for the first time in his life. He farms about acres apiece of corn and soybeans and has never used artificial irrigation, since rains and thick soil have, in the past, been sufficient to quench his crops. Now, corn stalks are scraggly and bean plants are knee-high instead of waist-high. It’s been so hot here—triple digits some days—there’s often no morning dew. In some cases, ears of corn have grown only as thick as a thumb, with tiny kernels. Sections of Roberts’ cornfields have no ears at all, because pollen from the corn tassels never fertilized the dehydrated plants. Roberts said that if decent rains arrive before the end of August, he may get a fair, though drastically reduced, soybean harvest. In mid-July the plants were struggling to put out flowers, which are necessary to produce beans. It’s probably too late to improve corn yields, though. Farmers in Kosciusko County can harvest bushels of corn per acre in a good year, but this fall they may get or less. In the hardesthit fields, they’ll simply have to fire up a tractor and level the corn with a Bush Hog—or sell it as silage, cheap cattle fodder. Otherwise, Roberts said, “You’re going to be wasting time and fuel trying to harvest corn that doesn’t have any ears on it.” In communities built on agriculture, a bad year for farmers is bad news for everyone. “If they don’t make any money this year, they won’t spend it next year,” said Matt Gilsinger, the store manager at Gilsinger’s, a John Deere dealership in Plymouth. He expects the biggest impact on farm equipment sales to come in , as farmers recoup losses. Meanwhile, Gilsinger isn’t selling many lawnmowers: “Personally, I haven’t mowed my backyard in nine weeks. The grass is just dead.”
STRUGGLING: Matt Roberts in his dehydrated soybean field.
Drought conditions in mid-July
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3 Abnormally dry 3 Moderate drought 3 Severe drought 3 Extreme drought 3 Exceptional drought
SOURCES: U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR, AP
from northern Indiana to the District of Columbia in hours, uprooting trees and blowing down semis with mph gusts. The storm left at least people dead and millions without electricity. The derecho wasn’t enough to halt the deepening drought, though, and neither were other sporadic showers that flitted across the Midwest during the first half of summer. By the beginning of July more than half the continental United States was in a moderate to extreme drought, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. On July the USDA said only a quarter of U.S. corn and a third of soybeans were in “good” or better condition.
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to the drought is divine relief. Southwest of Syracuse in Burket, a farming town with just Post Office addresses, about people met at Burket United Methodist Church on the last Thursday evening in June. The pastor, Gary Loy, had invited two area churches to join his congregation in a special drought prayer service. Attendees sang hymns and individually knelt near the front of the church to ask God for rain. Loy had brought a green-and-white umbrella, and held it up in front of his congregants, many of whom raised umbrellas of their own. “To me that’s a symbol of faith,” Loy told me later. “You have to believe. You have to have expectations.” Within an hour of the prayer rally’s conclusion, sprinkles fell on Burket. The next day, a downpour arrived: Loy “worshiped and rejoiced” on his screened porch as he watched a powerful storm front sweep through Kosciusko County. He didn’t mind that it knocked out his power: “The rain created an encouragement that God is in control.” But after cutting off lights and releasing a half inch of rain on the brown lawns of nearby Warsaw, dark clouds, lightning, and strong winds rolled eastward. The storm front, a rare weather event called a “super derecho,” sped with hurricane-force winds AUGUST 11, 2012
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Sporadic rains also aren’t enough to replenish shrinking rivers in Nebraska, a top corn and soybean state where half of cropland relies on artificial irrigation from wells and waterways. By mid-July the state’s Department of Natural Resources had ordered 1,106 farmers to stop irrigating their crops because the rivers they drew from are dwindling in volume. State officials in Kansas gave out similar orders regarding 10 streams there. Some farmers, anticipating the restrictions, gave their crops an extra dousing before the orders arrived. In several Midwest states, soaring temperatures turned a seemingly benign source into a Zippo: Farmers blamed barn fires in Iowa and Missouri on hay bales that had ignited by spontaneous combustion, a phenomenon that can occur when moist hay becomes overheated. Concern about wildfires motivated all but three counties in Indiana to ban open burning this year, and the commissioners of Johnson County barred anyone from bringing cigarettes to the county fair. Many Indiana counties also prohibited residents from lighting Fourth of July fireworks. Although Indianapolis officials put on a firework display during a week of triple-digit temperatures, residents caught lighting personal fireworks faced fines of up to $2,500. Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard declared an additional ban on watering lawns, hand washing vehicles, and filling swimming pools while the drought persisted. Morse Reservoir, a major source of the city’s water, was 6 feet below normal by midsummer and dropping 1 foot every five days. As the water disappeared and the lake bottom emerged, pontoon boats near the shore became stranded on dried, cracked mud. With just one-tenth of an inch of rain between June 1 and July 16, Indianapolis endured its driest stretch in 104 years. Email: ddevine@worldmag.com
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s the drought progressed, government predictions of the fall corn harvest fell sharply from what was supposed to be a bumper year. Farmers had planted more corn this year than anytime since 1937: a total of 96 million acres. With corn futures selling at a handsome $6 or more per bushel last year on the Chicago Board of Trade, farmers sowed more than usual in hopes of meeting demand and cashing in. Instead, their corn drooped and prices spiked. As the USDA slashed its forecast for the year’s per-acre corn harvest, corn prices shot up nearly 50 percent in six weeks, reaching $8.25 per bushel on July 20, an all-time high. Soybeans set their own record of $17.58 per bushel the same day. The record prices will help smooth out losses for some farmers: If they lose only a portion of their crops to the drought, they’ll be able to sell the rest at the higher price. And most, like Roberts, have taxpayer-subsidized insurance to cover crop loss. The USDA also made low-interest emergency loans available to farmers and ranchers living in the driest areas. This year, one farmer’s dry spell will be another farmer’s windfall: In Minnesota, where the effects of the drought are less severe, corn is faring better than in any other state. Farmers there stand to make good profits when they bring their crops to market. But high corn prices have a trickle-down effect on other industries and food products. Field corn, besides being an ingredient in three-quarters of supermarket products in forms like corn syrup, is also a major feed source for cattle, hogs, and chickens. As they watch the cost of feed rise, farmers are selling off livestock in order to collect profits while they can. Pork producers in Indiana have flooded the market with so many pigs that, in some cases, processing centers are backed up. Corinne Alexander, an agricultural economist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that livestock sell-offs will translate to cheaper meat in the supermarket in the shortterm—but in three to six months the prices of pork, beef, chicken, eggs, and milk will edge upward as livestock owners adjust to higher priced feed. Products made from soybeans, like vegetable oil, margarine, salad dressing, and even doughnuts (fried in the oil) are likely to increase slightly in cost by the end of the year and into 2013. That follows a year of above-average food inflation in 2011, when grocery store prices ticked up nearly 5 percent. With the 2012 harvest not yet gathered and counted, it’s too early to tell how high the drought may drive corn and soybean prices, Alexander said. One thing is for sure: The record prices will ripple around the globe. “The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of corn,” said Alexander. “If we have a bad corn crop ... that has a big impact on other countries.” Expensive corn and soybeans played a role in the food crisis of 2007 and 2008, when hungry citizens rioted in Haiti, Bangladesh, and several African nations. Anger over expensive food also contributed to the launch of “Arab Spring” revolutions. Back in Syracuse, Ind., Roberts’ concerns got some relief on July 19, when a 2.5-inch downpour—the largest all season— answered his prayers for rain. He was happy to see the rain fall, but regretted it hadn’t come in June. “This really isn’t enough to cure the problem. It’s a really good Band-Aid for now, though.” A A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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The National Association of Evangelicals backs off its million dollar subsidy from pushers of contraception for the unmarried
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t’s a new season. As spring turned to summer, WORLD on June 21 broke the news that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) had received $1 million over several years from the National Campaign for the Prevention of Teen and Unmarried Pregnancy (NCPTUP). That organization promotes contraceptives for the unmarried. Many evangelicals had heatstroke. NAE reacted at the end of June by flashing on the home page of its website two questions and answers: “Does NAE promote biblical sex in biblical marriage? Yes. Has NAE endorsed contraception for unmarried Christians? No.” But the real question was whether NAE was helping NCPTUP promote its unbiblical message—and whether NAE, which has an annual budget of only $1 million, was asking NCPTUP for new money. On June 15 NCPTUP chief program officer Bill Albert had written to me that NAE and NCPTUP were discussing a second grant: “The second award is still under negotiation and has not been finalized.” The goal of the second award would be “to continue the work started under the previous grant.” Albert added on July 9, regarding the NAE grant, “Funding has been extended through the end of the year.” But NAE has received a lot of summer heat from individuals and denominational leaders. On July 10 NAE vice-chairman David Neff told me flatly, “We are not applying for another grant.” (Neff is also editor-in-chief of Christianity Today.) NAE’s “Generation Forum” project, funded by NCPTUP, will close down later this year. A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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soften the impact of sinning he intensified it.” Piper cited Matthew :- and Galatians : (“God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap”), then concluded: “Abortion is caused by illicit sex the way stealing is caused by unemployment. We don’t give the unemployed person money so he won’t steal. We help him see that work is better, and then help him find it.” I THIRD, along the lines of helping young Christians see what’s good, Mike Singenstreu of Victoria, Texas, wrote that our churches should “promote integration of ages so they hear these messages from other adults.” This also goes with what Regnerus has found sociologically: “Weddings may be beautiful, but marriages become beautiful. Personal storytelling
AE P L A’ sevenparagraph June written response to WORLD, all of which is online at worldmag.com, included these two sentences: “Evangelicals are conflicted about contraceptives outside of marriage because we never want to promote or condone sexual immorality. But we are told that contraceptives can reduce abortions and we want to stop abortions.” The “but” is key: Should evangelicals accept the NCPTUP notion that to reduce abortion we should promote unmarried contraceptive use? Pastors writing to WORLD in late June and early July overwhelmingly said no to adultery. They proposed five alternatives. I FIRST, many said we should fight the recent tendency to marry later. (Since the median age for first marriages has jumped from to for men and from to for women.) Paul Mulner of WinstonSalem, N.C., wrote, “I have counseled certain young people to get married sooner than they had planned. I am opposed to the practice of long engagements and I let our young people (and their parents) know that.” That advice reflects what Paul told Corinthians: “If they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” ( Corinthians :). This was in line with common Jewish practice of the time, as later recorded in the Talmud: One sage, Rav Huna, said, “He who is years of age and is not married spends all his days in sin.” Q&A: The home page of the NAE website with two questions and answers: Pastors’ comments to WORLD also match up with “Does NAE promote biblical sex in biblical marriage? Yes. Has NAE endorsed contraception for unmarried Christians? No.” But the real question was whether what University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus has NAE was helping NCPTUP promote an unbiblical message. found: “Most young Americans no longer think of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the and testimonies can work wonders here, since so much about institution they enter once they think they are fully formed.” life is learned behavior.” That’s a problem, because marriage pushes men and women to Worldmag.com is beginning a series of profiles of couples maturity, and late marriage means extended adolescence for married for at least years. It’s important for -somethings millions. to see the positive side of earlier marriages to which Proverbs Others mature without marriage, but for many single men : alludes: “Let your foundation be blessed, and rejoice in this crucial developmental delay underlies both sexual the wife of your youth.” As Regnerus writes, “Young adults recklessness and job fecklessness: Earnings for men between want to know that it’s possible for two fellow believers to stay the ages of and have fallen by a fifth in the past years, happy together for a lifetime, and they need to hear how the accounting for inflation. The change also contributes to generations preceding them did it.” abortion and poverty among single moms: Many unmarried I FOURTH, Tim Keller in New York City preached in May women, competing for eligible men, feel the need to be about how we should foster covenant rather than consumer sexually available. Parents of both men and women are relationships. He pointed out that living together outside of complicit, because they often urge children to have a firm marriage is not a trusting and giving relationship, but a career foothold before considering marriage. consumer one in which those thinking about possible marriage I SECOND, we should show the consequences of sin: John market themselves to others. For this reason, it’s not surprising Piper in Minneapolis wrote that promoting contraceptive use is that those who cohabit and eventually marry are more likely to “opposite from Jesus’ approach. Instead of suggesting a way to
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It will be important to watch whether future NAE-sponsored events include NCPTUP speakers, as did a Los Angeles gathering in and the Christian Student Leadership Conference in . It will be an improvement if future NAE announcements, publications, and videos stop echoing NCPTUP’s failure to distinguish between married and unmarried contraceptive use. (See a “Generation Forum” video and the Spring issue of NAE Insight for examples of such lumping.)
divorce than those who did not cohabit: The former often become accustomed to thinking like consumers. Keller noted that rapturous passages about sex in the Bible show it’s supposed to be about giving and not just receiving— but sex outside of marriage is typically selfish, because one or both partners requires sex in order to keep the relationship going. Keller called sexual preoccupation a form of idolatry: Instead of thinking that we cannot be whole people and happy without sex, we should realize that the only Person we really can’t live without is God. I FIFTH, Eric Olson of Omaha, Neb., noted that the selling of extramarital sex is not new: “Just a couple of weeks ago, when preaching in … Judges 2:6-3:6 on the proclivity of the children of Israel to forsake Yahweh for the Baals and Ashteroths and ‘play the harlot,’ we studied the history of the fertility cults and what orgies they promoted, committing fornication with a temple prostitute every time they brought a sacrifice. We suggested that the sexual appetite was a big part of the draw to the pagan fertility cults.” It’s a big part today as well. I OTHER pastors also noted the concern that some contraceptives, by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, produce early abortions. All recognized that the problem of
saw passages like that of James 1:2-4 vital for just such a time: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” My takeaway: When we face difficult problems, we can choose to follow the world’s prescription, or God’s. If the NAE speaks with worldly wisdom in the name of evangelicals, it undermines pastors, parents, and young adults striving to do what’s right. The Holy Spirit is real and can change people: Giving in to the contraceptive lobby is like saying the Holy Spirit is powerless to help us obey God.
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he signs of an NAE summer change are welcome. When the NAE board of directors meets this fall, evangelicals will be watching. For example, the general assembly of one NAE member, the Presbyterian Church in America, has resolved to monitor NAE doings and then decide whether to stay in or leave. The PCA is not the only group on alert. The Institute on Religion and Democracy has criticized what it calls the NAE’s “leftward drift” over the past six years. It has critiqued NAE leaders who have advocated jobkilling regulations to try to fight global warming, worked to shield entitlement programs from reductions in projected spending growth, or hinted at support for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Those may or may not be good proposals, but the Bible does not clearly state what our position on these issues should be. On the issue of unmarried sex, though, the Bible could not be clearer: Do not. Some organizations with Washington, D.C.-area offices fuzz the basics as they start opining about all kinds of policy matters. Many are like Sir Brian Botany in the wonderful poem by A.A. Milne, which describes a man full of himself: “Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on. / He went among the villagers and blipped them on the head. / On Wednesday and on Saturday, / Especially on the latter day, / He called on all the cottages and this is what he said: ‘I am Sir Brian!’ (Ting-ling!) / ‘I am Sir Brian!’ (Rat-tat!) / ‘I am Sir Brian, / ‘As bold as a lion! / ‘Take that, and that, and that!’” But here’s a spoiler alert: The villagers finally David Neff, have enough of Sir Brian. He gets his comeuppance NAE vice chairman and editor-in-chief of Christianity Today and the poem concludes: “Sir Brian struggled home again and chopped up his battleaxe. / Sir Brian took his fighting boots and threw them in the fire. / He is extramarital sex is not going away. We’ve heard for a decade quite a different person / Now he hasn’t got his spurs on, / And about the 10-40 window for evangelism, but the biggest open he goes about the village as B. Botany, Esquire. / ‘I am Sir Brian? window domestically is the 10-30 window regarding sex, with Oh, no! / ‘I am Sir Brian? Who’s he? / ‘I haven’t any title, I’m puberty coming earlier and marriage later. We live in a highly Botany; / ‘Plain Mr. Botany (B.)’” sexualized culture where it’s hard to surf the web, watch A plain NAE can be of great use in representing evangelicals television, or drive past billboards without seeing appeals to by standing for religious liberty amid what looks increasingly adultery. like the “crooked and twisted generation” described in Some pastors mentioned that True Love Waits and other Philippians 2:15. Now that the NAE’s Generation Forum, paid abstinence programs have succeeded in pushing back the age for by NCPTUP, is on the way out, an NAE that will “shine as when sexual relations commence, but they apparently have lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” would be had little effect on individuals in their 20s. Pastors recognized wonderful to see. A the temptations to adultery that plague many young adults, but
neff: Carrie Devorah/WENN/newscom
We are not applying for another grant
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Art for comm
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munity’s sake The Culture House, an arts organization in suburban Kansas City, brings a Christian ethos of excellence for the sake of others and cultural leadership for its students
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by Janie B. Cheaney in Olathe, Kan.
{ photos by Scott D. Weaver /genesis }
hen Jeremiah Enna left his Christian home in Kansas City to study dance and theater at UCLA, footlights trumped faith in his priorities. But during his last year at the university, God took hold of him through an improbable chain of events.
Let Jeremiah tell it: “A friend of mine had graduated a year earlier
and moved to Paris to volunteer for Youth With a Mission. While there he met the leaders from Eternia Dans Teater based in Sweden.” The Christian dance company invited Jeremiah’s friend to join them. “He declined, but told them about me as someone who might be interested. So, he gave them my name and number. The only problem was he gave them the wrong number. “Months go by, and Vibeke Muasya, the director, finds the old crumpled-up phone number in her pocket. She feels that the Lord is telling her to call that person immediately. So, she calls the wrong number. But as God would have it, I showed up at UNUSUAL IN LOTS OF WAYS: Mona Störling Enna teaches a ballet dance class at The Culture House.
the wrong phone number’s house right about the time she called.” Wrong number, right call. A few months later, in 1989, Jeremiah moved to Sweden. His next need was for spiritual mentoring, and here God provided again. In 1990, Ellis Potter of A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS AND INTEGRATION: Dancers hang out in the lobby between classes at The Culture House.
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L’Abri conducted a seminar for the dance company. His creative way of relating the gospel to a relativistic, New Age culture profoundly affected Jeremiah’s view of his own faith. He and Potter have remained close friends ever since. What next? In 1991 Jeremiah participated in a dance conference held in Jerusalem, where one of the dancers who signed up for his workshop impressed him: “She should have been teaching me.” Mona Störling (pronounced “Sterling”), a native of Finland, had grown up in a family of unbelievers but came to Christ through the influence of her local Lutheran pastor, Johan Candelin (now an outspoken advocate for the persecuted church). She and Jeremiah discovered they shared much in common. They got married the following year. Mona joined her husband’s dance company, but soon they were praying about relocating to a larger city—Helsinki perhaps, or even London— to establish their dream for a community-related arts center. During a Christmas family visit, Jeremiah noticed potential in his own hometown. The couple moved to Kansas City in 1994. That’s how stopping by the wrong house to take a providential phone call led to The Culture House in Olathe, Kan.
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ulture can sound stuffy, especially when related to art, as a word that looks down its haute nose at the plebians. But to the Ennas, culture is not just about art: It’s also about relationships and integration. The Culture House’s lobby reflects that philosophy: Moms chat as they wait for their kids to finish dance class. Theater students practice dialogue for the next production. An impromptu prayer meeting gathers at the corner. Such camaraderie is unusual for a facility dedicated to the performing arts, where competition snarls behind smiles and thin skins flay easily. But The Culture House is unusual in lots of ways. On the outside, The Culture House is another performing arts school, performance center, and professional dance company. Every large city holds similar institutions, but Melissa, the summercamp coordinator doubling as receptionist, sees a difference: “With some schools, you get the sense that they’re only interested in the performers that make them [the school] look good. We try to get to the real person, help them figure out who they are and build confidence in their abilities.”
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And do Christian beliefs contribute to this goal? Melissa lights up: “Oh, yes! Jesus keeps us centered.” Kelly, a veteran of children’s theater programs now teaching summer camp, sees the “way above average” performance level of the students as another key distinction. Now in the middle of a two-week program that will end with a fully staged production of The Jungle Book, her class of 7- to 13-year-olds pays close attention. The 10-minute opening number calls for them to creep and slither, hunch and sway, act and react. They don’t miss a beat after one week of practice. Next week they’ll add costumes, scenery, and polish. Family support makes a difference, too. While leading a tour of the building, Jeremiah pauses at one end of the big rehearsal room, where scenery for an upcoming production of Cinderella awaits the stage. He points out a Tudor-style fireplace, beautifully painted in wood- and copper-tones: “One of our dads painted this.” Besides painting and construction, families are also involved in fundraising, promotion, and transportation. It’s a demanding schedule, not only for the school but for its affiliated Störling Dance Theater. Photos and mementos of Störling’s original productions decorate the walls. Two of them stand out: Butterfly, an interpretation of the pains and joys of Alzheimer’s, and Underground, a narrative ballet depicting the history and abolition of slavery in the United States. Underground is the company’s greatest success so far, and Jeremiah beams when the subject comes up. Instead of the usual evilAmerica approach when presenting slavery, “we wanted to show America overcoming evil.” The church’s roles in empowering slaves and inspiring abolitionists play a major theme: “God is the hero.” And the world takes notice. According to the Kansas City Star, “[Underground] is without doubt one of the most vivid, heartfelt and theatrically astute pieces of dance theater ever to grace a Kansas City stage, and it’s an ideal testament to what a small local company can achieve with talent, imagination, and lots of hard work.” The Culture House earns 65 percent (or more) of its annual budget through ticket sales and tuition and picks up the rest through fundraisers and donations from businesses, foundations, and individuals. Did the Ennas picture all this when they moved to Kansas City? More or less: They were seeking a way for the arts to engage the com munity through “excellence, education, and engagement.” Now, the Culture House’s STAR program shows at-risk kids that they can be creative, and a Professional Development
rogram trains Störling Dance Theater members p in apologetics, biblical worldview, and money management. The Culture House doesn’t plaster “Christianity” all over the walls or require Christian faith among those enrolling in classes or helping with productions. The Ennas see Christ embodied in the ethos of encouraging and sharing and being your best for the sake of someone else. Next summer they will host a conference for artists and others eager to use the arts to benefit their communities. “We want it to be a bridge for Christian artists to get into the marketplace,” says Jeremiah. Back in the lobby, the summer camp kids chow down on their Friday pizza, pausing for high fives. They may not be stars of tomorrow, but they’re learning how to give their best and take pride in each other’s accomplishment as they create a show together. Creativity is every human’s legacy, and whether they know it or not, they are blessed to be taught by people who know where it comes from. A
“JESUS KEEPS US CENTERED”: Jeremiah Enna (below) watches his wife Mona as she teaches a ballet class; Ingrid Johnston, 12, paints during art class (bottom).
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DOMA’s day of reckoning Obama administration reversal over the Defense of Marriage Act adds weight to a likely Supreme Court showdown over the law in the high court’s next term by Emily Belz in Washington
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term, his Justice Department defended the law in court and in consequence took heat from homosexual activists. Obama explained that even though he found DOMA “abhorrent,” his administration had a “duty to uphold existing law.” But then in February 2011, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder announced that they deemed Section 3 of the act— which defines a spouse as someone of the opposite sex and thus prohibits federal benefits to same-sex couples—unconstitutional. Holder said his attorneys would no longer defend the law. Since then, the Justice Department has not simply refused to defend the law but has participated in litigation against it. The law’s challengers aren’t disputing Section 2 in DOMA, which permits states to ignore same-sex marriage laws from other states. So if a same-sex couple is legally married in Massachusetts, other states don’t have to recognize that marriage—and for now, DOMA challengers are leaving that be. Same-sex marriage is currently legal in six states and the District of Columbia, while 38 states have passed laws that define marriage as between a man and a woman, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
After Holder and Obama’s decision, the defense fell to the body that passed the law: Congress. The House appointed private sector lawyers to defend the law, with prominent Supreme Court litigant Paul Clement heading up the defense. The House is now in the unusual position of finding lawyers to defend any challenges to the law around the country. Dale Schowengerdt with the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) is one of those lawyers working with the House to defend DOMA in lower courts. In one challenge to DOMA in Philadelphia, he found himself standing on the side of the aisle where the Justice Department lawyer would normally stand, defending U.S. laws, while the Justice Department lawyer stood on the other side of the aisle. “When they made the announcement [that they wouldn’t defend the law], we thought they’d just sit on the sidelines,” he said. “It was very strange to have the DOJ lawyer get up and attack the law.” The Supreme Court’s new term starts in October, and even if the justices agree to take this case right away, they almost certainly won’t hear arguments until
obama/holder: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images • rally: ted s. warren/ap
In the noisy days after the Supreme Court issued its healthcare decision, the Obama administration filed two cases with the high court challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The July 3 filings gained little attention but they, coupled with disagreement about DOMA among lower courts, mean the Supreme Court is almost certain to take at least one case on marriage this fall. The high court may also hear arguments on California’s Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The cases could establish whether federal courts begin to treat homosexuality as a status more like race or gender. “We’ll know a lot more about the landscape of marriage by next June,” said Paul Linton, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society who has been involved in various DOMA cases. The Supreme Court filings were another chapter in the Obama administration’s dramatic reversal on the marriage law. The Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for federal purposes, passed Congress in 1996 with massive bipartisan majorities. President Bill Clinton signed it into law. For the first two years of President Barack Obama’s WORLD August 11, 2012
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SHOWDOWN: A January rally in Olympia, Wash., in support of traditional marriage; Obama and Holder (far left) won’t uphold the law.
OBAMA/HOLDER: KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES • RALLY: TED S. WARREN/AP
after the presidential election in November. They may not hear the case until after a January inauguration. If Mitt Romney wins the election, he will likely reverse the DOJ’s current position on DOMA. That wouldn’t undo any challenges to the law, but it would put the U.S. government back on the side of the law.
THE DOMA CASE going before the Supreme Court is a May ruling from the Boston-based st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which unanimously struck down Section of the law. The st Circuit said the government had no “permissible” interest in barring federal benefits to gay couples who are legally married. “In reaching our judgment, we do not rely upon the charge that DOMA’s hidden but dominant purpose was hostility to homosexuality,” the court wrote, alluding to one of the federal government’s key arguments. But the court said DOMA doesn’t “explain how denying benefits to sameEmail: ebelz@worldmag.com
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sex couples will reinforce heterosexual marriage. … Certainly the denial will not affect the gender choices of those seeking marriage.” The House lawyers defending the law countered to the Supreme Court that the government has scarce resources and the benefits are restricted because the government has an interest in encouraging “responsible procreation” that allows biological parents to raise their children. DOMA’s challengers, on the other hand, have characterized the law as an impingement on states’ rights—that the federal government is impeding state gay-marriage laws. But the Obama administration’s brief often alludes to the larger question of whether homosexuality deserves constitutional protections similar to race. Of the circuit courts that have considered that issue, have said it doesn’t, according to Schowengerdt. The st Circuit’s ruling was more complicated. It said that DOMA passed muster under
“rational basis” review, the most deferential test of a law’s constitutionality. The court also said that DOMA didn’t need to pass a test of “heightened scrutiny”—the next level of review reserved for laws that discriminate on the basis of race or gender. But the st Circuit said DOMA failed somewhere between rational basis scrutiny and heightened scrutiny. The defenders of the law, in their filing with the Supreme Court, argue that if the law were constitutional on a rational basis, and doesn’t need a heightened scrutiny review, then it should be declared constitutional. The appeals court, they said, created “a previously unknown standard of equal protection review.” “This is really a stalking horse for getting the court to recognize same-sex marriage,” said Linton. “If Congress may not restrict the federal benefits of marriage, the obvious next step is you can’t restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples.” A AUGUST 11, 2012
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Miracle Thirty years after graduating from Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, India, six medical school classmates and their teacher had an unlikely reunion in June. At the request of classmate Rajiv Choudhrie, medical superintendent of Padhar Hospital, a 122-year-old mission hospital in rural Betul, they came together to write medical history: Their team plus 16 other doctors from India and Australia would attempt to separate a pair of conjoined twin girls, an operation never before completed in rural India. For 12 hours, the surgical team bent over 1-year-olds Stuti and Aradhana, carefully cutting the tissue joining their chest and abdomen together. They saw abnormal anatomy—two hearts stacked on top of each other in a common pericardial sac, each beating at its own rate. A good amount of Stuti’s blood was flowing through her sister’s body. They separated the hearts and created two sacs from the existing one, placing a heart into each girl. They then divided the liver, which had two separate blood supplies but were joined by a bridge of liver tissue. Then, with the cutting of the sternum and the closing of the wound, the surgery was complete. Everyone in the hospital cheered at the s uccessful operation, which many had decried as an impossible medical operation for the mission hospital. For the staff, the successful surgery was much more personal than proving a point: Stuti and Aradhana had become like their own children. The girls, whose names mean “praise” and “worship” in Hindi, first came to Padhar last May, when their mother was pregnant. She had trouble delivering them at a government hospital, so they sent her to Padhar. During the Caesarian s ection, the obstetrician jumped back when she realized that the twins were attached at the chest. The young parents felt over-
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Success and sadness proceed from a dramatic decision to separate conjoined twins, abandoned by their parents, at a 122-year-old mission hospital in India’s central highlands
by Angela Lu whelmed and unable to care for the girls, and “donated” them to the hospital. From then on, Choudhrie’s wife, Deepa, a 1982 CMC Vellore grad and a radiologist, took on the dual role of mother and doctor for the girls. A number of the nurses and staff also quickly grew attached to the girls, often coming in after hours to play with them. Despite being conjoined, the girls each developed their separate personalities. “Aradhana, I think, is quicker to smile,” Choudhrie said. “Stuti would look at you and wonder whether you were worthy of her smile.” Stuti was thinner, while Aradhana was taller and plumper. The media descended on the hospital, wanting to get pictures and videos of the twins. But the Choudhries and hospital staff worked to protect the girls from the hovering eye of the media: “These are not freaks, this is not a circus. These are humans beings, for us they were God’s creation.” Padhar Hospital’s decision to spend so much time, money, and energy to save two abandoned girls was news itself. Padhar first opened in 1890 and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Madhya Pradesh, located in entral highlands. Its rural site India’s c seemed an unlikely place for ground-
breaking surgery, but the hospital has a long history of treating polio and AIDS, and of providing dialysis and other specialized services. Recently Padhar has worked with Smile Train to perform cleft lip and palate surgeries. Another factor weighing on hospital staff: The girls were born right as the national census revealed a serious demographic crisis—for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6, there were only 914 girls. In the past decade, parents have aborted between 3 million and 6 million baby girls, as women are seen as merely a financial burden on the family. The state’s chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, hoped to reverse the trend by launching a program that provided girls aid for education and food. He was a big supporter of Stuti and Aradhana, donating to the surgery and later visiting them on their first birthday. From the beginning, the doctors discussed whether separation was viable for the girls. Without the operation, the girls would never lead normal lives and the risk of death was high—if one girl got sick and died, the other would die as well. Once scans revealed that each of the girls had her own set of internal organs and could be separated, Choudhrie called on his old classmates for help. He contacted Gordon Thomas, a pediatric liver transplant surgeon in Sydney; Sanjeeth Peter, a heart surgeon; Anil Kuruvilla, the head of neonatology at CMC Vellore; and their former anesthesiology professor, Rebecca Jacob. Choudhrie also contacted psychiatrist Prabahkar Thyagarajan to try to reunite the girls with their family. Choudhrie wanted the team’s opinion on whether it were possible to do the operation at Padhar. While larger hospitals apart: Stuti in Delhi, Mumbai, (left) and England, and Aradhana Singapore had offered after surgery. to do the surgery, SCN NEWS
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‘‘The children had become ours by then, we were also attached to them.’’ —Rajiv Choudhrie Mother Maya Yadav holds Stuti and Aradhana at Padhar (left); the team of doctors during the operation.
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“All of us were Christians,” Jacob recalled. “All of us had a common goal that we were to give the best care to hildren. If we were not assured of these c the best care we wouldn’t go ahead.” Arriving at Padhar from all corners of the world, they joked with one another, recalling the five years spent together in their tight-knit class of 60. But this reunion was about more than memories and storytelling. The doctors performed the operation successfully on June 20. Twelve days later, the staff celebrated the girls’ first birthday with cake, new dresses, and a visit from Chief Minister Chouhan. By now, Stuti had improved so much that they took her off the ventilator, but Aradhana, who had been sick before the operation, remained on it. Her health fluctuated and Choudhrie noticed that it was taking a lot of effort for her to breathe. She went back to the operating room after an infection, and seemed to get better, but a few days later she fell into cardiac arrest and the doctors could not revive her. She died July 5. For the hospital staff, it felt like losing a family member. “In the hospital, people are dying all the time. … But we were family, and the rules can be anything, but when it’s your own family, it changes the whole thing,” Choudhrie said in a Skype interview, tears falling from his eyes. “It shook my faith a bit when we lost one,” he continued. “I never thought in my wildest dreams with all the prayer support that we had that we would lose
one. To my mind they were meant to be for the glory of God. But God’s ways—you can’t explain them, I have not understood it.” Her parents buried Aradhana in early July in their hometown. Three carloads of Padhar staff attended the burial and Choudhrie said a prayer for the girl. The parents had started visiting the girls months before the surgery, and after several meetings with psychiatrist Thyagarajan, had decided to take the girls back after the operation. Stuti will return home after a few more months of recuperation. While Aradhana’s death has hit the hospital staff hard, Choudhrie believes they are starting to heal and move forward.“I don’t know what God’s plans are, I hope I can just trust in them, that He brings us out of this time as the Great Healer.” Despite the grief, the surgery has a widespread impact: While the team of specialists was at Padhar for the operation, the doctors were also able to conduct more than a dozen more surgeries for children with abnormal disorders. Much of the donated equipment and updated infrastructure at the hospital will allow for more surgeries in the future, helping more patients. Jacob said the separation showed the world that mission hospitals should be taken seriously. “Most people seem to write off the small hospital as ‘Oh you can’t do anything there and no one cares,’ … but I think this just proved that everyone cared and that we could do it.” A
mother: ap • doctors: Barcroft Media/Landov
Choudhrie felt that Padhar could give the girls something the other hospitals lacked—love. “The children had become ours by then, we were also attached to them,” he said. At first, Jacob thought the Padhar operation seemed like a remote possibility: The hospital was not equipped for two babies, and if anything went wrong, they were four to five hours from the nearest major hospital. But after a November visit to Padhar, she changed her mind: “Seeing the hospital, seeing the devotion of everybody around and in the hospital to the children, the way the children were looked after, they wouldn’t have gotten the same love if they were at a big hospital. They’d just be another set of twins.” To perform the surgery in Padhar, the doctors would have to ensure facilities, equipment, and personnel at the same level—or greater—than the best hospitals in the country. So each doctor wrote up a list of needed equipment—from ventilators to monitors to sutures—and the team worked to get them, at times asking companies to donate or lend them expensive machines. As word of the surgery spread, money poured in from hospital supporters and locals. Ten months later, the team had all the equipment it needed. The classmates also pulled in other specialist doctors, including Albert Shun from Sydney, a pediatric surgeon who had previously done three conjoined twin separations. The team of 23 doctors started, planned, and discussed the operation over Skype and email, motivated by love for the girls but also by a common faith. WORLD August 11, 2012
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Build The Bible is absolute Truth and the foundation for our Christian faith and living. BJU is committed to helping you build your faith. That’s why we infuse a biblical philosophy into all that we do— from our academics to campus life to extracurriculars. To learn how you can build your faith at BJU, visit us at go.bju.edu/build.
MOTHER: AP • DOCTORS: BARCROFT MEDIA/LANDOV
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For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (12192) 6/12
FAITH
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the 2012 Hope Award for Effective Compassion
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Work and faith, connected Our South region winner is full of practical help for former prisoners looking for jobs—and is full of Christ by Marvin Olasky in Houston | photographs by james allen Walker
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t’s 9:06 a.m. on day five of The WorkFaith Connection’s eight-day, early June boot camp. Twelve people ranging in age from 25 to 59 sit around a U-shaped table in a corporate office building. Seven are men, five are women. Eight are black, four are white. All are looking for work. Most are not confident that they’ll get jobs, so instructor Fran Hopkins, a former deputy warden at a state prison, asks for stories about when they’ve succeeded in previous jobs. It’s all part of a six-year-old Christian project to improve the job-hunting skills of exprisoners and others among America’s least-employables. And here’s what is spectacular: Three-fourths of the 1,560 WorkFaith alumni have snagged jobs soon after graduating from boot camp, with two-thirds of those continuing in that job for at least a year. That achievement makes WorkFaith our 2012 South region Effective Compassion winner. A big reason for job placement success, according to WorkFaith CEO Sandy Schultz, is that “they shift from an attitude of entitlement: ‘What can you do for me?’ becomes ‘What can I do for you?’” So on day five the
Fourth in a series; last issue: Midwest region
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class members recall what they did for previous employers. Myisha Powell emphasizes her time as a medical assistant. Kathi Lakey, unemployed for seven years, talks about how she unjammed a photocopier. Larry Bridgewater, who spent two years in prison for drug possession, recalls a successful meeting with building contractors. Each time the class applauds. Hopkins asks, “How many of you have ever been corrected on the job?” Most raise their hands. Hopkins says that’s nothing to be ashamed of: “Being corrected shows the company thinks you have value.” She reminds class members that in the afternoon they will have practice interview sessions with volunteers from Houston companies. She tells them they should meet the interviewers, labor day: make eye contact, shake hands, WorkFaith graduate Artie and have questions to ask. Mayham uses a Hopkins asks, “What do you say suction lift to when the interviewer says, ‘Tell me move large something about yourself’”? The panels of glass class responds, “Thirty second before they are commercial.” (“I grew up in _______. packaged to ship.
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Becoming craftsmen Some potential employers don’t think people can change, but more than 1,000 have hired WorkFaith graduates, largely with good results. Craftsman Glass in Houston is one of the businesses that plans to keep hiring them. The company-ministry relationship began before Scott Schultz, husband of WorkFaith CEO Sandy Schultz, started working at the company three years ago. The relationship has deepened as WorkFaith graduates like Artie Mayham, Don Cosey, and Bob Cox show they can do the job. Artie Mayham, 50, inspects laminated glass doors at Craftsman’s fabrication facility in Houston. He works surrounded by the roar of furnaces and autoclaves that transform jumbo sheets of glass into insulated, tempered, and bullet-resistant varieties—and he likes it: “I do glass doors. Inspect the doors, measure the doors. Make sure the hole location is correct. It feels good once you finish the job, knowing you had something to do with it.” Mayham, incarcerated in Tennessee, says he found at WorkFaith people “not concerned about your past. They’re more concerned about you doing God’s will.” Mayham followed the advice WorkFaith had given him about dealing with his past in an interview: “I laid it out there. I’m trusting in God. Either they accept me and accept my past, or they don’t.” He became a WorkFaith trailblazer at Craftsman, with “the opportunity to either open the door for more people from WorkFaith or close the door. ... It seemed like I opened the door.” Don Cosey in the 1970s could type 102 words a minute, a skill he put to good use working for nine years at the Bank of the Southwest—until he started drinking and lost his job. During the next quarter century he spent time in jail: When out, he picked up cans and mowed lawns. Potential employers focused on his prison past and lost years. WorkFaith helped him see that the cleaning he’d done in jail was a valuable skill. The organization hired him to clean part time. When he showed reliability, Craftsman hired him in maintenance, and he has worked steadily for the past year and a half. He’s seen the rewards: “I have a car. I have clothes. I can pay my tithe. I can take a vacation.” Bob Cox also had a background issue that made him doubt his ability to get a job, but WorkFaith classes helped the CPA move beyond bottling up his past. He learned to tell interviewers, “I made a poor decision. I have paid my time. Now I’m moving on. I’m trying to be the best person I can.” Cox says the greatest benefit of working nearly two years at Craftsman is getting back his confidence and winning the trust of his employer: “That was the biggest thing before, losing the trust. It was demoralizing.” —Susan Olasky
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I worked at _______. My strengths include _______. My focus is _______.”) Hopkins reminds them: “Admit your past mistakes and poor choices related to convictions, getting fired, or jobhopping. Talk about how you’ve changed and who you are today.” So far this morning the students have heard good advice that could be offered in all kinds of venues, but now comes something different: Hopkins says, “Pray before going into the interview room,” and the class says, “Amen.” Hopkins says, “When your hand touches the handle, I want you to say ‘Holy Spirit, go in before me.’” The class says, “Amen.” Hopkins says, “It is normal for us to be anxious, but the Bible says be anxious about nothing.” (“Amen!”) “Do everything with prayer and supplication, remembering that God is not a God of confusion.” (“Amen.”) Favorite WorkFaith Bible verses include 2 Corinthians 5:17 (“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”) and Ephesians 4:28 (“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need”). Hopkins combines biblical explanations with everyday reminders: “Don’t look down. Don’t roll your eyes. You need to convince them that you’re not the person you were.” Remember, Hopkins says just before lunch, “THERE IS A JOB FOR YOU.” The students go around the table for one more practice in saying who they are. Near the end, Carrie Johnson confesses that she’s “never had confidence because of my criminal background.” She weeps and can’t go on—and several class members hug her, comfort her, and bring her tissues. She dries her tears and says firmly, “That’s who I was. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be.” The class members applaud. The WorkFaith Connection is different from some other Christian programs because it is full of practical tips. It is different from some secular programs because it is full of Christ. After lunch Myisha Powell has a rough first mock interview, sitting across from a middle-aged white businessman. She breaks down in tears when talking about her two daughters. When he asks about her criminal background—she stole some money—her eyes shift up and down. But she does better in her second interview, emphasizing her year and a half as a
To learn more about WorkFaith Connection go to worldmag.com for more photos and a short video
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the 2012 Hope Award for Effective Compassion
runner-up
More than a clinic T
success story: President Sandy Schultz stands before a wall of portraits. These represent a fraction of the 1,600 people WorkFaith has trained and helped place in a job in the last 5 years (left); Don Cosey outside of Craftsman Glass (right).
medical assistant during which she took vitals and recorded the medical history of patients. Then comes the toughest question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Myisha says, “I made wrong choices. That’s who I was then.” The interviews also help others learn how to report their pasts. Carrie Johnson tells her interviewer that she stole from retail stores when she was nearly homeless— but she also says she took into her home six children, ages 3 months to 13 years, when their mom went to prison. Larry Bridgewater tells his interviewer, “I made mistakes and lost my family. Now I’m making better choices. I’m a changed man and a quick learner. Now I look to God.” Kathi Lakey learns from one interview to the next. Mock interviewer Al Barringer, a retired college administrator, gives her feedback about explaining why she has been unemployed so long: “A couple of sentences are enough: ‘I had family priorities: My father was ill. Then I decided to go back to school.” Barringer later comments that the interviews are “frightening for them. We are defined by jobs, and for people who care about being productive citizens, every day you wake up jobless is like a big black hole you can’t fill.” But Barringer, who MONEY BOX also interviews program applicants before they WorkFaith Connection start the eight-day boot expenses were camp, says he sees a $760,241 in 2010 and major difference between $1.23 million in 2011. their first day and last Contributions in 2011 days: “By the time they totaled $1.36 million. graduate, they are able to see their future.” A WorkFaith runs on 20 employees and 425 volunteers. Sandy Schultz’s salary in 2010 was $58,083.
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hursday, 5:25 p.m.: Mercy Health Clinic volunteers scurry like theater students before opening night. They rush from room to room carrying manila folders, pinning on nametags, and greeting each other with hugs and smiles. Doctors peek at their appointment lists and make final touches on their notes. “It’s almost time for our huddle,” Executive Director Tracy Thompson says. Shortly after 5:30 p.m., she leads the way downstairs where staffers and volunteers have gathered to pray. Ten minutes later, they rush upstairs and begin calling names. It’s show time. Mercy provides free medical care to people living in one of America’s poorest counties. Many patients are the working uninsured, meaning they earn too much to receive Medicaid but not enough to buy insurance without falling short elsewhere. A person must live at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty line, be uninsured, and live in one of six local zip codes in order to be accepted as a patient at Mercy. Demand is high: Mercy only accepts 12 new patients each week. The clinic is trying to hire a full-time practitioner, but until then some people only become patients after waiting for months. David Pressley, 51, was fortunate. His wait was only two weeks. A technician by trade, he was laid off in
clinical trials: A Mercy volunteer checks records.
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Tiffany Owens
helping hands: diabetic and needs medicine, Mercy will fill the prescrip2008 and tried to find work as a Dr. Buczynsky tion, but will also require the patient to take a six-week truck driver. When the physical exam with a patient. course in diabetes education before getting a refill. If required for that position revealed patients are overweight, exercise and diet change might diabetes, a nurse recommended him be just as much a part of their prescription as medicine. to Mercy where he found treatment. Later, when he Becoming healthy is partly up to the patients, and discovered a lymphoma on his spine, Mercy arranged his sometimes they don’t want to change. But if they do, back surgery at no cost to him. Mercy has impressed Mercy volunteers are willing to partner with them, and him: “If I had money, I would pay to come here.” not just when it comes to choosing carrots over candy. Mercy subsidizes its $514,000 operation through Mercy volunteers also partner with them spiritually and grants, fundraising, and donated services. More than 25 emotionally. “Often, the causes of chronic health problocal doctors and specialists donate services, and pharlems are relational or social,” Buczynsky says: “If we maceutical companies donate many of the prescriptions don’t deal with the emotional and spiritual part, how issued in Mercy’s in-house pharmacy. much have we really done?” Volunteer Dr. Paul Buczynsky says, “Doctors like Prayer and social services have been a part of coming here. They don’t have to hassle with insurance Mercy’s work since it opened in 2001. The clinic at first companies ... it’s pure medicine.” Since doctors who volfunctioned out of a Presbyterian church, using Sunday unteer at Mercy don’t have to spend hours on paperwork, school classrooms as exam rooms and they spend more time educating an office room as the pharmacy. Nearly patients on preventive measures and 11 years later, the building has changed how to make healthier choices. MONEY BOX but the mission remains the same. “We’re trying to get patients involved “Our first goal here is to share Christ’s in their health,” explained Buczynsky. Mercy Health Clinic had love,” executive director Thompson Many patients suffer from chronic expenses of $373,108 explains. “We use medicine as a vehicle diseases like diabetes and congestive in 2011. ... [but] if we’re not sharing Christ’s heart failure, but also from lack of Contributions in 2011 love, then everything we’re doing is information. Mercy doctors want totaled $478,363. like a clanging cymbal.” A patients to take responsibility for their health. For example, if a patient is a —by Tiffany Owens in Athens, Ga. Mercy Health Clinic has five full-time and three part-time employees.
Tracy Thompson’s salary is $48,000.
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Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania www.rpts.edu | info@rpts.edu
Study under pastors.
“The Seminary is, without apology, committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.”
TIFFANY OWENS
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What >> one person can do A difficult but conscientious business decision pays off in Texas
Mathew Miller/Genesis
by J.C. Derrick in Fort Worth, Texas
In business for 33 years, Tim Pulliam Concrete is a trusted name in concrete in North Texas. When customers step inside the front door of his Fort Worth building, they’re greeted by a black-and-white portrait of Pulliam’s grandfather Theo standing next to his concrete equipment. One trade, three generations. Pulliam was busy scheduling crews and talking to employees on Friday afternoon, March 23, when his phone rang with what seemed at first an annoying interruption. The caller told him that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, was executing secret plans to build a 20,000-square-foot abortion supercenter equipped to perform late-term abortions. No one had verified the plans: A third-party management company held the property and had announced only that an “ambulatory surgery medical center” was coming. Pulliam, a professing Christian, was only half-listening until the caller told him the building would be erected in the heart of a medical district—next
door to the Edna Gladney Adoption Center. That’s when Pulliam’s “ears perked up like horse’s ears.” He recognized the site as one on which his company was pouring concrete. Suddenly, Pulliam was no longer concerned with his Friday work activities. He stayed anxious all weekend. He knew he did not want to be on the job, but the general contractor under whom he was working was a top customer: “Over the last three to five years, we’ve had more repeat business through these guys than anybody else.” One more complication: Tim Pulliam Concrete had already poured 50 foundation piers into the 2.4-acre site. Pulliams don’t walk off a concrete job before it’s finished, and doing so in this case meant giving up $190,000 worth of work. Pulliam was still t oying with the idea of continuing the project when his wife, Janice, said, “Now that you know … how can you pour one drop of concrete?” Pulliam knew she was right: “The business side of my brain” was i nitially controlling him, but “the bottom line
slow build: The construction site of Planned Parenthood of North Texas. A u g u s t 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Notebook > Lifestyle
DATA MAPPING
Maps and data: What could be more fun? Academic researchers at Floatingsheep.org—a website “dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated geocoded data”—explore American culture by using strange data sets and mapping the results. In honor of the th of July, they decided to map tweets containing the words “beer” and “church,” using all the geo-tagged tweets in the continental United States from June through . From more than million tweets, the researchers found nearly , mentioning church, and , mentioning beer. After mapping the location of the tweets, they found beer tweets more common in the upper Midwest and church tweets in the Southeast. The website’s founders, a geography professor from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. at the Oxford Internet Institute, use software they developed to search Google Maps placemarks for certain keywords. They mapped differences between the number of abortion providers and abortion alternatives based on listings in Google maps directory (floatingsheep.org///visualizing-abortion-debate_.html). They also mapped the popularity of certain activities—bowling alleys, churches, guns, and strip clubs—based on clicks on Google maps (floatingsheep.org///what-dochurch-bowling-firearms-and.html). —S.O.
Stay-at-home blues?
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MAP: HANDOUT/FLOATINGSHEEP.ORG • MOTHER & CHILD: YURI ARCURS/GETTY IMAGES
A much-publicized Gallup survey of more than , women has found stay-at-home-moms (SAHMs), with children under age , likely to be depressed more often than work–outside-thehome moms with similarly aged children or working women without kids. News outlets said SAHMs are more likely to report feeling sad, worried, and angry than working mothers— and less likely to say they had learned something, smiled, or experienced enjoyment and happiness “yesterday.” The survey said lower-income SAHMs are less happy than wealthier ones, although the differences in some categories between more affluent SAHMs and their working peers are small. Still, mood differences held up across the board, and that raises lots of questions. Did
the Gallup survey take into account the marital status of the SAHMs, or look into their religious beliefs? Gallup researcher Lydia Saad told me married SAHMs have more positive moods than unmarried ones, but neither group attains the happiness levels of working women. Saad said cultural factors could explain the disparity: Perhaps in , women face a silent expectation that work outside the home has more value than staying home. Isolation could be another factor. This is one of those polls that cries out for follow-up research. Saad said the survey did not look at the religious beliefs of survey participants, so the data couldn’t say whether SAHMs in subgroups— evangelicals, for instance— that value staying at home are happier than other SAHMs. It would also be useful to find out what effect homeschooling has on moms: Are they also less likely to say they learned something during a day at home? —Susan Olasky
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is we care about the little ones. They can’t defend themselves.” On Monday morning, March , after the general contractor confirmed the plans were for a Planned Parenthood clinic, Pulliam removed his crew from the job. When his stand became known, several other subcontractors followed him in withdrawing from the project, significantly delaying its construction. Pulliam said he feels honored that God chose him to set the example, but he doesn’t consider himself a hero. Others do: Pulliam received free legal and accounting counsel, as well as an offer to help pay legal fees incurred. To this point, most of that hasn’t been needed, and Planned Parenthood in June paid him for the small percentage of the project that Tim Pulliam Concrete had finished. Still, support from believers has been encouraging: “I feel like Peter in the boat when Jesus said cast your net over on this other side … and he did it and they almost capsized with all the fish.” In the three weeks after pulling off the Planned Parenthood job, Pulliam’s business contracts increased eightfold, with some resulting from his stand against the abortion giant.
Notebook > Technology Pre-fighting crime Can a computer predict burglaries and other crimes? Police in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, Calif., say it can. Last year they began testing “predictive policing” software, which is designed around a common-sense principle: Criminals are most likely to strike neighborhoods they’ve visited before. By plugging reports of thefts and break-ins into the software, police created a district map overlaid with red squares indicating where crime, statistically, is most likely to occur again. In a six-month pilot program, an L.A. district saw a percent drop in crime after police began routing their patrols through areas marked by the red squares. The software, developed by a Santa Cruz startup called PredPol, predicted crime better than human analysts. It will likely roll out to other cities soon. —D.J.D.
Selective diversity Google devotes itself to worldwide homosexual rights, ignores persecution of other minorities BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
MAP: HANDOUT/FLOATINGSHEEP.ORG • MOTHER & CHILD: YURI ARCURS/GETTY IMAGES
GOOGLE: TERRY SCHMITT/UPI/LANDOV • MONITORING: MINISTY OF JUSTICE • PREDPOL:HANDOUT
CELL SNOOPS AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and six other cell phone carriers reported a steep rise in law enforcement requests for user data over the past five years. In response to an inquiry by Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., the companies admitted they fielded thousands of requests each day—at least . million last year—from federal and local officials to locate and track cell phone subscribers, tap phone conversations, reveal text messages, or turn over billing invoices. Sometimes police obtained information without a warrant, claiming emergency situations. Last year, AT&T turned over information on nearly one in subscribers, although it denied requests out of ,. —D.J.D.
>>
I G I. stepped up its advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights on July with the launch of a “Legalize Love” campaign, timed to coincide with an annual gay-pride procession in London. Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, Google’s European diversity chief, told a London audience his company would partner with organizations around the world to promote equal rights for gays and oppose laws against homosexuality. To begin, the campaign will focus on Singapore, where Google last year became the first organization openly supporting the LGBT community. In Poland, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation that doesn’t legally recognize same-sex couples, Google staff hosted a meeting with a Polish politician to discuss civil-union laws. The campaign isn’t specifically intended to promote gay marriage, although in Google publicly opposed California’s (now overturned) Proposition ban on gay marriage. “Legalize Love is our call to decriminalize homosexuality and eliminate homophobia around the world,” states a campaign page on the company’s website (google.com/diversity/legalise-love.html). In Google began offering fertility treatment assistance to its gay U.S. employees, and gave domestic partners health benefits equal to that of heterosexual couples. It promotes gay employee camaraderie through “Gayglers” networks in its offices around the world. A short Google-produced video caused a stir this Valentine’s Day when it showed cartoon couples holding hands: a princess and frog, a dog and cat, a boy and girl, and two men in tuxedos. Google is hot for homosexual rights, but where’s the global campaign to support Christians, who are persecuted in dozens of countries? Google’s “Diversity and Inclusion” report dedicated five of pages to the company’s efforts to support the LGBT community. It didn’t mention “religion” or “faith” once. AUGUST 11, 2012
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Notebook > Science made it big business: On the stock exchanges, the world’s second-largest initial public offering this year, behind Facebook, came from Felda Global Ventures, a state-run palm oil company from Malaysia. The oil has lost its appeal to environmentalists, though. Nature reports Malaysia has nearly run out of land suitable for oil palm plantations, and in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the oil ( million tons a year), plantation workers have deforested thousands of acres. One study found that once the cutting and burning of vegetation is factored in, it may take up to years for a new plantation to repay its “carbon debt,” the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by converting the land. Much of the cutting and clearing in Indonesia is illegal: In July the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London-based organization, reported that a palm oil company had cut down , acres of forest on Indonesia’s island of Borneo between and , according to satellite images, without obtaining the proper environmental permits from Indonesian officials. (The company denied wrongdoing and said national and local permitting laws are contradictory.) Any penalty seemed unlikely to be harsh: Indonesia earns billion a year on palm oil exports and wants to double production by . Profitable and tasty as palm oil may be, it’s a biofuel washout. The European Union still promotes palm oil as a biofuel, but in January the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a preliminary recommendation against burning it for fuel after finding it emits, at most, only percent less greenhouse gas than convention diesel. Agency officials have yet to announce a final verdict on the matter.
Eco washout Though lucrative and useful, palm oil has lost its environmental charm BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
15 MILES
1 IN 12
25 MILLION ACRES
Estimated maximum diameter of a new moon, dubbed “P5,” the Hubble Space Telescope discovered orbiting Pluto. It’s the dwarf planet’s fifth moon. Hubble spotted two others, Nix and Hydra, in —and a fourth, P4, last year.
Number of HIV-positive people who will get a false negative reading from OraQuick Advance, the first entirely inhome HIV test to receive Food and Drug Administration approval. The accuracy rate falls below usual FDA standards, but the agency greenlighted the test in hopes it will reach thousands of Americans who are unaware they have the AIDS virus. The test uses a mouth swab and should be available in drugstores by October.
Chunk of land Australia has declared a conservation zone, the nation’s largest so far and roughly equal in size to Portugal. The government will pay Aboriginal rangers to help manage the reserve, which spans subtropical savannah and sand, including much of the Tanami Desert. The zone harbors such threatened species as the bilby, a burrowing marsupial, and the great desert skink, a foot-long lizard. —D.J.D.
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PALM OIL: AFP/GETTY IMAGES • P5: NASA/REX FEATURES/AP • ORAQUICK: ORASURE TECHNOLOGIES/AP • DESERT SKINK: HANDOUT
>>
P , edible, and ubiquitous. Squeezed from the fruit of oil palm trees, it’s used in products like cookies, margarine, lipstick, potato chips, and instant noodles. Environmentalists have also promoted it as a biofuel, a renewable, environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum-based diesel. Palm oil’s multipurpose nature has
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GREG SCHNEIDER
SHIFTING SENTIMENTS: A worker collects palm oil fruits at a factory in Meda.
Notebook > Houses of God
Greg Schneider
palm oil: AFP/Getty Images • p5: nasa/Rex Features/ap • OraQuick: OraSure Technologies/ap • desert skink: handout
An audience listens to Rev. Franklin Graham preach at the Ghana Jesus Festival at the Accra Sports Stadium on April 29.
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Notebook > Sports
Linsanity departs the Big Apple and gives Houston another Asian sensation BY MARK BERGIN
>>
J L on the Houston Rockets wasn’t big news last December. He spent less than two weeks with the team, playing limited minutes in two preseason games before being waived. Seven months later, his return to Houston carries a bit more fanfare—and a boatload more in salary. Lin signed a three-year, million deal to play for the organization that formerly dumped him. The contract has raised eyebrows from some basketball analysts, who question whether a -game eruption in New York provides an adequate track record to warrant that kind of money. Lin averaged . points, . assists, and . rebounds for the Knicks during “Linsanity” before missing the final regular season games and playoffs with a knee injury. Does seven weeks of strong play justify a threeyear commitment? The Rockets believe so, and their decision stems from more than mere on-court production. As well as Lin was playing basketball last season, he was even better at selling clothes. Sales of jerseys with his name stenciled across the
companies during his time in Houston. And the Rockets benefitted substantially from that kind of broad appeal. Lin may not lend his name so widely given his focus on Christian mission. Already, he has launched basketball camps in China more bent on improving the lives of youth than turning a profit. But however much Lin chooses to dip his hand into the golden coin jar that is his name, the Rockets figure to make back their million investment several times over.
Rob Vito has a plan to reduce concussions significantly in contact sports like football and hockey. The CEO of Unequal Technologies wants to make players bulletproof. He claims that Kevlar, the material long used by military and law enforcement agencies in protective vests, can lessen the force of athletic collisions by percent: “If Kevlar can stop a bullet, it can ... sure stop a blitz.” That logic has convinced more than NFL and NHL teams and thousands of youth sport leagues to purchase the “Exo Skeleton CRT,” which stands for concussion reduction technology. Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo recently used the pads for extra protection around his midsection while recovering from cracked ribs. And Steelers linebacker James Harrison, well-known for his high-impact style of play, endorses the product’s effectiveness in his helmet. But as yet, no fully controlled scientific studies have demonstrated that Kevlar can reduce concussions. And no one knows what the effect of the material may be on theSLUG: playerCaption. delivering a blow. Kevlar works to diffuse impact, not remove it. Critics worry that the promise of Kevlar could give players a false sense of security that leads to more reckless play and greater danger. In that spirit, a growing chorus of voices now views protective helmets as the problem, not the solution. As Forbes columnist John Tammy says, “To put it plainly, the ‘safer’ the padding and helmets become in football, the more dangerous the game becomes.” —M.B.
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LIN: BILL KOSTROUN/AP • JERSEYS: HANDOUT • EXO SKELETON CRT: HANDOUT
PAD FAD
Email: mbergin@worldmag.com
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IMAGINE CHINA/AP
Rocket man
back were second only to those of Chicago’s Derrick Rose, the then-reigning MVP. The reason: Lin’s Taiwanese-American heritage endears him to the . billion people of China. The Rockets know all about capitalizing on merchandise sales to the world’s second-largest economy. For eight years, they reaped the rewards of NBA all-star Yao Ming donning a Houston jersey. The Rockets became China’s team, a phenomenon that Lin could well duplicate if he continues playing at a high level. What’s more, Lin’s Harvard pedigree draws fans from a population that might otherwise overlook the NBA. And his public Christian faith completes a picture that has marketers scrambling to employ the Lin brand. Yao made tens of millions of dollars in endorsement deals with Reebok and other
Notebook > Money
China syndrome
Slowdown in China’s growth will likely have global consequences By Warren Cole Smith
CREDIT
Imagine china/AP
>>
With all the focus on Europe and its debt crisis, it’s easy to forget that China is the world’s second-largest economy, after the United States. New data suggest it could also be the world’s next major trouble spot. China’s rapid growth over the past decade has masked major structural problems there. But that growth is slowing. The government announced in July that second quarter growth slowed to a 7.6 percent annual rate. The United States will experience only about 2 percent growth this year, and most European countries are contracting. So 7.6 percent may sound strong, but growth was a blazing 13 percent in 2008. And because China is still a developing nation, with hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, outsized growth rates are essential to quell potential civil unrest. Unofficial reports say as many as 180,000 people took to the streets in protests that sometimes turned into riots in 2010, during a similar economic slowdown. Also, China’s local governments are drowning in debt. China’s central government gave a $586 billion stimulus package to local governments in 2009, but now the local governments must repay the debt—and many can’t. So what does all this mean for the rest of the world? China is the largest trading partner of Russia as well as
dozens of Asian and African countries. China recently passed the United States as Brazil’s largest trading partner. Brazil, the largest economy in South America, has seen GDP growth above 7 percent as recently as 2010. However, on July 16, economists surveyed weekly by the Brazilian Central Bank cut the country’s growth rate to 2.01 percent. It was the ninth consecutive weekly drop in the survey. Economists give the slowdown in China at least some of the blame. China also trails only Canada as the top trading partner of the United States, and the flow of goods is both ways. We think of cheap Chinese imports flooding the U.S. markets, but the United States exports more to China than to all the nations of South America and Africa combined. One sign that the Chinese Tiger may be losing its roar: Even official statements are starting to acknowledge the troubles. On July 15, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao posted a statement on the government’s official website. After stating that growth “remains within the target range set earlier this year” and praising “the effectiveness of stabilization policies,” Jiabao offered a statement of almost unprecedented candor: “However, we also need to soberly see that the current economy has not yet formed a stable recovery and the economic difficulties may continue for some time.”
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China rising Despite the recent slowdown, two decades of growth have allowed Chinese firms to overtake their Japanese peers on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies. China had 73 firms on the list, released in July, which ranks companies by revenue. That’s 12 more than last year. Japan stayed steady with 68 firms. So if Japan stayed the same, and China grew, who lost companies on the list? That would be the United States and Europe. The United States still has the most Global 500 companies: 132, only 1 fewer than last year. But the United States had 197 just a decade ago. The number of European firms dropped by 11 in a single year, to 161.
2012 RANK
TOP 500 COMPANIES
132
United States
73
China
68
Japan
32
France
32
Germany
26
United Kingdom
15
Switzerland
13
South Korea
12
Netherlands
11
Canada
9
Italy
9
Australia
8
Brazil
8
India
8
Spain
7
Russia
6
Taiwan
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Mailbag ‘Rooted in Christ’
June My family and I have been subscribers to WORLD for several years. We enjoy the news and reviews from a Christian worldview, most recently the reports on the Hope Award winners and runners-up. It is refreshing to hear about these programs and the positive effect they have on their communities. —C R, , Ligonier, Pa.
‘Help for the hurting’
June Dan Allender taught me that no matter how horrific my childhood sexual abuse was, my chosen style of relating because of it was worse. That truth freed me from the isolated cellblock of victimhood. I’ll never be able to thank enough this wonderful surgeon of the soul for taking me on. —J E, Houston, Texas
It saddens me to see such a positive review of Allender’s psychotherapy with just one muted paragraph for balance. The church ministers to hurting souls through the sufficiency of Scripture, intercessory prayer, and the power of the Holy Spirit. What was so inadequate about these that so many in the church turned to modern psychotherapy? —L M, Milwaukie, Ore.
Allender does something few individuals can: He sits with those who desperately want Jesus to rescue them. When Jesus touches their deep, wounded parts, it is a beautiful thing. Not so beautiful is questioning Allender’s focus on Christ. When I have heard him speak I have been led to the feet of Jesus. —L F, Tucson, Ariz.
‘Love and wrath’
June Thanks to Janie B. Cheaney for making theology accessible. What a wonderful, succinct description of the relationship between man and the God of the Bible. —M C, Weeki Wachee, Fla.
People have a difficult time today dealing with “God’s wrath,” and in our touchy-feely world He seems more of a mystery than ever. This column did a great job of showing why there needs to be two sides of the coin: love and wrath. —D M, Naples, Fla.
‘Prison drama’
June There always seems to be at least one story in WORLD that brings tears to my eyes. “Prison drama” did it this time. It’s sad to think what it took for those inmates to find God’s love, but wonderful to see how they are redeeming the time.
—R T,, Bettles, Alaska
‘Perhapses and maybes’
June Thank you for that fascinating column about Darwinism. I am all too familiar with those qualifiers concerning evolution. We are made in the image and likeness of God, not that of an ape. —A K, Tucson, Ariz.
‘Seeds of hope’
June Thank you for keeping us informed about the progress in Myanmar. Recently I traveled to the northern part of the country and spent time with pastors in the Kachin state, where the new leadership and reforms are having a positive impact. —D L. T, Lafayette, Ind.
‘The poor in mind’
June Great column. We’ve had people stay with us as God led. One, who really was the lowest of the low, caused other Christians to question what we were doing. We are willing to help, but Jesus told us to make disciples. We don’t do God any favors by ignoring what it takes to make disciples. —M T, Kingsley, Mich.
—D MM, Pembroke, Ill.
‘Reform and reaction’
June I am saddened to hear of more arguing over Calvinism and free will. The Southern Baptists should know better, as should we all. As a young believer involved in a church split over this issue in , I know
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the anger and grief that incomplete doctrinal understanding can cause.
Cheaney’s comment that “we just need to be wiser” in how we help the poor reminds me of a quotation from Aristotle that I have had glued to the cover of my checkbook for years. He wrote that giving money away is easy, but “to decide to whom to give it, and how large and when, and for AUGUST 11, 2012
WORLD
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Mailbag what purpose and how, is neither in every man’s power nor an easy matter.” —D F, Wilmington, N.C.
‘Kid-glove treatment’
June This column is excellent, the best I have read on Mitt Romney’s faith and politics, especially the section on his works vs. Christ’s work. —D J,, Mitoyo, Japan
Quotables
June Wildlife biologist Jim Wiegand said wind turbines kill indigenous birds and that “there is no escape.” Methodical studies by other wildlife organizations show that the number of birds killed by cars, windows, and cats is far higher than by wind turbines. My vacation home has been powered by a wind turbine since and I have yet to find any evidence of even one bird kill,
OWERRI, NIGERIA submitted by Robert Stegemann although my cat averages one per month. —R R, Woodinville, Wash.
‘Politicized pulpit’
June Right on! Pastors from the
pulpit should deliver law and gospel. The left seems to apply a double standard to people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The vocation of those who sit in the pew is to witness to our Lord and Savior, first and
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO
Spirit of the Holy Land
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ht
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f oremost, but also to be good, knowledgeable, voting citizens. —Kirby Spevacek, Avondale, Ariz.
‘Fact or fiction’
June 16 You wrote that during “fracking” to extract oil and gas, operators inject a mixture of “fresh water and sand into a well at very high volumes and pressures,” but the fluids also include chemicals that some believe are hazardous. We live in central Pennsylvania and see and hear the local impact. Our forests are gouged and our winding, twisty mountain roads are now dangerously overloaded with speeding frac trucks. The list of dangerous negatives is long. —Barbara Perkons, State College, Pa.
‘Experts needed’
June 2 Who would have ever thought that understanding what it means to be male and female would be in such a confused state? It is really simple, yet this issue is central to so much turmoil all over the world. —Bev Roe, Hamilton, Ohio
‘God’s chickens’
May 19 It is so good to hear evangelicals taking up the cause for God’s c reation. Usually we are trying to push back against people who are making creation their god, making it seem as though we don’t care about the environment. —Betsy Nesbitt, Asheville, N.C.
‘Cheer of the crowd’
May 19 After the closing of our small church, which had a significant portion of international students from Asia and Africa, we looked for another church that “looked like the world” but did not act like the world. J.C. Watts said it best: “I’m not looking for a church that looks like me. I’m looking for a church that looks like heaven: red, yellow, brown, black, and white.” We are thankful that the church we found is developing more of a heart for the world, and is starting to look a wee bit more like heaven. —Lois Snyder, Wichita, Kan.
Notable CDs
May 19 I always read the reviews and have found them helpful, but Mr.
Orteza missed on his review of Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee. It was unkind to call it “the latest example of an overthe-hill performer squeezing a million or two more dollars” from his back catalog. I purchased the album and love it. —Earlene Barling, Merced, Calif.
Corrections
For the first time since 1989 Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi traveled outside her country’s borders on May 29 (Looking Ahead, June 16, p. 12). The author of Piercing the Night is H. Eberhard Roell (“Niche nook,” July 14, p. 51).
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Andrée Seu Peterson
Fixing the sinkhole It’s time to stop kidding ourselves and love one another for real
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KRIEG BARRIE
A where I do my . miles every morning, there was a sinkhole the size of a Buick hard by the stream near the last bend in the road. They kept filling it in with gravel but two weeks later it went back to the way it was. They would throw orange cones or sawhorses around it, but everybody knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. Finally, I understand the township got after them, and then I saw trucks with heavy-duty equipment for a few days on end, and the road hasn’t caved in since. There are the things we do when we are still kidding ourselves, and the things we do when we get serious. They come in like damaged goods, my friend Linda said through tears at the Keswick Diner about her fourth-graders in a Philadelphia Christian school. One troubled student said to her: “My parents are not acting like parents; they yell and slam doors.” By the statistics, Christian America isn’t doing marriage seriously yet. A book called The Marriage Builder that a man gave me for babysitting years ago contained the neat insight that good marriages happen when we “minister” rather than “manipulate.” I loved the mnemonic device, and underlined that baby, yellow-highlighted it, and spouted it to anyone who would listen. I did everything but use it. Using it is always the missing link. I reaped what I sowed. It is time to face the fact that, as Nikabrik said, our wallet is empty, our eggs are addled, our fish are uncaught, and our promises broken. One more church seminar will not fix the sinkhole. The problem is we have been attempting to obey Christ at the same time as holding onto our rights—attempting to love God at the same time as loving gods of happiness. The antics look like Drizella forcing her ungainly clodhoppers into Cinderella’s slipper. The no longer avoidable truth is that we may have our rights or we may follow Christ, but we may not have both. The issue of stark choice came up in the Corinthian church, and Paul scolded: “… brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already defeat for you. Why not rather
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suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers” ( Corinthians :-). I know that tone of voice. It’s the tone that has been preceded by plenty of gentler admonitions— about the importance of bearing with one another’s weaknesses (Colossians :), and pursuing love ( Corinthians :), and the sweetness of unity (Psalm :). But since the velvet glove isn’t working, Paul puts it point blank: You have to ask yourself, Corinthians: How much would I be willing to put up with rather than dishonor God? Look around you, your testimony is already trashed. How about something revolutionary—like giving up what you’re entitled to in a relationship? Remember when some of you “joyfully accepted the plundering of your property” (Hebrews :)? And why did you do it? Because “you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” When there is strife in a marriage, somebody needs to die who hasn’t died yet. Paul said, “I die every day!” ( Corinthians :). Does God lower His standards for Americans? The apostle sucked up insult without striking back; he just loved. Never mind Paul. Jesus, “when He was reviled ... did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten.” How could He do it? He “continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly” ( Peter :). It is the same way you and I can do it—and we can. For we “ought to walk in the same way in which He walked” ( John :). Pharaoh kept kidding himself—through gnats and frog infestations—that he could avert the inevitable. His servants got the nerve to be blunt: “Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus :). The time is short now, and our suffering is light and momentary and “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” ( Corinthians :). Let us love one another for real and not just keep patching over the old sinkhole. A AUGUST 11, 2012
WORLD
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Marvin Olasky
The sweetness of God’s goodness God’s commands come with wonderful promises
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WORLD
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AUGUST 11, 2012
Maybe because my wife and I celebrated on June our th anniversary, I’m impressed that, as historian Amanda Porterfield wrote in , Puritans often “loved their wives beyond measure.” The love was both spiritual and physical: Unlike killjoys who saw marital relations as matters of duty, Puritans said husbands and wives should “delight each in the other [during] mutual dalliances for pleasure’s sake.” Wives often loved being loved. Margaret Dunham, wife of a Glasgow University professor, wrote in of the “love-faintings … high delightings … love-languishings … and heart-ravishings” that characterized both love of Christ and love of husband. She noted “those beautiful blushings [and] humble hidings … on the Bride’s part, and those urgent callings and compellings … on the Bridegroom’s part.” Since it’s beyond us to know the depths of God’s love but not to grasp marital love, the Bible describes the former by the latter, and so did some pastors. Francis Rous, preaching on “Mystical Marriage,” noted “a chamber within us, and a bed of love in that chamber, wherein Christ meets and rests with the soul.” John Cotton of First Church in Boston, describing how we should long for Christ, wrote, “It will inflame our hearts to kiss him again.” A satisfying marriage points us to the satisfactions of God. As the Desiring God website states, “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him.” And what if, instead of learning satisfaction in God and the good gifts He provides, we proceed on our own path? What if we have a run of encounters commemorated by sexting photographs and asterisking phone numbers on iPads? What if we cohabit without covenant in the way we might try out a variety of gods? “You shall not commit adultery,” like all of God’s commands, has an implicit promise: “You shall enjoy the sweetness of God’s goodness in providing marriage.” In C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, Digory arrives at an Edenic garden and finds Jadis there. She has gorged herself on one of the apples, despite a sign forbidding that. She could have relished goodness, but instead becomes the White Witch. Whenever we advise the unmarried, we need to ask: God, or Jadis? A
RICHARD COWDREY
W in their s apparently having occasional or frequent sexual intercourse, some say pastors should offer contraceptives, and others say they should merely offer louder “Thou Shalt Nots.” Belden Lane’s Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality (Oxford University Press, ) suggests an alternative. A bit of background: I’ve learned much from John Piper and his Desiring God ministry. Basing their approach on the work of Puritan Jonathan Edwards, Desiring God notes that “God designed humans to seek their happiness in Him. ... Joy glorifies God.” Desiring God reaches secular, post-Christian Westerners by saying, “You are not nearly hedonistic enough,” and contrasting short-lived thrills with the “never-ending satisfaction in seeing and savoring Jesus Christ.” Author Lane is unconnected with Desiring God, and he goes off on political tangents at times, but he aptly quotes Calvin’s comment about God: “We will never spontaneously and heartily sound forth His praises until He wins us by the sweetness of His goodness.” Jonathan Edwards also preached more about God’s glory mirrored in the beauty of the world—“Nature teaches us God’s beauty”—than about God’s anger. Puritan Richard Baxter wrote in , “What a pleasure it is to dive into the secrets of nature.” Lane dives, as in this example: “Ten miles deep in the ocean’s abyss are blind creatures illuminated with some of the most lustrous colors imaginable. And for what purpose? They can’t even see each other. It is almost as if their glory were created for its own sake”—and, more importantly, for God’s. Why else would “marvelous shades of color” be found inside abalone shells? So much pleasure: The Blue Ridge mountains are beautiful and so are cities filled with people, all images of God. The Puritans’ “language of desire” honored God who created beauty in both nature and humanity. Most men four centuries ago and now feel the joy evident in Lewis Bayly’s declaration—The Practice of Piety ()—when he beheld “the lovely beauty of Women” and exclaimed “how fair is that God, that made these fair!”
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