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PRISM Freeing the future of North Korea: Now is the time to deliver Kim Jong-il’s persecuted people Also: Prescription for peace in Israel/Palestine Reflecting on the Lausanne Congress

What would Wilberforce do?

Striking a blow to human rights abuses Seniors who rock the world!

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PRISM Volume 18, Number 1 January-February 2011 Editor Art Director Publications Assistant Copy Editor Financial Operations Publisher

Kristyn Komarnicki Rhian Tomassetti Katherine Coulter Leslie Hammond Sandra Prochaska Ronald J. Sider

Contributing Editors Christine Aroney-Sine Clive Calver Rudy Carrasco Andy Crouch J. James DeConto Gloria Gaither Vernon Grounds Ben Hartley Jan Johnson Craig S. Keener Richard Mouw Philip Olson Jenell Williams Paris Christine Pohl James Skillen Al Tizon Jim Wallis

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A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University All contents © 2011 ESA/PRISM magazine.

"...where is the wrath of the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread. For I am the LORD your God..."

ISAIAH 51:13-15 JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2011

CONTENTS

8

2 Reflections from the Editor

8 How to Save a Life

Praying for North Korea's “Fear Leader”

Just in time: activists are reaching out to North Korean defectors and calling for international pressure to liberate the country from Kim Jong-il's oppressive regime.

3 Talk Back Letters to the Editor

20 Post-Heroic Ministry

4 Kingdom Ethics Common Ground on Abortion?

Does the church's obsession with muscular leadership mask our true calling to be followers of Christ?

5 A Different Shade of Green

24 The Wilberforce Effect

Weeding Out Population Control

Human rights activist Michael Horowitz identifies some of the most pressing justice issues of the year and outlines the policy initiatives that could change America’s politics, strengthen the appeal of faith institutions, and transform the face of history.

6 Global Positions Watering Community 7 Word, Deed & Spirit Christ Outside the Gate

34 Demanding an Encore

39 On Being the Church Discovering God on Angel Island

40 Washington Watch

6

The fast-growing “experience movement" looks to senior citizens for social innovation and the personpower to change the world.

Towards a Just Peace

24

41 Art & Soul Going for Broke

42 Off the Shelf Torture, faith and the American dream, immigration, spiritual action, the beauty of community.

46 Music Notes Music That Stops Traffic

48 Ron Sider Evangelizing the World: Reflections on Lausanne III

Cover Photo: North Korean children peer through a window at a government-run nursery in Anju city in South Pyongan province. (Photo: Gerald Bourke/Reuters/Corbis)

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R eflections from the Editor Praying for North Korea’s “Fear Leader” The first time I saw footage of Benito Mussolini, addressing a huge gathering from the balcony of his Roman palace, I was shocked–and repulsed–by the physical manifestations of his megalomania. His chest swelled like a full sail, pregnant with the wind of self-aggrandizement. He rocked up and down on the balls of his feet in a restless vertical swagger, his arms pumping the air around him like a drowning man. His lower jaw jutted up and out to meet a frowning sneer. Eyes bulged and neck swelled so that he appeared to be choking on his own ego. The man was, quite literally, sick with self.

Contrast this with North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, a Tweedledee lookalike who appears to wander, half asleep, through the stark bureaucratic landscape he inherited from his absentee, career-politician father. Flaccid-faced and void of even a drop of charisma, he bears the blank, befuddled expression of a spoiled child who has been deprived of both love and limits. The country’s “Dear Leader” is a lost soul–unable to save himself, let alone his 24 million subjects–and so he rules with banal terror.

While no less sin-sick than Mussolini, Kim inspires my pity in a way that few dictators do. Handed a kingdom over which to rule, fed from infancy on lies and legends, he simply swallowed the pill that his father (and his concomitant communist machine) handed him. But regardless of the external package, the internal result is the same: spiritual death. When we put ourselves in the place of God, we suffocate on our own bloated ego. Eventually we drop off the horizon, but not before we take a lot of other folks down with our sinking ship.

Kim’s been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve prepared this issue’s cover story and read one heartbreaking account after another about what goes on in his

2 PRISM Magazine

country. I listened to defector testimonies, watched interviews with party and military leaders, read the stories of torture survivors. The destruction is vast, the pain deep, and the fear widespread. From the elite party member to the local police officer, Kim’s system of oppression poisons the hearts and minds of those who hold power in that country. It seems that power–no matter how small the amount–deforms us when we seize hold of it instead of leaving it in our Creator’s hands.

Two of my Sunday school students with the letters they wrote to the North Korean people.

I teach Sunday school to a cozy group of children aged 2 to 10.

Oppressed by visions of Kim Jong-il, I’ve been diluting my despair by sharing it with them. We’ve been reading about the Bible’s mad dictators: Saul, the paranoid and insecure king; Nebuchadnezzar, the ADD-afflicted, worship-me-or-else monarch. And we’ve been praying–bless their little bowed heads and clasped hands–that God would turn the heart of Kim Jongil (whom we refer to as the “Fear Leader”), just as surely as he turned Nebuchadnezzar’s. Send him out into the wilderness, Lord, for as long as it takes to clean house and free the people of North Korea. And then call him home, Lord Jesus; heal his heart with your love. We know you can do it.

Lord, hear our prayer. We’ve sent love letters to be broadcast into North Korea, telling the people that they are not forgotten, that someone out there

Kristyn Komarnicki

loves them, knows their stories, and is praying for them. We’ve sent money to groups that are aiding escapees and rescuing orphans–did you know you can buy an orphan on the streets of North Korea for less than the price of a candy bar? There’s a lot to lament in this story, but when I feel discouraged, praying fervently with these little kids for Kim’s heart really does help.

The view of North Korea at night, as imaged by Google Earth, is a ghostly black shape flanked by light to the north (China) and the south (South Korea).

Even in the capital of Pyongyang, lights are turned off at night to conserve electricity in this land of recklessly induced poverty. This is a place of both literal and metaphorical darkness. It should make us stop and pray–against the spiritual gloom in North Korea...and against the murky darkness in our own souls. For while dictators like Mussolini and Kim paint a dramatic picture of the human condition without God, all of us are prone to self-worship, and all of us know the bitter taste that pride leaves in our mouth and how quickly it can lay waste to the world around us.

And so, let us pray, as we step into another year in this broken world: Lord, deflate my ego and pump me full of love for you, my neighbor, and my enemy.

Free us from enslavement to ourselves– our agendas, our appetites, and our apathy. And work a miracle in North Korea today so that your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Kristyn Komarnicki just celebrated her 10-year anniversary as editor of PRISM Magazine, a job she loves because it lets her tell stories of pain, joy, despair, and hope. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three sons.

Letters to the Editor

T alk Back

I used “A Covenant for Workers” from the July/August 2010 issue for discussion in the human resources management class that I teach, and it prompted interesting discussion in the classroom. My view is that it is no longer possible for industry to enter into the type of covenant advocated by the author, given the dynamics of globalization and the information age. Achieving these goals could be possible, however, through well designed public/industry/church partnerships that prepare and support workers with marketable, in-demand skill sets that provide long-term paths to living-wage employment with multiple employers.

Rick Jonsen Business Department Eastern University St. Davids, Pa. Loved, loved, loved Ron Sider’s article in the September/October 2010 issue about how Christians are “Called to Love the Gay Community.” I love what Andrew Marin is doing, and I’m so glad you published this article! This is theologically right on, and Ron’s words really communicate God’s heart. Well done, ESA! Angie Weszely Palentine, Ill. I let my PRISM subscription expire because, in my heart of hearts, I believe that ESA and I are heading in different directions. I am trying to snatch souls out of the gates of hell. ESA seems to be more concerned with the temporal. I realize that Jesus ministered to the temporal needs of those he met–and I am incorporating those aspects into my ministry and in my personal giving of finances and time. However, that is not my primary focus, and neither was it the primary focus of Christ, who said he came to seek and save the lost.

Perhaps ESA is intending to bring a balance to the church's ministry focus, but as it is examined by itself, ESA's focus seems to be missing the call of the Great Commission to make disciples. But that is just the simple opinion of this believer. Blessings to you. May many souls be brought into God's eternal kingdom because of the things you do.

Michael McGowan Solon, Iowa I thoroughly enjoyed the reflection from the editor, “Partaking in Each Other's Faith Journey,” in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue. The experiences related of speaking at the rabbinical college and participating in the Jewish/Christian study of the Scripture were very challenging to me. Although I am reserved when talking to people in that I do not debate beliefs with them, I do engage in a bit of mental apologetics. I am tempted to think about how they are wrong in their beliefs instead of simply showing the love of Christ through my actions and basically loving on them.

Very encouraging and challenging article!

Javan Rowe Columbus, Ohio

3

K ingdom Ethics pro-life subculture, I found myself Common Ground articulating an uncompromising prolife position when the responsibility on Abortion?

Last October I spoke at an ambitious conference at Princeton University on abortion. It was the brainchild of a friend of mine, Dr. Charles Camosy, a young Catholic theologian at Fordham University. In the end it brought together an amazingly diverse array of scholars ranging from John Finnis of Notre Dame to P e t e r Singer of Princeton, with an equally diverse array of attendees ranging from abortion providers to ardently anti-abortion Catholic priests.

The fact that such diverse people could manage to gather in the same room without fisticuffs was an accomplishment in itself. To the extent that this civility was the goal of the conference, it succeeded in its aims. Not that civility went unchallenged–indeed, the oft-stated ground rules were periodically breached. This proved to me that one cannot simply demand a kind of civil discourse and expect that people will be able to manage it without either training in such conversation or ongoing participation in communities that practice it.

I found myself among the most visible pro-life leaders at the conference. This startled me. It is not a public self-identification or role that I have courted. I have mainly worked on other issues and have not shared the spirit or the vision of the nation’s most visible and strident pro-life organizations.

But from the moment of the opening plenary I was placed in the position of having to articulate what I believe and why in front of an audience of hundreds, with maybe thousands more on the internet. It was striking to me that, despite my current professional distance from a

fell upon me to do so. Then in the dialogue and question period, in which I was being pressed by prochoice interlocutors to acknowledge the rightness of their concerns and views, I found myself unable to do so in good conscience. I actually thought most of their arguments dissolved on contact.

The ground rules of the event

David P. Gushee

results in an unwanted pregnancy.

The pro-choice side can talk about women’s moral agency all day long, but moral decision making happens in contexts of power. To the extent that a man has power or leverage in a relationship with a woman, he can affect or sometimes even direct her decision to have an abortion.

Is there the possibility of common ground on abortion? There seems to be common ground on issues related to reducing the need for abortion on the demand side, and perhaps also on helping pregnant women to have the best care possible so that they would have healthy pregnancies and access to the resources necessary to keep their babies or give them up for adoption.

But even this common ground is narrow and contested. This is because among some ardent prochoicers, even to try to work for a demand-side reduction of abortions “stigmatizes” abortion. Pro-choice advocates who work for this common ground therefore come under fire from their own pro-choice colleagues.

At the conference, I called abortion a tragic matter for all involved.

Even that characterization was challenged. But it is indeed a tragedy that one out of five pregnancies in our country ends in a woman “choosing” to contract with a doctor to destroy the life developing within her.

I say now what I said then: This is not the kind of world we ought to want. We can do better. We must do better.

“This is not the kind of world we ought to want.

We can do better. We must do better.”

4 PRISM Magazine

require me not to quote the views of others by name, so I won’t do so.

But let’s just say I was struck by the weakness of the positions taken by those on the pro-choice side.

I was directly confronted with the argument that individual fetal life has little or no value and no particular moral status. I can’t agree.

I was asked to affirm that abortion can be a good thing. I was only able to say that it might be viewed as the least bad option by a woman in a particular crisis situation.

I was asked to concur with the view that even when poor women choose abortion (70 percent of abortions are “chosen” by women who live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line) it is a positive expression of their moral agency. I instead am more deeply convinced than ever that the disproportionate resort to abortion among the poor reflects and deepens their entrapment in situations of powerlessness.

I was laughed off when I claimed that abortion places on women the burdens of the sexual revolution’s “liberation.” But as a man I totally and viscerally understand that the availability of abortion and the leverage a man has to demand it of “his” lover enables us to exploit our access to women’s bodies without having to pay the ultimate price if it

David P. Gushee is director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, Atlanta, Ga., where he is also a professor of Christian ethics.

Rusty Pritchard

Weeding Out Population Control Efforts to cap global warming pollution have withered and died without yielding a harvest.

Some new and good fruit may grow in its place, but probably not this year, and in the interim there is a danger of weeds popping up.

One of those weeds is the population control agenda. After the election sealed the fate of climate legislation for the near future, Grist magazine’s Lisa Hymas posted an article called “What should climate hawks do next? Fight for free birth control.” Hymas’ real agenda seems to be fighting for population control rather than environmental improvement.

It’s an old idea—and an example of where common sense can lead one horribly astray.

In 1968 ecologist Paul Erhlich became famous for his book The Population Bomb, which argued that in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people would starve to death because of ecological catastrophes caused by overpopulation. After all, world population was rising rapidly and showed few signs of slowing. Those dire predictions never came to pass, but the idea of “overpopulation” came to be lodged in the popular imagination as a fundamental part of environmentalism.

Yet for 20 years in my work among mainstream environmentalists, I’ve heard only two kinds of environmentalists talking about overpopulation: senior citizens asking cranky questions after one of my public lectures and undergraduate students on the first day of their Environmental Studies 101 class. The only place I saw the idea in print was in undergraduate textbooks, mainly written by end-of-career scientists still fixated on the nonexistent population bomb.

Advocates of population control did not find a home in modern environmentalism.

Instead they merged with pro-choice advocates and created a “family planning” subculture—a descriptor that sounds innocuous enough but is laden with circumlocutions about abortion and a misanthropic worldview. Too often it blends with (and offers funding for) anti-immigrant sentiment, borrowing much from the

D ifferent Shade of Green “lifeboat ethics” of Garrett Hardin, another population control advocate who was nothing if not consistent (besides making a strong case against helping the poor, he promoted population control and euthanasia, eventually committing suicide together with his wife in their 80s). Population control advocates had much more in common with the contraceptive culture of Planned Parenthood.

Today demographers realize that population growth rates are falling, all over the world, faster than anyone thought possible in the 1970s. While still growing, world population has passed its inflection point and is expected to level off in this century for reasons that are now well known to demographers.

To their credit, most mainstream environmental organizations are not outspoken proponents of population control.

Many are working to broaden their outreach to “non-traditional constituencies” (evangelicals, hunter/anglers, security hawks, the business community, etc.). They’ve dropped much of their rhetoric of gloom and doom, and they promote solutionsoriented campaigns that inspire action, not fatalism.

Part of Erhlich’s intuition was correct: Rapidly growing populations, whether in poor or rich countries, can press hard on the resources that give them their livelihoods.

But shrinking populations have their own social costs, as fewer workers are asked to support growing populations of the retired elderly and as young families abandon their elders in the countryside for the better services of the city. Populations whose fertility levels have dropped far below the replacement rate—as has happened in much of Western Europe, Japan, and Singapore— find themselves at risk of committing the demographic equivalent of suicide.

Pro- and anti-natalists can tot up arguments in favor of larger or smaller populations ad nauseam. But they have one thing in common—they are both nearly powerless to do anything about population size, short of coercion. Fertility rates (the number of children an average woman bears in her lifetime) vary dramatically from place to place, not because of investments in family planning efforts or inducements to

have more or fewer children but because of economics.

In fact, family planning efforts are singularly unsuccessful in slowing fertility rates. The only “family planning” measures that have proven successful in slowing birth rates are repression and violence directed toward mothers or information campaigns and subsidies of ridiculous proportions. The costs of contraception, after all, are swamped by the costs of raising a child, which leads one to the proper conclusion that family size is a choice.

Economic development makes large families less attractive. When women are offered education and employment, they are less likely to stay home rearing large numbers of children. Stable financial systems also make it possible to save for one’s own old age rather than being dependent upon offspring. Population control advocates point to the correlation between prevalence of contraceptives and falling fertility, but the relationship is actually driven by a desire for a smaller family.

Significantly accelerating the current decline in population growth is virtually impossible without oppressive policies, and spending vast sums to subsidize contraception has no effect on either family size or the environment. At best it is a waste of resources. At worst it is immoral, since family planning advocates refuse to decouple birth control and abortion rights. Linking population control to the environmental agenda rightly horrifies Christians, including green ones.

Environmentalists need as big a tent as they can pitch in this political climate, and adopting positions with so little scientific merit and so much political cost is foolhardy.

It’s time to weed out the population control agenda.

A natural resource economist, Rusty Pritchard is the co-founder and president of Flourish (FlourishOnline.org), a national Christian ministry that serves Christians as they grow in environmental stewardship, healthy living, and radical discipleship.

5

G lobal Positions Watering Community Deaths from waterborne diseases are commonplace in Nigerian villages, where people often share the same pond with their cows, sheep, and goats. Villages without ponds turn to hand-dug wells, but for every well there is a child who has died trying to fetch water from it. Experts estimate that the provision of clean water alone would cut disease in Nigeria by about 60 percent.

In 2008 SelfS u s t a i n i n g Enterprises (SSE) partnered with Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati to launch H2O Nigeria. The idea behind the project was to saturate targeted areas with clean water by drilling boreholes.

Villages desiring a borehole must demonstrate a collective sense of “ownership” of their well by working together to establish a water committee that will be responsible for management of the well. The water committee also serves as the health and hygiene contact group for the village. To date, SSE has built 70 boreholes in Nigeria that serve over 40,000 people.

In December 2009, SSE began the first of what they plan to be an annual tradition that is as exciting as the first sight of water from the first borehole– the H2O Nigeria Water Summit. The summit brought together representatives from every village that has a borehole. Representation was diverse– old and young; men and women; Christians, Muslims, and traditionalists.

The organizers were stunned! No one could have predicted such diversity in a culture where, typically, only elder men are sent to represent villages. For the summit the villages maintained the all-

6 PRISM Magazine

inclusive participatory approach that enabled them to get the borehole in the first place. A village-wide decision that included the voices of women and young people was a remarkable and life-giving departure from the norm.

Another departure was that, instead of featuring degreed outsiders who talked while the villagers took notes, at

this summit it was the villagers who were the experts, had all the experience, and did all the talking–everyone else was a student. This was a multivillage roundtable where all at the table had in common the life-changing experience of receiving a borehole.

The discussions at the summit soon revealed the extent to which a single borehole can spark a cycle of hope in a village. They told stories of conflict resolution where Christian villagers and Muslim nomads who used to quarrel over water–sometimes violently–share peacefully now that water is no longer so scarce. Representatives from a predominantly Muslim village expressed shock that they got a borehole without a demand for conversion to Christianity.

Similarities emerged in the stories.

First, every village was experiencing a decrease in the number of deaths and illnesses. In the case of at least two villages, the local health clinics were struggling to stay open due to lack of patients. This was even more remarkable since the report came from an area that had lost about 300 children

Emmanuel Itapson

just two years earlier because of pollution at the local water source. Second, every village talked about sustained enrollment at the local schools. A woman representing the village of Bunkusa said that because children no longer have to wake up at 3 a.m. to walk four miles to line up for water, fewer students were dropping out of school. Third, most villages were experiencing increased economic activity. Extra time was allowing the villagers, especially women, to spend more time in small trading and farming.

By the end of the summit, it was clear that clean, safe drinking water for these villages was only the beginning. A borehole cannot be an end in itself but is only a vehicle by which sustainable kingdom communities can be built from the ground up. With fewer deaths and greater prosperity, these villages will begin to buck some of the age-old traditions that minimize the voices of women who bear the brunt of Africa’s burdens. They will demonstrate the possibilities of peace and reconciliation in a country that periodically convulses from ethnic and religious riots. And the H2O Nigeria Water Summit will continue to bring these communities of hope together, because stories of hope are contagious.

Learn more at SSEinc.org.

Emmanuel Itapson is associate professor of Old Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary outside Philadelphia, Pa. He is co-founder of the Cincinnati-based Self-Sustaining Enterprises, Inc., which operates in Jos, Nigeria, providing ministry to orphans through boarding schools, health facilities, and vocational education.

Al Tizon

Christ Outside the Gate*

W ord, Deed & Spirit and forgiveness, all in the name of Christ.

I also observed Informal School, an educational ministry to children who for various reasons do not attend public school. The facility for the younger children was not usable due to a recent storm, so the 20 or so children were crammed into a volunteer’s shack.

When six of us arrived at the doorway,

especially eternal suffering. And so on.

I’m convinced that if the congress was held in Sweet Home, such prioritizing would sound curious, if not ludicrous.

Evangelicals have come a long way in Unless you insist on saving the best negotiating evangelism and social for last, please read Ron Sider’s colresponsibility since the first congress in umn before you read mine in order 1974, but I was hoping that such stateto get an overall feel for Lausanne ments would no longer be entertained.

III, the third massive gathering of During my long flight home, I read the International Congress on World an article Evangelization since 1974, held this time When missional reflection happens apart from the nitty-gritty of the practice a b o u t in beautiful Cape of ministry, artificial arguments arise, such as, “Which is more important: the Desmond Tutu and Town, South Africa. spiritual or the social, word or deed, evangelism or justice?” was once As one of 4,000 invitees from 198 countries, let me the children crowded around us, and again inspired by the bishop’s example say “Amen” to Dr. Sider’s reflections those close enough hugged our legs. I of what it means to follow Jesus in the on the event. There was much to bent down and went eye-to-eye with a context of injustice. I felt embarrassed celebrate at the congress, and well- little boy who took his brown cotton that apartheid had not been acknowldeserved thanks should go to the hat off and offered it to me. When I edged, much less confessed, at the organizers who worked tirelessly for took it and put it on my head, he congress. I was not the only one who the last few years to pull off, in the laughed heartily. I’ve been hearing that was pained by the omission. A Statement of Lament about apartheid words of the post-congress update, exuberant laugh in my sleep. “perhaps the widest and most diverse These ministries flow out of a part- was circulated and signed by many gathering of Christians ever held in the nership between St. Paul’s Anglican participants. It read in part, “This history of the church.”

Church of Philippi, Bridges of Hope Lausanne Congress...gathered in a land I realized in retrospect, however, International (BridgesWorldwide.org), which 16 years ago stood in the grip of that for me the most inspiring moments and the faithful volunteers of Sweet one of the greatest evils of our time– of the week happened “outside the Home. Empowerment among the apartheid. We regret that this was not gate.” For example, on our one day off poor, love and compassion, faithfulness named or confessed at the opening of I visited a township called Sweet amidst abject poverty, holistic minis- the congress.” We cannot expect a Home. Under apartheid, townships try, kingdom partnership–the firsthand gathering, even one of this magnitude, were designated areas on the periphery taste of these things reminded me of to cover everything; but how could we of “whites-only communities” in which the reason, meaning, and drive of mis- have overlooked such a thing while black South Africans were forced to sion more than any presentation or celebrating Christ’s holistic mission in the world? live. Only 16 years removed from the sermon I heard during the congress.

Lausanne III was a wonderful week dismantling of apartheid, many of And that is saying a lot, because these townships continue to consist of there were some excellent presenta- of mission renewal, sweet fellowship, high concentrations of extreme pover- tions. But there is simply no substitute and global networking, but it was “outty. Picture an American inner-city for seeing, smelling, and feeling human side the gate” where I encountered ghetto, and then multiply its plight by need to reignite the pilot light of mis- most profoundly, in the words of 10, 20, or 30 times. sion. In fact, when missional reflection Bishop Tutu, “the God of justice, libI spent only a few hours there, happens apart from the senses–that is, eration, and goodness.” observing a Community, Health, and apart from the nitty-gritty of the prac*The title of a book by Orlando Costas Evangelism (CHE) training take place tice of ministry–artificial arguments among a group of women. CHE is a arise, such as, “Which is more imporholistic ministry that seeks to provide tant: the spiritual or the social, word or Al Tizon (atizon@ physical, social, and spiritual care to deed, evangelism or justice?” eastern.edu) is direchouseholds. These women, themselves Unfortunately, I sensed the felt need of tor of ESA’s Word & Deed Network residents of the township, were being some of the plenary speakers to affirm and associate profestrained to impart principles of personal social ministry with caveat. It’s imporsor of holistic minishygiene and HIV/AIDS prevention, to tant, but we should not be distracted try at Palmer counsel the hopeless and the broken, from the real work of evangelism. We Theological Seminary and to offer prayers of reconciliation should alleviate human suffering, but in Wynnewood, Pa.

7

How to Save a Li f e Cultivating Prayerful Passion for the People of North Korea

by Faith McDonnell 8

Dr. Norbert Vollertsen holds pictures that he took of North Korean children suffering from malnutrition. At a rally in Athens in 2004, he and other activists criticized North Korea and China for their treatment of North Korean refugees and called for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters/Corbis)

Today many rest uneasy over the politics and policies of North Korea. They lose sleep over the looming threat of a nuclear Pyongyang, particularly in recent days with the unveiling of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program.

They wonder if the mysterious heir Kim Jong-un, third son of present “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, could possibly be an improvement over his father, or if the regime will go from worse to worst. They follow events in North Korea that affect our national or global security as closely as they can from outside that shut-off nation, deeply concerned over North Korea’s attack on Yeongyeong, a South Korean island, on November 23, 2010. Pyongyang’s bombardment killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded many other soldiers and civilians.

But American Christians have not customarily lost sleep over the fate of the people of North Korea. They have given little attention to a country plagued by famine and orchestrated starvation, to untold numbers of people imprisoned, tortured, and executed. But a growing group of activists are living out Marshall’s exhortation. The activists stress the indivisibility of human rights and national security. They have succeeded in arousing Congress and obtaining such legislation as the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 and subsequent Reauthorization Act of 2008. They work doggedly to extend freedom and justice to the entire Korean peninsula. They are literally saving the lives of North Koreans.

Under tyrannical Kim Jong-il, the regime in Pyongyang, known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), denies all human rights. The country is little more than a prison camp. Its inhabitants are cut off from the rest of the world, but defectors and escapees are exposing this hell. It is their testimonies that inspire the tireless intercession and daring actions of those who are trying to save lives in North Korea.

e “W

e should not sleep, at least not well, until we know that we have done everything we possibly can for our brothers and sisters around the world.” These are the words of Dr. Paul Marshall, the author of the seminal account of the suffering church, Their Blood Cries Out (Thomas Nelson, 1997). Marshall challenges churches in the West not only to defend the persecuted but also to own their accountability to the worldwide Body of Christ.

Kim Il-sung: The “Great Leader” who killed Christians A spiritual revival took place in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, in January 1907 and continued through 1910.

According to Mathew Backholer in Revival Fire, 50,000 people came to Christ in the first year of the revival.

Backholer quotes missionary John McCune, who wrote in a letter what was taking place: “‘…The work of the Holy Spirit here at the Jangdaehyun Church where revival first broke out would far surpass what we have read about the great revival in Wales and India…’”1 In the wake of revival, Pyongyang became known as the “Jerusalem of Asia.”

But the thriving Christian community suffered greatly in the succeeding years. Persecution began in 1910, when Japan annexed the Korean peninsula and mandated emperor worship. Then at the end of World War II, Soviettrained Kim Il-sung, the father of current leader Kim Jongil, imposed communism.

Kim Il-sung attempted to rid the country of Christians.

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Between 1945 and 1950 the DPRK government executed or arrested all of the country’s known religious leaders. A class system, seongbun, was created to categorize all North Koreans. Seongbun placed the surviving Christians and other religious families in the lowest, “hostile” category.

They were either relocated or sent to forced labor camps for political prisoners.

The government replaced Christianity and other faiths with a religious, political, social, and economic ideology called Juche. Juche, also known as “Kimilsungism,” is a bizarre cultish worship of the late “Great Leader.”

According to the ideology, there is no god but Kim Il-sung. Although the older Kim died in 1994, he is still considered North Korea’s “Eternal President.”

Juche also attributes divine powers to the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il.

In Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick tells how North Korean citizens are indoctrinated with stories of the miraculous nature of Kim Jong-il. “Kim Jong-il’s birth was said to have been heralded by a radiant star in the sky and the appearance of a beautiful double rainbow,” says Demick. “A swallow descended from heaven to sing of the birth of a “'general who will rule the world.'”2 Demick explains that in North Korea, children celebrate the birthdays of the Kims but not their own birthdays.

Conditions for Christians today Although the regime outlawed Christian faith, it declares that it allows for religious freedom. This is demonstrated to tourists and other foreigners (including Western government and church officials) with four “show churches” in Pyongyang. In the 2009 US State Department Report on International Religious Freedom, foreigners who visited one of these officially sanctioned churches, the Bongsu Church, stated that North Korean worshippers are bused in, and no children are present. “Church services appeared staged and contained political content supportive of the regime, in addition to religious themes,” they said.3 According to the report Thank You, Father Kim Il-sung, produced by

the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), there are three different categories of Christians in North Korea. The first category is described as “old society,” pre-WWII Christians and their children. They are members of the state-sponsored Korean religious federations and worship at statesanctioned churches or home worship centers whose services can only take place with Workers Party members or police in attendance. The second category is post-WWII Christians and their children. These Christians worship privately and do not participate in state-sanctioned religion.

But other North Korean followers of Christ are not in government-sponsored show churches and are not “old society.”

Some experts say that as many as 200,000 secret believers live in North Korea, most of whom became Christians in China or through contact with Chinese or South Korean Christians. They practice their faith under constant threat of imprisonment or execution. Thank You, Father Kim Il-sung interviewed two former members of the North Korean political police who defected. They stated that their work included “hunting down such Christians” and that the purpose of the “brutally coercive interrogations” of North Koreans who have been forcibly repatri-

DIG DE EPER In the film Crossing (Ke uro s ing, 2008), a North Korean e x - s o cc e r player is forced to sneak into China to buy medicine for his ailing wife.

Landing in trouble across the border, he flees to South Korea. But now he can’t return to his village, and hence begins a titanic struggle to get home.

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Hiding is a film that exposes the life of North Korean refugees hiding in China. You can host a screening of this film at the website of Liberty in North Korea (LinkGlobal.org), a youthdriven human rights advocacy organization.

In Escaping North Korea (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), American Mike Kim, who worked with refugees on the Chinese border for four years, recounts their experiences of enduring famine, sextrafficking, and torture, as well as the inspirational stories of those who overcame tremendous adversity to escape.

Terrified North Korean refugees, during an escape to China.

ated from China is to identify North Koreans involved with transgressed because of the late Kim Il-sung’s law that foreign Christians and missions.4 the seed of enemies of the state “must be eliminated through three generations.” Considering the brutal condiNot all North Koreans who have awakened to the reality tions of North Korea’s prison camps, execution may of their country become Christians. Others, disillusioned with have been the more merciful punishment.

Juche, have turned to Shamanism and to fortune tellers. But All North Koreans live under the continual and arbia former North Korean police official interviewed in the trary threat of imprisonment. According to the US USCIRF’s A Prison Without Bars said that these other reliCommittee for Human gions do not concern the North A drawing by a North Korean defector who was imprisoned Rights in North Korea Korean government as much as (HRNK) an estimated Christianity. They fear that 200,000 men, women, and Christianity will defeat “the One and children are being held in just Only Ideology–Kimilsungism,” he five of North Korea’s 12 said.5 prison labor camps. Unknown The North Korean government numbers of additional prisonfears the Bible as well. In July 2009, ers are in other known and Ri Hyon Ok, a 33-year-old Christian unknown prisons–some mother of three was sentenced to reported to be completely death for distributing copies of the underground. About 30 Bible and “spying” for South Korea forced labor camps are also and the United States. (She had in operation. In the last three decades, some 400,000 probably had contact with Christians from these countries.) have died in this gulag.

Ri was publicly executed in the northwestern city of HRNK’s 2003 report, The Hidden Gulag: Exposing Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.6 North Korea’s Prison Camps, includes groundbreaking According to the Investigative Commission on Crimes high-resolution satellite photographs and the testimonies against Humanity, on the day after Ri’s execution, her parof dozens of former political prisoners and defectors. ents, husband, and three small children were sent to a The research confirms that the nightmarish stories of political prison camp. The North Korean government punformer prisoners are not exaggerated. The details in the ishes three generations of the family of the one who has

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close-up photos correspond exactly with details from the witnesses about the camps.

Most North Koreans are imprisoned for trumped-up political “crimes.”

Such offenses include reading a foreign newspaper, singing a South Korean pop song, or “insulting the authority” of the North Korean leadership. One woman went to prison for leaving the mandatory photos of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on the wall of her burning house when fleeing the fire. Another was incarcerated just because she was the classmate of a former mistress of Kim Jong-il and the government wanted to erase all record of the woman.7 Testimonies of former prisoners in The Hidden Gulag provide other examples of the flagrantly unjust imprisonment of innocent citizens.

One such testimony included in the HRNK report is that of Kang Chol Hwan, the famous author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag. Kang was 9 years old when he was taken to Yoduk, North Korea’s most infamous prison camp, with the rest of his family. His Korean-Japanese grandfather, who had made a fortune in Japan’s casino industry, voluntarily returned to Pyongyang to support Kim Il-sung in building socialism. The regime repaid him by seizing his bank accounts, cars, and furniture. Kang’s grandfather “disappeared” one day. Officials declared that he had committed some unspecified act of high treason, and they arrested the rest of his family. Kang was imprisoned until age 19, when he was inexplicably released. He eventually escaped from North Korea.8 According to multiple reports, Christians receive the harshest torture and the worst forms of execution in the prison system. A former DPRK prison guard testified before the US Congress, confirming the regime’s intense hatred of Christians.

He recounted one instance in which a woman was kicked repeatedly and left with her injuries unattended for days because a prison guard overheard her praying for a child.

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At a rally in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul, activists protest the Chinese government's deportation of North Korean defectors. (Jo Yong_Hak/Reuters/Corbis)

According to North Korean escapee Soon Oak Lee, the prison guards would publicly humiliate Christians by refusing to give them any clothes. “They were considered animals,” she said. Soon testified that in the prison factories they killed Christians “by pouring molten steel on them.” She explained that believing in God instead of Kim Il-sung was the biggest crime in the eyes of the officials.9

No mercy: China’s treatment of North Korean escapees Many North Koreans are in prison camp because they attempted to escape the country and have been forcibly repatriated from China. Starvation and persecution have motivated over 300,000 North Koreans to flee to China.

Many never make it across the border. They are so weak and terrified that they stumble and never get up, drowning or freezing to death in the shallow but icy waters of the Tumen River. Those who do reach China live in hiding, in terror of being discovered by the Chinese authorities, who will send them back to certain imprisonment and quite likely death.

Spea king Out The following letter was sent in October 2008 to Senator McCain and then-Senator Obama by the Korean American Church Coalition for North Korea Freedom (KCC), an umbrella group of almost 3,000 Korean-American churches and pastors: We write as pastors of the Korean American Church Coalition who are grateful for the blessings of democracy that our beloved country has bestowed upon us. In exercising our democratic rights–and obligations–we and our fellow worshippers respectfully seek your views on the questions posed by this letter. We begin by expressing our concern with policies that ignore three present developments that jeopardize the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula. They are: ★ the abhorrent record of the Kim Jong-il regime towards our brothers and sisters, the people of North Korea; ★ the mass transfer of North Korean refugees by the government of China to the regime’s concentration camps–action taken in clear violation of China’s UN treaty obligations; and ★ the silence of the United Nations towards those treaty violations and towards the regime’s human rights record.

We believe that [current US] policies ignore the clear lessons of history and neither serve American values or interests. We further believe that offering money and legitimacy to the regime solely in exchange for its nuclear promises and concessions will invite future and increasingly grave weaponsrelated crises on the Korean Peninsula and beyond…

From this day forward, we intend to follow the examples of the American Jewish community’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry and the African American community’s campaign against the former apartheid regime. Guided by those models, we will call for policies that no longer abandon our North Korean brothers and sisters and no longer ignore the “Helsinki” human rights principles of the North Korea Human Rights Act that we believe offer the best hope for peacefully resolving the crisis produced by the character and conduct of the North Korean regime.

We take to heart something else we have learned from the anti-apartheid and Soviet Jewry campaigns. In America, a community’s standing with its fellow citizens does not come from economic or political success. Such respect is only earned when a community stands for something more than increasing its personal wellbeing–as when it speaks out for oppressed brothers and sisters whose voices would not otherwise be heard. We are moved by this lesson and celebrate it as a source of America’s greatness. We thus write because issues of US policy towards the North Korean regime go beyond our present affiliations as Democrats or Republicans; evaluating your response to this letter, or your failure to do so, will be a critical consideration as members of our community cast our votes in the coming election and as we offer our loyalties–now and in the long term–to America’s political parties.

Prayerfully but firmly, and on human and not “political” grounds, we thus seek your views on matters about which we are solemnly pledged to no longer to be silent.

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Activists burn a North Korean flag and pictures of Kim Jong-il during a rally north of Seoul.

(Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters/Corbis)

Although international human rights groups have for years urged China to grant political asylum to escapees, North Korea’s fellow communist country refuses to create and implement a legal process through which North Koreans can obtain refugee status. Instead China identifies those who flee North Korea as economic migrants and forcibly repatriates them. This is a violation of Beijing’s duty as a party to the UN International Refugee Convention of 1951 and the 1967 Protocol, which state that people who have a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country are not to be repatriated. The Chinese government even refuses to let the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have access to the border area between

North Korea and China in order to investigate these abuses.

Without any civil rights or protection by the government, North Koreans in China are extremely vulnerable.

Many of the children, especially orphans, end up on the street. And it is estimated that as many as 90 percent of North Korean female refugees become victims of sexual trafficking in China.

China’s forced abortion and sterilization policies have resulted in a lack of women for Chinese men to marry. This adds to the demand for girls and women supplied by sex traffickers. Some are led to China by “guides” promising a better life. Others are sold into prostitution that is carried

Reaching OUt 318 Partners (318.iebee.com) rescues North Korean women who, having crossed the Tumen River into China, are sold as prostitutes, sexual slaves, and rural brides. The ministry receives rescue requests for trafficked women from several different sources, including North Korea Refugee Women’s Coalition in Seoul, missionaries in China, NGOs founded and led by North Korean defectors, and news reporters. Since 2008 they have successfully rescued 66 North Korean refugees.

North Korean Freedom Coalition (NKFreedom. org) is comprised of international groups that provide humanitarian relief inside North Korea and that rescue North Korean refugees. The coalition sponsors the an14 PRISM Magazine

nual North Korea Freedom Week in Washington, DC, to raise political and humanitarian awareness.

PSALT (PSALTNK.com) works with and supports networks of organizations and individual missionaries serving in China and North Korea to help those in need by attending to both physical and spiritual needs.

Through their networks, PSALT has developed a number of projects for orphanages, shelters, and underground gospel ministries to which sponsors can earmark direct support. PSALT conducts a limited number of short-term mission opportunities on the China/North Korea border to explore and learn, and to support and serve refugees and faithful believers in the area.

out in bars and karaoke rooms in rural Northeast China. access to North Korea never before (or since) granted to And some are resold three, four, or more times. A 2009 Westerners.

HRNK publication, Lives for Sale: Personal Accounts of As Vollertsen drove in rural North Korea, he saw vilWomen Fleeing North Korea to China, offers testimonies lages with no sanitation or running water and no medical of 54 such women interviewed in China. It makes recomcare. He visited orphanages full of dying children and witmendations for policy changes that can protect the rights nessed young boys and girls forced to work through the of these abused women.10 North Koreans who are caught night to build a 40-kilometer “Youth Hero Motorway” and to practice dance routines to honor the egomaniacal Kim

by Chinese officials and repatriated are regarded as “traiJong-il. Leaving the country in 2000 to become an advotors of the state” by the regime. They are imprisoned, cate for the North Korean people, Vollertsen carried slick, tortured, and may be publicly executed to serve as a deterfull-color brochures from Pyongyang’s casinos and nightrent to others who would dare to try escaping. Repatriated clubs with photos of tables laden with foods from all over women who are pregnant are usually subjected to forced the world. The German doctor was enraged by the high abortion, especially if the father of the baby is Chinese. life enjoyed by Kim and his elites while an estimated 3 milIn a recent hearing held by Congress’ Tom Lantos lion North Koreans have died of starvation and malnutriHuman Rights Commission, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) distion-related causes since the 1990s.12 The international played drawings made by North Korean escapees and defectors, formerly inmates in the prison camps. One community has committed more than $2 billion in food aid drawing done by a woman who had been trafficked in to North Korea over the past decade, but defectors report China, then returned pregnant to North Korea, showed the that most of the food aid is given to the armed forces means of abortion used in the North Korean prison camps. instead of those for whom it was intended. As a result, 42 A wooden board is placed on the stomach of the pregnant percent of North Korean children suffer from chronic malwoman, and two other prisoners are forced to jump up and nutrition, resulting in drastic height and weight differences down on either end of when compared with North Korean defectors and anti-North Korea activists release balloons carrying the board until the baby children from South leaflets and North Korean banknotes towards the north at the Imjinkak pavilion, is dead. As US Korea.13 near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. The activists demand Representative Chris The 2004 BBC improvements in North Korea's human rights and the release of South Koreans abducted by the North. (Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters/Corbis) Smith (R-NJ) said at documentary Access that hearing, “The horto Evil provided ror of life in North Korea another shocking revexceeds our comprehenelation. Two British sion.” 11 filmmakers received permission to enter

North Korea to get Exposing the true the regime’s reaction North Korea to being called part of A German doctor was the “Axis of Evil” by one of the first activPresident George W. ists to help Americans Bush. But what the comprehend the horror filmmakers discovered of life in North Korea in North Korea only and mobilize advocates. served to justify In 1999, Dr. Norbert President Bush’s Vollertsen was in North description.

Korea with Cap Anamur, The filmmakers, the German Emergency Ewa Ewert and Doctors Union. While Olenka Frankiel, working as an ER docundeterred by the tor, Vollertsen donated propaganda organized skin for a graft for a for them by the North burn victim. The North Korean regime, manKorean government aged to interview sevawarded his humanitarieral defectors, who anism with a “Friendship revealed that North Medal,” a car, and a VIP Korea conducts deadpassport. These gifts ly experiments on afforded him the kind of

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prisoners with gas chambers and chemicals. A former prison camp security chief who had watched parents and children die by poisonous gas injected into a small glass cubicle, and a doctor who had actually performed the experiments, were the witnesses. They indicated that those prisoners the regime considered “enemies of the state,” including Christians, were selected for the experiments.

The former prison camp official, Kwon Hyuk, said of watching a Christian family perish in the gas chamber, “The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-tomouth breathing.”14 Doctors and scientists observed the whole process from above the gas chamber, taking notes, the defectors explained. Documents smuggled out by defectors appear to reveal how methodical the chemical experiments were.

One stamped “top secret” and “transfer letter” was dated February 2002. The name of the victim was Lin Hun-hwa.

He was 39. The text reads: “The above person is transferred from...camp number 22 for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons.” Soon after the release of the documentary, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote scathingly15 of the West’s failure to act on this information.

A year after the gas chamber revelations, North Korean activists and the Japanese media produced the first-ever photographic evidence of public executions in North Korea.16 Courageous dissidents, among the hundreds of local people rounded up and forced to watch the executions, secretly recorded the March 2005 death of two refugees caught trying to escape to China. The film shows North Korean authorities setting up posts to which the men will be tied and shot. After what can only be described as a mockery of a trial, the men are pronounced guilty and dispatched immediately, their bodies crumpling as the shots are fired.

Advocates fighting for change As these atrocities have been exposed, advocacy for human rights in North Korea has been growing. Human rights organizations, both Christian and secular, as well as Christian advocacy groups for the persecuted church, ministries to combat sex trafficking, intrepid individuals, and watchdog organizations are all working to bring freedom to North Korea. All of these organizations and approaches understand that interaction with and influence on South Koreans is essential.

Many South Koreans long for their fellow Koreans to live in peace, freedom, and prosperity and want to reunite with family and friends across the demilitarized zone. But many others, understanding the economic and social upheaval caused by the fall of the Berlin Wall, fear the economic repercussions of a collapse of the regime in North Korea. For many years the government of the Republic of South Korea, under Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, practiced a “Sunshine Policy” of

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Protestors at a North Korean Freedom rally in DC.

engagement and appeasement towards Kim Jong-il’s regime. This policy emphasized economic cooperation and did not challenge human rights abuses. But silence and continual funneling of monetary aid propped up the Kim Jong-il regime and may well have prolonged its miserable existence at a time when it was ripe for collapse. The current president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, has been a long-time opponent of the Sunshine Policy. He believes that North Korea should only be rewarded after it has abandoned its nuclear ambitions and improved human rights. Advocates and North Korean defectors/refugees are no longer encouraged to remain silent about the truth of the situation in North Korea.

Some American advocates believe that the most effective means of transforming North Korea is by transforming US political policy. Human rights and religious freedom activist Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute (see PRISM's interview with him on page 24), who has been working with North Korean refugees as well as Korean American churches for a number of years, decries the “human rights neutral” approach of the US government in dealing with Pyongyang, in which subsidy and legitimacy are offered to the regime in exchange for its weapons policy promises. The North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004,17 in the passing of which Horowitz played a major role, has not yet been able to transform US policy in this regard.

Horowitz urges a “Helsinki” approach, explained in A Statement of Principles Regarding the Suffering People of North Korea and the Threats Posed by Its Regime to World Security,18 a document for which Horowitz gathered endorsement by some 100 religious, human rights, national security, and civic leaders. The Helsinki approach links human rights and national security issues in US policy, to ensure “that the United States' negotiation agenda will always include, at the highest level of priority, such human rights issues as family unification, rule of law development, religious freedom, prison monitoring, and needs-based food distribution.” As with the Helsinki Watch, which monitored and promoted the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords in the Soviet Union during the Cold War,

Protestors marching to the US Capitol include North Korean refugees, Korean War veterans from the US and Canada, and Japanese who had family members abducted by North Korea, and other supporters of freedom in North Korea.

this approach focuses on enabling and supporting North Korean defectors and escapees as much as possible.

While Horowitz focuses on the big picture, another activist for North Korea, Mike Kim, is “restoring refugees one soul at a time.” Kim is the founder of Crossing Borders, a faith-based ministry that works with North Korean refugees who have crossed the border into China. He is the author of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country.19 The book tells of Kim’s own four years working with refugees on the Chinese border, and recounts the stories of the North Koreans that Kim came to know.

Another effort to affect US policy is the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC). The coalition has over 60 member organizations representing millions of American, Korean (both North and South), and Japanese citizens. It also has unlisted members that provide humanitarian relief inside North Korea and that rescue North Korean refugees.

The NKFC is credited with being a driving force behind the passage of the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004 and still works to ensure that the Act is fully implemented.

Since 2004, the NKFC has sponsored North Korea Freedom Week in Washington, DC. The annual event includes a large Capitol Hill rally, prayer vigils, demonstrations, art exhibits, and meetings. Participants from Japan and South Korea, as well as North Korean defectors and refugees, join activists and members of Congress for the events.

In 2010, NKFC Chairman, Dr. Suzanne Scholte, and Korean pastors and politicians, moved the event to South Korea for the first time to empower what Scholte called “the 17,000-strong North Korean defectors in South Korea” and to help South Koreans connect with fellow Koreans north of the demilitarized zone.20 Freedom Week organizers

launched balloons over the border holding messages of encouragement for the North Koreans.

Whereas the NKFC is heavily populated with middle-aged activists, LiNK, or “Liberty in North Korea,” is young–students and other young people who are taking leadership in human rights advocacy. LiNK says of itself, “LiNK exists so that one day the crisis in North Korea will not. We operate under a mandate that does not allow us to remain silent about the human rights and refugee crisis that is a result of this emergency. We educate, protect, advocate for, provide for, and empower the North Korean people so that one day they will have the opportunity to live in true freedom.”21 LiNK maintains safe houses for North Koreans in China and Southeast Asia. The houses protect refugees but also prepare them for their next steps to freedom. When refugees are physically, mentally, and emotionally able, LiNK works with other courageous organizations and pastors to bring them to free countries that will accept them or grant them safe access to a third country. LiNK’s new campaign, “The Hundred,” is working to bring to safety 100 of these refugees hiding in hostile countries such as China. They have already rescued 20 refugees.

At the end of Their Blood Cries Out, Paul Marshall warns that concern for persecuted Christians “should be part of western churches’ daily life...not a frenetic short-term focus.”22 And the activists working not just for persecuted Christians but for all of the oppressed people of North Korea understand this need. They are fighting to make things better in North Korea, to see an entire nation transformed by freedom and justice. But in the meantime, they are staying up nights, saving lives.

Editor’s note: due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/prism-endnotes)

Faith McDonnell is the director of religious liberty programs at the Institute on Religion and Democracy. She is also director of the IRD’s Church Alliance for a New Sudan. She writes and speaks on the subject of the persecuted church and has organized rallies and vigils for Sudan in front of the White House, the State Department, the Canadian Embassy, and the Sudanese Embassy. She has drafted legislation on religious persecution for the Episcopal Church and for the US Congress. She is the author, along with Grace Akallo, of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007).

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any of the good groups that you mention in your main article (see page 14).

Adult North Korean refugees, despite tragic conditions, can manage to survive the situation in China. A woman, for example, even when she is trafficked, can live as a housewife in the household that bought her. Men, even when their labor is extorted, can still eat better in China than back home. But children and old people do not have this ability. Because they cannot survive in China on their own, they are in the most miserable condition and have no future. They should be brought to South Korea or the US, but brokers are expensive, so Courageous North Korean defector Jinhye Jo we need money to rescue them.

I also want you to be aware of the living conditions for orphans urges Christians to welcome refugees and speak inside North Korea. I myself was once imprisoned in a “shelter” for out against an evil regime. children. These shelters are like prisons, with horrible buildings and Jinhye Jo escaped North Korea into China three times–and was scarce food and fuel. The regime confines the children because it does repatriated each time–over an eight-year period. She made her not want these vagabonds seen on the street where they will ruin the fourth and final escape, along with social order of their “paradise.” Many of the her mother and sister, in 2006. Two children starve to death or die during escape months later, she came under the attempts. According to a source in North Korea, protection of the UNHCR. She 78,000 children are confined in “shelters” in arrived in the US as a refugee in Chungjin, Moosan, Hoeryung, Hyesan. These 2008 and has since become a comare all northern provinces, which are relatively pelling witness to the oppressive better off due to the trade with China; inland regime of Kim Jong-il, participating children might be suffering more. What we can in a hunger strike in front of the do is buy orphans on the North Korean street Chinese embassy, speaking at unithrough brokers for 300-500 won (about versities such as Harvard and US$0.33-US$0.55) per person. We need to Georgetown, and testifying before do this on a large scale. You might think it is Congress. human trafficking, but from my point of view, having experienced it, coming to China is much PRISM: What can US Christians do better than starving to death in the prison-like to support the people of North Korea? shelters, even when it looks like human trafficking to outsiders’ eyes.

Jinhye Jo: They can start by helping North Korean refugees in various PRISM: What foreign policy actions would you ways. The most urgent need is money. like to see the US undertake in relation to North Korea?

North Koreans wandering in China can be divided into three groups: those who want to settle in China permanently, those who JJ: I would like to see the US accept North Korean refugees on as are looking to acquire medicine and money in China but want to go large a scale as it accepts refugees from other countries. North Korean back to North Korea, and those who seek permanent resettlement refugees work very hard and assimilate fast. It takes only two to three in a third country like South Korea or the US. Korean-Chinese defec- years, especially for young people. tors used to help North Korean refugees with food, clothes, medicine, I believe human rights advocacy programs have a direct and sigand even money, but not anymore. Now they drive out refugees or nificant impact on refugees’ lives. In 1994, in the early stage of the actively look for them and report them to police in exchange for refugee problem, North Korean policemen treated arrested refugees, financial reward (about 2000 RMB or US$300) or to avoid punish- called “betrayers,” cruelly. They made holes in the refugees’ nostril and ment themselves. So now refugees inside China are in even more peril thumbs and put strings through them. They also cut the tendons of than before. For these people, help with food and clothing, which the ankles so that the refugees couldn’t reattempt escape. When this was a big help in the past, is not nearly as important as financial help was made known to the Chinese, Falun Gong people protested, and to reach safety, because of the evermore strict inspection by the the Chinese government responded with warnings to North Korean police on the streets and in border areas. The solution is money, leaders, who then punished the policemen. which is much easier to hide (it can be swallowed), because people When I was imprisoned for 15 months in China, having been can bribe the border guards or policemen if caught. Money can also caught and awaiting repatriation, there was a period of several months help those who struggle to come to South Korea to hire a guide. with no new imprisonment of refugees. We wondered why, and later Even after resettlement in South Korea, many refugees are in debt we discovered that the first international campaign about North Korean to the brokers who guided them to freedom. If you want to help human rights had swept over several countries. Thanks to that presrefugees, the best way is to raise funds and send them to China via sure on the Chinese government, they withheld the repatriation process.

"I don’t understand why the US is so afraid of North Korea"

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Thus from my experience, human rights advocacy has a direct impact or that we were a family, because that meant death. We were imprison refugees’ lives. oned in separate rooms. Without warning, the police would approach each of us and ask questions, trying to find an inconsistent answer.

PRISM: What about providing humanitarian and development assistance But even though the three of us never discussed what we would say inside North Korea, such as providing medical or agricultural aid? in advance, what I told interrogators matched perfectly with what my mother said, and the same was true of my sister. Moreover, the other JJ: In principle, I agree with attempts to help North Korea, because prisoners, most of whom knew of us and how we helped refugees get it is my country. But I am fiercely against any aid–including medical to South Korea, closed their mouths for us as if they had all made a or educational services–because it only helps Kim Jong-il’s regime to pact. That is why we could be rescued by Pastor Yoon Yi Hwan’s linger. I know that the original intention of the UN or South Korea is $10,000 bribe. If our activities in China had been revealed, the money to help the people, but it ends up only enhancing the regime. I know could not have saved us. this from my own observation and experience.

At that time, I constantly remembered Job’s story in the Bible, North Korea now has no farming machines, so it is impossible to how he never betrayed God in the worst situation, and also Daniel, farm. Thus international food aid is either used to feed the army or for whom God closed the mouths of lions. I had never before felt so sold for money to build weapons. When I was caught by the guards sure of God’s existence and was so happy staying in the prison. while crossing the Duman River in Chilsung, Musan, I was sent to a small military unit to stay overnight. That night I heard the general PRISM: How do defectors like you adjust to life in freedom? make an announcement that they would have a feast with a whole pig that evening. The meat was bought by exchanging rice they JJ: My family was lucky to be loved a lot by pastors and other church received from the UN that day. That was a small local military unit, leaders. That love did heal us and opened our minds. We felt that but they were directly supplied with UN rice. During all three nights God called us and that he himself has found us and stayed with us, that I stayed there, they had a big party with drinking and eating. so we had less stress and less hurt. But there are still moments that Then I was transferred to the police station of Musan and was released are hard to endure, for example when people consciously or unconafter a month. When I went back to the town, no one among the sciously distinguish me as North Korean, separating me out from residents knew that the UN had sent rice.

South Koreans. A little while ago, at a lunch at church, someone asked Therefore, I am really against the aid, humanitarian or not, as long me, “Does the rice awarded from Great Leader Kim Il-sung taste as Kim Jong-il’s regime stays in power. The better thing is to help better than this rice?” It was just a joke, but I felt so insulted and got those who secretly work to destroy the regime, or to keep all the hurt deeply. resources to prepare for the aftermath of Kim’s collapse.

Once North Koreans come to the US or South Korea, they want I don’t understand why the US and other countries are so afraid to forget their life in the North and are eager to fit in. In my case, of North Korea. If you go into the country, you’ll see that it is nothing. when others recognize me as a North Korean, I feel defeated and Every aspect of the society is corrupted and can be broken at any think, “I did not copy South Koreans well enough.” I talked about this time. But it seems they believe that the North Korean regime is with my refugee friend, and she said, “That is why I don’t hang out impossible to destroy. I heard a group of people was arrested while with many refugees. When I am with other refugees, it reminds me attempting to bomb a statue of Kim Il-sung. Lots of young people of who I am and other people around me will also recognize it.” want to do this kind of activity, but they need money. Support them rather than send aid. I believe a new generation of people is coming Special thanks to Defense Forum Foundation President Suzanne up, and they are different from the older ones.

Scholte for her help in obtaining this interview and to Ana Jang for her translation services.

PRISM: Please tell us how, having survived so many ordeals, you understand Christ’s statement in Matthew 5: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and Send a love letter! falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

Free North Korea Radio is the only radio program run by North Korean defectors. For their “Letters from America program,” JJ: My family was destined to be executed after repatriation because the Defense Forum Foundation (DefenseForum.org) records we believed in God, attended church events, and helped others go to real letters from Americans expressing their concerns and hopes South Korea. On the day of repatriation–August 16, 2006–I felt so for the people of North Korea. These are read aloud and broadproud to believe in God. I felt like I was part of a royal family. I had cast into North Korea with a Korean voice-over translation. The already experienced repatriation three times, but this last time, even purpose of the program is to give North Koreans a true picture though I was sure I would be killed because I was a serious “criminal,” of the American people, because the Kim Jong-il regime raises I felt so comfortable.

North Koreans from childhood to hate Americans as “Yankee I could see how actively God was working to rescue us. We were imperialist wolves” who occupy South Korea and prevent unificaimprisoned in a police office in North Korea for one month, where tion. To participate, simply email your letter to skswm@aol.com seven policemen interrogated and tortured my mother, younger sister, and write “For Letters from America” in the subject line. and myself separately. We could not reveal that we were Christians

ACTION IDEA

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POST-HEROIC MI N

hile browsing for something to read on a long flight to a speaking engagement last summer, I came across two magazine covers with similarly provocative images.

I bought both and quickly tucked them in my carry-on. On the cover of the July 10-16 issue of the Economist, the Eiffel Tower drooped to the right under text that read “Can anything perk up Europe?”

The July/August Atlantic featured a pink, male icon with a wilted arrow (also drooping to the right) with text announcing “The End of Men–How Women Are Taking Control of Everything.” The imagery was not subtle.

According to at least two purveyors of respectable wisdom, something is ailing Western men.

Do some ministry and seminary schemes similarly reflect an effort to “perk up” our churches? Muscular Christianity has taken a variety of forms over the centuries. The current instantiation seems–at the denominational, academic, and accrediting levels–to involve “leadership” programs of one kind or another.

Dozens of flyers for “leadership” seminars, forums, workshops, books, workbooks, and courses have crossed my desk over the last few years. The website for the Fund for Theological Education is fteleaders.org. The Association of Theological Schools has numerous initiatives focused on “leadership.” My own United Methodist Church has adopted a recent motto of “Developing Principled Christian Leaders.”

A quick web-search with terms “faith” and “leadership” is revealing. Christians appear to be seeking Leading Leaders to Lead toward Leading in Leadership so that we can, er...Lead.

Why this fad? Why now? One possibility that has stayed stubbornly with me is that this trend is indicative of a sense of loss, particularly a loss of

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masculine control. Mainline Protestant men, once groomed for importance, seem nostalgic for modes of unquestioned leadership. Women and men in white, mainline churches are apt generally to worry over our loss of influence, and these concerns have been amplified during a recession that has disproportionately laid off men. Meanwhile, the new nondenominational churches down the street appear to prosper. Yet looking back with nostalgia and sideways with envy is not a recipe for good discipleship. I submit that the “leadership” trend within the mainline is reflective of a kind of unhealthy steeple envy.

For a brief period about a decade ago, private, mainline Protestant seminaries began to list to the feminine side. Barbara Wheeler characterized the change in a 2001 Christian Century essay: “Whereas 50 years ago almost all seminarians in North America were white men who had recently graduated from college, today women are a major presence in seminary classrooms, as are (to varying degrees) ethnic and minority groups.” And many mainliners worried over the change. Several women involved in mainline denominational gatekeeping and academic accreditation have expressed to me their dismay at the sheer urgency with which men in positions of influence speak about the need to attract more young men into seminary education and ministry. (Not surprisingly–given the current climate–these women asked to remain off-record.) The contrast is striking. I have yet to hear a male colleague or pastoral peer initiate a conversation about how best to attract more women into seminary education or ordained ministry. In many circles, mainline decline is associated with a shift toward a feminized church, and so projects to promote “leadership” seem to view a decrease in women as par for the proposed course. Within my own United Methodist ken, the celebration of a demographic shift toward younger men is obvious each June, as many conferences welcome a younger, more male cohort.

Too many clergymen (and, I must add, some ambitious clergywomen) are keen in particular for candidates who best fit a rather narrow mold: extroverted, take-charge, magazine-cover men with smiling wives and well-behaved children.

As a feminist, I care about these questions for the sake of the grandmothers who lost sleep and friends

by Amy Laura Hall 21

illustration and design by nicholas liston-avnaim

Does the church’s obsession with muscular leadership mask our true calling to be followers of Christ?

in order to hear a call to ordained ministry. I care recruit from the demographic that many “leadership” about this mess for the sake of my beloved sisters in initiatives are set up to attract. Duke Divinity School the theological academy and the parish, sisters whose promises an adventure requiring feats of courage, led gift of tears or whose soprano voice, for example, are by some of the leading men of Christendom. About perceived as signs of their lack of gravitas for leader- five years ago, we shifted explicitly to use words like ship. I also want to question this rhetoric for the “coaching,” “excellence,” and “leadership,” words that sake of my daughters, who, if they receive a calling to work on a visceral level for many students eager to ministry, should be cause for celebration rather than make their mark for the kingdom. As one beloved concern about the church’s future flaccidity. But I am Church of Christ graduate from Texas put it, many of also genuinely concerned about how a loaded rhetoric our students came to “receive their marching orders of “leadership” is shaping men in the ministry. Unless from Hauerwas.” But anyone who has seen mainline mainline Christians engage in some radical (at the church work up close and personal knows that such root) digging into the gendered fears that feed the language is misleading. The heroism connoted by “leadership” movement, we will admire and promote “leading” language is a form of false advertising, and I men who are most obviously successful in worldly terms–with big attendance and/or big steeples and/or big budgets–and then wonder ith our 70-hour work weeks, why they don’t connect with and attend to handheld devices, spiffy suits, and the voices of those little people who couldn’t keep up. This pattern will be bad for those staff members to do the “littler” men whose gifts are writ small, those who things, we easily lose track of the daily, serve with more holy subtlety than obvious show. I suspect it is also bad for the big men sacramental practices that link us up with who make it to the top.

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one another and with our Lord. On-theground, foot-washing work isn’t heroic in the ways connoted by our current language, but it is worthwhile. And it is blessedly basic to the calling of Christian ministry.

he reason that a focus on “leading” is not ultimately helpful for the men that such initiatives attract is, first of all, because “leadership” connotes a kind of heroism. Even more collaborative, innovative accounts of church ministry appear under testosteroneladen (and vaguely heretical) titles such as Leaders Make the Future. While there are indeed moments when a brave preacher must prophesy to a wayward or wicked congregation, even this work will fail unless the prophet has been listening and attending, tasks that seem to be associated more with needlepoint than with big-league sports. In her iconic cover essay for the Atlantic, Hanna Rosin describes how, “for the first time in human history,” the gender-power balance is shifting toward modes of collaboration and labor that favor skills that have been more traditionally attributed to and encouraged amongst women, “and with shocking speed.” In the 21st century, even “the perception of the ideal business leader is starting to shift,” as the story of “command and control, with one leader holding all the decision-making power, is considered hidebound.”

The “new model,” Rosin explains, is sometimes called “post-heroic.” By her account, the time is ripe for unapologetically egalitarian modes of labor. Rather than pursuing schemes fueled by male insecurity, it seems apt for the American mainline to go with our strength–as a strand of Christianity that has beautifully encouraged the gifts of women in congregational ministry.

I teach at an institution proud of its ability to

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think Hauerwas himself knows this. The most salient virtue required for church ministry is the uncelebrated yet uncommon virtue called patience. Many pastors, 10 years out, will tell you that the blessed, holy work of ministry is repetitive and slow, and not even remotely like the big-screen adventures mass-marketed to this generation. Here I am reminded of a great episode of Dr. Who, involving a giant lizard-chicken monster lurking inside a French cathedral. The young and dashing Dr. Who has a contraption with which to fell the beast, but he is nearly undone by the utter lack of excitement involved in watching for the monster.

Accustomed to time travel back and forth across the universe, Dr. Who exclaims in frustration: “Is this how time usually passes? So slowly, and in the right order?”

Yep. The work of collaborative team-building in parish life is all intertwined with awkward home visits, pedestrian sermons, and the “Royal Waste of Time” (Marva Dawn’s felicity) that is the repetition of the liturgy, day after day, year after year. This is the holy adventure to which mainliners are calling our young. We ought to do so unapologetically.

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econd, “leading” projects are apt to sell the wrong message about Christianity. A few years ago, I attended a daylong conference on L’Arche, the network of communities centered on life with adults living with disabilities. Participants came from many L’Arche communities, both “core-members” and “assistants,” along with pastors and interested laity.

There was also a group of potential donors to the academic institution hosting the event, donors from an organization quite keen on influencing key leaders in the Christian mainline. They stood out. Dressed in expensive business attire, their demeanor throughout the day was more that of observer than of participant.

Then it came time for the foot-washing service. I had on stockings, so I ducked out to take them off. As I tried discretely to exit, I noticed that the donors were also leaving the chapel. But they did not return. When it came time to practice the one act that Jesus so clearly commanded of all his disciples, the leading men left the scene. Please note, these are the men with big money. These are the “cosmopolitan evangelicals” (D. Michael Lindsey’s term from Faith in the Halls of Power), around whom many men in my academic and ecclesial ken are trying to prove themselves for the sake of more funding.

This anecdote stands in for a larger trend. The big-attendance, successful, out-in-front leadership model is not conducive to the holy flourishing of even those pastors or theological scholars who appear to “win” by the rules of the supposedly big-deal donor guys. With our 70-hour work weeks, handheld devices, spiffy suits, and staff members to do the “littler” things, we easily lose track of the daily, sacramental practices that link us up with one another and with our Lord. On-the-ground, foot-washing work isn’t heroic in the ways connoted by or current language, but it is worthwhile. And it is blessedly basic to the calling of Christian ministry.

The answers to the anxieties over “leadership” in this present age may entail some unwelcome selfexamination, institutional courage, and more than a modicum of whimsy. Rather than try to exemplify the virile words that roll down the opening of the Colbert Report–GRAVITAS, RELEVANCE, AUTHORITY, STRONG, BOLD–I suggest mainline Christians continue to dig into Scripture and our respectively salty traditions of “otherwise.” Relying on faith, we may resist a spirit of embattlement, trusting that the Holy Spirit, in her nimble mischief, is still making a way.

After all, funding gained through the “L” word is often put to good use by women and men called to the apparently unproductive work of mainline ministry.

But the “leadership” fashion is passé. Maybe mainline Protestants should truly go “retro” and return to the radical image of “follower.”

Amy Laura Hall is associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. She served on the Bioethics Task Force of the United Methodist Church and has spoken to academic and ecclesial groups across the US and Europe. Hall is the author of Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction (Eerdmans, 2007). Hall’s current research project focuses on social Darwinism and muscular Christianity in Anglo-American culture.

CHECK THE SOURCE Jesus on the qualities of true leadership: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees…do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for people to see… they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the place of worship…they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘teacher’ by others.

“But you are not to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all students. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Matthew 23: 2-12 “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Luke 22:25-27

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PRISM PRESENTS....

The Wilberforce effect

Human rights activist Michael Horowitz says

to some of Today’s most

pressing Human Rights injustices.

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“IF Y TO BE FEELIN GL FFERIN GS ALIV E TO TH E SU CREATU RES IS TO OF MY FE LLOW M OST AM ON E OF TH E I , C TI NA FA A BE ITTED TO TICS EV ER PERM IN CU RA BLE FA NA BE AT LA RG E.” CE -WILLIAM WILBERFOR

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he threshold of a new year is a good place to look out over the human landscape, consider the sufferings of our fellow creatures, and plan the shape of our “fanaticism,” as William Wilberforce so ironically defined the term. The 19th-century British statesman has become synonymous with human rights and thus lends his name to a group of human rights injustices that stick out as some of the most significant challenges/opportunities of 2011.

Deeply inspired by William Wilberforce, Michael Horowitz is the director of both the Project for International Religious Liberty and the Project for Civil Justice Reform at the Hudson Institute, a conservative DC think tank. A vociferous advocate for human rights, Horowitz is a Jew who believes that the Christian church is a powerful but underutilized force for human rights; he also believes that a vibrant and revitalized Christianity is the best means available for ensuring that this century is more peaceful than the last. Like his hero, Horowitz maintains a vision that is nonutopian, practical, and inclusive. He works tirelessly to fan flames to combat public apathy about human rights issues and is ferociously determined to build alliances across religious, political, and national borders. We talked to him about what he hopes to do and see happen this year.

PRISM: You’ve identified at least eight major issues and corrective initiatives that, in your opinion, constitute a “Wilberforce agenda” capable of gaining broad support from all points of the American political spectrum. These include supporting internet freedom, assisting Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti, promoting human rights in North Korea, putting the issue of international prison reform on Washington’s radar screen, implement-

ing the Advance Democracy Act you helped to pass, eliminating obstetric fistula and domestic prison rape, and moving Congress and the nation to adopt abolitionist policies towards the mass trafficking of girls and women in the US and around the world. What do all these issues have in common?

Michael Horowitz: They are all supported by leftright, religious-secular, bipartisan coalitions whose members range across the country’s otherwise fierce ideological battle lines. With one possible exception, each involves modest and in some cases no budget expenditures. Most deal with matters now either ignored by US policy makers or treated as low-priority concerns. Together and in some cases singly, they can achieve the rescue of millions of victims. All call for achievable, nonutopian approaches, and all are models that lead the way to comparable human rights initiatives. Each is premised on the idea that the judicious application of American values can enhance American interests, and each can greatly strengthen America’s standing in the world. Critically, each is on a pathway to rapid implementation if the coalitions that support them keep up the fight.

PRISM: How will Wilberforce agenda issues bridge today’s partisan political divides?

MH: The initiatives I am determined to help make happen demonstrate America’s shared values and teach us all that we can work together to make them come alive. They can satisfy the strong desire of most Americans to demonstrate that the “us versus them” ideological gridlock in which the country is now often trapped does not reflect America’s underlying reality. They can satisfy the equally strong desire of most Americans to promote freedom and rule-of-law governance and to peacefully challenge and undermine closed-society regimes.

They reveal a powerful means by which US parties and leaders can earn long-term public trust and achieve what the country sought when it elected President Obama: a clear demonstration that Americans have more in common with each other than either MoveOn.org or the Christian Coalition will acknowledge or wants us to know.

Evangelical Christians and Reform Jews, Democrats and Republicans, human rights NGOs and anti-abortion conservatives, feminist organizations and Tea Party activists will each greatly profit by not merely supporting but by taking matters to the next level and seizing ownership of Wilberforce agenda human rights initiatives.

Treating the issues as high priority concerns will

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not only save lives and peacefully promote American national interests but will also greatly help shatter caricatures in which many groups and leaders are now trapped.

PRISM: How will supporting Wilberforce agenda issues benefit these various political groups?

MH: Among progressives, there’s an increasing tendency to define human rights in ways that reflect domestic, middle-class, and often personal concerns. Whatever their policy virtues may be, abortion rights and gay rights involve beneficiaries quite different from the people whose causes were the traditional focus of American liberalism. Commitment to Wilberforce agenda initiatives on behalf of trafficked girls and women, religious persecutees, and North Korean gulag inmates can thus powerfully strengthen the moral standing of the American left.

On the trafficking issue–the slavery issue of our time and one where the condition of millions of trafficked girls and women almost precisely mirrors the condition of 19th-century African chattel slaves–the American left has been split between modern-day abolitionists and people who believe that “sex workers” can be protected by the legalization of their “work” and by enhanced government regulation of it. On North Korea policy, most Democrats now reject a “Helsinki” strategy that puts human rights issues on the bargaining table; they instead support offering subsidy and legitimacy to the Pyongyang regime in exchange for its weapons reduction promises.

The increasing “realism” of the left’s international and human rights policies and the increasing “idealism” of the right in such matters, all developments of the past decade, represent a reversal of priorities and bode poorly for progressives and the Democratic Party. This growing shift will increasingly undermine the moral credentials and public trust that helped make the Democratic Party America’s governing party for most of the second half of the 20th century. Widespread adoption of Wilberforce agenda initiatives with the commitment shown by such leaders as Ron Sider, Ann Lewis, and David Saperstein can be a critical antidote to progressive political decline– an antidote all the more critical in light of the precipitous downswing in support for progressives that took place in the recent elections. Progressives have long been supported by Americans troubled by their economic policies because of their seemingly greater compassion for human rights. Once that reputation and standing is lost, longlasting political hard times will not be far off.

On the other side of the coin, America’s traditional and identifiably conservative Christian leaders also have much to gain by adopting Wilberforce agenda priorities and by focusing on more than such issues as abortion, pornography, and gay marriage. Identifying Christian concern with Wilberforce initiatives will greatly help define opposition to abortion as being rooted in the desire to protect vulnerable beings and will thus strength-

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en rather than dilute the appeal of the abortion issue even (and especially) with people who don’t believe that a fetus is a vulnerable living being. Priority regard for Wilberforce agenda issues will thus have the double value of rescuing millions of victims and shattering caricatures of the “Dread Christian Right”–an imperative of particular importance for evangelical and traditional Protestant churches, if only to gain and retain the loyalties of young people. Christian leaders like Chuck Colson, Richard Land, and Robbie George understand this–as do such model officials as Sam Brownback and Frank Wolf. They know that the positions of 19th-century Christian leaders like William Wilberforce, William and Catherine Booth, and Josephine Butler on such issues as African slavery, prison reform, and widespread prostitution imbued Christianity with moral authority and were powerful means by which Christian witness shaped and led society.

But their actions and their seemingly singular focus on “hot button” issues often mask this understanding.

Wilberforce issues offer to mainline Protestant, progressive evangelical, and Reform Jewish communities a similarly valuable means of morally engaging the real world without identifying their faiths with one side of such actively debated issues as global warming, corporate governance, tax policy, and welfare reform. A Wilberforce-based set of issues will save lives and sharply reduce the risk of religious faith being subsumed and displaced by politics. Given the increased secularization of America’s Jewish community and the rapid decline of America’s mainline Protestant churches, present identification of religious faith with one side of fully debated policy/political issues will gravely risk causing their congregants to find the Sierra Club and the American Civil Liberties Union preferable substitutes for synagogue and church.

Lastly, on the secular side, the Republican party needs to better understand that Wilberforce issues will help them attract such groups as college students and– of critical significance–women.

PRISM: Let’s talk about the fight for global internet freedom. Why is this so important?

MH: I believe that global internet freedom must become a signature issue for America, because the walls by which 21st-century dictatorships isolate and control their people are increasingly electronic and less stone and barbed wire. Religious observance, cultural and informational exchange, and political dialogue are increasingly taking

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LEARN MORE ABOUT THE REASONS BEHIND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM AT INTERNETFREEDOM.ORG.

closed societies in operation for years to come. It is now openly and expressly articulated by senior State Department officials.

If the department chose to do what it is now refusing to do, it would rapidly make possible:

place through the internet–and in ways that strengthen religion, democracy, and overall prospects for peace.

Yet, despite pressure from the media, from Congress, and from others, I believe that the State Department has scandalously failed to do what is in its power to do: use appropriated funds it has been given to rapidly shatter the internet firewalls of the world’s closed-society regimes.

Secretary Clinton’s formal response to a key question put to her by Senator Arlen Specter following a recent Appropriations Committee hearing makes this clear. In the exchange, Senator Specter asked Clinton to comment on the claim of dissident leaders from China, Iran, Burma, Cuba, Vietnam, Syria, and Laos that unspent money available to the department could be rapidly used to provide 50 million closed-society residents per day with unmonitored and uncensored internet access.

That’s 50 million users! Per day! In posing the question, Specter asked Clinton to comment on whether there is “doubt…that systems capable of providing [such] internet service…would, among other things, immediately shatter Iran’s internet firewalls.”

Secretary Clinton did not deny the premise of the senator’s question. Remarkably, and in direct contrast to a major February 21, 2010 internet freedom speech she delivered as an expression of US foreign policy priorities, her response made clear that circumventing closedsociety internet firewalls was not a priority objective of the department. Hard as it may be to believe, her stunning explanation of this position was that doing so would not solve other closed-society internet problems. This position, which the State Department euphemistically calls its “holistic” approach to internet freedom, amounts to an affirmative decision to keep internet firewalls in

• free and interactive communication between the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers and interactive worship services conducted by the Pope or evangelical leaders for millions of Chinese house church Christians; • secure communication with closed-society residents, most particularly including Green Revolution dissidents in Iran; • an at-will ability of US presidents to interactively communicate with closed society groups of their choosing–with safety and anonymity; • an at-will and safe access to Western websites by residents of closed societies; and • safe communication to, from, and among residents of closed societies during regime-initiated political crackdowns and cover-ups.

Secretary Clinton’s smashing-firewalls-isn’t-that-important position, the State Department’s decision to classify and thus hide the failed results of an earlier $15 million internet freedom appropriation, the almost two years it has taken the department to process a 2009 $5 million internet freedom appropriation, and the failure of the State Department to ask for any funds for internet freedom in its recently proposed budget make the administration’s record an inexcusable one.

PRISM: What do you foresee happening if the State Department continues in their refusal to support internet firewall circumvention systems?

MH: If the State Department doesn’t act, I expect members of Congress, the press, “Tienanmen 21” arrestees, Iran Green Revolution leaders, Burmese anti-regime activists, and Chinese House Church supporters to engage the issue with passion. And I expect Republicans in the House of Representatives to conduct hearings and to begin issuing subpoenas in order to tell the story of what the administration has failed to do.

I also expect progressive leaders of conscience like the late Congressman Tom Lantos’ daughter Katrina Swett and his remarkable spouse, Annette, to call on their friends and fellow Democrats to turn the department’s policies around.

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A senior administration official anonymously After successful surgery to repair their fistulas, three patients find their acknowledged to the Washington Post what Senator smiles returning. (Photo courtesy of Brownback, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Worldwide Fistula Fund) and many others have openly alleged: that the State Department’s refusal to support systems that now facilitate internet firewall “circumvention” services for as many as 1 million Chinese users per day (and for almost as many Iranian users) is based on the fear of a “ballistic” Chinese government reaction. Others in the administration, echoing concerns expressed in earlier times about US support for Radio Free Europe and the supply of fax machines to the former Soviet Union, believe that challenging the internet firewalls of closed-society regimes–a process that involves no hacking of computers or computer systems–might lead to cyberwar attacks on US computer systems.

And developers of circumvention systems still being perfected have expressed mistaken “zero sum” concerns that present support for successful systems would dry up future support for their systems.

The peaceful dismantling of the internet firewalls by which the world’s dictatorships isolate and control their • train and assist African doctors, nurses, and other people is an issue of inestimable potential significance to a medical personnel to treat and repair obstetric fistulas; safe and peaceful and secure world. What Voice of • elevate the importance of child and maternal care America and Radio Free Europe did to weaken the hold of and the general medical treatment of women throughthe former Soviet Union on its people will be done–and out Africa; then some–by a clear US commitment to tear down the • set in motion unequivocally committed and locally internet firewalls of the world’s dictatorships. I and others conducted campaigns against forced child marriages, intend to ensure that such a commitment will be made– one of the root causes of fistula; and be made before long. Stay tuned: This will happen, • provide young American physicians with a life-transwhether by a State Department and administration that forming opportunity for service as front line surgeons reverse their current policies or over their objections. This and medical instructors; is a policy battle that cannot, must not be lost!

• create a model program by which a major American university medical center can powerfully expand its reach beyond America’s borders; and PRISM: Tell us about the obstetric fistula initiative, which • put America on the right side of a central hisyou have described as a form of US medical diplomacy. torical development by which the 21st century will be defined–the emancipation and empowerment of MH: Fistula is a condition suffered by millions that causes women. stillbirths and uncontrollable incontinence following deliveries where the fetus has been unable to pass through the birth canal and in places where C-section deliveries The next step for the coalition will be to find senior memhave been unavailable. Members of a broad coalition– bers of Congress from both parties to join Congresswoman including the NAACP, the Southern Baptist Convention, DeLauro in sponsoring the fistula initiative bill they have the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and worked with her to develop. Following that, a national Evangelicals for Social Action–have worked with the summit meeting of leaders of major faith, women’s, world’s leading expert, Worldwide Fistula Fund President African American, and human rights organizations will be Dr. Lewis Wall, to come up with a feasible plan to end fistula’s epidemic scourge. The Take Action... coalition has actively worked with Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and with othAt WorldwideFistulaFund.org you can help to build a new surgical center in West Africa, to sponsor fistuers on a proposal that I believe will: • rescue millions of presently afflicted African girls and women–and millions more who will be spared the tragedy of fistula in future years;

28 PRISM Magazine

la care for a woman, to train a innovative prevention program, or clinical research. Visit the website about how you can contribute to

surgeon, to start an to sponsor exciting today to learn more this life-saving work.

convened to put the issue “on the map” in ways that will be difficult for the political system to ignore. Efforts will be made to gain administration support for the initiative, and efforts will also be made to make the fistula initiative a joint US-UK project.

PRISM: What is your outlook on the fight against human trafficking?

MH: Grave concerns exist about the ability of the present leadership of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office to deal effectively with the issue.

There is now a compelling case to rapidly overhaul the office and to replace its director, Ambassador Luis deBaca. The 2010 TIP Report confirmed the fears of many of us about the current state of the anti-trafficking initiative, and the report Courtesy of SAWSO.org was unshirtedly condemned in a letter sent by the New York State Coalition Against Trafficking that many national feminist leaders this must not be permitted to happen to the anti-traffickhave endorsed. At least as troublesome is the fact that ing movement. Just as activist pressure resulted in the the TIP Office has failed to ensure Federal agency com- dismissal of the Bush administration’s first TIP Office pliance with many of the express statutory deadlines and director (and the subsequent appointment of Seattle’s mandates of the aptly named but seriously underenforced former Congressman John Miller, who led the office to 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection extraordinary heights), pressure can and must be applied Act. An office that cannot even achieve compliance with to the Obama administration to dismiss its TIP Office the laws that govern it is certain to be deficient in the director. This is necessary to ensure that the office is performance of its discretionary policy duties–and with taken seriously within the federal government and by forfrequency this has been true of the present TIP Office. eign governments, and it is a step necessary for it to Making the matter critical is the fact that the coming become the agent of historic change it can be. I intend to year is likely to be a make-or-break period for anti-traffick- work with groups from left and right to make public what ing reform. Failure to rapidly and visibly satisfy today’s most leaders now privately acknowledge–that they have high expectations for historic reform will generate a broad irretrievably lost confidence in Ambassador deBaca’s and strong public perception that nothing serious can be capacity to perform the duties of his office. There are many distinguished Democrats who can provide leadership done to eliminate sex and labor slave trafficking.

Can I take a break to offer a word of profound thanks similar to the leadership offered by Ambassador Miller durto PRISM magazine? The stunning beforeTake Action... and-after photos of girls and women brutalized by prostitution that appeared in your Support anti-trafficking efforts such as Love146.org, September/October 2008 issue played a NightLightInternational.com, ChabDai.org, FreesetGlobal. greater role in energizing Congress to pass the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking com, FAASTinternational.org (Faith Alliance Against Slavery & Victims Protection Act than all the speeches Trafficking), Live2Free.org, GlobalCenturion.org, SAwso.org made on the subject. The pictures taught (Salvation Army World Service), and ProstitutionResearch. and took away the breaths of coalition memcom. bers and members of Congress. They are still being actively circulated, have saved Call your representatives and ask that TIP Office Director many lives, and will save many more.

Luis deBaca be replaced with someone who is willing to Reform movements that lose their enforce the mandates of the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking momentum after being energized by passions Victims Protection Act, which activists (including ESA staff) like those generated by the PRISM photos worked so hard to put into legislation. invariably lose the capacity to achieve forward progress for many years thereafter–and

29

Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti addresses a press conference in Islamabad in September 2010.

(AdilGill/PPI Images).

ing the Bush administration. Millions of lives are at stake in the US and throughout the world, which is why we must ensure that it happens.

PRISM: Why is Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti, founder of the All Pakistan Minority Alliance and now Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities, so important in the fight for religious freedom?

MH: Few public officials offer greater potential in the struggle against religiously based Islamist terrorism than Shahbaz Bhatti. During his career as a religious freedom advocate, Bhatti has been the subject of many fatwa threats–including one prompted by his success in sharply limiting the use of Pakistan’s once notoriously enforced apostasy and blasphemy laws. As Pakistan’s leading lay Christian during the late ’80s and ’90s, he served for many of us–Jews, Christians, and agnostics alike–as a model of Christian witness.

Take Action....

The Institute for Global Engagement (IGE), in cooperation with the University of Science and Technology in Bannu, Pakistan, runs the Global Engagement Fellows Program. The program funds students from underrepresented groups–such as women and religious minorities–through their entire four-year education. The program provides the students with an exceptional opportunity to obtain highly sought-after technical degrees, while exploring a curriculum designed to deepen fellows’ comprehension of the values of peace, reconciliation, and respect for the other that are rooted in their own faith. As the program continues to grow, providing youth with an alternative to the extremism that is ever-present in the region, IGE welcomes dedicated prayer for the program fellows and their studies, as well as monetary support used to sustain and expand current and future programming. Learn more at GlobalEngage.org.

30 PRISM Magazine

A few years ago, Bhatti was elected to Paksitan’s parliament and, two years ago–in a miracle of sorts–he was designated as Pakistan’s first minister of minority affairs. Since then, his influence within the Pakistani parliament and cabinet–and with Pakistan’s leading Muslim clerics–has been significant and is growing. He has been publicly praised by the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the European parliament, key US Jewish and Christian leaders, the US International Religious Freedom Commission, key congressional leaders from both parties, Canada’s prime minister, and Italy’s and Britain’s foreign ministers. To date, however, he has not received meaningful recognition or useful assistance from US policy makers.

Last July, Bhatti convened an all-day National Interfaith Consultation that included Pakistan’s four principal imams; other senior Pakistani imams; the heads of Pakistan’s principal madrases; bishops of Pakistan’s Catholic, evangelical, and Baptist churches; and the principal leaders of his country’s Hindu, Sikh, Farsi, Buddhist, and Ahmadi communities. Following the meeting, the participants issued a remarkable statement of principles that condemned religious extremism and terrorism, condemned Al Qeda and the Taliban, and called for nationwide interfaith harmony and national solidarity. The statement received live television coverage when signed, has been much lauded in the Pakistani press and parliament, and belies defeatist pessimism about prospects for progress on the part of Pakistan’s Muslim clerisy. The statement and Bhatti’s continuing leadership on similar matters open up the extraordinary prospect that Pakistan’s imams can serve as the third (and the most important) leg of anti-terrorist policies that to date have solely relied on military and political leaders and have often appeased the most militant Islamic religious leaders.

Bhatti held a summit last fall with Pakistan’s leading madrassa heads to discuss educational reforms designed to alter their status as incubators of terrorism. He is planning a 2011 session at which Pakistan’s president, prime minister, and 3,000-5,000 religious and community leaders will endorse the July 2010 statement of principles. If this event takes place–a development that could be facilitated by informed US support not now present–Bhatti’s role in Pakistan and beyond would be hard to overestimate.

Senators Casey and Brownback and Congressmen Wolf and McGovern wrote to Secretary Clinton on the eve of her June visit to Islamabad; the letter praised Bhatti’s work and called on the secretary to meet with him during her trip. That meeting could not be scheduled, but a successful one did take place between Bhatti and Undersecretary of State Maria Otero–and follow-up meetings are now being considered. I and oth-ers intend to work–and to work hard–to persuade US policymakers to catch up with leaders of the rest of the world in recognizing Bhatti’s importance and potential.

PRISM: Where are we on the issue of prison rape in the with intense opposition from state prison officials and the Department of Justice. The department has made clear US? that it will be at least one year late in meeting an explicit MH: The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) June 2010 statutory deadline for issuing final PREA reguestablished a commission to propose low-cost regulations lations, and has shown itself at best indifferent to designto eliminate the widespread incidence of sexual violence in ing and conducting meaningful state prison surveys. It has America’s prison systems. (The legal basis of the PREA failed to indicate any willingness to link failure to comply was a Supreme Court holding in the Farmer v. Brennan with final PREA regulations with potential liability in case that held deliberate indifference to prison rape a vio- Farmer lawsuits brought by abused prisoners. Critically, it lation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and usual has sought to construe the PREA’s requirement for lowpunishment.) Under the PREA, the Department of Justice cost rape abatement standards as a bar against standards was charged with evaluating the commission recommen- that impose any costs, including costs which are marginal dations and then rapidly promulgating prison rape abate- in relation to overall prison budgets. In other words, the ment regulations in such areas as predator isolation, staff Department of Justice has effectively sought to gut the training, whistleblower protection, and the early identifica- PREA. Fortunately, the press–including the Washington Post, tion of likely victims. The PREA also charged the Department of Justice with conducting prison surveys the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal–has that permitted compari sons of the prison rape abatement condemned the department’s PREA delays, conduct, and performances of all state prison systems. After some dif- position–and this has put real pressure on the department ficulties, the commission issued its report in early 2009. to take the PREA seriously. This will be an active and The commission’s recommendations have been met important year in terms of holding the feet of the Department of Take Action...

Justice to the fire on the issue of domestic As this issue of PRISM is going to press, the Department of Justice’s proposed national prison rape. A furstandards addressing sexual abuse in detention, pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination ther development Act of 2003, are undergoing administrative review, after which there will be a public the likely appointcomment on these proposed standards. If they closely mirror the recommendations ment of the PREA’s of the bipartisan federal commission that originally drafted the proposals, these comlead sponsor, mon-sense measures will be the most important tool to date in the fight against sexual Congressman Frank violence behind bars. To learn how you can add your voice to the call for strong stanWolf, to the chairdards addressing prisoner rape, please join Just Detention International’s email list, at manship of the subJustDetention.org. While you're on the website, check out their Portraits of Courage committee responsifeature, which puts a poignant face on the issue of prison rape.

31

Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA) speaks at a North Korea Freedom Day Rally in DC.

ported by other Americans and by the American political system. Thus, while all of us have known the importance of persuading the Korean American community to take up the issue of US-North Korea policy as a signature concern, we have missed the fact that doing so is the central, overriding, and singular end to be sought–that it is the development without which meaningful change in US-North Korea policy will not occur.

Recognition of the State of Israel and later US policies that threatened the former Soviet Union with sanctions if it did not allow its Jews to emigrate occurred in the face of an establishment consensus that those policies were counterproductive. The same was largely true of the campaign to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime.

America is a country of immigrants and, to the consternable for Department of Justice appropriations augurs well tion of “experts,” US policies have been responsive to for full enforcement of the law and for radical abatement Jewish American, African American, and other immigrant of today’s widespread incidence of sexual assault and vio- communities when they have made their votes and longterm political support contingent on support for the lence in America’s prisons. oppressed people of their “home countries.”

PRISM: Our cover story in this issue is about the human rights disaster that is North Korea. Why is this particular PRISM: So what about the Korean American community? issue so hard to rally folks around?

Are they applying any effective pressure on behalf of their North Korean brothers and sisters?

MH: The most significant Wilberforce agenda failure of the past decade has been the failure to seriously alter the MH: The passivity and indifferenceof the Korean American Bush and Obama administration’s policy towards the community towards North Pyongyang regime. Passage of the North Korea Human Korea resembles that of the Rights Act, issuance of left-right statements from American Jewish community American leaders calling for a human-rights-oriented towards Hitler as he was comapproach to the regime, and assistance given to under- ing to power–and in the Korean ground railroad organizations that rescue North Korean American case is caused by a refugees have not significantly altered the humanrights- mixture of political naiveté, neutral policies of the US. To no significant avail, such career preoccupation, and stamembers of Congress as Sam Brownback, Evan Bayh, tus insecurity. Leaders of the Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Diane Watson, Dana Rohrabacher, Korean American community and Ed Royce, world leaders like Vaclav Havel and Natan also fear the uncertainty that Sharansky and the Bush administration’s Special Envoy for precedes such bold action, just North Korea Jay Lefkowitz have sought to promote a as Jewish leaders feared the human-rights-based “Helsinki strategy” for dealing with potential rejection of their effort North Korea. Frequent meetings between human rights to promote the emigration of activists and leaders of South Korea’s political, human Soviet Jewry, and as America’s rights, faith, media, and student communities have been Christian leaders feared that a campaign against worldsimilarly unsuccessful. All of those efforts–and extensive wide Christian persecution would not resonate in the media reports detailing the inhuman character of the pews. But those leaders came to see, as would Korean regime–have failed to move US policy away from its core American leaders, that meaningful initiatives on behalf of position of offering support and legitimacy to the regime persecuted brothers and sisters almost always catch fire in exchange for weapons policy promises. with members of their communities and with the country This failure on our coalition’s part has resulted from as a whole. the most egregious of strategic errors: our inability to Worst of all, Korean American leaders, and their relidistinguish between policy means and policy ends. gious leaders in particular, have failed to follow up on Throughout, advocates of a Helsinki strategy for North public pledges they have made to support a human-rightKorea have failed to assign adequate priority to the central soriented North Korea policy. A notable example was the fact that strong calls by Americans to protect their perse- strong October 2008 letter sent to Senator McCain and cuted home country brothers and sisters are always sup- then-Senator Obama by the Korean American Church

32 PRISM Magazine

Coalition for North Korea Freedom [“the KCC”], an umbrella group of almost 3,000 Korean American churches and pastors. (Editor’s note: Read the text of this letter on page 13). One week after delivery of the letter, in which the authors solemnly pledged never to countenance US failure to hold the regime accountable for its human rights violations, the Bush administration took North Korea off the terrorist list and then-Senator Obama endorsed the step. The KCC’s response was…silence.

An important means of engaging the Korean American community will be to more fully emphasize the obligation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to take China to binding international arbitration for its widespread deportations of North Korean refugee- escapees. This failure is based on China’s unlawful refusal to bring North Korean refugees before UN officials for refugee status processing, on China’s unilateral act of deporting the refugees to North Korea, and on the imprisonment and torture that follows the deportations. The potential appeal of such a focus is enhanced by the fact that the US is the principal financial supporter of the UN and by the fact that the UN secretary-general is himself Korean. The secretary-general’s silence over China’s treatment of North Korean refugees stands in contrast to his denunciations of human rights violations in other parts of the world. For this reason alone, UN failure expressly defined by the North Korea Human Rights Act as “a significant abdication…of one of [the UNHCR’s] core responsibilities” can, with proper leadership, become a matter of determined grassroots concern to the Korean American community.

The good news is that key community leaders may be ready to assume the risks of leadership and are ready to speak out and take action–a development strengthened by the regime’s mounting economic and succession crises and by the increasingly open internal criticism of the regime reported by such sophisticated observers as Barbara Demick and Chun Ki Won. But having been disappointed by the Korean American community’s silence and timidity, I’m not holding my breath until this happens, and I intend to raise my voice with all that’s in me to move the community to action. That action is long overdue and is a critical step if the community is to earn Take Action...

Read the interview with North Korean defector Jinhye Jo on page 18, then look at the list of advocacy organizations on page 14 and commit to partnering with one or more to help refugees like Ms. Jo. Purchase Restricted Nations: North Korea, produced by Voice of the Martyrs, at Persecution.com: These testimonies of steadfast saints living in a dark nation will give you the strength not only to pray on their behalf but also to live your life boldly for Christ.

respect and stature among its fellow Americans and with its young people.

PRISM: That’s quite an agenda you’ve set. Anything else in the works?

MH: Yes. I’m not getting any younger, and I’m determined to share the many gifts I’ve received before Gabriel blows his horn for me. My immigrant grandfather–probably the great influence on my life–regularly told me when I was growing up never to forget that “America is the blessed land” and that I owed it to others to share my blessings.

Besides, doing what I’m privileged to do–as an escapee from the world of co porate law firms–is fulfilling and energizing beyond measure.

Thus, I’ve been talking to activists and members of Congress about an initiative that addresses so-called “honor killings” and hope to gain traction in making our policies towards Sudan and Darfur shrewder, tougher, less morally promiscuous, and more focused on the failings of Darfur’s rebel groups–in a word, to get the strategic premises of our policies more in line with those of the Sudan Peace Act I worked to pass, legislation that helped end a brutal 20-year war waged by the government of Sudan.

Finally, there’s a reform I believe can be made to happen in less than a year–“Accent on Democracy.” This initiative results from my experience with pro-democracy hero-leaders who come to America but often fail to reach American audiences because their accents and speech patterns make them difficult to understand and often almost unintelligible. How sad this is because, better than anyone else, these often-great men and women can teach Americans about our strengths, opportunities, and obligations to help make a peaceful world for ourselves and for others. I’ve been in touch with the Hollywood experts who teach Meryl Streep how to be Julia Child one day and a Swedish immigrant in her next movie, and they’re excited about building bridges between the American people and Tiananmen 21 designees, Green Revolution leaders, Burmese dissidents, Vietnamese Christians, and Tibetan victims–and are confident they can do so.

Other opportunities are sure to come along in 2011, and I’m exercising, taking my pills, and trying to stick to healthy diets that will allow me to work with others to take them on.

PRISM: Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. May 2011 be a year in which we all work to make our abolitionist ancestors proud of us.

MH: From your mouth to God’s od’s ear.

33

Demanding an Encore A GROWING NUMBER OF 60-PLUS FOLKS INSIST ON GETTING THE GREATEST RETURN ON THEIR EXPERIENCE

by Samuel H. Shafer

J

ock Brandis worked for over 30 years in Hollywood as a lighting director, a position that required a can-do attitude and problem-solving abilities. But after losing his wife in his early 60s, he felt the need to take some time off. Traveling to Mali to help a friend fix a solar-powered water system, he witnessed women in the marketplace laboriously shelling peanuts,

34 PRISM Magazine

often with bloodied fingers.

Moved by their challenges, he returned home to tinker with creating a nut sheller, a mechanism that would increase the women’s shelling efficiency and give them greater prosperity. Months later he returned to Mali with a simple but entirely new type of machine. Called the Universal Nut Sheller, it costs $28 to manufacture

and has revolutionized the shelling of peanuts and other hard beans, nuts, and seeds.

Brandis’ ideas have since blossomed into an array of nonprofit activities. Reflecting on what he still wants to accomplish, Brandis says, “I’m in a hurry. If I had been doing this when I was 35, I would have all the time in the world to get it done. I

want to do water and wind and solar, and I’m not going to be able to do them all.” In 2008, Jock Brandis was awarded $100,000 as a Civic Ventures Purpose Prize winner for the contributions he has made in his “encore career.”

Civic Ventures Civic Ventures is a think tank

and incubator for generating ideas and creating opportunities to help society achieve the greatest return on experience. The organization was co-founded in the late 1990s by social entrepreneurs John Gardner and Marc Freedman.

As the visionary founder of Common Cause, a citizens’ advocacy group, Gardner was noted for saying, “The nation today faces breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” Marc Freedman is the CEO of Civic Ventures and the author of the popular book Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.

Gardner and Freedman could foresee a fast approaching demographic wave that would either crash over the nation’s head or lift the country up to meet the challenges of our time. That wave was the boomer generation which was beginning to enter the retirement years.

They launched Civic Ventures to reframe the debate about aging and

redefine the autumn season of life as a time of social and individual renewal. Through inventive programming, original research, strategic alliances, conferences, publishing, and the power of people’s stories, Civic Ventures reports on and promotes the experience movement.

The organization gathers older adults with a passion for service and helps stimulate opportunities for harnessing their talents in order to revolutionize retirement and transform their communities, the nation, and the world.

Each year Civic Ventures awards Purpose Prizes to people over 60 who are making extraordinary contributions via their encore careers. The annual summit conferences, where the Purpose Prizes are awarded, are attended by 300-400 people involved in making their own encore contributions, people from every walk of life with broad visions and a pen-

Henrietta Mann believes that Native American youths must have a solid education that reflects their culture, history, government, and language in order to provide leadership for their communities. But after spending nearly four decades in public higher education, Mann was weary of seeing the

chant for “getting things done.” The weekend gathering crackles with creative energy and continuous exchange of ideas. What dominates the summit conversations is the search for better practices and ways that attendees can collaborate to expand or help realize each other’s visions.

These are people who believe the world can be changed and insist on being part of that change.

Why the encore phenomenon?

A confluence of factors has allowed for the emergence of the encore movement. Medical advances have increased average life expectancy to the late 70s, and better diets and exercise have contributed to a healthier generation of retirees. A substantial number of the boomers possess the economic freedom to explore new vistas in their remaining years. Many of those who don't, due to the severity of the recent financial crisis and the subsequent loss of retirement savings, are willing

continuing achievement gap of Native American students. So she founded the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College (CATC) to ensure that Native Americans have culturally based education opportunities which are not offered to them elsewhere. Starting in 2006 with just one

student, CATC now has 110 students from 17 tribes. The college is currently hosted by Southwestern Oklahoma State University, but in the next five years Mann plans to build an environmentally friendly campus for CATC.

to continue working, even at lower-paying jobs, if it means shorter hours, flexible conditions, and more meaningful work.

Older Americans who choose to turn their backs on traditional retirement enter what author Richard Bolles (of the What Color is Your Parachute? books) describes as the outer circle of a work life. Bolles characterizes our work lives as a series of concentric circles. For a Christian, the center of the circle is the vocational call to serve Christ in all facets of life.

The second ring involves finding a job that puts bread on the table. The third ring is for those who have the luxury of choosing a career most in line with their passions, knowledge, natural talents, and experience. Finally, there is the outer circle, in which people begin to deeply explore their life work and the purpose for which they have been put on earth.

This is the realm many of

HENRIETTA MANN

35

Herb “Coach” Sanders is the executive director of Full Count Baseball Ministry, a nonprofit organization in Denver, Colo. The ministry teaches youth to model responsible behavior by utilizing the fundamentals of baseball. Sanders spent a number of years working with the Colorado

ED SPEEDLING

After 28 years of raising a family abroad while working in real estate development, Adrienne Houel decided to create new solutions to the economic plight that plagued her hometown of Fairfield, Conn. Houel is tackling two of the most pressing needs of low-income urban neighborhoods: clean, affordable housing and steady employment.

DR. ARTHUR AMMANN

36 PRISM Magazine

Department of Juvenile Corrections. However, later in his life he made a bold decision to leave behind the security of his public employment and answer a call to Christian ministry. This new direction first led him to the position of program director for a prison ministry providing mentors

Having served many years as a healthcare executive, Ed Speedling became aware of a yearning to work with people on the margins of life. After weeks of family discussions and personal reflection, he joined the staff at St John’s Hospice, a shelter for homeless men in

First, Houel helped create and now runs an affordable housing development outfit in Connecticut called Fairfield County Housing Partnership Inc., which specializes in environmentally friendly, or green, building. In 2006 she launched the Greater Bridgeport Community Enterprises Inc. Green Team, which partners with small businesses to create

When Arthur Ammann and his colleagues discovered children suffering from AIDS in 1982, little was known about the disease.

Today, more than two dozen drugs treat those infected by HIV. In resourcepoor countries, however, the HIV epidemic continues to spread wildly, particularly among women and children.

to inmates. As his journey continued, Sanders started mentoring with Save Our Youth and served as a youth pastor for Berean Bible Church.

In addition to founding Full Count Baseball, he has served as a varsity baseball coach at public high schools since 1993.

Philadelphia. A few years later he accepted a position with the Outreach Coordination Center at Project H.O.M.E., where he would address the needs of people living on the city streets.

Today, as Speedling reflects over his 10-year encore career, he says, “My life’s journey has

job opportunities in the growing green sector and then trains unemployed residents to fill those jobs: 27 green jobs have been created in areas such as carpentry and weatherization, and 125 people have been trained in three years through the program.

At age 62, Ammann left his job as president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1998 and founded Global Strategies for HIV Prevention, to bring life-saving drugs to people in underserved regions.

Since then Global Strategies has raised $22 million for HIV prevention, trained 5,500 healthcare workers,

HERB SANDERS

led me to places I never thought I would go and into relationships with people I would have only known from afar.

I have been blessed to work shoulder to shoulder with people from all walks of life who know ‘It is in the shelter of each other that people live.’”

ADRIENNE HOUEL

and given drugs or HIV testing kits to 85,000 women in Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, South Africa, and the Dominican Republic. Ammann’s next project is to partner with lawyers and advocates in those areas to address gender inequality and rape, the root causes of HIV transmission.

Marc Fre e dman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, has written a trio of books (all published

by Public Af fair s B o o k s) o n th e subject of living a purposeful life in the later years. Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize R e ti re m e nt a n d Transform America (2002) provides a new vision on aging, retirement, and the role of older Americans in the 21st century. Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (2007) shows how baby boomers are today’s seniors have been permitted to enter–should they choose to do so. This can be a culmination of a childhood dream or vocational calling, or the application of knowledge/skills accumulated throughout years of work experience. Within this circle is what Frederick Buechner refers to as “that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet..”

People of faith might reflect on whether the concept of retirement is biblical. The psalmist gives us something to consider in this declaration, which reveals that he assumes he’ll be working for God’s kingdom until his dying day: “So even to old age and gray hairs, O’ God, do not forsake me, till I proclaim thy might to all generations to come” (71:18).

While our culture has long purported that proof of worldly success is an early retirement filled with golf and leisure, a study published in the winter 2010 edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives suggests that avoiding retirement may be the smartest choice. In “Mental Retirement,” two economists claim that their data–gathered from the United States and 12 European countries– indicate that the earlier people retire the faster their memories decline. This should make the idea of an encore career even more attractive.

Sidney Harman could be a poster child for the encore career movement. In the 1950s he and a fellow engineer founded the audio industry firm Harman Kardon. With an estimated fortune of $500 million, Harman has no economic reason to continue working, yet last year he purchased the struggling Newsweek magazine. Why take on such an endeavor? He reasons that Newsweek is a “national treasure” and that journalism needs to be revived. His daughter puts it more succinctly: “[My father] is a man who needs a project.” Or, as Harman told the New York

r e j e c t i n g conventional notions of retirement and crossing into a new stage of work—and how their energy is transforming what work means for all Americans. His latest book, due out in April, is The Big Shift: Navigating the Ne w State Between Midlife and Old Age. It uses personal stories, visionary thinking, and practical advice to offer a new perspective to people entering their 40s, 50s, and 60s and asking "What's next?"

Times, “Retirement is the enemy of longevity.” Mr. Harman is 92.

The church People of faith understand best the idea that every life has a unique purpose designed by God. As Henry Emerson Fosdick once asked, “Can an architect design a beautiful house with no plan for the inside?” As the demographic wave of boomers approaches retirement age, the church is in a unique position to help Christians define and pursue their callings. Churches are natural intersections for connecting what God is doing in the world with the “callings” that are stirring in people’s hearts.

The church would benefit from understanding the extent that materialism has obscured the idea of calling and influenced the destiny of our nation. In the late 1600s the Reformation expanded the understanding of “calling” to include all people, the political philosophers were formulating the foundational tenants for individual freedom and democracy, and mercantilism was expanding the base of capitalistic enterprise to include more individuals than ever before. These three forces coalesced in a way that would eventually give the individual in Western civilization greater freedom and prosperity than had previously been known in history.

However, it was during this period that Cotton Mather penned the prophetic words that clearly speak to the plight of our day and age: “Unless there is a vigilance, a sense of calling will bring forth prosperity only to result in prosperity destroying the sense of calling.”

The wave of aging boomers represents a historical opportunity for the church to help turn around the cultural drift into materialism. The church can be a potent force in helping millions of its members redis-

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cover their callings, identify their unique gifts, and provide avenues for unleashing their energy into the fields of mission and ministry. With its vast reservoir of workers, the church can collaborate with a group like Civic Ventures, which, through its Encore affiliate (Encore. org), offers a repository of research, inspirational stories of individuals and organizations, and opportunities to collaborate with creative and dynamic leaders who are actively addressing the needs of our time.

Those US churches that are unleashing creative ministry and mission into the world appear to possess two common threads. First, they have a clear understanding that God’s kingdom is unfolding “out there”–in the world–where today’s church needs to be. The antithesis of the “if you build it they will come” approach, going out into the world with authentic word and deed speaks to the minds and hearts of broken, disillusioned, and hurting people. Second, these churches are entrepreneurial. Two essential components of entrepreneurialism are faith and courage, both of which are required to move into new and uncharted territories. Church leaders who follow in the footsteps of Christ value risk-taking and encourage members to be on the cutting edge of new endeavors–the place where good ideas flourish and even failed ideas make clearer the direction of success.

Labor of love The boomer generation is equipped to apply its time, energy, experience, wisdom, and resources to problems that cannot be addressed by dollars alone. New approaches, scientific breakthroughs, and a passion for innovation are needed to address the obstacles to human flourishing.

Public servants, teachers, coaches, tutors, mentors, and caregivers are much needed for vulnerable populations of all ages. When aging boomers overcome their commitment to consumption and security and give themselves permission to pursue a labor of love, they discover a renewed passion for life and a new kind of work satisfaction.

Theologian Karl Barth once remarked, “As if it were permissible to freeze or solidify at the point where the river of responsibility should flow more torrentially than ever in view of the approaching falls, of the proximity of the coming Judge!” Thanks to the generosity of our God, we often experience the greatest satisfaction when we are living most closely aligned with his will. So while serving God with the whole of our beings for the duration of our lives is a responsibility, it is also a joy. An encore career is God’s invitation to linger at his banqueting table long into the night.

Sam Shafer, an Episcopal priest, has served in the church and as the executive director of a state-wide prison ministry. His present passion is to inspire people of all ages to identify their callings, develop their gifts, and connect them with opportunities for service. He teaches a six-week course entitled “Called to Serve” and is currently writing a book on the subject.

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ARE YOU PURPOSE DRIVEN? Are you or someone you know a purpose-driven senior? Civic Ventures is now taking nominations for the 2011 Purpose Prize. Go to Encore. org/prize/nominate to submit your nomination by March 10.

IDEAS FOR CHANGE Policy solutions that would make encore work easier for more people: z access to affordable healthcare z an end to financial penalties for continuing to work while receiving a pension z online resources to help people learn how to locate opportunities and transition into them z accelerated education or retraining programs for experienced people interested in learning new ways to use their skills in work that benefits their community z programs that help match people who want to transition to working for nonprofits and government agencies with employers who are interested in these job seekers z services that aid people interested in making a career transition in their second half of life z midlife internships so people can try out new careers z loan forgiveness for people who need more education or retraining to work in areas of greater societal need

Craig Wong

O n Being the Church

Discovering God on Angel Island In the fall of 1916, my grandmother, Wong Shee Fong, boarded the S.S. Tenyo Maru and set sail for America, having been separated from her husband for over five years. Alone and in her early 20s, she was eager to leave a fractured and struggling China, a country left in the hands of competing warlords after the failed monarchy of self-proclaimed emperor Yuan Shikai. Furthermore, she was fleeing the tyranny of a harsh and heavy-handed mother-in-law. Despite the pain of having to leave her young son behind, she looked to the hope of reunion with her spouse and the chance for a better life in Jiu Jin Shan, or the Old Gold Mountain that was San Francisco.

Indeed, the Gold Mountain had bettered the life of a few, particularly the successful speculators in the early stages of the rush. For most, however, the promises of wealth did not deliver, and the Chinese were among the first to be scapegoated and economically marginalized. Harassment and forced segregation were accompanied by laws, such as the Foreign Miner’s Tax designed to force “coolies” out of the mineral fields and local ordinances that prohibited Chinese cultural practices like the use of shoulderslung “yeo-ho” poles. More importantly, a series of laws was passed to make Chinese immigration as difficult as possible, culminating in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which declared all but certain classes of Chinese (i.e. economically beneficial merchants and students) barred from the country, the original “illegal aliens” of federal regulatory code.

Thus, the America that Wong Shee experienced upon arrival was a hot, crowded, and locked barrack, for she found herself booked into the nation’s first major immigration detention facility, located on Angel Island just off the coast of San Francisco. Unlike the European immigrants who typically passed through Ellis Island within a few hours, my grandmother remained in detention for nearly six months, enduring multiple interrogations, health inspections, and the long wait for reference checks in a system

where one is deported unless proven eligible. The painstaking process is exemplified in this small excerpt from one of my grandmother’s interrogation transcripts: Q: “You stated before that there were eight houses in your village, and four rows. Now, with the paper clips you have used, you have arranged the village in six rows. Which is correct?”

A: “The first three rows there is only one house in each row. No second house.”

Q: Do you mean there are really six rows instead of four?“ A: Yes. Q: “Why do you have your village different from the way you told us it was arranged when we had the other interpreter?”

A. “I did not arrange them. The other interpreter arranged them himself. I did not know what he meant...”

And so on.

Aside from the stressful gauntlet of interrogations, Wong Shee also had to combat prolonged disease in a jail with unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care. One disease in particular was trachoma, a serious eye infection that had just been classified as a basis for deportation. However, with time running

out, the immigration authorities received a letter, accompanied by a check, which read: “Sir, I respectfully request that hospital treatment be granted in the case of Wong Shee…A deposit of $300 is hereby made to cover such treatment.”

This letter was signed and delivered

by Ms. Donaldina Cameron, a Christian minister of the Presbyterian Chinese Mission in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In this gracious appeal for mercy on behalf of my grandmother, she was not alone.

Along with Ms. Cameron were Ms. Ethel Higgins, Mr. J. H. Laughlin, and other saints from the Presbyterian Mission who, for months, advocated for my grandmother’s release from the island.

Documents drawn from the National Archives bear witness to the voluminous correspondence between the church and the US immigration authorities, an amazing labor of love that blessed the lives of my ancestors–and so many others.

I share this account with great delight, for in studying my grandmother’s ordeal in the Angel Island Immigration Station, I discovered the great works of the Lord in, and through, his people. Discovering God’s gracious hand upon my family nearly a century ago, I am filled with gratitude for the men and women who served in his name. As our nation’s dark immigration history repeats itself, I pray that we might serve likewise.

Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in Him. Psalm 111:2 For more stories, visit GUM.org/ AngelIsland and download a copy of Congregational Ministry and Advocacy: The Angel Island Immigration Station Era, 1910-40, a publication co-edited by Grace Urban Ministries, a congregationbased nonprofit serving children, youth, and families in San Francisco.

Craig Wong is the executive director of Grace Urban Ministries. He invites your feedback at onbeingthechurch@gum. org.

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W ashington Watch Towards a Just Peace Being prophetic can be hard and being pastoral is not always a walk in the park.

Speaking truth to power, as Dr. King did, can get you killed–even when you smile kindly while saying it and hope for the transformation of the oppressors. If “pastoral” could mean something like “caring for the wholeness and faithfulness of each person and the church” and “prophetic” could mean something like “calling for greater justice and peace by pointing out injustices committed by states, citizens, religious leaders, and religious people,” then perhaps we could seek to be both pastoral and prophetic. If we are only pastoral we might not see and address the social injustices around us; if we are only prophetic we might forget that structural injustices needing to be dismantled involve the hearts, minds, lives, and humanity of specific people.

I think the church needs to address the Israeli-Palestinian situation with God’s pastoral love and God’s prophetic call for justice–godly love and godly justice. To do this we must be willing to point out both the positive and the negative that policy makers are doing, affirming the just policies and criticizing the unjust. And since the Israeli-Palestinian situation involves the US, we must do this for US policy as well as for Israeli and Palestinian policy. Sometimes when a person criticizes the policies of the US they are called unpatriotic or anti-American, which diverts attention away from the policy being criticized or suggested. A similar phenomenon happens when people criticize the policies of Israel or the Palestinian Authority. An Orthodox rabbi told me that a way to lower one’s chances of being called anti-Israel when criticizing its policies is to be sure neither to demonize the Jews nor to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel. My desire is to speak pastorally and prophetically to this issue and be clear that I love Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians and want all three peoples to enact the most just policies possible.

My threefold approach to this situation is to discern the best perspectives and

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actions for churches and for followers of Jesus and to offer policy recommendations to the nations involved.

Churches should be communities of character that create people of integrity who live truthfully. Discovering the truth as a church could happen by connecting with Palestinian churches and evangelical organizations in the West Bank, like Bethlehem Bible College, and using resources at ESA and Churches for Middle East Peace in your Christian education programs and sermons.

Churches should speak clearly against the use of violence by all parties, and if they tour Israel they should learn the Palestinian narratives alongside the Israeli ones.

Followers of Jesus who seek to be faithful could learn about the situation not only from American and Israeli Christians but also from Palestinian evangelical Christians like Sami Awad (Holy Land Trust), Alex Awad (Palestinian Memories), and Salim Munayer (Musalaha). Watch the film Little Town of Bethlehem, which features the stories of an Israeli Jewish fighter pilot, a Palestinian Muslim, and Sami Awad. Also learn from the many Jews who are working for a just peace through organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (Jeff Halper). While learning, pray about whom you should become as a peacemaker and justice seeker and be open to having conversations with family and friends, writing letters or making phone calls, or even journeying to Israel/ Palestine to meet the folks who live there.

Jesus’ invitation to pick up our crosses and follow him seems to entail a willingness to risk, and the journey of faithful discipleship means that one may lose (and gain) reputations, friends, family, even one’s life.

Count the cost as you engage this issue, and proceed wisely.

Based on my desire for both Israel and Palestine to have viable states, I have specific policy recommendations. The Obama

Paul Alexander administration should be commended for bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together for direct talks, but it should pressure Israel to stop building Israeli cities in Palestine. These “settlements” of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens are built in occupied territory and are illegal under international law, and the US must stand strong against their expansion. The US should also fund Palestinian infrastructure development to empower President Abbas and draw support away from Hamas.

The State of Israel should be commended for its willingness to engage in direct talks, but it should cease building additional structures in the West Bank (neither homes for settlers nor walls on the Palestinian side of the Green Line), end the occupation by withdrawing troops from the West Bank and handing control to the Palestinian Authority, and vocally denounce any violence against Palestinians by the Israeli settlers.

The Palestinian Authority should be commended for its willingness to engage in direct talks and for denouncing the use of violence to resolve the conflict, but it should even more vocally denounce all uses of violence by any Palestinians, persevere in building efficient infrastructure in Palestine, and consider financial compensation related to the return of refugees.

Hopefully, we can become better followers of Jesus and more faithful churches while also addressing the nations. We are certainly called by God to love the Israelis and the Palestinians–Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others–and it seems that a Spirit-led way to love is to work pastorally and prophetically for a just peace.z

Paul Alexander is ESA’s director of public policy and professor of Christian Ethics and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

Going for Broke Ten years ago, record companies dictated the rules. Think Britney Spears or boy band sensation ’N SYNC. You take a couple of kids with a little bit of talent and a lot of personality; enter Jive Records and BMG; and after two years of development and thousands of dollars on marketing, branding, tours, and airtime, the record companies cash in millions from their new artists’ big “break.” Today it’s a different story. As record companies struggle financially, they are less willing to sign artists and less likely to deliver commercial success. Today, as one music critic put it, if financial success is what you’re looking for, you need to “operate less like a musician and more like a corporation.”

Radiohead front man Thom Yorke recently spoke out against the music industry and in favor of independent pursuits, saying, “Signing a record deal is like tying yourself to a sinking ship.”

He’s got a point. Since 2000, CD sales have dropped over 48 percent and approximately 2,680 US record stores have gone out of business.

In 2007, Radiohead walked away from their longtime label, EMI, and began independently working on their album In Rainbows, which was released exclusively online for donations only. The pre-release online profit alone for In Rainbows exceeded that of their classic record Hail to the Thief. This model may have worked for the successful British band that has built a loyal fan base for the past 25 years, but what about the emerging independent artists with a much smaller fan following?

“Sure, sounds really great to do it by yourself and be independent, but how?” asks a Columbia Pictures VP. “So you go on tour from New York to LA, earning maybe $300 a night for 20 shows, but spending $10,000 on gas alone. Not counting food, tolls, hotels, and parking, you’re $4,000 in the hole before you even start.”

But it’s worth it if it leads to your big break, right?

Herein lies the question, then. Is it possible for an artist to “break” anymore? Or, is the music industry entirely broken?

Singer/songwriter Will Gray has been asking this question for nearly five years now.

A rt & Soul “There would be no U2 after that second album. We wouldn’t have the songs. No ‘Beautiful Day,’ no ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday,’ no ‘Unforgettable Fire,’ no ‘One,’ no ”Where the Streets Have No Name,’ no ‘With or Without You.’ I would like to ask the music business to look at itself, to ask itself some hard questions because there would be no U2 the way things are right now. That’s a fact.“ - Bono at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, March 14, 2005.

With over 60 interviews from New York to believe that investing in culture is of the Los Angeles and more than 200 hours of utmost importance because culture is so footage, Will Gray has just completed his influential in shaping ideas and, subsedocumentary, Broke, in pursuit of this very quently, our lives. With technology that question: Can an artist break? delivers round-the-clock content to indiArtists aren’t necessarily after the viduals everywhere, the impact of the fame and fortune. In the documentary, entertainment sector on world view and John West, an independent attitudes is greater musician in LA, says, than ever.

“Success for me is just havWedgwood proing enough financial stabilivides investors and ty to be able to continue foundations with making music.” the necessary netFor many artists, breakwork and strateing would mean finally makgies to wisely ing enough money to put invest with a doufood on the table, take a ble bottom line: trip home to visit family, financial return afford health insurance, or and positive social Singer/songwriter Will Gray pay their bandmates what outcome. In the they deserve. It’s about being able to pur- words of our namesake, Josiah Wedgwood, sue a calling, do what you love, and reach we call this “doing well, while doing good.” hearts through the power of a song.

In 2008, Wedgwood launched the “Great music will find a home and it Sapere Fund to support a small cadre of will find its way into people’s hearts,” says independent music artists, including Will singer Sam Brooker in Broke. “The Gray, to assist/equip them in their profesresponsibility of the artist is to make an sional/personal journeys. A total of 28 album that’s worth buying. Somehow grants ($2,500 to $25,000) were awarded, music does touch people and that’s what and a regional music tour was underwritkeeps us going. When [we] look out and ten, encouraging young musicians to consee smiles and tears at a show, [we know] tinue following their creative calling and we’re doing something right.” impacting the culture for good. Since When Adjoa Skinner explains what it’s record companies aren’t making the rules like for her to write a song, she talks about anymore, the faith community will. waking up in the middle of the night with a lyric in her head or standing in the groLearn more at BrokeDoc.com and cery store and hearing a melody. She canWedgwoodCircle.com. not not make music. So where can musicians like her turn now that the music industry appears broken beyond repair?

Kristin Neal is director of Wedgwood Circle is a faith-informed communications and events organization that exists to promote the for Wedgwood Circle. She creation of cultural artifacts that are good, loves classical dance, a true, and beautiful for the common good good book with tea, and in the art and entertainment space. The the Red Sox. folks at Wedgwood (of which I am one)

*

Kristin Neal

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O ff the Shelf

Book Reviews

On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration

by Father Patrick J. Bascio AuthorHouse Neighbor: Christian Encounters with “Illegal” Immigration

by Ben Daniel Westminster John Knox Press Reviewed by M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) These two books could not be more dissimilar. One is a prolonged diatribe on the dangers of what is perceived as the uncontrolled illegal influx of foreigners; the other places the dilemmas of immigration within a personal narrative to comprehend better those who face hardships in their quest for an alternative future in a foreign land.

The title of Bascio’s work–On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration: A Priest Poses an Alternative Christian View–is at once reflective of its content and, in this reviewer’s opinion, misleading. The key word is “immorality,” a term that appears repeatedly throughout the book.

The tone is often combative and alarmist: “Groups that favor illegal immigration often invoke the Almighty and wrap themselves in the mantle of compassion as their justification for turning a blind eye to the terrible consequences to America of our porous borders.”

Bascio reviews the points that are brought to bear in the national debate against the entry and presence of undocumented immigrants in this country: the danger of Hispanic gangs; the negative impact on job availability and wages for American unskilled labor (especially among African Americans); the additional

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financial burdens on the education system and law enforcement; and the dangers to national security. All of these issues are important realities that need to be addressed, but it is unfortunate that he makes no attempt to communicate or engage contrary views in any meaningful way. The presentation is one-sided and sometimes shrill. Given the author’s wealth of experience in the Caribbean, both in the pastorate and in education, this limited perspective is a bit surprising.

More regrettable is the misleading nature of the subtitle.

The book contains no theological discussion beyond the occasional comment that the author does not agree with the pro-immigrant stance of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The only biblical text cited (and only once) is Romans 14:1-2. The last chapter closes with a sampling of letters written to Bascio by Mexican women who express longing that their husbands return home.

The old adage “you can tell a book by its cover” proves true in this case. The cover of this work depicts the author in a US Air Force Veteran cap. “Keeping America Safe” would make a suitable subtitle to Brascio’s On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration.

Ben Daniel’s Neighbor offers a very different cover

(faces of immigrants and a picture of the border fence) and focus. Frank Schaeffer, son of well-known conservative Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, contributes a passionate foreword in which he shares how his mind has changed on the topic of immigration and calls on the reader not to be swayed by nationalistic rhetoric. The author, a Presbyterian pastor (PCUSA) in Northern California, divides his 10 chapters into three sections, each of which ends with stimulating reflections and suggestions for action. The book’s conclusion is followed by a list of 10 study questions that probe political, socioeconomic, and religious beliefs and practices. The endnotes and index make this a helpful reference source. Daniel writes: “My desire for this book, then, is not so much that it will inspire charity or political activism (though I do not wish to discourage either), but that readers will recognize in undocumented immigrants the potential for long-lasting, lifegiving friendship.”

Part one looks for guidance to the broad Christian tradition, from the opening stories about Father Toribio Romo González, patron of migrants and pilgrims, to a brief look at the biblical material and church history (including Calvin’s Geneva!).

This is an ecumenical exercise designed to reshape the religious

imagination and to direct a stance on the complexities of immigration in a spiritual and more humane direction. In these chapters and every subsequent one, Daniel weaves in his personal experiences and describes how they shaped both his mind and heart.

This is a book largely about people who live in the chaos surrounding border realities.

Part two focuses on the efforts of a congresswoman seeking legislation reform and the compassion of a federal judge in Las Cruces, N.Mex., who tries to handle his courtroom and caseload with Christian sensibility. Part three deals with several concrete dimensions of immigrant life: ministries of solidarity and aid for distressed travelers on both sides of the border, the provision of water in the desert, the new sanctuary movement, and education initiatives to empower immigrants. What make these discussions compelling are the personal accounts that illustrate the breadth and depth of the problems and the urgency of concrete solution.

This is an immigration discussion from an explicitly Christian stance as it should be–with a human face. My recommendation? Be aware of Brascio; read Daniel.

M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary and author of Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Baker Academic, 2008). He frequently speaks on a biblical framework for the immigration debate and blogs at bit.ly/7ev6u.

Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul Edited by David P. Gushee, co-edited

by Jillian Hickman Zimmer and J. Drew Zimmer Mercer University Press Reviewed by Bret Kincaid Colonel Jessep, Jack Nicholson’s commanding character in A Few Good Men (1992), compellingly pushed what was then the edge of the envelope where human rights and national security collide. When the Navy prosecutor (played by Tom Cruise) demanded the truth, Jessep fiercely retorted, “You can’t handle the truth!” Jessep then barked out that Americans, while enjoying the luxury of opposing the violation of human rights, sleep comfortably at night knowing that the military keeps Americans safe even as soldiers may be violating human rights.

This “truth” also casts its shadow over torture, an issue Americans have been debating intensely since 9/11,

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the beginning of the s o - c all e d War on Terror. This e xc e l l e n t b o o k represents the antitorture side of this debate. It is a compilation of papers presented at the 2008 national summit on torture put on by Evangelicals for Human Rights (EHR) and the National Religious Campaign against Torture and hosted by Mercer University. Not everyone at the summit would concur with EHR’s motto–“No Torture. No Exceptions”– but each of the 30 voices included in the volume takes the position that the use of torture is immoral.

Especially noteworthy are the many dimensions of the issue that the book addresses: a history of the US “drift” toward torture since 9/11; what torture does socially and psychologically to victims and

perpetrators; Christian, Islamic, and Jewish theological analyses of and sermonic reflections on torture; and the politics of policy advocacy against torture. Generally, two or three prominent and knowledgeable presenters either offer an independent viewpoint on a subtopic or one person presents his or her perspective and others respond to it. The only exception to this is the paper offering a “practical way forward” for policy advocacy, which unfortunately focuses exclusively on party politics rather than also looking toward people with nonpartisan NGO and culture-shaping experience. If consulted, such people certainly could have provided encouragement and guidance to those who worry about, and want to change, the current opinion polls demonstrating large swaths of support for torture under certain circumstances.

Still, this virtual primer on torture policy was as compelling as it was painful to read. I felt queasy reading

some of the personal stories of those who have worked with Guantanamo inmates and those who have been tortured. Poring over the policy history, personal testimonies, and opinion polls of evangelicals’ positive attitudes toward torture will depress anyone who accepts Glen Stassen’s original thesis that the morality of torture cannot withstand Jesus’ call to love both our neighbors and our enemies, which is the genuine grounding of human rights (not the Enlightenment). But David P. Gushee’s paper strikes a hopeful note, despite the fact that this emergent evangelical anti-torture movement has been resisted by some evangelical leaders. Perhaps widespread reading of this book would begin bending toward justice Colonel Jessep’s “truth” presently embraced by too many evangelicals.

Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

Living into Hope

by Joan Brown Campbell Skylight Paths Reviewed by Francesca Nuzzolese Written with the verve of an activist and the heart of a pastor, Living into Hope: A Call to Spiritual Action for Such a Time As This is a testament to the transformation that can occur when faith and action go hand in hand. It is also a compelling call to people of all faiths to work in unity to bring hope and renewal to the human community.

The book is primarily centered on the life and work experiences of its author, Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, a woman of great faith and vision who has served alongside such historical heroes as Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the US civil rights movement), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (in the commission for a reconciled South Africa), and Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church (in peacemaking efforts during the conflict in Yugoslavia).

While narrating her own journey into hopeful living over four decades of active service–as executive director of the US office of the World Council of Churches, as general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, as a pastor and faith-warrior–Campbell draws out themes that are as critical to the work of peacemaking, reconciliation, and faithful activism today as they were in the past century. Highlighted in the tripartite structure of the book, these themes are love and unity, reconciliation and renewal, and faith in action.

Each part of the book offers anecdotal and historical evidence of the miracles of transformation that occur when people of faith seize opportunities to stand up

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for what is just and honorable; w h e n Christians are willing to make radical choices, even at the cost of their worldly stability; and when they have the courage to view the world through God’s eyes and are moved to spiritual action by the suffering of the innocent.

Particularly touching are the accounts of her life-threatening (and life-giving) involvement in the deliverance of US soldiers during the conflict in Yugoslavia; her pastoral and political involvement in the difficult negotiations for the life and destiny of Elian Gonzales, the small Cuban boy caught adrift in the waters between Cuba and USA; and her faithful, ordinary, everyday involvement in “dangerous dreaming” for a world engulfed in compassion.

Lest the reader be content with lessons of hope coming from the author’s own life, each chapter ends with pointed questions for personal reflection and an unambiguous invitation to seize the moment for radical action.

To compound the message that action is as important as reflection, the book ends with structured lessons and guidelines for group work (such as home group study) so that opportunities for hopeful, active living may be sought out and taken hold of by individuals and faith communities in all places, at all levels, and, most critically, at such a time as this!

Francesca Nuzzolese is associate professor of spiritual formation and pastoral care at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University in Wynnewood, Pa.

The Good and Beautiful Community

by James Bryan Smith InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Poosawtsee

Ben

In The Good and Beautiful Community, the third in a trilogy of books focusing on “good and beautiful” aspects of the Christian life, Smith considers community through a series of false narratives (“Worship is an obligation we owe to God”) and their corresponding true narratives (“Worship is an invitation given by God”). This approach works well for young Christians concerned with story, reason, and coherent writing. The exercises for each chapter are quantifiable and thus serve as more than just discussion starters.

For example: Spend two hours with God this week, work toward inviting another person to visit your faith community, and focus on one aspect of worship each week and find a specific way to apply it. Some of the exercises are designed to take place between meeting sessions, while others extend well beyond the reading of the book. The final chapter asks us to create a “soultraining plan,” which may sound hokey but is actually a natural send-off for the book. The design leaves the book open to each person’s needs and emphasizes taking care of self as much as anything else.

What drew me in most was that Smith addresses things that are already on the minds of Christian readers, particularly millennialists like myself and most of my friends. I’ve recently been in discussions with friends who were raised Christian and still keep the faith but feel that church and those in it have left them feeling unengaged. In one recent late-

n i g h t di s cus sion with this group, we all came to the agreement that people our age want our churches to have less “excitement” and more of a sense of holding us accountable. If we feel the church isn’t affected whether we’re there or not, why go?

Echoes of this appear in chapter 6 of the book, which affirms the church that expects something of its members and eschews the self-marketing church looking for ever-larger attendance. Chapter 8 builds on these ideas with a beautiful and relatable narrative of what makes church matter to a young person (ever thought that church rock bands come across as a much better idea to leadership trying to attract young people than to actual young people?).

This chapter contains Smith’s touching letter to his almostgrown-up son, outlining substantive things only church provides, such as the sacraments, community worship, and the reciting of creeds together. Like the book in general, the letter is sincere but lighthearted and prompts decisions without sounding demanding.

Because of its ability to recognize people’s need to have expectations placed on them, along with the way it echoes thoughts many readers are already having, I recommend this book for your next personal or communal spiritual endeavor.

Ben Poosawtsee grew up as a missionary kid in Thailand and currently resides in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he works for a nonprofit arts organization.

Radical

by David Platt WaterBrook Multnomah Reviewed by Glynn Young

www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rfia

Imagine setting up a card table in New Orleans’ French Quarter, next to the tarot card and palm readers, voodoo priests, fire eaters, minstrel shows, magicians, and other entertainment hawkers and religious “isms” that wash up amidst the tourists. Then imagine offering to tell people’s futures while you give away Burger King tacos to the homeless. Then imagine the birth of a vibrant ministry to the homeless, led by one of those people who showed up to have his future read and to snag a free taco.

Such a scenario would be alien to the vast majority of American Christians. Most of us would smile and inwardly cringe, thanking God that we were not “called” to that

particular ministry, or to the slums of India, or to AIDS ministries in Africa, all so far from our comfort zone.

That is precisely the point that David Platt makes in Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. Pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., Platt maintains that we American Christians have so identified with and are so cocooned within the economic and social culture of the American dream that we may be turning ourselves into the “whited sepulchers” Jesus so railed against, the people of whom Jesus will say “I never knew you.”Instead, Platt describes something “radical”–the gospel–and what it means to

accept it, believe it, make disciples in it, and multiply it. The gospel is a dying to self, an acceptance of that “instrument of torture” called the cross, and a willingness to sacrifice who and what we are to further God’s kingdom.

Chapter after chapter, Platt makes his compelling case (increasing the reader’s discomfort proportionately). He does what a good expository preacher will do: question, provoke, afflict, encourage, entreat, and help the listener understand the truth.

“We Christians are living out the American dream in the context of our communities of faith,” he says. “We have convinced ourselves that if we can position our resources and organize our strategies, then in church as in every other sphere of life, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to.”

Radical is not a contempo-

rary version of the old social gospel. Platt avoids that by providing a clear articulation of the theology of Christ. In the chapter entitled “There Is No Plan B,” he describes seven truths from Paul’s letter to the Romans, establishing the primacy and uniqueness of Christ.

These truths are well known: “All people have knowledge of God” and “God has made a way of salvation for the lost” are two. But the mandate to “go to all nations” is not for some but for all. We are all called “to go.”

Radical is a clearly drawn, solidly based, and well argued statement of what the gospel is and what’s expected of us who accept it. And that is, indeed, radical.

Glynn Young is director of online strategy and communications for a Fortune 500 company in St. Louis, Mo.

Official journal of the Center on Faith & International Affairs (CFIA) at the Institute for Global Engagement www.cfia.org Free sample articles from Volume 1, Issue 1 to the present! To access click on the ‘News & Offers’ link on our website. To subscribe click ‘Subscribe Online’ at: www.tandf.co.uk/ journals/rfia Executive Editor: Dennis Hoover Assistant Editor: Anna Carrington Founding Publisher: Chris Seiple

The Review of Faith & International Affairs The Review of Faith & International Affairs is a quarterly journal dedicated to providing analysis and commentary regarding the role of religion - for good or ill - in global affairs.

M usic Notes Music That Stops Traffic

to help him, and the country’s ongoing civil war hampered any infrastructure that might have aided in the search.

Gopal determined to put together a network of people he could trust to help Soon I’ll come to your side him find Sohenya. As he did so, he began To see you come alive…inside… to educate himself about human traffickIt weighs on my gallant heart to ing and realized how pervasive a problem know this It tears out my open heart to know it is, not only in developing countries but also in the US. He met with a pastor of you sit here alone. an orphanage in Thailand who rescues – from “To Know This” by PW girls from prostitution. And he spoke at a camp for at-risk kids in the US, where he Gopal met a girl who told him that she prostiPW Gopal’s towering, molasses-rich vocals tuted herself to help pay the bills.

Eventually Gopal got conhave at once a tenderness and a muscular edge to them. The Sri Lankan-born, nected with North Carolina-based singer-songwriter creates beautiful, lyrical songs that not only express a deep intimacy with God but also challenge listeners to love and care for the victims of human trafficking.

“It’s a polarizing issue, but in [a concert] setting, it’s easier to introduce the subject matter,” he says. “I tell the stories of the people I the Not know…It’s a good way to for Sale campaign, an organiget people thinking, and if they want more, they can get in zation working to end the global slave trade, and learned about some tools to touch with me and take the next step.”

During his concerts, Gopal tells the help him find Sohenya and to fight human story of a young girl named Sohenya, for trafficking. He also met Marlene Carson whom he wrote the song “To Know This.” of Rahab’s Hideaway, an organization that He and a friend were working on a docu- rescues girls from prostitution and slavery mentary about a Sri Lankan orphanage and puts them up in apartments. A few affected by the 2004 tsunami. There weeks later Gopal moved out of his house, Gopal met Sohenya, who was living at the and several of the ministry's girls moved orphanage because her family could not in.

According to Gopal, there are fewer afford to take care of her. When Gopal returned to the orphanage in 2007, he than 100 beds in the US for rescued vicfound that Sohenya had gone home to tims of human trafficking and even fewer visit her mother and that her mother had connected resources for assisting them. sold the girl to an unknown man from In response to a sense of God’s call, Gopal founded the Hundred Movement, an iniIndia.

Anguished by this news, Gopal felt tiative aimed at establishing 100 core God was calling him to find Sohenya. He groups of people who will take one girl off has continued searching for her when he the streets and into a safe place where she can, but he was unable to find any aboli- can get her life back. Gopal’s vision is that tionist organizations working in Sri Lanka these will be rescue homes, not institu-

46 PRISM Magazine

Allison Duncan

tions. He is asking the church to become educated about the problem of human trafficking, to discern what its role will be, and to be trained to care for these girls.

Several churches have accepted Gopal’s invitation. “There are little pockets of people who are starting to move,” he says.

He hopes to see more churches start the education process, which involves a seminar with him, discernment about the skills the community has, and surveillance and monitoring training. This is not just about giving money so that the staff of a nonprofit organization can do the work, he emphasizes. “I want people to know that the Hundred Movement is a movement, not a nonprofit. The way the church typically deals with things is just write a check and what we’re asking people to do is not just write a check but do the work.”

Through music and through a movement, PW Gopal is gradually building a community of people who know about human trafficking, who let it weigh on their hearts, and who love those caught in its hold. “We’re dealing with a very small population of people who want to be involved, but it will be a powerful group of people,” he says.

Does it weigh on your breaking heart to know this?

Will it change who you are inside?

Will it change who you love tonight to know that Love is here, Love is here?

Learn more at TheHundredMovement.com

Allison Duncan studied English and theology at Eastern University and works as a marketing writer/editor in Broomall, Pa. She enjoys freelance writing and singing harmony.

R on Sider

Evangelizing the World: Reflections on Lausanne III Last October, over 4,000 evangelicals from almost every nation on earth met in Cape Town, South Africa, to pray and plan better ways to share the whole gospel with the whole world. (Both Al Tizon and I had the privilege of being participants.)

Thirty-six years earlier, Billy Graham had assembled the first Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, to focus the energy and resources of the global church on evangelism. The primary mission of the church, Graham said, is saving souls. But ringing papers by younger Latin American evangelicals Samuel Escobar and René Padilla moved the congress to declare in its historic Lausanne Covenant that evangelism and social responsibility are both part of our Christian duty. Vigorous, intense debate followed, but the advocates of holistic mission prevailed (see Al Tizon’s excellent history in Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective; Wipf & Stock, 2008).

At Lausanne III in Cape Town, the biblical obligation to combine evangelism and social action was assumed by almost everyone. A deep, powerful longing to share the gospel with everyone who is not a believer pervaded the congress.

But so did the call to seek justice for the poor, care for the environment, combat HIV/AIDS, and work for peace. A vast array of breakout sessions and dialogues addressed both the best strategies for

48 PRISM Magazine

effective evangelism and the urgency and practice of social engagement.

Lausanne III accurately reflected the huge change that has occurred among evangelicals all around the world. Holistic ministry–combining evangelism and social action–is now part of our spiritual DNA. And the official document from the congress, the Cape Town Commitment, provides a superb, biblical theological foundation for deepening our holistic engagement.

For the first time ever at a global evangelical congress, creation care received attention. In some workshops, and especially in the official statement from the congress, our responsibility as biblical Christians to care for the environment and combat the reality of climate change was clearly affirmed–and grounded in a solid theological framework: “Creation care is a gospel issue...

The gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation. All three are broken and suffering because of sin; all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God; all three must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’s people” (Section 7).

Lausanne III was far less Western (and American) than previous congresses. Sixty percent of the participants were from the global South and East (Asia, Latin America, and Africa) where threequarters of all Christians now live. The program chair was Ramez Atallah from Egypt. Americans still had too much influence, but it was substantially less than at Lausanne I and II. I was surprised and delighted at the prominence of women at the conference: 27 percent of the participants were women (although the goal had been 35 percent). Women were prominent in the plenary sessions–Ruth Padilla DeBorst gave one of the morning plenary Bible

expositions. Brenda Salter-McNeil was co-chair of the morning plenaries. Grace Mathews played a prominent role presiding, along with Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda, in the final communion service. A young American couple gave a clear plenary call for mutual submission and full recognition of the equal roles of women and men in the church based on gifting. Privately, when I asked one US church leader what percent of the US delegation would have been opposed to this prominent role for women, he astonished me with his comment: only 5 percent! There is still a long way to go.

Women were not close to being half of all speakers or planning committee members. But Lausanne III did demonstrate substantial progress.

Many things, of course, could have been better. Repeated claims from the platform that Lausanne III represented the whole church were tragically false– virtually no Catholic and Orthodox Christians were present. American managerial missiology was alive and visible at Cape Town. But the positive features of Lausanne III far outweighed these and other weaknesses.

Again and again, personally, I was caught up in intense worship. I felt a deeper love for Christ our Lord and Savior.

Worshiping together–with the help of wonderful musicians and liturgical dancers–with Christians from almost every nation on earth was deeply moving.

Praise God for what, on balance, was an important global conference reflecting the growing maturity of global evangelicalism. And, far more importantly, thank God for a ringing call to get on with the task of sharing the whole gospel with the whole world.

Ron Sider is the founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action, author of dozens of books, and professor of theology/holistic ministry/public policy at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University.

PRISM Volume 18, Number 1 January/February 2011

Editorial Board Miriam Adeney Tony Campolo Luis Cortés Richard Foster G. Gaebelein Hull Karen Mains Vinay Samuel Tom Sine Harold DeanTrulear

George Barna Rodney Clapp Samuel Escobar William Frey Roberta Hestenes John Perkins Amy Sherman Vinson Synan Eldin Villafane

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A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University All contents © 2011 ESA/PRISM magazine.

CONVERGENCE UNITING LEADERS TO COMBAT SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IN THE MOBILE AGE

APRIL 13-14, 2011 The Conference Center at the Maritime Institute l Linthicum Heights, MD (five minutes from BWI Airport)

PRESENTED BY

Religious Against Pornography

Mobile technology and social media are changing society in remarkably exciting ways—they are also exposing young people to destructive sexual content, behavior, and exploitation. To address effectively the convergence of new technology, pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking, leaders in government, industry, education, psychotherapy, and religious communities must themselves converge in their understanding of the issues and their development of solutions.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, share, network, and participate with leaders from across the nation in crafting solutions to some of the most important issues facing our society in the twenty-first century.

COST

$

299 BEFORE FEB. 14

$

339 FEB. 14 - APRIL 12

$

369 ON-SITE

Register online at www.convergencesummit.net Scheduled Speakers include: Leaders from government, industry, education and the faith community such as: Linda Smith (Shared Hope International), Steve Largent (CTIA-The Wireless Association), Dr. Judith Reisman (Institute for Media Education), Patrick Trueman (Esg. War on Illegal Pornography) and Sheila Hopkins (Florida Catholic Conference) Presentations include: Porn Culture in the Mobile Age, Corporate Responsibility in the Age of Pornified Culture, Virtual Brothel: Pimping & Trafficking Go Online, Public Leadership to Protect the Vulnerable, and Porn as a Driver of Demand for Prostitution & Sex Trafficking

For more information on speakers, schedule, and to register go to:

WWW.CONVERGENCESUMMIT.NET