PRISM November/December Issue

America’s Alternative Evangelical Voice

MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD Society’s lust for precious metals is undermining the foundations of a poor Guatemalan community — calling us to recognize, and save, what is truly valuable JUSTICE IN THE BARRIO Conquering cowardice with courage in the mean streets of Tegucigalpa PLUS: a Kenyan church trains up a generation of world-changers, the importance of local politics, responding to a Tea Party invitation, Makoto Fujimura on God’s mysterious artistry, a farewell to Vernon Grounds.

NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2010

Not Feeling the Faith?

No Worries.

GOOD NEWS FOR ANXIOUS CHRISTIANS 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do

Phillip Cary 9781587432859 • 224 pp. • $14.99p “Evangelicals worry about lots of things, including the state of our spiritual health. Cary is worried too: worried that evangelicals are suffering needlessly because they have imbibed a consumerist spirituality that offers much but provides little. Phil’s prescription for spiritual indigestion?

A turning away from the self to the one who continually speaks a healing, saving word to us, Christ himself. This is, quite frankly, one of the best books I’ve read on the spiritual life over the past twenty-five years. I heartily recommend it.”—Christopher A. Hall, chancellor, Eastern University

LETTERS TO A YOUNG CALVINIST T An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition

James K. A. Smith 9781587432941 • 160 pp. • $14.99p “I wish there had been a Jamie Smith to write letters like these to me when I was a young Calvinist. But, hey, I’m glad to get them today! This is a wise and delightfully written portrayal of a robust Calvinism for the twenty-first century.”

—Richard J. Mouw, president and professor of Christian philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Available at local bookstores or by calling 1-800-877-2665.

Subscribe to Border Crossings, the Brazos electronic newsletter, at www.brazospress.com.

PRISM VOLUME 17, NUMBER 6 • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010

EVANGELICALS FOR SOCIAL ACTION The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

Editor Publications Assistant Copy Editor Art Director Financial Operations Publisher

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

Kristyn Komarnicki Katherine Coulter Leslie Hammond James H. Glass Sandra Prochaska Ronald J. Sider

E ditorial B oard

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

Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss.

PROVERBS 22:16

Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

MATTHEW 10:42

C ontrib u ting E ditors

Christine Aroney-Sine Myron Augsburger

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

Issac Canales M. Daniel Carroll R. Terry Cooper James Edwards Perry Glanzer David P. Gushee Stanley Hauerwas Jo Kadlecek Peter Larson Mary Naber Earl Palmer Derek Perkins Elizabeth D. Rios Lisa Thompson Heidi Rolland Unruh Bruce Wydick

PRISM magazine (ISSN: 1079-6479) is published bimonthly by Evangelicals for Social Action.

F E AT U R E S 9

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A More Perfect Love

by Kurt A. Ver Beek When rampant crime paralyzed their community, a group of Christians in Honduras learned that real neighbor-love starts with sticking your neck out.

e-mail: prism@esa-online.org 6 E. Lancaster Avenue • Wynnewood, PA 19096.

Unsolicited submissions will not be returned unless they include a SASE.

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To receive PRISM Magazine six times a year, call 484.384.2990 or go to www.esa-online.org

Johnny Cash and the Prophetic Imagination

by Tony Blair A theological look at the cultural icon who was American Christianity’s most vocal, visible, and volatile believer--and, at times, its most critical prophet.

Note: Standard A mail is not forwarded, please contact us if your address changes.

All contents © 2010 ESA/PRISM magazine.

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Talk Back

Letters to the Editor

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Kingdom Ethics

Evangelicals and Politics at Election Time 5

May I Have a Word?

The High Cost of Immortality

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In Like Manner…the Women “Managing” Diversity

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Making a Difference “Fearless Influencers”

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Faithful Citizenship Local Heroes

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Washington Watch

An RSVP to a Tea Party Invitation

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Art & Soul

God’s Strange Art

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Off the Shelf

The Bible and the black experience in America, rooting faith in a mobile culture, raising awareness of global oppression of women, Ron Sider’s must-read book list.

Weaving a Living

by Shelly Curtis and Helen Lepp Friesen Two tales of indigent people who are being brought out of desperate poverty by the work of their hands and the support of people of faith.

Reflections from the Editor

Gold Rush

Charity Is Not Justice

by James Thomas Sharing our wealth with those in need is a good thing, but it is not to be confused with the more important work of advancing justice.

e d i t o r i a l /a d v e r t i s i n g i n f o r m at i o n

s u b s c r i p t i o n i n f o r m at i o n

Bowing to the Golden Calf

by Tim Høiland Despite vigorous local and international opposition, a Canadian gold company continues to ravage an indigenous community in Guatemala with its destructive mining operations.

DEPARTMENTS

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Music Notes

The Gospel According to Patty 40

Ron Sider

The View from a Giant’s Shoulders

www.esa-online.org

Cover: Yolanda lives in one of the many houses near the Marlin mine, located in the western highlands of Guatemala, that have sustained serious structural damage due to mine blasting and heavy truck traffic.

The mining company denies any responsibility. (Photograph by Allan Lissner; Allan.Lissner.net)

REFLECTIONS FROM THE EDITOR KRISTYN KOMARNICKI

Gold Rush It’s an old story. A wealthy foreigner arrives in town, spins a pretty tale about what’s to be gained from hooking up with him, and shops around for a girl who will be an easy sell. But the girl he sets his sights on is not as simple-minded (or desperate) as he assumes she is, and she refuses his advances. Not used to being rebuffed and having no intention of taking no for an answer, he presses on until he has taken what she has not given. It’s called rape, and it’s against the law. It’s wrong — everyone can agree — even if the girl’s father is only too happy to get her off his hands while getting a taste of the foreigner’s money.

This is exactly what you’ll read in our cover story, the tale of a Canadian mining company that has raped — and continues to ravage — a land that was never given over to them by the people who actually own it, people who said and continue to say “No!” but who are ignored by the powerful players. It’s wrong — everyone can agree — even if the Guatemalan government has turned a blind eye because it fancies the cash that comes with it, even if some shareholders are ignorant (or would like to be) of the human cost their gold investment carries.

Harry Brod teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Iowa. He remembers something his driver’s ed teacher told him over 40 years ago: “The right of way is not something you have. The right of way is something the other driver gives you, and if the other driver doesn’t give it to you, you don’t have it, no matter what you think the rules of the road are supposed to be or what you think you’re entitled to. If people really understood that, there would be a lot fewer tragic collisions on the roads.”

In his ethics class, Brod compares right

In the delightful film Heaven Can Wait, a decent fellow finds himself bodiless when he’s taken up to heaven prematurely by an overeager angel. He’s now in limbo, and in order to go back to earth he must borrow a just-deceased person’s body.The only body available at the moment belongs to a Goldcorp-type mogul. When confronted with the injustices executed by the former owner of the body, this good soul is horrified and immediately starts to rectify things, using the mogul’s tools, which are now at his disposal. He builds instead of tearing down, he protects rather than attacks, he listens to the weak and ignores the powerful.The best part is that he has the time of his life doing it! Everywhere he goes, he stuns folks with his generosity, his simple logic (do good, not bad), and his winsome lust for life. Whenever I watch that film I wonder why more of us don’t Why don’t more of us use use whatever ounce of earthly power every ounce of our earthly we’ve been given — our health, wealth, time, education, skills — to spend every power to spend every minute minute of every day spinning joy into of every day spinning joy into motion all around us. Surely that’s the motion all around us? irresistible life, the real gold rush we’re all looking for.

The writer of Proverbs tells us that Let’s you and I do more than just read “Oppressing the poor in order to this story and shake our heads. Let’s go enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, to the Dig Deeper section on page 14, will lead only to loss” (22:16).The execu- access one of the resources there, and tive leadership at Goldcorp may profit begin to make a difference right away — now, in other words, but gold is all they’ll by telling Goldcorp execs what we think get. As Jesus would say, “Verily they have of them and how we’re praying for their reward.” May God be merciful to them, by writing letters of encouragethem; they are in his hands, as are we. ment to the Guatemalan villagers so And while God asks us to show love they know they’re not forgotten, by and mercy to others, he also asks us to supporting the groups that are on the join with him in the work of justice. Even ground fighting the corporate rapists, as the most loving thing we can do for and by planting and nurturing joy in an abuser is to stop him and hold him our own small spot on the planet every accountable and accompany him on the day. Heaven can wait, but why should road to healing, the most loving thing it? n we can do for the human beings that make up Goldcorp (executives, employStudy questions for this issue ees, investors) is to stop them and hold can be found at ESA-online.org/ them accountable and show them a PRISMDiscussionQ better way. of way to sexual consent.“Consent is not something you have. Consent is something the other person has to give you, and if the other person doesn’t give it to you, you don’t have it, no matter what you think the rules are supposed to be or what you think you’re entitled to.”

He says that without this standard, we would have “a world in which other people have right of access to your body without expressly asking you for permission to have that access.” Brod says that “no one is really willing to live in a world like that.”

And yet, that is the world we often do live in, because it is a world marred by sin. While Jesus says, “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” sin demands the right of way, and then insists that it only go one way.

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Talk back LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

As a first-time offender, I am amazed to see how many men return to prison three, four, six times. But when I look at the programs that are available, I can see why. Nothing here is preparing inmates for the outside world.The cover picture of the July/August issue of PRISM portrays exactly how many feel upon reentry: Nothing makes sense out there. I am excited to see that, with the Second Chance Act, Congress has taken a step to encourage free people, churches, and parachurch organizations to become involved in the reentry process.

Mainline evangelical churches must enter the arena of prison ministry on a more personal level. Many churches provide Sunday services or weekday Bible studies, but those have little impact on the lives of the majority of attendees.

No relationship is built, for the most part.

The groups that seem to be the most aggressive in mentoring are groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, offshoots of Armstrongism (Worldwide Church of God), Native American spirituality, and Islam.They each offer something entirely new to many inmates. We need more Bible-based churches that present a more orthodox version of Christianity.

Those aforementioned “fringe” groups are trying on some level to help inmates upon release. Evangelical churches must start to do the same or in 15 years we will read in PRISM about the “Third Chance Act.” Glen Beeler Terrell State Prison Rosharon, Tex. Thank you for the September/October issue’s focus on bearing witness in love. I was especially struck by Dan Merchant’s approach to engaging con-

versation (particularly at the Gay Pride event in Portland) in his documentary, Lord, Save Us fromYour Followers and Ron Sider’s exhortation (inspired by Andrew Marin) to the church to reach out to the gay community. I believe that how we treat our gay brothers and sisters today will have more impact on the credibility of the gospel 25 years from now than anything else we do.

Daniel Butowski Hilliard, Ohio It strikes me that our cultural context has a lot to do with how we share the gospel and how we are heard. What worked 30 years ago isn’t effective today, and what works in China, where so many have yet to hear the gospel, is different from what works in the US, where it seems so many people have been inoculated to it through exposure to the Word of God but little understanding of it (even among Christians!).

In the end, the results are in God’s hands. I’m tired of that “burden” I’ve always felt to set people straight, illuminate them to the truth. I need the truth as much as “they” do. I appreciated the recognition in the September/October issue that those of is in the church also need to be evangelized. It’s a lot easier to love your neighbor when you’re standing on the ground next to him and not hovering on a cloud of self-righteousness looking down on him! Yes, “Jesus is the answer,” but we don’t own that answer, and Christians, too, need to keep bringing him into our hearts every day.

Like AA participants who must confess their disease and their dependence on a higher power at every meeting, Christians need to start each day reminding themselves and the world around them that we are sinners in need of grace.

Sheila Franklin Clayton, Del.

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We can end hunger.

“God is moving in our time to end hunger, and we are invited to be part of this great liberation.”

– David Beckmann

Order Exodus from Hunger,

by David Beckmann, Bread for the World president and 2010 World Food Prize Laureate,

www.bread.org/go/exodus1

www.bread.org

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Evangelicals and Politics at Election Time

ments breaking up asphalt roads because they cannot afford to maintain them.

NewYorkTimes columnist Paul Krugman aptly describes our nation as being on the “unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.”

Evangelical political engagement has never been very strong on economic issues. Some of my heroes, like ESA’s own Ron Sider, have devoted much of Two years ago I published a mapping and their career to calling for Christians to analysis of evangelical political engage- care for the poor and work for ecoment titled The Future of Faith in American nomic justice. Meanwhile, most readers Politics. Today, amidst another bitterly of PRISM will know about how such contested Congressional election, and calls for basic Christian principles often with the presidential race of 2012 already have been met with cries of protest under discussion, I want to talk about from affluent suburbanized American the “present” of faith in American poli- Christians. But notice that the Sider tics — in other words, where are we now? call for generosity and the angry response The major rational concern of the have in common a backdrop of American American public this fall is economic affluence. Evangelicals don’t really have distress. That distress is being felt in two much to say these days about the fading primary ways — disastrously high rates of of American affluence and the spread unemployment and underemployment of economic anxiety up the economic and dramatic cuts in state and local pub- ladder.This is not really our turf, and we lic services. (Not to mention a $1.4 have not produced very many productive contributors to this discussion. trillion federal budget deficit.)

This leaves election-year discussions As of August 2010, nearly 30 million Americans either cannot find work about economic anxiety in the hands or cannot find the work they want. of others. Mainly it seems to me that That’s 14.6 million people officially Republicans want to use current ecounemployed, 5.9 million people who nomic fears and miseries to bury the have stopped looking for work but still Obama presidency, which might be nice want a job, and 8.5 million people who for partisan purposes but doesn’t really work part-time and wish they worked address mass unemployment.And Demofull-time. Half of American families have crats are trying to defend the policies of been directly affected by the economic the last two years. Never in my years of distress that has hit our nation since late observing the political scene have spe2007.Tens of millions of people face the cifically Christian contributions seemed worst crisis of their lives — right now! — more marginal to public debate.

Unless, that is, we are talking about and no power on earth seems able to do the two major irrational concerns of the much about it.

Sluggish tax revenues have contri- American public right now — illegal buted to budget cuts beyond what immigration and Muslim mosques (at Americans in this era have ever seen. “Ground Zero” and elsewhere.

On the illegal immigration issue, leadMost of us know about school cutbacks, furlough days, and reduced public ser- ing evangelicals and their organizations vices. But I think the twin symbols for generally have overcome their differences this new era have got to be cities cutting to come together to advocate for humane, back on streetlights and local govern- comprehensive immigration reform.

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Indeed, the coalitions calling for a reasonably humane solution to our immigration issues have fulfilled a hope I expressed in Future of Faith — that despite deep divisions among us, immigration might be an issue in which evangelicals could unite and provide moral leadership in our nation. That has occurred (with some notable right-wing exceptions), but it has not been enough to overcome the mass xenophobia now sweeping the nation. Far from making progress on passing comprehensive immigration reform, the best we can now hope for is to forestall the spread of punitive Arizona-type legislation around the nation.

As for the controversy that has erupted over a mosque and community center near the WTC site — with the news that other proposed mosques are running into opposition around the country — here evangelicals will have to decide whether we will stand up for religious liberty for Muslims as we so often demand it for ourselves. And we will have to decide whether Christ’s call to love our neighbors includes our (sometimes feared and hated) Muslim neighbors.

All of this is to say that after nearly 40 years of defining the “social issues” agenda (mainly around abortion, stem cells, gays, etc.), evangelicals do not currently have the opportunity to set the national agenda. It is being set for us — by profound economic distress and the undoubtedly related racial/ethnic and religious hatefulness that is spreading like wildfire across our troubled land.We will be relevant to the public debate to the extent that we provide meaningful solutions to these problems. n David P. Gushee is director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, where he is also a professor of Christian ethics.

His twelfth book, Religious Faith,Torture, and Our National Soul, was just released

by Mercer University Press.

MAY I HAVE A WORD? Peter L arson

The High Cost of Immortality A man goes to the doctor for a checkup. The doctor tells him, “I have good news: You’re going to live to be 100!”

The patient replies, “That is not good news. I only budgeted to live to be 90!”

As we agonize over healthcare reform, I believe that joke reflects our dilemma.

The good news is that Americans are living longer than ever before. The bad news is that we can’t afford it. Our everincreasing life expectancy is a wonderful blessing but also a crushing burden that is steadily pushing us toward the brink of financial ruin.

In the current healthcare debate, everyone is looking for someone to blame: greedy insurance companies, profiteering drug companies, a medical delivery system that is wasteful and inefficient, a government that isn’t doing enough to help the poor. We labor under the illusion that with better regulation and more government control, the cost of medical care will be affordable for everyone.

But if we’re looking for someone to blame for the high cost of healthcare, we should start by looking in the mirror.

Here are the facts: In 1850, the average life expectancy for Americans was 38 years of age. By 1900 it had increased to 48 years. By 1950, we could expect an average of 66 years. By 1990, it was up to 73 years. By 2008, the average life expectancy was about 78 years.

What this means is that the average American today is living 12 years longer than we did 60 years ago. That is something to celebrate, but it comes with a price tag. With every year that we add to life expectancy, the demand for prescription drugs, hospitalization, surgery, and life-extending medical procedures rises astronomically. If you think we have

a health crisis now, imagine what will happen when life expectancy for the average American reaches 80 or 90.

We live in an age of medical miracles, but miracles are expensive, and someone has to pay for them. As the American population continues to age and live longer, we can expect to see more people living with Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, more people needing dialysis, more people in their 80s getting knee replacements, colonoscopies, and open-heart surgery, more people with prostate cancer requiring expensive treatments.

The drug commercials on television beguile us into believing that, if we take enough pills, we can live forever. But in our quest for immortality, we have created the current healthcare crisis.When it comes to buying caviar or champagne, most of us know that we can’t afford it.

But when it comes to our health and longevity, we are willing to spend anything to prolong our lives for a few more years.

In Greek mythology there is the story of the Sybil of Cumae, who was offered anything she wanted by the god Apollo.

She asked for eternal life, but she forgot to ask for eternal youth. As a result, her body withered and decayed until it had to be stored in a jar. All that was left was her voice. The ancient Greeks understood what we seem to have forgotten — that longevity is not always a blessing and that quantity of life is not the same as quality of life.

So what is the solution? Most of us, if we had a choice, would choose to “die young as old as possible,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously quipped. But how, exactly, do we determine when a person should die? Should we ration healthcare, as some have suggested, or create death panels to decide who lives and who dies?

For most of us, those options are unacceptable; we simply do not trust the government to make those choices.

For those of us who are Christians, I PRISM 2 0 1 0

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would suggest another alternative. Instead of striving desperately to extend our lives for a few more years, perhaps we should accept our mortality with faith and courage and go home to be with Jesus.

Two years ago, my church built a medical clinic in Kenya for less than $13,000. Currently, the annual budget to maintain the clinic is only about $20,000, which includes medicine and the salary of a nurse, lab technician, and clerical assistant. If some of us were willing to forgo surgery or treatments — particularly in the case of terminal illnesses where medical intervention can only prolong life in the short term rather than heal the disease or prolong life in the long term — and contribute the deductible that we would have paid, it would go a long way toward meeting the medical needs of an entire African village.

As people of faith, we believe that eternal life and joy await us. And yet, we spend huge sums of money in a futile attempt to cheat death and postpone the inevitable. The soul-searching question is: “Why?” To forgo medical treatment is a radical proposal, I know, and it’s a decision that should be made prayerfully and with the consent of family. But as the cost of healthcare continues to spiral out of control, we would do well to consider the words of Jesus,“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matt. 16:25).

Or, in the words of Paul, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil. 1:23). n Peter Larson is the senior pastor of Lebanon Presbyterian Church in Lebanon, Ohio. He can be reached at peter@lebanonpresbyterian.org.

Would you like to get a word in?

If so, submit your 850-word opinion piece for consideration to kristyn@esa-online.org.

In Like Manner…the Women N ikki T oyama - S z eto

“Managing” Diversity For a few months over the summer I was involved in multi-ethnic discussions — panels, seminars, megachurch consultations, Christian schools, conferences. I’m no expert on the topic, but by virtue of being both a woman and a person of color I was given a place at the table.

During one of these discussions, my heart soared as I heard of the flood of Asian American families into a large, historic church in Northern California.

The church’s leadership team showed an eagerness to steward this opportunity well. “Here we are, arriving in a postracial America!” I thought to myself giddily, imagining the diverse “house of prayer for the nations” that Mark describes.

But as the conversation continued, my heart sank. Instead of the foundations of the beautiful vision in my head, I heard the rumblings of danger ahead.

“Why do you care about multi-ethnicity?” I asked. Most of their answers were PR-related or simply passive: “Isn’t it the thing to be a diverse congregation or organization?” (especially if they’re engaged in justice work); “The diversity is just happening; we don’t know why.”

The conversation went towards “managing” diversity rather than being transformed by it.

This same conversation repeated itself over the months. Independent of the context, well-intentioned people of God talked about “diversity” or “inclusivity.”

But those words are too anemic to express the true complexity of partnering across racial boundaries.

My limited experience of racial and gender issues reveals that it is a hard journey. Good intentions are not enough to stay the course.They’ll get you through

the early stage (“What are holidays like at your house?” “Wow — you do that too?”), but the journey quickly gets tricky when you start talking about communication, conflict, power, leadership, resources. We rush to avoid looking at our racial or gender differences: “Let’s agree on the basics. Let’s not fight over the details that divide us.”

But, I want to scream, I am the details that divide us. I wish that gender or racial issues could be optional for me.

For one day, I would love to have the luxury to not have to think about how my race or gender is bringing complications to my conversations with others.

Multi-ethnic (and cross-gender) partnerships make life messy. Diversity slows the process down, requires more conversations. Things that you worked for will get interrupted. Plans that required invest-

Multi-ethnicity and gender justice are about hearing those we desperately need to hear from. ment will be uprooted.Values and issues that are important to you will be questioned. But this is all part of what my friend calls the “rock polisher” of community. Our rough edges bump up against others’ rough edges. When it gets difficult, many people choose to jump out.

But for those of us who remain in it, the result is a polished set of rocks. It’s a painful, but refining, process.

As a woman of color, I bring “trouble,” “interruptions,” and “uncomfortable questions” wherever I go. Some folks welcome this and make space. At one of these discussions, a panelist redefined leadership qualifications. And this has now become my standard interview question: “Have you ever been under the leadership of someone of a different race or gender from yours?” For many women, for many people of color, the answer is an easy yes. Most companies, PRISM 2 0 1 0

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churches, organizations have white male managers. Is it possible to be an effective leader in a multi-ethnic context like the US without ever having been under the leadership of someone who is different from you? What does it say about your leadership qualifications? Are you qualified to lead men and women, Latinos, African Americans, First Nations folks, or Asian Americans if you’ve never worked under one?

We don’t need advocates. Advocates are people in power who use their power/position to make space for those who have no voice or who live on the margins. We need partners on the journey. Partnership is about justice, about the transformative power of the gospel — in our lives, in the lives of those around us, in the systems and structures in which we exist. Multi-ethnicity and gender justice are about hearing those we desperately need to hear from. In a sense, this type of justice work is a selfish work, because the need is ours.

Without others, my view of God is narrow. I limit God to the things that can be done in my world — my culturally limited world. But I need the perspective and challenge of the Latino community, for example, to challenge my view of God that begins and ends with family. I need people in power, not to advocate for me but to see that what I hold inside me is a small portion of God that they will never access without me — and for the sake of their own souls, they need me in partnership with them. In the same way, I need them to see a fuller picture of God and his kingdom. n Nikki Toyama-Szeto is program director of Urbana, a student missions conference that gathers 20,000 students from 120 different countries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Madison, Wis. She is coeditor/coauthor of More than Serving Tea (IVP, 2006), a collection of writings that examine the intersection of race, gender, and faith for Asian American women.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE A my L . S herman

“Fearless Influencers”

media; education and the family; church /mission; health and the environment; and business.

Deeply frustrated with the individualistic, information-oriented, and often compartmentalized discipleship he witnessed, Wanjau sought a radically new Post-election violence in Kenya in late approach. Against teaching that brought 2007 left over 1,000 people dead and “outward conformity to a bunch of 250,000 displaced. In one gruesome inci- ‘don’ts,’” he developed an interactive, dent, nearly 50 unarmed civilians were praxis-oriented, small-group course slaughtered with machetes as they tried called “Mizizi” (Roots). It combines biblical learning with real-life action, hiding in a church in Eldoret.

According to Nairobi-based evangeli- emphasizing a kingdom-oriented thecal pastor Muriithi Wanjau, the church ology that calls believers to join the suffered a huge loss of credibility during missio Dei.Wanjau’s coleaders then develthe crisis.“They acted like everyone else,” oped follow-on courses of similar ilk, he explained. “They took sides. Church one focused on prayer and the other on leaders fronted political candidates.They social justice.

Today, hundreds of congregants have played a part in destroying the society. completed Mizizi and are at various And the people noticed that.”

On August 5, 2010, two-thirds of stages of the Mavuno Marathon, which the Kenyan people voted to support a now also includes a season of leadership new constitution in a clean, peaceful development, behind-the-scenes service election — one the NewYork Times called at church, and exposure trips through“a much-needed boost of self-confi- out Nairobi.The first group of Marathon dence.” In the months leading up to graduates have now started frontline inithe vote, Wanjau’s church, Mavuno tiatives, according to their passion and (“Harvest”), played a role in educating vocational gifts.

Mukuria Mwangi, for example, has hundreds of evangelicals about the new constitution. This included tackling the launched REFUGE, an initiative that hot-button issue of land policy — a promotes beekeeping by Mau Forest complicated problem, overlaid with residents and has established 13 nurserethnic tensions, that most pastors seek ies to aid in reforestation. Simon Mbevi to avoid. For Mavuno’s leaders, though, created Transform Kenya, Mavuno’s the issue involved justice, and that meant first foray into the political/governance sector. The new nonprofit is promoting it mustn’t be ignored.

This remarkable church — which a nationwide prayer movement and draws nearly 3,000 people weekly, only operates a 12-month Christian leaderfive years after being founded — is on a ship-training course for believers who mission to penetrate Kenya with the plan to run in the country’s next elecvalues of God’s kingdom. Its entire dis- tions for Parliament. “It’s not enough to cipleship emphasis aims at “turning just pray for good leadership, and then ordinary people into fearless influencers we sit back and all the wrong guys run of society.” It has created a multi-year for political office,” Mbevi says.

Two female graduates of the Mavuno “Mavuno Marathon” with the goal of producing passionate, prayerful Christian Marathon, Daisy Waimiri and Anne social entrepreneurs who will launch Nzilani, are deploying their business new initiatives in society’s six strategic skills in efforts to empower impoverished sectors: politics/governance; the arts and women from the slums. Waimiri has PRISM 2 0 1 0

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developed a matched savings program with over 450 members; Nzilani is using her import/export experience to market abroad handicrafts made by poor women. Photographer Ken Oolo has started a videography business with teens from Kibera slum. And musician Kanjii Mbugwa, who serves as Mavuno’s director of worship arts, leads Kijiji Records.

The media company has successfully infiltrated the secular airways with gospel music and produced a reality TV show starring socially conscious singers that will air weekly on a leading national station.

Adolwa explains that these initiatives result from congregants who grasp what is meant by “social transformation.”

“It is a very big jump for people to move from saying, ‘Praise God,’ to ‘God has a heart for justice,’ to ‘God wants us to do something about the society,’” she explains.

Thus, in addition to the Marathon, Mavuno hosts church-wide educational campaigns.The most recent example was its course on proposed Kenyan land reforms in the new constitution. A few years earlier, Mavuno urged its members with maids to enroll those young women in Kenya’s national health insurance program and pay the premium. Pastor Linda preached a series of messages about the realities faced by poor women in Nairobi and showed a disturbing video of a maid giving birth at home in the slum without any medical help. “We wanted the congregation to understand that this is not God’s will,” she says. Few middleclass Kenyans provide health insurance for their house help, but Pastor Linda told them, “Righteousness means you do things differently.”

Pastor Muriithi says the Mavuno Marathon is about raising an army that will bring reformation in our generation.

He wants to form Christians who will have confidence, assurance, and such a heart for the society that they begin to Continued bottom of page 38.

At a Guatemalan mine, profit-driven abuses are wantonly destroying lives and ecosystems — a tragic story repeated in indigenous communities worldwide.

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Bowing To The Golden Calf

by Tim Høiland PHOTOS AND CAPTION INTERVIEWS BY ALLAN LISSNER

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by this time become a well-established social and political force, gave its silent assent to the new arrangement.

In the 20th century, with colonialism-as-usual waning, US interests at times assumed a less overt, but no less insidious, role in Guatemala. When, after years of dictatorial tyranny, a delicate democratic process resulted in the election in 1951 of a president committed to land reform, a major US fruit company with much to lose persuaded the Eisenhower administration that recent developments in Guatemala represented a turn towards communism. According to the domino logic of the Cold War, this was seen as an intolerable threat, and the CIA swiftly engineered a coup to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, Guatemala’s head of state.

Within several years Guatemala had spiraled into a civil war over the struggle for land that would last 36 years, waged between left-wing indigenous guerrillas and the military forces representing right-wing dictators. Wanting nothing more than peace, the majority of Guatemalans — and especially the rural-dwelling indigenous poor — were caught in the middle.

After the signing of peace accords brought fighting to an end in 1996, reports by the United Nations and the Guatemalan Catholic Church (which had since “converted” to the side of the poor) revealed that the vast majority of “disappearances,” deaths, and human rights abuses during the war occurred at the hands of the federal government and military forces.Among the most notorious offenders of human rights during the civil war was Efraín Ríos Montt, an army general and evangelical televangelist with strong US support, during whose short-lived presidency in 1982-83 the country saw an alarming escalation of rape, torture, and gruesome massacres of indigenous people.The United Nations accused him of genocide.

This was the world into which I was born at a small hospital in Guatemala City in 1982. My parents were working as linguists among the people of Sipakapa, whose language, Sipakapense, had never previously been reduced to writing.

I grew up in what had been a one-room adobe schoolhouse

o one ends up in Sipakapa accidentally.A small municipality of 15,000 people in the highlands of western Guatemala, Sipakapa has always been fairly unremarkable to the outside world. Always, that is, until gold was discovered there a decade ago. Since then, Sipakapa’s story has made it the subject of documentary films and brought it international media coverage and a steady stream of foreign visitors.

Residents, however, would just as soon remain anonymous.

It’s a story that’s becoming all too common for indigenous communities around the world. Buoyed by an international bank and with the blessing of friends in high places within the national government, a multinational mining corporation enters a poor and isolated community to set up a mining operation, bringing promises of development and jobs but leaving the community devastated when all is said and done.

Investors in North America, meanwhile, enjoy hundreds of millions of dollars in returns, completely unaware that they are complicit in human rights abuses, environmental devastation, and, at times, even the destruction of entire communities of people whose only crime was living on land full of gold.

A HISTORY OF POWER

Dietrich Bonhoeffer described history as the story of what people do with power. History has not been kind to Guatemala’s indigenous people.The country’s Mayan descendants, though comprising well over half the population, have time and again been dealt a losing hand by those in power.

After Columbus “discovered” the New World, Europeans began settling in the region, usually exercising force as a means of gaining control in matters of politics, economics, and even religion. This wealthy and powerful Old World elite established large-scale coffee and banana plantations, or fincas, on Guatemala’s fertile lowlands. Many of the indigenous people, meanwhile, were pushed to resettle on small tracts of land in the more topographically challenging, and often less fertile, highlands, while some were forcibly conscripted into harvesting the fincas.The Guatemalan Catholic Church, which had

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Top left & right: In 2005, the inhabitants of Sipakapa put mining to a vote. In some of the villages, votes were submitted on paper, in others by raising hands. The results: 98 percent of the participating population rejected mining.

Bottom: According to the law, the community’s decision to refuse mining had to to be taken to the town hall three days after the referendum. By petition of the mayor, however, anti-riot police forces entered Sipakapa to “avoid conflict.” No confrontation took place between police and civilians, but what should have been a public celebration was turned into a show of intimidation.

Goldcorp took legal action to have the referendum annulled. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled that the referendum was legal but not binding. (All photos this page courtesy of COPAE)

on a mountain ridge 9,000 feet above sea level. On a clear day we could walk out the front door and see Volcán Tajumulco, the highest point in Central America. Out back, past the eucalyptus trees on the far side of the soccer field, was Mexico, several hazy mountain ridges away.

I remember our neighbors as beautiful, hardworking people — subsistence farmers mostly — living with large extended families in adobe houses perched on steep hillsides amid rows and rows of corn. Legions of clucking chickens and gangs of vigilantly territorial guard dogs roamed the farms.

Families lived off the land, in a way of life passed down from generation to generation. For the Sipakapense, every meal, every day, was centered on corn grown in their own fields with their own hands. It was a simple, stable way of life. It was, however, by no means without its hardships, and a nostalgic image of blissful agrarian living must be balanced with the pernicious everyday realities of malnutrition, underemployment, lack of education, inadequate healthcare, and the acute

problem of alcoholism, in addition to racism and discrimination experienced in relation to formal structures of power.

And circumstances were about to take a tragic, if paradoxical, turn for the worse.

THE GOLD RUSH

In 1998, vast mineral deposits were discovered in the region, with an especially lucrative deposit in an area straddling the line between the municipalities of Sipakapa and its neighbor, San Miguel Ixtahuacán.The majority of this deposit was buried in land under the jurisdiction of the latter, but the mine was to impact Sipakapa significantly as well. Over the next several years, various companies bought and sold rights to the deposit while the process was underway to gain both the necessary funding and the legal permission to begin a major extraction operation. Funding was arranged through the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the federal government of Guatemala

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signed the necessary paperwork for the start of what is now known as the Marlin mine. Shortly after extraction began in 2005, a Canadian multinational corporation called Goldcorp — one of the largest mining companies in the world — acquired rights to the deposit. Today, Marlin is Goldcorp’s most profitable mine.

Controversy surrounded the operation from the start.As part of the 1996 peace accords, Guatemala is bound to standards set by the International Labor Organization, which were designed especially to prevent the recurrence of abuses and assure indigenous peoples autonomy in matters of local concern.

In other words, indigenous communities are entitled to determine, through their own democratic methods, how their land is used. Additionally, according to operating policy, the IFC and other international banks are not permitted to move forward with funding a project without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected communities. Though consultations of various sorts reportedly did take place in the case of the Marlin mine, instances of misinformation bordering on manipulation were rampant, and in no way could such consultations be considered free, prior, or informed.

Nonetheless, many of the people of San Miguel Ixtahuacán at least initially welcomed the mining operation. And why not?

After all, the company promised community development, which would mean schools, infrastructure, health clinics, a community center, vocational training, and — above all — jobs.

Given the general lack of economic opportunity in the area, these were compelling promises. Several families in both municipalities sold their land at top dollar, and a number of local residents managed to obtain employment at the mine.

Ana Gonzalez of COPAE conducts regular tests of the water all around the mine. Scientific studies by COPAE have shown that the rivers below the tailings pond contain arsenic and are not suitable for consumption. Despite claims that the water is safe, company employees refused when one of the auxiliary mayors of San Miguel Ixtahuacán challenged them to drink or bathe in the water themselves.

Through its own nonprofit organization, the Sierra Madre Foundation, Goldcorp even began to follow through on some of its community development pledges.

THE RESISTANCE

In Sipakapa, however, reception for the mine was decidedly less enthusiastic. In conjunction with the Diocese of the Catholic Church in the regional capital of San Marcos, community leaders spoke out with a unified voice, citing the lack of community consultation and the denial of local democratic processes as guaranteed by law. Additionally, after investigating Goldcorp’s sunny promises in light of the measurably inferior results at similar mining operations elsewhere — including one in nearby Honduras — the people of Sipakapa decided that they must work to avoid a similar fate.

The community organized a formal consultation involving all 13 villages within the municipality to address the simple question of whether or not the community was in favor of the mining operation continuing. Despite misinformation campaigns traced to Goldcorp leading up to the date of the consultation (including the distribution of flyers announcing the cancellation of the consultation one day prior), as well as the company’s last-ditch efforts petitioning the government to have the consultation stopped on supposed legal grounds, the community was united. Its will was strong, and the consultation took place as planned. Having taken steps to ensure transparency and legitimacy by inviting international observers to be present and arranging for proceedings to be broadcast

“They told us the water is fine,” says Reyna as she does her laundry in the river. “We don’t have any water at the house and our well has dried up, so we have to come down here.”

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Water shortages in the region are worse than ever, which is an urgent problem in a farming community with underdeveloped infrastructure and irrigation.Tests by researchers from the University of Michigan have shown that the water has been poisoned by toxic levels of chemicals and is becoming unsafe for use. Children especially have begun to suffer various health problems, including skin diseases, hair loss, and respiratory difficulties. Nearby houses have begun to crack, leaving families exposed to the elements and susceptible to collapse in the event of earthquakes and landslides.

All of these problems can be traced directly to the Marlin mine, which uses unsustainable quantities of water, employs high levels of toxic chemicals such as cyanide, and systematically uses explosions to gain access to deeper and deeper layers of ore. Other repercussions, no less serious, will only

live on the local radio station, residents of each of the 13 villages cast their votes.

The results were undeniable: 98 percent of votes were cast in opposition to the mine, stating definitively that they wanted no part of the operation in their communities.

Nevertheless, due to the tragic but all-too-predictable lack of enforcement of the law and the neglect of human rights — which had allowed the mine to begin in the first place — operations continued unabated.

Locals have continued to speak out against the mine and, in turn, have been harassed, arrested, and, in a few cases, killed.

Since the Sipakapa consultation in 2005, nongovernmental groups and, more recently, international media have increasingly begun spotlighting the human rights abuses and environmental devastation surrounding the Marlin mine.

Left: “Since the mine came, [the corn doesn’t] come out the same anymore,” says Crisanta. “We haven’t had a good harvest for about three years. Even the crops that we do harvest we cannot sell. As soon as people find out that we are from San Miguel, they don’t want to buy from us because they say it’s all contaminated.”

Right: Lisandro, 8, has itchy rashes all over his body. “When the mining company came, it brought us skin infections, stomach pains, illnesses like flu, and also diarrhea in children and adults,” says Lisandro’s Uncle Victor. “I think that it is because we are drinking the water, and we bathe in the river. Where are we going to go?”

“This is not a development project,” adds Miguel-Angel, who owns the local pharmacy. “This is a project of death! It’s a monster!”

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be seen in time, such as the erosion of topsoil as a result of deforestation and the social conflicts that have begun to surface as the winners and the losers from the mining operation (sometimes from within the same families) emerge at odds with each other.

These outcomes are par for the course in indigenous areas acquainted with what has been dubbed the “resource curse,” in which the presence of rich natural resources, such as mineral deposits, ends up destroying ecosystems and community livelihoods.

Over the past few years, calls for the temporary suspension or permanent closure of the Marlin mine have increasingly arisen from various quarters. Most recently, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States, has stated that the mine must be suspended until Goldcorp can correct its ways.

Initially the Guatemalan government balked at the injunction, but later agreed to a phased-down suspension, claiming it would require months to fully suspend operations, even temporarily. At the time of this writing, it appears that the government has since rescinded on even that half-hearted measure, and mining seems to be continuing as usual.

Above: Sipakapa continues to refuse any payments from the company and resists continued attempts to expand the mine within their territory. Instead, the community proposed an alternative development project of their own in the form of a fair-trade organic coffee cooperative. In the summer of 2009, their coffee co-op finally got off the ground and participants, like Fausto Valiente (left), are now in the process of laying the groundwork for their future plantations.

HOMEGROWN ALTERNATIVES

Below: “Agriculture is our art, it’s what we know,” says Ovideo. “Gold is of no value to us, but our land, our families, our culture — these are things that we value greatly.” This group is planning the layout of a new coffee plantation in Sipakapa. They measure out the distances between each tree, taking into account the slope of the hill, direction of the sun, and quality of the soil. “This is very difficult and complicated work, but we know how to take care of ourselves,” says Fidel, one of the organizers behind the organic coffee project. “That is why we, the people of Sipakapa, have said ‘No!’ to mining in our territory.”

Last year, as a graduate student of international development at Eastern University, I returned to Sipakapa for the first time in more than a decade to conduct interviews with community leaders and members of the mining resistance movement. I had already done research from afar; I wanted to hear from the people of Sipakapa for myself.

I began in the regional capital of San Marcos, where the anti-mining movement has been strong since the beginning.

Working through a nonprofit organization called the Pastoral Commission on Peace and Ecology, or COPAE, the Diocese of San Marcos has played an integral role in organizing resistance to the mine and supporting the grassroots efforts of local indigenous leaders.

I met with Nate Howard, a community development worker with the Mennonite Central Committee who works in partnership with the diocese. While I was visiting the diocese building in downtown San Marcos, Howard introduced me to Fausto Valiente, working with COPAE in a small laboratory where he tested samples of water from rivers near the mine to determine levels of toxic chemicals. This was an important part in bringing to light the true effects of the mine.

But Valiente was concerned with far more than chemical levels. He told me how the Marlin mine has disrupted life for Sipakapa and San Miguel Ixtahuacán.

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mine and people below are against it, there are conflicts. We have seen the militarization of our territory. In the past they had no presence here, but now they intimidate the population.”

“There have been other problems,” he continued. “The villages were quiet and calm but now prostitutes come in because of demand from workers. Also, rapes have increased, but women are afraid to admit to being assaulted, because they fear what the rapists or their husbands might do to them.”

COPAE, while officially part of the Catholic Church and rooted in its theology of the dignity of all human life, has served to unite communities across religious and denominational lines. Catholics, evangelicals, and practitioners of the traditional Mayan religion have come together as community members in opposition to that which threatens their collective way of life.The Catholic Church has taken the initiative because of its unparalleled influence and presence in communities, Valiente said.

Indeed, under the tremendously influential leadership of Alvaro Ramazzini, the bishop of San Marcos, the anti-mining movement in the region has gained national and international notoriety. Like other Guatemalan priests and bishops before him, Ramazzini has received death threats for his work but has remained committed to affirming the rights of the indigenous people and standing with them no matter the cost. A similar conviction compels and sustains many in the antimining movement.

Valiente has since left COPAE to head a start-up organic coffee project as an alternative development model in Sipakapa.

Recognizing that it is simply not enough to resist destructive forces from the outside and that a community like Sipakapa falls victim to mining operations for lack of better alternatives, the project emphasizes community ownership, interdependence, and sustainable practices. It aims to make clear that a destructive mining project should not be a community’s only option for development and that community residents — not boards of directors for corporations far away — should be able to make the decisions that affect their daily lives.

Though still in its early stages, this effort has infused a small but renewed sense of optimism into Sipakapa. Such positive development alternatives are today more crucial than ever if Sipakapa’s future is to be any brighter than its recent past.

DIG DEEPER

MCC Mining Justice Ottawa.MCC.org/MiningJusticeResources The Mennonite Central Committee provides thoughtful resources on the intersection of theology and mining opposition, especially for Canadian constituents but helpful for all.Watch the 15-minute documentary La Mina (free study guide for download) and sign up for the newsletter.

COPAE Resistance-Mining.org The English-language website of the anti-mining movement from the Diocese of San Marcos provides updates as they happen in the region. Sign up for COPAE’s monthly newsletter, The Oak. Sipakapa No Se Vende CaracolProducciones.blogspot.com This 55-minute documentary by Caracol Producciones tells the story of the community consultation in Sipakapa, contrasting the claims of the mining company with the daily lives and hardships of the people. Spanish with English subtitles.

No Dirty Gold NoDirtyGold.org From EARTHWORKS and Oxfam, this campaign aims to provide in-depth information about the realities of the mining industry, along with positive alternatives at both the policy and the personal levels.

Citizenship Papers This book by Wendell Berry, and especially the chapter “The Total Economy,” is a thought-provoking manifesto on the merits of the local economy as opposed to the current arrangement in which everything and everyone is for sale to the highest bidder with no concern for long-term consequences.

COMPLICITY AND CONNECTION

While the ebb and flow of countless setbacks and small victories have understandably taken their toll on the resolve of those opposed to mining in Sipakapa, elsewhere the movement is growing like wildfire because Goldcorp has continued to seek out — and in many cases obtain — licenses to explore elsewhere in the Guatemalan highlands for mineral deposits.

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without a move of God,” he says, “but we are responsible to give testimony. Mining is a representation of so many values that stand against the kingdom of God. We are to be about life in all its manifestations. We defend life when it comes to abortion, but in so many ways our economics are anti-life.

It is a huge disconnect.”

Connection is a big theme for Howard. He emphasizes the importance of Christians connecting the dots between their faith and their economic practices in this age of globalization, in which even previously isolated communities like Sipakapa and Sibinal are unavoidably connected to the rest of the world.

“There is such a disconnect with our economics and how it affects people,” he argues. “It’s a system of proxies: We take our responsibility and turn it over to corporations.”

We do this through our habits of consumption, Howard says, but also through investments and generally with little or no thought about who is affected on the other end of the market equation.

Goldcorp, for its part, claims to value “a balance of economic prosperity, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility.” This sounds good on paper, but balancing the need for substantial profits with the promises of environmental stewardship and social responsibility is easier said than done under the less-than-gracious auspices of the almighty dollar.

At Goldcorp’s annual meeting in May of this year, investors were presented with findings from an independent investigation into the Marlin mine, alleging various abuses and recommending that key changes be made. But when investors were given the opportunity to vote, 90 percent indicated their desire for mining to continue as normal.When push came to shove, “economic prosperity” yet again won out over “environmental stewardship and social responsibility.” In other words, short-term economic gain for a few took precedence over the long-term well-being of many.

This should come as no surprise, however. After all, is this not how publicly traded companies — especially those dealing in natural resources — are designed to work? Perhaps it is not too much of a stretch for one to conclude, as farmer and poet Wendell Berry does, that “a corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”

Executives, then, understandably assert that the most ethical thing for them to do is to secure for their investors the greatest possible monetary return. William Vanderbilt, who at the time of his death was the richest person in the world, captured the mindset poignantly: “The public be damned! I’m working for my stockholders.”

When a corporation is owned by shareholders who expect

“Our houses are falling apart!” says Irma, standing in her crumbling bedroom. “I’m scared to be inside my house, because one day it can fall on top of us!” Goldcorp refuses to acknowledge any connection between their operations and the damage to the houses, which they say are poorly built.

“If the problem was poor construction, then most of the houses in the whole country would be having the same problems, not just the ones next to their mine...Once they even said it was being caused because we play our music too loud!”

A recent report put out by COPAE and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee states:“There are no sources of vibrations in the area except those resulting from mine blasting and heavy truck traffic; therefore it is very highly likely that the damage in local villages is caused by the mining activity and associated truck traffic.”

The Marlin mine has captured the attention of tens of thousands in the region, and stopping the expansion of mining operations in the western highlands has become a rallying cry.

One San Marcos community targeted by Goldcorp for expansion of its operations is Sibinal, where Nate Howard works. This has made the work of food security and income generation in the community all the more pressing.

Though on a day-to-day basis Howard’s work is highly localized in Sibinal, he cannot help but consider the broader philosophical and even theological issues that have led to the current situation in such communities.

Howard describes the work he does with food security and income generation as a small part of building the kingdom of God. “It’s not that we’re going to build the kingdom

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and demand the maximum return on investment in the shortest amount of time with no questions asked, it naturally follows that concerns other than the immediate economic bottom line will be offered as sacrifices to the proverbial golden calf. Indeed, short of legally binding regulations to restrict exploitive practices, we can expect business to continue as usual, not just in Sipakapa and San Marcos, but throughout the whole world as well.

Of course, the vast majority of investors do not actively condone the destruction of entire ecosystems, the violation of human rights, and the wanton recklessness with which

indigenous communities are torn apart. Most would be appalled to discover their complicity in such abuses. One would hope, in turn, that followers of Christ — when they discover that by investing their hard-earned money in companies that systematically put profits before people to such a devastating and life-destroying effect — would at the very least reconsider their investment practices.

LIFESTYLE AND JUSTICE

The problem that must be examined, critically and theologically, is a pervasive unquestioning allegiance to an economic system that implicates us followers of Christ in abuses against human dignity and degradation of God’s good creation.This is a travesty in itself that is greatly multiplied in its tragic implications when the well-being of the rural poor is so closely tied to the health of their land and ecosystem.

Will evangelicals who affirm social justice in theory have the integrity and courage to examine their hearts and actions and be willing to change? We must ask ourselves: What are the lives and livelihoods of the poor really worth to us? What are they worth to God? We may pray for, support, and serve the poor regularly from afar or in our own backyard. We may read the Bible, attuned to God’s special concern for the oppressed and vulnerable. But as Saint Augustine said, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

Even if we have not invested directly or through mutual funds in extractive industries with questionable ethics, our very lifestyles feed an insatiable demand for metals that pushes companies like Goldcorp to operate as they do.

The Marlin mine produces gold, which is used largely for jewelry. Like the now infamous blood diamonds of Sierra Leone, it is particularly disturbing when unspeakable suffering is brought upon innocent people so that we can buy the luxuries we desire.

At the level of policy and law enforcement, governments should be held to the environmental, labor, and human rights agreements that they signed for the well-being of their people. Leaders of developing nations must come to see that lining their own pockets works to impoverish their people, weakens the country, and eventually makes violent conflict all but inevitable.

Additionally, accountability is urgently needed for mining companies, which are largely Canadian, but also from the United States. In Canada, a promising piece of legislation known as C-300 is being considered, which, if passed into law, would ensure that companies acting irresponsibly overseas would not be eligible for taxpayer-supported subsidies.

That would be a promising first step in the accountability process.

Rosalia stands on what used to be part of her farm until the mine expanded a single-lane dirt road to accommodate large mining trucks. Rosalia’s family says it was never consulted or compensated for the loss of their land. When the company first arrived in the area, they carried out a series of presentations on the benefits of mining. Those who attended the meetings were asked to sign a list in exchange for a free lunch. Community members say that these lists were then used by Goldcorp to prove to the government and the World Bank that they had consulted the local communities. “There was no dialogue and no consultation with the communities about the company coming here. The public was not consulted.

That is why we are very upset, because these people have money, they can do what they want. They don’t care about our lives. We did what we could, but it didn’t make any difference. The old mayor and judge sided with the company for the money. So the people couldn’t defend their rights.”

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The United States recently passed conflict minerals legislation related to the Democratic Republic of Congo, but comparable legislation is needed to prevent similarly insidious, if less flashy, destructive practices connected to American business interests and consumption overseas.

As Christians who believe in social action, we must work for and support such positive steps that affirm life. But we simply cannot wait around for top-down policy solutions.

Ultimately, we, who are among the world’s richest, maintain the economic status quo through our lifestyles while simultaneously keeping the indigenous peoples of the world vulnerable to the whims of exploitive industries. But it is also in our lifestyles, collectively, where possibility for lasting change lies.

THE LAST WORD: STEWARDSHIP

While writing this article I received an email forwarded to me by a friend who had received it from someone I do not doubt is a genuine follower of Christ.The email concerned a “special opportunity… too good not to share,” an opportunity to invest in a company specializing in precious metals, including gold and silver. I learned that the company’s executives and key investors are Christians.The message went on to say that investing in such a company, boasting impressive returns that will only continue to multiply, was “a great opportunity for being a good steward.”

Stewardship as a concept and as a lifestyle is in desperate need of redemption. It is not, as some suppose, merely a matter of maximizing profits through work and investments so we can then give 10 percent to our church with a bit more ease.

Stewardship, properly understood, is rooted in the earthshaking recognition that all we have is entrusted to us in service of a good King who claims lordship over all of life.

We cannot serve both God and money. But as folksinger and prophet/provocateur Bob Dylan famously crooned, “You gotta serve somebody.” Wantonly destroying lives, communities, and ecosystems for short-term economic gain is not good stewardship. Such participation is simply at odds with the in-breaking kingdom of God, and we shield ourselves from these realities, through willful ignorance, to our spiritual peril.

As Christians, we rightly ground our belief in the Bible.

But we do not always follow our beliefs to their logical and necessary conclusions in matters of ethics, I believe, because doing so eventually involves dealing with structures of power.

But North American evangelicals, albeit with notable exceptions, have tended to shy away from speaking the truth to power even when the powers that be oppress the very ones Jesus identified himself with, “the least of these.”

The uncomfortable fact is that while people like the Sipakapense have suffered because of the economic system, it

Goldcorp’s annual meetings, held alternately in Toronto and Vancouver, draw regular protests on the outside, as well as community representatives raising their concerns to the shareholders inside.

has worked quite well for many of us. Because we find ourselves near the top of the global economic pyramid, it is quite inconvenient for us to take issue with the status quo.

It may be fear, greed, ignorance, or some unholy union of the three. But we must take issue with the status quo when it stands against life. We must examine our hearts. We must do all we can to connect the dots, and we must be honest with what we discover.We must be willing to repent, to change our ways and move, by God’s grace, in the opposite direction.

God is waiting to transform us into a mercy-loving, justicepracticing, humble people, set free from the chains that bind us all. Then, and only then, can we speak of stewardship.

It’s our move. n Tim Høiland (tjhoiland.com) is a reader, writer, sinner, saint, and an aspiring artisan of shalom. He lives in Lancaster, Pa.

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C

harity

Is not Justice b y J ames T h omas

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slippery concept. The idea seems intuitive, but definitions abound, and they don’t all mean the same thing. Justice in the Bible can mean the meting out of punishment for crimes, practices in the marketplace, and how society treats its most vulnerable people. These expectations are not just for God’s chosen people. In the book of Amos, we read of God’s judgment on the injustices of Israel’s neighbors, Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.

e are trying to help. Simon is a 15-year-old who lives in a one-room structure in a Nairobi slum.

His home has no electricity or running water. The floor is compacted dirt. He has lived there with his grandmother since both of his parents died from AIDS.We learned about Simon through an AIDS program called Beacon of Hope that our church supports.Those who run Beacon of Hope believe that education is the most reliable road out of the slum.

Since 2003 Kenya has provided free primary school education to all citizens. But the term “education” has to be interpreted loosely.When the government opened the school doors to all young children, it didn’t add the needed number of teachers. So the existing teachers doubled the number of students in their already full classrooms, reducing the schools to warehouses for young children.To provide real education, Beacon of Hope sponsorships enable children to attend private schools.The sponsorships often carry a child beyond elementary school into secondary school and sometimes into technical training or college.

Sponsorships are a common way to help children in need.

Many people sponsor a child through an organization like Compassion International or World Vision. Churches that promote child sponsorship programs will sometimes place them under the umbrella of “social justice” ministries. Other programs that are often under the same umbrella are feeding the homeless, visiting prisoners, and building affordable houses.

The essence of justice We tend to think of justice as a domain of governments. After all, they establish laws, maintain courts and prisons, regulate some aspects of the marketplace, and provide public education and other services. But businesses can also be just.Witness, for example, the fair-trade coffee movement. Starbucks knows that its customers care about the wages of the coffee pickers, so it prominently displays a few fair-trade coffee selections.

That Starbucks would provide coffee according to the desires of its customers shows that individuals, too, can shape justice by choosing to abstain from unjust systems or, alternatively, enable them by turning a blind eye. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, I was living in a remote area of the Congo, running a nutrition rehabilitation program out of a missionary hospital.The range of local foods in our area was extremely narrow and the diet monotonous. But that could be fixed by flying in fresh fruit and vegetables from South Africa.

The missionaries were divided over whether to buy food from a country sanctioned for its unjust racial policies. Eventually, some did and some didn’t. In our small way, we could participate in or abstain from an injustice.

Scholars argue over what justice is, but a number of common themes emerge. Key among them is the exercise of power — power to engage in war, to build roads, to provide sources of clean water, and to pay a fair wage. Most theories of justice apply to large groups of people.With large groups, a customized decision for every person on every matter is impossible.

There must be preset decisions for common circumstances.

For this reason, we don’t negotiate how fast we can drive in a certain part of town and what will happen when we’re caught

The Bible tells us so God wants his people to be just.The prophet Micah explained that what God wants of his people is that they act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Amos, another prophet, said it more forcefully:“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies … Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:2224). In other words, your praises are empty words unless they flow from a life that strives to reflect God’s nature.

If justice is so important to God, we’d best understand what it is and be sure that we are doing it. But justice is a

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missionary organizations have been doing for decades by providing schools and hospitals in places of need?

Not if we stick to our definitions. It is the Kenyan government, not people outside of Kenya, that has the power and the mandate, expressed in its constitution, to provide education to its people. When the government fails at that task, others — be they Kenyan citizens or outsiders — may act charitably and provide for those who lack, but they are not establishing justice in doing so.

speeding through a school zone. Justice, then, often has to do with systems of allocation and decision making.

The limits of justice Laws and policies are appropriate for most circumstances, but in some cases there is a legitimate reason for breaking them.

I know, for example, that I broke a law or two when I was rushing my wife to the hospital for the delivery of our second son. This is where mercy comes in. Sometimes a law or policy needs to be waived in light of the circumstances — or at least that is what I would have pleaded to the judge had I been caught. Mercy is just punishment withheld. I rely heavily on God’s mercy in my relationship with him.

Knowing how to act justly and when to allow exceptions is immensely difficult and requires great wisdom. One of the cornerstones of wisdom is humility: the humility to admit when the answer is not clear, to seek advice, and to acknowledge when a mistake has been made. This is one reason God groups “walking humbly” with “acting justly” and “loving mercy.”

Keeping our eye on the ball Not only is charity not justice, but charity can also impede justice. If enough outsiders step in to fill the gaps in education and healthcare, some of the load is taken off the government, thereby relieving it of pressure to carry out its full responsibility.

With thousands of charity organizations active in Kenya, the net result may actually be less justice for the Kenyan people.

To paint an even bleaker picture, the Kenyan government and the charities may be in a codependent relationship. Each depends upon the other’s pattern of behavior in order to maintain its own. I point this out not because I am against charity — I will continue to support Simon’s education — but because justice is important to God, and I want to be sure his church doesn’t neglect justice by doing something else and calling it justice.

We attend to justice when we examine our own exercise of power, when we hold others accountable for theirs, and when we advocate for just systems.When International Justice Mission (IJM.org) works to hold perpetrators of child slavery accountable in their local judicial systems, it is strengthening justice. A Tanzanian organization called the Women Emancipation and Development Agency (WOMEDA.org) is pursuing justice when it advocates for the land rights of widows so they won’t lose the land they rely on for their food and livelihood.

And Beacon of Hope (BeaconAfrica.org) in Kenya is acting justly when it helps its employees establish savings accounts and provides them with a fair wage and vacation time.

My own church, which is nondenominational and evangelical, is doing much in the way of charity but little in the way of justice. In my role as a lay leader, I will advocate that we continue to be charitable, that we not call charity justice, that we examine the justice of our own church policies and our individual consumption patterns, and that we learn how to hold other institutions accountable for maintaining systems that are just — because justice is close to God’s heart. n

Back to Kenya What about Simon, then? Are my family and I “acting justly” when we support his education? He is not part of a group of people over whom we have authority to exercise power.

As a professor, I have that kind of authority over my students; and as a physician, my wife has that kind of authority over her patients. But Simon is neither a student nor a patient of ours. He is not subject to my system of grading or my wife’s system of providing medical care.

As people who are wealthy on the world scale, we have the power to affect Simon’s life by sharing from our abundance.

God calls his people to compassion and generosity, as we see with Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan. But in selecting Simon as a beneficiary, we are reaching outside of our sphere of official authority to share a portion of our wealth with him.

This is neither an act of justice or mercy but one of charity.

Does this mean then that sponsoring Simon’s education is not an act of social justice? Yes, I’m afraid it does. In the case of education in Kenya, an act of justice might be publicizing the corruption of officials who divert into their private accounts funds intended for teachers and schools. Or it might be supporting the work of Kenyans who lobby for government reforms. For people who do not have the power to allocate resources in Kenya, these are ways of holding accountable the people who do have the power.

But by paying for Simon’s education, aren’t we assisting with the distribution of resources? Aren’t we filling a gap where the Kenyan government’s resources run short? Isn’t that a contribution toward justice for those in need? Isn’t that what

James Thomas (JCThomas.me) is an associate professor of epidemiology and director of the public health ethics program at the University of North Carolina. He is also the founder and president of Africa Rising (AfricaRising.org).

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A More Perfect Love Casting out fear to become courageous Christians

and I did not follow up. In fact, I didn’t do much of anything in spite of the fact that more people were robbed and at least 13 were killed during those months. I wonder how much guilt I share for all this death and suffering.

That all sounds pretty bad, I know. Does this sound better?

I live in a poor neighborhood in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, in what most North Americans would call a slum. My neighbors and I didn’t know if we could trust the police, and we even suspected some of them might be involved in the crimes.These thieves haunted the community at night, wearing ski masks and preying on easy targets. They were willing to kill to get what they wanted. So going to the police could have gotten some of us or, worse yet, some of our family members, killed. Neither I, my friend, the young people at my church, nor the many witnesses to the crimes were willing to take that risk — no one beyond the widow who had already lost so much that she was willing to risk her life to seek justice. In our fear, we rationalized that we were powerless and sought to delegate the task of actually doing something about the situation to a friend of a friend.

I think about this a lot. What should I have done?

B y K u rt A . V er B eek

More than a dozen people were killed and dozens more robbed in my neighborhood during a three-month period, and I did nothing.

That is the short version. Depending on which details I highlight, I can make it sound better or worse.

Let’s start with worse. One of the first killed in a robbery was the father of two boys, classmates of my children. He was leaving his house early in the morning in his beat-up pickup truck to buy vegetables to sell at his small produce stand. Another man was killed in front of his whole family when he didn’t hand over his belongings quickly enough.

While I did not know who the killers were, I knew several people who could identify them, including a group of young people from my church who had seen them take off their masks and recognized them as neighbors. What’s more, the widow of the first victim came to me and a friend of mine asking for help; she said she was willing to testify against her husband’s murderers. We contacted a lawyer who said she would try to talk to a trusted friend who held an influential position with the police. But over three months went by,

Cowardly Christians When my wife, Jo Ann, and I arrived in Honduras in 1988, about five percent of the population considered themselves to be Protestant or evangelical Christians. In the 22 years since, that number has risen to nearly 40 percent. At the same time, the Catholic Church, in which much of the rest of the population claims membership, has experienced a revival, encouraging discipleship groups and Bible studies, and a charismatic Catholic movement has emerged.Visits from short-term missions teams from US churches have surged.

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seem to think the rest of us are off the hook.

We are not. Courageous faith is exactly what Jesus calls us to — all of us. Where did we get the idea that following Christ mainly meant driving a comfortable, air-conditioned car to a comfortable, air-conditioned church to which we are able to give semi-generously but usually semi-painlessly, because of our comfortable, steady, secure job? Following Christ has always been dangerous.The Israelites braved hunger, thirst, and marauding armies in following God out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land. Joseph and Jeremiah were both thrown into deep wells; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were locked in a fiery furnace; and Daniel was tossed into a den of lions — all of them for for following God when it was not popular to do so. Stephen was killed, Peter and Paul were frequently flogged and imprisoned, and the apostle John was exiled to an isolated island for spreading the gospel.

Jesus, our ultimate role model, angered authorities by throwing over money-changing tables and calling them nasty names (I wonder what the modern-day equivalent of “whitewashed tombs” would be?). Then he humbly let himself be tortured and murdered in one of the most barbaric ways humans have ever invented. And he made it clear that we, his followers, can expect the same: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus tells us, and then goes on to say, “You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.”

Tens of thousands of North Americans fly to Honduras every year to help build churches, hand out medical supplies, and more. You would think this revival of spirituality and this influx of good-hearted aid would result in the reduction of the poverty, corruption, and violence plaguing Honduras.

But you would be wrong.

In 1988, Honduras was among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.Twenty-two years later, it’s still at the bottom of the lists: literacy, life-expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, etc. In the last five years, the annual murder rate has more than doubled, from 2,416 in 2005 to 5,265 in 2009. Honduras now has one of the highest murder rates in the world, about 10 times that of the United States.

It’s not uncommon to hear Hondurans talking wistfully of the days of Tiburcio Carías, an iron-fisted dictator who in the 1940s ruthlessly oppressed the opposition — but also kept the city so crime-free that you could sleep on the streets of downtown Tegucigalpa with no fear of being robbed.

Corruption, too, is on the rise. In the most recent Transparency International poll, Honduras was ranked 130th out of 180 countries, worse than neighbors like Guatemala and El Salvador, but also far worse than Rwanda and Liberia — countries which, not to belittle them in any way, would seem to have better excuses than Honduras for having shaky holds on the rule of law.

How can it be that as Honduras has become more “Christian,” things have gotten worse instead of better?

Some may write it off as simply a sign of the end-times. But I think the fault lies closer to home: Honduras is full of Christians, but our faith hasn’t made us very brave. It’s no accident that while literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian groups run orphanages, schools, health clinics, and micro-enterprise funds, you would be hard-pressed to find a dozen that seek to expose politicians who divert aid meant for the poor into their own pockets, or that stand up for victims of violent crime like my grieving neighbor.

Love vs fear Now, many of us are able to be brave and willing to take risks to protect and help those we love. But we are far more cautious for a stranger. If an armed man attacks my daughter, I will likely do everything I can to stop him, but I may not do the same for a stranger’s daughter.What happens when this caution becomes the norm? What happens is that the forces

The cost of following Christ Before you start shaking your head at this sad situation in Honduras, let me say that I don’t think we North Americans are doing any better. When is the last time most of us even associated the idea of being “brave” with our day-to-day walk with Christ? We look up to soldiers, police officers, and firefighters for facing danger on a daily basis, but we often Opposite: The author’s neighborhood.

Photo by Katie Hommes

Right: Two AJS investigators on the job.

Photo by Läkaramissionen

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An AJS psychologist (background, in focus) with a rape survivor she has counseled. Photo by Läkaramissionen

a new gang rose up to fill the void. A dozen teenagers from the roughest corner of the neighborhood began extorting local bus drivers and businesses and eventually obtained enough weapons to launch a reign of terror — robbing, raping, and killing. Again, 35,000 neighborhood residents were at the mercy of a handful because they did not trust the police to do anything about the criminal behavior or to protect them from the perpetrators if they made complaints.

This time, however, God stirred our hearts and tugged at our consciences so insistently that we could not ignore him.

In 1998 my wife and I, along with a friend and several colleagues, had started an organization called the Asociacion para una Sociedad mas Justa (Association for a More Just Society). Up to this point, the focus of our organization had been on structural injustices.We performed journalistic investigations of government corruption, advocated for more just laws, and eventually took on individual casework in areas such as labor rights, land rights, and domestic violence. Given the situation in our neighborhood at this time, however, we decided to expand the work of ASJ. But tackling the gang violence issue head-on was a major departure for us, not only because of the level of danger involved but also because, as a Christian human rights organization accustomed to helping unjustly accused people get out of prison, we were initially uncomfortable with the idea of helping to put people in prison. What’s more, we had few if any models of Christian NGOs working alongside law enforcement officials to investigate, arrest, and prosecute perpetrators of gangrelated crimes. We had to wrestle with some difficult questions and deepen our vision of justice in order to address the street violence.

We took what in retrospect appears a small enough step.

We hired a lawyer and a private investigator and introduced them to some neighbors who had been victimized by the gang. We had hoped to hire Christians, but each of the three Christian lawyers we asked turned us down: They were too scared. But an agnostic lawyer and a lapsed-Mormon investigator were willing to take the risk, and God used them to help change our neighborhood.

In our neighborhood, as in most of Honduras, some police officers are involved in everything from extortion to drug trafficking and even moonlight as hit men, and unfortunately they tend to tarnish the reputation of the entire police force, even though many other officers are honest. On the other hand, experience has shown us that gang members hardly ever show mercy to those they suspect of having turned them in. Thus, in a survey AJS did in my neighborhood in 2005, over half of respondents said they’d been a victim of crime in the last year — but only four percent reported those crimes to the police.While this skepticism towards law

of evil are empowered to do what they want with impunity.

What happens is that you get a situation like the one in Honduras where as more people flock to church things get more violent in the streets every day.

Jesus calls me to go beyond defending just that which and those who are “mine”; he calls me to defend my neighbor, both literally and figuratively, as if she too were my daughter, sister, or mother. Jesus summarized the whole of God’s desire for how we should treat each other as “Love you neighbor as yourself,” and he made it clear that our neighbor is anyone in need of mercy and care. Christ told the story of the good Samaritan to show that our neighbor includes even those who we view as our enemies.

Is it contradictory that Christ called us to turn the other cheek but then made a whip and overturned the money changers’ tables at the temple? That he walked toward the cross without a fight but defended the woman caught in adultery and saved her from being stoned? There is no contradiction in Christ; rather he shows us by example how we need to be slow to defend our own “rights” but quick to defend others — especially those who are marginalized and weak — and how we must be willing even to suffer for it.

How can we cultivate the courage needed to love so radically? I keep coming back to this passage in 1 John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear” (4:18). The more we focus our eyes, our hearts, and our actions on the love of Christ — the more we allow that love to grow into love for our neighbors, coming to see them as our own brothers and sisters — the less room we leave for fear to outmaneuver us and divert us from the path Christ calls us to.

Stepping out of our comfort zone Let’s get back to my neighborhood. Eventually the skimasked gang was broken up, when one member was killed and another arrested in a shoot-out with the police, but soon

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enforcement authorities is understandable, it also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If no one testifies about crimes they’ve seen, police and prosecutors are left without a legal basis to incarcerate and convict criminals. And knowing they’re unlikely to receive adequate cooperation from survivors and witnesses saps the motivation of law enforcement officials to solve crimes.

Our lawyer and investigator worked tirelessly to build a circle of trust between neighborhood residents (crime victims, witnesses, and informants) and law enforcement officials (police detectives, prosecutors, and judges). The support of AJS staff and the special witness-protection measures they implemented emboldened a few witnesses to testify about the murders and robberies they had seen. Combined with other evidence our investigator gathered and shared with the authorities, this resulted in the arrest and conviction of the most vicious of the gang leaders. As these first collaborators saw their testimony resulting in positive action by lawenforcement officials, they began to put our staff in touch with friends and relatives of theirs who had also been attacked by the gang. We also assigned an AJS psychologist to help these crime survivors work through the emotional damage they had suffered.

A transformed neighborhood As a result, over the last five years, 100 of our neighborhood’s most violent gang members have been tried and convicted.

Our staff also worked with neighborhood residents to arrest and convict the members of a self-appointed vigilante group that had tried to deal with the gang problem by brutally executing 15 of the youngest (most were 12 or 13) and weakest gang members. Today, robbery, rape, and murder rates are down by as much as 80 percent in my neighborhood compared to 2005, even as the murder rate has more than doubled in Honduras as a whole during the same time. If my neighborhood’s murder rate had just kept pace with the national average, this year 77 of my neighbors would have died violently. Instead, only seven have — that’s seven more than we hoped for, but 70 less than we would have had good reason to expect if no one had stepped up to change things. Today in my neighborhood, our local bus drivers are the only ones in all of Tegucigalpa who do not pay a weekly “war tax” to local gang members. Children now play in the street until bedtime, and those striving to break the cycle of poverty through education dare to attend night school. Churches that had moved up their services so that people could get home before dark are once again worshipping into the night.

And the “courageous” step Carlos, Jo Ann, and I took?

All we did was risk hiring a lawyer and an investigator. But God used the tiny sparks of courage in our hearts to ignite much more daring acts by our staff and our neighbors, which had the result of transforming our neighborhood.

This small act on my part does not now let me off the hook. Every day I must ask myself, “Will I act out of fear today, or love?” This is a call to all of us to seek a way to live out a radical and perfect love, a love that casts out all fear.We cannot be ruled by fear of what others will think, what might happen to us, or what we might miss. We must love those who are victimized, those who could be future victims, and even those who commit injustices (which sometimes means ourselves). If I love my neighbor as myself, if I seek to love my neighbor’s children as I would want them to love mine, even when — perhaps especially when — that requires sacrifice, then I will be well on the road to being the courageous, loving Christian Jesus calls me to be. n Dr. Kurt A.Ver Beek lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where he and his wife, Jo Ann, run Calvin College’s Third World Development Semester in Honduras. He has done fieldwork among Honduras’ Lenca indigenous group and has conducted research on labor conditions in the Honduran apparel manufacturing industry and on the effects of short-term mission trips. Kurt and Jo Ann are founding members of the Association for a More Just Society (ajs-us.org/ ashonduras.com ).

The buses in the author’s neighborhood are the only ones in all Tegucigalpa that do not pay weekly extortion fees to gang members. Photo by AJS / Fredrik Johansson

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Johnny Cash a n d

t h e

P r o p h e t i c

I m a g i n at i o n

Considering an American icon through the theological lens of Walter Brueggemann b y T ony Blair

Cash’s role as both representative and critic of American Christianity was recently explored in book-length form by Rodney Clapp in Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for a Soul of a Nation (Westminster, 2008). In it he says,

I’ve been listening to Johnny Cash with fascination ever since I became a fan at the tail end of his career. Growing up, I was aware of him, mostly as a television performer, but didn’t truly discover his work and heart before delving into his startling American Recordings albums, released over the last 10 years of his life.

While Cash possessed a deep faith in Christ, he was a sinner of biblical proportions, with a spiritual journey as winding and rutted as King David’s. And while he sinned like an Old Testament king, he also railed like an Old Testament prophet.

Cash called the American church to be more than and different from what it was; although he died in 2003 at the age of 71, that call continues to resonate.

In cultural terms Cash became as big as he was because he tapped into something bigger than music. There was something about his presence, about how he said and sang things, about his authenticity and humility, about his story and how he lived it that connected with multiple generations of people

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Andrew Hench

ery few figures in recent history are seen as more repV resentative of American identity than Cash. His music was included in a space capsule the USA shot into outer space. He played Abraham Lincoln in a television miniseries and was a major player in the celebration of the country’s bicentennial. His has often been suggested as the face that should be added to the select pantheon on Mt. Rushmore. But in addition to his profound Americanness, the late and still celebrated country singer and songwriter, in his life and work, provides several lamps to shine into the neglected, shadowy twists and crevices of the caverns of America’s current religious, cultural, and political predicaments.

abandoned his wife and their four daughters to chase after June, who was then married to someone else. And all of this while (not before!) professing Christ!

from all walks of life in many countries.

Perhaps nothing more accurately represents Cash’s authenticity than his cover of “Hurt,” a Trent Reznor song that he so poignantly made his own on American IV:The Man Comes Around, the final Cash album released during his lifetime.

The song itself is haunting, in a postmodern, all-is-meaningless sense, but the video is more so. I will let you down, I will make you hurt, Cash groans in his raspy voice, itself merely a shadow of the powerful instrument it once was. You can have it all, my empire of dirt, he offers as footage of Cash in his heyday flashes across the screen. This whole career, all the fame and money, is worthless on the day of dying. I have achieved little and hurt many, he laments. And the screen fills with images first of June, Cash’s wife, who died after heart surgery just months after the video was made, and then of Jesus, carrying the cross. Clearly Cash is confessing, “I gave you that cross. I crucified you. I hurt you.”

The melody is accompanied by a pounding piano track, increasing in intensity, hammering as the song reaches its climax — hardly the typical country music sound. Cash is seated at the piano, his once handsome face now wide and haggard, his hair wispy gray, his large hands now weak and trembling. Near the end, he picks up a wineglass and shakily pours the wine over the piano, as if his own blood were being spilled in propitiation for the pain he has caused. And then, as the music fades, he closes the keyboard cover. In the silence, with the camera focused solely on his hands, he rests them on top the cover.

Beyond the music and personality is the faith of Johnny Cash. For decades he was American music’s most visible, vocal, and volatile believer. It is difficult to describe how explicit Cash was about his faith without making him sound preachy or pompous. He wasn’t, and yet he included altar calls in some of his concerts and toured with Billy Graham. He sang gospel and included at least one explicitly Christian song on every album. He had fellow rockers over for dinner and asked them to join hands and pray around the table. At the height of his fame, he took a two-year correspondence course on the Bible.

His two posthumously released albums are called My Mother’s Hymnbook and The Gospel of John.

And yet his reputation as a bad boy never went away either, which is why he remained such a mysterious contradiction.

He struggled with drug addiction and identified with prisoners. He defied the censors on his own TV show to sing a song about getting stoned and got kicked off the stage of the Grand Ole Opry for being high and stomping out the footlights. He was one of the first artists to be bleeped in a live album for his language, and he ran a full-page close-up of himself extending his middle finger to express his views of the Nashville establishment. His first marriage ended when he

Johnny Cash through a theological lens In his profound first book, The Prophetic Imagination (1978), Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann examines the Scriptures as drama and explores the role of the imagination in understanding that drama. In it he contrasts what he calls the “royal consciousness” with the “prophetic consciousness.”

The royal consciousness is represented in the Old Testament

by Solomon and his dynasty, which subverted the freedom of the Mosaic system in order to impose imperial rule on the people. This imperialism — whether in Solomon’s era or in contemporary America, focuses on satisfying the material cravings of the majority of the subjects so that they do not object to the violence and tyranny upon which royal power so heavily relies. It oppresses some while satiating others, enclosing and nullifying God by narrowly defining his role and controlling how he is worshiped. Under the royal consciousness, God is utilized as a means of perpetuating power.

The prophetic consciousness, on the other hand, is represented by those who remember the Mosaic formulation and stand on the margins, calling forth with both memory and imagination. Brueggemann sees two primary, almost contradictory activities of the prophetic imagination — prophetic criticizing and prophetic energizing.

Considering the work of Johnny Cash through the theological lens of Walter Brueggman is a rich exercise, because the dual prophetic functions Brueggeman identified are the very functions that the “Man in Black” performed for American music, American culture, and, more specifically, American evangelicalism, during his long career. Cash selfconsciously assumed the role of a prophet, inveighing against the royal consciousness of the music establishment, of the social structures, and even of the church, offering both criticism and redemption, both condemnation and hope, all borne out of his own awkward, contradictory faith experience.

Johnny Cash as critical prophet “The royal consciousness leads people to numbness,” writes Brueggeman, “especially about death. It is the task of prophetic ministry and imagination to bring people to engage their experiences of suffering to death.”

If there’s anything that Johnny Cash was criticized for, particularly by fellow believers, it was his articulation of death and grief, which they too often (wrongly) associated with a glorification of violence. It was exactly the opposite for him.

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It was putting himself (and thus his listeners) in the uncomfortable position of the dying person or, worse, the one who causes others to die. His insistence on first-person narrative in many of his songs led people to believe that he, Cash, was living out these activities or fantasizing about them. But they missed the point. He embodied those people for the length of a song in order to help us embody them, to allow us to encounter the horror, fear, and evil, and thus to confront our own humanity.

This use of imagination was present from the beginning in Cash’s music. “Folsom Prison Blues,” perhaps his signature song, contains a memorable line, so much more shocking in 1956 than it is today: I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Cash didn’t want to kill anyone; he wanted to imagine the worst thing that one person could do to another, to get inside that head and confront that reality — and force us to confront it along with him. Those who miss that point will also miss the next line of the song: When I hear that lonesome [train] whistle, I hang my head and cry. This is a song of confession and regret.

One of my personal favorites is his cover of a Nick Cave song called “The Mercy Seat,” sung from the point of view of a man in an electric chair, contemplating his life and God as the power is switched on:

voice is that of the murderer and the murdered, the criminal and the victim, the destroyer and the destroyed — and in that moment we encounter truth. That is me in that chair, says Cash, for this moment at least, for I, too, am afraid I told a lie.

That is me in there, for I, too, must approach the mercy seat of Christ one day. That is me in there, for I, too, am a guilty man in need of redemption.

Johnny Cash spoke truth to us in that song, forcing us to confront our own sin and its consequences, forcing us to come to terms with the darkness and despair of our own character, compelling us to sit in the electric chair and there seek mercy. Fortunately, there was another side of Johnny Cash, which corresponds to Brueggemann’s other aspect of the prophetic imagination — prophetic energizing.

Johnny Cash as energizing prophet Brueggemann contrasts this prophetic energizing with royal consciousness:“The royal consciousness leads people to despair about the power to move toward new life.” So could the prophetic critique, if there were no counterbalance to remind us of what God is up to. “It is the task of prophetic imagination and ministry to bring people to engage the promise of newness that is at work in our history with God,” writes Brueggeman. He suggests three actions: to “offer symbols that are adequate to contradict a situation of hopelessness in which newness is unthinkable”; to “bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they are there”; and to “speak metaphorically about hope but concretely about the real newness that comes to us and redefines our situation.”

For Johnny Cash, this energizing message occurred, almost paradoxically, by his explicit identification with the marginalized.

He sang in prisons and about prisoners so often that many people mistakenly thought he had done hard time.When no one else was paying attention to Native Americans, he identified with them and even did an entire theme album on the topic, enraging and alienating his producers and many of his fans by taking on something so controversial and off the beaten path.

Cash also took on the Vietnam War, standing in opposition to it while remaining a friend of Richard Nixon and being perceived as a patriot to his country, a difficult balancing act that few pulled off. Describing himself as “a dove with claws,” he sang to the troops in Vietnam and later wrote about his harrowing travels there. In the late 1960s, when his good friend Merle Haggard was singing “Okie from Muskogie” against the hippie movement, Cash sang “What is Truth?,” advising older folks to shut up and listen to the young because what they were saying needed to be heard.

I n Heaven his throne is made of gold / The ark of his Testament is stowed / A throne from which I’m told / All history does unfold. / It’s made of wood and wire / And my body is on fire / And God is never far away. /…

And the mercy seat is smoking / And I think my head is melting / And in a way it’s helping / To be done with all this twisting of the truth. / An eye for an eye / And a tooth for a tooth / And anyway I told the truth / But I’m afraid I told a lie.

The narrator’s voice continues as the switch is pulled and the electricity surges through him, and in the end, as he approaches the mercy seat of Christ, we finally hear the truth about his crime: I’m afraid I told a lie. In that moment, Cash’s

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Cash’s kinship with society’s marginalized stretches back to the days when his family were cotton sharecroppers on Arkansas bottomland. Even when he had earned the respect of (and membership in) “the establishment,” he was always on the outside, peering in, and inviting others to peer in with him. His life made the common man feel that if Johnny Cash could succeed, could make a difference in the world, they could, too.

Written at the height of his fame in 1971, during the Vietnam era, Cash’s “Man in Black” articulated not only the reason for his color of choice but also his philosophy of life and his role as a prophet:

within the contours of classic evangelicalism, and he had a persistent habit of singing, even writing, music that many evangelicals of his generation considered to be the work of the devil. He associated with people most evangelicals considered to be on the wrong side of the kingdom, supported social causes that were not popular among white evangelicals of his time, and embraced believers (and nonbelievers) who approached God sincerely in ways different from his own. In short, he refused to preach or proof-text or become a spokesman for evangelicalism. He would talk about Jesus, yes, but he never claimed to represent a church, denomination, or movement. He resisted such efforts, partly out of humility, partly because of a legitimate concern of being co-opted.

And, finally, when pushed, he could be critical of his fellow believers. You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good, he sang to them in one caustic song. Sinners loved him for it.

His faith did not come easily to him, nor was it sustained without difficulty. He doubted, challenged, examined, and wandered away; he approached God with both fear and love; when he finally claimed redemption, he did so with sincere reservations about whether he could hold onto it and whether he was too weak, unstable, and sinful to belong to God. My parents were Johnny Cash fans in the 1970s — fans of the newly born-again Cash; the southern gospel, been-tohell-and-back Cash; the non-offending, “I won’t swear anymore” Cash who sang pretty or humorous songs.Today I, too, am a fan, but for very different reasons. I am a fan because in his music Cash does offend, because he cries out in pain, because he doubts, and because, in the end, he discovers the same redemption that I claim as my own.

For that I am grateful, and because of that I recommend him to you — the critical prophet, the energizing prophet, the voice that expressed both the best and worst of our faith over five decades and whose wisdom will continue to light the decades to come. n

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down / Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town / I wear it for the prisoner who is long paid for his crime / But is there because he’s a victim of the times /I wear the black for those who never read / Or listened to the words that Jesus said / About the road to happiness through love and charity / Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me / … I wear it for the sick and lonely old / For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold / I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been / Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

The tone of this song is exceptionally somber, the voice wavering and sometimes off-key, and yet the mere articulation of the words gives hope. Someone knows. Someone gets it.

Someone speaks for me. And so, ironically and paradoxically, his somber voice became an instrument of hope, of energy for change, of renewal and redress, of justice and redemption.

When Johnny Cash sang it, his listeners could believe that it might actually come true.

Johnny Cash and American evangelicalism Johnny Cash was both a representative of the evangelical movement and a contrarian prophet to it. Raised in a Pentecostal home, he learned his first songs from his mother’s hymnal.

He experienced the standard evangelical conversion narrative, including a recommitment to the Lord in the late 1960s as he emerged from his worst drug-induced haze. He spoke openly of heaven as his goal, most conspicuously in his original song “Will You Meet Me in Heaven?” He took the Bible literally and studied it assiduously. He attended church faithfully, and his music, particularly his own songs, was permeated with biblical language. He even produced a movie about Jesus, The Gospel Road (1973). Evangelicals loved him for it, claiming him as their own.

But Cash was consistently wary of claiming them as his own. His view of the kingdom of God never fit comfortably

Tony Blair is an associate professor of Leadership Studies at the Campolo College of Graduate and Professional Studies at Eastern University and a pastor at Hosanna Fellowship in Lititz, Pa.

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W eaving Although 8,000 miles apart and from vastly different cultures, islanders from Mindoro in the Philippines and sheepherders from the mountains of who crossed their path. Alona Mugbuhos, a 16-year-old who lived in an overcrowded hut in Puerto Galera with three generations of her family, walked the beaches daily, offering her handmade bracelets to tourists. When she approached the Kuhlows, they were happy to purchase some from her, and when Alex and Chris look back on this meeting, they reflect that it was Alona’s quiet courage and respectful behavior that drew them to her that day.

That beach became a favorite getaway for the Kuhlows, and over the next several years the family regularly met up with Alona. She began to spend time with them on the beach, braiding Chris’ hair and playing in the sand with their children.

Eventually, the Kuhlows invited her to visit their home in Manila. Alona had relatives living there, but the Kuhlows noticed that she did not go to see them.When they asked her why, she told them that her relatives expected her “to do things that she didn’t want to do” to earn her keep while visiting.

While statistics vary somewhat, they are all sobering: According to a 2005 UNICEF report, children are commonly targeted for the sex trade, and up to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, with a high concentration of this in tourist areas. As the Asian economy struggles, many children are forced to leave school and find work to supplement their families’ meager incomes. In Puerto Galera, a sprawling mountainous city of nearly 20,000 souls that depends upon tourism to survive, more than 70 percent of the population is under age 25. Not much employment is available to young people in these locales, and the temptation to exploit young family members is strong.

During a weekend break at the beach in 2003, the Kuhlows were forced to confront this issue head-on when Alona, in obvious distress, told them that one of her close friends had recently succumbed to prostitution to help provide for her family. With their eyes opened to the presence and pressure of the sex industry, the Kuhlows wanted somehow to encourage Alona to persevere in her efforts to make an honorable income. They decided to purchase 5,000 pesos’ worth (about $100 US) of bracelets from her. Alona didn’t have that many bracelets on hand, but she promised to have them when they came back again.

Sure enough, next time the family set foot on that beach, Alona brought them 1,200 bracelets. Startled at the number

THREADS OF HOPE B y S h elly C u rtis

In 1997, Puerto Galera, a tourist town on the island of Mindoro, Philippines, was identified by UNICEF as one of the five worst Filipino cities for child prostitution and sex tourism.

Americans Alex and Chris Kuhlow didn’t know this when they went there in 1998. On vacation from their position as dorm parents at Faith Academy, a boarding school in crowded Manila, the Kuhlows simply wanted to relax and enjoy the sun and surf far from the city clamor and the pressures of fostering a dozen teenage boys.

On their first day on the beach, they had an encounter that would prove life-changing for both them and the young Filipina

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a

L iving

Morocco hold a common thread. Both groups are emerging from grinding poverty through the work of their hands and the support of people of faith. she presented, Alex quickly did the math in his head and questioned Alona about her profit. She assured them 23 cents an hour was a good income for her family and that they were grateful to have it without having to walk the beaches hoping for sales.

Not thinking beyond the immediate, the Kuhlows wondered what in the world they would do with 1,200 bracelets.

During their annual summer furlough, they took the bracelets back to the US. After giving some as gifts, they sold the rest at family camp for a dollar apiece. Returning to the Philippines and to Puerto Galera, they took that $1,000 — more money than the average Filipino family would see in a year — and, still thinking to encourage Alona in her endeavors, ordered more bracelets.

“Whenever Alona and her family thanked us for what we were doing,” says Alex,“we made sure they understood that we were only instruments that God was using to bless them.”

When the Kuhlows and their children began to share with their friends and coworkers about their experience and the needs of families in Puerto Galera, many took bracelets to sell during their own furloughs, at athletic events, or in their workplaces. The money poured in. As the Kuhlows continued to order bracelets, it became evident that more at-risk families could be helped if the profits were reinvested in the purchase of more bracelets. It was then that Alex and Chris recognized that God was presenting them with a much bigger opportunity than they’d imagined.

Alex and Chris passionately prayed for God’s direction.

Calling their new ministry “Threads of Hope,” all they did initially was to repeat their story, pray for the families, and be the supply line for thread going into Puerto Galera and bracelets going out. As the bracelet orders began to increase (multiplying tenfold four years straight), the Kuhlows registered as a nonprofit organization.That incredible growth continues:They

now order more than 100,000 bracelets every month. In early 2009, after much prayer and discussion with their board of directors, they felt that God desired them to continue with Threads in a full-time capacity. No longer dorm parents, they spend their days taking internet and phone orders, purchasing and transporting thread and beads, training and encouraging the workers, and shipping orders around the world.Threads of Hope bracelets are now sold in nearly every state of the US, many Asian and European countries, Canada, and Australia.

Threads of Hope’s success confounds everyone. Other missionaries visit to ask questions and, according to Alex, “call it ‘crazy’ because it’s not a business model to emulate according to the normal standards of business practices. It’s just not the usual practice to send bracelets all over the world and trust the money to come back.” However, that’s just what the Kuhlows do.

They market through visibility and word of mouth, selling to individuals online, to groups who use the bracelets for fundraisers, and from booths at youth-oriented and high-traffic events. They often give out batches of 100 bracelets for free, and trust the Lord for the results — that money will come back in from the sales of these bracelets. Except for very rare cases, they see this unusual business concept work consistently to the glory of God. Sales partners, who like both the quality product and the idea of helping someone in need, take the bracelets and the story to music festivals, family camps, college

Opposite: This young boy holds bracelets his family has made. Bracelets can be custom ordered in preferred colors and styles. Photo by Chris Brett Right: Members of the Aninuan Christian Church meet together to worship. Income from bracelet sales provided enough cash to build a small sanctuary/community center. Photo by Alex Kuhlow PRISM 2 0 1 0

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bookstores, county fairs, church bazaars, workplaces, retreats, and a variety of other events both Christian and secular. Most go out and sell, return the money, and do it again.

Economic stability isn’t the only change prompted by Threads of Hope. In 2006, Alex asked friend and Manila pastor Alejo Matienzo to accompany their family to Puerto Galera and share the gospel with the people in their heart language.

Alona, her mother and grandmother, and several other individuals became believers in Christ.“Pastor Al,” as he is known, was amazed by their receptiveness and felt the Lord calling him to move his family to the village to shepherd the new believers and begin a church. Income from Threads has provided enough cash flow to allow the people to build a church/ community center for further ministry. Currently 400 members strong, Aninuan Christian Church regularly baptizes new believers and works to spread the gospel to others in the village through programs for children and medical care provided by Pastor Al’s daughter.

Threads of Hope presently employs an average of 300 people monthly, with each individual contracting to make roughly 400 bracelets, depending on style. Every 10-cent bracelet sold at $1 means that 10 more bracelets can be made and the process repeated.

Because weaving bracelets requires minimal training and supplies, entire families can participate, from the children up to the grandparents. Generally, two or three adults from each family have contracts with Threads, and many are men. “They’re doing a lot of the work,” acknowledged Alex, “because there are no construction or manual labor jobs available in the area.”

A contract with Threads allows a man to make what Alex terms “a living wage” — enough to buy rice and sustain his family until other satisfactory employment can be obtained.

Bracelet makers weave three to four bracelets an hour when they begin, the equivalent of about 25 cents an hour. As their skill increases they are able to work more quickly, and the earnings potential increases. Alex recently videotaped one teenage girl weaving a bracelet in three minutes. She is dexterous and quick enough to make up to $8 a day, the equivalent to the pay of an adult police officer in that region.

The Kuhlows have observed that families earning money through Threads are no longer being targeted for the sex industry. “Providing an honorable and stable income takes the target off their backs. The people aren’t approached because they don’t appear desperate enough,” explained Alex. In fact, because they have a contract, the Threads bracelet makers no longer have to walk the beaches at all.

Until recently, Alona was the sole representative of Threads of Hope in Puerto Galera. Threads paid for her to return to school and finish sixth grade — and she utilizes every bit of that education in her management position. Now 28, she makes

Thanks to Threads of Hope, instead of selling bracelets on the beach, where they would be vulnerable to sex traffickers, these girls are able to attend school. Photo by Chris Kuhlow a good enough living that she and her sister were able to move from the thatched hut they shared with their parents, grandparents, and other family members to a new home with cement block walls and a floor that’s not dirt. In spite of — even because of — this success, Alona and others have declined to take a pay increase.They see so many other families who could benefit from the work, and they’d rather teach more people to make bracelets and earn an honorable income than take more money for themselves.

Managing Threads of Hope is an evolving process. On a recent visit to Puerto Galera to deliver thread and beads, Alex met with Alona and Pastor Al and determined that she was being overwhelmed by the many issues arising from being in charge of more than 300 individuals at a time. Now, like Moses, she has trustworthy overseers, each in charge of teams of employees; these overseers are voted into leadership and expected to evenly distribute orders, showing no favoritism in the process.

Threads of Hope impacts not only the spiritual life and family economics of those involved, but also the economics of the region. Flooding and damage from storms in 2009 greatly impacted the Philippines. Although Puerto Galera was not extensively damaged by weather, it did experience significant loss in local trade due to the hampered tourism industry. This made the stability of worldwide sales of bracelets through Threads of Hope partnerships even more significant.

Today the Kuhlows are still amazed at how God initiated such a creative solution through that one relationship begun on the beach during a vacation. One small transaction resulted in the weaving together of hearts from all over the world.

And in a village where hopelessness once reigned, hope is overcoming, thread by thread. n Learn more at ThreadsofHope.com.ph.

Shelly Curtis is a teacher and freelance writer from Upland, Ind., whose family sells Threads of Hope bracelets in their workplaces and at youth events.

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R U G S T H AT E N R I C H

squatters, they are not permitted to build permanent houses on the land, in spite of harsh winter weather conditions.

And so the herders construct temporary dwellings, piling up walls of loose rocks, which are plentiful in the hills, layering plastic overhead to keep out the rain, adding handwoven rugs for insulation, and topping the structure off with flattened metal milk powder cans.

The rural community of Tarmilat is located on a 5-kilometer limestone plateau upon which the sheep graze. Berbers have lived in this community for close to 60 years. The shepherds are paid partly in cash and partly in kind; they are allowed to keep one out of every four lambs born to the flock in their care.

In 2004, a rug weaving cooperative was launched in the community thanks to the involvement of Hand in Hand, a student-led humanitarian development organization of Al Akhawayn University.Al Akhawayn, which means “two brothers,” was founded by the King of Morocco in 1995 to be a place of interfaith dialogue in this Islamic nation. Rev. Karen Thomas Smith, the American chaplain to the Christian community at Al Akhawayn, was one of the driving forces behind the Tarmilat project.

Says Smith, “It is important to us as a church community to work in service projects alongside our Muslim colleagues.

Muslim community members and student leaders welcomed us foreign Christians as partners in this venture.We helped the community raise money and do some marketing through ex-pat networks of churches and other groups wanting to support development projects.We also helped the women of Tarmilat connect with Berbers of the High Atlas doing a similar project with the help of Franciscan sisters; they were thrilled to share their expertise with the women of Tarmilat. It has been a joy to undertake this work hand in hand with Muslim friends.”

Today almost everyone in the Tarmilat community draws additional income from involvement in the cooperative — the men working as herders, the women as weavers.Ito and Aischa are co-leaders of the group, coordinating work and transmitting requests to the women. Each weaver purchases her own wool, dyes, and other necessary materials and then brings her rugs to the cooperative to be sold. After shearing, the wool is carded with a rough comb and then spun onto a long spool. The women use only natural dyes, derived from onions, pomegranates, henna, and various wildflowers.

Excited by the arrival of American customers who have come to hear their stories and purchase their rugs, the weavers gather in a dimly lit, low stone building. Showers beat a steady rhythm on the tin roof as a pool of rainwater expands slowly

b y Helen L epp F riesen

Morocco is a country of storytellers, shepherds, and craftspeople.

Statistics indicate that 60 percent of adult females and 36 percent of adult males in Morocco are illiterate, but statistics don’t tell the whole — or the most important — story.“Illiterate” defines a person by a particular deficiency, but many people who cannot read are rich in other strengths and skills.

Morocco’s indigenous Berbers, who comprise about 40 percent of the country’s 30 million citizens, are accustomed to being defined in terms of deficiency. When it comes to representation in government and voice, Arab culture dominates.

Although Morocco gained its independence from France more than 40 years ago, it took time for the government to promote the Berber language and culture. Mohammed VI, who was crowned king a decade ago, has made efforts to improve Berber rights, including adding their language to education curriculum and creating a new alphabet for the language.

Singing, dancing, and storytelling substitute for reading and writing among the Berbers, and when measured by these talents, the Berber population ranks high in wealth and aptitude.

And when it comes to surviving challenging conditions, the Berbers in the community of Tarmilat exhibit Olympian talents.

Tucked amid the Middle Atlas Mountains, 10 kilometers down the road from the tourist and university town of Ifrane, the community of Tarmilat is home to 24 Berber families whose main livelihood is sheepherding.The grazing land is governmentowned, and most of the sheep are owned by wealthy families in Ifrane and the surrounding area, who hire the Berbers to care for their flocks. Since the sheepherders are technically

It takes a month to weave a 5-foot by 5-foot rug, which sells for about US$35.

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He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers — all of them master craftsmen and designers.

Exodus 35:35

dark shanty, their shoulders draped in plastic cloaks to fend off the rain dripping from the leaky roof. One by one they spread out their rugs and woven handbags. Attached to each piece is a tag with a photo and brief description of the craftswoman who made it. A handbag the color of cinnamon, paprika, and cream bears the photo and story of Fatima, a married woman with no children. She is the second wife of an elderly deaf man whose first wife is disabled. For seven years Fatima has lived in Tarmilat, where her primary responsibility is to manage her home and care for her husband’s first wife.

An indigo-and-charcoal-colored handbag bears the story of Milouda. Born in 1985 and raised in a different village, Milouda married her cousin, who lives in Tarmilat, and became the first literate woman in the village. Having completed the seventh grade, Miolouda acts as bookkeeper and secretary for the cooperative.

Meryem’s story is attached to a large rug woven in shades of cream, pink, black, and blue. Meryem is 66 years old and has three grown sons who are all looking for employment. Her daughter, Aischa, helps lead the weaving project. Meryem uses her rug money to help pay for her arthritis medication.

The women look on eagerly to see which items will catch the eye of their customers.When the final selection is placed before the bookkeeper, she writes down the purchases, accepts the dirhams, and immediately distributes the cash to the maker of each purchased piece. With the transaction completed, a woman brings in a tray spread with a pot of sweet mint tea, small glasses, and a plate of milwee, a flat pancake-like bread.

Over refreshments, the women explain the kinds of entertainment their community enjoys.With no electricity, entertainment consists of drumming, singing, chanting, telling stories, and, in the winter, sledding. Weddings are the social highlights of the year, lasting several days and consisting of dancing and feasting.

The American customers leave Tarmilat under a rainy sky.

Bearing piles of colorful carpets and handbags in their arms, they also carry away with them the stories and vivid images of the people who made these purchases possible: women waking early to make a fire, men cloaked in warm blankets as they herd sheep, mothers and children leading water-laden donkeys over rough terrain, a people poor by the world’s economic and educational standards but rich nonetheless — in history, courage, skill, hospitality, and heart. n

The bookkeeper distributes cash to the weavers as soon as the sale is complete. on the floor. As the rain slackens, more women arrive, several of them bringing in the loom from an adjacent building so they can demonstrate how they work.

In animated voices, with the help of a translator, they describe their daily routine, which starts at 5 a.m. when they rise to build a fire to cook their family’s breakfast.The younger children go to a school that was recently built by the government, but older children work with their parents because the closest post-elementary school in Ifrane is beyond walking distance and no transportation is available. Children help their mothers fetch water from a spring 10 kilometers away, collecting it in plastic jugs and strapping it to their donkeys’ backs.

They fetch firewood from the nearby forest, a precious commodity since none of their homes have heat. Entrepreneurial children in the community can earn additional income by fashioning sleds from scrap metal and wood and renting them to the tourists who pass by the road in the winter. With the proceeds from the rugs and tourism, five families have been able to purchase solar panels for their homes to power a few light bulbs or a radio, creating an anachronistic sight that is as surprising as it is impressive.

The women explain that it takes one month to weave the 5-foot by 5-foot rugs, which sell for approximately 400 dirhams, or the equivalent of US$35.Their status as squatters prevents them from establishing a formal business, and one of the biggest challenges is finding a suitable market for their rugs. So far, their best market has been customers who are willing to come to the village and purchase directly from the weavers.

Almost two dozen women have now assembled in the

Helen Lepp Friesen is a freelance writer. She visited the Tarmilat rug-weaving cooperative last December and came home with beautifully colored rugs and handbags. She would like to say “Shoukran,” or many thanks, to the artists of the Tarmilat Women’s Weaving Cooperative for sharing their stories, to Latifa for translating their words, and to Julie Reimer for arranging the visit.

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Faithful Citizenship H arold D ean T r u lear

Local Heroes

Researcher David Bositis echoes Goode’s view. Dr. Bositis has spent over two decades working at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a DC-based think tank founded in 1970 More elected officials fill municipal and to provide research-based analysis to county posts than state and federal ones, support the work of black elected offibut this fact seems to escape most of us cials emerging in the post-civil-rights in an era of global and national con- era. He cites issues such as policing, cern. That’s a shame, because local offi- quality of life, education, and healthcare cials have more direct influence over as important areas primarily under the our daily lives than do state and federal control of local government and service officials. delivery.

“Local politics is responsible for more Decisions made on these issues at the delivery of day-to-day services than any local level require information — research other entity in society,” says Rev. Dr. that many counties and municipalities Wilson Goode. “Who keeps the streets cannot afford to generate. Black elected safe, who plows and cleans those same officials often represent disadvantaged streets, how we educate our children communities, and most do not have the and house our families all depend upon extensive staffs needed to provide the local politics.” Goode, who served as research and analysis that undergirds sigmayor of Philadelphia from 1983-1991, nificant policymaking. suggests that people who care about justice for the poor should take a particular People who care about interest in local politics, since that is justice for the poor should “the level of government which most impacts those who need help the most. take a particular interest Those who suffer the greatest need in local politics. require the stewardship of local politics and politicians.”

Although he changed sectors when So Bositis and his colleagues have he moved from the mayor’s office to conducted a number of projects over the ministry, Rev. Goode says his profes- the years to support the work of local sion remained the same: serving others. black elected officials, working on issues “Just as ministry is service, so is local such as the relationship of demographgovernment,” says Goode.“Local govern- ics and environment to healthcare and ment is the largest service provider in healthcare availability, prisoner reentry any community, with the most employ- and rehabilitation, and small business ees of any service organization in any development. Many of the officials to city.” which the center provides information Under Goode’s leadership, Philadel- not only represent poor communities phia led the nation in per capita investment but also serve part-time, are paid per in social programs, from adult literacy diem, or even work without pay. “They to sheltering the homeless. When peo- are truly public servants,” explains ple fail to vote in local elections, he says, Bositis. “Nobody’s getting rich.” the fate of the most vulnerable falls into And these are the people standing the hands of those few who take the time for election in November 2010, garnerto cast a vote and who are often moti- ing minimal support at the polls but vated by self-interest. expected to provide maximum services.

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They make the decisions that educate our children, police our streets, assist our businesses, handle medical emergencies, put out fires, remove garbage, operate our courts and jails, handle foster care, serve our seniors, create space for recreation, and any number of social services we take for granted — until they go awry or go away. But these important men and women often run for office in the shadow of highly financed state and national elections and are selected by a weak minority of voters. Media and money supplant conscience and conviction when it comes to who gets attention in the electoral processes. As Christians, we should pay more attention to the supporting cast than to the celebrities.

Since Wilson Goode now operates a national program, Amachi Mentoring, which recruits and trains mentors for US and Canadian children with incarcerated parents, and he led a successful lobby to procure federal funding for the work, some might wonder if he’s lost the “local touch.” But his list of ongoing local involvement reveals he has not: Since leaving the mayor’s office, Goode served a decade on the board of the Free Library of Philadelphia and served as board chair for Self Inc., the largest provider of services for the homeless in Philadelphia. He also heads the Philadelphia Leadership Foundation, convening groups of religious and civic leaders throughout the city to address social problems and influence local politicians and policy. He remains a presence on the local political scene 20 years after his term as mayor — and challenges those who come behind him to be a presence there as well. n Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC, and director of the Healing Communities Prisoner Reentry Initiative at the Philadelphia Leadership Foundation (HealingCommunitiesUSA.org).

WASHINGTON WATCH Bruce Wydick

An RSVP to a Tea Party Invitation Recently I received a flyer in the mail with an invitation to join the Tea Party, a dynamic new force in American politics. Not an official political party, the Tea Party can be best described as a movement of people — mostly older, white, male people — with similar gripes about the functioning of our government and the direction of the country. Different polls have shown that between 18 and 31 percent of American adults are either Tea Party members or supporters. These are large numbers, and it is worth examining the philosophy of the movement and what it seeks to accomplish.

It is impossible to understand the Tea Party movement without understanding its philosophical roots.The nominal founder of the movement is Dale Robertson, a retired Marine. But its intellectual roots draw deep into the libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand and thinkers with ties to the Austrian school of economics,such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek.

Rand, a Russian-American immigrant whose father’s small business was confiscated by the Bolsheviks in 1914, articulated a philosophy known as objectivism, which stemmed from the Austrian school.

Her philosophy fervently condemned statebased altruism and instead promoted the virtues of egoism, self-interest, and a pure form of capitalism nested within the framework of a spartan government functioning principally to uphold private property rights. Rand was an ardent atheist who wrote that Christianity was “the best kindergarten of communism possible.”

Libertarian philosophy has always gained traction with a segment of the American public. It — especially Rand’s version of it — has served as the basis for an intellectual refutation of communism

and socialism. It laid the underpinnings for Margaret Thatcher’s market-based reforms of British socialism and for the Reagan revolution in America. As a philosophy, it has created an intellectual foundation to buttress and justify an American ethos of independence, individual creativity, and self-reliance, distinguishing characteristics of our culture since Alexis de Tocqueville observed them in the early 19th century. Indeed, this ethos is so pervasive in our culture that most Americans share many libertarian ideals without even being aware of it.

The Tea Party holds 17 core beliefs, a few of which are entirely commendable.

It wants more average citizens to hold political office (whatever “average” means — but it sounds good). It seeks to promote responsible fiscal spending and balanced budgets. Rather than lifting the poor from poverty through the income transfers of the welfare state, the Tea Party favors the creation of prosperity through entrepreneurialism.These are all good things.

But alongside some of its more worthwhile admonishments, theTea Party’s vision for American life contains a number of disturbing elements.

First, alongside patches of good economics, the Tea Party philosophy — and libertarian philosophy in general — advocates for some frighteningly bad economics. Its economic philosophy seems to be based on free-market sloganeering rather than a serious analysis of complex economic policy issues. Extolling the virtues of unfettered free-market capitalism, it ignores the need for correcting problems with free markets that are now well understood by mainstream economists.

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externalities (in which the “freedom” of one individual imposes a cost on others, such as with noise, traffic, or pollution).

Second, the pure form of libertarianism advocated by the Tea Party would seem to have little or no relation to biblical Christianity. We see the radical individualism of the libertarian philosophy commended nowhere in scripture. (Where do we find the biblical basis for private ownership of handguns?) Efforts to politically wed libertarian ideology and American patriotism to Christianity have resulted in a tragic syncretism that has sadly hoodwinked many American evangelicals.

Third, while most biblical conservatives advocate respect for our political leaders (based on Romans 13), a culture of slander and disrespect for our current government pervades the Tea Party, its publications, and its website postings.

A recent posting on its homepage, entitled “Tea Party Stands With Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson,” quotes (and affirms) Peterson’s statements that “Obama is a ‘racist president’ who ‘hates white people and Jews,’ as he promotes big government to the detriment of Americans. Moreover, ‘He doesn’t mind lying to get what he wants.’”

American politics is comprised of a complex network of coalitions. To the extent that we view politics as an appropriate vehicle for change,American evangelicals need to ask ourselves who our coalition partners should be. Do evangelicals truly share less in common with, for example, people whose views on certain issues lie somewhat to the left of our own than we do with people whose top priorities are the abolition of any kind of government healthcare intervention, the legalization of assault rifles, and low corporate tax rates? It may be time for American evangelicals to reconsider our political allegiances and our friendships.

Unfortunately, I had to RSVP “No” to the Tea Party. ★ Bruce Wydick is a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco.

ART & SOUL M akoto F u j im u ra

God’s Strange Art A teenage girl claims an angel told her she’d have a virgin birth. Her fiancé is hesitant to believe her. She gives birth in a stable. The people who come to visit are not family members but shepherds — the most humble people of the time, like today’s garbage collectors. A few weeks later, magicians from the East come with their gifts. They are fortune tellers, not religious leaders, and the stars are their scriptures.

The greatest story ever told is not about power, wealth, or worldly success; it is the story of people in the margins, people under suspicion, people who have been humbled — people like artists.

When strangers find out that I’m an artist, they almost always ask the same questions: “What kind of art do you make?” “Why do you do it?” “Can you make a living?”

If I said I was an electrical engineer, explaining would not be necessary. But tell people, particularly Christians, that I am an artist and I am immediately suspected or dismissed: “You don’t paint nudes, do you?” “I don’t understand modern art.” “You make that weird stuff that my kids could paint and then call it ‘art,’ don’t you?”

No wonder artist types sit in the back of the church and leave as soon as the music ends, if they come to church at all. Church is for successful people, for respectable folks with real jobs.

But church people forget that the Bible is full of strange, artsy folks. Ezekiel believed God asked him to do performance art — eating a scroll and cooking with human dung. King David danced naked in the streets. Hosea claimed that God told him to marry a prostitute and, when she’d run off, to keep buying her

uating that they are that elder brother who does not understand the Father’s frivolous love for his inconstant and selfish child. Like them, we too are often legalistic and loveless, an anxious people who cannot stop to appreciate beauty or hear music in the spheres of our world.

A journey with Jesus is more like being an artist than working a predictable nine-to-five job. It’s unpredictable, risky, and often strange. It’s an adventure for which you need faith. You don’t need to be a “respectable Christian” to walk with Jesus: In fact, it’s best if you are not.

You’ll be better able to wrestle with the deeper realities of your journey, to confront your brokenness.You’ll be able to let your life’s experience become the materials for your craft, articulating that deep mystery within you rather than trying to explain it away.

The church needs artists, because, like Jesus, they ask questions that are both enigmatic and clear, encouraging and challenging. And like Jesus’ closest followers, they are neither respectable nor well put together. Jesus gave his disciples “authority” because he chose them Saint Paul, while in prison, asks for as broken creatures in need of a Savior prayer to “boldly proclaim the mystery who understood their dependence on of the gospel.” The gospel is the good God. He gave them “author”-ity to news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrec- write the story of the kingdom and tion, which on the surface seems pretty recount the mystery of redemption. He clear. So why does he use the word made them into artists.

We are all chosen, broken creatures, “mystery?” Why not say, “Pray that I can be clear” or “Pray that I can be and Jesus has made us all into artists, whether we use a brush or simply ride persuasive?”

Jesus, himself an artist, spoke of mys- on a garbage truck. Our lives are living terious things by using parables. He told stories of the kingdom that we write of a young son who takes his inheritance every day. Infused with the mystery of and wastes it all on frivolous pleasures. the Great Artist’s spirit, our stories can When he loses everything and decides become a wide-open adventure, part of it’s better to go home ashamed than be the greatest story ever told. ■ homeless, his father throws a big party for him, saying, “My son was lost, and is Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer, speaker, found.” The elder brother is under- and the founder of the International Arts standably upset: Where’s the discipline? Movement (IAMNY.org). This essay was adapted from a lecture he gave at Park City Where are the consequences?

As Jesus tells this story, he turns to Presbyterian Church’s invitation to Dallas artists the religious authorities of his day, insin- to create works for the Christmas season. back from her pimp by baking food for him. Then you have this pregnant teen who gave birth to a King in a food trough, a King who was greeted by the garbage collectors of the time. Right.

When I read the Bible as an artist, however, this all makes sense. Artists do all sorts of strange things to communicate — they create language to describe the indescribable. The prophets were marginalized, poor, outcast, creative, curious — more like artists than “respectable people.” God, too, is an artist, inventing strange ways to communicate. Existing outside time and space, he must translate the transcendent into the mundane.

He dares to use us, broken and lost, to do the work of re-creation. And like “modern art,” this looks strange, otherworldly, and full of mystery.

A journey with Jesus is unpredictable, risky, and often strange.

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OFF THE SHELF Liberating Black Theology

By Anthony B. Bradley Crossway Books Reviewed by Vincent Bacote When members of the media attempted to understand the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s comments during the last presidential campaign, the topic of black theology emerged as a focal point for understanding Wright’s homiletical rhetoric. In Liberating Black Theology:The Bible and the Black Experience in America, Anthony B. Bradley presents an analysis and critique of this contextual theology, with a specific focus on the version constructed by James Cone of Union Theological Seminary. The emphasis is on Cone (and his legacy) because his version of black theology had the greatest resonance and impact when it emerged and because it has remained the primary point of reference ever since.

Bradley’s central thesis is that Cone’s version of liberation theology is ultimately unhelpful because “it views peo-

ple perpetually as victims.” In six chapters Bradley introduces us to conditions which produced black theology, summarizes Cone’s background and theological method, intriguingly engages the form of Marxism advocated by Cone and others, surveys biblical interpretation in light of the black experience, and finally presents a wide range of critiques from liberal to conservative, while recasting a vision for a more historically orthodox black theology that is centered on God’s redemptive mission as opposed to a victimized black identity.

Bradley’s book helps us to see the very real concerns that led James Cone to be critical of the liberal and conservative theologies in the predominantly white academy. Because the concerns of blacks were largely ignored, Cone set out to construct a theology that directly addressed the crises facing blacks, particularly the multifaceted legacy of racism.

Bradley argues that while Cone rightly observed a crisis in theology, the efficacy of his theological vision was hampered from the start by making the context of black oppression the controlling principle.

He questions how this approach can be helpful when you have the emergence of a successful black middle class and whether it is necessary to jettison historically orthodox theological emphases because of their misuse by white oppressors. The strength in Bradley’s book lies in the fact that it is critical of black theology while maintaining that it is vital to address the crises which catalyzed Cone’s project.

The trajectory of Cone’s work should not surprise anyone familiar with his theological training in liberal Protestant institutions. Liberalism places greater authority on human experience and historical context than on the Bible, and one result is that any theology that emerges risks being limited to or confined by a central focus on experiences

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such as victimization. Cone’s theology is the result of his own theological imagination but is built with equipment from the toolbox of liberalism.

I had a couple of quibbles with Bradley. One, he labels Cornel West and Cheryl Sanders liberation theologians. Though familiar with the topic, neither would own the label. Second, perhaps the term “victim” is overplayed in Bradley’s critique. Maybe it is better to say that Cone’s work suffers from slavery to its context (which includes the emphasis on “victims”).

Aside from these flaws, this introduction to black theology is helpful and worth reading. It is well researched and can help evangelicals move forward in an area we have mostly neglected. n Vincent Bacote is an associate professor of theology and the director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. He is the author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Baker Academic, 2005).

The Wisdom of Stability

By Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Paraclete Press Reviewed by Rachel Parker In the introduction to The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes, “This is a book about staying put and paying attention. In a culture that is characterized by unprecedented mobility and speed, I am convinced that the most important thing most of us can do spiritually is to stay in the place where we are.”Tough words for my generation, which is drawn to the possibilities that

technology and transportation have to offer and often employs them to pursue God’s call. We would rather “follow Jesus anywhere, so long as we don’t have to stay put.”

Wilson-Hartgrove draws extensively from the monastic tradition, in which men and women take vows committing themselves to a particular community for life. He tells of a friend who left a fast-paced urban job in order to work on a remote Benedictine campus and, after being there a while, told the author, “I’m learning from these guys that God can change us if we’ll settle down in one place. So I’ve given up my spiritual journey. I’m going to just stay with God here and see how I can grow.” It’s easier to jump from one spiritual experience to the next, concludes the author, than it is to stay still in one place long enough to listen to God. Maintaining relationships 21stcentury style takes very little effort; we just tap into the technological device of choice and communicate with people around the globe — in seconds and for just pennies. But Christ invites us into deeper and more costly relationships that go beyond communication. When we make the choice to invest in a place and its people for the long haul “and not easily leave,” we learn to practice the “daily tasks of life with other people,” which Wilson-Hartgrove defines as hospitality, listening, forgiveness, and reconciliation. He speaks of both Cistercians and Benedictines, who recognize their community not only as places of grace but also of responsibility and mission.

Brothers are responsible to and for each other and the world, not just to themselves. Likewise, when we accept the responsibility that comes with long-term, face-to-face relationships, we also accept the gift of rich, mutual interdependence in which we care for and are cared for by others.

The Wisdom of Stability is a delight-

fully readable book that offers a biblical defense of stability woven together with plenty of personal encounters richly recounted in the “Front Porch” sections that follow each chapter. In these days of globalism and instant everything, Wilson-Hartgrove offers readers a convincing argument for the merits of faithful localism. n Rachel Parker has been invested in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston for eight years.

She walks to church, participates in a community garden on her street, and, along with her preschool-age daughters, loves inviting neighbors over to play in the yard.

Half the Sky

By Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn Vintage Reviewed by Tania DoCarmo Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide tells the stories of individual women and girls across Asia and Africa who fight for

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equality and freedom against all odds.

Through a variety of personal accounts based on journalistic interviews, the authors depict the horrors of everything from sex trafficking to honor killings to female genital mutilation in countries as diverse as Zimbabwe, Cambodia, and Pakistan. Kristof and WuDunn call upon their readers to take action, calling us to improve education for girls, empower women financially through microfinance, and donate to specific movements such as the Worldwide Fistula Fund.

While I don’t doubt the authors have good intentions and that this book has raised the consciousness of those who have made it a national best seller, Half the Sky fails to reach its potential and is, in fact, ultimately damaging to its cause.

Because Kristof and WuDunn base information on their experiences as journalists and not researchers or practitioners on the ground, their work is scattered, under-researched, and lacking adequate depth and accuracy.This results in some major problems: Their “investigation” is based on their own interpretation of a myriad of detached journalistic stories rather than facts; they partially blame women for their own oppression; and their recommendations for change, while plausible, completely miss the mark.

Kristof and WuDunn unfortunately fail to see the complexity of the issues they raise, passing inaccurate analysis off as “fact.”Take their chapters on sex trafficking and prostitution. While globalization, AIDS, and the collapse of communism are likely no help in slowing the global sex industry, they are by no means “the cause” of sexual slavery. Sex trafficking is fueled by the demand for commercial sex. This demand is driven not only by sex tourists, pedophiles, and the “John” next door but also systematically by glorification of the porn industry, the sexualization of youth, and sensationalized sex in mainstream culture. As long as there is money to be

made, pimps and traffickers will continue to “recruit” a supply of bodies to meet the demand. To miss this point is detrimental to the anti-trafficking movement.

Perhaps worse, Half the Sky goes as far as blaming women for their own oppression. “One of the reasons that so many women and girls are kidnapped, trafficked, raped, and otherwise abused is that they grin and bear it,” write the authors, suggesting that if girls would just scream, protest, or run away, the abuse would stop and sex trafficking would be “undermined.” This kind of thinking dismisses the very real power of systematic oppression, turns a blind eye to the abuser/buyer, and suggests that those who are oppressed have a choice in the matter. “Oppression” denotes being under the merciless control of a greater power, and choice is a notion of privilege that many of us take for granted. For these victims “choice” does not exist. Most have been forced and coerced into their situation, and it is counterproductive (not to mention cruel) to suggest otherwise.

I certainly resonate with the authors’ vision to empower women by encouraging them to speak out and seek change.

However, to publish the real names, faces, and even exact locations of victims is not only unnecessary but also thoroughly unethical and voyeuristic, serving only to increase the vulnerability of already victimized, vulnerable people.

We should be protecting and empowering survivors of torture and crime, not subjecting them to pity or further exploitation. Nor is throwing money at schools and microfinance the overriding solution.

Gender oppression is not limited to impoverished nations. Sex trafficking and gender-based violence are global issues, and money alone won’t fix them.

In a movement where community education and activism are essential to change, we cannot afford to relay messages that further oppress the very women we advocate for. Instead, it’s crucial we take time to understand the systematic complexities of gender oppression and come up with ways to generate awareness, challenge the status quo, and call for social responsibility among our leaders and peers. n Tania DoCarmo is director of Chab Dai USA, a Christian nonprofit dedicated to combating human trafficking across the globe through collaboration-building, prevention, and advocacy. She has lived in Cambodia and Brazil and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in applied anthropology.

Making a Difference continued from page 7. lead their peers into effective responses to their country’s problems. “As church members take up roles of leadership,” he predicts, “people will begin to say, ‘We want what you have.’That really is the best advertisement a church can have.” n Dr. Amy L. Sherman is director of the Center on Faith in Communities at Sagamore Institute and a senior fellow with International Justice Mission.

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Must-Read Books

by Ron Sider Here’s a list of books that I am currently reading or have recently read and can heartily recommend.

To Change the World by James Davidson Hunter. I’m partway through this important book.

The Historical Jesus of the Gospels

by Craig S. Keener. Superb scholarship on a crucial topic.

How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? by Larry W. Hurtado.

This great book demonstrates the enormously important fact that monotheistic Jews almost immediately started worshiping the Carpenter from Nazareth.

Excellent presentation of the historical data.

Four Gifts of the King by R. Scott Rodin. A great first novel.

Worshiping with the Church Fathers by Christopher A. Hall.

A specialist on the early church, Hall provides an excellent, readable overview of the worship of the early church.

Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright. If you have not yet read this superb book, put it at the top of your to-read list.

Sex and the iWorld by Dale S. Kuehne. An important new book.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Yes, I know this came out seven years ago, but I’m just now reading it, and it is fascinating and informative.

MUSIC NOTES Al Tizon

The Gospel According to Patty Listening to Patty Griffin’s Downtown Church feels like attending an unauthorized late-night worship service, as if an unassuming member of the choir sneaked back into the sanctuary one night, gathered a few barroom musician friends, and together they let loose with their favorite instruments, passionate voices, and beautiful harmonies — and someone just happened to be there to bootleg it.

In reality, Downtown Church is the result of singer-songwriter Patty Griffin deciding to do a gospel album and then succeeding in getting Buddy Miller to produce it, a gifted ensemble of musicians to play on it, and an unbelievable cast of vocalists — including Emmylou Harris, Raul Malo, Shawn Colvin, Jim Lauderdale, the McCrary Sisters, Buddy and Julie Miller, and Mike Farris — to back her up. It’s Americana at its best recognizing gospel music’s impact on the genre. And true to Americana artists’ somewhat snobbish insistence that their music be rootsy and real, Griffin and friends lay down these tracks not in some upscale music studio but in an historic Presbyterian church in downtown Nashville — a brilliant idea that really does succeed in giving the album the aural seal of authenticity.

Her seventh release, Downtown is Griffin’s most thematically cohesive and mature album. She seems relaxed and comfortable here, enjoying the company of fellow musicians and friends.

She also seems to be fanning the embers of her own faith. A self-professed lapsed Catholic, Griffin sings the songs on Downtown as if to get back in touch with

something that already runs through her veins. While her previous release Children RunningThrough (ATO Records) shows initial signs of spiritual longing, Downtown continues the search with greater clarity.

Listeners are treated to originals such as “Little Fire” and “Coming Home to Me,” as well as fresh covers of old songs such as “Wade in the Water” and “We Shall Be Reunited.” With the exception of “I Smell a Rat,” — a pronounced misfit in this collection, but nevertheless catchy and easy to like — the Downtown songs are emotionally soothing. Griffin’s records have that effect on people anyway; but when she sings overtly spiritual songs, her voice becomes a balm to the beat-up and weary soul.

By the time I got around to the last song, the familiar church hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King,” my tears were flowing. This is by far the most moving song on the album, or perhaps it is simply the perfect ending to an overall moving production. At first I sang the hymn with Patty, as if I were standing right next to her in church; but after the first verse, I just let the gentle piano and Griffin’s soaring voice

take over as I worshiped the Creator with blubbering too deep for words.

Appropriately, Griffin dedicates this work to the homeless women and men of Nashville in her liner notes (those who have gone totally digital in their music acquisition sadly miss out on things like this). She also encourages listeners to make donations to the homeless ministry of Downtown Presbyterian Church (where the album was recorded), as well as to the Room in the Inn, a homeless shelter also in Nashville. I say “appropriately” because of the nature of the gospel; if we’re going to sing about the man who befriended the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast, then let our heartfelt singing lead to meaningful action among them. This is one of the reasons I appreciate the fact that this album was made not by a band of the slick and polished variety, but by a scruffy group of gifted cowgirls and cowboys who sing earthily of personal faith and its implications.

I am not surprised that Griffin was nominated as artist of the year and Downtown Church the album of the year by the Americana Music Association.

While Roseanne Cash’s The List and Ryan Bingham went home with the prizes, Patty Griffin and Downtown Church are no less winners, sure to satisfy not only indie fans, but also those who find themselves perpetually on the lookout for spiritual substance in music and culture sure to satisfy not only indie fans, but also those who find themselves perpetually on the lookout for spiritual substance in music and culture.

So there’s only one thing left to do: Buy this heavenly “bootleg” and listen in on Griffin and friends who have been left unsupervised in the sanctuary.

Al Tizon is associate professor of holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., director of ESA’s Word & Deed Network, and regular columnist for PRISM magazine.

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RON SIDER

The View from a Giant’s Shoulders

in retirement,Vernon Grounds modeled tireless service to the kingdom. For most of his 30-plus years of retirement, he continued to teach, counsel (in the Vernon Grounds Counseling Center at Denver Seminary), speak, and write.

His selection as master of ceremonies for the important evangelical conference on peacemaking that took place An evangelical giant has just left us to in Pasadena, Calif., in 1983 reflected be with the Lord. Dr.Vernon Grounds, both his prominence as an evangelical prominent evangelical leader for decades leader and his own vigorous commitand close friend of Evangelicals for Social ment to peace. But few things better Action, died on September 12 at the illustrate the degree to which Vernon Grounds was a pioneer well ahead of age of 96.

Vernon Grounds’ life and ministry his time than his 1967 lectures published significantly shaped modern evangelical as Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility.

Christianity. He began in the heart of This ringing call for evangelicals to comAmerican fundamentalism, taking his bine evangelism and social responsibility seminary degree at Faith Theological Seminary, which was founded by the prominent, reactionary fundamentalist, Carl McIntire. But by the time he moved to Denver in 1951 to join a new Baptist seminary as professor (eventually going on to become dean and then president), Vernon was becoming a prominent leader of a new kind of evangelicalism that embraced vigorous engagement with the modern world — via academic excellence, sociopolitical engagement, and loving In Loving Memory of Dr. Vernon Grounds respect for everyone.

J u ly 1 9 , 1 9 1 4 – S e p tem b er 1 2 , 2 0 1 0 In 1973 Grounds signed the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, was delivered six years before the Chicago a document that launched Evangelicals Declaration of Evangelical Concern for Social Action. After retiring as presi- (1973), seven years before the Lausanne dent of Denver Seminary in 1979 after Covenant’s section 5 urging evangelical serving for two decades,Vernon agreed social responsibility. I was still in graduto help ESA, serving (without any salary!) ate school! That was back when Jerry as ESA’s president for several years. His Falwell was still condemning Martin reputation as a prominent evangelical Luther King, Jr.’s political engagement leader, plus the articles he wrote for ESA’s with the claim that Christ calls us to publications, was a great gift to our young preach the gospel, not to influence politics. That was back when many of movement.

The 19,000 books in Grounds’ per- evangelicalism’s most visible voices still sonal library reflect his love of learning. understood persons primarily as souls to The 75,000 miles he traveled to speak — be saved rather than body-soul beings just in 1962 — indicate his energy. The made for community and needing God’s 71-year-marriage he enjoyed with his total salvation.

Vernon Grounds also anticipated many wife demonstrates his dedication. Even PRISM 2 0 1 0

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of the momentous changes in evangelicalism over the last 40 years. With his vigorous claim that “personal evangelism and social concern are two sides of the same coin,” he was an early harbinger of what is now the evangelical consensus — that Christian mission must embrace both evangelism and social action. With his insistence that the human person “is not a disembodied spirit” but rather a “fleshand-blood being who needs bread as well as truth, shelter here as well as heaven hereafter, clothes for his body as well as the robe of righteousness for his soul,” he pointed the way toward a truly Hebraic understanding of persons and away from a one-sided, Platonic overemphasis on the soul. With his vigorous call for evangelical political action, he anticipated evangelicalism’s political re-engagement so often identified with the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition but did so with wisdom, caution, and qualifications that, if heeded, would have spared us the ghastly mistakes of the religious right.

Today it takes precious little daring to speak for holistic ministry combining evangelism and social action or to urge evangelical political engagement. But that was certainly not the case in 1967. Back then, whatVernon Grounds said in Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility was as controversial as it was insightful. For the president of a leading evangelical seminary to say these things took courage. It also involved the risk of loss of funds from influential donors and nasty attacks by fundamentalists. But Vernon Grounds was unconditionally committed to Jesus Christ and the Scriptures, not some short-term calculation of institutional self-interest or avoidance of controversy.

A wise person has said that if we see more clearly than our predecessors, it is because we stand on their shoulders. I am not certain that we see more clearly than Vernon Grounds, but we certainly stand on his shoulders. Thank God for this faithful servant, courageous pioneer, and successful leader. n

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