PRISM May June 2012

May

June 2012

PRISMmagazine.org

Tomato Justice

Standing up to an agricultural industry that crushes its workers

Bully Pulpit

A Christian response to both victims and tormentors

Orphans and widows

What “pure religion� looks like in Ethiopia and the Ukraine

PRISM Vol. 19, No. 3 May/June 2012

Editor Art Director Copy Editor Marketing Publisher Assistant to Publisher Member Services

Kristyn Komarnicki Rhian Tomassetti Leslie Hammond Sarah Withrow King Ronald J. Sider Josh Cradic Deborah Caraher

Contributing Editors

Pastor, professor, and missionary Al Tizon introduces the essentials of missional preaching and then offers chapters grounded in biblical themes for mission, including: • • • •

Alternative Community Holistic Transformation Justice and Reconciliation Whole-Life Stewardship

Christine Aroney-Sine

Clive Calver

Rudy Carrasco

Andy Crouch J. James DeConto

Gloria Gaither David P. Gushee

Jan Johnson

Craig S. Keener Peter Larson

Richard Mouw

Philip Olson Jenell Williams Paris

Christine Pohl

James Skillen

Al Tizon

Jim Wallis

Myron Augsburger Issac Canales M. Daniel Carroll R. Paul Alexander James Edwards Perry Glanzer Ben Hartley Stanley Hauerwas Jo Kadlecek Marcie Macolino Mary Naber Earl Palmer Derek Perkins Elizabeth D. Rios Lisa Thompson Heidi Rolland Unruh Bruce Wydick

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This book is not about the ‘how’ of preaching, but the ‘what’ and even more so,....’”

—Rob Fairbanks, president, Christian Associates International.

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Library Subscription Order PRISM for your library! Only $45 a year. www.PRISMmagazine.org 6 E. Lancaster Ave, Wynnewood PA 19096 484-384-2990/PRISM@eastern.edu Note: Standard A mail is not forwarded; please contact us if your address changes.

A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy www.EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University All contents © 2012 ESA/PRISM magazine.

May / June 2012

Contents 2 Reflections from the Editor

If Your Gift Is _____* then ______*

4 Talk Back Photo this page by Scott Robertson. Cover image by Pascal Blancon.

Letters to the Editor

7 Art & Soul

Beyond Words

8 May I Have a Word?

A Grief Accompanied

9 Kingdom Ethics

From Kiev to Kansas City

37 Hands & Feet

A Lawyer's Calling

38 Off the Shelf Book reviews

41 On Being the Church

Ubuntu Theology & the Church Foyer

42 A Different Shade of Green

Environmental Guilt and the Gospel

43 Music Notes

10 Tomato Justice

Speaking against an industry that squeezes the lifeblood from its workers means standing with the Florida farmhands who feed us.

20 Just "Kids Being Kids" or

Justice for Kids?

It's time to offer real solutions to the bullying epidemic plaguing our young people.

26 Market Fundamentalism

American idol: unpacking the "root of all evil"

28 The Gift of Tomorrow

With help from international partners, a groundswell of Ukrainian believers are answering the call to bring home their country's orphans.

32 "Let the Little Children Come"

How two American families answered God's call to care for some of Ethiopia's most disenfranchised little ones.

An Enduring, Endearing Duo

44 Washington Watch

Jesus, Political Wisdom, and Public Flourishing

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Global Positions "We Refuse to Be Enemies"

“I will be quick to testify…against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.

Malachi 3:5

48 Ron Sider

A Tale of Two Budgets

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Reflections

If Your Gift Is * then * “I still shop at the Gap,” my friend confessed, her voice lowered guiltily and her face flushed with embarrassment. “I know I shouldn’t, but...”

Thanks to the hyper-informed nature of her generation as well as the advanced degrees she holds in international development and public policy, she well knows that the Gap has a reputation for fueling their fashion empire with sweatshop labor.

But she also happens to work with the poorest of the poor in our city. Every day she goes to bat for the undereducated, underemployed, and underpaid—folks not unlike the workers exploited by so many of our popular clothing brands.

“But,” she admits, “it’s hard to care about so many things at once.”

I admire her honesty. She’s right—it is hard. It’s also nigh unto impossible to live a single day in our world without directly or indirectly exploiting another human being.

Wanna ruin a perfectly good day? Go to SlaveryFootprint.org. Spend more than a minute there and you’ll realize that, even if you only got out of bed an hour ago, you’ve already enjoyed the services of dozens of slaves around the world—from the cotton T-shirt you slipped on to the coffee beans you enjoyed to the phone you used to check your messages.

How about that tomato you’re about to slice into your omelet? Unless you grew it yourself, it’s likely been harvested by farmhands working in slavery conditions. If you’re not aware of the price paid by the men, women, and—in many cases, children—who harvest our food, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to from this issue’s cover story about migrant farmworkers in in the United States. Caveat lector.

So what are lovers of justice like you and me to do? Should we throw out that tomato, give up coffee, turn in our phones, and walk around in fig leaves in an effort to avoid exploiting others? Even that won’t do it. The fact is, every strand of the web

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that is modern life intersects with injustice of one kind or another.

It is, quite literally, impossible to disentangle oneself. But it is possible to use what we do have control over—our voice and our buying power—to speak out against abuses and stand with the oppressed.

I’m pretty sure that if you’re reading PRISM, you already agree with that, but what about my friend’s dilemma? How many injustices can we realistically care about—let alone act upon—at any one time? We’re only human, after all. There

cacy by fair trade devotees, every shop was a fair trade shop? What if, thanks to impassioned clean air enthusiasts, I didn’t have to worry that flipping my light switch meant sending coal fumes into the atmosphere or blowing the tops off Appalachian mountains?

One of my biggest passions is sexual wholeness. I advocate for sacred sex and fight pornography’s lies at every (discovered or created) opportunity I get. I take it as my personal responsibility to make the world safer for lovers of every age. Now, I don’t expect everyone I meet to do the

"We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully."

Rom. 12:6-8 are still commutes to make, children to same thing, even if they share my passion. care for, marriages to work on, houses to But if I stay on task, remaining faithful to clean, and neighbors to love! How many my calling, and I join forces with every hours in a day can we commit to acting other “real sex” activist I can find, eventujustly for global causes? ally the curtain will be pulled back and Fortunately, although each of us is the prince of porn will be revealed for the only one, there are a lot of ones out mangy, pathetic liar he truly is. there. If we all do our small part, every So, yes, go forth and live as justly as injustice will have its warriors, every exyou possibly can. But don’t waste precious ploited worker his/her advocacy partners, time and energy on anemic guilt over your and together we will make a joyful noise Gap jeans—not when you can spend it unto our justice-loving Lord. Think about it: productively on muscular acts of justice What if each one of us worked diligently in one or two areas for which you have to clear the world of just one injustice? If enough passion to sustain you over the we did, our heart’s injustice alarms would long haul. Because the long haul is what be a lot less stressed, because we’d each real justice work is all about. be less likely—less able, in fact—to live exploitatively. *[insert favorite justice passion] For example, I love those grocery stores where they’ve already done all the (Note: If you’re ever in the mood to play hard work for me—by stocking only fair superhero, you can always carpet-bomb a trade foods, they’ve taken the guesswork whole slew of corporations with demands out of my shopping experience. I know I for just practices by going to SlaveryFootcan go in there and shop on autopilot, print.org/IWanttoKnow.) ❤ because everything they sell is already screened for just practices. Do I shop at those places often?

Kristyn Komarnicki has been passionate about Are there enough of PRISM since 1999 and is grateful for the many these places to shop things it has taught her, from how to love a at? No, but what if, porn star to how to love the hands that pick thanks to avid advoher daily tomato.

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Talk Back I had the privilege of attending the Ohio Convocation of Ministries sponsored by the Ohio Council of Churches in January. Ron Sider was the main speaker. I was delighted to hear him and to know there are evangelicals concerned about social justice.

I just finished reading the November/December 2011 issue of PRISM, devoted to Christian men, their struggles, their ministry, and their mission.

I am the pastor of a small church (98 members, about 41 in worship) which is led primarily by women—typical in many churches today. It is also an aging congregation, but there are some younger families. There are strong men in the congregation, but they are outnumbered and are not united in ministry as a group.

I’m planning on passing extra copies of this issue to them to see if they might be sparked to be more active in their Christian witness. As a female pastor, I found the magazine to be truly enlightening—things I honestly didn’t know about men (my husband and I have never talked about some of those things). I think it would be good for the men in the church to know that there are other men who are wrestling with their Christian witness and how they are channeling their energy to be strong and faithful fathers, leaders, warriors for justice.

Anne Fisher Akron, Ohio

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I’ve been a member of ESA since the late '80s but haven’t written a letter to you for about 20 years. I’m writing today about a couple of items in the January/February issue. First, I was interested in reading “Getting Schooled in Islam,” because I’ve heard some truly horrible (even paranoid) comments about Muslims from fellow evangelicals, but unlike nearly all of them I’ve had opportunities to befriend many Muslims in my nursing work. And I certainly agree with Matt Palombo that true friendship requires self-critique, willingness to listen to them and accommodate their culture, etc. I really have trouble, though, with some of his comments, such as Mohammad is a true prophet of God. Since Mohammad emphatically denied that Jesus is God in the flesh, I don’t see how anyone who believes in the New Testament can even consider such a thought in light of Scriptures like 1 John 2:22-23.

Secondly, although David Gushee has long been one of my favorite writers in PRISM, I was puzzled to read that he seems to criticize Rev. Robert Jeffress for stating that Mormonism is a cult. As Gushee must know (or ought to know), the Mormon church tacitly admits that it is a cult by its belief that it alone is the one true church and that all other churches are apostate. Anyone who questions whether Mormonism is a cult needs only to consult authoritative works on it, such as Walter Martin’s The Kingdom of the Cults. Mormonism is a non-Christian cult as surely as the pope is Catholic.

There’s simply no room for debate on that point. And whatever else one may say about Jeffress’ comments (and I strongly object to some of them), he was unquestionably right on that essential point.

In an otherwise excellent speech

on religious freedom and the personal faith of leaders that he gave in 2008, Mitt Romney concluded by emphasizing that he believes that “Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of mankind.” But the Mormon concepts of god and jesus (I deliberately use the lower case) are incompatible with those of the New Testament. It’s bad enough that Romney is a serial flip-flopper willing to say anything to get elected, but for him to slickly insinuate that he believes in the same Jesus that Christians believe in is outrageously deceptive and dishonest.

I enjoy reading PRISM. It always gives me food for thought, even when (as in the items cited above) I strongly disagree.

Rev. Gerald Bishop Milford Center, Ohio

I was astounded at the sloppy thinking expressed by David Gushee (”Election Distresses”) in the January/February 2012 issue. His only complaint about President Obama is that he isn’t leftist enough! Does he have no objection to Obama’s strident support of subsidized

Make your PRISM experience even richer by engaging your small group in a discussion of the topics raised in the magazine. You’ll find challenging study/discussion questions for each issue at PRISMmagazine. org. This is a great resource for college faculty and small group leaders.

Interested in bulk subscriptions for your church, college, or small group?

Email PRISM@eastern.edu.

abortion on demand or his refusal to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act? The views attributed to Matt Palombo (”Getting Schooled in Islam”) are at least as disturbing, if not more so. He offers this dubious rationale for the indiscriminately mass-murderous 9/11 terrorist attacks: “We’ve colonized Muslim lands, exploited resources, and exported a culture of greed, covetousness, and extravagance all over the world.” Christopher Hitchens succinctly refuted such masochistic absurdity that was pervasively spouted by his fellow leftists in the wake of the 9/11 slaughter: “[Islamic radicals] regard the Saudi regime not as the extreme authoritarian theocracy that it is, but as something too soft and lenient. ... What they abominate about ‘the West,’ to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.

Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.”

Most alarming of all is Palombo’s view of Mohammed “as a true prophet of God.” This is decidedly unbiblical and anti-Christian. (See Lk. 10:16; Jn. 3:36, 6:45, 14:6; Acts 4:12; Gal. 1:6-9; 1 Jn. 4:1-3, 5:12, etc.) It is anything but “loving” to distort the gospel of Jesus Christ by affirming Muslims’ false beliefs. Does ESA still consider itself an evangelical voice?

Mike Nacrelli Portland, Oreg.

Matt Palombo’s response: Nowhere in the article or elsewhere have I offered a moral justification for the events of 9/11, as Mike Nacrelli erroneously states. My comments referred to the horrendous impact of Western imperialism in Muslim lands, perpetuated by greed and triumphalism.

Western imperialism is absolutely antiChristian, anti-godly, and anti-human and has been rightly condemned by many Muslims (and Christians!) throughout the world who experience its negative effects. What is most tragic is when moral criticisms of Western imperialism are twisted into justifications for the events of 9/11. How can this be? Have we given up that much on preaching truth to power? We must not shy away from our obligation to condemn imperialism and greed wherever we find it (even when in our own land and in our own religion) and to join others who struggle against it (wherever and whomever they may be).

Also, I do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet because I love Muslims, as Nacrelli implies. I believe that Muhammad was a prophet because of the research I have done on his life and teachings. His prophethood is consistent with the nature of prophethood as evidenced in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and as a Christian I find nothing contradictory or compromising in affirming his prophethood. I do recognize that this is a minority position within Christian history.

Matthew Palombo Minneapolis, Minn.

Join the Conversation!

We’d love to hear from and keep in touch with you. There are lots of ways to interact. @ Email the editor at KKomarni@Eastern.edu. f Like us on facebook.com/PRISMmagazine. k Follow us on Twitter @PRISMMag1. e Sign up for ePistle, the free weekly e-news also published by Evangelicals for Social Action. EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org/ePistle.

Join the conversation! We look forward to connecting with you.

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by Tegan Marie Brozyna Picasso once famously said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” In a child’s imagination anything is possible; a stick becomes a sword, a rock is a pirate ship, and the family cat is a tiger. In the drawings of a child a green unicorn can scamper beneath an orange sky. A child’s creativity recognizes no limits.

As Christians we know that the source of this creativity is our Creator God who breathed life into the world and formed complex humanity from simple dirt. To create is to mimic the Creator.

When artists paint or poets write they reflect the one who formed them and spoke them into being. Because we are formed in God’s image, humans at any age have in them an innate creativity, and, as Picasso suggests, the real task is maintaining our inner artist as we age.

Modernity witnessed a growing divide between the art world and the church, with a significant amount of distrust and unease on both sides. But over the past 50 years, people of faith have been trying to reconcile this gap and help the church find its way back to God-inspired creativity. The first generation of artists of faith to lead the way found their voice

groanings from within, and others would miss the enrichment of seeing how the Lord moves in our lives. Being in community with like-minded artists has created a bond or family tie where once I felt alone, different, and isolated.”

Art also helps us to better understand ourselves. Like the Psalms, art is an outlet to express our joys and our sorrows. Says VineArts participant Alyee Willets, “Creating an art series about my recovery from anorexia in seven paintings brought me closer to Jesus, because I could visually express the process of brokenness that was bringing me to my knees in front of the Father for the first time...We are his hands. We hold his brushes to the canvas he has given us.

I show up because I can show his glory, bring his healing, and reveal his majesty through my art in places mere words cannot go.”

It is the desire to take that healing beyond the walls of the church that led to the creation of VineHearts, an outreach that brings art experiences to marginalized populations. Whether to a frightened young woman facing an unwanted pregnancy, a refugee family dealing with displacement, a lonely man in a nursing home, or a victim of domestic violence processing her pain, VineHearts provides an artistic outlet for expression and healing.

The folks behind VineArts believe that art is worshipful and that creativity breathes life into dry bones and reinvigorates the soul as well as the community.

Church member Samuel Burns testifies to this: “I was someone who didn’t ‘know a thing about art,’” he says, “but just being in the church, seeing how much status quo has been ‘destroyed’ in such a beautiful, holy way through God’s hand and many hands covered in paint, I now do know a thing or two about art. The VineArts team has been a witness and inspiration to me that I do have a creative side—and it cannot go to waste!” !

Learn more at VineArtsBoise.org.

Art & Soul

Beyond Words

in the 1960s and ’70s. These forbearers worked openly as Christians in the art world, formed art departments in Christian colleges where there previously had been none, and also created organizations like Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), which seeks to support Christian artists as they relate to the church and to the world. Today, a new wave of artists of faith are reinterpreting the place of art in the church.

In 2004 the Vineyard Boise Church in Idaho launched VineArts in order to attend to and grow the gift of creativity in their community. The program was birthed when church member and artist Jessie Nilo felt a call to to bridge the gap between art and worship. Nilo knew that art and creativity could serve God, church, and community as well as reach out to artists both inside and outside the church.

Prior to the formation of VineArts, few leaders or members of the church expressed interest in engaging art, let alone in using art as ministry. However, as more people discovered the freeing and worshipful qualities of creating, the program caught on. Like life-giving red blood cells bringing oxygen to all parts of the body, VineArts now serves hundreds of men, women, and children in the church as well as in the greater community, reaching out to artists and non-artists alike to nurture their creativity, artistic ability, and spirituality. The mission has expanded to include open studio sessions, workshops hosted by teaching artists, art-focused Bible studies, and quarterly themed exhibitions in the church’s gallery. Writing, design, multimedia, culinary arts, and gallery-hopping groups meet regularly throughout the year. The goal is to encourage every church participant to grow in Christ, connect with others, and worship God through creative play and an engaged imagination.

“Doing art at my church gives me a forum to express what the Spirit of God has laid upon my heart when words are not deep enough,” says VineArts artist Sherri Coffield. “Without this form of expression I wouldn’t be able to share my

Tegan Marie Brozyna is a Philadelphia artist, writer, and illustrator. She recently completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship program with the New York Center for Arts and Media Studies in Manhattan.

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May I Have a Word?

A Grief Accompanied

by Thomas Allbaugh The spring after my sister died in a car accident, I gave a copy of C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed to my mother. It seemed a good idea at the time—the book was about grief, after all, and Mom was sad. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that Lewis’ book couldn’t lessen the suffering of those in mourning.

How could it? Lewis’ account of his loss of nerves, his inability to concentrate, his desire to be alone, and his simultaneous fear of being left alone— these are merely descriptions of hunger pains to someone who is starving. Whatever I thought I was doing in giving Mom the book, it wasn’t an act of compassion.

One truly compassionate gesture that was offered to Mom that spring came from my usually inexpressive brother. Early on Easter morning, he placed on the kitchen table an Easter card my sister had written to our parents two years earlier. This simple act had an almost miraculous effect. The momentary light of my sister’s presence was brief, but it gave us a glimpse of someone we loved dearly and missed terribly.

I wasn’t a Christian at the time I read (and offered) A Grief Observed, but I knew that Lewis was sometimes seen

by Christians as offering real answers to real questions about the big issues in life.

Eventually I came to see who might benefit from such a book—not people who are suffering from loss, but rather the outside observers who find themselves in close proximity of grief and would like to offer their support—unless, of course, they’d rather not go there.

Many people don’t. “The heart of the wise dwells in the house of mourning,” says the proverb, but suffering people tend to frighten off the self-protective among us. Even those who would like to help often have no idea how to go about it.

A year after my sister’s death, I still found myself telling people about her.

Shrouded in my own grief, I had to talk.

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Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Rom. 12:15

I can’t be sure, but I think some people tried to avoid me.

There does come a point in grief, of course, when people turn the corner and stop talking. Painful as it seems, I found I was moving on. A distant shore came into view. Most people do eventually get there, but many must navigate through the twin reefs of clichéd well-wishing (It’s all for the best; Your loved one is in a better place; At least you have other as well. We must grieve hard and well children/siblings, etc; Isn’t it time to move before we can pass through to the other on now?), which only tends to make the side. grieving person feel angry and misunderI found it difficult to imagine life stood, and dead silence from those who without my sister. I had to grieve not refrain from speaking for fear of spouting only the immediate loss of her physical clichés. presence, but also the future ramificaSadly, one can go through this jourtions—she would not be at my wedding; ney of grief and get to the other side my children would never know her as and still not know how to help people their aunt. Today, over 25 years later, I who are in the grip of it themselves. still miss her.

Merely living through grief doesn’t autoI still don’t completely understand matically give us insight or ability. It takes what others are going through when they a conscious act of helping, and it starts grieve. But when accompanying them I with recognizing the symptoms. It’s there understand enough to try the opposite in the nerves that Lewis speaks of, the of what might come naturally, even to inattentiveness, the "maudlin" sensibility. say things that others fear will make the After that, it takes a kind of other-awareperson more sorrowful. When grieving, it ness that says, “Okay, I see this. Let me is a relief to hear someone say “It must just wait here for them and see what be so difficult” instead of “You’ll feel bethappens. Maybe nothing will. Maybe they ter soon.” When accompanying people in need to rage. Maybe they need to show their grief, honor their loved one by remisome pictures or tell a story. Whatever it niscing about that person—talk about all is, I’m available.” the wonderful things she did or what he Whatever our approach to grief, it is was that you so sorely miss. Hold them, best to remember that there is nothing hear them, and don’t hurry them as you anyone can do to shorten the process. walk them through this valley. ❖ Grief will often grow wider and deeper Would you like to get a word in? before it begins to abate. Like a great If so, submit your 800-word wound that inhibits us from using a part opinion piece for consideration to of our body as we once did, the loss KKomarni@Eastern.edu. of a loved one Thomas Allbaugh is an associate professor of changes us. We English at Azusa Pacific University in Southern need to underCalifornia, where he coordinates faculty for stand that in losthe freshman writing seminar and teaches ing our loved one undergraduate courses in composition and creative we have lost a nonfiction. part of ourselves

Jeroen M. Peters

by David P. Gushee

T

hree decades ago, Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argued in his famous book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory that contemporary Western society lives on the half-understood fragments of previous philosophies and theologies. We lack a shared framework of meaning. Layers of once vibrant worldviews sediment our world; none of them is dominant, none of them compelling to everyone.

MacIntyre’s claim came back to me in March during a trip to Kiev, Ukraine, where I was teaching a course in political theology to students at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Semi-

triumphant church.

We considered the Christendom period, with its millennia-long marriage of the church with the state. We studied how in the West, Christendom was finally rejected, beginning with Christian dissenters who demanded religious liberty—the beginning of the end for state-established orthodoxy in the West, with the change first enshrined formally in the US First Amendment. But in Kiev, of course, as throughout the East, Christendom survived much longer, finally giving way under the violent assault of Communist atheism beginning in 1917. It was clear in Kiev that in the Christian East they skipped the gradual secularization stage altogether, jumping right from royalist Christendom to atheistic Communism. The entire region still seems to be struggling from the trauma of that transition, whose only remotely similar western precedent was the French Revolution.

Toward the end of the course, we reviewed the major political ideologies that arose in the wake of Christendom’s demise—liberalism, democracy, conservatism, nationalism, socialism, and fascism. We considered their occasional truths and their many lies. We saw that fragments of each of these ideologies remain with us both in the West and in the East.

Ukrainians hope for a better future but have few usable resources from their past. nary. The combination of the setting and the subject, provoked these perhaps mordant reflections.

My course surveyed biblical resources and themes for political theology. We considered the Genesis 1-11 texts, the Exodus, biblical law, the Israelite kingship, and the Hebrew prophets.

Then we considered the significance of Jesus’ person and ministry, including his proclamation of the Kingdom of God and his way of relating to government and violence. I was reminded of the continued fecundity of these themes—and yet it can be questioned whether they really amount to a coherent “biblical political theology.”

Next we turned to the history of Christian political thought over our long two millennia. We looked at the countercultural moral teaching of the early church. We lingered over the significance of the Constantinian transition, trying to reenter that moment in which the persecuted church became the tolerated church and finally the

Kingdom Ethics

From Kiev to Kansas City

Kiev is a city that has seen some version of almost all of the foregoing: established Eastern Orthodoxy, communism, Ukrainian nationalism, Nazism, more communism, and now 20 partly promising but also quite unsteady years of parliamentary democracy. So much blood has been spilled on Ukrainian soil, especially in the disastrous 20th century! The city of Kiev today memorializes the victims of the 1932-33 terror-famine under Stalin, the victims of Nazism (including tens of thousands of Jews), and all who died in World War II. It is the graveyard of millions of ideology’s victims.

Ukrainians hope for a far better future but have few usable resources from their past. Evangelicals, at least, have no interest in a revival of an established Orthodox Ukrainian state.

Obviously, no Christian here yearns for communism or Nazism. They know the dangers of tribalism and nationalism.

They are not impressed by the current functioning of their fragile liberal democracy, if it is that. They don’t readily know how a small evangelical minority can best contribute to public life in the Ukraine of 2012.

We live in a very different context in the United States, but can anyone identify any similarities? At least this: a dysfunctional democracy and a bewildered, divided Christian witness to the state. Each faction in both church and state draws on some fragmentary wisdom from the past, some ideological morsel that makes sense to some proportion of the population but nothing that commands the adherence of everyone. And so, whether in Kiev or Kansas City, we muddle through the best we can—grateful for grace and surely in need of it. ✟

David P. Gushee is director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, Atlanta, Ga., where he is also a professor of Christian ethics. He is the author or coauthor of a dozen books, including the forthcoming book A New Evangelical Manifesto: A Kingdom Vision for the Common Good (Chalice, 2012).

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Shiho Fukado

Tomato

Field hands, faith groups, and ordinary c industry that squeezes the lifeblood from 10

PRISM Magazine

stice

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Juice

by Tim Høiland

citizens are demanding dignity from an m its workers.

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Scott Robertson

W

elcome to Immokalee. You’ve likely never heard of this small town in southwest Florida, and by most accounts that’s perfectly understandable. With a population of just under 25,0001—nearly half of whom live below the poverty line2— it doesn’t have quite the allure found in other parts of the Sunshine State.

But if you’ve ever eaten a tomato in the winter, chances are good that it came from the fields of Immokalee.

Not that the land or the climate is particularly conducive to tomato farming; agriculture in this part of Florida is a relatively recent phenomenon. Immokalee was originally home to the Calusa and Seminole tribes who passed through the area while hunting its swamps for alligators and other wildlife. Eventually the swamps were drained, and in the 1920s a railroad was built, which led to an influx of settlers and immigrant farmworkers responding to the demand for food for the growing settlement.3 It has been farmland ever since, though its sandy soil leaves much to be desired. The area’s humid climate is conducive to tomato-eating pests, and tomatoes thrive best in hot, dry climates. But poor soil quality and ubiquitous pests have been no match for science. Thanks to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, these natural obstacles have largely been offset, and red tomatoes are enjoyed year-round, from sea to shining sea.

End of story, right? Well…not exactly.

Life at the bottom of the food chain

Picking tomatoes in Florida’s blistering heat is backbreaking work, and it doesn’t pay much. For this reason, growers rely heavily on migrant farmworkers willing to do the work most American citizens are unwilling or unable to do.

Like many farmworkers, 21-year-old Wilson Perez came to Immokalee to provide for his family back home in Guatemala.4 On a typical day, he gets up at 4 a.m. and makes his way to a parking lot in town where he and hundreds of others wait for work for the day. Able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 40 are often selected, but as Perez says, even so “you have to continue to have good luck and be hired back day after day.”

On good days, Perez is selected by a crew leader and taken to the field where he and his fellow day laborers will pick tomatoes. It is often 10 or 11 a.m. before work begins, and the pay doesn’t kick in until the workers start picking. Moving row after row, hunched low to the ground, Perez fills his 32-pound bucket. When it’s full, he hoists it onto his shoulder and carries it hurriedly to a waiting truck, which may be 100 feet or more away. Then he gets back to where he left off and continues picking.

This is repeated bucket after bucket, hour after hour, day after day.

Farmworkers like Perez are typically paid 50 cents per bucket, a rate that has remained stagnant for three decades. In fact, taking inflation into account, today’s pay

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is only half what it was then.5 A single worker needs to pick 2.5 tons of tomatoes every day just to earn minimum wage.6 But low wages are just the beginning of the problem.

“Women face sexual harassment,” Perez says. “Sometimes you’re not paid for the work you’ve done, and many times your basic rights are not respected by your employer.

That’s why we’re working hard to get a better wage and to be treated more justly on the job.”

Perez’s experience in the tomato fields of Immokalee can arguably be seen as a poignant subset of agriculture in the United States today. According to the National Center for Farmworker Health (NCFH), more than 3 million migrant farmworkers labor in the United States today, effectively serving as “the backbone for a multi-billion dollar

Farmworkers are typically paid 50 cents per bucket, a rate that has remained stagnant for three decades. A single worker needs to pick 2.5 tons of tomatoes every day just to earn minimum wage.

{Chew on these} $10,891 = Federal poverty line for one person in 2011. $10,000 = Typical annual income of seasonal farm worker in the US. $5,231 = Average annual grocery spending by four-person families in the US. $15

= Estimated increase in annual grocery spending per household if farm wages increased by 40 percent.

From The American Way of Eating by Tracie McMillan (Scribner, 2012)

agricultural industry.” The NCFH also says that three of five farmworker families live below the poverty line,7 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) lists farmworkers as some of the lowest paid workers in the country.8 And it’s especially dangerous work: In agriculture, hunting, and fishing (which are grouped together in BLS statistics), almost 27 deaths occur per 100,000 workers, a rate nearly eight times higher than the average for all private sector jobs.9

Ground zero for slavery

For many in Florida, working conditions are even worse than the pay. In his recent book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Andrews McMeel, 2011), author and food writer Barry Estabrook writes, “If you’ve ever eaten a tomato during the winter you’ve eaten a fruit picked by a slave.”

Indeed, over the past 15 years, seven slavery cases have successfully been prosecuted in Florida, resulting in 1,200 slaves being freed. At least two additional slavery Mario Menjivar, an Immokalee farmworker, joined hundreds of other farmhands and advocates for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' six-day Fast for Fair Food, held outside the headquarters of Publix in Lakeland, Fla., in March. (Photo by Smriti Keshari)

investigations are currently underway. And by all accounts this is only the tip of the iceberg. Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant US attorney in Fort Myers, Fla., said that the tomato fields in and near Immokalee constitute “ground zero for modern-day slavery.”10 “Molloy is not talking about virtual slavery, or near slavery, or slavery-like conditions, but real slavery,” Estabrook writes. “Workers were ‘sold’ to crew bosses to pay off bogus debts, beaten if they didn’t feel like working or were too sick or weak to work, held in chains, pistolwhipped, and locked at night into shacks in chain-link enclosures patrolled by armed guards. Escapees who got caught were beaten or worse. Corpses of murdered [farmworkers] were not an uncommon sight in the rivers and canals of South Florida.”11 When I spoke with Estabrook, he explained just how difficult it is for prosecutors to win slavery convictions in Florida, or elsewhere in the US for that matter. “The ones we see represent a fraction of a fraction of what’s going on,” he said. “Even if a case is brought to light before law enforcement, it’s rare that it can be prosecuted—and rarer still that it comes to light in the first place.”

This is certainly due in part to the fact that once free, former slaves—often migrant farmworkers—are likely to flee the country for their lives. And to successfully prosecute slaveholders, Estabrook says, “you need witnesses willing to stick around to face those who have threatened to kill them for years—very violent people in most cases.”

Prosecutors, meanwhile, are reluctant to bring charges against suspected perpetrators unless they have an ironclad case. If they fail to win a

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The children who feed America

by Tim Høiland The Harvest (La Cosecha) is a documentary by Cinema Libre Studio exposing the deeply troubling reality that in the United States there are approximately 400,000 children who pick the food we eat. The sons and daughters of migrant farmworkers, they work in Florida’s tomato fields, Michigan’s apple orchards, and Texas’ onion fields, seven days a week, sometimes more than 12 hours a day. Born into families on the move, these children bounce from place to place, doing their best just to be kids while also contributing to their families’ shaky livelihoods.

Among those we meet in the film is Victor Huapilla, 16, who lives in Quincy, Fla., and takes an active role in caring for his siblings. “I’m really happy that my younger sisters are going to school,” he says. “They are not out in the field breaking their backs picking the tomato all day. In the school you get fed, there’s air conditioning, everything.” This, of course, is in stark contrast with those children, like Victor, who spend their days toiling in the fields.

We’re also introduced to Perla Sanchez, 14, whose older brother died in a waiting room at the hospital, allegedly because the family lacked health insurance. She was born in the US, but, because of the color of her skin and since her family is forced to move from place to place, she is considered an outsider. Nonetheless, she’s determined to become a lawyer so she can help other families in similar situations.

Migrant farmworkers are arguably some of the hardest working people in the country, doing work that most Americans, if hired, quit in less than a week. They are also the most desperately poor, but in this film their persistence in seeking a better future shines through. The Harvest provides a deeply personal glimpse into the hopes and fears of the children who feed America and help keep their families afloat.

Learn more at TheHarvestFilm.com. conviction, after all, the suspect goes free and the lives of countless people could be put in imminent danger.

Toxic tomato fields

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Scott Robertson

Estabrook didn’t have slavery in mind when he started researching the tomato industry.

Rather, as a food writer, the journey that led him to Immokalee began with curiosity about the tastelessness of store-bought tomatoes. What he discovered at the root of the problem was the use—and astonishing abuse—of pesticides.

Winter tomatoes grown in Immokalee, Estabrook writes, “are bred for hardness, picked when still firm and green (the merest trace of pink is taboo), and artificially gassed with ethylene in warehouses until they acquire the rosy-red skin tones of a ripe tomato.”

Over the course of a growing season, growers use up to 110 different chemicals, Estabrook says, “including

some of the most potent, toxic chemicals in industrialized agriculture’s arsenal.”12 The ramifications of this chemical use for those who will eventually eat the tomatoes is troubling in itself, considering that traces of 35 pesticides have been found on tomatoes in supermarket produce aisles.13 But there is no escaping the fact that farmworkers bear the overwhelming brunt of the harmful effects of these chemicals.

Estabrook interviewed dozens of farmworkers, and the vast majority told of being sprayed with chemicals directly and repeatedly while picking tomatoes. In some particularly troubling cases, women who worked in the fields while pregnant gave birth to children with severe birth defects. “It simply demonstrates callous disregard [by the growers] to spray that sort of stuff on workers,” Estabrook says, adding, “and especially on pregnant women.”

Fortunately, the men and women who endure these conditions out of economic necessity

do have their advocates. And, as has been true throughout US history, Christians and other people of faith have been instrumental in the movement for improved wages and working conditions for farmworkers.

¡Sí, se puede!

The most iconic figure in the history of the farmworker movement is undoubtedly César Chávez (1927-1993), a Mexican American farmworker himself who founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which was later named the United Farm Workers (UFW). Through strikes, boycotts, and “spiritual fasts,” Chávez led the UFW to previously unprecedented gains, including collective bargaining rights for all farmworkers in California.14 Chávez’s longtime press secretary and personal aide was Marc Grossman, who continues to work as spokesman for the UFW as well as communications director for the César Chávez Foundation. As a student at the University of California, Irvine, in the 1960s, Grossman studied American history and participated in grape boycotts, as did many of his peers. Upon graduation Grossman concluded that “being part of history would be a lot more interesting than just reading about it,” so he joined the UFW.15 Grossman told me that, in his opinion, three great innovations were at the heart of Chávez’s success. First, for both philosophical and practical reasons, Chávez insisted on nonviolence—something that was not a hallmark of the labor movement at the time. Second, he emphasized

voluntary poverty, rooted in the belief that he couldn’t organize the poor if he didn’t share in their plight. And third, he pioneered the boycott as a way of transferring the front lines from the fields (where farmworkers were relatively defenseless) to the cities (where students, union activists, consumers, and faith groups could participate).

Though Chávez is often described by biographers as a devout Catholic, such characterizations are a bit too simplistic, says Dr. Luís León, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, who is currently working on a book about Chávez’s faith.16 “He was raised Catholic, baptized Catholic, and had a Catholic sensibility,” León told me. “But his Catholicism was not orthodox Catholicism.”

Rather, he simply identified himself as a Christian—as did the vast majority of US citizens at the time—and he worked to build bridges with a variety of groups, faithbased and otherwise. Though he had nuns, priests, rabbis, and liberal Protestant leaders on the front lines of the movement from the start, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops didn’t offer their official support until 1973.

Interestingly, Chávez also garnered widespread support from Pentecostals, despite the fact that they had traditionally been apolitical.

“When Chávez moved to the Central Valley [of California],” León says, “he went from house to house, knocking on doors, looking for those who would support the movement. He quickly encountered Pentecostal house churches,

Felipe Timoteo Perez, a farmworker and CIW member, stands beside Larry Cox of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights during the ceremony to close the six-day Fast for Fair Food. (Photo by Forest Woodward)

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Before the 200-mile bike “Pilgrimage to Publix” last September, Christians gathered for a “prayin” at a store in South Florida. Brian McLaren was one of the participants who prayed for Publix CEO Ed Crenshaw to do justice to the farmworkers who pick the tomatoes his corporation sells.

(Photos courtesy of Interfaith Action)

and they became some of the first members [of the UFW].”

Chávez drew inspiration for his work from Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and St. Francis of Assisi. It was from Gandhi, León says, that Chávez gleaned the insight that he could not understand the suffering of the poor unless he was among them. Like St. Francis, Chávez lived very simply, never owning a house or a car or having a bank account. And like King, he made the case to the

At the end of the pray-in, members of the group purchased tomatoes and filled a standard 32-pound bucket like the ones used in the fields. Demonstrating that Publix could easily spare an extra penny per pound, that full bucket—for which a typical farmworker would earn 50 cents—cost $79.63 at the checkout.

American public that being Christian is directly tied to working for social justice, and that to mistreat anyone is an affront to God. But Chávez’ faith can best be understood, León argues, in terms of his commitment to nonviolence—something that stood in stark contrast with other social movements of his day. Though violent struggle was seen by many at the time as the only way to defeat colonialism, racism, and injustice, and while the men at the forefront of these movements were linking violent struggle with spiritual rejuvenation and real masculinity, Chávez saw things far differently.

“I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness,” Chávez said, “is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!”17

The Campaign for Fair Food

What Chávez and the UFW accomplished for those picking grapes in the fields of California has paved the way for further victories in the farmworker movement nationwide, and people of faith continue to be integrally involved. In the tomato fields of southwestern Florida, the farmworker movement has been driven by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and its allies.

CIW is a member-driven organization made up of farmwork-

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ers, which got its start in a borrowed room at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Immokalee in 1993, when workers began meeting weekly to discuss how they might best effect change in the fields. From these humble origins, the CIW has grown to 4,000 members and has already brought considerable changes to the tomato industry.18 For one thing, the CIW has had an active role in the investigation and prosecution of several slavery cases in Florida, including one that is currently ongoing. Two years ago, coinciding with the release of the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the CIW for being “an independent and pressing voice as they uncover slavery rings, tap the power of the workers, and hold companies and governments accountable.”19 Beginning in 2001, the CIW organized a boycott of Taco Bell, putting pressure on the major fast food chain to address unjust working conditions and low wages in its supply chain, particularly in the fields where its tomatoes were picked.

The “Boot the Bell” campaign garnered support at colleges and high schools across the country, and a variety of faith groups, labor organizations, and community members all helped to galvanize the campaign. In the spring of 2005, the pressure became so strong that Taco Bell agreed to meet all demands and to “work with the CIW to improve working and pay conditions for farmworkers in the Florida tomato fields.”20 With the end of its boycott against Taco Bell, the CIW launched its Campaign for Fair Food, calling on the remaining key players in the tomato industry to agree and adhere to a Fair Food Code of Conduct. Among other requirements, the code ensures that workers

Faith Moves Mountains Campaign

by Tim Høiland

Farmerworkers biked 200 miles last fall to speak with the CEO of Publix supermarkets. He refused to meet with them. (Photo courtesy of Interfaith Action)

]

Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida, in conjunction with members of the clergy in Florida, have launched the “Faith Moves Mountains Campaign,” calling on members of congregations across the country to join in prayer, asking God to change the hearts of those who lead Publix and others who have not yet agreed to provide fair wages and just working conditions for farmworkers in the tomato industry. A powerful threeand-a-half-minute video featuring several Christian leaders, including Brian McLaren, is available on the campaign’s website, and DVDs can be requested for use in your congregation or small group.

You’ll also find a variety of resources to help educate fellow church members and friends, including a printable prayer card and bulletin insert. In addition, you can organize a letter-writing campaign in your church, or urge members to take their letters with them when they shop. Finally, you can request “penny folders” which can then be sent to Publix, with contributions of pennies, urging them to agree to pay an additional penny per pound.

Learn more at InterfaithAct.org/FaithMovesMountains.

are paid an additional penny per pound. While that may sound insignificant, it actually nearly doubles what workers currently earn. The code also calls for an actual clockin system to ensure that workers earn at least minimum wage and that they get paid for all time spent on the job.

The code also provides for a complaint resolution system for reporting abuse of any kind—unlawful use of chemicals, sexual harassment and abuse, or even suspected cases of slavery.

Following the landmark agreement with Taco Bell, the campaign focused its efforts on the other leading fast food chains. In 2007, McDonald’s agreed to meet all demands and also committed to help develop a third party system for monitoring abuses in the fields. Burger King and Subway soon signed on as well.

Next, the campaign turned its attention to the food service industry, and in 2009 and 2010, Aramark, Bon Appétit Management Co., Compass Group, and Sodexo—the leading companies in that sector—signed the agreement as well.21 The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative representing 90 percent of Florida’s tomato growers, originally fought the fair food agreements tooth and nail. By the end of 2010, though, it too had agreed to cooperate.22 Following the announcement, a New York Times editorial called it a “remarkable victory,” and while recognizing that the agreement wouldn’t change everything overnight, it said that “part of the farm industry is pointing in the right direction.”23

With the major players in the fast food and food service sectors on board, and with full participation from the growers association, workers have begun to experience better pay and improved working conditions, but the fight is not over yet. With two exceptions—Whole Foods Market, an early ally beginning in 2007, and Trader Joe’s, which signed an agreement earlier this year—the supermarket sector continues to resist pressure to cooperate.24 What the Campaign for Fair Food has clearly shown is that getting companies to agree to the terms of the code of conduct is far from easy, but that given enough time, and with farmworkers, student groups, church members, and ordinary consumers of tomatoes all speaking with a unified voice, companies—supermarkets included—will have no choice but to comply.

The home stretch

One of the major grocery chains in Florida and throughout the southeastern US is Publix, which has its headquarters in Lakeland, Fla. After years of failed attempts by the CIW to initiate dialogue with Publix and its CEO, Ed Crenshaw, about participation in the Campaign for Fair Food, the farmworkers decided it was time to pay him a visit themselves.

So a 200-mile bike ride—the “Pilgrimage to Publix”— was planned for last August and September. Organized

by CIW, churches along the route from Immokalee to Lakeland provided places for the riders to stay, prepared home-cooked meals, and offered prayers of encourage-

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“It was a very beautiful experience to ride 200 miles to Lakeland to struggle together for a better life for farmworkers. And it let me know that we’re not alone. That motivates us to keep going with our work.” ment and support.

At the start of the trek, a small group of Christian allies convened at a Publix store in North Naples, Fla., along with Wilson Perez and another farmworker.25 They gathered in the produce aisle to pray that Publix’ management would have a change of heart.

Among those present for the “pray-in” was author, speaker, and Christian activist Brian McLaren. “It was a great event,” he told me. “It brought together clergy from the area at a very local level, and allowed us to make a statement to the management of the store, to the CEO, and to the public at large.

“It was respectful, not vengeful,” he added. While there is danger in praying to be seen, at times it is the faithful thing to do, said McLaren, referencing the biblical account of Daniel who defied the authorities of his day in order to pray publicly to the one true God. “By all accounts I have heard, Ed Crenshaw and his family are committed Christians and wonderful people—so we hoped that prayer is a language they would understand.”26 At the end of the pray-in, members of the group each purchased tomatoes and filled a standard 32-pound bucket like the ones used in the fields. Demonstrating that Publix could easily spare an extra penny per pound, that

( 18

full bucket—for which a typical farmworker would earn 50 cents—cost $79.63 at the checkout.

So Perez and the team of riders made their way to Publix headquarters, hoping to speak with Crenshaw himself.

“For my part, I’ve never been part of anything like it,” Perez told me later. “I had never seen such a great outpouring of support from churches and supporters as we did on that trip. Many people told us we were doing a good job and urged us to keep moving forward in our struggle, and this gave us a lot of inspiration to continue.

It was a very beautiful experience to ride 200 miles to Lakeland to struggle together for a better life for farmworkers. And it let me know that we’re not alone. That motivates us to keep going with our work.”

Jordan Buckley, who works closely with the CIW as part of Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida and who also participated in the bike ride, agreed. “It was a touching, inspiring experience to be housed and have our meals provided by congregations,” he said. “They included us in their prayers, and it was a great experience to be able to invite those we crossed paths with to pray not just for us but also for those making the decisions at companies like Publix.”27 When the riders reached Lakeland, dozens of others joined them for the final leg across town to Publix’s corporate offices. There they were met by a crowd of enthusiastic and committed supporters from the surrounding area.

One pastor read an open letter, signed by 31 members of the clergy, calling on Publix to commit to fair food practices. The Rev. Kent Siladi, the Conference Minister of the United Church of Christ in Florida, prayed, “For those who have ridden the 200 miles, for their commitment, for their courage, for their discipline, and for the way in which you, God, have guided them, we do give thanks.”28 Outside the offices’ security gate, the riders were met

Extra bite In The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table (Scribner, 2012), investigative journalist Tracie McMillan works alongside America’s working poor in order to examine how we eat. She explains why higher farm wages might not mean costlier produce and why subsidizing demand instead of production might be the best way to fix American agriculture.

In Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Andrews McMeel, 2011), Barry Estabrook describes the chemical warfare and slavery endemic in the industrial tomato crop, explains how the fruit has been stripped of flavor/nutrition and how it can be fixed, and examines the Fair Food Agreement of 2010.

PRISMmagazine.org

)

by a public relations representative for Publix who declined to provide his name but informed them that Crenshaw would not be meeting with them and asked them to leave the property. A farmworker named Oscar Otzoy wasn’t ready to give up, saying, “We want you to do the right thing. Until now, your company has ignored our poverty wages and bad conditions, including the slavery that you refuse to recognize exists here in Florida.”29 The public relations representative thanked them and again asked them to leave.

Before the crowd of supporters dispersed, Brian McLaren led the group in a call and response, expressing frustration with the unresponsiveness on the part of Publix and Crenshaw and making clear that those pursuing justice and dignity for the farmworkers who form the backbone of the tomato industry would not be giving up anytime soon.

“I believe that things will change,” Perez told me. “In fact, things are already changing. The victories we’ve had already have been big reasons for hope. My colleagues are being trained so they know their rights under the new code of conduct, and their pay has increased with each new victory. So I’m full of hope, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes—each corporation that comes on board results in an increase to our pay, improves the chances that our work will be honored, and means that we can have a more dignified workplace.”

The rules of the game

Our economy is built on the law of supply and demand, and the tomato industry is no exception. The fact of the matter is that we will keep demanding tomatoes, and supermarkets—like fast food chains and food service providers—will continue to supply them. But we can demand more. We can demand that the tomatoes we purchase contribute to the dignity and wellbeing of those who pick them; slavery cannot be tolerated anywhere in the supply chain. We can demand that farmworkers be paid a penny more per pound—at least minimum wage. We can demand that tomatoes are grown with reasonable precautions; for starters, workers shouldn’t be sprayed with pesticides. And we can demand that workers’ voices are heard and that they are respected as key players in the tomato industry.

When demand for tomato justice is strong enough—and it’s getting stronger by the day—supermarkets will have no choice but to supply it.

Raise your voice Susan Sampson of Seffner Presbyterian Church in Tampa joined CIW's six-day Fast for Fair Food, held outside Publix headquarters in March.

(Photo by Forest Woodward)

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) was founded in 1993 by Southwest Florida tomato pickers to fight for better wages and working conditions in the field. Many important US labor laws specifically exclude farmworkers, including the laws that protect workers’ rights to organize and to earn overtime pay.

The CIW holds weekly meetings to help workers analyze the reasons for their poverty and harsh working conditions and to build their strength as a community to demand change from the forces that determine those conditions.

Their Campaign for Fair Food, launched in 2001, continues to gain victories for farmworkers. Do your part: Take action by sending letters, emails, and postcards to the corporate headquarters of Publix, Kroger, Ahold, or Chipotle. You’ll find everything you need at CIW-online.org/action.html.

Scott Robertson

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

Tim Høiland is an advocacy journalist and a regular contributor to PRISM, writing about the intersections of faith, development, justice, and peace in the Americas. Read more at tjhoiland.com.

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“Just kids being kids” or

Justice for Kids?

Moving towards a Christian response to bullying

by Margot Starbuck

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his book No More Bullies: For Those Who Wound or Are Wounded. His story puts human flesh on the current rise in school bullying.

Whether we were raised watching Little Rascals, Little House on the Prairie, or Stuart Little, many of us have resigned ourselves to the fact that, at the end of the day, the dull, muscle-bound bully will have confiscated the lunch money of the weak underdog. Kids will be kids, right? For years, too many adults have been willing to shrug off bullying as one of the unpreventable chronic difficulties of childhood. And though we know instinctively that it’s not right, few of us have been willing to stand

Gemenacom

W

hen the moist gym towel snapped, it caught the prepubescent boy between the legs. Frank was the smallest and weakest boy in the locker room, and his tormentors laughed when he cried out in pain. Raising a knee to protect his groin, Frank slipped, falling toward a bench of amused onlookers. Impulsively pushed away, he fell, naked, into another wet body.

“Get off me, you fag!” barked one.

Another demanded, “Hey, squirt, you looking for trouble?”

Popular Christian author Frank Peretti describes, in excruciating detail, the abuse he endured in childhood in

up and declare it to be wrong.

Today Peretti, and others, recognizing the inherent evil of bullying, are asking if this might not be the moment for Christians to take a stand. Dan Weiss, former senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family, remarks, “Bullying has come to the fore of national consciousness in the past few years, and it is time our culture takes this more seriously. The call of Christ is always for the downtrodden and, unfortunately, it seems Christians have been slow to respond.”

Will evangelicals who are concerned with social justice—liberating the captives, healing the sick, and feeding the hungry—respond to school bullying? Will we engage today with those who are bruised and bound by fear and shame to offer hope? Christians today are being presented with the opportunity both to think theologically about bullying and to implement creative solutions to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Just the facts

Across the nation, the number of students who are reporting being bullied is on the rise. In the fall of 2011, Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), reported to the second annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit that 28 percent of students between the ages of 12 and 18 reported being bullied during the 2008-2009 school year. In 2003, just five years earlier, only 7 percent of students had reported being bullied.1 The trajectory is disturbing. And though the meaning of the numbers is debated, with some suggesting that bullying is only reported more frequently now, the fact remains that more than one in four students experience bullying in school today.

Increasingly the two-dimensional stereotype of the hulking dumb thug fails. Today boys are bullying and girls are bullying. Weiss explains, “Bullies are children who have their own wounds, insecurities, and traumas and are dealing with them by reenacting those traumas on others.” Some of these children who bully have endured abuse or neglect at home. Others have endured bullying at school. Weiss wisely adds, “Not all bullies come from what we consider to be a classic broken home where divorce, abuse, or neglect has occurred.

Many bullies come from intact and otherwise well-off families. Yet our culture has grown increasingly narcissistic and digitized, the combination of which has opened up the door to greater opportunities to hurt others.”

Easy access to graphic pornography, much of which is no more than sexualized bullying, means that many young people are indoctrinated from an early age in the art of bullying and dominating those they perceive as weak or unworthy of respect.

Not only can we not predict with accuracy who will bully, we also cannot predict who the victims will be.

Data collected by the NCES about victims’ age, school

performance, income, gender, and race yielded no identifiable trends or patterns that might identify why a student would or would not be bullied. The blight is even impacting children’s ability to learn. Nationally acclaimed youth speaker Mark Brown reports that every day 150,000 children stay home from school to avoid bullies.2 Children are not only bullying in person, they’re doing it remotely. One-fourth of students who’ve been bullied report being cyberbullied—harassed through technology such as computers or cell phones. Some of this harassment is sexual. The American Association of University Women reports that 81 percent of students in US schools will experience some form of sexual harassment, with 27 percent experiencing it often.3 Students report that bullying is happening in parking lots, hallways, and even in classrooms. While some assaults are physical, the NCES has found that twice as many students were attacked verbally—mocked, called names, or insulted in a very hurtful way—than those who experienced physical violence.

If bullying is on the rise, despair is as well. The Center for Disease Control reports that suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers, with 14 percent of high school students saying they have considered it.4 Yale University studies reveal that victims of bullying are two to nine times more likely to consider taking their own lives than nonvictims.5

Paying attention to the signs

While the face of bullying varies, StopBullying.gov recognizes that three factors are always present in bullying situations. The first factor is imbalance of power. People who bully use their power to control or harm, and the people being bullied may have a hard time defending themselves. The second is intent to cause harm. Actions done by accident are not bullying; the person bullying has a goal to cause harm. The third factor is repetition.

Incidents of bullying happen to the same person over and over by the same person or group.6 If these ring familiar, it’s because they resonate with other pervasive patterns of violence in the culture.

As the church gradually woke up to, and continues to confront, slavery, domestic violence, child abuse, racism, and human trafficking, some, like Peretti and Weiss, say it is time to add bullying to our list of priorities. Peretti observes, “Whether on an international scale, in your own neighborhood, or in your own family, the results are the same: People are no longer intrinsically precious, so it’s easy to find petty reasons to mistreat the weak, the less intelligent, the less affluent, the physically disfigured, or those who, for whatever arbitrary reason, don’t ‘measure up.’”7 And while Christians—led by the likes of William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Jr., and more recently organizations like International Justice Mission— have eventually acted on behalf of the oppressed, we’ve

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Dos & Don’ts for Concerned Adults

communication.” Unfortunately, many adults are simply not equipped to deal with the problem constructively. The trite assurance of the one who casually offers, “Just tell an adult”—which young people know intrinsically often makes the situation worse—provides no more hope of relief to a Do: desperate child or teen than do the canned Bible ✔ Notice cues of mood and lack of interest that verses. Today’s young people deserve more than might suggest your child is struggling. fortune cookie aphorisms, biblical or otherwise. ✔ Make yourself emotionally available to your In order to generate effective solutions it’s child. critical to understand why bullies bully. Often ✔ Practice good listening skills. there is a conflict, internal to the bully, which is ✔ Validate every person’s right to safety. expressed in relation to someone who’s identi✔ Model healthy conflict resolution. fied as being weaker. According to Weiss, they’re ✔ Invest in the life of a teen at church, offender dealing with their own traumas by inflicting them or offended, as a “helping witness.” on others. He explains, “A significant number of ✔ Pay attention to what your child does/ children who admit to bullying others have been experiences online. bullied themselves. Somewhere in this discussion ✔ Access an institution’s anti-bullying policy or we need to recognize the cycle of abuse and becreate one. gin to teach our youth better ways of channeling their frustrations with others.”

Don’t: Just how to do that is the question many are ✘ Assume everything’s going well if your child asking today. Professional sports consultant Garret doesn’t report problems.

Kramer recognizes that stated school or class✘ Ignore the clues your child is communicating. room rules such as “no put downs” and “listen to ✘ Tell a child or yourself that it will get better if each other” are not preventing bullying. He notes, ignored.

“If a student was capable of accepting these ✘ Dismiss a young person’s concerns. anti-bullying ‘ground rules,’ he or she wouldn’t be ✘ Resort to bully-ish behavior when you feel emobehaving badly in the first place.” Rather, Kramer tionally low. claims that the single most critical factor in bul✘ Assume that bullies and victims are somewhere lying is an individual’s state of mind. He explains, else or known by someone else.

“When an individual finds himself or herself in a ✘ Give children unmonitored access to computers, high mood, the urge to bully—if it occurs at all— phones, and other handheld devices. will come and go. But when an individual is in a ✘ Assume schools will deal with the problem. low mood, he or she may look to bullying as the solution to unruly thoughts and feelings.”9 not yet worked together in a systematic way to release Kramer’s insistence that bullying is determined by young people from the suffering of bullying. the state of mind of the bully, as opposed to either outside events or any identifiable characteristic of the victim, resonates with current psychological wisdom.

How do we respond?

Christian young people browsing online for help with bul- Though many children experience difficulties at home or at school, not all bully. Dr. David Stoop, licensed clinical lying can quickly discover what the Bible reportedly says psychologist and executive board member of the Ameriabout bullying. These “verses about bullying” include Jesus’ admonition, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, can Association of Christian Counselors, claims, “We are too easily caught up in that old ‘stimulus causes turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). Also included is response’ way of thinking.”10 That, he claims, is a closed the assurance, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you circuit, a process that cannot be changed. Something falsely on my account” (Matt. 5:1). None provide much else occurs, reports Stoop, between the stimulus and the hope to either vulnerable victims or aggressive bullies. response. That intermediary step is the presence of our Studies have proven that receiving outside supown personal set of beliefs. Beliefs about ourselves, othport is one of the most important factors in dealing ers, and the way the world works can create any variety with bullying.8 Weiss exhorts, “Parents can be involved of responses and consequences in an individual. Negative beliefs about one’s self and others can be expressed in the bullying issue the same way they ought to be through bullying. involved in other issues their children encounter and While Kramer would concur that the stimulusneed help navigating. The best and most important response logic is faulty, he’d identify the x-factor that step is to create and maintain clear and safe lines of

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leads to bullying not as beliefs but as mood. To illustrate, Kramer points to the practice of Maria Venegas, a teacher in Albuquerque, N. Mex. Upon arriving in class each day, Venegas’ middle school students are invited to chart their moods using a “mood meter.” Kramer reports, “Her students have learned that productive behaviors come from moods at the top end of the chart, while unproductive actions—such as bullying—are generated from moods at the bottom of the chart.” The mood meter, helping students notice what’s impacting their behaviors, is working for Venegas.11 Both Stoop and Kramer suggest that increasing the self-awareness of bullies is what leads to changed behavior. This awareness must be integrated into effective anti-bullying strategies.

Consequences beyond punishment

As in the plight of young Frank Peretti, the smallest child in the locker room, bullies will often target a child who is in some way different. When bullying has been related to either an early person’s emerging sexuality or involves teasing about gay parents, some school districts have purposed to sensitize all students by introducing curriculum which includes lessons on diversity. (See “Bullying, from the School Yard to the School Board” on page 25.) In reaction to this inclusive curriculum, in which some recognize an “agenda” of those who promote diversity, the Alliance Defense Fund has created a model anti-bullying policy which depends in large part upon the swift punishment of bullies.

Unfortunately, punishment alone doesn’t effectively transform behavior.

John Heffernan, director of Central Park School for Children in Durham, N.C., an elementary school committed to standing against bullying, warns that simply punishing a bully neither gets at the root cause for the violence nor does it teach children new strategies for relating to others. Nor does didactic conversation effect change. “Just talking about a problem,” says Heffernan, “doesn’t work.”12

Bully (2012) is a documentary that gives voice to five families’ stories, stories that challenge viewers to move from shock and resignation about bullying to action. The Bully Project is a collaborative effort that brings together partner organizations that share a commitment to ending bullying. Learn more about both at TheBullyProject.com.

No More Bullies: For Those Who Wound or Are Wounded by Frank Peretti (Thomas Nelson, 2003) calls on victims, authority figures, and bystanders to speak up and take action, refusing to treat bullying as inevitable.

BullyPolice.org outlines and assesses individual US states’ anti-bullying laws.

See how your state’s laws measure up.

StopBullying.gov provides information from various government agencies on how kids, teens, young adults, parents, educators, and others in the community can prevent or stop bullying.

Bullying and Stop Bullying! is a twopart DVD set from Paraclete Video Productions that shares students’ real-life experiences in order for both kids and adults to get a better grasp on what bullying is and the toll it takes.

The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America’s Schools by Jessie Klein (NYU Press, 2012) explores how bullying results from a culture that promotes aggressive and competitive behavior.

Instead, staff at Central Park School utilize a variety of practices that include using active listening with both parties, facilitating a meeting for students to talk it out with one another, and helping offenders explore other possible solutions for the future. As in Venegas’ Albuquerque classroom, children are invited to examine what’s going on in their own inner world. One of the methods the school employs is a storyboard exercise, with squares aligned in a cartoon sequence, called “social stories.” In it, the child draws pictures which illustrate positive ways to engage with others in the future. Heffernan explains, “Visual cues that help kids with learning disabilities are good for all kids.”

Later, when a child’s own record of the work that’s been done between the bully and victim is sent home to parents, Heffernan explains, “The child realizes that we’re all together on this.”

The approach to bullying at Central Park School has been effective because the school understands that responding to incidents with punishment or lectures or discussion is not transformational. Citing moral leaders like Martin Luther King, Heffernan recognizes that students must develop as whole persons, explaining, “We know that character is more important than intelligence.”

Purposefully providing space for reflection—about mood and beliefs and choices—gives young people opportunity to develop that character.

Reflecting and modeling truth about identity

In our homes and schools and churches Christians can nurture and model relationships which exhibit respect and, when respect fails, reconciliation. In order to mature into functional individuals, children need both to see appropriate relationships in action and to witness the way healthy adults

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work through conflict.

Seventeen-year-old TJ Lane, of Chardon, Ohio, had endured a difficult and sometimes violent home life.

Lane was arrested for the tragic shooting of five fellow students, on February 27, 2012. Many of us would prefer not to imagine that offenders like Lane, or his victims, are in our congregations. But Lane, an active member in his church’s youth group, was exactly like the children and teens we know. According to the research of Dr. Alice Miller, developing relationships with these young people is what makes a difference in their lives.

Miller, in her work with those who experienced abuse and neglect in childhood, discovered the single determining factor separating those who later perpetuated violence and those who did not: the presence of a person Miller calls a “helping witness.” This was a concerned individual—neighbor, aunt, teacher, pastor—who reflected for the child that he or she did not deserve the treatment he or she endured. Children who had access to this helping witness were those who grew up to thrive and to stop the cycle of violence they had endured.

Weiss concurs, “Christians have tremendous opportunities to positively impact the lives of not only those youth who have been bullied but those who are doing the bullying.”13 Both bullies and victims need mature adults to reflect for them the truth about who they are.

In addition to investing in the lives of young people, reflecting their inherent value and worth, Christians can also model reconciliation for children. Weiss observes, “Parents are in the unique position to teach and model healthy ways to manage conflict. They do this by demonstrating good ways of dealing with marital and job

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Suzanne Tucker

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stress. They can pray about situations in front of and with their children. They can model forgiveness and a soft heart for others.”

One savvy mom did this very thing. Jane P. remembers when her son, now 23, was being teased mercilessly at school. When she initiated a conversation with the bully’s mother, the families were able to move toward reconciliation, with the bully eventually apologizing. Seizing the opportunity to build relationship where there was brokenness, the mothers even began exercising together for a season. Young people learn how to work through conflict by observing adults doing it.

Both bullies and their victims need access to those who can function as “helping witnesses,” reflecting the truth about their inherent value and belovedness. According to Miller, the truth reflected by this adult is what actually corrects some of the “beliefs” identified by Dr. Stoop that lead to inappropriate behaviors. Victims whose experience of being bullied has confirmed the lies identified by Peretti—that they are not intrinsically precious—find reflected in the adult the truth of their belovedness as well.

Dan Weiss shares how a “helping witness” impacted his own life. “In seventh grade,” Weiss explains, “I was picked on by an older boy each day after lunch. I was so distraught I finally told my father about it.” Although their relationship was tenuous, Weiss’ father encouraged him to stand up to the bully—with his fists. Weiss continues, “I don’t know if hitting the kid would have solved my problems, as I never got the chance to find out. The next day, empowered by the fact that my dad had my back, I left lunch with a new confidence. That boy didn’t bother me again for many years.”

When his father reflected back to him that he didn’t deserved to be pushed around, Weiss was able to access the internal resources to deal with a bully. He adds, “He never moved a muscle toward me. After several seconds of this standoff, I knew he posed no threat, and I never again paid him any mind other than to pray for him. To

Bullying, from the School Yard to the School Board

reducing bullying. In studying the relationship between forgiveness, reconciliation, and shame in reducing school bullying, Eliza Ahmen and Valerie Braithwaite have identified the significance of Some public schools, in efforts to end bullying, have introduced tolerparental response to a child’s bullying.14 ance curriculum. In many of these instances, however, the issue quickly becomes politicized, especially among Christians. In several states, They explain, “A parental response of families and faith-based groups have opposed anti-bullying curricula that forgiveness and reconciliation will aseducate students about gay teens and families headed by same-sex sist children in the painful process of couples, which they feel are an effort to normalize homosexuality and acknowledging shame. The child works advocate for gay marriage rather than simply sensitize students about through their shame knowing that their bullying sexual minorities.15 When parents from Alameda, Calif., lost a parents hold hope and trust in their future. In other words, they can change case fighting to remove the inclusive curriculum, many removed their their behavior in the future; they can children from the public schools. self-regulate against bullying.” As parThe outcry of many of these groups coincides with the concern of ents practice forgiveness and reconCandi Cushman of Focus on the Family, “We need to protect all children ciliation, reducing shame rather than from bullying, but the advocacy groups are promoting homosexual lesinflaming it, bullying decreases. sons in the name of anti-bullying.” Unfortunately, the “but” in Cushman’s Concerned Christians also serve statement, and others’, effectively functions to remove the conversation young people as we offer them spiritual from the reality of children’s suffering and thrust it into the political resources, through Christian practices, realm. for their life journey. For instance, when In an effort to distinguish the issue of bullying from any implicit a child forgives an offender—whether endorsement of homosexual behavior, the Alliance Defense Fund has or not the bully is repentant—the act proposed a model anti-bullying policy.16 BullyPolice.org, a watchdog orgafunctions to liberate the victim from the nization that advocates for bullied children and reports on state anti-bulsting of shame and sin. When we teach lying laws, offers a comprehensive framework for the issue in their “The young people that forgiveness is not More Perfect Anti-Bullying Law: Harrassment, Intimidation and/or Bullying for the weak, but for the strong, we Prohibition & Cyberbullying.”17 equip them with necessary tools for the present and for the future. me, having confidence in myself made all the differWhether through creating space for authentic enence. When he sensed he couldn’t push my buttons, he gagement and relationship between bullies and victims, stopped trying.” equipping parents with tools for success, or instilling Christian practice in the hearts of young people, the harFresh solutions vest is ripe. Today Christians—parents and teachers and Schools around the country are implementing a variety youth leaders and others—who are committed to social of programs to combat bullying. Some are employing action have rich opportunities both to engage with young principles of restorative justice, emphasizing repairing the people at a personal level and to create opportunities harm inflicted by criminal behavior. In these initiatives, for reconciliation and redemption. As those called to bullies and their victims meet so that aggressors can protect the most vulnerable, liberate captives, and heal learn about the consequences and impact of their acthe wounded, Christians can agree that the time is right. tions. Willing bullies can often escape formal disciplinary action if they then apologize to the victim. Unfortunately research has shown the procedure isn’t the cure-all (Editor’s note: due to space limitations, the endnotes for some once hoped it might be, with results being widely this article have been posted at EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org/ exaggerated. What is so right about it, however, is that it PRISM-endnotes.) makes space for reconciliation.

Reconciliation has been realized in other types of Margot Starbuck is based in Durham, N.C., and is the conflicts—across ethnic barriers or rival gang affiliations— author of several books, including Small Things with when those in conflict are provided with opportunities Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor (2012) to know each other by working together. So while an and The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father insincere apology may prove ineffective, broader reconcilWho Does Not Fail (2009), both from InterVarsity Press. iation efforts suggest that genuine reconciliation between Connect with her at MargotStarbuck.com. bullies and victims may be possible with a greater depth of connection in which individuals are humanized as their common humanity is recognized.

Parents of bullies play a surprisingly critical role in

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Market Fundamentalism Where money is an idol, being poor is the greatest of sins.

by Sharon Delgado

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hen Marie’s house was foreclosed upon, auctioned off on the steps of the county courthouse, she wandered through the rooms of her home for two days. “I felt like I did after my divorce,” she said. “I felt so lost, so humiliated. Ashamed.” She added, “It affected my faith. I felt like God had abandoned me.”

Home foreclosures in the United States have been steadily rising since the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007, with over 1 million homes foreclosed upon in 2010 alone.1 Since public policy prioritizes corporate profits over the needs of homeowners, this is no surprise. Nevertheless, many who lose their homes experience it as personal failure and are left feeling humiliated and ashamed. This makes sense in a culture that glorifies financial success and promotes market-based solutions to social problems.

In a society that holds these values as primary, the wealthy become role models. Those who lose their jobs, homes, or healthcare may blame themselves and may even be judged by others. As William Stringfellow says, “The idolatry of money means that the moral worth of a person is judged in terms of the amount of money possessed or controlled...Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin.”2 Results of the Baylor University survey The Values and Beliefs of the American Public, released in September 2011,

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show that 20 percent of people in the United States believe that God controls the free market. This belief system merges faith in unrestrained free market capitalism with an overtly religious worldview. According to sociologist Paul Froese, coauthor of the survey, “They say that the invisible hand of the free market is really God at work.”3 This is an extreme example of what has been called “market fundamentalism,”4 the belief that minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets provide the greatest possible prosperity and social well-being. This economic ideology has dominated economic discourse in the United States for three decades.

What is new, however, is the merging of this secular ideology with an overtly religious worldview. This merger presents grave personal, social, and environmental implications.

To view the market as the work of God is idolatrous.

It sets up money as a god.

20 percent of people in the United States believe that God controls the free market.

Personal implications—moral distortion

To see God as in control of the market implies that money and goods are allocated according to a divine plan. This is a form of economic determinism, with God meting out reward and punishment in monetary terms. From this perspective, to regulate the market is to interfere with the purposes of God. At a personal level, this strangely syncretized5 religion can produce ethical confusion and moral distortion, because it exchanges spiritual for worldly values. The core values of free-market capitalism, such as greed and self-interest, become virtues. Wealth becomes a sign of God’s favor. Individuals who understand God in this way may care about the needy and contribute to charities but at the same time oppose government policies that could alleviate suffering, improve social equity, or redistribute wealth or income, on the grounds that such policies go against the will of God. People without money become expendable, since they fall outside the purview of the market. They may become scapegoats. The poor and declining middle class who internalize this worldview may blame themselves for their economic misfortune and may even see it as a sign that they are under the judgment of God.

Social implications—torn social fabric

The ideology that underlies unrestrained free-market capitalism rationalizes unjust and unsustainable policies and practices. To claim that this ideology is aligned with God’s purpose turns traditional religious beliefs upside down.

The market does not measure the value of other sectors of society upon which the formal economy rests: unpaid household work, volunteer labor, government-supported infrastructure, cultural resources, or the foundational gifts of the natural world. The market does not measure human need but only supply and demand based on what people can afford to buy. In addition, those with economic and political power manipulate the market, creating advantages for the wealthy and large corporations at the expense of small businesses, the middle class, and the poor. The market leaves those without money behind. This is a far cry from any traditional understanding of God. When the values of unrestrained free-market capitalism dominate public policy, economic relationships take priority and the social fabric is torn apart. Politicians, funded by profit-driven corporations, can call for “less government” while invoking the name of God. This provides a religious cover behind which politicians, CEOs, and others in positions of power can hide when putting corporate profits above social and environmental needs.

Environmental implications—desecration and sacrilege

Market fundamentalism knows nothing of the intrinsic value of God’s creation. Its view is purely utilitarian, based on turning plants, animals, land, and even water into commodities to be bought and sold. It reduces the value of everything to the economic value of the bottom line. This ideology desa-

To claim God’s blessing on this ideology is a travesty. To despoil the earth, pollute the air, and contaminate the water is a desecration and sacrilege. To knowingly and willfully do so is sin. cralizes life and creates a framework that allows creation to be exploited for financial gain.

In current economic measurements, all expenditures, whether they have positive or negative effects on people or the earth, contribute to the Gross National Product (GNP), creating a distorted view of progress and ignoring alternative economic measurements that take account of economic, environmental, and social well-being. In economic terms, an old-growth forest is an “underperforming asset.” It shows up as an addition to the GNP only after it has been harvested and sold. Standard economic measurements ignore “externalities,” the social and environmental costs that come about through the process of extracting resources and producing, packaging, and transporting consumer goods. Climate change, toxic pollution, habitat destruction, species loss, and other environmental damages are not reflected in the costs of doing business or in the prices we pay.

To claim God’s blessing on this ideology is a travesty.

To despoil the earth, pollute the air, and contaminate the water is a desecration and sacrilege. To knowingly and willfully do so is sin.

The merger of market fundamentalism with blatant religiosity implies that the market has ultimate value, which it does not. The market is not omnipotent, omniscient, or infallible. It is not a worthy object of faith in which to place our confidence and hope. The market is created, supported, and maintained not by the hand of God but by policy choices enacted by fallible, and often self-interested, human beings.

To anoint market fundamentalism with the blessing of God is idolatry. It places money at the pinnacle of values and relationships, and discounts human, social, and environmental needs. What we clearly need is a public discussion of values that go beyond profit and self-interest and an exploration of policies that can lead to a transformed economics and world.

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

The Reverend Sharon Delgado is a retired United Methodist minister, founding director of Earth Justice Ministries, and author of Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization (Fortress Press, 2007). Learn more at Earth-justice.org/SharonDelgado.html.

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The Gift of Tomorrow Ukrainian-American partnerships work toward a Ukraine without orphans.

by Deborah Amend

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“Da, zaftra?” Tomorrow, yes? A chorus of little voices are each asking the same thing: “Will you come back and visit tomorrow?”

Visiting the Tsurupinsk Home for Disabled Children in Ukraine might have been somewhat cathartic for me, as it was where my youngest daughter would be living today had adoption not brought her into our family, but it was bittersweet because of the children I was leaving behind.

All I had done was bring some cookies and talk briefly with a group of elementary-age boys, showing them pictures of my daughter and her dazzling purple wheelchair.

I didn’t dare show them the handicap accessible bus that picks her up daily for school, the breakfasts she turns her nose up at, the pictures of her weekly swim lessons, the bunk bed she shares with her sister, or any of the other blessings that fill her daily life. I did tell them about our dogs, which sparked a light in their eyes as those in wheelchairs rolled about, popping wheelies in the same way my daughter does.

Anna has a future. Despite her disability, she’ll likely go to college, get married, have children. All because she found the golden ticket. She was adopted. These sweet boys, who live in the nearly futile hope that they will ever have a family, face life in an institution or begging on the street.

We left the boys and headed to the art studio at the orphanage. There I found Vitaly, a polite young man who was abandoned at birth due to his dwarfism. Sixteen years old, a gifted artist and singer, Vitaly was preparing for an art show in Kyiv. A committed Christian, Vitaly has only a couple more years at the home before he will be moved on to what will likely be a very lonely life elsewhere. His constant prayer is for an American family to adopt him.

in the United States via Master Provision’s project Master Care, My Home began to change the lives of many orphans in southern Ukraine.

The men began by visiting the orphanages, building relationships with the children and staff and giving much needed resources. Before long, the Ponomarevas adopted two young boys, and the Gordenkos adopted two girls.

The children flourished, and My Home’s vision expanded beyond orphanage relief to encompass the goal of finding Ukrainian Christian families for other children.

Outside of the cultural ideology that rejects orphans, the main obstacle most Christian families face regarding adoption is financial. The Ukrainian government requires an adoptive family to have a home that provides 9 to 13 square meters per family member, excluding the kitchen and bath. Most citizens live in much smaller dwellings and are thus unable to adopt. My Home has served over 60 families by building additions to homes and contributing to over 100 adoptions. Each addition costs an average of $10,000 to complete.

Ongoing financial support for orphanages and adoptive families is another area of focus. Limited government funds directed toward orphanages often do not reach their destination, leaving children undereducated and malnourished. At the same time, daily life for most Ukrainians is difficult. More than 35 percent of the population lives beneath the poverty level, and the annual inflation rate often exceeds 10 percent. Unemployment hovers around 8 percent, and underemployment is estimated at over 20 percent. The black market, some estimates say, accounts for over 40 percent of the economy. Small homes or apartments often house multiple generations under one roof.

A remnant

In the 10 years since the birth of My Home, financial support has proven to be only the start. Over 100 children in southern Ukraine have now found families, and as they grow up they begin to process the implications of having been abandoned by their biological family. As one adoptive parent asked, “What do you tell your child when no one knows who his birth mother was? She entered the hospital under an assumed name and climbed out the window after the child’s birth.”

Birth stories like this are not uncommon, and frequent, too, are stories of horrific abuse and neglect that result from alcoholic homes or inconsistent care within the state-run orphanage system. The children’s journey to wholeness is hindered by the lack of educational and therapeutic resources for dealing with the mental trauma as well as disabilities. The healing hand of God is poised and ready, but many parents find these wounds heal very slowly. In response to this, My Home has partnered with the Canada-based LAMb International, a ministry that works in the Ukraine.

LAMb International was founded by two couples: Lynn and Ruby Johnston and Donald and Johanna Buchman.

Ruby Johnston, a career social worker, with her husband, Lynn, a retired high school educator, saw the need within their local churches for a standardized and proven method of training for leadership. She customized her leadership workshops for a Christian audience and began delivering them to churches. When she and Lynn were invited to present a workshop at a church in Ukraine, their backgrounds in education and social work led them to request a visit to the local orphanage. While the children were compelling, something else caught Ruby Johnston’s attention.

Da, zaftra? No, I wasn’t able to come back the next day, but because the Lord is at work in Ukraine there are others who will. My involvement in Ukraine began nearly a decade ago when my husband and I completed our first adoption. Anna was only 3 at the time, but we were told repeatedly by the governing authorities in her region that no one in Ukraine would ever adopt “such a child as this,” referring to her missing arm and severely deformed legs and hips. My prayer became that God would raise up a remnant of faithful Ukrainians who would embrace not only the orphan, but the disabled orphan as well.

Ten years later, Anna is a 13-year-old honor student who inspires not only those around her but also—through my memoir about her adoption and multiple national and international television features—people around the world.

Anna is a shining example of where these children could be. This past autumn, when I returned to Ukraine to teach at a family camp for adoptive families, I saw that God, indeed, had begun to answer my prayer.

Anatoly Ponomareva is the pastor of a Christian church in a village outside the city of Kherson. He and his wife, Galina, were devastated when their fifth child, a son, died at the age of 3 after eating poisonous mushrooms. In the midst of their grief, Anatoly’s friend, Ukrainian businessman Alexander Gordenko, and Gordenko’s American business partner, Joe Parker, invited him to visit orphanages with them. Parker had come to Ukraine with the US-based ministry Master Provision. As these men saw the suffering of the orphans, they were moved to do more. Along with two Ukrainian churches and Master Provision, they launched My Home. Funded in part through Parker and Gordenko’s business and donations gathered

Support beyond financial

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“It was apparent to me, from my A group of preschool children years of work in child welfare, that the in a Ukrainian orphanage prestaff at the orphanage had little knowlpare for their afternoon nap. edge in the way of outcome-based practices and that the children would benefit greatly if the staff were trained.

We started doing training on our second trip, training caregivers from nine different orphanages and shelters.”

The Johnstons trained the workers and also visited the orphanages to help them implement the practices. On return trips, the couple brought teams of people from home and worked on relationship-building with the orphanages. They emphasized one-on-one time with the children; leading games, stories, and crafts; and providing much-needed resources.

“The quality of care in orphanages varies greatly,” explains Ruby. Orphanages are severely underfunded and overpopulated. Estimates put the number of orphans and street children at over 100,000. Ukrainians are thoughtful, peaceful, and hospitable people. Their country older orphans, to create a life-skills curriculum to use with is still recovering from 60 years under Soviet rule and the tweens and teens. current oppression of a mafia-controlled culture. Little has The curriculum covers various topics, from identity been offered to those who work in orphanages as they in Christ to sexuality, marriage, and childrearing. It also care for the thousands of children that have fallen victim teaches job skills, including identifying job scams that to enormous social problems. might lead to human trafficking. The Johnstons have perPreviously, Ruby had written a standardized compesonally trained over 600 volunteers in Ukraine, including tency training program for the province of Manitoba. LAMb master trainers who go on to train new volunteers. had the entire manual translated into Russian and gifted ILDC is translating training materials for parents it to orphanage staff and advisors. Word of their work as well. Recently released was Step-by-Step to Effecspread throughout the country, which gave rise to more tive Parenting, a series of 80 small booklets, each one requests for child-welfare training. They moved beyond covering a specific parenting topic, such as bedwetting or staff training and began training high-level government oftemper tantrums. For adoptive parents, Jayne Schooler’s ficials. They went on to establish the International Leaderacclaimed books Telling the Truth to Your Adoptive or ship Development Center (ILDC) in Ukraine, which, while Foster Child and Wounded Children, Healing Homes, have partnered with LAMb in Canada, is run by a Ukrainian been translated and given to parents at conferences and staff. The ILDC then partnered with the ministry Orphan’s through ministries.

Promise, the Christian Broadcast Network’s ministry to Adoption conferences have also sprung up, and this past September LAMb partnered with My Home to host a conference at which Thanks to the extension being built by the My Home fund, the I was privileged to be a trainer. Two Beckhtold family (pictured here with the author, on far left) will hundred people, made up of 40 adoptive soon be bringing Kiril (second from the left), as well as another families plus volunteers and staff, met at child, home with them. a family resort on the Black Sea for five days of training and recreational activities.

During the final evening worship, participants listened to a sermon on Matthew 5: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” All participated in a “covenant of salt,” committing to continue to labor on behalf of the orphan.

The partnership between these ministries has also been instrumental in producing an organization called the Alliance for Ukraine without Orphans. Governed by a board that is almost entirely Ukrainian, the alliance organized its first “Orphan Sunday” last November, with over 170 churches from denominations as diverse as orthodox, charismatic, Baptist, and

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Seventh Day Adventist praying for, preaching on, and participating in orphan ministry. Documentaries produced with the cooperation of agencies in the alliance, The Gift of Adoption and Extraordinary Kids (profiling disabled orphans) were screened in churches around the nation.

With over 31,000 registered churches in Ukraine, those involved believe it is well within the scope of the church to find homes for all 28,625 orphans legally available for adoption.

The disabled

Even as the spirit of adoption has begun to flourish in Ukraine, there is a still a demographic that is excluded— the disabled. Most often abandoned at birth, an estimated 6,000 severely disabled orphans live in Ukraine, with the vast majority tucked away in institutions, a completely forgotten people.

Gordenko notes, “Initially we were just working with children in the orphanages; however, when American Christian families came to adopt special needs children and we were able to fellowship with them, our eyes were opened to the need these children have for a family.”

Gordenko and My Home director Andrey Beglenko began to visit Tsurupinsk Home for Disabled Children several years ago. At first the director was leery of their intent, but over time a relationship was built and My Home began to offer their services to the orphanage. Several families opened their homes for visits, and some of the teens began to attend church.

Around the same time, a local believer, Allah Beckhtold, began to visit the orphanage. Beckhtold and her husband had moved to southern Ukraine from Kazakstan several years before and felt their nest was empty with only their youngest child still at home. Beckhtold regularly visited Tsurupinsk Home, where she taught the children an ancient form of wax painting called encaustic art. One young man showed a talent for encaustic art, and Beckhtold enjoyed working with him. With the permission of the orphanage, she invited him to their home for dinner. Soon he was spending weekends and holidays there.

“We felt that Kiril belonged in our home, but our house was so small that the state welfare service would not give us permission to adopt or even foster him. But the Lord is good and merciful. He sent us the ministers of the My Home Fund. They offered their help, and now there is remodeling going on in our yard. Soon our house will have three new rooms: one for Kiril, one for our other son, and a third for another child for us to adopt.”

Kiril will not be the only youth finally finding a

Make a difference

For more information about the ministries in this article, including ways you can get involved in orphan ministry in Ukraine, log onto these websites: My Home for Orphans (MyHomeforOrphans.com.ua) Master Care, a division of MasterProvisions (MasterProvisions.org) LAMb International (LAMbInternational.org) International Leadership Development Center (ILDCua.org) Orphan’s Promise (CBN.com/OrphansPromise/profileUkraine.asp) The Alliance for Ukraine without Orphans (UkraineWithoutOrphans.org)

family. Several other families, including the Ponomarevas, are in the process of adopting or taking legal guardianship of disabled teens. My Home has begun advocating for the higher education of disabled children, helping three of them obtain entrance to post-secondary vocational schools.

Partnering with A gifted artist, Vitaly, 16, still holds out the churches hope of adoption by a Ukrainian or a in Tsurupinsk, US family.

My Home has begun the construction of a center that will house three families adopting children with special needs. The center will also contain a training center for Christians from all over Ukraine who are willing to take disabled children into their families Compared to the estimate of 100,000 orphans nationwide, the hundreds that have found homes can seem insignificant. However, believers there are working diligently to serve those still lost. They have undertaken a daunting task, one that they cannot do on their own. “Support from the US makes a huge difference,” notes Gordenko.

“First of all there is prayer support. Then there is financial support, which is so helpful to our families. And, there is still a need for US partners to find homes for specialneeds orphans.

While the tide is changing, it is not changing quickly enough for children like Vitaly, who daily moves closer to the age where he can no longer be adopted, to find a home in his own country. “There are practically no families willing to take disabled children in Ukraine,” laments Beckhtold, who longs for more Christians to take up this particular cross.

My 10-year-old prayer has been answered hundreds of times over now, and to see so many children sealed by love into a forever family is a blessing to witness. Yet, as the director of my youngest daughter’s former orphanage, the Kherson Regional Babyhouse, pointed out, “In 2004, there were 135 babies living here. Now there are 70. Things are definitely getting better… but there are still 70 children here…”

Deborah Amend is the author of A Dress for Anna, which chronicles her and her husband’s first international adoption. The mother of five children now, including another daughter from Kazakhstan, she lives in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, where she focuses on raising her family and, through writing and speaking, advocating for adoption, Christian service to the poor, and a healthy biblical respect for people with disabilities.

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"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD." - Isa. 55:8

S

he is running late.

And so Sarkalem Terefe begins to sprint. In tattered sandals, she climbs up a steep and rocky road. Through mud and rushing water, then over a wobbly stick bridge, she emerges into the chaotic road traffic of Ethiopia’s capital city. She dodges cars, motorbikes, packed buses.

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PRISM Magazine

If Terefe is fast—and more than a little fortunate— she’ll make it to her usual fruit merchant before anyone else does. There, she will spend her last 10 birr on some overripe bananas. She’ll resell those for a 2- or 3-birr profit. And in the transaction she will profit the equivalent of a couple of American dimes. This is her daily wage.

She never attended school. She cannot read or write. So this is what this single mother does, day after day, to support herself and her toddler.

It is an unsparingly difficult life. But today Terefe is feeling very fortunate—and not just because the merchant who sells her bananas also has some bruised tomatoes and a shriveled pineapple to offer at a good price.

“Let the Little Children Come”

by Matthew D. LaPlante Photography by Rick Egan

Dashed plans and disappointment give rise to a new vision in Addis Ababa “I am lucky,” she says, “because I know my child is being taken care of right now—and I do not have to worry about her while I try to make money for us.”

Terefe is one of 30 women who are receiving help from Embracing Hope Ethiopia, a childcare service recently launched by Pennsylvania natives Jerry and Christy Shannon. The fledgling nonprofit serves single mothers who live, as Terefe does, on the edge of homelessness in Ethiopia’s beleaguered capital city.

But Terefe is fortunate in another way—a way in which she does not know.

She is lucky that the Shannons failed to fulfill the mission they originally felt called to serve in this, the land of hope and heartbreak.

What do we do now?

The Shannons did not come to Ethiopia with any thoughts of opening a daycare facility. Rather, when they arrived here in 2009 with their four children, it was with the intention of opening a new branch for the Vineyard Church movement—something they had done successfully throughout the United States and Canada for much of the past decade.

They were confident that God had called them to Ethiopia. But the church-planting effort seemed plagued from the start. There were communication problems, funding woes, doctrinal differences. And in the end there was no church, no congregation, no pulpit for the pastor.

“It was a huge identity crisis for me,” Jerry Shannon says. “Because all I had known was pastoring for about 18

years. And all of a sudden, all of that was stripped away.”

Had they misunderstood their calling?

“We kept asking ourselves, ‘What do we do now? Do we just pick up and go back? Or is there something for us to do here?’” Christy Shannon recalls.

Surely, they thought, God hadn’t sent them here to fail.

They prayed and prayed.

And they prayed some more.

They were not alone. All across the gritty conurbation of Addis Ababa, the Shannons found others who had been knocked down while serving the Lord—and who, like them, were somewhere in the process of getting back up again.

Among them was Levi Benkert.

Once you’re here

Benkert was also certain he’d heard God’s call. The Sacramento real estate developer had been summoned to Ethiopia by a friend of a friend, who wanted Benkert to consult on the building of an orphanage for children who had been marked for death by superstitious tribal leaders in

For once again, they believe they’ve heard God’s call. And in this, the land of heartbreak and hope, they follow.

Audaciously, so very audaciously, they follow.

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The adoption of a few thousand children out of Ethiopia each year only scratches the surface of the vast need for orphan care. the director removed by the nonprofit’s board.

But citing the Benkert family’s adoption of one of the mingi children—and facilitation of several other adoptions—the director counter-accused Benkert of selling Ethiopian children to American families.

The adoptions were, in fact, all legal under Levi and Jessie Benkert with their children Ethiopian law. And in cases where the biological parents of the orphans were known, the adoptive families had undergone a rigorous legal process the remote South Omo River Valley. of relinquishment. But the board of directors—comprised He wasn’t planning on staying. But within months he entirely of Ethiopians under that nation’s laws for humaniand his family had dedicated themselves to saving the tarian aid groups—sided with the orphanage’s director. And children known as mingi—those thought by tribal elders to just like that, the Benkert family was pushed away. be cursed and thus targeted for execution for the good of “It was devastating,” Jessie Benkert recalls. “Those the tribe. children were like our own children. But we had no power, The Benkerts had no experience running an orphanand we had no choice. We had to leave them behind.” age, no background in dealing with tribal peoples or customs. They didn’t speak the language. But Benkert and his wife, Jessie, had no doubt that this was where God You’ve done your duty wanted them to be.

They had been in Ethiopia for two years. They had helped “Once you’re here, once you see the absolute depth save dozens of children’s lives. They had taken a girl who of need, how could you turn away?” Levi Benkert says. was once marked for death and made her part of their “And we felt particularly called to face mingi. We believed family. we could do something about it.”

“We certainly had plenty of friends and family who And they did. Over the next two years, the Benkerts said no one would question us if we decided to pack up helped establish a rescue program, a fundraising initiative, and go home,” Jessie Benkert says. “They said, ‘You’ve and an orphanage in the southern Ethiopian city of Jinka. done your duty.’”

They helped save 34 children. One of them they adopted, And they had learned so much in doing so. One of and they named her Everly. the key lessons: The adoption of a few thousand children And then everything came crashing down. out of Ethiopia each year only scratches the surface of the vast need for orphan care.

And although they We had no power came here with no experiThe beginning of the end ence in running an orphanwas marked with red ink. age, they certainly have it The ledgers weren’t now. So even as they still adding up. Money from struggle to come to terms American benefactors wasn’t with losing the mission being accounted for. Levi they worked so hard to Benkert says he confronted build, the Benkerts have the center’s director, inshaped an ambitious plan stalled in that role because to continue their work in of his clout within one of Ethiopia—the creation of the mingi-practicing tribes. a system of small homes The director admitted to that will provide long-term taking the money, Benkert care for children often says, but expressed no considered “unadoptable,” interest in returning it.

Sarkalem Terefe, left, searches the streets of Addis Ababa for a place to sell her vegetables. particularly those older than Benkert moved to have

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5. The children will be placed Right there on the edge into small “family units,” each There are scores of led by a “mother”—a widow single mothers in Korah. who will help care for the And most—like Terefe, children through the age of the woman who sells 18. fruits and vegetables on As he awaited the arthe side of the road— rival of the first group of 30 work for a few birr a orphans during Thanksgiving day. week—just days after obtainMany ultimately coning government permission clude that they cannot to begin placing the chilsupport their children— dren—Benkert sat down at abandoning them to his computer and opened his Ethiopia’s over-crowded If Terefe is fortunate, she might profit a couple of birr today— heart. At times he wrote on orphanage system with the equivalent of a few US nickels. his family’s blog, BringLove.in, the hopes that they will that he’d sunk into doubt and have a better life there. despair. But “looking back on the journey to this place,” he “We were just seeing so many women who were living wrote, “we can see that God has been nothing but faithful, right there on the edge,” Christy Shannon says. “These bringing provision when it was needed and friends when we women, they fiercely love their kids. And for many, that is were lonely.” the only reason they hold on.”

Among those friends—those who knew a thing or two But it is that very same reason, she says, that leads about being knocked down while following the Lord’s call— many to give up their children. “They get to the point of were the Shannons. desperation where they don’t have any other choice,” she says. “But we think that, if they just had a little support, chances are they could keep their children.”

We really just fell in love For many, the stakes are even higher. One in 10 Like the Benkerts, the Shannon family had considered Ethiopian children dies before the age of 5. And governpacking up and heading home after their church-planting ment officials say the rate is almost certainly higher in plan fell short. places like Korah.

But then they discovered Korah.

“Some people say these women cannot help themFounded as a leper colony nearly a century ago and later used as a city dump, the Korah district has since been incorporated into “These women, they fiercely love their kids. And for many, the ever-sprawling urban limits of Addis.

But the district never shed its identity as that is the only reason they hold on.” a place for outcasts and remains one of selves and their children, but we the most impoverished places in one of know it is not true,” says Alayu the poorest cities in the world.

Tadesse, who had worked in “We really just fell in love with this community and child developarea,” says Christy Shannon, whose ment projects for 13 years before home overlooks the still-active dump. accepting the directorship of the “But we weren’t exactly sure what we childcare program at Embracing were supposed to do here.”

Hope Ethiopia. “Maybe they canThey pored over—and prayed over— not do it all themselves, but that dozens of ideas about how to serve the does not mean we should just let people of Korah. It was their 6-year-old them fail.” daughter, Caia, who finally cut through The Shannons have dethe uncertainty. signed the childcare center to “Jerry and I were talking in the be sustainable if they ever leave kitchen, and Caia walked in and said, Ethiopia. And Tadesse, the local ‘You know all those ladies we see with director, says it most assuredly is. babies on their back? It must be difficult A mother arrives at Embracing Hope to “We are ready,” he says, to work like that.’ And then she just pick up her child, who noting that after just a month of turned around and walked out of the has been fed, washed, and loved on all day. work, the facility’s staff was runroom.” ning as though it has been doing

35

have what they need to adequately care for their children.

Among those reporting proudly on her family’s status is a woman who once begged on the Shannons’ street. In just a month she has been able to cover rent on a small apartment.

“It’s really no bigger than most this for years. “With the Shannons here, we can proceed. people’s bathroom,” And without them here, we can proceed just as well.”

Christy Shannon says.

For their part, the Shannons don’t plan on going any“And all that she has where. But now more than ever, they say, they have come is a foam mattress to understand that God does not always work according in the middle of the to their plans. floor. But before, she was squatting wherever she could “That’s been a big lesson for us,” Jerry Shannon says, find a place. She’s not begging anymore. And when we as he and his wife sit with the Benkerts in the living room see her now, the change is just so apparent. She literally of the Shannons' Korah home. skips down the street, and her face just beams.”

At those words, JesTerefe, who has spent sie Benkert laughs, closes the day near the corner of her eyes, and nods her a bank parking lot hophead. “We’ve all had to ing to sell fruit to passing learn that lesson,” she employees and customers, says. “But it’s a good leshas trouble finding words to son to learn.” express her appreciation for the change that has come to her life.

Sometimes it gets hard “Before, I was not sure The children begin to about my child’s future,” she arrive just after sunrise. says. “Now, I think it will be They are dirty, often good.” soiled, and covered with She glances upward and flies. The corners of their contemplates her own words eyes ooze—a sign of for a few silent moments. infection. Their noses drip Jerry and Christy Shannon spend lots of time on the floor cuddling and playing with their young clients, as do their own “Yes,” she confirms. “It incessantly. children, Caia and Micah, pictured above. will be a good life.”

Christy Shannon lifts The Benkerts and the Shannons agree. While transeach one into her arms and greets them with a kiss. formed, their aspirations are no less ambitious than And then it’s time to work. Breakfast is the first order before. If anything, their goals are more grandiose than of business. Then each child is bathed in a plastic wading ever. pool, strapped into a cloth diaper, and changed into a For once again, they believe they’ve heard God’s call. clean set of clothing.

And in this, the land of heartbreak and hope, they follow.

The Shannon children all help out. Nine-year-old Micah Audaciously, so very audaciously, they follow. says it was hard to leave his friends and family in the United States, “but we’ve made new friends here,” he says.

Learn more at EmbracingHopeEthiopia.com and BringLove.

“And sometimes it gets hard, but I really love snuggling up in. with the babies.”

At noon many of the mothers will return to the center to breastfeed their children. The others will have lunch.

Matthew D. LaPlante is an assistant professor of Then it will be nap time. journalism at Utah State University. Rick Egan is a staff The mothers return again in the afternoon, and a photographer for the Salt Lake Tribune. social worker checks in with them to make sure they

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by Debbie Lee

While thousands of US attorneys have been uprooted from their corporate jobs in recent years, Mimi Yang saw the tumultuous times as an opportunity to expand her experience and offer service to people in need, all the while experiencing the realities of an uncertain future. She quit her job as counsel to cosmetics giant Estée Lauder and accepted a one-year, unpaid fellowship with International Justice Mission (IJM), an organization that offers legal services to the poor in developing countries. By the summer of 2010, she was on her way to Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh.

The process that led to her decision to go to Cambodia began back in 2006 after a crisis. While sitting in church, she felt God telling her that if she was “not afraid of death” and if she was “in such despair that life is not worth living” she could do something to help someone else instead.

IJM works with the local police in Cambodia to enforce laws against sextrafficking. Victims, some of whom are minors, are invited to make a statement at the police station but are often too frightened to speak. If a victim expresses interest in obtaining legal representation, IJM’s legal department prepares the victim first for an interview before the investigating judge, which is typically referred to as an “IVJ interview,” and subsequently for testimony at trial.

Yang helped manage the legal department in Cambodia. Expat attorneys that work for IJM do not represent the sex-trafficking victims directly. Instead, they work with the native Cambodian lawyers, helping them refine their legal advocacy skills. Yang, along with the Cambodian attorney she was training and a social worker, accompanied the victims to each IVJ interview and to the trial.

A girl who has just recently been rescued will often think of herself as a

Mimi Yang in Phnom Penh

criminal because she’s done “sex work,” when in actuality she’s a victim of trafficking. If IJM were not present at the trials, Yang believes the victim would not show up in court. The victim’s state-

If you are really open to

seeing the suffering of the

world, says Mimi Yang, no

amount of engagement will

ever feel like enough.

ment, the perpetrator’s statement, and the statements of witnesses are usually the only pieces of evidence presented at trial. As a result, it is critical that the victim is present at the IVJ interview and at trial to tell her story and testify against the perpetrator.

“The first three months were difficult,” recalls Yang. “There were days sitting in the court when I was almost in tears. The translations weren’t coming out fast enough, and when I finally understood I couldn’t communicate what I wanted to say, I felt completely, utterly out of control.”

Things improved over

the months as she got to know the Cambodian lawyer she was working with.

“You’re two different people from two different cultures, and there’s a language barrier as well. There are a lot of communication difficulties. We both tried very hard to work together, and the effort really came through.”

The traffickers are often someone the victim knows, which can present an additional challenge to obtaining a truthful statement from the victim against her perpetrators at trial. Mothers sometimes sell their daughters in Cambodia, where it is understood as a means of survival and therefore normalized. Victims are trafficked into Phnom Penh and other major cities of Cambodia from the countryside and also from Vietnam.

Yang calls that year of her life an offering to God that was tainted with self-centeredness. “One year,” she says, “is really nothing.” The constant struggle among her circle of missionary friends is how far to push themselves, how completely to scatter themselves among the people of Phnom Penh. If you are really open to seeing the suffering of the world, she says, no amount of engagement will ever feel like enough.

Although she sometimes feels ashamed of having failed people and God, Yang says, “I realize that’s when God’s grace comes in. It’s not the work that saves us, it’s his covering.”

Back in the US now, Yang hopes to return to her patent practice and to continue her work with women and children in need. “American life is really comfortable, everything is so clean, there’s no dust on my face,” muses Yang. “I have to keep disciplining myself mentally and still be ready to go. I still feel like whatever the next step is I want to be ready for when God calls.” N

Hands & Feet

A Lawyer’s Calling

Hands & Feet profiles (extra)ordinary Christians who embody the gospel.

Send your nominees or essays to KKomarni@Eastern.edu.

Debbie Lee is an attorney in New York City and an active member of the Fellowship Group ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

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Off the Shelf

A Faith of Our Own

by Jonathan Merritt Faith Words

Moral Ambition

by Omri Elisha University of California Press

Reviewed by Casey Hobbs

Reviewed by Benjamin L. Hartley

Each generation of Christians must answer, for themselves, the ancient question of Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” In the past 50 years, the answer has had much to do with political affiliation—whether following Jesus means siding with the right or left. In the past generation, “culture warriors” on the right, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson, built the Moral Majority in response to this question, attempting to bring followers of Jesus’ way of life to political influence.

Today’s generation is answering the question differently, says Jonathan Merritt in A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. He believes that today’s generation of Christians want a faith that “isn’t just politically active, but one that transforms life.”

Merritt’s work is part reflection upon this reality and part exposé of a Christianity gone wrong in generations past; it is also a thorough investigation of one aspect of the changing landscape of the church A Faith of Our Own is Merritt’s follow-up to his 2010 book, Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet, itself a good hard look at the contemporary church’s growing concern for environmental issues long overlooked by church leaders. Merritt possesses a unique résumé, with degrees from conservative evangelical hubs such as Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Emory University, and Liberty University. It is from his experience at Liberty, founded and headed by the late Dr. Falwell, that Merritt draws most of his insight into the “culture warrior” world in which he was schooled. Merritt’s book serves as both homage to the past and invitation to the church’s future.

In A Faith of Our Own, “Rejecting the labels and even Merritt recounts story the culture wars themselves, after story of the resismany of today’s Christians are tance he has encountered carving out a new path down as he’s opened himself the middle of the public square. to thinking beyond the And perhaps that is exactly conservative partisan where Christians need to be.” landscape and become - Jonathan Merritt in A Faith of an advocate for environOur Own mentalism, the poor, the gay and lesbian community, and nuclear arms reduction. He recalls one experience in particular when invited to speak at a prominent Christian advocacy group where a mostly gray-haired audience had gathered to hear his perspective on the changing church climate. Just as people began asking him questions, the emcee of the event broke in, saying, “We’re already out of time…so let’s thank Jonathan for making the trip up here and sharing his opinions on this topic with us.” This and other such patronizing episodes in Merritt’s career served as an impetus for this book.

He writes not only to be understood by his own generation but also to reconcile the past with the future.

In the end, Merritt’s work is conscientious, honest, and reflective Continued on page 46

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Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches was immediately appealing to me for two reasons. First, I was interested in learning more about the relatively new field of “anthropology of Christianity,” which seeks to better understand the shape of Christianity-diverse cultures. This book deepened my insight in this regard, but not for a culture most readers of PRISM would find exotic. Omri Elisha studies Knoxville, Tenn., megachurches—specifically people from two churches and their discourse about and involvement in social outreach ministry. The second reason for wanting to read this book was that the author describes himself as a “nonobservant secular Jew” from New York City. I was intrigued. What questions might such an anthropologist raise about the culture of Knoxville megachurches and evangelical social outreach more generally? I was not disappointed.

For the readers of PRISM this Although certain aspects of evangelibook will be most cal social engagement stand at odds valuable for the with competing social ethics and pracway Elisha un- tices in the nonprofit arena… it is also packs Knoxville the case that competing social ethics e v a n g e l i c a l s ’ and practices exist within the very complicated and contours of the evangelical movesometimes contra- ment, surfacing in situations when dictory thoughts, the stakes of engaged orthodoxy are feelings, and ac- imagined to be at their highest. tions with regard - Omri Elisha in Moral Ambition to social outreach toward the poor. Although clearly targeting an academic audience (this book is a revised dissertation), Elisha’s analysis of evangelical attitudes and actions with regard to materialism, race, compassion, accountability, suburban-urban partnerships, the Kingdom of God, and a number of other concepts will prompt many evangelical readers—including this one—to assess the extent to which one’s own efforts at social outreach among the poor correspond to that of Knoxville church members. Christians accustomed to thinking theologically about “holistic ministry,” “social justice,” and an assortment of other evangelical buzzwords will find this anthropological analysis to be most thought provoking. Megachurch members’ lived-out “vernacular theology” of social justice is less soaring in its rhetorical flair than what is found in most evangelical books about social action, but such vernacular theologies and practices deserve more attention precisely because they are “messy.” Elisha should be commended for helping his readers better understand this richly textured but not always beautiful reality of a congregation’s social involvement.

For all of its strengths as an excellent anthropological study of megachurch social outreach efforts, this book is not without a few faults. The astute evangelical reader will note occasional examples of language use which signal that the author is an outsider to the evanContinued on page 46

Kingdom Calling

by Amy L. Sherman InterVarsity Press

Between Heaven and Mirth

by James Martin, SJ Harper Collins

Reviewed by Brandon Rhodes

Review by Pamela Robinson

While in seminary I worked part time at a health foods deli where I was one of maybe four Christians in the whole store. What a missional opportunity!

But seminary taught me nothing of this job’s significance for Jesus. What, besides creative evangelism and being extra nice to my customers and coworkers, could give this job meaning? I lacked the theology, training, and relational support to charge my deli life with holiness. In a seminary culture that prepares us for all things Sunday morning, I hadn’t a clue about Monday “We’re called to labor with [the through Friday. poor]. We do not impose our vocaVocation was tional power on them or even use it the void in my profesfor them. We are called to bring it sional Christian pedialongside them.” gree.

- Amy Sherman in Kingdom Calling Amy Sherman’s Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good aims to heal that void. The gospel story, Sherman says, has much to say to our jobs—and in ways more interesting (and possibly more Christlike) than the evangelism and do-it-with-integrity approach with which the topic is usually addressed.

Grounding her claims in the fertile soil of the biblical vision of shalom and justice, Sherman shows that every part of our life can express righteousness and offer healing to the world. And the kingdom gospel makes us the kinds of people able to live into that. Eclipsing the lunacy of the prosperity gospel and the limits of asceticism, she propels us toward a gospel that transforms the privileged and unleashes abounding justice.

But Sherman doesn’t just give us a vision; she illuminates and brings it to life for us through stories. Kingdom Calling is a packet of mustard seeds, true parables of folks who let their election in Jesus Christ spill over from Sunday into their Monday-through-Friday lives.

Their jobs don’t reduce to a way to make (and tithe) more money. No, they sow the seeds of new creation among greedy capitalism’s sharp briars. Sherman gifts us with replicable parables of Christians prospering in a way that make poor people leap for joy.

Sherman’s book extends the important conversation of re-sacralizing all spheres of life. But the conversation could go even further—by going lower, and by going local.

“Going lower” refers to class divides. Upper- and middle-class jobs are empowered by her kingdom vocation stories, but my entrylevel deli job feels marginalized in this book. For those with privilege, the book rocks. For those who, for whatever reason, cannot turn their job into a kingdom calling, this book shows its limits. The poor may rejoice in the flourishing of the righteous, but what does the gospel have to say to the vocations of the poor? To salespeople, waitresses, factory workers, firefighters, farmers, and, if I may be so bold, Galilean fishermen? I look forward to Sherman’s readers finding ways to extend Continued on page 46

Jesuit James Martin convinces and charms with Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. His look at Scripture, saints, Jesus, and jokes asserts that joy is the “infallible sign” of a close walk with God. On the one hand, Martin distinguishes secular joy as happiness related to a worldly object or event—wonderful and fleeting. On the other hand, he defines religious joy as dependent upon relationship with one object, God. Citing contemporary Christian theologian Donald Salier, Martin states that Christian joy “does not ignore pain in the world, in another’s life, or in one’s own life...Rather, it goes deeper, seeing confidence in God—and for Christians, in Jesus Christ—as the reason for joy and a constant source of joy.”

As Martin points out in his “Brief but 100 Percent Accurate Historical Examination of Religious Seriousness,” Christians have come by their gloom honestly. He believes, among other things, that reverence for the Passion of Christ has stifled Christian humor and laughter.

Examining Scripture passages from both the Old and New Testaments, Martin reveals the balance between seriousness and humor.

In his analysis of the Jonah story, the Zacchaeus story, Psalm 65, the story of the prodigal son, and a number of additional passages, Martin reveals how humor has punctuated the Christian faith tradition.

Jonah, “an unlikely prophet” given to temper tantrums “Too often we overlook the and pouting even after be- way that humor can lead us ing threatened with diges- to deep truths, even when it tion by a whale—is a par- comes to well-known Bible ticularly good example of stories.” the Bible’s cast of comical - James Martin in Between Heaven and Mirth characters.

Likewise, he highlights expressions of joy in the lives of such saints as Teresa of Avila, Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, and others. By the time we reach chapter four, subtitled “11 ½ Serious Reasons for Good Humor,” and Martin reminds us that joy is one manifestation of the fruit of the spirit, we’re ready to believe it for perhaps the first time in our lives.

Illustrating how joy can (and should!) result from our acts of service and worship, Martin encourages us to embrace that joy and revel in it. He acknowledges and helps us tackle the challenges to living a joyful life, noticing joy in our everyday lives, and introducing joy into our prayers. Scriptural analysis supports his thesis that joy really is a God thing. I especially appreciated the discussion about mothers-tobe Elizabeth and Mary.

Martin concludes that joy on earth foreshadows joy in heaven: “If our lives on earth provide us with a taste of heaven, as I believe they do, then we can assume heaven includes laughing with friends and Continued on page 46

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Pluralism and Freedom

by Stephen V. Monsma Rowman & Littlefield Reviewed by Stephanie Summers Rarely does a book from an academic press engage the topics making headline news. Yet in the stunningly prescient Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, former politician and professor of political science emeritus Stephen V. Monsma describes the challenge that individuals and institutions face when, embodying their formal faith commitments (or lack thereof), they enter the public realm. At the outset, Monsma contends that “the ideal of safeguarding the freedom of persons and organizations of all religions and of none can be met.”

Given the front-page status of rancorous arguments about government policies requiring faith-based organizations to provide services they find ethically objectionable, Monsma’s premise is a healing balm. This highly readable and comprehensive summary of the topic, set within American political and legal history, deftly identifies how

“Attempts to protect the religious freedom of individuals without protecting the religious freedom of the faith communities and religious associations from which faith is given birth, nurtured, practiced, and passed on from one generation to the next makes no sense.”

- Stephen Monsma in Pluralism and Freedom today’s partisan political landscape works against the ideal, and what we must do instead to achieve it.

Writing for a lay Christian audience, Monsma defines in his initial chapter key concepts such as diversity, pluralism, and autonomy. In a novel second chapter, he outlines the role that faith-based organizations play in the American public policy mix, pointing out the substantial contributions these institutions make to health, educational, and social services, even in situations where government funding for such services is not involved.

A chapter examining the “seedbeds of attitudes towards faithbased organizations” coming from Enlightenment thinking, the judicial system, and nondiscrimination measures provides helpful context for understanding why today’s policy questions are, as Monsma puts it, “the issue that will not go away.” Throughout, Monsma critiques both the political left and right, demonstrating the failures of each to adequately develop understanding and policy to define and implement the relationship between government and faith-based organizations.

Chapter 5 provides a helpful introduction to key concepts of what is referred to as structural pluralism. For the unfamiliar reader, Monsma articulates how these ideas have shaped other Western democracies and how they protect the autonomy of faith-based organizations without violating religious freedom for all. He then goes further, integrating uniquely American and nonpartisan elements of church-state jurisprudence and concepts of limited government, to help demonstrate what structural pluralism should look like in an American context if religious freedom for all is to be ensured.

Continued on page 46

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Herman Baron

by Craig Wong Up until this past year, a first-timer visiting our church building during midweek office hours would have to take a shot at which button to press at the entrance… and hope that pushing it would actually have an effect. Fortunate guests might then hear a garbled, barely decipherable voice emanating from a speaker, explaining how to manipulate the door open. If successful, he or she would make it into the foyer, a long, dark hallway with no human being in sight. Once at the end of the corridor, the visitor again had to make a best guess: Do I make a right or a left? Do I go up the stairs? Is anybody here? Thankfully, a friendly face would usually, eventually, be found.

Ironically, parallels can be drawn to my experience visiting a congregational friend held at an immigration detention facility, located within the Yuba County Jail about 100 miles from San Francisco. Finding the entrance was just the beginning. Apparently worried about cakes with embedded nail files, security imposed meticulous and time-consuming protocols. Once I was able to see a detention officer, I was permitted to converse with my friend—with muted voice through the ultra-thick medium of a bullet-proof encasement. Even more impersonal was the process of ascertaining my friend’s deportation status. I was sent upstairs to a windowless and entirely empty room, with the exception of one vintage dial phone mounted on the wall. Upon picking it up, I was immediately referred to some geographically distant office, followed by another. The runaround was stunning. And no friendly face was to be found that day.

Dr. Timothy Gorringe, whom I had the privilege of meeting at the University of Virginia, likes to talk about the “theology of the built environment,” an exegesis of physical spaces that embody, or distort, the character and purposes of

God. Put another way, planned environments can serve to either re-humanize or de-humanize its occupants. Such analysis can be applied to any place inhabited by people, whether there voluntarily or not. While in Virginia, for instance, Gorringe helped us astutely exegete Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful country home that physically segregated his slaves in a basement-level dwelling— a striking example of structurally engineered human division by race and class.

For many churches of the emergent variety, it’s trendy to draw from the notion of the “third place,” popularized by the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who posits that beyond one’s domicile and workplace, healthy democratic societies need spaces where people can meet, share ideas, and build relationships

“I am, because of who we all are.”

with strangers. Of all institutions, the coffee shop or English pub best exemplifies this concept. Indeed, it was Oldenburg’s theories that CEO Howard Schultz glommed onto, eventually to become the philosophical backbone of Starbucks’ staggering success. Arguably, the evangelical church has taken its cues from

America’s caffeine empire, making coffee bars and internet cafés an article of faith in the design formulae of sanctuary spaces everywhere.

Although I, too, find the conversation about “church as third place” a stimulating one, I’ve been more intrigued of late by the Ubuntu theology that Bishop Desmond Tutu, in particular, first introduced to Western Christians in his 1999 book, No Future Without Forgiveness. Although a precise definition of Ubuntu is probably hard to come by, a Liberian once put it succinctly in this way: “I am, because of who we all are.” In other words, contrary to the hardened sensibilities of American hyper-individualism, the Ubuntu ethic assumes that one’s identity, meaning, and purpose are inextricably tied to the whole. I do not—indeed cannot—exist apart from you. My welfare is tied up with yours. Ubuntu theology is fundamentally a Trinitarian theology: I am a communal being because I was created in the image of a communal God. Which brings me back to my church’s foyer. As a result of recently completed building renovations, our foyer has been transformed into what we’ve come to affectionately refer to as our “courtyard,” a nice open space pregnant with possibilities to invite, welcome, and gather human beings into contact with one another. In this space, we can envision the breadth of neighbors from every possible walk of life—laborers and landlords, lawyers and launderers, pizza makers and principals, homeless and homeowners, believers and unbelievers—experiencing the rare encounter where shared humanity and a profound interdependence is rediscovered. With the Holy Spirit at work, with or without the aroma of a Sumatran blend wafting about the room, we will marvel at what the Father, through Jesus Christ, is ultimately about doing in the world…reuniting the Trinity’s scattered, rebellious, yet lonely children back together again for the glory of God. W Craig Wong is the executive director of Grace Urban Ministries in San Francisco. He invites your feedback at onbeingthechurch@gum.org.

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On Being the Church

Ubuntu Theology & the Church Foyer

A Different Shade of Green

Environmental Guilt and the Gospel

by Rusty Pritchard I often hear the claim that environmentalism is a kind of new religion—usually from anti-environmentalist critics who are trying to disparage the movement.

I think the observation is partly right.

The human bent toward legalism, fingerpointing, self-righteousness, and meddling finds its expression in various forms of fundamentalism, whether in churches, mosques, or environmental circles.

Part of our sin nature is a desire to find some w e a p o n to wield over others whom we deem less worthy than ourselves. Environmental fundamentalism can feel like a religion, with its own norms and values. Try talking about the joys of Southern barbecue or the happiness that comes with having three kids (or two, or more than none) in certain environmental circles. There can be a little venom in those green fangs.

But if our “critique” of environmentalism stops with its own finger-pointing and doesn’t provide a springboard for salty encounters with the world, we are missing a huge opportunity. It’s not enough to claim that environmentalism seems like a religion. We have to provide some answers for what to do about environmental guilt.

After all, Jesus didn’t come to offer a new religion, or a new set of standards, or a new ethic. He came to offer himself—to us and for us. Through his death on the cross, he offers us a restored relationship, first with our Creator, but also with our fellow humans and with the rest of creation.

Thoughtful environmentalists are often racked by guilt, but so are many

If our “critique” of environmentalism stops with its own finger-pointing and doesn’t provide a springboard for salty encounters with the world, we are missing a huge opportunity.

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Christians, who realize that in almost ernments (Romans 13). Yet it is envievery dimension of life they don’t live up ronmentalists who often have a better to their own standards, much less the diagnosis of evil in the world, of how standards of a holy and righteous God. misuse and mistreatment of creation afChristians should be bold in proclaimfects innocent people through pollution ing that the answers to today’s crises, or wasteful resource use. They don’t whether political, social, moral—or enusually find support in the church, espevironmental—are found not in law but cially in the evangelical church. Rather, in grace. they too often find Christians denying It should come as no surprise that the very possibility of environmental folks outside the church who perceive problems through unsound proof-texting. a crisis would want to find religious And they find an anti-government, antianswers to it. The shame is that most regulatory streak that verges on rejectChristians don’t even have a vocabuing the role of civil governments in the lary for talking about the environment in restraint of evil.

Christian terms. Letting a biblical world4. Finally, and most to the point, view infuse our consciousness would alGod’s common grace operates low us to cultivate conversations about through the human conscience, conhow God’s common grace operates— victing the world of sin. Paul writes grace for everyone in every sphere of that “[the Gentiles] show the work of life. the Law written in their hearts, their 1. God’s common grace operates conscience bearing witness, and their to reveal his awesome power and thoughts alternately accusing or else divine nature through the created defending them” (Romans 2:14-15). Isn’t order (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19). Why do this guilty conscience what anti-environwe fail to use this gracious revelation in mentalist critics are complaining about? our communications with environmentalIf people are convicted about their ists? I think part of the reason is that we waste, their poor stewardship, their ignoChristians have failed to allow ourselves rance of the side-effects of their actions, to encounter the incredible witness of shouldn’t we thank God for his grace, creation. Too often, we’re committed inby which this occurs, and point people doors-men. Environmentalists may know to the answer offered by Jesus’ life and more of the awesome nature of God death on the cross? Awareness of sin is than Christians do in this regard. If we something we have in common with the aren’t humble enough to admit this, we rest of the world; the disorder wreaked won’t be very good at pointing people on the world by human ignorance is to Jesus. perceptible even to those outside the 2. God’s common grace provides faith, and we can use this as common for our needs through the operation ground to communicate the gospel and of the earth’s ecosystems. We Christo work together for the common good. tians too often leave rigorous learning God’s special grace—redeeming, about the operation and management sanctifying, and transforming those who put their trust in Jesus—is the ultiof the planet to secular scientists and mate answer to today’s environmensecular environmentalists. Because so tal crises. Let us respond to people’s few churches teach about this, we find awareness of creation—and of the ourselves unable to provide answers to disorder they find in it and in their secularists who understand something own lives—by faithfully communicating of how the world works and who want the whole gospel story. † to offer thanks to someone (or some thing). This is a travA natural resource economist, Rusty Pritchard esty. is the cofounder and president of Flour3. God’s comish (FlourishOnline.org), a national Christian mon grace restrains ministry that serves Christians as they grow evil in the world, in environmental stewardship, healthy living, often through the and radical discipleship. hand of civil gov-

by Levi Gangi

Mark Seliger

W

hen it comes to team loyalty, musicians are as notoriously fickle as athletes. Some bands are more famous for their relational drama than they are for their music. Lead singers launch solo careers to prove they can stand on their own (although sadly, most lead singers who go solo are no John Lennon in the songwriting department). To say that you have “artistic differences” with someone has become something of a cultural joke. When the wind blows, musicians drift.

In contrast, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings represent the most united front of any duo around. They’re billed under her name alone—a fact that has everything to do with how Nashville favored female artists 20 years ago and nothing to do with the importance of his contribution—but give a listen to The Harrow and the Harvest, and you’ll be forgiven for forgetting that two people are singing. Their voices are as one, and their harmonies have a haunting, airy lift that goes beyond talent alone. “There’s musicians I love to death, and I sound awful singing with them,” Welch said in an interview with Seattle radio station KEXP. Not so when singing with Rawlings.

Welch and Rawlings have been collaborating since they met as students at Berklee School of Music in the early ’90s. Growing up, Welch was influenced by old-time bluegrass artists in the style of the Stanley Brothers. “Anytime I heard a guy singing with an acoustic guitar, I was like, ‘That’s for me,’” she says.

The duo’s songs defy any strict genre, however; they are at once tiny and expansive. Though they’ve included larger bands on some albums, Welch says playing with a full band feels “recreational.” With Rawlings there is a natural blend that gives them space to create. They each write songs with the other in mind, and this album show-

cases that unique ability in its raw form.

The Harrow’s songs leave no room for anything extraneous. Nothing is hidden, nothing is wasted. Picture a frontier cabin with a few pieces of simple but practical furniture. The instrument list reads “vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica, hands & feet.” Rawlings has an ear for intricacy—a simple note change to a chord to add a nine or an 11 and he says “you’ve got your space.” He and Welch specialize in bare arrangements, and small changes are what give the songs a timeless and memorable sound.

Both artists are delightful eccentrics, and yet if you met them on the street they would seem like common country folk. They are unpretentious, and there is an enchantment in the way they are completely enraptured by their own music. In an AcousticGuitar.com interview, Rawlings explained that he found his guitar, a 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop, in a friend’s basement. It had no strings, no bridge, and was covered in sawdust, but when he tapped the body it had “one of the nicest knocks I’d ever heard.” Welch says music is “pretty much all I think about. All my friends are musicians.” The two carry themselves with grace and laugh easily.

The new album has a pair of dark rollicking numbers, “Scarlet Town” and “The Way It Goes.” The opening number paints a raw scene: I don’t mind a lean old time or drinking my coffee cold / but the things I seen in Scarlet Town did mortify my soul / Look at that

deep well, look at that dug grave / ringing that iron bell in Scarlet Town today. The music and lyrics combine to create urgency and suspicion; they could be the soundtrack to any Flannery O’Connor story.

“Six White Horses” is upbeat and carefree, with a rhythm section of hand-claps and knee-slaps. “The Way It Will Be” swells like a sea between major and minor to tell its story of loss: It was seven years on the Burma shore with Gatling guns and paint / working the lowlands doorto-door like a Latter Day Saint / Then you turn me out at the top of the stairs / You took all the glory that you just couldn’t share.

"Hard Times” is filled with imagery of the human spirit. Kick ’til the dust comes up from the cracks in the floor / singing hard times ain’t gonna ruin my mind, brother. It is a standout on the album, with lilting banjo that frames the lyrics in a delicate melody. Its fragile tenor speaks to the tension between the frailty and the fight in every human heart.

The Harrow is homespun from front to back. The album cover features a woodcarving of Welch and Rawlings that is letter-pressed by hand onto cardboard. The inserts were placed by hand, one by one, into thousands of CDs. In a restless age of one-upsmanship in the music industry, The Harrow and the Harvest stands out for its beautiful simplicity. Welch and Rawlings create songs that evoke the past, speak to the present, and look toward the future.

And their artistic loyalties lie with each other. ♫ Levi Gangi is a chaplain resident at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, and a US Army reservist. He is also a singersongwriter with the Folk/Americana band The Lonely Ones; find him at ReverbNation. com/LeviGangi.

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Music Notes

An Enduring, Endearing Duo

Washington Watch

Jesus, Political Wisdom, and Public Flourishing

by Charles Strohmer Senator Rick Santorum’s controversial statement about President Obama’s “worldview,” which went viral in February, puzzled many news analysts. But it was clear to most evangelicals that Santorum had implied that the president’s worldview was not biblical, or at least not sufficiently biblical to ensure wise political direction for the country.

It’s far too easy, however, to assume that we are the ones with a thoroughly biblical worldview. Santorum’s comment gives each of us a golden opportunity to reflect on our own worldviews, particularly as they relate to our wisdom for political life.

How consistently do we see political life through the eyes of Jesus? How much of our political wisdom, to put it in the words of Colossians 2:8, depends on the basic principles of this world rather than on a philosophy based on Christ? More specifically, through what filter do we interpret domestic and international issues and events, prescribe policies, engage with our political opponents, or elect presidents? Blue? Red? Liberal? Conservative? Libertarian? The mainstream media? Talk radio? The blogosphere? The Bible? Far too much of our wisdom, I fear, relies on American attitudes and allegiances that are in conflict with Christ. Here’s why.

Jesus had a very strange view of political engagement. Think with me for a moment about the Palestine of his day and how he handled it. Jesus’ audiences could at any time have included any cluster of ethnic, social, religious, political, and occupational vested interests and conflicting agendas that were daily in close contact with one another— Jews, Romans, Greeks, religious leaders, government officials, political zealots, apostates, pagans, philosophers, fishermen, soldiers, tax collectors, lawyers, you name it.

That land, it was crazily pluralist, like ours today. What can we learn from our Lord in the midst of all this? For

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one thing, when people came to him, ence to the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam, Jesus did not affirm their vested interwhich means “repairing the world.” The ests or political ideologies. Neither did phrase appears in many contexts in rabhe tell them that it would take becombinic literature for influencing both Jewing a Sadducee, a Pharisee, a Democrat ish communities and the world at large or a Republican, or even a Jew or a toward societies of love, peace, justice, Christian, before they could have their kindness, generosity, and suchlike—seen relationships and situations changed. by some as a kind of rehearsal for the Instead, to his mixed audiences, anticipated Messianic age of shalom (or whoever you were, Jesus taught: Don’t wholeness, human flourishing). That is repay anyone violence for violence, settle what Rabbi Jesus was on about throughmatters quickly with your adversary, go out his itinerant ministry in Galilee and the extra mile, turn Jesus was a rabbi who the other cheek, forgive, stop throw- taught his listeners to ing stones, drop the practice God’s wisdom-based hypocrisy, repent of way of seeing others who your sectarian poli- were different from them. tics and tendencies to violence. And if you hold a career Judea. Jesus the wisdom teacher sigin politics you are not precluded. No naled to his mixed audiences that they wonder Jesus’ teaching seemed strange! could create samples of that anticipated What’s going on? In short, it was future in the here and now. It’s doable, about applying God’s peaceable wisdom he said, if you see it through the filter in pluralist situations. Jesus was a rabof God’s peaceable wisdom and act acbi who taught his listeners to practice cordingly.

God’s wisdom-based way of seeing othA philosophy based on Christ givers who were different from them. Jesus ing direction to our politics, it seems called civic officials, religious leaders, to me, takes personally very seriously and government authorities, not to menJesus’ call to shalom. It steadily identition ordinary folk, to a wisdom-based fies and exorcises from our worldviews praxis that emphasized not just personvoices, values, and attitudes that conflict ally shaking off dehumanizing habits of with the peaceable way of wisdom that the heart but also living cooperatively comes from above—from God’s love in and peaceably with one another amid Christ offered to us for the transforming the plurality. even of political life in this world amid This is a normative understanding its plurality. Does this seem strange to of the Hebrew wisdom tradition. It is us today? I hope so. about the kind of peace that the Hebrew Upon hearing it preached and sages and prophets called shalom, the seeing it demonstrated, people “were opposite of which is not war but brokenamazed at his teaching, because he ness, whether economic, social, or polititaught them as one who had authority, cal. And as Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff once and not as their teachers.” Dumbfoundexplained to me, “There is no shalom, ed, they asked, “Where did this man get even if bullets are not flying, if hearts, this wisdom?” (Matthew 7:29; 13:54). Yes, minds, and souls, or even dreams, are where? O still broken. We, as God’s partners (according to Jewish theology), Charles Strohmer is the author of several books and is must help mend and repair currently writing one on wisdom-based Christian-Muslim the brokenness of the world.” and US-Mideast relations. He is a visiting research His use of the word “re- fellow of the Center for Public Justice. Learn more at pair” was a deliberate refer- CharlesStrohmer.com > The Wisdom Project.

by Sarah Withrow King

As our tour bus approaches a wall of rocks and rubble, it comes to a slow stop and we disembark into the bright, breezy day. We will learn later that the Israeli government built the blockade along this narrow dirt road in 2001 to prevent access to Route 60, one of Israel’s main highways. Our group, a diverse mix of evangelicals from around the world, will need to walk to our destination from here. As an ambler, I stay at the back of the pack, snapping photos of the landscape, including the Israeli settlements that cover every hilltop surrounding this small Palestinian farm.

One of the couples in our group is elderly; the husband holds the hand of his blind wife to help guide her over the rocky terrain. I am touched and inspired not only by their devotion to one another but also to their commitment to support Daoud Nassar. Nassar owns and operates Daher’s Vineyard and the Tent of Nations, this 100-acre organic farm and educational organization that seeks peace and reconciliation in the occupied territories of Palestine.

In a conference room carved out of an underground cave, Nassar shares his family’s story. Like many Palestinians, Nassar traces his Christian heritage back to the earliest days of Christianity.

In 1916, Nassar’s grandfather bought and registered the land on which their farm stands. The Nassar family has a clear record of land ownership from each of the four governments that have administered the land in the last 100 years. Despite this, since 1991 the family has been embroiled in an ongoing court battle with the Israeli government over their right to keep and cultivate their small farm.

Even after two decades of discrimination and intimidation, Nassar pleads with his visitors to harbor love, not hate: “We refuse to hate, because people are created in the image of God. We are not created to hate each other…We are asking you not to be on one side only

but to be on the side of peace and justice, which is for everyone.”

In addition to the legal challenges, the family experiences physical and psychological threats from surrounding Israeli settlers; fends off offers to buy the land (“Our land is our mother, and our mother is not for sale,” was Nassar’s reply to a blank check offer from the Israeli government to abandon his property); and creatively overcomes the systemic abuses of power that prevent the family from access to water, electricity, and the right to renovate or build on their own property.

“When you act in a different way, you confuse the other, and you force them to see you in a different way,” explains Nassar. “Since we aren’t allowed to build on the ground, we build under the ground.” The underground conference room in which he stands is equipped with wireless internet; its walls were painted by children enrolled in one of the farm’s many summer programs.

Supporters from around the world have helped Nassar and his family engage the violence of occupation with peaceful, nonviolent resistance. Palestine’s first solar power system is installed on Nassar’s property, a system which allows the farm to use electricity and to maintain a website (TentofNations.org).

Through their “Plant for Peace” program, the farm has planted 1,280 olive trees this year. Once planted, olive trees must be carefully cultivated and may not bear fruit for many years.

“When you plant a tree, you believe in the future,” says Nassar, who sees olive tree planting as nonviolent resistance.

“You won’t see the result tomorrow, but the tree will grow and bear roots. Peace cannot come from up to down; it needs to grow like the olive tree.”

Peace abides in another village, called Aboud, northwest of Ramallah, where 2,200 people, half of them Muslim and half Christian, live and work

Nassar and his young son. His life is a testament to the farm's motto: "We refuse to be enemies."

Global Positions

“We Refuse to Be Enemies”

together peacefully. A small soap factory and a few shops provide income to inhabitants, whose freedom of movement in and out of the town is heavily regulated by the Israeli army. After worshipping in a church many hundreds of years old, our group is hosted for lunch by several local families. Abuna Immanuel, the Orthodox priest, answers our questions and discusses his hopes for the community. “Christians in the Middle East are like salt—they are small, but very tasty,” he says. “This land is big enough to take all of us without killing.” And how can Christians be most salty? “We must remember that peace is a culture. How to live with peace is a culture.”

Despite their many physical and psychological trials, in addition to their unwavering commitment and cry for peace, Abuna Immanuel, Daoud Nassar, and the dozens of other peacemakers we met during our time in Israel and Palestine had only two requests of their visitors—that we remember this land and its people in our prayers, and that we visit, to see for ourselves that “without faith, without love, without hope, nothing can be done here.” ✌

Sarah Withrow King is ESA’s director of marketing and development projects and a fulltime student at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary. A longtime vegan, she ate falafel three times a day in Palestine and believes that peace begins on our plates. If you’d like more information about visiting Palestinian Christians, email her at swking@eastern.edu.

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A Faith of Our Own continued from page 38: of his generation’s answer to Jesus’ question, favoring love and service over power and influence. His style marries a stinging, dry wit and an earnest desire that his message will result in action. While lamenting the mistakes of church leaders in the past, Merritt’s work is ultimately optimistic about the future, a future that requires each of us to answer Jesus’ life-changing question: “Who do you say that I am?”

Casey Hobbs is loved by Jesus and taught by the host of Bonhoeffer, Steinbeck, and Dostoyevsky. A freelance writer in Seattle, blogs about the implications of the gospel in everyday life, Casey blogs @ CaseyHobbs.com.

Moral Ambition continued from page 38: gelical movement (such as when he refers to systematic theology as “systemic theology”), but these missteps were rare and for the most part inconsequential. One also wonders if Elisha occasionally places too much emphasis on a particular theological concept his informants raise or seeks to make generalizations about evangelicals beyond the Knoxville context. For example, Elisha exaggerates the significance of an “exilic” frame of mind among his informants with regard to their engagement with the city as a place where they are “strangers in a strange land.” His insights are intriguing in this regard but not very well supported by ethnographic evidence. Elisha’s insights here also made me wonder why he chose not to examine these churches’ involvement in foreign mission efforts as an important dimension of their social outreach. He notes that the foreign mission budget for these churches is large but gives no further information about it. Some attention to this aspect of the churches’ ministries would have strengthened the book.

Omri Elisha provides a wonderful invitation for his evangelical readers to assess their own “moral ambition” in new ways using the tools of anthropological analysis. I am convinced that our churches and ministries with the poor would benefit enormously if we had more pastors and Christian leaders who used anthropology to better understand the streets and the churches we serve. Elisha provides a rich showcase of what anthropology can offer, and for this I am grateful.

Benjamin L. Hartley is associate professor of Christian missions and director of United Methodist Studies at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary.

Kingdom Calling continued from page 39: Kingdom Calling’s aspirations across class lines.

Here’s one: At my neighborhood-scaled deli, regulars came from nearby businesses, schools, and homes. Some asked for me by name to make their sandwiches, and we knew a bit about each other. We’d see each other at bus stops and bars. Locality’s inherent immediacy and transparency suited me, more than any of the store’s higher-ups, to seek the kingdom through my job. What, I always wondered, if I had lived near where I worked? How might the Spirit have used me? Would my job have become my kingdom calling?

Place, neighborhood, and shared locality are promising platforms

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for bridging the class lines of Kingdom Calling. What if we churched, worked, lived, and served in the same neighborhood? What if we broke bread with those for whom we bake bread? Suddenly the entry-level and trade jobs underrepresented by Sherman become charged with an enduring dignity and kingdom potency. Call it incarnational vocation.

My hope is that the Lord will use Sherman’s empowering book to inspire others to live into these questions with me and so find themselves, their jobs, and their neighborhoods steadily transformed by God’s gospel of the kingdom. And—in that—that the poor may rejoice!

Brandon Rhodes is rooted in the eclectic Lents neighborhood of Portland, Ore., with the Springwater community. He is a doctoral student focusing on the effects of automobility and its pending decline on North American churches and applying this research with ParishCollective.org.

Between Heaven and Mirth continued from page 39: families, finally relieved of any of the painful burdens of our physical bodies, sharing our happiness with the saints, in the company of our loving God, who has prepared a place of eternal joy for us.”

Between Heaven and Mirth is an essential addition to the Christian library. Some may place it alongside Martin’s earlier book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything. Surely this author shows us how the joy of the Lord is meant to be our strength as we journey toward heaven.

“For all its dignity and grandeur and gravity, the Christian church is, like any institution, manifestly human. With that humanity comes some laughter, both intentional and unintentional,” Martin reminds us.

“This is a gift from God, who wants us to enjoy ourselves, to appreciate the absurdities of life, and not to take ourselves so seriously, particularly in religious institutions, where it’s easy to become deadly serious.”

Pamela Robinson lives a life of joy in southwestern Indiana, where she is the features editor for a weekly newspaper and a proud wife and mother.

Pluralism and Freedom continued from page 40: In the final chapter, Monsma deliberately takes on the toughest and most controversial policy questions of our day, articulating the way forward consistent with the framework articulated throughout the text. This is the gift of Pluralism and Freedom; he is not just presenting a theoretical ideal but also calling upon Christians to embody principled application to achieve it.

Currently this treasure of a book is only available as hardcover with a $60 retail price. I implore you to make the investment, to circulate it widely, and to ask every librarian you know to purchase it for others who cannot make the investment themselves. It is a very small price to pay for a resource that equips and exhorts Christians to safeguard the freedom of persons and organizations of all religions and of none, for the good of all, to the glory of God. Stephanie Summers is the CEO of the Center for Public Justice, a nonpartisan civic education and public policy organization committed to principled pluralism as the basis for Christian political engagement.

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Ron Sider

A Tale of Two Budgets Hikingartist.com

by Ron Sider

I

t is not the worst of times. The American economy is recovering. It is not the best of times. The economy is recovering very slowly. The official unemployment rate is high at about 8.3 percent. Millions are looking for work. And more Americans than ever (46 million) are in poverty. Our national debt is high and growing in an economically dangerous, unsustainable way. And we are putting current expenditures on our grandchildren’s credit cards.

So what solutions do our politicians propose? President Obama and the Republican-controlled House have offered dramatically different solutions in their budget proposals for fiscal year 2013.

Biblical people who care about both economic wisdom and justice (for the poor and our grandchildren) must evaluate these two budgets carefully.

A few key economic facts are crucial.

The US has a higher poverty rate than any other industrialized nation. Current US tax rates are low, both by comparison with other rich nations and with earlier American history. And the inequality of income and wealth is greater today than at any time since 1928, just before the Great Depression. The richest 1 percent own more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent. And the US spends about as much on the military as all other nations in the world combined.

So what does the Republican budget (called the Ryan budget after Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee) propose? Increase defense spending by about $228 billion over 10 years; give

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more huge tax cuts to the richest Americans; slash programs that empower poor Americans.

The Ryan budget wants to keep all the Bush-era tax cuts (65 percent of all those cuts went to the richest 20 percent) and in addition give the rich additional huge tax cuts. People making a million dollars would get tax breaks worth $265,000 a year—in addition to the $129,000 extra from extending the Bust tax cuts.

The Ryan budget wants to cut discretionary spending dramatically, and 62 percent of those cuts would come from programs serving low-income Americans.

Cut food stamps by $133 billion over 10 years. Cut Pell grants helping low-income students go to college. Cut Medicaid (healthcare for poor Americans) by 34 percent by 2022, causing millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

Replace President Obama’s healthcare bill, which offers health insurance for the first time to 30 million lower income people. The Ryan budget would also move toward a voucher program for Medicare (healthcare for seniors), which would almost certainly dramatically increase what seniors would pay for their healthcare.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated that the Ryan budget would cut federal funding for health insurance for lower income Americans by 75 percent by 2050 relative to current law. Because of the Ryan budget’s high tax cuts for the rich, the federal debt will increase by about $3 trillion over the next 10 years.

So what does President Obama propose for FY 2013? He wants to keep effective programs that empower poor people: food stamps, Pell grants, economic foreign aid, Medicaid. He also wants somewhat increased spending to improve infrastructure (roads, bridges, high speed rail lines), schools, and clean energy programs that help build a better future.

His tax proposals reflect what polls indicate most Americans think would be fair: The richest Americans should contribute more. A Buffet Rule would mean that people earning a million dollars or more would pay income taxes of at least 30 percent. For people earning more than $250,000, stock dividends would be taxed

at the regular income tax rate rather than today’s low rate of 15 percent.

Rather than abolishing the estate tax, Obama would keep it (with a high $7 million exception per couple).

All that is basically good. But there are problems. Obama makes almost no cuts in the military budget (it should be cut by at least $100 billion a year). And Obama’s deficit reduction proposals are totally inadequate. His proposals would add about $6.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. By 2022, we would be paying $743 billion just in interest on the nation debt. We must move much more decisively to dramatically cut annual budget deficits.

That does not mean the federal budget should be balanced in 2013. Almost everybody (most economists, Federal Reserve Chief Bernanke, even Congressman Ryan) agrees that would send the economy back into recession. But over the next three to six years, we must move decisively toward a balanced budget. President Obama owes the American people clear proposals on how to do that. That will require more cuts in defense spending, serious proposals on how to rein in spending on Medicare and Social Security without privatizing it, and some further taxes on people making less than $250,000.

On balance, I think President Obama’s budget is far more just than Congressman Ryan’s. But President Obama’s willingness to dramatically increase the national debt is unfair to our grandchildren, who will have to repay it, and economically unsustainable.

As I show in my new book, Fixing the Moral Deficit: A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget, there is a way to end the deficit crisis and retain effective programs that empower poor Americans.

Congressman Ryan needs to embrace tax increases (not more tax cuts) for the rich, and President Obama needs to show us how to balance the budget while retaining effective federal programs. ✍ Ron Sider is president of ESA and professor of theology/public policy at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University.

PRISM Vol. 19, No. 3

May/June 2012

Editorial Board

Miriam Adeney

Tony Campolo

Luis Cortés

Richard Foster G. Gaebelein Hull

Karen Mains

Vinay Samuel

Tom Sine

Eldin Villafane

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

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A Publication of Evangelicals for Social Action The Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy www.EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University All contents © 2012 ESA/PRISM magazine.

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