September/October 2012

PRISM September/October 2012

prismmagazine.org

Genocide in Sudan Time is running out for the Nuba Mountain people Just eating: Environmentalism at the table

Children behind bars in America Ron Sider weighs the presidential candidates

The power of rest, prayer, and selfcare

PRISM Vol. 19, No. 5 Sept/Oct 2012

Editor Creative Director Copy Editor Deputy Director Publisher Assistant to Publisher

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

Contributing Editors Christine Aroney-Sine Myron Augsburger

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

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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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.

Photos courtesy of: Eyes and Ears of God—Video Surveillance of Sudan| Farm Sanctuary| Equal Justice Initiative

“The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene...” (Isa. 59: 15b-16a)

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Contents 2 Reflections Praying with Our Eyes Open 3 Talk Back

Letters to the Editor

41 hands & Feet

A Mustard Seed in Bethlehem

42 May I have a word?

Unexpectantly Expecting in Midlife

8 A War of Domination Impunity in Sudan—a convicted war criminal rules openly while his own citizens cower in caves.

18 Pray Ceaselessly & Eat Justly

Why a meat-free diet is an important part of a compassionate, merciful life.

4 Music Notes Giving Away Music for the Kingdom

43 on being the church

Repenting from Idolatry of the Way Things Are

22 Damaged but not Condemned

5 Art & Soul The Art of Justice in Honduras

44 washington watch

24 A Time to Walk Away

6 Say What?

Obama vs. Romney: Does God Have a Preference?

7 word, Deed & Spirit

Subversive Rest

38 Off the Shelf

Three Ds for Israel & Palestine

46 Ron Sider

september/ October 2012

We have everything that we need to stand against the evils in this world.

Sometimes when faced with the world’s overwhelming needs, the healthiest thing—for both others and ourselves—is to let go.

28 Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me?

Today’s climate change skepticism veers dangerously close to conspiracy theory.

30 Leading Well When Life Hits the Fan

Book reviews

No matter what position of leadership we find ourselves in, how we react in times of crisis can mean the difference between spiritual life and death.

40 Ministry matters

34 Kids Shouldn’t Die in Prison

Secret to Success? Rest.

Fun.

While celebrating the recent Supreme Court ban on mandatory life sentences for juveniles, let’s take the opportunity to refuel and fight for true justice for kids.

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Reflections

to publish them.

“Please show the world,” the picture-takers urged. “Time is running out,” they warned. “Many children are missing after the aerial bombardment,” wrote the director of Yida Refugee Camp in South Sudan, where population doubled to more than 58,000 between April and June as refugees from Sudan’s southern regions continued to flee south. “Many kids and women are getting sick, and many of them are not good psychologically. No food at all.”

To refuse to publish these pictures of slain, displaced, and terrorized children, women, and men is to refuse to hear their story. To refuse to look is to turn our backs on these beloved children of God. Of course, that is the choice we face every day, repeatedly, a choice some might argue we are required to make in order to go about our lives.

I cannot laugh at my son’s crazy kitchen dance if I am thinking of children on the other side of the world who will never dance again—but laugh I must. I cannot delight in the salad created from our summer garden if I am focusing on the insects that Sudanese refugees are reduced to eating—but

Praying with Our Eyes Open

by Kristyn Komarnicki

I

had assigned the cover story. I had edited the first draft. I knew about the merciless government bombing of civilians in southern Sudan, and my brain acknowledged the realities these people are facing. The horrors were outlined for me in black and white: casualty counts, dates, crimes committed by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir.

But it wasn’t until the photos began flooding my inbox that I truly understood. These came through in vibrant color. Red and green: blood pooled in grassy fields. Brown and yellow: African flesh blasted to the bone and left to bake under the equatorial sun. What I saw—spinal chords and intestines exposed, human torsos blown open

To refuse to look at these pictures of slain, displaced, and terrorized people is to refuse to hear their story. with the carelessness of windows thrown wide on a summer day—brought the story screaming into my consciousness. I could not look at the pictures for more than a second or two at a time. And I could not look away.

My first thought was, We can’t publish these. I felt traumatized and was unable to shake the images from my mind as I moved into a weekend family reunion that was supposed to be a time of joy and rest. But when I sneaked away from the party and reread the messages from those who had taken the pictures—people who had endured long months, even years of persecution and then had witnessed and somehow survived the horrific events recorded by the camera—I realized that we had no right not

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delight I must, or risk missing out on the joy of my own life, which is a good gift from our good God. How do we reconcile our despair over the world’s brokenness with the sheer gift that is our life here and now?

When it comes to doing justice, joy is a much better fuel than despair—it burns brighter, lasts longer, and, because it is rooted in God’s life, builds something of lasting value. If I am paralyzed by anguish, I can neither enjoy my own life nor extend a hand to save another’s, and thus both are lost. And the other option— choosing not to acknowledge

the suffering of others at all—leads to a different kind of despair, the emptiness born of the shadow life that comes from seeking only to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.

The author of “Damaged” (page 22) points us in the right directions when he says that— thanks to God’s gifts of truth, righteousness, peace, and strength—“We truly have everything we need to stand against the evils in our neighborhoods, city, and world. We will never repair every crack in our world, but with God’s resources and in partnership with the community of faith, we can take a stand against Satan’s schemes that seek to corrupt God’s good world.” He is talking here primarily about prayer.

Can I use late-night kitchen giggles with my sons to grow prayers for healing laughter to spring up in Sudan? Can I turn my prayer of thanks for my fresh salad into an “Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus” (my mantra prayer for those times when words fail me) for people who have no food? In other words, can I live in two worlds at once without one diminishing the other?

Because we worship an extravagantly generous, “how-much-more-will-your-Father-in-heavengive” kind of God, the answer, I imagine, is yes.

As I began proofing this issue, I detected a subtheme running through its pages, and I am taking it to heart as a message meant for all of us. It may appear to run counter to our usual message of go, do, build, feed, help, speak out, etc. But I suspect that in reality it is an essential stream that needs to be the central current of our activism if we are to serve God well in the end: rest (page 7); play (page 40); let go—of your definition of success (page 41), of your carefully laid plans (page 42), even of your desire to do good (page 24).

I am on a journey to discover how to do these things: to wait on God before acting, to trust God to act instead of acting as if I care more than God does, to celebrate my weakness as a means to invite God’s power, to allow my joy to be full even as it prompts me to pray healing over a broken world.

I want to live out my faith with eyes wide open, feet poised for action, and heart quietly confident that all life sits in the palm of God’s holy and capable hands.

Kristyn Komarnicki never ceases to be amazed by how much there is to learn, how much room there is to grow, and how much God wants for her. Her goals for the coming year are to laugh more, take a nap at least once a month, and stop using the word “should” (as in, “I should laugh more, take more naps, and stop saying ‘should.’”).

@

OOPS! In the January/February issue’s “May I Have a Word?” column, we mistakenly identified the Bloom Café in Phnom Penh as a project of International Justice Mission. In fact, Bloom is an initiative of Gateway Baptist Church in Brisbane, Australia. We apologize for this error.

The PRISM arrives, and I begin where ends meet, first digesting the thoroughly encapsulating overview by its editor, then reading Ron Sider’s backpage insights. This lays the foundation for my personal read, which delights as it sprinkles seed into the soil of the intelligent mind.

Leo Severins New York, NY

feedback

Talk Back

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join the conversation at facebook.com/evansocaction

Regarding immigration – it appalls me that so many Christians throw around the “they are illegal” argument as if that were an open-and-shut case. As Augustine of Hippo said, “An unjust law is no law”; we should be judging the law on the basis of morality rather than vice versa. What part of “you shall love the stranger among you” don’t YOU understand?

- Julia

Check Leviticus 19:33-34 about treating aliens in the land fairly...

- Wayne M.

These religious people are hypocrites. The churches have a vast amount of money amassed to provide plush benefits to their clergy and to build bigger and better churches, but they are delegating THEIR responsibility to Caesar—go figure! No wonder things are in the state they are. If they did their job by providing for the poor themselves they could also along the way teach them some Christian values—such as not fornicating and having children with different men and expecting welfare to support them, or not using drugs so that they lose everything buying drugs, committing crimes. There are poor who are poor because of difficult personal situations, and then there are “poor” who contribute to their own poverty through their actions. In any case, it is the church’s responsibility to help them—not Caesar’s.

- Marta E.

Regarding illegal immigration: Maybe the folks at Evangelicals for Social Action should take all the locks off their doors...or maybe just take off the doors! They don't mind a little infringement on civil whatchamacallits—oh yeah, civil offenses. Maybe when they have been ROBBED by people who have not been invited nor sponsored by anyone in their house, they will get the idea that it is WRONG to barge in and STEAL from others just because you don't have something. There are legal means. All people need to use them—not just the US taxpaying public!

- Glenn V. S.

I don’t agree with everything you write, but you are a badly needed breath of fresh air. Keep up the good work.

- Kristine

Join the Conversation @ Email the editor at KKomarni@Eastern.edu.

f Like us on facebook.com/PRISMmagazine t Follow us on Twitter @PRISMMag1 e Sign up for ePistle, the free weekly e-news also published

by ESA. EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org/ePistle.

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Music Notes

Giving Away Music for the Kingdom

by Jeremy Ritch It’s easy to be discouraged by the behavior of record companies. With far more focused on making money than on making a difference, they often sacrifice artistry for sales charts, leaving the artist to choose between compromising or

Chad Johnson

being dropped from the label. Consistently competitive and cutthroat, the music business has produced many disenfranchised music fans and musicians.

Sadly, the practices of Christian recording companies can look indistinguishable from secular ones. Most of the bigger Christian labels are owned by larger secular companies anyway, and those are owned in turn by one of several giant corporations. The smaller independent labels, which struggle so valiantly to compete, are disappearing.

In all this madness, however, a few surviving Christian labels do manage to care about the art, the artist, and the message. One of the most notable examples is Come&Live out of Nashville, Tenn. Come&Live was founded in 2009

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A few of the more than three dozen artists Come&Live promotes.

by Chad Johnson, a former A&R rep at Tooth and Nail Records in Seattle, Wash., who before that ran the independent label Takehold Records.

Weary of the direction in which the industry was headed, Johnson decided to walk away from his career and settled his family in Nashville. But he changed his mind when he realized he could take a different approach—by launching a nonprofit label that gives away its music in mp3 format and promotes not only music but also service.

I caught up with Johnson and asked him about the vision behind Come&Live. “We’re a nonprofit missions community,” explains Johnson. “Our mission is to establish the kingdom of God and awaken the world to the love of Jesus. Essentially, we see our core DNA as three strands: discipleship, kingdom living, and radical generosity. Blend the three together and the hope is that we’ve helped the world see Jesus a bit more clearly.”

How do they compare with for-profit labels in the industry? “Not very well,” says Johnson.

“The reality is that even though we are positioned in Nashville, we are after a very different approach and set of goals than the conventional music model. We don’t exactly fit the current model, but we do have many friends in the industry and are very grateful for what God is doing in the lives of all his children. Unity is key.”

With a ministry model based on giveaways, how do they stay afloat? “We see our music as a gift,” says Johnson. “A small gift, but a gift nonetheless. God has gifted artists with the ability to bring him glory. Our desire is to turn that blessing into gifts that keep giving. It is easier to reflect the generous gift of the gospel through the generous giving of songs and records than through selling. We trust the Lord to provide for our needs, and in the almost four years since our inception, he has always been faithful to do so. Staying afloat is God’s call—staying focused on the prize is ours.”

What kind of artists does Come&Live look for? “Teachable hearts. Hungry hearts. A desire to see this generation drawn, by the power of the Spirit, into the

loving arms of a King. Willing to potentially forgo their own income streams to see the kingdom of God established. Risk-takers that long for more of Jesus in their daily lives.”

This unique approach goes beyond music as they seek to develop leaders, not just musicians. “We’re trying to seek God together as a community,” Johnson continues. “That’s not an easy task when we have artists spread out all

“Staying afloat is God’s call—staying focused on the prize is ours.” over the place. God has opened doors for us to travel around the world with the message of love and simply invest in a fatherless generation.

It’s a joy to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, knowing that all these things could be added unto us.”

With outreach as their central goal, Come&Live has undertaken several missionsoriented trips, most recently to New Zealand and Brazil. The focus is not just on evangelism but also on being God’s hands and feet on earth, and the artists are part of that vision.

“Our goal is to more clearly communicate Jesus to the world,” says Johnson, “specifically in launching monthly conference-style events where we can more steadily invest in a generation of youth and encourage their faith journeys.

We’re after true biblical revival—that’s really the goal for every year, in a broad sense. The broken and hurting encountering God. Living a story of transparency along the way.”

Learn more at ComeandLive.com.

Jeremy Ritch is a copastor at The Exchange, a service at Cornerstone Fellowship in Wormleysburg, Pa., a freelance writer for the Brethren in Christ church, and the author of My Beautiful Mess: A Journey Through Faith, Hope, and Love.

Art & Soul

The Art of Justice in Honduras

by Jo Kadlecek Saturday nights in the Nueva Suyapa neighborhood of Tegucigalpa can be tough. Dogs scavenge through unlit streets, gangs vie for power among the poor, and young people look for a way to pass the time. Last year a UN report ranked Honduras as having the world’s highest per capita homicide rate.

But one Saturday night in June, I joined 20 others—pastors, scholars, and practitioners from places as far away as Cambodia, Guatemala, and Canada—for dinner with two local families living side by side in Nueva Suyapa.

I had just arrived in the middle of a twoweek seminar called “Justice: Theory Meets Practice,” sponsored by the Association for a More Just Society (or AJS, which is the US-based development arm of Honduran-run Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa). The participants had already spent a week together, listening

those of his children.

Through a translator, I discovered his story. Dennis Cerrato, the father of five boys and a girl, had started painting at age 14. As far as he knew, no family member or neighborhood friend showed any similar interest, but he kept at it, drawing or painting whenever he could, teaching himself or taking an occasional class. Then one day a friend whose relative was “high up in the culture” invited him to show some of his landscapes.

“He was a divine person God put in my way, who helped me see I could do this,” Cerrato told me. “It was an open door to the artistic world for me.”

He began to sell some work, exhibiting in small galleries and giving painting lessons when he could.

(The daughter of AJS cofounder Kurt Ver Beek learned to paint from him; today she’s majoring in art at a Christian college in the US.) Now, after 13 years as a professional artist, Cerrato has exhibited his work in the Galería Nacional de Arte in Tegucigalpa, the Annual Exhibition of Honduran Paintings, the Nacional Theater Manuel Bonilla (sponsored by the Embassy of Japan), El Salvador, even Colorado.

Still, Cerrato says it is hard to support his family from his art. The average annual income in Honduras is only $1,870, according to the World Bank, and artists there struggle daily, along with every other street vendor. Cerrato paints more pictures than he can sell. But he perseveres, developing a style uniquely Honduran with themes of “spirituality,” as he calls it. His children’s faces, he said, represent God’s protection; doors and doves symbolize

“I want my art to reflect a tranquility we need.” to lectures on justice from Yale scholar/author Nicholas Wolterstorff and learning about each other’s work as well as the work of others pursuing justice in Tegucigalpa.

Amidst the smell of chicken and rice, beyond the main room where children ran in and out, the father of the family sat in the kitchen, paintbrush in hand. He was working at an easel, focusing intently on his canvas as the women cooked.

Several of us gathered around him, intrigued by his work in progress—an oil painting with six panels, the face of a boy in the center, a door with a knocker in another. We admired his precision as well his other paintings, which hung on the wall behind him, a slew of newspaper clippings of recent exhibits taped on another wall. We recognized the faces in his paintings as

the peace he hopes for in his country. The colors resemble those of the city and the mountains beyond. Even a painted screw in the door reflects the “forced unity” he believes defines the church.

I asked if he thought any of his children would be painters. He smiled. “One has begun to draw, so maybe,” he said.

In the meantime, Cerrato models for them an artist’s life; he serves in his church and on the board of a collective of Honduran artists.

This summer he helped to prepare an exhibit by local Central American artists around the theme of peace. And in September, his work is on display at the Embassy of Honduras in Canada, along with a consortium of visual artists.

“This is both my passion and my work,” he said. “I want my art to reflect a tranquility we need.”

When our conversation was interrupted with a plate of rice and beans, we turned toward Cerrato’s 2-year-old nephew who was dancing between us and the guests. One of his sons turned up the music, and eventually everyone joined in the dance.

It turned out to be a really good Saturday night in Nueva Suyapa.

(View Cerrato’s paintings at DennisCerratoArt.com.

You’ll be glad you did.)

Jo Kadlecek is the senior writer and journalist-in-residence at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass. She hopes someday to move beyond her junior high Spanish to have a real conversation with new friends in Honduras.

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Say What?

The Naked Truth about Public Libraries United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003) ruled that Congress has the authority to require public schools and libraries to install web-filtering software as a condition of receiving federal funding. This means that it is perfectly legal to block pornography from library computers.

However, in spite of that ruling, some public libraries across the country refuse to provide internet filters.

Some libraries, like Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center, attach privacy screens to limit the view to the person using the computer, but those screens don’t always work, and library patrons—including children—are routinely at risk of glimpsing pornographic images. Even if the images aren’t visible to other patrons, how can it be safe to have children in the vicinity of patrons who are sexually titillated and in some cases masturbating?

Investigating the situation in February, Inside Edition observed numerous men openly viewing hardcore pornography in the Chicago library, with one man even filming the action on his own video camera, undeterred by the security guard patrolling the area.

Commercialized Wound Care for the Very Young This just in from our friends at the Campaign for a CommercialFree Childhood (CommercialFreeChildhood.org)—Next time your little one gets a cut or scrape, how about a little TLC in the form of branded screen time? With a new app from Johnson & Johnson, kids can point an iPhone or iPad at their Muppet Band Aid and a virtual Muppet will emerge on-screen to offer comfort.

Is this creepy enough for you? “When you have your first wound-care occasions—both as a child and as an adult with children—it’s emotional,” says Hugh Dineen, a vice

Pushing “Choices” onto Teens The 2012 Teen Choice Awards aired on July 22 on Fox broadcast network. In theory, the Teen Choice Awards are an opportunity for young fans to honor their favorite singers, actors, movies, and other entertainment. But the reality is quite different.

Teenagers do vote for the final winners, but teens have absolutely no role in picking the nominees. Instead, products are nominated by the entertainment industry itself. Teens are then allowed to merely select from a prechosen list presented to them by an entertainment industry eager to market their wares to children.

Obviously, a public library should be a safe place for people of all ages to go to access educational material without fear of being exposed to offensive images. But the Minneapolis Central Library has a curious idea of what offensive is. In June patron Hadley Barrows was nursing her baby when a security guard approached and told her she’d have to either go to the bathroom to breastfeed or leave the library. The security officer was later informed by a county police officer that breastfeeding in public is indeed legal. We’ll chalk it up to ignorance, but that doesn’t stop us from saying, “You gotta be kidding.”

president of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products Company. “We like to think about Band-Aid as the magic healing brand. Mom puts the Band-Aid on and seals it with a kiss.” When the app is incorporated into that age-old parent-child interaction, “the entire experience is branded,” says Dineen, “and there isn’t another bandage brand or store brand that could bring that experience.”

Why it’s important to brand any human interaction is anybody’s guess…

No surprise then that every category is filled with nominees that are rated by their own industry as inappropriate for children and teens. The video game category included extremely violent M-rated games, the “Choice Movie” categories included R-rated films, and the TV shows nominated included raunchy sex comedies.

Refreshingly, when faced with these preselected “choices,” for the most part the teen voters chose the media that was least degrading, with the film Hunger Games and songs by Taylor Swift garnering some of the most support.

Educate or Incarcerate?

Here’s some food for thought, but take it in slowly as it has been associated with the desire to vomit: Approximately 7 cents of every tax dollar in the US is spent on prisons and corrections. About 2.5 cents of that dollar goes to education.

If you’re a high school dropout, you have a 1-in-10 chance of going to prison. If you’re a college grad, your chances are 1 in 100. Seems obvious

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that if we invested even a wee bit more in education we might be able to bring our criminal justice costs down significantly, but with the powerful prison industry lobby offering the promise of jobs across the country (as is the fast-growing casino industry), we’re not likely to see that happening any time soon.

(Curious about where your other tax dollars go? The military gobbles up 27 cents of every dollar; 14.5 cents go to pay interest on the federal debt.)

“Safe” by Perzikhoofd (Perzikhoofd.deviantart.com)

by Al Tizon Sigh. My sabbatical—my first since joining the faculty of Palmer Theological Seminary six years ago—is over. I think everyone should take one as regularly as possible, not just academicians, but everyone, regardless of vocation. Doctors, pastors, janitors, secretaries, CEOs, burger flippers, construction workers, lawyers, accountants—whoever you are and whatever you do, I wish there were some way you could enjoy an extended break to renew your first Love and to remember why you’re alive.

What a gift. Of course, I didn’t accomplish everything I had ambitiously set out to do—finish a book and start another one, visit various ministries around the world, speak at X and Y conference, learn Spanish, etc. But then again if I had, the sabbatical—if rest has anything to do with it—would have been a miserable failure. Ironically, my own plans had to fail in order for my sabbatical to succeed.

What have I learned from this extended rest? I need to ask this, lest I get caught up in the rush to resume work at the frenzied, make-up-for-lost-time pace to which I so easily default.

The most valuable lesson I learned was experiencing rest as a subversive act. In the beginning, I had to work hard to relax; it was a discipline, because I truly had forgotten how. As I resisted the neurotic voices urging me to check my emails every 15 minutes, to sign on to every ministry opportunity, and so on, I began to feel strangely in control of myself. Driven by an economic vision of wealth, security, and comfort, our hell-bent world has set a torrid, unrelenting, and merciless pace.

It’s a rat race, and we’re the rats working 40, 60, 80 hours a week. Add to this the propensity to wrap our self-worth in our work, and the rhythm of life turns erratic, misguided, and self-destructive. Rest subverts this awful rhythm and gives us a chance to establish a different sort that is more reflective of the God who made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.

As I began to dance more comfortably to

bathed in prayer, meditation, and union with God is in fact the strongest and most enduring sort, as seen in the lives of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. God-rest subverts workaholism. It enables us to feel again. It reminds us of the importance of family and friends. It grounds our actions in the God of love and mercy. Perhaps that is why God instituted the sabbath as part of the rhythm of life, not just for Old Testament

Word, Deed & Spirit

Subversive Rest

a new rhythm, I realized I had time to get to know myself again. I had time to feel. Life certainly did not stand still during my sabbatical; it had its ups and downs like any other time period, but now I had the luxury to enjoy the ups and grieve the downs. I experienced them both to the fullest, not having to “keep it all together emotionally” so as not to disrupt my productivity. I got to shout for joy as well as fall apart without worrying that I was letting anyone down. Extended rest enabled me to feel again, and I intend to keep feeling post-sabbatical.

Another nugget from sabbatical has been the reminder of the importance of family and friends. Spending time with my wife and children became something more than another activity to check off my to-do list.

What a concept—to go on a date with Janice without worrying about the time or go swimming with my nearby kids or Skype with my faraway kids while being fully present with them.

At the two-month mark of the sabbatical one of my closest friends died of pneumonia. I’m still reeling from his untimely death.

The sabbatical afforded me the time to be in shock, to grieve, to wail, and to hop on a plane on short notice to attend the memorial service. My sabbatical-ized self exhorts me now by whispering regularly in my ear, “Don’t take your family and friends for granted, okay?” Okay.

I did get a few projects done. But the way I went about the tasks felt different. I wasn’t driven, my body tight with stress. I did not feel smothered by the tyranny of the urgent. I was reminded thus that ministry should ultimately flow out of experiencing God. Yes, knowing God means in part to experience the pain and suffering of others, but the sabbatical experience taught me that the more I serve out of joy rather than urgency the more effective I am in coming alongside and truly serving the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. Activism

Activism bathed in prayer, meditation, and union with God is in fact the strongest and most enduring sort.

times but for all times. “So then,” the writer of Hebrews explains, “a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest . . .” (Heb. 4:9-11).

Al Tizon (atizon@eastern. edu) is director of ESA’s Word & Deed Network and associate professor of holistic ministry at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary.

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Convicted war criminals gover in caves to escape aerial attac What will it take to end the cris 8

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Photography by Eyes and Ears of God: Video Surveillance of Sudan

A War of Domination

by Faith McDonnell

rn openly while families hide cks by their own government. sis in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains?

W Some images in this article are graphic and/or sensitive in nature and may not be appropriate for children.

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any signs have come to prove what Jesus said is true,” sing hundreds of young people in unison, their faces shining. “We have seen these many signs among us, like hunger, starvation, and war.” The teenagers and young adults in this choir have personally endured precisely these hardships, but their faith in a better future is palpable as they sing, “God brought peace and stopped the war! Brother, God has raised his hand to stop the bad things!”1 They sing and dance under the open sky. Rounded, rocky hills rising from lush, grassy plains provide the backdrop.

The Kurche Youth Choir in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state was captured on video in 2006.2 After decades of genocidal war waged by a government attempting to forcibly create a homogeneous Arab/Islamic state, a 2002 ceasefire and the 2005 north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) had produced relative peace. Some 50 different Nuba Mountain tribal groups, collectively called “the Nuba,” were rebuilding their lives after God raised his hand to stop what the singers above refer to understatedly as “the bad things.” The Body of Christ was emerging from ferocious persecution. Church leaders were restoring razed churches and schools and constructing new ones.

But life is far different now. For over a year Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) government, led by President Omar Hassan al Bashir—who was indicted in 2009 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a war criminal3—has waged an extermination campaign against the Nuba. The land is blackened where NCP troops burned crops, herds, houses, schools, and churches. The earth is pockmarked by aerial bombardment and mass graves. House-to-house searches and executions have silenced the singing.

Nuba civilians are either dead, hiding in mountain caves where they are cut off from food and water by the NCP, or have fled over the border to South Sudan refugee camps. Today, Sudan advocates in the US urge prayer and action on behalf of the Nuba, fearing for their very survival.

Hundreds of thousands of Nuba citizens have relocated to caves in the hopes of avoiding aerial attacks by Khartoum.

another of Sudan’s ICC-indicted war criminals, Ahmed Haroun. The 11thhour defeat of popular favorite, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) war hero Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu, was more than suspect. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the political party affiliated with the SPLA, announced that they rejected the results and would “peacefully struggle” against Commander Haroun’s recognition.6 The NCP decided to use the crisis to set in motion their long-planned extermination of the African Nuba.7 Haroun, who was Khartoum’s strategist for the Darfur genocide, demanded the immediate disarming and expulsion of SPLA troops from the region. This violated the CPA protocol for the Nuba Mountains that stipulated that the SPLA’s northern forces remain active in Southern Kordofan for a set time after the elections and the July 9, 2011, secession of South Sudan.8 Even before SPLA Nuba forces (now the SPLA-N) resisted this ilEthnic cleansing legal order, Khartoum started a war. In April 2011 they had attacked Al On June 5, 2011, sources on the ground reported that war had begun.4 A Hilu’s home village, torched his house, and killed 29 people, but Al Hilu had restrained the SPLA from retaliating.9 Now the Sudan Armed Forces fraudulent election5 in May had given Southern Kordofan’s governorship to (SAF) moved heavy weapons and tanks into Southern Kordofan’s capital, Kadugli, and Women and children demonstrate against the ineffective presence of the United created a military air base. An SPLM press reNations Missions in Sudan (UNMIS).

“after

500,000

dead and years of broken promises, marginalization, and persecution, the Nuba people have had enough.”

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SPLA-N rebels pose after a victory in the Nuba Mountains, during which tanks and aircraft were captured from the NCP forces.

lease on June 6, 2011, warned, “The mission of SAF is to disarm [the] SPLA in Southern Kordofan, clear the area of Nuba, and settle Arab tribes there as done in Darfur and Abyei.”10 Khartoum has made it clear over the decades that while they want the mineral-and-natural-resources-rich land of South Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and elsewhere, they do not want the indigenous black Africans who live on that land.

Along with SAF troops, Khartoum sent the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), an Arab militia known as the “Al Qaeda of Sudan.”11 The PDF conducted door-to-door searches for SPLA civilian supporters and generally for black African Nuba. They boasted that they were given orders by Khartoum to “sweep away the rubbish” and if they saw a Nuba to “just clean it up.”12 In a June 16, 2011, McClatchy news story, fleeing aid workers “told harrowing tales of Nuba tribesmen being gunned down in the streets ... and of women and children seeking refuge in the Nuba Mountains.” One aid worker said those fleeing said, “Whenever they see you are a black person, they kill you.”13 Frantic messages came from the Nuba Mountains that “the Khartoum regime is starting another genocide” and the only way to stop it is with “direct military intervention.” But when asked on June 11, 2011, by PBS A child injured during the bombing of Kurche on June 26, 2011.

News Hour’s Margaret Warner if ethnic cleansing was occurring, Princeton Lyman, President Obama’s Sudan special envoy, replied that he didn‘t “think the North is capable of dislodging large numbers of people on an ethnic basis from the Nuba Mountains” and he was “not sure that’s the objective of the government, though local commanders may have a different point of view.”

When Warner inquired whether Lyman believed atrocities were being committed by the North Sudanese forces against civilians, he replied that they “certainly had reports,” but since the US had no presence there, they were not able to “investigate it fully.” He added that there were “reports from the other side, also.” Lyman assured Warner that they were “working with the parties” and that “Secretary Clinton had called the chief negotiator for the Sudan government to urge him to reach an agreement on a cessation of hostilities.”

“But the bottom line is, it is just talk,” Warner summarized.14 While the State Department talked, Khartoum acted swiftly, killing thousands. With every new email report of atrocities from NGOs on the ground, Christian and secular advocacy organizations, human rights

...For over 12 months other “Days of Bleeding” have been repeated across Nuba Mountain towns and villages... groups, members of the US Congress, and other Sudan advocates demanded intervention. The State Department expressed “deep concern” but maintained that “there was not enough information” to consider action.15 On June 23, 2011, the Associated Press leaked16 an “internal use only” UN memo reporting that thousands of displaced Nuba in Kadugli had been directed to a big stadium by Sudanese National Security Service agents posing as Red Crescent workers. They had been threatened with forced removal from the UN camp if they did not go to the stadium to hear an address by new governor Haroun. The report ended there, but five days later another AP story17 reported, “The United Nations … was concerned about the fate of 7,000 Sudanese civilians last seen being forced by authorities to leave the protection of a UN compound in the tense border region between the North and South." A few weeks later, Satellite Sentinel Project, cofounded by actor George Clooney and Sudan activist John Prendergast, provided images of some eight mass grave sites in and around Kadugli.18 Although the NCP killed both Christian and Muslim Nuba, numerous eyewitnesses declared that from the war’s start “churches and pastors were directly targeted.” The bishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan’s Kadugli and Nuba Mountains Diocese may be alive today only because of his medical problems. The Rt. Rev. Andudu Adam Elnail Kuku was in the United States for treatment when on June 7, 2011, armed forces in Kadugli broke into pastors’ houses, “looting or burning all the valuables inside,” according to a June 11, 2011, press release from the All Africa Conference of Churches.19 Looking for clergy, and especially for Bishop Andudu, they

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destroyed the Episcopal Church guesthouse, the diocesan headquarters, Christ Church Cathedral, and the bishop’s house.

Andudu testified20 before the US House of Representatives Africa Subcommittee in August 2011 that at that time “armed men went house to house, searching for me, calling my name.” The bishop’s chaplain who witnessed the search escaped through a window but was captured and beaten. Andudu’s wife and five children are safe in Uganda, but many other Nuba Christians have been killed.

And since the NCP has put a price on his head, Andudu has been granted asylum in the US where he is working tirelessly for his people with American Sudan advocates.

Bombing and starving: then and now In addition to conducting a ground campaign, the SAF resurrected old flight plans used the first time that the Sudan government declared jihad against the Nuba.21 Anti-personnel bombs—barrels stuffed with ball bearings and other deadly projectiles and dropped from converted Russian Antonov cargo planes, MiG fighter jets, and helicopter gunships—terrorize communities and are used to flush civilians out from hiding so they can be killed. They have caused displacement and prevented the Nuba from planting and/or harvesting crops. More than 40,000 have fled to Yida and other refugee camps in South Sudan to escape the bombs, but Sudan has also violated international boundaries by bombing refugee camps in the Republic of South Sudan.

One of Andudu’s senior priests sent out photographs of a June 2011 bombing in the Kurche marketplace that killed 16 and wounded 21.22 The priest called it “The Sunday of Bleeding,” the first of many bombings to occur in that town. Among the victims were two sisters; one was decapitated, and the other died from her wounds at a clinic. Another victim was a young father who was sheared in half by shrapnel. The priest’s own brother and sister-in-law were killed, leaving behind three children.

For over 12 months other “Days of Bleeding” have been repeated across Nuba Mountain towns and villages, such as Al Hamra, Miri, Lagawa, Um Dorain, Talodi, Dilling, Heiban, and many others. Sudan expert Eric Reeves has documented over 230 aerial bombardments or rocket attacks against Southern Kordofan/Nuba Mountains between June 2011 and June 2012.23 In a desperate attempt to escape the bombing, some 500,000 Nuba have fled to mountain caves where they are at imminent risk of death

from disease, starvation, and dehydration, cut off from all aid by Khartoum.

Bishop Andudu pleads with churches around the world to pray and fast for the Nuba. “Once again we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture and society from the face of the earth,” he says. “It is not a war between armies that is being fought in our land, but the utter destruction of our way of life and our history, as demonstrated by the genocide of our neighbors and relatives in Darfur,” he explains. “This is a war of domination and eradication; at its core it is a war of terror by the government of Sudan against their people,” the bishop declares.24 Some warn that “this could become another Darfur,” but in reality Darfur was another Nuba Mountains. For many, memories of the first Nuba genocide during Sudan’s civil war are fresh. Men from the Nuba Mountains, as well as Blue Nile State and elsewhere, fought alongside Southerners in the jihad against South Sudan from 1983 to 2005. Because of this, Khartoum set out to purge the region. Nuba Muslims were labeled “apostate” in an April 1993 government-sponsored fatwa that proclaimed, “An insurgent who was previously a Moslem is now an apostate; and a non-Moslem is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.”25 The Nuba genocide raged from 1993 until 2002 when the first US Sudan special envoy, former Senator John Danforth, brokered a ceasefire.

During those years, the Nuba population was reduced by over 50 percent.

Above: Bombs dropped on villages kill the Nuba indiscriminately.

Left: By any standard, the Nuba are incredibly resilient, but the events of this last year have them near breaking point as starving refugees in their own land.

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Top and bottom right: Children slain in the bombing of Kurche on June 26, 2011. “Do the world and our administration still want to deal diplomatically with the bloody racist terrorists of Khartoum?” wrote the Nuba citizen who took the photos.

“Please circulate these pictures!”

Bottom left: Families flee their villages and seek shelter in caves.

Tens of thousands were killed outright. Others were victims of slave raids or “peace camps,” where receiving food was contingent upon conversion to Islam. Still others starved through the banning of international relief flights.26 Soon after war began in 2011, Bashir recalled the Nuba “rebellion” in a speech in Kadugli, now an NCP garrison. “If the people here refuse to honor the results of the election, then we will force them back into the mountains and prevent them from having food just as we did before,” he threatened.27 And now people have indeed been forced from their homes and up into the mountain caves by bombing and other acts of war. Stored food has been depleted and those in the caves have nothing to eat except leaves and insects, with little access to drinking water.28 Aid is available over the border in the Republic of South Sudan, but the NCP regime forbids cross-border aid. Courageous NGOs and Christian organizations have defied the ban as much as possible to bring in aid, but they can’t take care of half a million people. Now Sudan is well into the rainy season, making it almost impossible to deliver aid to the mountains.

The current crisis has united Sudan advocates on the need to stop the NCP regime’s attacks on civilians and the blockade of humanitarian aid. US advocacy groups include Christian, Jewish, and secular organizations and coalitions, large and small. Each brings its own strengths to the table—some have excellent contacts with Sudanese on the ground and in the Diaspora, some are media strategists and involve individuals with high name recognition, and some are mobilizers of those who will pray. Some

focus on humanitarian aid, some on political advocacy, some on research and reporting, and some are willing to go beyond what is politically correct or expedient to push for what is necessary. For instance, in a Washington Times opinion piece in April, Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham urged the US to bomb Sudan’s airstrips. “I certainly am not asking the president to kill anyone, just to break up some concrete to prevent the bombers from taking off,” Graham said. “I think that by destroying those runways, we can force Mr. Bashir to the negotiating table.”29 Sudan advocates and some members of Congress have pointed out that although the US and other governments sided with Egyptian and Libyan demonstrators and rebels to bring down tyrants, none is willing to prevent the starvation of half a million Nuba by pushing Khartoum for uncompromised humanitarian access to those in the caves. Instead, in every negotiation, the war criminal NCP government is permitted to dictate its terms. They will accept food but insist that only they deliver it. They will allow access to government-controlled areas, but not to “rebel-held” areas where the actual starvation is taking place. Why would the very regime that has deliberately orchestrated starvation and genocide allow preventative measures to counter them?

“Rebels” and moral equivalence The US State Department may believe that negotiating a “cessation of hostilities” is the solution, but Brad Phillips of the Persecution Project Foundation (PPF), working in Sudan since 1997, declares that the only reason the Nuba have not already been exterminated by Khartoum is that the SPLA-N “has clearly taken the fight to the NCP.” Phillips says that “after 500,000 dead and years of broken promises, marginalization, and persecution, the Nuba people have had enough.”30 In

“Once

again

we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture

and

society from the face of the earth.”

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Act for Sudan (ActforSudan.org) is probably the newest of the Sudan advocates, but it is an alliance of over 60 seasoned Sudan activist/human rights organizations. It was launched in the fall of 2011 to “advocate for what is necessary, rather than what is politically correct or expedient” and features ongoing social media and other campaigns. R Church Alliance for a New Sudan (CANS) (TheIRD.org/ Sudan), partnering with the Sudanese Church since 1994, mobilizes church members to press for a coherent US foreign policy response to Sudan, including appropriate intervention and support for democracy in Southern Sudan, leading to a just peace and religious freedom for all of Sudan. + The Enough Project (EnoughProject.org) fights to end genocide and crimes against humanity by obtaining facts on the ground, using rigorous analysis to determine the most sustainable solutions, influencing political leaders to adopt their proposals, and mobilizing the American public to demand change. Enough partners with the Satellite Sentinel Project (SatSentinel.org), which features compelling video witness of the war crimes in the Nuba Mountains, where cameras are banned. R Help Nuba (HelpNuba.net) promotes awareness of the crisis in the Nuba Mountains and of the situation in Darfur and in South Sudan. It is led by members of the Nuba Mountain, Darfur, and South Sudanese communities in the United States and around the world, along with American activists.

Joining Our Voices Ministries (JoiningOurVoices.com) rallies efforts to end the genocide in the Nuba Mountains. It calls attention to the Nuba church, recording and documenting the indigenous songs and worship of Christians in the Nuba Mountains and throughout Sudan/South Sudan to archive and preserve their cultural expressions of worship. + Nuba Christian Family Mission (NCFM) (georgetuto@ hotmail.com)—George Kouri Tuto, a Nuba from the Moro tribe, is president and founder of Nuba Christian Family Mission, which works to provide humanitarian aid to the people of the Nuba Mountains, to support the Diocese of Kadugli, and to visit the region and produce fact-finding reports. +

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+ GET INVOLVED

Below is a sampling of humanitarian and/or advocacy organizations and individuals for the Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan region of Sudan. Many of the humanitarian organizations have felt compelled over the years to also be involved in advocacy. Self-identified Christian organizations are marked +. All of them feature resources to better understand the issues involved; those that offer the best action ideas have a R.

congressional testimony Phillips criticized the US and other governments for not protecting the Nuba. If it were not for the SPLA-N, “led by their inspirational leader, Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu, we would be witnessing Rwandan-style genocide,” he blazed.31 Like David against Goliath, the SPLA-N has caused the NCP humiliating military defeats even though only the Sudan government has air power. The SPLA-N now controls 90 percent of the countryside while the SAF are “in garrisons ... dug in like rats inside their trenches,” according to Al Hilu.32 The SPLA-N is able to fight against the larger, betterequipped army, “thanks to Bashir [and] SAF,” Al Hilu reveals.

Often SAF troops flee, abandoning tanks, land cruisers, shells, rockets, and other weapons, so “it is Bashir who is supplying us,” Al Hilu says. “They bring everything and leave it for us!”

SAF troops also defect frequently to the SPLA-N. Speaking to Global Post journalist Tristan McConnell recently, Al Hilu admitted that when they run across an unfamiliar weapon, they look for ex-SAF soldiers to train them.33 The Muslim Al Hilu agrees with his Christian friend Bishop Andudu that this is a war of domination over Sudan’s marginalized peoples. “Khartoum doesn’t want to recognize the diversity in the country,” he told Tristan McConnell. The NCP regime is “going for a monolithic type of state, based on only two parameters, that is Arabism and Islam.”34 Al Hilu believes in religious freedom for all and a secular democracy, the “New Sudan” vision of his late friend, SPLA leader Dr. John Garang.35 In November 2011 the SPLA-N united with opposition movements of Sudan’s other marginalized people groups (the 87 percent of Sudan’s population who are black Africans, treated as second-class citizens by Khartoum’s ruling Arab elite) as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF).36 Al Hilu is the chief of the Joint Military Command. Others in leadership include a number of Darfurian rebel leaders and former Blue Nile State Governor Malik Agar. In September 2011, Khartoum began another war, this time against Blue Nile State, and ousted Agar.37 The SRF also includes the Beja Congress of Eastern Sudan38 and the Nubians from the far north39—other ancient, indigenous people groups marginalized and oppressed by the regime.

Neither the US nor NATO has offered the SPLA-N the support they offered Egyptian and Libyan protestors, even though Khartoum could eradicate the Nuba and coordination between Sudan’s marginalized peoples and some young pro-democracy Arab Sudanese in the north is now a viable alternative to the regime. Instead, the SPLA-N and NCP are portrayed as morally equivalent by such statements as “Both sides must end the current violence and allow immediate humanitarian access to desperate people.”40 A mere one week after demonstrations started in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, President Obama urged President Hosni Mubarak to step down.41 Libya’s uprising began February 17, 2011, and by February 26, the UN Security Council condemned Gadhafi’s crackdown on the rebels as a violation of international law.42 By March 17, the UN created the kind of no-fly

Nuba Reports (NubaReports.org) provides onthe-ground coverage of the situation in the Nuba Mountains by citizen journalists who call themselves “Eyes and Ears Nuba.” They provide credible, compelling reportage about the fighting in the Nuba Mountains, where thousands now hide in caves from Sudan Armed Forces.

Sitting out an aerial attack in the Nuba Mountains.

zone for which the Nuba have been pleading for a year.43 Unlike the SPLA-N, which has taken on Khartoum by itself, Libya’s “freedom fighters” needed the US and NATO to fight their battles for them.

Asked if the US hopes that the Arab Spring will spread to Sudan, Special Envoy Lyman said, “Frankly, we do not want to see the ouster of the [Sudanese] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.”44 The US continues to expect success from negotiations, incentives, and empty warnings, but these have never brought success in the past. Khartoum uses these delays and distractions to its own advantage, committing serial genocide with impunity. Successive US administrations have never seemed to understand the truth of late SPLA leader Garang’s claim that the NCP government was “too deformed to reform.”45 The double standard is breathtaking to Sudan activists, particularly now that people like the Muslim Brotherhood have gained substantial power in Egypt and Islamists have gained significant influence in Libya. Lord David Alton, a member of the British Parliament and a tremendous advocate for human rights in Sudan, recently compared his government’s action against Libya and strong statements about Syria with the way it was “turning a blind eye” to Sudan. In a July 8, 2012, story in The Independent, Alton asked, “Why is a life in Africa worth less than a life in any other country?"46 If the US and other governments will not support the SPLA-N and the SRF, they should at least not stand in the way of their courageous and sacrificial fight for freedom. Al Hilu observed that the Sudan Army is very weak and that they seem to have little will to fight. So journalist Nicholas Kristof wants to know why the Obama administration “consistently tried to restrain the rebel force.”47 In his New York Times column, Kristof said that the SPLA-N wants to liberate Kadugli from NCP regime control but Washington is discouraging them. Al Hilu, he said, “seemed mystified that American officials try to shield a genocidal government whose army is, he thinks, crumbling.” Stating that the international community has a “problem with memory,” the commander marveled that this is the same Bashir “who introduced Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to the world.” He said what Sudan advocates have observed all along: “In this conflict between the Nuba and the center [Khartoum] we are not allowed to fight freely, there is intervention always … Always there is pressure on the South, on the Nuba, on the marginalized people, the poor people … They make us go to the table to talk but there is no action.”48 Some argue that the US is concerned that regime change could usher in an even worse regime. In any event it is difficult to conceive of anything worse for the people or for global security than Bashir and the NCP regime. Admittedly, there are Islamist hardliners and throwbacks such as former Minister of Justice Hassan al Turabi49 and former President Sadiq

Operation Broken Silence (OperationBrokenSilence.org) works to abolish mass atrocities and modern slavery. They recently returned from a factfinding mission to South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains and are now working to publicize the “shocking consequences” of the genocide being committed against the Nuba people.

Persecution Project Foundation (PersecutionProject.org) provides active compassion for the persecuted, bringing crisis relief and spiritual hope to victims of civil war, genocide, and religious persecution. They have focused on the Nuba Mountains with both humanitarian relief and advocacy since the war began (see SavetheNuba.com). The Persecution Project offers lots of effective ways to get involved, according to your gifting (leader, implementer, artist, connector, specialist, prayer warrior, etc). + R Samaritan’s Purse (SamaritansPurse.org) is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid. They are bringing food, medical care, wells, sanitation, shelters, and other support to Nuba that have fled over the border to Yida and Doro refugee camps in South Sudan. + United to End Genocide (UEG) (EndGenocide. org) is a merger of Save Darfur Coalition and Genocide Intervention Network. It aims to prevent and end genocide and mass atrocities worldwide, make human rights and genocide prevention core values in US foreign policy, ensure justice for victims, and stop the perpetration of genocide or mass atrocities.

Voices for Sudan (VoicesforSudan.org) is a US-based coalition of Sudanese-led organizations dedicated to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and South Sudan and establishing a Sudan at peace with itself and its neighbors, where human rights are protected by the government and where economic development can flourish.

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al-Mahdi50 waiting in the wings. Laughably, these two, and others like them who have always plotted the Islamization of Sudan and all of Africa, now clamor for “regime change.” If given the chance, they would use the SPLA-N and the SRF’s fight for freedom to regain power. Regime change that puts one of them in leadership again would change nothing for the people of Sudan.

How will the conflict end?

When asked how the conflict will end, Al Hilu stated, “We are working for regime change, for complete transformation, for writing a new constitution, a democratic constitution that recognizes diversity, that accepts the liberal values of justice, equality, individualism. We want to achieve lasting peace and justice in this country.”51 Most (not all) Sudan advocates and members of Congress who care about Sudan would stop short of calling publicly for it, but in their heart of hearts it is exactly this kind of regime change for which they hope and pray. Such an ending to the conflict is, they know, the desire of the Nuba, of all Sudan’s marginalized people, and of most of Sudan. But it appears to be diametrically opposed to the wishes of the US government.

Advocates today have two important tasks. First, we must expose the propensity that would cast the persecutors and the persecuted—the genocidal Sudanese regime and the “rebels” who are fighting back against the genocide—as morally equivalent. Second, we must add our voices to increase international pressure on the regime. Some Christians will push for Western military intervention while others will push for spiritual warfare against the evil regime, but we can all agree to contact our leg-

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Eyes and Ears of God is a nonprofit that seeks to put video cameras in the hands of as many Nuba people as possible so that they can record the atrocities committed against them and put a face on their tragic circumstances.

Eyes and Ears of God was founded in 2006 by Tomo Kriznar, a human rights activist from Slovenia who has been traveling to Sudan since 1979. The photos in this feature were supplied by Kriznar and some of the more than 600 courageous Sudanese volunteers who—in the belief that cameras, computers, and satellite modems are more potent weapons than Kalashnikovs—provide regular footage that gives the International Criminal Court in the Hague proof of the genocide taking place in Sudan.

“Thank you for publishing these photos,” Kriznar told PRISM. “They express not only suffering but also the Nuba people’s endless strength, optimism, faith, and love. I have never encountered a more inspiring culture.

Nowhere do I feel God more than in the Nuba Mountains. Nowhere do I get more energy for my own struggles in life. Everybody who comes to Nuba notices that, but I can see that European and American decision makers are not aware of it.

Please share these photos widely. Time is running out for the Nuba people. If we protect them, everybody will benefit.”

Please go to TomoKriznar.com to learn more and to watch the featurelength documentary Eyes and Ears of God—Video Surveillance of Sudan.

islators in Washington, DC, to express our outrage over what is happening. We can demand that our leaders call on Sudan President Omar al-Bashir to halt the campaign of violence and to establish a humanitarian corridor in the Nuba Mountains so that aid can be delivered. We must let the Nuba people know that they are not forgotten.

As the Kurche Youth Choir mentioned at the beginning of this article sang, “Brothers, the bad things that were happening, God has raised his hand to stop.”

Humanly speaking, in spite of passionate advocates and valiant warriors, obstacles to peace and freedom seem insurmountable this time around. But the Nuba have faith that God will once again raise his hand to stop the evil occurring in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

(Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Faith J. H. McDonnell directs the Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan of the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007). She has been involved in advocacy for Sudan since 1994.

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Pray Ceaselessly & Eat Justly

by Bruce Friedrich

Living our environmentalism at every meal God has showed you, O human, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? Only that you act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Mic. 6:8 Pray without ceasing.

1 Thess. 5:17 In 1987 I was a senior in high school and struggling with the fact that almost a billion people were starving in the world while I was about to pay a liberal arts college enough to feed thousands of starving Ethiopians, Eritreans, or Sudanese for a year. What did the vast gulf between the developed world and the developing world say about the existence of God? I had been reading Nation magazine and Mother Jones for a few years and had started an underground ’zine and a recycling program at my Oklahoma high school. I had organized protests of US policy in Latin America. I was trying to live out my role as a Christian who was concerned about the plight of “the least of these,” as defined by Jesus in Matthew 25.

I showed up at Grinnell College in Iowa feeling confused and guilty about my role in the world and wanting to do more to help, so I joined Poverty Action Now and the Latin American Support Organization. I volunteered weekends at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen and shelter in Des Moines and organized film screenings about US policy in the developing world.

Then one day I read a book that would radically change my life’s trajectory. In Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moore Lappé makes a very simple argument: Growing crops to feed animals, who will burn off most of those calories simply by existing, is inefficient and wasteful. Furthermore, it drives

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up the price of feed crops, which means that the poor in the developing world can’t afford them. As the Worldwatch Institute puts it: “In a world where an estimated one in every six people goes hungry every day, the politics of meat consumption are increasingly heated, since meat production is an inefficient use of grain ... Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grains to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world's poor.” In other words, by eating meat, I was participating in a system that took food from the mouths of the global poor to fatten up farm animals for those of us in affluent countries.

Lappé’s is not an overtly faith-based book, but for those of us who take Christian discipleship seriously, its themes of looking deeply, acting justly, and loving radically touch a deep spiritual chord. Lappé challenges us to examine the systems that put meat on the table, to act from this knowledge, and to love the people of the developing world by committing to make measurable changes in our everyday lives.

Over the past 25 years, the argument for avoiding meat has only gotten stronger for those who prioritize environmental stewardship and solidarity with the developing world.

1:10

Eating meat wastes resources At its most basic level, eating meat is the environmental equivalent of tossing more than 10 plates of beans and rice or spaghetti into the trash for every one plate we eat. None of us would do that, yet that’s the effect each time

Eating one plate of meat = throwing 10 plates of rice and beans or pasta in the trash.

Animal waste is washed away from a dairy factory farm. (Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS)

1/2

we eat parts from a chicken, pig, or cow. It’s much more efficient for us to eat grains, corn, and soy directly rather than feeding them to farm animals that we then consume, because the majority of those calories are used up simply by keeping the animals alive.

And that’s just the pure calories-in/calories-out equation. If you take into account all the additional tilling, irrigation, crop dusting, etcetera involved in raising all those feed crops, you can see how exponentially greater the cost is for growing crops for animal feed as opposed to growing them for direct human consumption. Then consider all the extra stages of production required to process animals for our consumption. Gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing 18-wheelers transport all that grain and soy to the feed manufacturers and then to factory farms. Then massive amounts of energy resources are consumed in trucking the animals from factory farms to slaughterhouses to meat processing plants. Finally there is the cost of operating all those businesses as well as refrigerating the meat in grocery stores.

Nearly 50 percent of all the water used in the US goes to raising farm animals for food.

While non-meat foods also require some of these stages, they cut out the factory farms, slaughterhouses, and multiple stages of heavily polluting tractor-trailer trucks, as well as the extra energy use and subsequent pollution from each of those stages.

Sometimes when I make this case, someone will point out that vegetables are also resource intensive—and that’s true. But meat-eater or not, all of us are supposed to get five daily servings of fruits and vegetables. The substitute for meat is not vegetables but protein-providing beans and grains, which is also what is fed to farm animals. Eating these crops directly means cutting out the interim pollution and waste from feeding it to animals raised for slaughter.

Let’s look at some of those environmental costs now: / Eating meat is the number-one cause of global warming. UN scientists have concluded that eating meat accounts for almost one-fifth of all carbon emissions or about 40 percent more than all cars, trucks, planes, and other forms of transport combined. World Bank agricultural economists Dr. Robert Goodland and Dr. Jeffrey Anhang, however, point out in a Worldwatch Institute study that if you add in the effects of the respiration of animals raised for slaughter, the amount of warming caused by animals rises to more than 50 percent, which means as much as all other human sources of warming combined. That’s why Al Gore’s Global Warming Survival Handbook notes that the single best thing any individual can

get the facts

Forks over Knives examines the claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. Check it out at forksoverknives.com

Glass Walls is a short documentary of standard practices in North American agribusiness. Music legend Paul McCartney delivers a powerful narration of this must-see video.

Watch this short documentary and learn more at meat.org.

Vegucated is part sociological experiment and part adventure comedy. Vegucated follows three meat-and-cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks.

Watch at getvegucated.com.

Eating Mercifully: Christian Perspectives on Factory Farming is a documentary from the Humane Society about factory farming and its relation to Christian ethics.

Get a free copy of the DVD at humanesociety.org.

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Left: Waste runoff from a factory farm has travelled through the water table and drained into a public waterway. Factory farm waste is the leading cause of water pollution in the US. (Photo by Angela Muerer, courtesy of Brighter Green) Right: A permanent open-air manure lagoon holds waste from a factory farm.

Some of the waste will evaporate into the air, which is why factory farming is the second leading cause of air pollution in the US. (Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS)

do to reduce their own carbon footprint is to stop eating animals. / Eating meat wastes and pollutes water. All food requires water, but animal foods are much more wasteful than vegetarian foods. According to the National Audubon Society, water used for crop irrigation, factory farms, and slaughterhouses is roughly as much as all other water uses combined. Environmental author John Robbins estimates that it takes about 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day, 1,200 to feed a vegetarian who consumes dairy and eggs, and about 4,200 to feed a meat-eater— that’s 14 times the water usage of a vegan. / Raising animals for food is also a water-polluting process. Farm animal excrement is more concentrated than human excrement and is often contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, toxic chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and other harmful substances. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the runoff from factory farms pollutes our rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined. / Eating meat destroys the rain forest. A few years ago, Greenpeace unveiled the largest protest banner in US history. It said “KFC: Amazon Criminal,” targeting KFC because the Amazon is being razed to grow soy for chickens that end up in KFC’s buckets. Of course, the rain forest is being used to grow feed for other chickens, pigs, and

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300: 4,200

It takes an estimated 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day and 4,200 gallons to feed a meat-eater for a day.

cows, too; KFC isn’t the only culprit. The World Bank reports that 90 percent of all Amazon rain forest land cleared since 1970 is used for meat production, mostly to grow feed. Occasionally, someone will point out to me that the rain forest is being chopped down to grow soy. That’s true, but it’s worth noting that more than 95 percent of that soy is fed to farm animals, not people. If we ate the soy directly, we’d need a fraction of our current soy crop, and we could stop chopping down the rain forest.

What about eating fish?

Commercial fishing fleets are plundering the oceans and destroying sensitive aquatic ecosystems at an astonishing rate. One super-trawler is the length of a football field and can take in 800,000 pounds of fish at one time. These trawlers scrape along the ocean floor, clear-cutting coral reefs and everything else in their path. Hydraulic dredges scoop up huge chunks of the ocean floor to sift out scallops, clams, and oysters.

Most of what the fishing fleets pull in isn’t even eaten by human beings; half is fed to animals raised for food, and about 30 million tons each year are just tossed back into the ocean dead, with disastrous and irreversible consequences for the natural biological balance. And then there is aquaculture (fish farming), an industry that is increasing at a rate of more than 10 percent annually. Aquaculture is even worse than commercial fishing, because a farmed fish consumes four pounds of wild-caught fish for every one pound of flesh it provides.

Farmed fish are often raised in the same water that wild fish swim in, but fish farmers dump antibiotics into the water and use genetic breeding to create “Frankenstein fish.” The antibiotics contaminate the oceans and seas, and the genetically engineered fish sometimes escape and breed with wild fish, throwing delicate aquatic balances off-kilter. Researchers at the University of Stockholm demonstrated that the horrible environmental impact of fish farms can extend to an area 50,000 times larger than the farm itself.

What about meat that isn’t from factory-farmed animals?

Is meat better if it doesn’t come from factory-farmed animals? Of course, but its production

still wastes resources and pollutes the environment. The UN report looks at meat at a global level and indicts the inefficiency and waste that are inherent in meat production. No matter where meat comes from, raising animals for food will require that exponentially more calories be fed to animals than they can produce in their flesh, and it will require all those extra stages of CO2-intensive production as well. Only grass-fed cows eat food from land that could not otherwise be used to grow food for human beings, and even grass-fed cows require much more water and create much more pollution than soy, oats, or wheat.

So while it’s certainly preferable to eat meat from non-factory animals, little of my discussion above deals only with factory farming; the caloric equation and extra stages of production and global warming and the rest are just as true (and in some cases even more true) of small family farms. Shouldn’t just action and radical love entail doing the best we can rather than just making choices that are a bit less bad?

Farm animals are God’s creatures, too From 1990-1996, I helped run a Catholic Worker family shelter and soup kitchen in inner-city Washington, DC. We lived in voluntary poverty (earning $5 per week, plus a room in the shelter and the food we dumpster-dived from the local wholesale markets or were given day-old by local bakeries), shared our lives with the city’s least fortunate, and attempted to live in solidarity with Jesus’ mandate of Mathew 25—feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned.

While there, I read Christianity and the Rights of Animals by the Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest and professor of theology at Oxford. Linzey’s argument is very simple: God’s animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone—just as we are. And they have the same physiological senses; they touch, taste, smell, see, and hear—just as we do. Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice about who we are in the world—do we want to choose mercy or misery, compassion or cruelty? While not the central argument of this article, I do think that for those of us who want to love radically and act justly, we should be making choices that are as compassionate and merciful as possible, and a no-meat diet satisfies that faith-based obligation.

is better than eating meat from KFC or Tyson Foods, if we are to “look deeply, act justly, and love radically,” as PRISM urges us to do, we will come to see that more is required of us.

When I was running the homeless shelter for families in inner-city DC in the early ’90s, I spent a fair bit of time with Muslims, and I came to deeply admire their devotion to God. No matter what they were doing or where they were, five times per day they would stop and praise God. Similarly, Dorothy Day wrote about the centering process of daily Mass— about the daily recommitment to Christ’s radical compassion for the least of these.

For me, one of the great joys of choosing a plant-based diet is the spiritual centering of a daily life in which every time we eat we’re reminded of our commitment to just action and radical love— or as PRISM’s mission statement puts it, “the transforming power that Christ brings to the whole of our lives.” St. Paul calls on us, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, to “pray without ceasing.” For me, a plant-based diet is a joyful part of that—my every meal becomes a prayer to God for radical justice and radical love.

Amen, and bon appétit.

Bruce Friedrich (pictured below) is senior director for strategic initiatives at Farm Sanctuary, the largest and most successful US farm animal protection organization. To read his reflection on Christian compassion as an argument for plant-based eating, search “An Advent Reflection on God and Animal Cruelty.”

Conclusion Considering the proven health benefits of a vegetarian diet (the American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have a reduced risk of obesity, heart disease, and various types of cancer), there’s no need or excuse to eat chickens, pigs, and other animal products. God has shown us what is required of us, and it’s simply no longer possible to reconcile acting justly, loving mercy, or walking humbly with raising, killing, and eating animals.

But make no mistake. For most people, not eating meat is a big deal. Society is all but founded on meat-eating. You can’t watch 10 minutes of television or drive three blocks without being confronted with the societal normalcy of dead animals served up as food. However, God doesn’t call us to make easy choices but rather faithful ones. And while eating less meat is much better than eating more meat, and while eating meat from small family farms

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Damaged but Not Condemned God longs to repair the world through our prayers

by Kurt Willems

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few years ago, while driving to a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, I flinched as an airborne object hit my windshield. Ding!

The projectile smacked the bottom right-hand side of my windshield, leaving a small crack. But over the course of several weeks, the crack crept west until an arc-shaped horizontal line had traveled its entire width.

I was frustrated—but also cheap. I decided to leave it alone. After all, the fracture no longer had room to grow.

Enter three years later—same crack, same window. Yet something had changed over time—something in me. The crack had become an accepted—in other words, acceptable—part of my view. Deep down I knew the crack distorted what should have been a perfectly clear view.

But by ignoring it, by looking past the crack rather than repairing it, I had absorbed it into what I considered to be normal.

Like my windshield, our world is full of cracks and imperfections.

The easy thing is to ignore these problems, accepting them as normal.

But when we do, a subtle apathy creeps in. Instead of acting like people empowered by God to repair the brokenness, we take the path of least resistance and simply ignore it.

The cracks are obvious—and ubiquitous—as we take in the morning newscast. A child is kidnapped. A government declares war. A plane crashes. A famine threatens the lives of millions. And all this before our first cup of coffee. By the time we walk out the door for work, we’re already overloaded with the many troubles of our world.

And global bad news is quickly eclipsed by stressors that hit much closer to home. We pass a homeless person at a streetlight and speculate on how he ended up there. We wonder how secure our job really is.

We think about the size of our daughter’s college tuition. We worry about a family member caught in addiction.

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By the time we arrive at our destination, we are paralyzed by personal stress and/or empathy overload. With our own small corner of the world containing more brokenness than we possess strength to engage, our default mode becomes a posture of ignorance when it comes to larger justice issues. We look past the cracks of injustice, violence, and poverty, normalizing the world’s pain while the backrooms of our minds and hearts slowly fill with guilt, shame, and anger.

The Scriptures remind us that the world we live in does not match God’s intention. The Bible does not Photoshop reality but wrestles honestly with the sticky situations in which the biblical authors find themselves, situations that have a lot in common with our 21st-century lives.

In Ephesians 6:10-18, Paul invites the church to “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” and to “put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” While some who grew up in the evangelical subculture may dismiss this passage as an extreme portrayal of a spirit world where demons lurk behind every bush, others see it as valid but primarily relevant to issues of personal temptation.

Outfitting ourselves with truth, righteousness, and faith does indeed equip Christ-followers to find victory over any attack from the “powers of this dark world,” and this “spiritual warfare” approach has emboldened my own prayer life over the years, allowing me by God’s grace to live with integrity. But I suspect that I am not alone in having long neglected an understanding of this approach that reaches beyond personal values to broader prayers for justice in the world.

Offense or defense?

As a 12-year-old, I played city league basketball. The score was close during the final game of the season, and the other team tied in the

We truly have everything we need to stand against the evils in our neighborhoods, city, and world. As we pray in community, matching our prayers with our actions, we join with God in actively pursuing justice and dismantling injustice. final seconds. Invigorated by the impending buzzer and the sense that anything might happen now, I soared into the air to grab a rebound.

Touching down briefly, I jumped back up in a moment of glory and put the ball in the basket. Adrenaline surged through me until I realized that my teammates were looking at me in disgust. I had scored for the wrong team by playing offense when we were in fact on defense.

In applying Ephesians 6, we must understand that while spiritual warfare is often defensive—for we must defend ourselves spiritually when the powers of evil attack us directly—it is also meant to be offensive.

How do we know this? First, Paul’s armor metaphor would have been informed by the Roman soldiers he saw each day from his jail cell.

As conqueror and colonizer of the known world, 1st-century Rome was decidedly on the offensive.

Second, we must understand that Paul’s main source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Consider Isaiah’s words in chapter 59: The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice.

He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him. He put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head. He clothed himself with a robe of vengeance and wrapped himself in a cloak of divine passion (vs. 15-17).

God looks around and is “displeased to find…no justice.” God himself needs no defending. But he puts on his armor in order to intervene and fight on behalf of the oppressed. He asserts himself in the name of justice. Paul invites us communally, as God’s people, to put on this very same armor, God’s own breastplate and helmet and cloak! According to Ephesians 6, we can join in God’s offensive liberating activity on behalf of the oppressed. Through words and actions, together with God, we proclaim the subversive victory of the cross.

While it is easy to feel overwhelmed in view of the brokenness in our world, powerless to make any significant impact, this text invites us to an opposite response. As we catch the vision of Ephesians 6, we realize that in spite of our weakness, God’s mighty power and divine resources are at the church’s disposal. We truly have everything we need to stand against the evils in our neighborhoods, city, and world. We will never repair every crack in our world, but with God’s resources and in partnership with the community of faith, we can take a stand against Satan’s schemes that seek to corrupt God’s good world. As a body, we must put on our armor: The belt of truth, embodied in the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Paul says earlier in Ephesians (1:10), because of Christ’s victory on the cross, God is “gather[ing] up all things” in heaven and on earth.

If this truth points us to anything it’s that God is not finished with the world yet!

The breastplate of righteousness, a word that is often linked with “justice” in the Scriptures. God wears this to fight oppression. The church’s invitation is to build just systems and structures and tear down

unjust ones.

The shoes of the gospel of peace. These remind us that we are not fighting a war of “flesh and blood” but must charge into broken situations and announce shalom.

The shield of faith. This is less about our personal, individual faith and more about God’s faithful and trustworthy character, which goes with us as we expose the lies of the powers of evil. Psalm 91:4 reminds us that “[God’s] faithfulness is a shield.”

The helmet of salvation (or liberation), which recalls God’s passion for freeing the oppressed from the bondage of injustice.

The sword of the Spirit / Word of God, the gospel-shaped announcement that God is reclaiming this world in Jesus Christ!

Ultimately, we recognize the powerful weapon of prayer. As we pray in community, matching our prayers with our actions, we join with God in actively pursuing justice and dismantling injustice. When we understand that this armor represents God’s own resources, we no longer feel powerless. God is reclaiming the cosmos, and he invites the community of believers to join in the justice movement of Jesus. As we respond to his invitation, we will see cracks repaired!

De-normalizing the brokenness Not long ago, my wife and I flew up to Portland for a time of ministry training. A friend’s father, who lives a couple of minutes from the airport, kindly offered to have us park our car at his home while we were gone, rather than leaving it in the pricey airport parking lot.

When we returned, the man who had kept our car drove it to the airport to pick us up. After a minute or so of riding in my car, I began to have the feeling that something was different. Then it finally clicked—the crack was gone! This generous-hearted man had seen the crack in my windshield and decided to do something about it. Believing that his resources came from God, he had put them to work on our behalf.

Driving home that day was an incredible experience. My view through the windshield was transformed. The world was no longer distorted by a long crack.

God is powerful. When we are overwhelmed by more problems than any one person can handle, we know that God is at work in the world to oppose evil. This reality ultimately came to fruition in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Until the finality of the gathering of all things—the beautiful union of heaven and earth—we are invited into partnership with God. Together, we can be empowered by God to make a difference in and beyond our sphere of influence.

May we see the cracks in our world as they truly are—distortions of God’s good intention. May we see injustice as opposed to the way of Jesus. And may we, together, do justice to spiritual warfare by taking up God’s own armor for the cause of the vulnerable and oppressed.

Kurt Willems (M.Div., Fresno Pacific) is currently preparing for a church planting project with the Brethren in Christ. He is a freelance writer for various print and online publications, including his personal blog hosted

by Patheos (KurtWillems.com).

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by Jeff Goins

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“Letting Go” by StateofKaos.deviantart.com

A Time to Walk Away

When obedience to God means not serving others Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

- Henri Nouwen

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ometimes when facing a need, we have to walk away. For one reason or another, we must sometimes pass the baton on to the next person God is calling to heal a wound. We must let go; we must leave what is comfortable and familiar and once again trust. Sometimes people leave our lives of their own volition; other times, they are violently torn from our arms, and we wonder why. Sometimes God doesn’t “close a door and open a window” but slams the door on our fingers, and we’re left with a throbbing pain, unsure of where we went wrong.

“Let it go” It was October, and I was volunteering with an organization in Nashville, Tenn., that delivers groceries to people’s homes. This is a service for people who don’t have transportation, are physically disabled, or just aren’t able to get out to go shopping. They usually don’t have the money to buy groceries either.

I met a single mother named Michelle on a delivery run. She was pregnant. Aside from her two kids, Michelle was alone. She lived in a small rented duplex between two large public housing projects. After meeting her family, I felt a connection to all three of them. In fact, the experience kind of haunted me.

When we first delivered groceries to Michelle’s house, she couldn’t stop crying. She was so grateful. When my friend Bruce and I offered to put away the bags and boxes of dry goods in her kitchen, she said, “No, leave them. I want the kids to see when they wake up.” So we left them in her living room. When we offered to pray for her, she cried again.

I couldn’t get Michelle’s sobs out of my head. For days afterwards I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about her and her family, wondering how they were doing. So I went back and visited. They welcomed me into their home with open arms. So I made it a regular thing.

About every week or so, I would drop by. Sometimes I would watch a movie with the kids; other times I’d bring cookies. In some weird way we

became family.

In December I knocked on Michelle’s door. With me was a tall, artificial Christmas tree in a long brown box. Michelle was blown away when she saw the tree. She had told me that the one thing she wanted more than anything that year was for her kids to have Christmas.

Two weeks later I pulled up to her house with a car full of presents.

I told her this wasn’t me or my friends from church or any other person who was providing for her. It was God. It felt good to bring tangible hope into a person’s life—a little too good. Whenever Michelle would express gratitude for what we were doing, I would quickly correct her, informing her that God was the one who was providing and that she could trust in that.

A week after dropping off the Christmas presents, some friends and I took Michelle’s kids to the zoo and then out for dinner at McDonald’s.

More than anything, I noticed that the kids just wanted to be touched. I even got to hold the little boy’s hand when he was acting tough. At the end of the day, we dropped them off at their mom’s. She was tired but grateful. We said goodbye and told them we loved them.

And that was the last time we ever saw them.

My wife, Ashley, and I were married that January. We had a wonderful honeymoon. After returning home I said, “We should go visit Michelle.” But life got busy. We were adjusting to our new life together, sharing a home (and bathroom), and growing in all the ways that young married couples do. We trusted Michelle was doing well, though her due date was quickly coming. To my surprise a month went by without our even realizing it. The pressures of work, marriage, and building a new life consumed us.

One day I thought about Michelle and decided we needed to visit her and the kids soon. We talked about it for another two weeks before it actually happened. Ashley baked some cookies, and we drove over to their house after church one Sunday to drop them off. We knocked and knocked, but no one answered the door. We looked around, shrugged, and left—and spent the afternoon at the mall.

Two weeks later my friend Joel and I dropped by to see Michelle. We got out of the car, walked up to the door and knocked. No answer. There were a bunch of envelopes stuffed into the mailbox. I knocked again. A white man (out of place in that neighborhood) stopped us and asked, “Can I help you?”

“No thanks,” I said. “We’re fine.” I continued to knock on the door to no avail. I wished this man would mind his own business.

“Well, I own this building,” he replied. Instantly I remembered all the things Michelle had told me about this man—how he had turned off the heat on her family, how they had to use the oven to stay warm some nights, how he kept charging more for rent and had zero sensitivity to their situation. “No one has lived here for two months,” he told me.

My heart sank, and I started to feel sick.

The landlord said he knew Michelle. He told me she just up and left one day—maybe two, three months ago. I couldn’t believe it. I knew she was unhappy, but she had always said she planned to stay until the summer to finish out her lease. I was scared. It was now March, and Michelle was due to go into labor soon. The landlord told us she may have moved in with her mother who lived down the street.

Joel and I proceeded to knock on every door. It was useless. No one answered. I stood in the street, my head hung low. I wondered why this had happened. I asked God why he would let it. Didn’t he see the

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good we were doing in this family? Had I been lazy or negligent? Was this my fault?

Then I remembered the voice.

Back in January I had heard something that might have given me a clue that all this would happen. I might have been able to prepare.

My wife and I were at the mall, and I was sitting on a bench, waiting for her to exit a store. This was a voice I had ignored, a voice that was now ringing in my head as I stood outside of Michelle’s old home wondering what had happened.

Let it go, the voice said.

I don’t know what you believe about prayer and miracles and such, but I’m pretty much a skeptic about the Creator speaking to me through audible voices and oddly shaped pancakes, but every once in a while something happens to me that is inarguably God. This was one of those moments.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

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This was not the first time I had heard the phrase. It had popped into my mind one afternoon in December, too. I was praying for Michelle, and I heard those words in my mind as clear as day: “Let it go, Jeff.”

I thought, “Are you serious?” My mind must have been playing tricks on me. I shared the thought with a friend, and she thought it sounded absurd that God would be telling me to let go of a relationship.

A few weeks later I prayed and seemed to hear the same thing. I didn’t believe it.

As I was standing at Michelle’s door, listening to her landlord tell me this friend of mine had taken off very close to the same time I heard those words in my mind, I started to wonder. Maybe this wasn’t just a random thought that popped into my head. Maybe God was proving what I had always told Michelle—that he was her provider, not me. And maybe he was still providing for her right now. Maybe God didn’t need me.

I still struggle with feeling we abandoned Michelle, that maybe I could have done more, but that’s not really productive. I know that I’d do some things differently if I had the chance to do them again. But I also know that this is an important lesson to learn for anyone who does work requiring compassion: Sometimes you have to walk away.

In visiting Michelle and doing other things, I had grown codependent, getting my self-worth from what I did for others in need. I shared this story about Michelle with a friend of mine. Over dinner that evening he shared the story with his family, and his young daughter responded, “Daddy, do you think God made that woman move so that someone besides Jeff could have a chance to bless her?” He only smiled and nodded.

I must learn to do the same.

I don’t know what happened to Michelle. I never got to run into her at the grocery store or see her smiling face. I never got to see the story resolved. It will always be a painful memory. But in that pain I’m learning to trust. Maybe these scars serve as reminders to me to be more intentional, to have more faith, and to learn that I’m not ultimately in control. I can only hope.

Losing your soul to save the world This is not easy, this letting go. There is so much need and so much pain—so much suffering—that it seems self-centered to walk away from a need. But this isn’t about the need; it’s about humility. It’s about believing that there is more happening than we can see when we bring a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty. It’s about having faith in a deeper narrative that underlies every compassionate act.

In other words, it’s easy to lose yourself in the pursuit of justice, and nobody wants to tell you that this may cost you your soul, that it will hurt worse than you imagined and there will be all kinds of unresolved tensions. You never see a disclaimer at the bottom of those commercials with starving African children, saying, “Warning: Taking action may lead to serious mental health risks.” But it’s true. At least, in my experience and what I’ve seen in others. And no one wants to talk about that—how justice can consume you—not in a good way—how it keeps you up at night, how it becomes an obsession.

If we are not careful, we may end up living like Martha, the woman who was so content do to things for Jesus that she forgot why she was doing them in the first place. Yes, friends, compassion can become a distraction. The needs are so abundant that it seems selfish to consider our own spiritual health while seeking to do good in the world. But that is exactly what we must do if we are going to be more than do-gooders in

We are only able to help heal the brokenness around us when we are living whole lives ourselves. the world—If we are going to participate in redemption.

Whenever I think of walking away, I always think of my friend Colleen. Colleen read a book about poverty and immediately felt compelled to help the poor. Like a lot of people she was overwhelmed with the needs. So she tried to meet them all.

Colleen signed up to volunteer at every shelter, soup kitchen, and social service in Nashville. She was incredibly committed. She was resolved not to do this halfway; it would be her life. She helped people in need with every spare moment she had. Every evening and Saturday afternoon, even Sundays after church, were dedicated to helping the less fortunate. She loved the opportunity to help and learn from others more experienced than her. She was an inspiration of love and perseverance.

Or so I thought.

For years Colleen befriended prostitutes, visited widows, and delivered food to the handicapped. She invited homeless people into her home and her life. She read every book, watched every movie, and adopted every discipline. She was beyond focused. However, she began to realize that some of the problems she was battling were big, complicated issues that required holistic solutions. She began to realize that some of these people needed more than a warm bed or a nice conversation over coffee. They needed help at a deep level that she couldn’t provide. This was something she didn’t know how to give. And it wrecked her.

Colleen did what most of us would do. She tried harder. She redoubled her efforts and focused on fewer projects. She read and studied harder so she could handle any issue. Yet she still ended up feeling stressed and burned out. On top of that, her marriage was starting to suffer. Instead of bringing healing to the brokenness around her, Colleen was being broken herself.

The kind of brokenness I’m talking about here is not healthy. It’s not the spiritual brokenness you hear about in church or at Bible studies. It’s dysfunctional. It’s painful in a way that disrupts the healthy systems in your life. And that’s exactly what was happening to my friend Colleen—everything around her was falling apart. All because of her compassion. Something had to change.

Colleen had to step down from all weekly volunteer commitments.

This was her own choice, but it was still hard. She began concentrating on “smaller” things: serving at church, befriending neighbors, and loving her husband. It was a paradigm shift for her, a discipline. But it was one she needed to make.

Shortly after Colleen scaled back her volunteering, I met with her over coffee. She told me what she was doing with all the extra time and energy she normally would have spent volunteering at soup kitchens.

She was now investing in her marriage. She was reading books and asking people’s advice on how to love her husband well. She was spending most nights and weekends with him instead of serving on the streets.

By serving the poor Colleen had learned how much she could give of herself to something she was passionate about. And for the first time she was applying that to immediate relationships she had neglected. “It’s so good,” she told me. I believed her. In fact, I was envious. My friend

had stumbled upon something I hadn’t yet grasped—that we are only able to help heal the brokenness around us when we are living whole lives ourselves. When we neglect the systems and structures that are intended to bring us life, we not only rob ourselves and those around us, but we also rob those to whom we would minister. In other words, you can’t forsake everything for the cause of justice; it will undermine the stability you need to heal the poor and hurting.

Be still and know I know a lot of people who are passionate about social justice, and most of them would admit that not being able to serve is uncomfortable. “I can’t just do nothing!” they might say. But sometimes, that is exactly what we are called to do—to be still and know there is a deeper story happening, one that goes beyond what we could do with our own hands and feet.

This is no excuse not to act but rather a caution to steward our lives well. If we do not, we may be forced to give up something good for a season—so that we can be made whole, so that we can grow up.

This is what God wants from us—not to serve out of our brokenness (although we all start there) but to serve as whole people, helping others heal and find wholeness. Anything else is codependence, a sham to assuage our guilt.

Being able to walk away is a sign of maturity. When we first discover the world’s needs, we become consumed with righting every wrong we see. We put our passion to work, every spare minute doing whatever we can to help “the cause.” But exhausting yourself on behalf of the poor and downtrodden will ultimately burn you out physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When this happens, it becomes hard to pray. We may even resent God for not doing something, as I did with Michelle. We may strive harder to fill the gaps. We may neglect our families, churches, work, and even ourselves. In the process we may become the brokenness we seek to heal.

Trying to be effective in everything means not being effective in anything. My friend Colleen discovered this when she was bouncing from one volunteer opportunity to the next. She wasn’t volunteering as much as she was making an appearance. She was busy but not effective. Certainly there are enough needs in the world to keep us busy, but without being intentional, we will do little long-term good.

Jeff Goins is the communications director for Adventures in Missions (Adventures.org). He writes books and blogs (GoinsWriter.com) in his spare time and lives just outside of Nashville with his wife, son, and dog. This article was adapted from chapter 7 (“When You Have to Walk Away”) of his book Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life (Moody, 2012). It is reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher.

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onspiracy theories are nothing new. My grandfather, a North Florida farmer, never believed that men had landed on the moon. He suspected that the whole project was an elaborate fiction to raise federal taxes. In recent times, conspiracy theories have grown less benign, more prone to echo-chamber amplification, and more resistant to the marshalling of evidence. Two cases illustrate the point:

Case 1: Unfounded rumors about the link between childhood vaccines and autism have circulated for some time, without scientific basis. In 2010, the lone study that had claimed back in 1998 to find a tentative link between childhood vaccines and autism, and which had given rise to conspiracy theories about the medical establishment, was shown to be the result of outright fraud and falsified data. 1 But the discovery of fraud did not quell the fearmongering of activist groups of parents, many of whom still refuse to get their youngsters vaccinated.2 That decision puts their own children, and other children, at increased risk of death from preventable diseases, 3 like the measles outbreaks now occurring with more frequency.

Case 2: At the end of 1996, scientists were so certain that the HIV virus caused the condition called AIDS 4 that they began giving patients

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On the difference between denial and dissent when it comes to climate change

by Rusty Pritchard

anti-retroviral therapy (ART) intended to keep the HIV virus from replicating. The result came to be known as the “Lazarus effect” 5 as AIDS patients at death’s door began to come forth and to go back to their jobs.

That didn’t convince South African President Thabo Mbeki, who refused to believe in the HIV/AIDS connection6 and instead believed the science to reflect poorly on African morality and values. In 2000 his government invited dissenting scientists to sit on important government health panels. Those panels recommended against a largescale national anti-AIDS campaign, despite an international scientific consensus that it would save lives. Recently, a study from the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes claims that at least 365,000 South African deaths7 can be blamed on the fallacious viewpoint Mbeki adopted.

It’s classic conspiracy theory stuff. An article in the New Scientist8 described what denialist movements have in common: All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people. This conspiracy is usually claimed to be promoting a sinister agenda: the nanny state, takeover of the world economy, government power over individuals, ...atheism.

Climate Change - Polar Icecaps by Shane Gavin (sephorangelus.deviantart.com)

Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me?

Denialism veneers over its irrationality with a paradoxical appeal to science but without doing the hard work of convincing scientists of an argument.

Right-wing “birthers”9 (who fail to acknowledge Barak Obama’s birth certificate) and left-wing “truthers” (who believe George W. Bush or his friends masterminded the 9/11 attacks) both subscribe to conspiracy theories.

Today, climate change skepticism veers dangerously close to being a conspiracy theory.

Jigsaw puzzles and card houses Denialism (a word first used in connection with conspiracy theorists who tried to cast doubt on the historicity of the German genocides of WWII)10 tries to veneer over its irrationality with a paradoxical appeal to science but without doing the hard work of convincing scientists of an argument. So climate denialists, like HIV/ AIDs denialists and vaccine alarmists, trumpet the work of a handful of dissenters, many of whom did real research in the past but whose recent, more ideological work fails to get published because it can’t pass peer review. They see this inability to

get published as a sign of persecution and lockout orchestrated by the establishment rather than a reflection of the quality of their work. They might even accuse scientific journal editors of “groupthink” for failing to recognize the brilliance of the dissenters.

The paradox in many nonscientists who profess “skepticism” about climate science is that they are so staggeringly unskeptical about the claims of people who agree with them. They are willing to believe that almost all the experts are being duped. It’s faux skepticism.

Conspiracy theorists look at science as a postmodern exercise of power instead of as society’s best-faith effort to find coherent explanations for natural observations. The Economist newspaper11 put it this way: In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions, and mistakes.

Whether your impression is dominated by the whole or the holes will depend on your attitude to the project at hand. You might say that some see a jigsaw where others see a house of cards. Jigsaw types have in mind an overall picture and are open to bits being taken out, moved around, or abandoned should they not fit. Those who see houses of cards think that if any piece is removed, the whole lot falls down. When it comes to climate, academic scientists are jigsaw types, dissenters from their view house-of-cards-ists.

Nothing is more frustrating for credentialed scientists than to present their research to a general nonacademic audience and then to find themselves facing off during the Q & A with a blogger who says, “I’ve done a lot of research on the internet about this question, and I think your science is a house of cards.”

Denialism and dissent To avoid conspiracy theories, Christians need to learn how to distinguish climate dissent from denialism. Dissenters will recognize that there is a fairly robust consensus on the human role in climate science but will explain why a minority disagree with it (and will usually explain charitably why they haven’t been able to convince their peers yet). They will recognize the reasonableness of the prevailing view.

They won’t look for a “smoking gun” or try to topple a house of cards. They will use their best science skills to argue that some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are in the wrong place.

Denialists deny everything—they deny that there is a strong consensus view; they deny that humans are partly responsible for climate change; they deny that the The Christian earth is warming; they deny that we could detect it if it was warming. The Christian variant of climate denialism denies variant of climate even the theological possibility that a sovereign God would have created a world that humans can influence at a global denialism scale.

In a way, their argument is with the Bible itself: They denies even deny the reality of human dominion. If Genesis 1 means anything at all, it is that humans have in some sense actuthe theological ally been given charge of planetary maintenance, for good or for ill. Let’s take it as evidence for God’s existence that possibility that the scientific knowledge we need to manage the planet is growing along with our need to act on it. a sovereign (Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

God would have

A natural resource economist, Rusty Pritchard is the CEO of Flourish (FlourishOnline.org), a ministry that equips Christians to engage the world of environmental science and action.

that humans can

created a world

influence at a global scale.

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Kids Shouldn’t Die in Prison

A look at the recent Miller v. Alabama Supreme Court decision—a victory for juvenile justice advocates—and the long hard road ahead by Kimberlee Johnson

O

n June 25, 2012, the United States Supreme Court struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for homicide offenders who are under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes.

This narrow 5-to-4 decision is a victory for both juvenile lifers and the advocates who have worked tirelessly for many years on their behalf. In the Miller v. Alabama ruling, the majority opinion as stated

by Justice Elena Kagan was that juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP) convictions violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Approximately 2,600 citizens are currently serving JLWOP sentences. More than 2,000 of these were sentenced through the mandatory sentencing practice that the new ruling has barred; it is these prisoners who now have hope of eventual release. 1 Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson represented the defendants in the case. The executive director of the nonprofit law firm Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson called it “an important win for children...

The Court has recognized that children need additional attention and protection in the criminal justice system…[This] decision requires the lower courts to conduct new sentencing hearings where judges will have to consider children’s individual character and life circumstances, including age, as well as the circumstances of the crime.”

But the fight for juvenile justice is far from over. Because resentencing must be initiated by the prisoners themselves, the majority of whom lack the funds to hire an attorney, Stevenson worries that many will remain in prison. The Supreme Court has stated that prisoners seeking new hearings have no constitutional right to counsel. And youths will continue to be tried as—and incarcerated with—adults, as this ruling touches exclusively on mandatory life-without-parole sentences.

How did this happen?

Many Americans are surprised to learn that the US not only incarcerates a greater percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world but also has the dubious distinction of being the only nation

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that sentences children to life in prison without parole. What is this harsh sentencing based upon?

Two key factors have contributed to the large numbers of juvenile lifers. The first is mandatory transfer laws. Transfer laws, which vary by state, determine whether a juvenile will be heard in a juvenile court or prosecuted in an adult criminal court. These transfers can occur through judicial waiver (a juvenile court judge decides), prosecutorial discretion (the prosecutor decides to directly file in an adult criminal court), or legislative statute/statutory exclusion (state law mandates that it is automatically filed in an adult criminal court). Currently 29 states have automatic statutory transfer laws so that all juveniles charged with felony murder are tried in adult court at the very start, and murder charges apply to both the principal actor in the murder and any accomplices who are a part of the original felony regardless of their role in the crime.

The second factor is mandatory sentencing laws. When statutes automatically dictate the sentence for a particular crime, the hands of judges are tied in terms of determining what may be a more just sentence given particular circumstances. Anita Colon, Pennsylvania coordinator for the National Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, illustrates this in the tragic story of her brother, Robert “Saleem” Holbrook. At the age of 16 Holbrook was given $500 by a drug dealer to serve as the lookout during a drug transaction. The transaction turned out to be a robbery/murder, and Hobrook was eventually charged and convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Despite the judge’s expressed acknowledgement that Holbrook was the youngest and least culpable in the crime, Pennsylvania law mandated that he sentence the boy to life without parole.

According to Human Rights Watch, 59 percent of juvenile lifers are first-time offenders, like Holbrook, with no juvenile or adult record. 2 Like the rest of the US criminal justice system, JLWOP reflects extensive racial and economic disparities. Youth of color are more likely than white youth to be transferred into adult courts for every type of offense.3 In Pennsylvania, 65 percent of prisoners serving

15-year-old in confinement in San Jose, Calif.

(Photo by Richard Rodriguez)

JLWOP sentences are African American. White youth in adult court are twice as likely as African American youth to have a private lawyer, and youth represented by private attorneys are less likely to be convicted, regardless of race or ethnicity. 4 Many politicians have garnered popularity by taking tough-oncrime stances and using phrases like “adult crime, adult time.” Children, however, are unlike adults in one very significant way. According to Dr. Ruben Gur, director of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, “The evidence now is strong that the brain does not cease to mature until the early 20s in those relevant parts that govern impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences, and other characteristics that make people morally culpable…” 5 While our laws determine that young people are not mature enough to drive before the age of 16, vote before 18, or use alcohol before 21, trying and sentencing children as adults implies that they are capable of exercising appropriate judgment in the midst of peer pressure, tempting life circumstances, and often difficult home situations. Sadly, the recent ruling against mandatory LWOP sentences for juveniles will do nothing to change the broader situation for youths charged with violent crime. All states have laws permitting the trying of children as adults (under various circumstances), and at least 22 states and the District of Columbia have no minimum age restriction.

Trying youth in adult court could also subject them to adult sentences and placement in adult prisons. 6

While natural consequences and appropriate punitive judgments are needed for children as well as adults, “the juvenile justice system was founded because youth have unique characteristics—requiring special protections and services—that reflect a greater capacity to change than adults.”7 If this is true, rehabilitation/restoration as a productive member of society is not only a worthy but also a realistic goal for them.

Consider Philadelphia native Edwin Desamour. At the age of 16, Desamour was tried and convicted of murder as an adult. Spared a life sentence, he was given seven to 20 years, going on to serve eight years in an adult prison and over 11 years on parole. Despite his misery while incarcerated, Desamour was motivated by the possibility of parole and determined to change his life around and never return.

Upon his release, and with the help of community support, Desamour eventually founded the nonprofit MIMIC—Men in Motion in the Community. MIMIC is a group of men, most of whom are ex-offenders, who offer mentoring and crisis intervention to at-risk youth in order to keep them from entering the juvenile justice system in the first place.

Like Desamour himself, MIMIC volunteers model what it takes to be a productive citizen and are living proof that redemption is possible.

Impact and implications of new ruling Opponents of the abolition of mandatory JLWOP argue that given the heinous and sometimes premeditated murders that are committed,

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Dig Deeper: Organizations The Campaign for Youth Justice (Campaignfor YouthJustice.org) is dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth in the adult criminal justice system.

The Coalition for Juvenile Justice (JuvJustice.org) is a nationwide coalition of State Advisory Groups and allies dedicated to preventing children and youth from becoming involved in the courts and upholding the highest standards of care when youth are charged with wrongdoing and enter the justice system.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI.org) is a nonprofit that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system, including juvenile offenders. Check out their excellent resources on children in adult prison.

Men in Motion in the Community (MIMICPhilly. org) seeks to build bridges of community support and social bonds for Philadelphia’s high-risk youth, young adults, and previously incarcerated men through mentoring, community engagement, and educational enrichment.

The National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers (NOVJL.org) tells the stories of those victimized by juvenile offenders.

Take some time to visit their site in order to better understand their side of the issue and to grieve their losses as well.

The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (EndJLWOP.org) is a national campaign that has been working to end the practice of sentencing youth to die in prison.

ders of our innocent loved ones and the devastation left behind…

The deluge of litigation, legislation, and resentencing that has been opened … by the Court will rip up the legal finality that family members have relied on. We will have to go back to court and re-engage with the offenders who ruined our lives.” 8 As a result of Miller v. Alabama three things will happen. First, states must respond with changes in legislation. Second, courts must provide new sentencing hearings to all of the affected petitioners.

Third, the public consciousness and dialogue must grow as it relates to issues of mandatory minimum sentencing, transfers of youth to adult criminal courts, and the appropriateness of adult sanctions for juveniles convicted as In 2008 a group of five young men were arrested in Miami for armed car-jacking, buradults. glary, sexual battery, and assault. Among them was then-13-year-old Ronald Franklin.

States must enThe older members of the group pointed a finger at Ronald as the ringleader, although act laws consistent he was the youngest. Ronald is still being held awaiting trial in an 8×10 cell at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. (Photo by Richard Ross; juvenile-in-justice.com) with the Miller v. Alabama ruling. All states with mandatory sentencing schemes are affected by the Court’s decision—and the responses have been varied. In the state of Pennsylvania, which has the highest number of juvenile lifers at 480, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R-12), held a public hearing on July 12, 2012, to receive testimony regarding how to implement the Supreme

JLWOP should continue in the United States. It is important to remember that to the same extent that juvenile lifers, family members of these lifers, and fair sentencing advocates feel excited, victorious, and relieved, victims’ families, prosecutors, and victim-advocacy groups feel angry, defeated, and grieved.

These voices must also be heard. Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers, said, “This ruling invalidating the life sentences of many of our family members’ murder cases comes against the backdrop of tragedy. While we understand the tragic consequences to the killers, the entire context of this decision is first and foremost the appalling and senseless mur-

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Dig Deeper: Books

Court’s decision. This is perceived as an immediate act to achieve compliance with the higher court’s EDITOR’S PICK: TRUE NOTEBOOKS—A WRITER’S YEAR AT JUVENILE HALL is Mark Salzman’s mandate. Sentencing laws related to account of his reluctant first visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup first- and second-degree homicide for violent teenage offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved convictions are the primary issue. and astonished him that he began to teach there regularly. An eye-opening, heart-softening According to Lourdes M. Rosado, asread. sociate director of the Juvenile Law Center, Sen. Greenleaf is trying to get the relevant legislation passed by the Boys among Men: Trying and Sentencing Juveniles as Adults by David L. Myers end of 2012, but this process may (Praeger, 2005) explores the evolution of transfer laws, increasingly prevalent in the US, take longer depending on the state. that send youth to adult prisons rather than juvenile detention facilities.

Lower courts must offer the opportunity for new sentencing hearings to those currently serving manLast Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth by John Hubner (Random datory juvenile life-without-parole House, 2008) looks at a facility in Texas that runs the most aggressive–and one of the most sentences. At these hearings, mitisuccessful–treatment programs for violent young offenders in America. gating circumstances and arguments (related to age, family and home environment, relevant circumstances, and the possibility for rehabilitation) can be presented, and judicial discretion may be used in sentencing.

According to Rosado, a letter containing the Motion of Post Convic) Educate yourself about these issues. (See “Dig Deeper: Books” tion Relief form has been sent to all juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania, above.) Become part of or support the efforts of an existing orgaencouraging them to file a petition within 60 days of the Supreme nization or movement that is making progress with regard to these Court ruling, challenging their life-without-parole sentence. In Philaissues. (See “Dig Deeper: Organizations” on page 36.) delphia alone approximately 250 cases are already before the Court ) Support the families of victims who died at the hands of juveof Common Pleas in order to have sentences revisited. As Anita Colon niles. Support the families of incarcerated youths. indicated in her July 12, 2012, testimony before the Senate Judiciary ) Host forums at your organization or job to educate others about Committee in PA, “The crucial mitigating factors that my brother’s trial juvenile justice issues. judge was prohibited from considering all those years ago must now ) Churches and other community organizations, donate the use be taken into consideration.”9 of your space for community meetings. Allow flyers to be posted.

Disseminate information.

Lest anyone think this process will be easy, consider the extreme ) Admit your involvement or place in this issue (e.g., victim of dissent and disagreement with regard to interpretations of the retroviolent crime, family member of an incarcerated person, advocate, activity of the Court’s ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his disopponent) and voice your beliefs. senting statement, said that it “is a great tragedy when a juvenile ) Write a letter (or start a letter-writing campaign) to your discommits murder—most of all for the innocent victims. But also for trict attorney, state representatives, and local newspaper editor the mur­derer, whose life has gone so wrong so early. Perhaps sciexpressing your opinion about the issue. ence and policy suggest society should show greater mercy to young kill­ers, giving them a greater chance to reform themselves at the risk (Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article that they will kill again… Neither the text of the Constitution nor our have been posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.) precedent prohibits legislatures from requiring that juvenile murderers be sentenced to life without parole.” 10 This statement has formed a basis upon which many district attorneys’ offices are fighting to mainKimberlee Johnson is chair of the Urban Studies Department and directain (discretionary) life-without-parole sentences for those previously tor of the Center for Urban Youth Development at Eastern University’s convicted under mandatory sentencing laws (despite the fact that any Philadelphia campus. She is a member-at-large of the Coalition for juvenile sentences lacking the possibility of parole were discouraged Juvenile Justice. The author would like to express particular thanks to by the Court).

Anita Colon (Pennsylvania coordinator for the National Campaign for The public consciousness has been raised as a result of the the Fair Sentencing of Youth); Edwin Desamour (founder of MIMIC); Lourdes Rosado, Esq. (associate director of the Juvenile Law Center); Miller v. Alabama Supreme Court ruling. Opportunities for discourse and Jeffrey Shook, Esq. (associate professor of law and social work at must continue as issues of human rights and juvenile justice come to the University of Pittsburgh) for their time and contributions to this arthe fore in our society. We must contend with the issues of mandaticle. (The editor would like to thank Roger Zeperneck, board member tory minimum sentencing, transfers of youth to adult criminal courts, of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, for his guidance.) and the appropriateness of adult sanctions for juveniles convicted as adults. People of conscience must take action. How?

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Off the Shelf

Still

by Lauren F. Winner Harper One

Making Peace with the Land

By Fred Bahnson and Norman Wirzba InterVarsity Press

Reviewed by Pamela Robinson

Reviewed by Rusty Pritchard

Theologian Lauren F. Winner follows her Girl Meets God, the critically acclaimed memoir regarding her conversion to Christianity, with Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. As Winner comments in the author Q&A at the end of the book, Still cannot be neatly classified as memoir. Instead, its three sections comprise 54 chapters of varying length and, she explains, provide both memoir in the storytelling about her life and reflections on the spiritual theme of desolation and consolation. In the end, Winner proclaims no magical solution to her mid-faith doubts, largely the result of an abandoned marriage, but rather a miraculous acceptance of God’s presence in the midst of her questioning.

As the first of the two prefaces to her book explains, Winner converted to Anglican Christianity, moving away from both the beloved Judaism of her father and the lapsed Baptist Protestantism of her mother. Now several years later, in the midst of a divorce, she writes, “The enthusiasms of my conversion have worn off.” In her second preface, she summarizes, “This is a book about God moving “I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to away at the same time that God took away learn that I am a small the ground. First goes this. Then goes this. character in a story Gone are conversion experience, mother, that is always fundamarriage. Then a small light dots the dark mentally about God.” hills. And then two.” The lights shine from - Lauren Winner the windows of the church Winner continues to frequent until, little by little, she experiences movement in her paralyzed heart and pens “a sort of psalm, maybe.”

She writes: “Sometimes the redoing [of oneself] is not big, not audible; not a move, a marriage, a child, a heroic change of course. Sometimes it is only here inside, how you make sense of things. Sometimes it is only about who you know yourself to be.” For as she tells us a little later, “God has become illegible”—a statement all the more dramatic for appearing in the book’s only one-sentence chapter. Such are the revelations in the middle of one’s faith.

Early on, Winner provides considerable detail about her divorce. She takes responsibility for leaving the marriage and is refreshingly honest about the reason—unhappiness.

“What needs to be said here about my marriage is, I think, only this: I was very unhappy for a long time, and all my explanations for that unhappiness seem pat and flat and deceptive,” she writes. “There are days when I tell myself I tried everything I could (therapy, stick-to-it-iveness, etc.), and there are days when I think I could have tried more, tried harder, or tried something different, though I’m not sure exactly what. There are days when I see mistakes early in the threads of marriage and I think, if I had just paused then, and gone back and picked up the dropped stitch, then the sweater would have come out fine, and there are days I think that even if I had ripped out and reknitted row after row, the sweater would never have been other than misshapen, unwearable” [Winner’s italicized emphasis].

Yet, Winner doesn’t excuse herself. She recounts a private conversation with her priest a year before she left her husband in which her priest underscored the gravity of her divorce. He told her she needed to consider that she lied during a sacramental moment, “a serious sin you have to deal with.” Indeed, Continued on page 45

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God’s first love is the soil, from which springs forth all life, and which when mixed with the breath of God became the first human soul. So say agriculturalist Fred Bahnson and theologian Norman Wirzba. Animated by personal stories, theirs and others, they make the case in their new book that God is calling us to be reconciled with creation.

Making Peace with the Land is a powerful argument for the materiality of God’s loving intentions, that mankind’s interconnection with and embodiment in creation is not accidental, ephemeral, or even a regrettable necessity.

Wirzba writes of ecological amnesia, Bahnson of our inability to see the consequences of our actions on the land and other people or to understand our dependence on God’s soil. Together these maladies explain how unintended consequences now threaten human flourishing. Utilitarian reasoning might motivate some measure of ecological understanding, but it is the authors’ theological reasoning, worked out in actual places, that forces them to conclude that our willful ignorance of creation is ecological sin and that tolerating it makes us subhuman.

To rescue us from this condition, to make us fully human, to reconcile us to creation and to each other, to equip us for our work as God’s co-gardeners— these are the outworkings of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. To claim that his work was merely “spiritual” is to miss the fullness of what Jesus set out to do.

The mystery of creation—that God should dig, mold, shape, and form the dirt, gifting it with mankind made in God’s image—comes full circle with the final “earthing of heaven” [Christ’s] is a reconciliation of all the (as theologian N.T. material bodies in creation.

Wright describes it), - Norman Wirzba where God himself comes to make his home among mortals. “To take part in God’s reconciliation of the world is not to pine after some lost Eden. It is to live in anticipation of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city come down to earth.”

Bahnson and Wirzba have written a book that is thoroughly Christian, offering inspiration to many of us who seek to understand what on earth (literally) God would have us do. But the book’s apologetic value cannot be underestimated. It unfolds the riches of Christian teaching, tradition, experience, and reflection and makes it accessible to those outside the faith. They drive all of us to consider the actual ancient stumbling blocks of Jesus’ humanity and his bodily resurrection, and they offer hope.

“All things have a place in God’s reconciling and redeeming life,” not just bucolic farms and pristine forests but even toxic waste dumps and polluted cities.

Why is this good news? If God is reconciling all things, he can rescue even me, toxic and polluted though my spirit and body are. The authors don’t achieve a Christian ecological imagination by retreating to the margins of Christian thought, but by digging to its center. There they find a God demanding of us that we love him, and that we love his soil.

Rusty Pritchard is the CEO of Flourish (FlourishOnline.org), a ministry that equips Christians to engage the world of environmental science and action. He wrote the feature on climate change denialism in this issue.

Ashamed No More

by T.C. Ryan InterVarsity Press

Our God Is Undocumented

by Ched Myers and Matthew Colwell Orbis Books

Reviewed by William M. Struthers

Reviewed by M. Daniel Carroll R.

A decade ago it would have been scandalous for a pastor to share his lifelong struggle with sex addiction, and it would have destroyed any future he may have had in ministry. Nowadays it is almost commonplace to hear such stories. In Ashamed No More: A Pastor’s Journey Through Sex Addiction, T. C. Ryan shares his personal struggle and its impact on his life and ministry. It provides an honest (and borderline graphic) account of how easy it is for many men—pastors no less than others—to slide into the numerous traps of our hypersexualized culture.

We follow Ryan from his descent into compulsive sexual behaviors up through his ongoing recovery and subsequent ministry. The first few chapters recount a tale of self-discovery and understanding of addiction, sexuality, brokenness, and spiritual warfare. His tales cut to the chase and include details that are occasionally cringe-worthy. Reflecting on the origins of his emotional wounds and the lies he had absorbed into his identity, Ryan makes generous references to pop culture influences, which will be especially recognizable to men in their 30s and up.

I find it refreshing that Ryan does not shy “My faith offered away from the spiritual aspects of his struggle; me genuine forgive- however, at times this fuses rather awkwardly ness, but I continwith the more therapeutic and psychological ued to engage in frameworks that he attempts to integrate, and he behaviors I could is somewhat susceptible to over-spiritualizing the not understand or issue. But one section that is particularly helpstop.” ful—and that is in line with a more developed - T.C. Ryan contemporary understanding of recovery—is the section on mindfulness near the middle of the book. It is encouraging to see clergy actively employing the findings of researchers in communicating their stories, and mindfulness is one of the more relevant and important practices employed in recovery programs today. Fitting squarely within a Christian framework, mindfulness emphasizes the practice of becoming aware of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual states and is helpful in developing maturity in these areas.

The second half of the book focuses on the role of community and how sexuality fits into the broader context of healthy human living. Ryan offers a solid chapter on the biblical ethics of sexual behavior that provides more practical points. Towards the end, he reflects on the nature of being a broken leader and on the need for care for clergy and church leaders, especially in the area of sexual brokenness. He proposes seven principles that should govern the process of recovery among leadership. In my opinion these principles are not necessarily specific to leadership positions but would be equally important regardless of one’s place in the church.

The book also contains an appendix detailing a group meeting protocol for men struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors. This protocol is designed for a church setting and is modeled after the 12-step programs commonly seen in recovery ministries. It utilizes Patrick Carnes’ framework for sexual compulsivity, which is the standard in this area.

Overall the book is well written and easy to follow. While personal recovery books can sometimes come across as cathartic or narcissistic endeavors through which the author attempts to work out his own healing, this text did Continued on page 45

The number of books being published that encourage a positive stance toward immigrants, especially the undocumented, is growing.

These usually combine biblical and theological reflection with personal stories of immigrants.

The former serves to establish the mandate for Christian involvement; the latter give the issue a human face. Our God Is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice is a good example of that genre, and it is written by two men who have long experience in human rights advocacy in California and south of the border. Theirs is a powerful appeal to rethink Christian discipleship, the person of God, and Jesus’ ministry in the light of biblical teaching and immigrant realities.

Ched Myers, who works with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries and calls himself a “social justice theologian,” authored the biblical chapters in this book. Matthew Colwell, a Presbyterian pastor in Pasadena, wrote the accounts of significant players within the immigration reform arena. The book alternates chapters of biblical reflections with chapters describing the courageous and selfless commitments of activists from whom the authors have learned. This structure and personal touch keep the reader’s interest throughout, and both authors write well. The final chapter, in which Myers talks about his Mexican roots, is followed by two appendices. One articulates the goals of the reform of immigration legislation; the other provides guidelines for uncovering the ethnic, immigrant narratives of one’s own family.

Unlike many books of this type, the engagement with the biblical text is substantive. In“The question … is not whether stead of simply citing Christians should be involved in briefly the usual few immigrant solidarity, but rather how passages commonly and why.” used to validate - Ched Myers and Matthew Colwell God’s concern for immigrants (e.g., Leviticus 19:33-34 and Matthew 25:31-46) before moving on to the stories, Myers offers extensive discussions of “powerful texts from each Testament that are rarely considered in the immigration debate.” In the introduction he deals with Ephesians 2 and its call to eliminate the walls of division. Later chapters interpret Genesis 11 and Acts 2 as celebrating the power of diversity, give a biblical rationale for radical hospitality, appeal to Isaiah and Luke to explain Jesus’ vision of inclusion, connect Mark 4-8 with the imperative to have communion with those who are different, and highlight the refugee realities of the narratives of Jesus’ birth and the flight to Egypt. There are stimulating and creative insights to glean from these chapters, and Myers has obviously thought deeply about these matters in real-life contexts.

There is much to commend in this book, but some features will limit its readership. I mention three. First, the authors constantly return to the decades of the ’70s and ’80s to connect present immigration reform to earlier protests against the wars in Central America. I wonder how many who work for reform today would make that link, however valid it might be at points.

Second, some of Myers’ critical stances concerning the biblical text may alienate some. In the field of biblical research, several of these positions Continued on page 45

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Ministry Matters

worth repeating

Secret to Success?

Rest. Fun. Kathy Khang serves InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA as regional multiethnic director for Illinois and Indiana and as national Asian American Ministries blog editor. She works out of her home office in the northern suburbs of Chicago, where we caught up with her to ask a few questions about the hidden hurdles of holistic ministry—and the secret ingredients for success.

What is one cultural-specific challenge that you encounter in working with the people you do?

I work with college students as well as collegeeducated campus ministers who range in age and experience—from recent grads to folks who have been in ministry longer than I have been alive! Generational differences (as well as racial/ethnic cultural differences) pose a unique challenge, as we are all committed to reaching the students, staff, and faculty on college and university campuses across the country, but how we work (from paper-and-pencil note-takers to iPad and cloud computing), communicate (from telephone to Skype), and worship (from liturgyhymnal style to virtual church) vary greatly. And I can’t assume that the Boomer is any more or less aware or well-versed in the trends of the emerging church or the neo-Reformed than the Millennial.

Tell us about a mistake you’ve made in your years of doing ministry, and what it taught you.

One of the more glaring mistakes I’ve made in my 15 years of ministry was not seeking out help and treatment for my depression. It was easier to stay busy and “minister” to others while ignoring what was going on internally—emotionally, mentally, spiritually. I thought the relative success, or “fruit” as we Christians like to call it, in ministry meant that my depression was under control, but what I learned was that even in successful ministry there are bridges unnecessarily burned and emotions left unchecked when men-

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"What intrigues, amazes, tickles your fancy, delights your senses and casts you into an entirely new and unlimited world is the raw material of Sabbath…

"It is a day we pretend that all is well, our enemies are not at war with us, and the peace we will one day enjoy for eternity is an eternity that utters this day on our behalf."

- Dan Allender in Sabbath (Thomas Nelson, 2009)

Kathy Khang

tal and emotional health isn’t dealt with. I also learned that depression isn’t just about walking around sad and gloomy but also about anxiety and misdirected anger.

How do you refresh your spirit/sustain yourself in the hard work of holistic ministry?

I had to work hard to figure out what refreshed my soul, mind, and body, because just taking a day off assumes that simply refraining from ministry = rest. For most of us, a free day from our vocational ministry can easily be filled with other things that never get done, and that may free us from a few to-do items but not necessarily give us space to rest. I am a reader, and at some point I got my groove back by reading for fun—novels, nonfiction, magazines, etc. And that led to starting a book club not only to share my love for reading but also to carve out space for new community connections and friendships.

To refresh my spirit I also exercise physically— running, yoga, weight training—anything to get my heart beating faster and a little sweat running down my furrowed brow makes me breathe a little deeper and reconnect physically, mentally, and spiritually. And finally, I am known by many of my colleagues as one who values self-care. I have a collection of home spa items—nail polish, body scrubs, a home paraffin wax bath for my hands, a foam roller to roll out the stiffness and soreness, lotions, and other things that remind me of how much I also love being a woman.

Ministry Matters is a new column that will feature mini-interviews with holistic ministry practitioners.

“Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”

- Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (Mariner, 2003) “We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God.” - Annie Dillard in Holy the Firm (Harper, 1988) “...there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

- Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image, 1968) “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” - The Psalmist (42:1) “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

- Jesus (in Matthew 11:58, The Message)

by Rebecca Hall Of all the snares the church faces today, perhaps one of the greatest—and subtlest—is success. Too often our churches pursue goals like large membership, good reputation, and solid outside support, all the while forgetting that “Success the purpose of the church is not worldly achievement in the eyes but the faithful following of Christ. of God is Nihad Salman understands this all too well. to stay Pastor of a Palestinian church in Bethlehem, he where he ministers in the midst of occupation, instability, and wants you 38 percent unemployment with little support from his to stay.” country, his denomination, or even the global church. Yet the lack of traditional measures of success has only driven Salman closer to God and to God’s purpose in his life.

Every aspect of Salman’s ministry is based on his sense of God’s leading and focus. In this way he first recognized his own call to ministry—praying for more workers to be sent out into the fields, he was led to include himself in prayer as one of them. Missionaries in Israel assigned him to his first church, which turned out to be a complete failure, at least in their eyes. Attendance hovered at near zero. The missionaries themselves had so little trust in Salman’s pastoral abilities that they refused to let him make even the smallest decisions. It was at this time that the pastor rediscovered the story of Jeremiah, a faithful prophet who had lost his entire following by the time he died. This gave him the strength to reevaluate his own ministry.

“People make you feel failure,” he says, “but when I came to the Lord, the Lord said, ‘This is not failure. Failure is to run away.’

Nihad Salman with his wife, Salwa

a contradiction of terms because of their belief that the Israelis are the chosen people of God. Some of these make their views all too public, to the point of calling on Christians in Palestine to go into voluntary exile.

“You’re looked at from the outside Christians as political,” Salman comments.

“It’s difficult to be under such pressure from your brothers, from your own family—to be looked at as second-class citizens in the kingdom of God.” This attitude on the part of Western Christians became painfully clear for Salman and his family in an incident that occurred a few years ago. It was one of the nights in which Palestinian fighters and soldiers at a nearby Israeli military base fired on one another, and the family was forced to take cover from the bullets. In order to distract his wife and children, the pastor turned on the television to a program run by a prominent US televangelist. The entire family listened as the host gave his opinion on the situation in Israel, phoning in and chatting with an on-

duty Israeli captain who was at that moment firing on insurgents. Suddenly it dawned on them that the man on the phone was garrisoned at the base near their house—that this Christian brother in the US was praying for and blessing the very man who was shooting at them. Salman still recalls the sadness he felt as he spoke quietly at the televangelist on the screen before him: “You are talking to a person who is terrifying my daughter, who doesn’t care about Jesus Christ, and is using his weapon to terrify my children. I thought you were a man of God. I turn to you for encouragement. Who are you? You are blessing those who terrify me and my children.”

While some of those within the international community, including some parts of the church, stereotype them as terrorists and malcontents, Salman and other Palestinians endure the daily struggles of life under Israeli occupation. He and his family cannot travel due to a lack of permits, not even far enough to take a simple vacation. His children have no choice but to attend the Palestinian public school system, which Salman calls one of “the most terrible curricula in the Middle East.” Passing through checkpoints, they witness people just like them being patted down and arrested, and they feel the helplessness of being at the mercy of foreign occupiers.

Salman has had more than one chance to move with his family to Europe or the United States, to some other place with more freedom and better opportunities. Yet he stays in Palestine, fulfilling his calling to lead God’s church there. In spite of all that he has seen and experienced, Salman still does not lose faith, either in God, in the future, or in his own people. “God is going to use the least influential and the smallest church to bring a revival to the Middle East,” he says, “and it could start in Bethlehem. The smallest church in the Middle East.”

Hands & Feet

A Mustard Seed in Bethlehem

Success in the eyes of God is to stay where he wants you to stay.” This realization led Salman to break off ties to the mission and start the church over again. He began by holding a small Bible study, which eventually grew into a healthy, vibrant parent church.

Despite Salman’s success in building his own church, one persistent challenge he faces is a lack of support from the outside world, especially from overseas Christians.

Many Western evangelicals have no idea that the body of Christ is not only alive but also thriving in Palestine. Many others still consider the phrase “Palestinian Christian” to be

Nihad Salman was interviewed by Paul Alexander and Robert K. Welsh through a grant from the Flame of Love Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Rebecca Hall is an MDiv student and Sider Scholar at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, St. Davids, Pa.

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May I Have a Word?

Unexpectantly Expecting in Midlife

by Beth Caulfield

The birth rate for women aged 40 and older has tripled in the past 20 years. 1 While the media emphasizes that more women are choosing to delay or extend motherhood, roughly 40 percent of pregnancies among women aged 40 and older are “unintended,” and 56 percent of those end in abortion .2 But why?

Although many assume that unplanned pregnancy is less disconcerting for older women, the unique shock, shame, disappointment, and fears that many such women experience can be overwhelming. I know, because at 43, while in seminary and raising a teen and preteen, I too had a surprise pregnancy.

Few resources addressed my concerns, and even fewer offered encouragement. Instead, a distorted picture of this midlife blessing prevails.

Today most unplanned pregnancy assistance focuses on teen and young adult concerns: single motherhood, disrupted education plans, poverty, rape, and incest. Yet many older women choosing abortions are married and not poor. They abort for three reasons: lifestyle concerns, the perception that it is medically advisable, and ignorance or rejection of Judeo-Christian faith and teachings about motherhood. Each motivation is powerful and difficult to overcome.

Suddenly entering—or repeating— motherhood in midlife signifies for many the disruption of plans for careers, finances, retirement, and leisure. It causes fears of spousal rejection, social stigma, and isolation. All family members are affected. Many conclude it to be too daunting or even unethical.

Medical experts reasonably caution that conceiving and completing a healthy pregnancy can be more challenging after age 35, but the media sensationalizes infertility stories and glamorizes alternatives for achieving parenthood. The well-publicized increased chance of chromosomal defects causing

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conditions including Down ter. Even religious leaders syndrome and Trisomy 18 sometimes give contradicterrify women. Many theretory or sordid advice. It can fore conclude that natural be overwhelming. One wompregnancies after 40 are an blogged, “I am a FREAK, rare and pose significant a geriatric mother! Look at health risks. how my life is messed up!”

Yet such risks remain Encouragement and senvery small. At 43 my agesitivity are greatly needed. related risk for a Down Christian friends and mensyndrome baby was only 2 tors were crucial in helping percent and 3 percent for me. a baby with any chromoAll children are blessThe author with daughter Camille somal defect.3 Factoring in ings at any time in life. Our very healthy new daughter, my health and ultrasound, Camille Joy (meaning “perfect joy”), blesses the calculated risks were 1.5 percent for us in many ways. The concerns engendered Down syndrome and .02 percent for Trisomy by my pregnancy enhanced my relationship 18. Older women who conceive naturally are with God. I gained new appreciation for how often healthier than age-related risk calculafearfully and wonderfully I am made as I martions reflect. The American College of Obsteveled at all my body was doing. I also expetricians and Gynecologists states that “many rienced thankful wonderment that, although older women show no greater signs of probmy baby surprised me, she was no surprise lems than do younger women. Age need not to God (Psalm 139:13-14). be a barrier to a safe, healthy pregnancy.”4 Camille brings new excitement to family Yet protectionism bred by malpractice life. As she discovers the world around her, lawsuit worries can cause OBGYNs to nurture we’re rediscovering the joys in simple things. women’s fears. Much screening and testing She gives us all chances to be young again of my baby was recommended. When I reand opportunities for our older children to fused procedures, my declination was meticlearn new responsibilities. And because of ulously recorded in my presence. Repeatedly our maturity, we believe she is a calmer, more I had to verify my choices. I was counseled confident child than our older children were that abortion is best opted early. at her age.

However, for most genetic disorders, My time is more divided, but I can purno definitive testing is available in the first sue other interests. Financial resources are trimester of pregnancy. Screening tests only divvied up more, but the Lord provides. Reprovide imprecise risk levels for defects. 5 So tirement may be delayed, but more than ever during the height of psychological, physiwe’re appreciating that joy can be found in cal, and spiritual upheaval from pregnancythe journey—and our journey with Camille is induced hormonal change, I felt pressure precious. I implore others to become advoto choose despite incomplete information. cates for embracing surprise midlife mothThese experiences are emotionally draining erhood so that more families will enjoy this and faith-testing. tremendous blessing.

Thus many older women abort. Often they have resources to do so in utmost pri(Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the vacy. Writing about her surprise pregnancy endnotes for this article have been posted at age 43, Sarah Palin confessed that even at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.) she—a longtime pro-life advocate—considered abortion because “no one would know.”

Sound teaching and mentoring about the blessings of motherhood and the spiriBeth Caulfield writes from Lebanon, N.J., tual pitfalls of ending a baby’s life is lacking where she and her husband are raising their for many. Instead, insensitive quips abound three children. She is currently earning her for older pregnant women, like “Better you MDiv at Drew Theological School in Madison, than me,” or “It’s your worst nightmare come N.J. true.” Such jibes reinforce feelings of disas-

On Being the Church

Repenting from Idolatry of the Way Things Are

by Craig Wong

On the Sabbath Jesus began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him.

Mark 6:2-3

M

y great-grandfather was among the lot of those branded a serious threat to millions of hardworking males in turn-of-the-century America. His was also a hardworking lot—craftsmen, small-business owners, educators, and low-wage laborers hired by large corporations to build an ascending nation’s growing infrastructure.

The acceptance of the Chinese, handy as they were in building railroads and irrigation systems, was short-lived. As the post-Gold Rush economy began to fizzle, political pressure mounted to keep out all but the most productive Chinese, culminating in the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law, many hoped, would be the answer to the Chinese threat, not only to American jobs but also to public health and, most of all, the dominant Anglo culture. “Coolies,” after all, were a disease-ridden lot with strange beliefs and customs unfit for the American way of life.

Within a few years, unsatisfied by the federal government’s efforts to stem the tide of Chinese immigration, California passed another law—the 1889 Geary Act, which not only extended the Chinese Exclusion Act but also added an aggressive, ID-based enforcement feature. Under the Geary Act all Chinese were required to carry governmentapproved identification cards to be produced upon request by any law enforcement officer.

Failure to show one’s papers could result in

immediate arrest, imprisonment (with forced and heavy labor), and eventual deportation.

Naturally this law instilled great fear within the Chinese community, regardless of an individual’s legal status.

Reaction to the Geary Act, among both Chinese and non-Chinese leaders, was swift and emotional. Lawyers, advocacy organizations, business interests, and common citizens pulled together in concerted opposition. The policy, they argued, was unconstitutional on the basis of cruel and

The neighbors took offense at Jesus’ message, which was a call to repent from their idea of what the kingdom of God was all about. unusual punishment, including the acquisition of personal property and liberty, without prior indictment or jury trial. Within four years of its passing, the controversial law was taken to the highest court in the land (Fong Ting Yue v. the United States). On May 15, 1893, the Supreme Court upheld the Geary Act with a vote of 5-3 on the basis that a sovereign nation has the right to deport any people or race that it wants to—that is, any it fears will bring undesirable change to the way things are.

The recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the “show me your papers” portion of Arizona’s SB1070 is not only a remarkable repeat of history but also a sobering mirror to our fundamental propensity, as sinners, to devolve into something less than human when we hold too tightly to the world as we know it, or at least to what we think it should be.

We do this in resistance to a Creator whose authority transcends the authority of nations, and whose insistence in redeeming his fallen world necessitates change—whether or not

it feels comfortable or makes sense to us— for his limited yet beloved creatures.

The account of Jesus’ experience in Nazareth captures this resistance. Jesus’ neighbors took offense at Jesus’ message, which was a call to repent from their sense of things or, most importantly, their idea of what the kingdom of God was all about— triumph rather than suffering, self-sacrifice, and radical inclusion. Although he preached with authority, their familiarity with him as Mary’s son, the local carpenter, and one of many brothers provided a convenient excuse to disregard a new and unsettling direction.

I wonder if our ambivalence about the morality of our nation’s exclusionary posture is directly tied to our own idolatry of the status quo, our deep-seated desire to keep things the way they are. Such resistance becomes painfully obvious whenever we chafe at truth spoken from the pulpit or from the lips of fellow congregants who question our choices or point out our sin. Resistance to change also rears its ugly head in congregational seasons of transition—that is, when it is time for the “old guard” to make room for the new.

It is well and good that growing evangelical voices are calling for just and humane immigration reform in our country.

However, it behooves us to examine the sinful dispositions we share in common with those who fear a changing America. We, too, must repent from the ways we seek to inoculate ourselves from the gospel’s demands, keeping our comfortable worlds intact, lest our public witness, and prophetic words, ring hollow.

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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Washington Watch

three d's for israel & palestine

by Paul Alexander Several of my rabbi friends have explained to me that there are three Ds that we should keep in mind when we criticize the policies of the State of Israel as we work for justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians. I think these three Ds can be helpful and can also be applied to the way that many people—including Christians and Jews—talk about Palestinians and the future Palestinian state.

Demonization. I have been told that demonization of the State of Israel occurs when it is called “a pariah nation,” compared to the Nazis, or accused of committing genocide. I agree that these references cheapen their meaning in their original context and are not helpful in pinpointing the exact policies that the State of Israel engages in that are harmful—like using tax revenue to subsidize housing for Israeli Jews in more than 120 settlements on land the Palestinians lay claim to for their future state.

Demonization also applies to the ways US citizens—whether Christians or Jews—demonize Palestinians. And just as it is never acceptable to demonize Israelis, Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel, it is never acceptable to demonize Palestinians, Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, Islam, and the future State of Palestine. This demonization is most obvious in the widespread use of “terrorist” with no admission that violent extremists are a minority and that most Palestinians are hardworking people who want the best for their families and a healthy society to live in. An example of this demonization is Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie Bruno. Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian Christian, was misled into participating in the movie and then, for “comedy purposes,” was identified with the caption “terrorist group leader.” Abu Aita sued Cohen for defamation, and they recently settled out of court.

Double standards. Why do people seem to ignore far more egregious behaviors from other nations who abuse Christians in the Middle East

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and throughout the world and instead focus so much attention on the State of Israel? Although this is a valid concern to be taken seriously, we must recognize that the high standard is set by the State of Israel itself since it claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East and to have the same moral values as the West, requests and receives billions of dollars in aid from the US each year, and expects moral and political support from US citizens. The “Holy Land” is not like other lands (even if for no other reason than that the histories of three major religions say so), and it is common for some Jews and Christians to invoke the Bible for support of the modern State of Israel. This higher standard is thus bolstered with unique claims of biblical significance, and it rightly invites criticism of state policies—like unequal use of the water from the West Bank that is transferred to Israeli citizens while Palestinians have to store water in tanks on their roofs. Indeed, we should criticize and seek to correct the policies of the US and other nations throughout the world, but Israel’s self-proclaimed high standards invite criticism.

And what about the double standards applied to Palestinians? Why are Palestinians not granted the same civil rights in Israel as Israeli Jews? Why can’t American-Palestinian citizens like Bishara Awad, president of Bethlehem Bible College, travel with their US passports in Israel?

As a US citizen, Bishara can travel throughout the world with his US passport, but in Israel he is subject to his Palestinian citizenship. And Palestinians are expected to be nonviolent, publicly commit to nonviolence, and maintain no military whatsoever, while the State of Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world. I once heard an influential leader falsely malign a Palestinian Christian for having possibly supported the use of violence as a strategy. I asked this leader if he himself supported the use of violence for the defense of his state, and of course he agreed that he did. He also immediately realized that he was holding the Palestinians to a double standard: We can use violence to attain and defend our state, but you must not use it to attain yours. I am committed to consistent nonviolence and am opposed to the use of any violence whatsoever to attain a Palestinian state, and I think that the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to

nonviolence is laudable. But rhetorical moves that condemn some Palestinians’ use of violence, when the person saying it generally supports his own people’s use of violence, betrays a tragic double standard.

Delegitimization. Delegitimizing the State of Israel includes denying Jews’ historic connection to the land and Jerusalem and questioning the right of the Jewish people to self-actualization. I think these two claims can be applied to the way Palestinian aspirations are delegitimized as well. Palestinians have an ancient connection to the land, have cultivated it and lived on it for centuries, and they have as much right to selfactualization as do Jews. Delegitimizing rhetoric includes the claim that there really are no Palestinian people, that they didn’t take care of the land, and that they didn’t really exist until 1969 or 1963 or 1948 or 1931 or some date that seems to be less legitimate than Jewish identity.

Those claims are not only false; they are also attempts to delegitimize Palestinian aspirations.

Palestinians are even sometimes described as not educated enough to rule themselves or vote, similar to the way “negroes” were described a few decades ago in the US. These three Ds apply to both Israelis and Palestinians, and we should employ none of them but instead call them out when we see them in operation. By doing so I think we can better support the folks—all the folks—in the Holy Land.

Paul Alexander is professor of Christian ethics and public policy at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary as well as director of public policy at the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy.

Still continued from page 38:

as Winner makes clear, her action wasn’t without consequence in the Christian community. Her divorce prompted a number of people of faith to shun her, and a class she was scheduled to teach was cancelled.

Winner alludes to the memoir Eat, Pray, Love, sharply contrasting her experience with that of her famous counterpart: “...a friend gave me a copy of a best-selling memoir, which I’ll call Masticate, Meditate, Masturbate. It tells the story of a woman, just recently divorced, who spends a year traveling the world, eating life-changingly delectable pizza in Naples, sitting in an ashram in India, and so forth.

I read the memoir, but after leaving my husband, I didn’t go on a trip around the world; I just moved off the porch and went, again, to church.”

Winner’s refusal to lapse into escapism, recrimination, and pat answers wins my trust as a reader. I walk away from the book consoled by her candor and her realistic ruminations on the dark night of the soul. I believe her when she concludes, “I do not think I am a saint, but I am beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God.” Isn’t that the grace all of us sinners hope to receive?

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.

Our God Is Undocumented continued from page 39:

are contested and even discredited. On the ecclesiastical side, I fear that these views will unnecessarily turn some people off, because they run counter to the convictions of many in the pew.

Third, in several places the authors tie immigration reform to support for gay and lesbian rights. This is common among progressive immigrant activist groups, but it does not represent all within the broader movement. Also, although Myers and Colwell say that they “do not pretend to speak ‘for’ immigrants—only to stand with them,” at this point they interject an agenda that most of the Hispanic community, which is overwhelmingly traditional in their views of marriage and family, would not accept.

M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary. He is the author of Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Baker Academic, 2008) and is the national spokesperson on immigration for the NHCLC (National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference).

Ashamed No More continued from page 39:

not feel self-congratulatory, nor did it minimize the author’s personal experience or story of transformation.

William M. Struthers is an associate professor of psychology at Wheaton College and the author of Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

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Ron Sider

Obama vs.

Romney:

I

think the answer is yes. God wills shalom—wholeness, peace, justice, goodness—in every area of society. And God knows which of the two presidential candidates would, on balance, do more to promote shalom. But God never identifies his preferred candidate, so we are left with the hard task of combining biblical principles and the most accurate information we can gather to decide how to vote this November.

For decades, ESA has been promoting a “completely pro-life agenda.”

We believe that biblical Christians concerned about politics should ask, “What does the Bible say God cares about?” The answer is clear: God cares about economic justice and the sanctity of human life, about peacemaking and marriage, about creation care and sexual integrity.

So how do Obama and Romney measure up on key issues—abortion, economic policy, healthcare, religious freedom, taxation, international affairs, marriage and family, immigration, the military, and the environment?

More than at any time in recent memory, the two candidates differ sharply.

Romney used to support “abortion rights” but now is “pro-life.” He opposes abortion, believes life begins at conception, would nominate Supreme Court justices he believes would overturn Roe v. Wade, and supports the Hyde Amendment banning the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. He also opposes the use of human embryos for stem cell research.

Obama is “pro-choice,” supports abortion, would nominate Supreme Court justices that would support Roe v. Wade, and overturned President Bush’s ban on the use of human embryos for stem cell research. Obama faithfully implements current law prohibiting federal funding of abortions.

The topic of the national budget, debt, and deficit is in play in this election in a major way. George W. Bush and Obama both dramatically increased the national debt. Virtually all economists agree that it would be economically disastrous to continue over the next 12 years what we have done over the past 12—spending vastly more each year than the federal government receives in revenues.

Obama and Romney both agree that we must substantially reduce federal budget deficits—although Romney promises to have a balanced budget by some unspecified time, and Obama is even less clear. But there is a huge difference in how the two propose to achieve deficit reduction.

The key components of Romney’s budget proposals are (1) increasing defense spending dramatically; (2) giving more big tax cuts (mostly for the richest Americans); and (3) dramatically cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and discretionary programs that include many important supports for poorer Americans.

Romney wants to keep all Bush’s tax cuts (65 percent went to the richest 20 percent), reduce individual income taxes by 20 percent, repeal the estate tax, and keep the very low 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends (which is why rich people like Romney and Warren Buffett pay

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Does God Have a Preference? at such a low rate) rather than tax them at the same rate as other income.

These tax cuts would mean a loss of $4.9 trillion in federal revenue over 10 years.

These tax cuts would also substantially widen the gap between the rich and the poor, which is already more extreme than at any time since 1928.

Experts at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center say Romney’s tax proposal would give an additional average tax cut of $250,000 to persons making a million dollars or more a year, while those earning $40,800-$50,000 would get an average tax cut of about $512. People earning between $10,000 and $20,000 a year would actually pay an average of $174 a year more, partly because Romney wants to shrink tax advantages implemented by Obama to help lower-income families.

The US currently spends about as much on the military as all other nations combined, but Romney wants to vastly increase defense spending ($2.2 trillion over 10 years). Obama wants to keep the military budget flat over the next 10 years, rather than cutting it by at least $100 billion a year (my preference) or dramatically increasing it by about 50 percent as Romney proposes.

Because of his expansion of defense spending and large tax cuts (primarily benefiting the rich), Romney will have to sharply cut other federal expenditures. He has not provided details, but he largely agrees with the 2012 Ryan Budget, which cuts many programs (e.g., food stamps, Pell grants) that help poorer Americans and would throw millions more into poverty. The Ryan Budget already cuts over $5 trillion over 10 years from federal expenditures other than defense and Social Security, and Romney’s proposals would cut an additional $2-5 trillion.

Obama proposes a very different federal budget. He wants to keep, not cut, effective programs that empower poor people. He also wants to somewhat increase spending to improve our national infrastructure, schools, and clean energy programs.

Obama’s tax proposals reflect what many polls indicate a majority of Americans favor—that the richest Americans should pay more, not less. A Buffett Rule would require that people earning more than a million dollars would pay income taxes of at least 30 percent. For people earning more than $250,000, dividends would be taxed at the regular income tax rate rather than today’s low rate of 15 percent. Obama also wants to retain the estate tax. Obama fails to provide a clear plan for getting to a balanced budget within the next five or even 10 years. His fiscal year 2013 budget projected adding $6.4 trillion to the nation debt over 10 years, which is not acceptable. There are good ways to retain effective programs that empower poor people and get to a balanced budget over five to 10 years.

But neither Romney nor Obama tells us how to do that.

Obama and Romney offer a sharp choice in healthcare. The Affordable

Care Act passed by the Congress in 2010 and recently upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court is the centerpiece of Obama’s position. That law extends health insurance to 32 million more Americans, although still leaving 18 million without insurance. It prohibits a lifetime limit on health insurance coverage and provides that people applying for health insurance can no longer be rejected because of pre-existing conditions. The Congressional Budget Office says that this bill will reduce the federal deficit by more than $150 billion over 10 years and that repealing it would increase it by more than $250 billion.

Romney promises to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act (modeled on legislation Romney supported as governor), saying that states rather than the federal government should be responsible for healthcare policy for the uninsured. Romney would restrict medical malpractice awards for non-economic damages and would turn Medicaid over to the states and cap its growth at inflation plus 1 percent. (Since that is well below the ongoing increase in healthcare costs, it would mean deep cuts in the program and loss of health coverage for millions).

On many issues of religious freedom, Obama and Romney largely agree, but there are some important differences. During the 2008 election, Senator Obama promised some of us in private conversations that he would

late the use of carbon. Romney favors the Keystone XL Pipeline. Romney used to accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change but now says,”My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change.”

Obama and Romney also differ sharply on immigration. In 2007 Romney supported legislation that would have offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants but now opposes it. He wants to complete a high-tech fence on our southern border and expand border patrol. He opposes the Dream Act and promises to develop a tamper-proof verification system to make sure undocumented immigrants cannot get jobs. The result, Romney says, is “self deportation.”

Obama favors additional personnel and technology to support the integrity of the border. Unable to persuade Republicans in Congress to pass the Dream Act, Obama used his executive power to accomplish largely the same thing for two years. Obama wants to increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and favors a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes.

Both want to expand the number of visas for highly skilled workers and grant permanent residency to graduates with advanced degrees in math, science, and engineering.

vote for the person you think will be at least a little better in moving our nation and the world a bit closer to the shalom God wills. maintain the right of religious organizations to hire on the basis of their religious beliefs. In spite of major pressure from secular groups, President Obama has kept his promise.

In early 2012, the Obama administration raised a major issue of religious freedom as it developed federal regulations for implementing the Affordable Care Act. The regulations specified that nearly all organizations, including religious ones, must provide health insurance coverage that includes contraceptives (including some that are probably abortive) even if the organizations have religious convictions against them. Obama has promised some modification of this regulation but has not yet done that. Romney has condemned this violation of religious freedom and would clearly change it.

In 2008 Senator Obama said he did not favor legalizing “gay marriage,” but in the spring of 2012 he called for its legalization. Obama favors repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and has refused to defend it in court.

Romney supports it and promises to propose a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Romany also opposes civil unions if they offer the same privileges as a legal marriage and differ only in name.

Obama and Romney also disagree sharply on environmental issues.

Obama has worked with auto manufacturers to essentially double the fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks by 2025. His administration has sought to use the authority of the Clean Air Act to regulate (and reduce) carbon emissions. Obama has a 10-year goal to develop cost-effective clean coal technology and plans to spend $150 billion over 10 years to develop a “green economy.” Obama refused to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Romney would reverse Obama’s regulations designed to reduce carbon use and would amend the Clean Air Act so it cannot be used to regu-

There are some differences as well as major agreement in foreign policy. Both strongly support Israel and favor expanding full trade agreements with other countries. Obama has significantly reversed President Bush’s tendency toward a unilateral foreign policy and has articulated and implemented a vision of dialogue and cooperation where possible. Obama kept his promise to end American military involvements in Iraq and has stated a clear date (2014) for ending major American military presence in Afghanistan. Obama has continued Bush’s large expansion of US economic foreign aid to reduce poverty and improve health in poor nations.

He embraces the Millennium Development Goals and has continued large US foreign assistance.

Romney has criticized Obama for setting a date for withdrawal from Afghanistan and would support substantial cuts in US foreign economic aid as proposed by the Republican majority in the House. He says Russia is “our number-one geopolitical foe.”

That in brief is my best effort to spell out the positions of the two presidential candidates on many of the most important issues.

So who does God want us to vote for? I honestly do not know. I urge you to do what I plan for myself. Follow the debates. Keep learning about each candidate and his polices as they are stated, attacked, defended, and developed. Talk to others. Pray fervently that God will guide in this election.

And then vote for the person you think will be at least a little better in moving our nation and the world a bit closer to the shalom God wills.

Ron Sider is president of ESA and professor of theology/public policy at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University.

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PRISM Vol. 19, No. 5

Sept/Oct 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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