The SEMI Fall 2014.5 by Fuller Office of Student Affairs

the semi fall 2013.5

GIVE

T H A NKS A L WAYS

Semi-Coherent

Editor’s Notes

Thanksgiving is a fantastic holiday. For those who join us at Fuller from outside the United States, the history of this holiday traces back to the Plymouth colony, one of the first European settlements in what is now the US. The settlers, Puritans seeking religious freedom outside of England, had scraped through a harsh year with the help of the indigenous Native Americans. Despite about half the settlers dying that first year and barely enough food to put on the table, the Puritans stopped to thank God for taking care of them. We are much better off, much more secure, than that ragged band of pilgrims. We have much to be thankful for. I find, though, as I thank God for many of his blessings, that my heart breaks for others. It is right to thank God; it is also right to decry injustice. Thanks must be mingled with justice. And so this issue of the SEMI is filled to the brim not only with cries of praise, but also cries for justice. We give thanks through an ode by Leah Buturain Schneider. We cry for justice as Avril Speaks leads us to critically engage 12 Years a Slave (courtesy of Reel Spirituality). There is thanks in the ability to cry for justice through Fuller’s Immigration Reform March on City Hall. In my own article, I cry for justice for the disenfranchised in Switzerland. We have countless reasons to sing God’s praises this Thanksgiving; we also have many injustices to fight. May we learn to do both well: with love, humility, and the ultimate aim of bringing glory to God. Reed Metcalf, Editor

The SEMI

Managing Editor Carmen Valdés Editor Reed Metcalf Production Editor Jonathan Stoner

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Wo r d P l a y What's this? It's a word search, here for your enjoyment. Sometimes the SEMI will carry some heavy stuff. This is here to be decidedly unheavy. Each word search will have an overarching theme as its title to guide your answers. Please don't be doing this in class, though. It'll make us look bad.

THANKSGIVING N Z P C C Y E O I Z X V K F U I M L T B

I Z L L A B T O O F G K B Q B I P O D F

S T B E T T H N J J J D X C Z S P O T X

L A S P C L C C D T N K U B U N A M V R

B U Y N U L S H R B U G T Y J M G I K K

AUTOMOBILES AWKWARD FAMILY CATCH UP ON READING CIDER CRANBERRIES FOOTBALL FUNNY HATS HAM I AM THANKFUL IT’S NOT CHRISTMAS YET LOOMING FINALS ANXIETY

I T X N O M P Y U S B S T U F F I N G E

L L D I O T P F O P E X B H S W A G Z E

Z U S Q B T C K R L O I X M Y Q K F E P

V F T D O P O H I S X N R Z D I T I D U

P K A P Q R E B R N N T R R T H U N W V

L N H P I T O V L I P L T E E Y N A P Y

A A Y N U M O V G A S I E Y A B X L S K

N H N A O R D N D R C T E B P D N S L L

E T N T A C I C M T I K M I L E I A N V

S M U A S P R T Q F R O F A N V H N R I

I A F B E F X V A U G R C R S X J X G C

C I D E R J Q H T N N K E N I Y M I F K

Z S L P U N M A C Y S P A R A D E E F A

C S M A Y L I M A F D R A W K W A T G O

N T S G A V Q N M W D W A X K Z I Y O D

MACY’S PARADE PLANES PUMPKIN PIE PURITANS SAY NO TO BLACK FRIDAY SLEEPING IN STUFFING TRAINS TRYPTOPHAN TURKEY YAMS

Horror &

Humanity in

by Avril Z. Speaks As I still try to gather my thoughts after watching the acclaimed film 12 Years A Slave, I am left with several questions. Prior to its release, the film has seen more than its share of buzz. From early rumors of its likely Oscar victories to its brutal depiction of slavery, 12 Years A Slave has been a much-talked about film for quite some time. It was the latter point that caused me to enter the theater questioning all the hype. I had heard countless times that it was a hard film to watch, and that the brutality was relentless, which left me wondering about

our expectations as a society when it comes to this aspect of American history. After all, why would we expect anything less than brutality in any type of realistic portrayal of slavery? Have we been so brainwashed by our Hollywood endings that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel pain that has no salve? McQueen’s depiction of the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in New York who is lured to Washington, DC and sold into slavery for twelve years, indeed does not let up. For two hours, audiences are exposed to the torturous existence of plantation

life, from senseless beating, to rape, to total dehumanization. McQueen does a masterful job at portraying the beauty of the southern landscape and then destroying it with the garish reality of the situation. By the

people dare say that a film about the horrors of slavery is not about race. Racism is one of those societal ills in America that just won’t seem to go away. It’s no wonder, since much of the racism we encoun-

end of the film, even though something good happens, there is nothing to cheer about. The cycle continues.

ter is a direct result of the indoctrination that came with slavery.

Steve McQueen has said in interviews that 12 Years A Slave

I wonder if McQueen’s British descent makes him say things like that. In a recent interview

is not a story about race. He says he set out to tell a human story about the loss of dignity and the fight for a man’s mind. I tend to turn up my nose when

with acclaimed author, filmmaker and culture critic Nelson George, McQueen states that “I am British. My parents are from Grenada. My mother

Why would we expect anything less than brutality in any type of realistic portrayal of slavery? Have we been so brainwashed by our Hollywood endings that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel pain that has no salve?

was born in Trinidad. Grenada is where Malcolm X’s mother comes from. Stokely Carmichael is Trinidadian. We could go on and on. It’s about that

gia, to the white slave owners everywhere who lost their own souls. Yet, somehow McQueen does, in fact, manage to capture it all in a way that we do

diaspora.”

His response reminds us of the reality that the institution

actually get a look inside the humanity behind this evil. One scene that stood out to me was when Solomon (given

of slavery did not only affect America. Its effects were international. Although historically, Britain ended its slave trade before America, the machination of this atrocity was still in motion all over the world. Slavery affected everybody - from the sugar plantation workers in the Caribbean, to the female concubines in Savannah, Geor-

the slave name Platt) is almost lynched. As the overseer hoists him up the tree and he dangles with a noose around his neck, another overseer tells him to let him go because killing this piece of “property” would be a detriment to the debt the master already owed on the land. The overseer lets Solomon down, but only a few inches

The scars that slavery left behind still linger in the American psyche, however those scars are rarely discussed in open spaces.

short of his feet actually touching the ground, leaving Solomon to scuffle around on his tip toes to try to keep himself from asphyxiating, as he is still bound and tied to the noose.

This scene plays out masterfully in a wide shot that lasts what feels like an eternity. But what was so mesmerizing about this shot is that as it lingers, you begin to see signs of how life goes on in the midst of this man gagging, still partially dangling from a tree. In this same wide shot, the rest of the slaves emerge from their quar-

ters and begin to carry out the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, for any reaction to this atrocity could cost them their own lives. In the distance, the overseer paces back and forth on the porch, watching Solomon gasping for air, allow-

ing him to suffer just short of death in order to teach him a lesson about staying in your place.

What do you tell your kids after you have witnessed the horrors of slavery? Or better yet, what do you tell your kids after you have experienced the disappointment of injustice? How can someone fully embrace humanity when they have seen it at its worst? I would imagine that a man like Solomon doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come home and tell his kids that they can

be and do anything they want in this world. I would imagine that a man like Solomon doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come home and tell his kids that they can trust the system.

Little is known about the real Solomon Northup and his life after this ordeal. Maybe he was able to still remain positive, but after sitting through 12 Years A Slave, I think that

On a recent trip home to Atlanta, GA, I remember my grandmother admonishing us not to laugh too loud while having dinner at the Golden Corral because the white people would

that would be terribly difficult. Could a man like Solomon still teach tolerance? And then how would his kids explain their father’s experience to their own

be looking at us. Growing up, I remember my mother refusing to watch any movie that dealt with slavery, civil rights, or the treatment of blacks in

children? And then how would their children explain it to the next generation?

the south, as her own form of protest. We don’t often talk about it, but people like my grandmother and my mother have seen some things. They

Perhaps it’s that type of candor that’s needed to heal the wounds that slavery has caused and have never been bandaged.

have lived through Jim Crow and some of the worst behaviors of our history. The scars that slavery left behind still

it does not let up. But perhaps it’s that type of candor that’s needed to heal the wounds that slavery has caused and have

linger in the American psyche, however those scars are rarely discussed in open spaces. And yet here we are in 2013. While we may have survived slavery, many recognize that its effects still linger. Mass incarceration has become, in the words of author Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow.” There are still disparities in the public school system. Racial profiling is on the rise, and issues like the Trayvon Martin incident and partisan politics continue to divide the country.

never been bandaged. Perhaps we need to drown in our sorrow for this tragedy, perhaps we need to sit in its brutality in order for us to reconcile our race with our humanity, and finally talk together about what it means to have justice for all.

Yes, 12 Years A Slave is hard to watch. Yes, it is brutal and

This review was originally published on the Reel Spirituality website (http://www.brehmcenter. com/initiatives/reelspirituality/film/). Please check out their site for more great film reviews.

Avril Z. Speaks (MAT, ‘14) is a New Jersey native who now calls Atlanta, GA home. Most days she spend her time juggling between being a filmmaker, a film professor at APU, and a full-time student. However, when she does get free time she enjoys going to the movies, driving down the PCH, and wonderfully bad singing at karaoke.

An Ode to Thanksgiving by Leah Buturain Schneider I am sitting in a leather chair on the second floor of Fullerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s David Allan Hubbard Library looking at a beautiful six-feet high installation of vintage Persian tiles. Thank you to the person who donated these tiles, and to the ones who conserved the treasures now assembled on the second floor of the library. Fresh grass green, mustard yellow, salmon pink, indigo blue, chocolate brown, purple hyacinth, peach blush, linen cream, emerald green, colors that like our Fuller community constellate a mosaic of jewel tones and earthen elements all in praise of the Creator.

researchers, administrators, and support staff. The main composition of slender graceful branches that curve and intersect as they overlap bearing blossoms, some buds, some burgeoning, and others full bloom attracting a dozen birds all of varying shades of feathers and shapes and perches. We students and professors who study here are birds flocking here, some on the end of the branches taking out books to study elsewhere and others ensconced in the middle of the thicket soon after the doors open at 9 a.m.

How fortunate we are to flock together here in this amazing season of seed and nectar, of The beauty of the Persian carbloom and blossom, with abunpet motif in the border tiles that dant foliage to hide and blend frame the central composition is and some to contrast, all beautilike the seminary that supports ful, all belonging. the library, attracting scholars, Thank you books for standing 10

sentinel, ready to be opened and to provide knowledge in pursuit of wisdom. Thank you journals, newspapers, and all printed materials, some awaiting binding, others recycling.

great gift. Thank you hardworking librarians for long hours of dedication to provide the very finest resources for us, negotiating with other institutions to borrow, lend, and open up more access.

How fortunate we are to flock together here in this amazing season of seed and nectar, of bloom and blossom, with abundant foliage to hide and blend and some to contrast, all beautiful, all belonging. Thank you shelves, carts, elevators, vaults, for storing the treasures. Thank you library staff for carting, sorting, lifting, replacing, and providing. Thank you behind the scenes staff for cataloging, recording, recycling so many hours and years you need to wear wrist guards to support your labors of love. Thank you library staff for walking through the rows to check on those who leave their belongings vulnerable, for thoughtful reminders of danger in more than one language, for caring to protec what we can take for granted, but is indeed a

Thank all of you who greet us as we walk up to the desk, interrupting you yet you graciously multi-process and enrich the beauty of this sacred space. Thank you IT people for connecting the digital resources here to the network on campus and beyond. Thank you to those who scrub, mop, empty trash, replace liners, dust, and vacuum. Thank you for those who do invisible work with excellence. Thank you brother and sister scholars who respect this library as a place for study, for 11 11

composition, for discovery. Thank you neighbors in carrels for your thoughtfulness in

Thank share library write,

you to all those who will leave their books, their art, and give resources to keep this growing and equipped so that we can teach, minister and keep the gift moving.

keeping your phones on vibrate and taking them away from the study area to answer them. Thank you for each person who respects this quiet and for guarding this place as one of the last outposts of mutual respect for the opportunity to be attentive to the words on the page as mind and heart and spirit process and appropriate. Thank you for using earbuds, for silencing computers, for keeping conversations brief or moving them outside, upstairs, or in the lobby. Thank you for mutual respect to compose and sustain a sanctuary. At a party recently, I met a physician who said after trying many libraries in frustration, he now studies here on weekends because it is one of the last outposts of quiet. 12

Thank you parents, for being so thoughtful, when you bring your children, to have what they need to engage them. As a

parent of four, I bow to you in honor of how quiet and respectful your children are and how you are juggling studies, work, and the inestimable responsibility of being mother and father and friend. Thank you for looking out for one another against laptop thieves. Thank you heroes named and unnamed who helped create and design an environmentally saavy building, who spent long hours at city meetings to attain zoning and work permits. Thank you Board of Trustees for your commitment to support the hard-working administrators and staff who give their all to make this place exceed its resources.

Thank you donors for giving money to build and continue to maintain and improve this beautiful facility. Thank you to foundations like the Luce Foundation that gave the Brehm Center money to purchase rows of art history books that make L2 the home of the top three finest art and theology collections of all universities in the country.

angels to protect those who risk their lives to get an education and those who risk to teach freedom of thought. Please help us here to hone our critical skills that our minds would be renewed to discern how to contribute to the world with vision. Thank you for the privilege to have freedom and access to come and borrow books and study in beauty and safety.

Thank you to all those who will leave their books, share their art, and give resources to keep this library growing and equipped so that we can write, teach, minister and keep the gift moving.

Thank you for all good gifts.

Thank you to those like Fred Davison who built the gallery wall and installed the lights during his own time so that we could see art when we walk in.

Thank you that you desire that we take the knowledge here and live and serve wisely with abundant love here in this library and beyond.

Thank you to our Orthodox brothers and sisters when they entrusted Bill Dyrness and us with their precious icons, images of Holy members of the Communion of Saints. Thank you Author of the Book of Life for sending fleets of

Thank you Giver of all good gifts, thank you for becoming human, the Word Incarnate so that your Holy Spirit within us testifies to life.

Leah Buturain Schneider is the Brehm Scholar of Theology and Culture at the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Leah brings to her interdisciplinary work in theology and the arts a keen and poetic desire to meet, greet, and give thanks to God for the beauty in others, in creation, and in the material world. She is currently composing her dissertation proposal involving mid-fifteenth century devotional praxis and altarpieces of the annunciation.

Ful Immig Reform

11.18

ller gration m March

8.13

Photos courtesy of Jonathan Stoner Photography

On Monday, November 18th, members of the Fuller community—staff, faculty, students, and friends—marched on Pasadena City Hall as a call for immigration reform. It was not an anonymous march; we marched blatantly as evangelicals. Why? A wandering Aramean was our father Abraham, and a famine drove him to live as an immigrant, undocumented and often unwelcomed. Our story as Christians is that of strangers living in a strange land. From Abraham’s coming to Canaan, Joseph living in Egypt, the Israelites taken captive to Assyria and Babylon, and even Christ living in Egypt and Roman-occupied Israel, ours is the story of immigrants. Even now, we live as “strangers and immigrants” in a world where we do not belong (1 Peter 2:11). The immigrant is not simply an immigrant: he or she is a human being. We of all people should recognize that. So we stood up for our voiceless and fearful neighbors who try to earn a better life for themselves, who took seriously the inscription inside the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” May God enlarge our hearts and minds constantly so we may recognize the human being oppressed by the label and fight for their right to breathe free.

“DON’T MISTREAT OR OPPRESS WERE ONCE IMMIGRANTS IN TH 18

AN IMMIGRANT, BECAUSE YOU HE LAND OF EGYPT.” Exodus 22:21 19

Burning Tamar By Reed Metcalf

new plan to regulate the sex trade in Zürich has been causing quite the buzz in Switzerland and her surroundings. The city—famous and infamous for its risqué social reforms—has opened a compound in which prostitutes can practice their trade in safety. What?

That’s right: the Zürich citizenship voted on a referendum to build an industrial complex in a suburban setting for 2.5 million taxpayer francs ($2.7 million) where prostitutes would solicit and deliver their services in safety. This may seem absolutely shocking to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, but there is a great deal of backstory to look at. Zürich once had a massive drug problem—as in people openly injected heroin in parks and on street corners while drug dealers

operated with impunity—but cleaned it up with some startling reforms that included needle exchanges, injection clinics, and government-dispensed drugs. Even more startling is that the reforms worked to an extent.

Now Zürich is trying a similar method with its prostitution issue. The trade has been legal in the Swiss capital since 1942, and prostitution in general is legal in most central and western European countries. Many places have it highly regulated on paper (but often not in practice) and stipulations that narrowly delineate between legal prostitution and rape, coercive sex, or other violent crimes. The dominant view in Europe is that the prostitute has turned to prostitution out of economic desperation; only a minute number of individuals choose this lifestyle willingly. Most cannot otherwise support themselves and their families.

And so many women in Europe put themselves in massive danger to feed their children—children, mind you, that they have often had prior to turning to prostitution. These mothers and wives go to work daily with the understanding that they face a high probability of being robbed, raped, or abducted at work; it is an occupational hazard. But they seemingly have no choice.

And so Switzerland has introduced die Verrichtungsboxen—sex boxes. This is in the same vein as the drug reforms: make prostitution safe, reduce the violent crimes suffered by those forced into this lifestyle. The complex has strict rules: one man per car, no driving off-site, services must be performed in one of the drive-in carports. The ports are like small, open-ended garages with modifications. Each has a bright light so the security guards can see what is happening, an alarm on the passenger-side door, and a wall so narrow on the driver’s side that the client

for sex or that the city has become the new pimp by charging prostitutes for daily licenses to practice. The project has become a joke in a very dark way. In defense, however, Herzig says, “We want to reduce violence and improve living conditions for sex workers. For us, it’s not funny. I don’t think violence is funny. And the cause for prostitution usually is poverty, and I don’t think poverty is funny either. So what we are doing here is serious.” When I first read the coverage of the issue from the BBC,1 I was startled; it’s just such a foreign concept to Americans, where certain counties in Nevada are the only places prostitution is legal in the States. The more I read and delved into the issue, however, the sadder I became. The sex-box development is definitely an improvement for the destitute forced to turn to the trade, but something about it still resounded discordant in my ear. The biblical filter with which I interpret the world knew this was not satisfac-

These mothers and wives go to work daily with the understanding that they face a high probability of being robbed, raped, or abducted at work; it is an occupational hazard. could not get out to pursue a fleeing sex-worker. There is also a counseling center on site with showers, a coffee room, and sleeping quarters. Zürich hopes the complex will help prevent robberies and completely stop the abductions and subsequent beatings and rapes that plague the city’s sex-workers.

Criticism has flooded in against the project. Michael Herzig of Zürich social services says the complex has been accused of making Zürich a theme park

tory as a solution, but I struggled to articulate why. Deeper delving eventually gave me the words I needed.

The hearts of the project’s leaders are admirable, but it seems that their motives are the only ones uncompromised. The sex-box complex is merely the culmination of a whole series of injustices that are deeply woven into the society’s fabric. They are all but indistinguishable at first glance, but a closer look helps reveal the problems that are greater than even prostitution.

The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports the observations of a woman who runs a drop-in clinic for prostitutes: taxpayer support “had more to do with their annoyance at seeing prostitutes on their streets than it did with keeping women safe.” The sex-box is not as much a safehouse as it is a set of blinders. There is a problem in Zürich, but the citizens

known pejoratively as Gypsies, have been historically disenfranchised in many capacities in Europe. Migrants from India and Persia looking for a new start, the Roma were kicked and driven about the European continent for centuries without a true homeland. At times they were tolerated, and at others they were slaughtered. They suffered many of the same injustices and fates as the Jews, including the

The sex-box development is definitely an improvement for the destitute forced to turn to the trade, but something about it still resounded discordant in my ear. The biblical filter with which I interpret the world knew this was not satisfactory as a solution. don’t want to see it. They would rather quarantine it, pay a small bit of tax for upkeep every year, and forget that there are women who are stuck selling their bodies and their dignity so they can feed their children.

But here is the plot twist. Why is there not a greater movement to alleviate the poverty that forced these individuals into this lifestyle in the first place? In a country that boasts a perfect literacy rate, a gross national income per capita of $76,380 (for comparison, the U.S.’s from the same year was $48,450),2 and an unemployment rate in Zürich of 3.2%,3 can they not find the means to keep women from this practice if they truly are concerned for their safety or well-being? All indicators suggest that they do not want to, because the vast majority of Zürich’s prostitutes are Gypsies. It boils down to an issue of racism or exclusionism. The Roma peoples,

death camps of Nazi Germany in World War II. They have never gained the same sort of deliberate push towards equality, however, from the rest of the Western World in the wake of that horrific crime. The Roma are still despised and marginalized in many countries today. And so it is in Zürich. The issue is not so much that the prostitutes are prostitutes; it is that they are Roma. They are not wanted, they are not hired, and they are eventually forced to provide for themselves in degrading ways that put them at risk to be robbed, raped, and killed by members of the very culture that pushed them to this state. Some in Zürich want to protect them, but it appears that most just don’t want to see them or think about them. They put the Roma in a cage so that they can be disenfranchised away from the citizens’ sight that might make them remorseful for the effects of their racism.

My initial reaction to the situation has been anger. Let me clarify. I am not angry at the sex-box concept. The minds behind the complex truly want to alleviate the plight of these women who find themselves stuck in a life-threatening and dignity-destroying trade. I am certainly not angry with the prostitutes. To point the finger at a woman trying to feed, clothe, and educate her children after she has been denied the right to work is not acceptable. I cannot help but remember Tamar, a Gentile ancestor of David and Jesus, who turned to prostitution when the family she had married into (Israel) severed their connections with her. She was a widow, and to be sent away from the family of her husband was close to a death sentence. She had no property and no value as a bride. She would be lucky if her own father took her back. She was disenfranchised completely. So she dressed as a prostitute with a face-covering and sat along the road. Her own father-in-law, Judah, solicits her and pays her with his signet ring, cord, and staff. When

Tamar and the twin boys she bears, accepting the marginalized back into the family of Israel, God’s chosen people. The judgment on Tamar’s acts as a prostitute issues from Judah’s own mouth: “She is more in the right than I.” 5

she becomes pregnant, the town is outraged and they inform Judah. His response?

tion that has led to this dehumanizing situation, that lights the pyre of execution. Judah saw what he had done to Tamar and repented. Zürich refuses to see what it has done to the Roma and the other marginalized. Humanity is denied. The blaze is stoked. The building of the sex-boxes removes the marginalized and the guilt associated with them from sight and allows their suffering to continue as the voters who approved the complex sleep with unbothered consciences.

Tamar pressed her right as a human being, the right to live, by turning to her last resort. Her prostitution forced her father-in-law to see her humanity and his culpability in all but destroying her. Even without the glaring double-standard where the prostitute is punished but not her client, the horror of the story is evident when the one who pushed her to this state is the very one who decides to burn Tamar for her desperate actions. Praise God for Tamar’s deliverance in Canaan, but it seems that this deliverance might be denied her in Zürich. No, I am not angry with Tamar. I am not angry at the sex-box concept. I am instead angry at the deeply ingrained, centuries-old hatred and discrimina-

The sex-box is not as much a safe-house as it is a set of blinders. There is a problem in Zürich, but the citizens don’t want to see it.

“Let her be burned.”4

But then the signet ring and other identity markers come forth. Tamar says, “It was the owner of these who made me pregnant.” Judah realizes that he was the one who not only impregnated Tamar but forced her to fend for herself in the most desperate of ways. He repents and cares for

Tamar is burned, and Judah will visit another prostitute on his next business trip. My next reaction is shame and horror, for my hands are dirty as well.

This is the natural destination of unchecked sin. All of us have the same temptation as the expert of the law in Luke 10, the temptation to ask, “Who is my neighbor?” “Who can I get out of loving? Aren’t there any people I don’t have to love?”

When we do not love the other, when we make excuses because of gender, skin color, language, country of origin, age, economic standing, religion, or any other reason to not love them, we slowly build up a rhetoric that allows us to strip them of all things human. We deny them life; perhaps we allow them to continue breathing, but we deny them the life of dignity and safety that we have come to expect and demand for ourselves.

I sincerely doubt that most people would be complicit with putting other human beings in a cage to earn their food via sexual favors, but this is what has happened because of unchecked prejudice, because of human unwillingness to look at another people group and say, “You deserve the chance to live.” It has happened in every culture in every time, and a look at what has transpired in Zürich must make us look to our own prejudices. Those in Zürich who would do what is right, would try to protect these women who

constantly must venture into harm’s way, end up with the impossibility of curing a cancer with gauze bandages. They are doing what they can for the sex-workers, but it is not ultimately changing the society that led them to and is keeping them in the sex-trade. Recognizing the Imago Dei, the Image of God in which every human on the planet has been created, is the only thing that we can do to stop or reverse such situations in Zürich, in Los Angeles, in London, in Delhi, in Chicago, in Johannesburg. We have to own this problem, each person and each community: every prejudice we harbor, whether against a religious garment like a turban, a symbol like the flag of Mexico, or an accent we instantly recognize as foreign, we must understand that prejudice to be the beginning of disenfranchisement, of segregation, of Apartheid, of a sex-box, of an execution pyre. To overlook our own personal discriminations is to plant the seeds of wicked crops. We must instead view every person through the eyes of God, allow God to shape and redeem our perceptions of those different from us, and love as the God of All loves: perfectly and indiscriminately. May we love instead of shun, and deal with our true sins instead of only treating their symptoms. Reed Metcalf (MDiv, ‘13) is the Editor of the SEMI. He and his wife Monica love hiking and wish they had a dog, but they don’t have room for both a dog bed and all their books. Reed likes to spend his free time looking like he actually knows what he’s doing.

1. The BBC Article “Zurich introduces ‘drive-in’ sex” by Imogen Foulkes (26 Aug 2013; http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/world-europe-23839358) is foundational for my own information on the sex-box topic. 2. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Switzerland,” accessed September 22, 2013, http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/577225/Switzerland. 3. “Arbeitslose” (Web publication). Präsidialdepartement der Stadt Zürich (Department of the Mayor). July 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2013. 4. Genesis 38:24, NRSV 5. Genesis 38:26, NRSV. Genesis 38 is the source for the entire Tamar-Judah cycle.

Hey, Fuller! Check this out!

• Strong Marriages/Successful Ministries Winter Groups Now Open! Enrollment is open for the Strong Marriages/Successful

Ministries groups for the Fall Quarter. Strong Marriages/Successful Ministries is a small group psycho-educational opportunity to enhance your marriage. Groups meet one evening per week for 9 weeks starting week two of the Winter quarter (week of January 13). The groups fill up quickly as there are only four couples in each group. Groups are filled on a first come, first serve basis. Receipt of payment will reserve your spot in the group. Total cost is $40 per couple. Contact Melinda Talley at melindatalley@fuller.edu to sign up. Winter quarter Strong Marriages/Successful Ministries groups: Mondays 7-8:30p Led by Sharon Hargrave Tuesdays 7–8:30p Korean-speaking group led by Sarah Jin English-speaking group leader TBA

• MONDAY WORSHIP! The Office of Presbyterian Ministries at Full-

er hosts weekly worship in the Catalyst at 10am. Upcoming speakers include: 11/25: Rev. Shawn Robinson (EPC Pastor and Moderator of Pacific Presbytery) 12/2: Rev. Chris Murphy (Director of Presbyterian Ministries) and Maria Fee (PhD student in Theology and the Arts)

• Help End Homelessness! Theology, Faith and Practice: Be a part of Pasadena’s plan to end homelessness. Volunteer with Fuller’s Office for Urban Initiatives to help conduct the 2014 Pasadena Homeless Count and Subpopulation Survey. Sign up through www.phhn.org. Questions? Contact Janice Chan at janicechan@urban-initiatives.org

Semi-Responsible The All-Seminary Council Column

Greetings, If you are tired as I am, hopefully you are encouraged by the light at the end of the tunnel also known as finals week. Granted, this “light at the end” that we see from afar is more like the ring of fire we must go through before we enter Winter break, but it is light nonetheless. The ASCers know how hard this week can be for most, so each quarter we devise a plan to give students a break during this crazy week: Cram Jam. Cram Jam is a time for students to get together, have some food, conversation,

and just take their mind off of work for awhile before heading back to the books. It’s usually held on Tuesday of finals week, and this quarter is no exception. Check out the info below for details. That’s all for this time around (we thought we’d keep the reading light as it got closer to finals week. Next time: pictures only). Keep on keeping on,

Tamisha Tyler ASC President