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A pr i l 19, 20 14
conscience?
The Supreme Court visits Hobby Lobby
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Contents , / ,
34 Conscience at the court
Opponents of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate have a good day before the Supreme Court in their effort to avoid supporting abortion
42 Charitable confusion
World Vision reverses decision to hire employees in same-sex marriages, but questions remain about theological clarity
46 Turkey’s U-turn
Growing authoritarianism and Islamism in Turkey put pressure on religious minorities
50 Remembering a massacre
The th anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide brings memories of violence and stories of reconciliation
5 News 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes World Vision president Richard Stearns
54 Not by sight
A new documentary tells the amazing story of blind surfer Derek Rabelo
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59 Lifestyle 61 Technology 62 Science 63 Houses of God 64 Sports 65 Money
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23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music
3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 67 Mailbag 71 Andrée Seu Peterson 72 Marvin Olasky WORLD (ISSN -X) (USPS -) is published biweekly ( issues) for . per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail) All Souls Crescent, Asheville, NC ; () -. Periodical postage paid at Asheville, NC, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. © WORLD News Group. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD, PO Box , Asheville, NC -.
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Joel Belz
Patient and wise Two practical ways to spend less for healthcare
>>
KRIEG BARRIE
A , and you’ll get approximately the same general answer. As many as percent of all medical ills in the United States that end up in family doctors’ offices would take care of themselves if the patients were—well, let’s just say, a little more patient. I heard that statistic most recently from a physician friend of mine, and a long-time WORLD reader whose wisdom I have noted in this column from time to time. Dr. F. Edward Payne was for years a professor in family medicine at the Medical College of Georgia, instructing and shaping a new generation of young doctors in that division of the state university system. Dr. Payne is something of a radical. He’s always made me think hard about the realities of medical care—and his “ percent” comment was just such a prompt. If we Americans are spending . trillion annually on medical care (that’s close to , every year for every man, woman, and child), and if about two-thirds of one major component of that bill would just go away if we disciplined ourselves to wait out a few of our maladies—well, why not? Let’s suppose that family practice accounts for only percent of the whole medical establishment, and that we’re spending just annually per person for this primary care. Could it be that, just by exercising a little restraint every time we’re inclined to run off to the nearest clinic, we could reduce that by as much as two-thirds? And even if Dr. Payne’s figure of percent is only half true, the potential for savings is enormous—coming to billion annually—and all that just in the area of primary care. If “family practice” suggests a focus that includes kids and the sniffles and playground accidents that accompany them, Dr. Payne suggests savings that may be even bigger at the other end of life. Here, he says bluntly, something like percent of all Medicare expenses go for just the final year of recipients’ medical costs. Death, of course, is the ultimate enemy, and the closer it gets, the more we seem ready to spend to avoid it. But Dr. Payne suggests
Email: jbelz@wng.org
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that in joining such a cultural tide, we impoverish ourselves and our families. We end up stealing financial resources from our children and their fellow citizens of the next generation. And we miss an opportunity for Christian witness about our biblical perspective on death. On both sides of this divide—primary care earlier in our lives and death-defying care in the late years—Dr. Payne says Christians need to learn to distinguish between high-tech and low-tech healthcare. We are naturally enamored of the dazzling accomplishments of high-tech medicine, he says. Modern research has produced both chemicals and hardware that couldn’t have been imagined a generation ago. Dr. Payne credits modern emergency rooms, for example, with life-saving capabilities that border on the miraculous. But much of the best in healthcare, he insists, comes from the low-tech side. In pointing in that direction, Dr. Payne stresses the actual healing benefits of simple human acts of care and compassion; he seems only incidentally to be noting the gargantuan financial savings. When I asked Dr. Payne for examples of the greatest advances in healthcare during his lifetime, the hospice movement was high on his list. “It’s not a specifically Christian outreach,” he says, “but it creates a model and sets a standard Christians might well follow as they think about having a big impact— without spending vast sums of hi-tech money.” In all that, Dr. Payne is emphatic to avoid anything that sounds like an endorsement of euthanasia. “None of this is designed to bring on death. It’s just a reminder that there’s only so much we can do to stop the inevitable.” On both fronts—one earlier in life, and the other later—here were practical opportunities to spend a good bit less on healthcare than our society is accustomed to spend. No organization to join. No lobbying needed. Just the simple good sense to do a bit of research and then in a radical but good-natured way to say to your doctor next time: “No, that’s a procedure I really don’t think we need right now.” A
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
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Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes
MARCH 31: An Afghan National Army soldier watches as soldiers with the U.S. Army’s nd Battalion, th Infantry Regiment, rd Brigade Combat Team, th Mountain Division patrol below near Pul-e Alam, Afghanistan. The primary mission of soldiers with the th Mountain Division stationed at FOB Shank is to advise and assist Afghan National Security Forces. Security was at a heightened state as Afghanistan prepared for the April presidential election. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
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4/2/14 9:20 AM
Pre-election terror
We d n e s d a y, M a r c h
Final picket Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, a former civil rights lawyer who became infamous for picketing military funerals, died at the age of . Phelps, his family, and his church in Topeka, Kan., earned condemnation from evangelical and secular Americans for protesting funerals of servicemen, tornado victims, or AIDS patients. They proclaimed a message of God’s judgment on national sins that lacked any good news, and carried signs reading “God hates fags” or “Thank God for dead soldiers.” In the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Constitution protected Westboro Baptist’s funeral pickets as free speech. Phelps’ estranged son Nathan said the church’s elder board had excommunicated the pastor last year after a power struggle.
Toyota fined
The U.S. Justice Department imposed a . billion fine on Toyota—its largest such penalty against an automaker—for hiding safety defects from the public in “blatant disregard” of the law. Under the settlement, Toyota admitted to withholding information about accelerator pedals that might stick or become entrapped by floor mats.
Four Taliban gunmen launched a gruesome attack inside the luxurious Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing nine before being gunned down by police. After smuggling small pistols into a hotel restaurant inside their shoes, the men shot patrons at point-blank range, including three small children (one survived). The same day, Taliban fighters stormed a police compound in Jalalabad, killing officers. And on March , suicide bombers attacked election offices in Kabul, killing five. The attacks, along with others that month, were part of a Taliban campaign to disrupt Afghanistan’s presidential election, scheduled for April .
Free speech victory In a decision an Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer called “a powerful message for academic freedom and free speech,” a U.S. District Court jury ruled the University of North Carolina Wilmington retaliated against associate criminal justice professor Mike Adams because of his conservative views. Adams, a former atheist who converted to Christianity, had argued the school denied him a promotion because of his conservative columns addressing subjects like abortion, homosexuality, and religion.
PHELPS: THE TOPEKA CAPITAL JOURNAL/AP • TOYOTA: ANDREAS GEBERT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP • TALIBAN:SHAH MARAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • ADAMS: ALLIED DEFENSE FUND • TAGESON: NICK LUST/NHLI/GETTY IMAGES
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Signed The San Jose Sharks signed a -year-old fan to a one-day contract to fulfill his dream of playing for the
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California hockey team. Sam Tageson, who was born with only two chambers in his heart and will need a heart transplant, practiced with the squad and received his own jersey for a March game against the Florida Panthers. He became the first nonplayer to skate onto the ice and be introduced with the rest of the team. The Make-A-Wish Foundation worked with the San Jose Sharks Foundation to make the teen’s memorable night happen.
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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PUTIN: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/RIA-NOVOSTI/AP • DETROIT: MANDI WRIGHT/DETROIT FREE PRESS/AP • GOD’S NOT DEAD: PURE FLIX ENTERTAINMENT CANNON: JEFF SINER/CHARLOTTE OBSERVER/MCT/LANDOV
Dispatches > News
Wave of mud
PUTIN: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/RIA-NOVOSTI/AP • DETROIT: MANDI WRIGHT/DETROIT FREE PRESS/AP • GOD’S NOT DEAD: PURE FLIX ENTERTAINMENT CANNON: JEFF SINER/CHARLOTTE OBSERVER/MCT/LANDOV
PHELPS: THE TOPEKA CAPITAL JOURNAL/AP • TOYOTA: ANDREAS GEBERT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP • TALIBAN:SHAH MARAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • ADAMS: ALLIED DEFENSE FUND • TAGESON: NICK LUST/NHLI/GETTY IMAGES
S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, M a r c h -
F r i d a y, M a r c h
Crimea annexed
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty finalizing the annexation of Crimea, a process begun earlier in the week after residents of the peninsula illegally voted to secede from Ukraine. Condemning Russia’s move, the United States and European Union announced economic sanctions against elite Russian officials and businessmen. “No amount of propaganda can make right something the world knows is wrong,” said President Barack Obama in a March speech before EU leaders in Brussels.
Marriage overruled A federal judge in Detroit overturned Michigan’s ban on samesex marriage in a lesbian couple’s adoption case. Voters had approved the ban in . “The guarantee of equal protection must prevail,” wrote U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman. Michigan joins Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia as states where federal judges have overturned traditional marriage laws since last summer. Appeals are pending.
Softened by spring rains, feet of hillside near Oso, Wash., suddenly gave way on March , pitching evergreen trees, damming a river, and demolishing a cluster of four dozen homes in a wave of mud nearly a mile wide and up to feet deep. Rescue teams pulled several people from the mire, but muddy ground slowed search efforts. A little more than a week later the teams had confirmed deaths, with over a dozen people unaccounted for. The hill had been known among geologists as unstable for decades. It experienced a much smaller mudslide in .
Surprise hit God’s Not Dead, a low-budget Christian film about a student who believes in God and a professor who doesn’t, was a surprise hit at the weekend box office. Released in just theaters, the movie was the fourth most popular for the weekend, earning . million. Divergent, the latest fantasy thriller targeted to teens, ranked first, pulling in . million.
Church attack
During a Sunday morning worship service at Joy in Jesus Church near Mombasa, Kenya, two gunmen burst into the building and began firing on Christian congregants. Six worshippers died, including an assistant pastor. The attackers fled, but were believed to be Muslims affiliated with al-Shabaab, the extremist group that invaded Westgate Mall in Nairobi last year.
Resigned Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Patrick Cannon,, , resigned from office on March after he was
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arrested on corruption charges only days into his tenure. Prosecutors say Cannon took more than , in bribes from undercover FBI agents who were posing as real estate developers. Cannon, who served years on the city council, faces up to years in prison and more than million in fines. According to the local NBC affiliate, Cannon was shocked at his arrest and was not cooperating with investigators.
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APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/1/14 9:18 PM
Dispatches > News Tu e s d a y, M a r c h 2 5
M o n d a y, M a r c h 2 4
Burnt for fuel
A British television news investigation revealed that government-run hospitals in the United Kingdom not only dispose of the bodies of aborted or miscarried babies in trash incinerators, but sometimes burn them for fuel. Channel 4 Dispatches found that two major hospitals with “waste-to-energy” incinerators, built as a “green” heating source, added the remains of nearly 2,000 babies as biofuel. Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge told mothers the babies had been “cremated.” The U.K. Department of Health ordered an immediate stop to the practice upon hearing of the report.
Mass death penalty
Core rejection
After a trial that lasted just two days, a three-judge panel in Minya, Egypt, sentenced 529 alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death for rioting and killing a police commander in August. Legal experts said the sentencing was excessive and unprecedented in modern Egyptian history, and unlikely to withstand appeal. A day later, a second mass trial of 863 Islamist suspects began, with charges including murder and sabotage. The Egyptian government has cracked down on the now-outlawed Brotherhood since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July.
Gov. Mike Pence signed a law making Indiana the first state to reject the national Common Core education standards after originally adopting them. The Core standards for K-12 math and English met opposition from Hoosiers worried about academic decline and federal overreach. The new law requires Indiana to craft its own statewide standards by July 1.
Running Former Louisiana Gov.—and convicted felon—Edwin Edwards has launched a political comeback at age 86. The legendary Edwards, who spent more than eight years in prison for corruption, announced he is running for the U.S. House seat to represent Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. Edwards had three tenures as the state’s governor spanning 16 years in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. “I acknowledge there are good reasons I should not run,” he said. “But there are better reasons why I should.” 8
Two weeks after insisting it had no legal authority to extend the March 31 deadline for Americans to sign up for Obamacare, the Obama administration extended it. By checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov, people late to obtain insurance can indicate they already tried to enroll, but ran into a problem with the glitchy healthcare exchange website. The extension relies on self-attestation, so anyone could claim the loophole, until at least mid-April.
After then, enrollees facing website problems will be able to request an extension over the phone. Justifying the move, White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted the official deadline remained March 31: “If you’re in line before the polls close, you get to vote.”
Addenbrooke: D Dinneen • Ultrasound: RyanJLane/istock • egypt: Firdaus Latif/NurPhoto/Corbis/APImages • Pence: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images • Carney: Mark Wilson/Getty Images • Edwards: Sean Gardner/Getty Image
Endless extensions
WORLD • April 19, 2014
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3/28/14 11:23 AM
Dispatches > News Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter wears APU for “All Players United” on wrist tape as he scores a touchdown.
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Pro-life law upheld The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas abortion laws that sparked a Democratic filibuster in the State House last year and have resulted in the closing of 17 abortion centers so far. Requiring abortionists to have local hospital admitting privileges and abide by other rules does not infringe on women’s constitutional rights, the three-judge panel said, overturning an earlier ruling by a lower court. The U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately weigh in.
Surprise decision
Student workers In a decision experts called “revolutionary” for college sports, the National Labor Relations Board ruled football players at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., were treated like employees and therefore have a right to unionize. With an approval vote, they would be the first unionized football team in the NCAA, where players do not earn salaries but sometimes receive scholarships. Northwestern plans to appeal the ruling, which could otherwise trigger unionization bids at other schools. The group pushing the case, the College Athletes Players Association, wants schools to provide long-term medical coverage for sports injuries, reduce the risk of concussions, and give players permission to sign commercial deals.
Edge planets
Astronomers announced in Nature the discovery of a probable dwarf planet orbiting far beyond Pluto. The object, dubbed officially as 2012 VP113 and unofficially as “Biden” (after the U.S. vice president), is about 280 miles in diameter. It may be one of hundreds of dwarf planets at the distant edge of our solar system.
Papal visit President Obama and Pope Francis joked and exchanged gifts during their first visit together at the Vatican, where they discussed the world’s poor, immigration reform, and human trafficking. Francis may have delegated his second-in-command to talk to the president about contraceptive coverage under Obamacare and Catholic conscience rights: Obama promised to “continue a dialogue” about the issue in order to “strike the right balance” (see p. 32).
Sentenced A Pakistani court on March 27 sentenced a Christian man to death under the country’s blasphemy law. Sawan Masih was sentenced in private due to the “sensitive nature” of the case, although last year when Masih’s Muslim acquaintance accused him of blasphemy, the allegation was blasted over mosque loudspeakers. The proclamation caused a riot, as a mob of 3,000 Muslims destroyed some 200 Christian homes in Lahore. Masih, who is appealing the ruling, maintains his innocence. 10
colter: Nam Y. Huh/ap • Huang family: David House Agency/ap • VP113: Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science/ap • Masih: Christians in Pakistan
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A judge in Qatar handed down a surprise threeyear prison sentence to Matthew and Grace Huang, a Christian couple from Los Angeles whose adopted daughter died of malnutrition last year. Qatari prosecutors claimed the Huangs starved 8-year-old Gloria in order to harvest her organs, but the couple says she had an eating disorder. The couple plans to appeal.
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CHURCHES ALL ACROSS AMERICA ARE DYING‌
Best-selling author of Simple Church and the runaway hit I am a Church Member, Thom S. Rainer uses his more than twenty-five years of experience helping churches grow and reverse the trends of decline to expose twelve lessons on how to keep your church alive. CREDIT
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3/31/14 3:21 PM
Dispatches > News M o n d a y, M a r c h
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Time for action
The United Nations Human Rights Council called for action in response to the page report documenting prison camps, torture, executions, and other human rights abuses against political dissidents and religious adherents in North Korea (see “Fleeing hell,” March ). Thirty member nations approved of a strong resolution asking the Security Council to examine the report and file charges against North Korean officials at the International Criminal Court. China, which voted against the resolution, could stall the process. “Mind your own business,” said a North Korean envoy to the UN.
Double tragedy
California quakes
LaKisha Wilson, a -year-old African-American, died after seeking an abortion at a facility in Cleveland. Wilson was at the Preterm abortion center March when she stopped breathing and was rushed to a local hospital. She was pronounced dead March , Operation Rescue later reported. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner planned to conduct an autopsy.
A series of small earthquakes and dozens of aftershocks shook the Los Angeles region beginning around p.m. The largest, a magnitude-. quake centered near La Habra, Calif., knocked products off store shelves, broke water lines, and damaged some homes. But no major injuries were reported.
More glitches The official final day of Obamacare enrollment at HealthCare.gov didn’t come off without a hitch. Website glitches prevented many uninsured Americans from completing their enrollments Monday, ensuring they would need to use the extension option. Many had waited until the last minute to sign up: Record traffic clogged the website, with , people trying to access the system at one point.
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Died Former Vietnam POW and U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton, , died on March . Denton in June began flying combat missions for the U.S. Navy over Vietnam and was shot down the following month. He spent more than seven years as a prisoner of war, including at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, and alerted U.S. personnel to nightmarish conditions when he blinked “torture” in Morse code during a propaganda interview. Denton, elected to the Senate in , was a strong pro-family legislator during his sole term in office.
KIRBY: SALVATORE DI NOLFI/KEYSTONE/AP • EARTHQUAKE: JAE C. HONG/AP • VENEZUELA: ALEJANDRO CEGARRA/AP • DENTON: HANDOUT
Michael Kirby, Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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ABU HAMZA AL-MASRI: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES •TAXES: MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • EASTER: JORGE GUERRERO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • AEREO: BEBETO MATTHEWS EARTH DAY:DAVE EINSEL/AP IMAGES FOR DOUBLETREE HOTELS • MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: GAIL ORENSTEIN/NURPHOTO/SIPA/AP • MILNE: HANDOUT
Crackdown By morning government forces in Venezuela, driving bulldozers and armored vehicles, declared they had regained control of San Cristóbal, a western city where university students had barricaded the streets with furniture, tree trunks, and steel drums. Students in San Cristóbal had begun demonstrating against violent crime and food shortages in February, and the protests soon spread throughout the socialist nation. Since then, at least people have died in confrontations with security forces. On April the government rolled out a new ID card system to ration food and counter black markets.
April 14 Hook-handed radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri goes
on trial today in a Manhattan federal court on charges that he conspired to set up a terror cell in Oregon and for participating in a abduction in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four Westerners. Al-Masri has indicated he will testify in his own defense for the sake of historians recording the event.
Brotherhood watch British media revealed that U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered a probe into the local activities of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist group has reportedly established headquarters in a flat above a former kebab shop in London, and British authorities worry members may be using the city to plan extremist activities. The Brotherhood, which advocates Islamic law and democracy, was founded in Egypt but has since been outlawed there. Saudi Arabia declared the group a terrorist organization in March, although Western nations do not yet treat it as such.
. Keep up with the news about Russia and Ukraine, Turkey and Syria, and the search for flight . And read more commentary from Marvin Olasky, Mindy Belz, Janie Cheaney, and Andrée Seu Peterson.
adhere to either the Gregorian or Julian calendar will celebrate Easter today. The coincidence occurs in because of the peculiarities of the calendars used by Western and Eastern churches to calculate Easter’s date. East and West will celebrate Easter on the same day only one other time () in the next years.
April 15
This year, the taxman came after wealthier Americans a bit more vigorously. Couples making more than , or individuals making more than , in saw their top marginal income tax rate jump to . percent. The deadline to file last year’s taxes is today.
April 22
To listen to the complaints of broadcast television networks and stations, the Supreme Court on April will hear a case that could condemn their industry to certain doom. At issue in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, Inc. is whether Aereo’s practice of using E Ch et Kanoj ia, C antennae to pick up broadcast television and then streaming it over the internet to paying customers violates copyright law. Aereo
Tu e s d a y A p r i l
April 20 Churches around the world that
of
A demonstration outside the Muslim Brotherhood’s office in London.
O
KIRBY: SALVATORE DI NOLFI/KEYSTONE/AP • EARTHQUAKE: JAE C. HONG/AP • VENEZUELA: ALEJANDRO CEGARRA/AP • DENTON: HANDOUT
ABU HAMZA AL-MASRI: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES •TAXES: MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • EASTER: JORGE GUERRERO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • AEREO: BEBETO MATTHEWS EARTH DAY:DAVE EINSEL/AP IMAGES FOR DOUBLETREE HOTELS • MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: GAIL ORENSTEIN/NURPHOTO/SIPA/AP • MILNE: HANDOUT
LOOKING AHEAD
April 22
Earth Day arrives as a leading American scientific organization is reviewing its statement that man-made global warming is “incontrovertible.” It is standard practice for the American Physical Society to review its scientific statements, but the process for its current review of climate change includes a workshop with balanced viewpoints tasked to address questions very critical of computer models used by climate scientists.
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Hearing Thanks to a timely video, millions around the world have experienced the moment a -year-old British woman heard sounds for the first time. Joanne Milne, who was born deaf, received cochlear implants in late February, and a month later her speech therapist turned them on. Milne broke down sobbing as she heard the therapist say the days of the week. The breakthrough came just in time for Milne: The rare condition that caused her to be born deaf, Usher syndrome, started taking away her sight years ago. Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad
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APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/1/14 9:37 PM
Dispatches > News
No more Turkish delight The hope for Turkey as an anti-sharia beacon for the Muslim world is fading quickly By Marvin Olasky
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POWER SHIFT: Erdogan salutes supporters from the balcony, after election; more than 10,000 people, carrying pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, staged a rally in 2008, accusing the Islamic-rooted government of undermining the country’s secular laws (left to right).
Watch Monitor about desecrated churches and pillaged houses. Churches were sheltering 600 families, with local charity groups providing food, mattresses, blankets, and clothing. “Turkey is hosting jihadis,” said a Syrian Muslim humanitarian worker (name withheld to protect his life). Those fighters reportedly include Chechens, Tunisians, Turks, and Arabs. Turkey is a member of NATO, and the United States has a massive air base at Incirlik, just 130 miles away from the area of border fighting. Armed military conflict between Turkey and Syria could severely escalate the Syrian war, forcing a NATO intervention. But Erdogan seems intent not only on re-Islamizing his own country but supporting neighboring jihadis. Time magazine put Mustafa Kemal on its March 24, 1923, cover: He was the great Muslim hope. In 1924 Kemal said, “The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.” In 1925 he declared, “The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples.” The following year he closed Islamic courts and created a European-style penal code. At the rate Turkey is marching back to its future, the 100th anniversary of Kemal’s directives may bring their complete unwinding. What’s happening in Turkey is part of a long-term trend that might better be termed an ooze. A decade ago many Americans hoped that a democratic Iraq would join Turkey in providing liberty and justice for all. The “Arab Spring” brought similar hopes regarding Egypt. But ancient traditions backed up by dictatorial religion are hard to topple, and those forecasting the growth of freedom in Muslim countries may have to follow those words by saying “April Fools.” A —with reporting by Mindy Belz in Beirut; for more on Turkey, see p. 46
Erdogan: Kayhan Ozer/Turkish Prime Minister’s Press Office/ap • Mustafa Kemal: Burhan Ozbilici/ap
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For most of the 20th century Turkey was the great hope for yanking the Muslim world out of sharia law. Mustafa Kemal, Turkey’s 1920s-1930s autocrat, took as a new last name Ataturk, which means “father of Turkey”—and he truly was the progenitor of a country that kept Islamists at bay. His secularist vision, with the assistance of Turkey’s army, stayed dominant until 2002. Just before April Fools’ Day, though, two developments—one political, one military—dashed the slight hope that remains. The political story began 12 years ago when Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power not on an overt Islamist program but an anti-corruption one. Prime Minister Erdogan since then has used salami tactics—one slice at a time—to cut out the Ataturk legacy and edge back toward traditional Islam’s
union of mosque and state. Erdogan’s administration has also displayed the cronyism that he deplored when in opposition, and some secularists predicted that elections on March 30 would curtail the prime minister’s power. Exactly the opposite happened: The AKP won big, and Erdogan is now likely to become Turkey’s first directly elected president this summer, a triumph that would allow him to rule for another decade and stomp on the little bit of religious liberty that remains. The military development also reflects Turkey’s growing Islamism, and it has international implications. Syrians in the northwestern part of their country reported at the end of March that jihadist rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are receiving help from Turkish tanks and anti- aircraft fire. The jihadists attacked villages inhabited by Alawites, the Muslim sect of the Assad family, and others that are home to Armenian Christians. Thousands of Christians had to flee, seeking refuge in nearby hills or the coastal city of Latakia. One pastor told World
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8 NEWS p14.indd 15
3/28/14 11:21 AM
Dispatches > Quotables
‘The mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there’s no scientific explanation of how it came about.’
‘I have seen racism. I know what it looks like. This isn’t it.’ SETH WILLIAMS, Philadelphia’s Democratic district attorney, on claims by Pennsylvania Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane that she decided not to pursue charges against four Philadelphia state legislators and other government officials because the investigation of them had been tainted by racism.
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist BILL GATES, when asked in an interview with Rolling Stone whether he believes in God. “I think it makes sense to believe in God,” he added, “but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.”
‘Aren’t these God’s mistakes?’ South Korean Dr. KIM SEOK-KWUN on persons born with what he calls “a mismatched sexual identity.” Dr. Kim has conducted sex change operations over the past years after, he says, he agonized over whether performing such operations was defying God: “I’ve decided to defy God’s will.”
‘They are pushing the homosexual agenda and also changing the meaning of the word wholesome.’ MONICA COLE of One Million Moms on a new commercial from Nabisco featuring two dads and a baby and touting “everyday wholesome snacks for every wholesome family.”
WILLIAMS: MATT ROURKE/AP • KANE: BRADLEY C. BOWER/AP • YEE: BEN MARGOT/AP • GATES: JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT/KEYSTONE/AP • KIM: AHN YOUNG-JOON/AP • NABISCO: HANDOUT
A Dec. tweet from California State Senator and aggressive gun control advocate LELAND YEE. On March , authorities arrested Yee for allegedly offering to help an undercover agent posing as a member of the Mafia to obtain million in high-powered weapons in exchange for direct payments and campaign donations. Yee also faces other corruption charges.
Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com
4/2/14 8:44 AM
CREDIT
‘A year after Sandy Hook, let us recommit ourselves to working towards a safer society for all of us.’
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4/1/14 12:58 PM
Dispatches > Quick Takes
William Shakespeare wrote that “revenge should have no bounds.” And with free SMS messaging, and an assist from the Bard himself, one British man has taken Shakespeare’s words to heart. Edd Joseph of Bristol, U.K., tried buying a gaming console from a private seller over the internet in early March. But after Joseph made the $130 payment, the seller refused to ship the device. After trading furious text messages—and finding no other method of recourse—Joseph, 24, used the copy-paste function on his smart phone to put the entire works of William Shakespeare in a text message and send it to his nemesis. Because the text can only be delivered in 160-character chunks, Joseph’s message needed 29,305 parts to reach the scammer’s phone. Thanks to his unlimited data and texting plan, Joseph won’t pay a dime while his opponent’s phone was continuously chiming for the better part of a week.
Motherly love Few things can stop a mother in pursuit of her children’s safety—not even a moving car. And on March 6, a Lawrence, Mass., mother proved it. Mindy Tran, 22, didn’t have many options when the vehicle occupied only by her two young children began rolling down her driveway and toward traffic. Unable to jump back into the moving vehicle, the mother of two instead lay down behind the tires, creating a human speed bump that slowed down the Honda enough so neighbors could intervene. The incident left Tran with a shattered leg, but her children emerged unscathed.
Clutch klutz
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W OR L D • A p r i l 1 9 , 2 0 1 4
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Banner banter Labor unions in Wichita, Kan., have become more aggressive in their decisions to picket local businesses. But what the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 201 didn’t anticipate was a car dealership’s penchant for shameless advertising. When Subaru of Wichita opted to use a nonunion firm to hang some drywall, the carpenters union in March sent over picketers carrying a large banner that read, “Shame on Subaru of Wichita.” It didn’t take long for the marketers at the dealership to come up with their own sign, positioned just to the right of the union picket, reading, “for having unbeatable prices.”
Joseph: David Hedges/SWNS • tran: handout • Subaru: handout
If you ask Melissa Peters what the best auto theft deterrent device on the market is, her answer will be clear: a clutch. Police in Omaha, Neb., say 17-year-old Mganga H. Mganga surprised Peters on March 27 when he produced a gun and pointed it at her as she was walking to her car to take her son to school and herself to work. Peters had left the keys—and her 13-year-old boy—in the car. After yanking her son from the car, Peters and child fled on foot. But when she turned back, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. According to police reports, Mganga was struggling to start the manual transmission Dodge, and had somehow rolled the car into her side yard. After several more futile minutes, police arrived and captured Mganga when he tried to flee on foot.
Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com
4/1/14 12:32 PM
Houshang: Long Hongtao/Xinhua/landov • illustration: krieg barrie • zhao: HAP/rex USA • Chihuahua: tucson police department • lire: Ryan McVay/getty images
Message sent
-
JOSEPH: DAVID HEDGES/SWNS • TRAN: HANDOUT • SUBARU: HANDOUT
HOUSHANG: LONG HONGTAO/XINHUA/LANDOV • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • ZHAO: HAP/REX USA • CHIHUAHUA: TUCSON POLICE DEPARTMENT • LIRE: RYAN McVAY/GETTY IMAGES
For decades a blind female beggar named Ayesha worked the streets of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, raking in donations from passersby. How much in donations? Apparently enough to hire an assistant, who reported to local authorities that when she died in March, she had left him to manage an estate worth over million. The assistant, named Ahmad Saidi, said Ayesha had instructed him to distribute her cash, gold, and jewelry to needy residents of Jeddah. More than a decade ago, Saidi helped Ayesha to convert some of her gold takings into cash. Later he advised her to give up begging because of the fortune she had amassed—but she said she preferred to go on working.
One man’s trash is another man’s helicopter. At least that’s how tinkerer Li Houshang thinks about it. The Chinese farmer from the Hunan province says he’s close to getting his homemade helicopter off the ground—despite being constructed entirely from junk from a scrap heap. Li said he began constructing the helicopter last year by stripping down a motorcycle for its motor, clutch, and throttle. The fuselage and blades come from scrapped metal he welded together in his spare time. And in a test flight earlier this year, Li said he got his contraption nearly . feet off the ground.
What’s the cure for a stuffy nose? If you’re a Chinese woman named Zhao, it might be finally removing the bullet lodged in your head for nearly five decades. Identified in local Chinese media only as Zhao, the -year-old said she has suffered from a stuffy nose, intermittent headaches, and swollen lymph nodes for the past years. When the pain became too much to bear, Zhao finally went to the hospital. An exam revealed the woman had a bullet lodged in her sinus cavity—apparently from a gunshot wound suffered in . For most of her life, the inch-long bullet caused few problems. But when Zhao’s symptoms began to dominate her life, doctors at a local hospital were able to remove the bullet.
Unless Tucson, Ariz., police catch up with him, one unidentified bank robber could eventually become known as the Chihuahua bandit. Police there say the man, approximately , entered a local Chase bank on March and demanded money from the tellers. The thief evidently brought some backup too, as his Chihuahua puppy monitored the robbery from a basket behind him. Police say the thief fled on foot with the loot and the dog.
They may have a face value of more than million lire, but for one Italian woman the old bank notes found squirreled away in her uncle’s home aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Claudia Moretti must have thought she struck it rich when she discovered old Italian currency worth a total of million lire—or ,—in her recently deceased uncle’s home. But Italy’s deadline for converting lire into euros passed in December . Moretti and her lawyers challenged the law and tried to get a late conversion. But a court recently decided against her.
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
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4/1/14 4:53 PM
Janie B. Cheaney
Authorized personnel only God has entrusted Christians with the gospel, but He hasn’t left us on our own
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WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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I am sometimes stymied by the great gulf between my experience and everyone else’s. How do I communicate to the world what is totally unworldly? How can that gap possibly be closed? But imagine God thinking such thoughts. Look at the great gulf between His Spirit and our flesh. How does He bridge that? We know how: by fusing Spirit with flesh. He “entrusted” Himself with the gospel by embodying the gospel. He complimented our flesh by taking it on; He glorified our bodies by rising again in a body; His righteousness becomes ours. And so does His mission. “He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers in the divine nature …” ( Peter :). Partaking in the divine nature means we are partners in the divine project—not only recipients of Trinitarian love, but agents of that love. I’ve even thought of having business cards printed up: Janie B. Cheaney/ Agent of Reconciliation/ ( Corinthians :).
Participation in the divine nature means I’m not on my own. He fuses my flesh with His Spirit. I love reading about the work of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, but Acts is not just an exciting story—it’s a continuing story. Today is the day of salvation, beginning ca. .. ; the work that began then goes on, uninterrupted, minus a few show-stopping miraculous signs. We have the same Spirit as Peter and Paul, equally “approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.” He is our seal of approval, of adoption, of authority. Authorized personnel only? That’s us. That’s me. A
KRIEG BARRIE
I’ why humans are entrusted with sex and with children, since we make such a mess of both. But what other way will we learn to handle both pleasure and responsibility, much less continue the human race? Whenever I question God’s ways of accomplishing His purposes, I always run up against the question of alternate ways. Every alternative has been tried and comes up short; God’s way, when undertaken in good faith (and by good faith), turns out to be best by far. Still I wonder sometimes about an even greater responsibility: “[J]ust as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man but to please God” ( Thessalonians :). “Entrusted with the gospel” was fine for Paul; he’d seen Jesus face to face and spent a vacation in the Third Heaven. But now that Paul is no longer with us, who is “we”? In my imagination I look around, see no likely candidates, point hesitantly to myself: “Who—me?” Surely there are better ways to spread the gospel than entrusting it to wispy creatures. The conspicuous flubs and failures of charismatic Christian leaders (Doug Phillips, Mark Driscoll, etc.) make me wonder about alternatives. What about periodic angel appearances—not too often, or it would get old, but once in a generation? Or angelic gospel bureaus scattered throughout the world, offering weekend retreats? Jesus could even come back to lead a revival every few hundred years, or whenever He’s ready (we’ll let Him decide). How about a gospel refresher course, a -day Jesus crusade, with direct-from-heaven preaching and miraculous signs on the side? How about a church taught by the best, with no doctrinal error or Scripture twisting, just the unvarnished truth. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Why not? A few considerations: Direct-from-heaven application of the gospel seems as if it would be more effective, but Jesus met plenty of opposition when walking among us, even accompanied by signs and wonders. In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul speaks of the gospel in the midst of much conflict, out of the frying pan of Philippi (an arrest, a beating, and a night in jail) into the fire of Ephesus (another riot). He was only one step removed from the risen Christ, and did his share of miracles, yet still people disbelieved and strayed into error.
Email: jcheaney@wng.org
3/28/14 11:53 AM
Paying for a college education these days is difficult for everyone. We understand the challenges you face in making this investment. We hear your concerns, and we’ve done something to help you focus on your future.
Beginning in fall 2014, all incoming campus-based freshmen and qualified transfer students will be automatically enrolled at no cost in a loan repayment assistance program—a powerful safety net that can help BBC graduates pay back their education loans. More online at
www.bbc.edu/LRAP
KRIEG BARRIE
Get details today from BBC Admissions at admissions@bbc.edu or 800.451.7664. Baptist Bible College 538 Venard Road Clarks Summit, PA 18411
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3/28/14 10:18 AM
MOTHER’S DAY if t s g
to: Mo
m
Author, blogger, and mother Aimee Byrd shows all women how knowledge of the gospel enhances every part of every day. Give your mom a reminder that her relationship with Jesus Christ creates joy in your life and the lives of others. Above all, encourage her in her calling as a woman of God.
CREDIT
Is your mother a grandmother? A trio of grandmothers stitched together this devotional to strengthen more grandmothers in praying for their grandchildren each day. Fun activities and ideas let grandmas and grandkids grow in love and friendship.
prpbooks.com
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| 1(800) 631–0094
3/31/14 3:12 PM
Reviews Movies TV > Books > QA > Music
No mercy MOVIE: Noah presents a harrowing picture of God’s wrath, but misses the gospel BY SOPHIA LEE
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
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N through a flood of vocal opposition and doubts, landed a solid box office opening, and planted a victory flag that promises more big-studio biblical epics in the future. The million movie by Paramount finished strong in its opening weekend at over million in domestic box office sales, exceeding expectations. With the additional million it made overseas, Noah (PG-) seems to be on good forecast for profitability. To put those numbers into context: Russell Crowe, who plays Noah, also starred in Robin Hood and Gladiator. Robin Hood made about million in its debut weekend, and Gladiator made about million. Both were released in May, a profitable month that marks the beginning of summer blockbuster
Email: slee@wng.org
8 MOVIES & TV.indd 23
season. Generally, March is reserved for smaller budget movies, so for Noah to bust a million opening in March is considered a substantial success. That success came despite initial negative responses from religious groups—a profitable demographic Paramount was hoping to woo. And there is much in Noah for Christians not to like. Director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky’s Noah focuses on God’s wrath, and it will blot out whatever Sunday school watercolor image you may have of a righteous Noah beaming at the heavens as mommy and daddy giraffes duck into a rudimentary ship. Instead, what you get is a dark psychological thriller wrapped up in a horror film. To its credit, Noah makes serious attempts at grappling with deep theo-
logical questions: What is good? Who is righteous? What are justice and mercy? But Christians shouldn’t be surprised that a secular production would miss the most important and critical element of this Genesis story—the gospel of Christ. Aronofsky minimizes the Bible’s original narrative and rewrites characters and themes through a flawed human perspective. God is only alluded to as “The Creator.” Noah’s super-old grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), is a spiritual, magical blend of Yoda and Merlin with E.T. fingers. Noah builds his ark with the help of fallen angels called The Watchers (based on references to Nephilim), who have been flung down to earth as rock giants that resemble Lord of the Rings’ Treebeard. And for a story whose main
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/2/14 11:53 AM
Reviews > Movies & TV
Cesar Chavez by Megan Basham
>>
Si, Se Puede. Yes We Can. Ask almost anyone under 30 about these words and they’ll likely associate them with Barack Obama’s historymaking 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. But before millions of idealistic millennials began chanting them at college campuses across the country, the slogan served as the rallying cry for a different charismatic community organizer leading a very different sort of movement. The new biopic Cesar Chavez (rated PG-13 for language and some violence) captures the dusty beauty of California’s fertile Central Valley, and a cast of actors headed by Michael Pena, Rosario Dawson, and John Malkovich credibly bring to life the principle factions involved in the 1960s California grape strike. Unfortunately, the script fails to offer anything more than a simpleminded good guys/bad guys perspective, reducing the farm owners (not to mention Ronald Reagan) to a caricature of racism and inexplicable meanness that make no account for real financial issues or ideological differences. Director Diego Luna is too interested in making an idol of the founder of the United Farm Workers to explore the complexities of a flesh-and-blood man who sometimes espoused political views significantly out of step with today’s progressive movement. While Chavez did rally for better pay and working conditions for domestic, mostly Mexican and Filipino farm workers, he and his organization also took the logical stance that one cannot be for raising the wages of those currently laboring in fields, vineyards, and orchards yet also support unfettered illegal immigration. Chavez and the UFW were virulently a nti-illegal-immigration, even offering to report illegal immigrants to the INS. Just as Luna is unwilling to look at any aspects of Chavez’s life and work that deviate from modern liberal lockstep, he likewise avoids examining why the influence of the United Farm Workers movement has, like many other union movements, grown nearly nonexistent in recent years. The life and work of Cesar Chavez should cast a fascinating spotlight on today’s political landscape and some of the issues the country is debating most hotly today. Though well-acted, Diego Luna’s hagiographic film never manages to shine a meager beam.
*Reviewed by world
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4/2/14 11:54 AM
Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Walt Disney Studios • Bethlehem: Entre Chien et Loup/Gringo Films
Box Office Top 10
MOVIE
Cesar Chavez: Pantelion Films • Aronofsky: Paramount Pictures
message is sin, Noah shows more concern for environmental destruction than spiritual corruption. Still, with its staggering $125 million budget, Noah spectacularly depicts the realistic horrors of the flood and God’s immense wrath against sin. The story of Noah is tragic and terrifying, and Noah vividly captures those emotional and psychological aspects. This is where Aronofsky’s signature “psychological case study” style shines, as it did in his previous feature films, The Fountain and Black Swan. He does a masterful, intense portrait of the characters as they slide into delirious fear and survivor’s guilt in the claustrophobic, clammy ark. Aronofsky, a self-identified atheist who was “surprised” by the uproar over the film even before its release, said people didn’t acknowledge his “personal passion” in the Genesis story. He spent 10 years of research to create Noah, consulting various experts and studying every text he could find (including some noncanonical documents such as The Book of Enoch, which explains the unfortunate rock monsters). But he’s been mulling over Noahic themes much longer than that. When he first heard the story of Noah as a child, Aronofsky remembers feeling scared. He asked questions then that he asks again in Noah: “What if I’m not good enough to be on the boat? I have wickedness and sin too.” In other words, the film is asking, “How can we sinners get saved?” If Christians have solid answers to these real questions, need we fear a secular artistic medium that asks them? Consider this: Just weeks before Easter—a day commemorating Christ’s accomplishment of the ark’s salvation—people all over the world were talking, blogging, tweeting, and texting about Noah. For the weekend of March 28-30 according to Box Office Mojo Perhaps some of them are going cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 home and blowing scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com dust off their S V L Bibles, or asking 1̀ Noah* PG-13.................................3 6 1 Christian friends 2̀ Divergent PG-13........................2 6 3 about the real 3̀ Muppets Most story of Noah. And Wanted* PG................................ 1 3 2 if nonbelievers are 4̀ Mr. Peabody & asking and pon Sherman PG................................ 1 3 1 dering the mean5̀ God’s Not Dead* PG......... not rated ing of sin, perhaps 6̀ The Grand Budapest Hotel R...........................................6 6 6 they’re one more 7̀ Sabotage R................................. 7 9 10 step toward 8̀ Need for Speed PG-13............3 6 4 repentance. A 9̀ 300: Rise of An Empire R... 7 9 5 10 Non-Stop* PG-13....................... 1 5 5 `
MOVIE
Bethlehem
CESAR CHAVEZ: PANTELION FILMS • ARONOFSKY: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER: WALT DISNEY STUDIOS • BETHLEHEM: ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP/GRINGO FILMS
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W why Israel is so, well, mean. Why can’t they just get along with everyone? I can only speculate on Yuval Adler’s reasons behind directing and writing Bethlehem, but I wonder if part of it was to answer this question. In Bethlehem, being mean can save your life. Set in modern-day Israel, Bethlehem (unrated) follows adolescent Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i) and Razi (Tsahi Halevi), a member of Israel’s Secret Service tasked with capturing or killing Sanfur’s brother, a notorious terrorist. Sanfur is caught between Razi, who is using him as an informant, and Badawi (Hitham Omari), an ambitious terrorist trying to steal credibility and power from Hamas by whatever means necessary. All of these men are locked in the middle of a behind-the-scenes war, and when the shooting starts, their battlefield is Sanfur’s hometown, Bethlehem. This struggle is not between the armies of nations, but between a few men all vying for control. Intelligence and information are deadlier weapons than guns; and money, fear, and ideology are the most common motivators. Bethlehem handles its grim content very well. Everything is designed to be believable: The story is simple yet unpredictable, and the actors (who speak Hebrew or Arabic the entire movie) are sometimes rough around the edges. The acting is bland, but good enough not to shake our suspension of disbelief. The cinematography is solid, but not particularly brilliant, although it does casually sweep up a great deal of beautiful scenery. Even the action sequences are frank, gritty, and often brutal. In many ways, it is unlike many Western thrillers, which feature handsome heroes dashing off witty punch lines before engaging in rollicking sprees of stylized violence. Fun, yes, but deep down we know that’s not how it really is. Bethlehem is not fun, but it does look very real. So real, in fact, that when the movie is over we may find ourselves preferring romanticized plots and unrealistic underdog stories. The wounds Bethlehem inflicts on its characters and audience never heal, and the story closes with them raw and bleeding.
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
8 MOVIES & TV.indd 25
Evans and Johansson
MOVIE
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
>>
C A (Chris Evans) may be the most wellmannered, clean-cut, and straitlaced of the Marvel Comics heroes. But he still packs a punch. In this second installment of the Captain America series, Cap runs through bad guys like a bullet through water. That is, until one night S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson) delivers a flash drive and a cryptic message: Their helicarrier security system, set to launch within a few days—including enough firepower to wipe out civilization— has been hijacked from within the organization. Suddenly, bullets rain through a window into Fury’s chest, and as he struggles to breathe, he warns Cap, “Don’t trust anyone.” When Cap races to catch the gunman, he encounters a dark figure who also has superhuman strength. The dark figure, of course, is the Winter Soldier, a ghost from the WWII era, and it seems he’s been resurrected to do the bidding of some powerful politicians. Untangling the web of deceit behind his appearance as well as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s corruption become Cap’s mission—while his unlikely partners, the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie), add unique skills and character interest along the way. In general, the film is nearly as clean-cut as Cap himself. One curse word makes its way into several scenes (and one trailer), but the film’s PG- rating comes largely from violence, gunplay, and a heavy dose of action. More heroic are the morals of the movie, including patriotism, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. At times the dialogue is stilted, and the plot’s conspiracies seem about as realistic as original Marvel illustrations. But what will likely stick with viewers is the vision of a classic hero in stars and stripes, and his heartfelt rallying cry: “The price of freedom is high, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/2/14 11:55 AM
Reviews > Books
First pitch
Books to start another joyful baseball season BY MARVIN OLASKY
and adulterous striving epidemic among bantering non-Christian athletes. For those who want just the facts, ma’am, the th anniversary edition of The Bill James Handbook (ACTA, ) is essential. James revolutionized the use and abuse of baseball statistics a quartercentury ago. He went beyond batting average to OPS (on-base plus slugging percentages). He went beyond won-loss records to WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched). He went beyond other conventional measures to the esoterica that bred a new intellectual discipline and organization, sabermetrics (derived from the acronym SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research). I still have the early James handbooks, so it’s fun to note the success of one American dream by seeing how far James has come. He now gives out his own awards for fielding prowess based on Defensive Runs Saved. His playerby-player statistical summaries include how to pronounce names (Yasmani Grandal is yaz-MON-ee gran-DAHL).
But the most interesting part remains James’ take on timeless questions of baseball philosophy: His stats show that “Throwing Strikes is more important to the success of a major league pitcher than Having a Swing-and-Miss Pitch,” and the Ground Ball Rate is irrelevant to success as a pitcher. Those seeking not only information about last year’s major league season but predictions of the future may go all the way to Rob Gordon and Jeremy Deloney’s Minor League Baseball Analyst (Triumph, ). It includes extensive stats of high potential minor leaguers (for example, we can learn about “catcher pop times,” i.e. how long it takes from the time a pitch hits the catcher’s mitt to the time a middle infielder receives the ball at second base). It also gives players’ “upside potential” plus a rating on their probability of reaching that potential. I’m skeptical, since many phenoms selfdestruct or suffer injury—but fortunetellers of the world, unite.
A downward spiral
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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WHIT PRESTON/STONE/GETTY IMAGES
Encounter Books continues to publish a series of -page-or-so “broadside” books of policy and cultural analysis. I found particularly valuable The K- Implosion by Glenn Reynolds and What Doomed Detroit? by Kevin Williamson. (His short answer: “a combination of racialist politics and union self-dealing.”) Another broadside, Richard Epstein’s Why Progressive Institutions Are Unsustainable, Unsustainable gives a trenchant analysis of why America is heading to economic disaster unless we have a great reversal. I’ll quote just a bit of Epstein’s analysis: He writes that the progressive agenda requires “extensive and counterproductive programs of redistribution that cannot be supported by a stagnant economy and a shrinking productive wealth base. As that base gets smaller, the demand for a stronger safety net induces yet another round of transfer payment.” That hurts productivity and fosters unemployment, which leads to “fervent calls to create a stronger safety net,” which leads to more economic weakness, then a bigger safety net, and down we go. —M.O.
Email: molasky@wng.org
3/28/14 9:52 AM
MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/THE IMAGE WORKS
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I some hearts still turn to baseball, and publishers respond. Chris Ballard’s One Shot at Forever (Hyperion, ) is a sweet, Hoosiers-type story of how a small-town, high-school baseball team made it to the Illinois high-school championship game. George Will’s A Nice Little Place on the North Side (Crown, ) is a nice little book, but by the end of it I was ready for books that recognize original sin and not just lovable quirks. I got that in two books by Dirk Hayhurst, who was on his way to a major league career when he hurt his pitching arm. His Out of My League and Bigger Than the Game (Citadel Press and ) are the best inside-thelocker-room books I’ve seen. They show, with verve and humor, what the contemporary pro baseball world is like. Hayhurst’s realism also means that although he professes faith in Christ and writes of his own virginity until marriage, he reports the f-laden language
NOTABLE BOOKS Four books on popular theology > reviewed by
The Gospel at Work Greg Gilbert and Sebastian Traeger The gospel matters in the pulpit, in the home, and in the family. And, according to Greg Gilbert and Sebastian Traeger, the gospel also matters at work. The Gospel at Work is meant to show that Christians work for a King, and that this changes everything, because there is no work that is meaningless or insignificant when it is done for King Jesus. The authors provide a brief but sound theology of work, and then progress to practical matters: choosing a career; finding that difficult balance between work, family, and church; sharing the gospel at work; and so on. Since we all work somewhere, sometime, this is a book we would all do well to read.
Spiritual Warfare Brian Borgman and Rob Ventura Few subjects are more important to the life and well-being of the Christian than spiritual warfare. Yet, in my experience few topics receive worse treatment. Novel interpretations abound, as do outright unbiblical ones. In Spiritual Warfare Brian Borgman and Rob Ventura look at Ephesians to provide a detailed but readerfriendly examination of this text. They stay within the bounds of Scripture, never embellishing or pursuing original and unconventional interpretations. C.S. Lewis said Christians fall into two errors when it comes to demonic forces: “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” This book avoids both extremes. It is a steady, reasonable, and balanced look at the reality of our battle and the armor God has provided.
What’s Best Next Matt Perman I am convinced there is a Christian way to think about everything. One of the joys of reading widely in the Christian book market is seeing how authors address those topics for which they have a special interest or passion. In What’s Best Next, author and blogger Matt Perman explores productivity—a topic about which there is a gap in Christian literature. It’s not only about getting things done, but about getting the right and best things done. Perman provides a uniquely Christian view on productivity, and then offers a practical approach that will help you become more effective in what you do, no matter what you do.
WHIT PRESTON/STONE/GETTY IMAGES
MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/THE IMAGE WORKS
The New Calvinism Considered Jeremy Walker I don’t think anyone could have predicted the contemporary resurgence in Calvinistic theology. Yet over the past or years, Calvinism has once again become a significant presence in evangelicalism. In The New Calvinism Considered, Jeremy Walker explores the roots, strengths, weaknesses, and future of this movement. Writing personally and pastorally with a winsome tone and a balanced view, he commends this movement for what it is doing well, and cautions it for areas in which it is weak, vulnerable, or even unbiblical. While this book is certainly not the final word on the movement, Walker’s commendations and concerns are on-target and thought-provoking. A willingness to consider such critiques would prove both the health and the humility of this movement.
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
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SPOTLIGHT In Volume of Building a Godly Home: A Holy Vision for a Happy Marriage by William Gouge (Reformation Heritage Books, ), the Puritan pastor draws practical applications from Ephesians :-. His pithy prose will keep you reading. For example, he describes a man who intending “to court and woo a woman will promise mountains, but not perform mole hills. Others will snuggle and kiss their wives much, but trust them with nothing.” In Help for Women Under Stress: Preserving Your Sanity (Eternal Perspective Ministries, ), Randy and Nanci Alcorn provide a biblical perspective to overbusy women. The book deals with theology— appreciating and trusting God’s sovereignty and goodness—and with practical habits—diet, exercise, relaxation—that can help us stay healthy. In this updated edition, the Alcorns share what they’ve learned in the years since the book first came out. —Susan Olasky
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
3/28/14 9:52 AM
Reviews > Q&A
Transforming >> power How tea party pioneer MARK MECKLER found real hope and change you can believe in By Marvin Olasky
Gary Fong/Genesis Photos
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Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Self-Governance, was one of the founders of the tea party movement. He’s now working to bring about a Convention of States that could be a step toward amending the U.S. Constitution to rein in big government—but in front of students at Patrick Henry College I asked him about things more fundamental. With what beliefs did you grow up? I was a secular Jew and went to college with no beliefs about religion. I never attended a church or a synagogue. You took some religious studies courses as an undergraduate at San Diego State University. What effect did they have on you? I came away a militant atheist, really. In those classes they teach you everything bad that religion has ever done on planet Earth. You were an English major: What was your favorite book? Atlas Shrugged. In law school you had a blue mohawk? There’s no picture—thank God. You meet in law school everybody you ever wanted to be the class president at your high school, and they’re all trying to conform to some ideal of what a law school student should look like. My pushback was one day to walk downtown to a punk rock hair dresser and ask for a blue mohawk. About three-quarters of my teachers refused to look at me after that. When you went for interviews at corporate law firms, did you have your blue mohawk? No. I’m a rebel, but I’m a practical rebel, so no tattoos.
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Did you get married straight out of law school? Yes, and a year after law school ended up in a really nasty divorce. My parents are now married 53 years, thank God, so I had great role models and expected to be married my whole life. Going through this divorce was very dark, and that’s part of what started to turn me to faith. Two years after the divorce you remarried. God put her in my path for multiple reasons—I think one was to erson help me heal. She was a p of faith. How did her religious beliefs affect you? She was a devout Christian. We decided she would practice her way, I would not practice my way, and kids could make their own choices. That was a terrible mistake on my part. So you’re pursuing your law career in northern California, not involved in politics at all, and then what happens? The tea party movement happened. I had been very frustrated, and somebody told me, “Hey, you need to look at these pages on Facebook. These people are holding a protest.” That inspired me, and my wife is from Boston originally so the idea of a tea party appealed to her. We organized a protest five days later in Sacramento, with signs like, “Show me a good government program, I’ll show you a unicorn”—and 150 people showed up. Then what? I’m a networker by nature and so started calling people in California who had done one of these events: “What did you do? What worked? Did you have as much fun as we did?” I became the de facto coordinator for California because everybody
Email: molasky@wng.org
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knew me, so somebody in San Diego would say, “Who do we ask about this?” and they would say, “Call Meckler, because he called me.” Then I started calling around the country, and we came up with the idea of a tax day, April 15, tea party. We started promoting this on Facebook, and by the end of the week 150 people were asking, “Can you list our event on your web page?” By April 13 we had 850 events listed on the website.
further away from the grassroots group it was supposed to be. The organization was starting to play Washington politics. The leaders were going to fancy parties. I was saying on TV, “We’re not partisan,” but the organization at the board level cut a check for $250,000 to a Republican organization. That was when the parting of ways happened. What’s happening to you spiritually at this point? I’m meeting people
‘If you’re a Jew ... you believe it would be a betrayal of your heritage to become a Christian, but when you learn the true history, a completely different door opens.’ Lots of people turned out. Twenty thousand in Sacramento, and so on. Afterward a few of us said, “We can’t stop.” We formed an organization called the Tea Party Patriots to be the goforward grassroots organizing mechanism. It grew, but at a certain point the leadership has a division, and you were out. What happened? By February 2012 the organization has grown incredibly. At that point we had raised in a previous 12-month period almost $14 million. We had a bigger fresh email list than The Heritage Foundation. But from my perspective the organization was moving further and
who—by what they profess to me, by who they are, by what they do—are devout Christians. They are powerful people who seem personally unaffected by their own power. They have a humility about them that is missing in a lot of the other powerful people I’m meeting around the country. They’re actually walking the path, and I’m impressed with that, because it’s different than what I was taught in college. Anyone particularly influential? Tim Dunn, a West Texas self-made millionaire, self-taught theologian. We started talking Christianity and restoring the Judaic heritage of Christianity, and as a
Jew obviously that resonates with me. If you’re a Jew, you hear there’s an absolute schism and the Jews go one way and the Christians go another way, but you don’t know anything about Paul, or that these were all Jews who now believed that the Messiah had come. As a Jew you believe it would be a betrayal of your heritage to become a Christian, but when you learn the true history, a completely different door opens. Edith Schaeffer wrote her great book, Christianity Is Jewish—but a lot of people who see that still hold back because the thought of leaving behind a community and alienating parents is too much for them. How did you take the final step, and how did your parents take your conversion? I came to a time where on my scale of logic it made more sense to believe than not to believe. I got to the point where I felt foolish in not believing. Everything I read, everything I saw in the world around me, every sign pointed me to believing in Christ. My dad is an atheist and I respect his decision, and my mom believes in a higher power, but has no specific religious beliefs. It’s tough for my dad, but they’ve both been fantastically accepting. And in God’s providence you may be leading them. Well, if you believe in the Big Bang you have to believe in magic, because there was nothing and now there’s something, and it’s like pulling the rabbit out of the hat—it’s magic. The logical question you have to ask yourself is, “Do you believe in magic with, or without, a magician? Which is more logical?” A
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that the lead vocalist Chad Gardner emotes the lyrics or the way that the arrangement builds to a full-bodied martial climax entirely in keeping with the concept of spiritual warfare. What seems to animate the group’s members more than anything else is a disregard for time-bound categories that might inhibit the spontaneous exuberance experienced by those who’ve tasted and seen that the Lord is good. And by titling Live in Color’s lead track after a term coined by Augustine (“Felix Culpa”), they give
singers and musicians preserve the melodies of hymns such as “O Worship the King,” “How Firm a Foundation,” and “For the Beauty of the Earth” while discarding aural cultural baggage. “I see the project as something of a ‘preservation’ endeavor,” Kimbrough says. “Because it’s not always readily apparent how to translate these old hymn tunes from the piano to the guitar, some of them are falling out of use. I hope that by making serviceable guitarbased recordings of them, I might contribute to their wider circulation.” A
Durable hymns
New and recent CDs maintain traditional hymns in diverse styles BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
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L K J B, Christian hymns have imbedded themselves so deeply in the American consciousness that even now they sprout and bloom if only like wildflowers in the cracks of a secular sidewalk. Consider the Gaither Vocal Band’s Hymns (Gaither Music Group/Universal). Now , Bill Gaither has long been the éminence grise of popular evangelical song. He has also popularized at times an evangelical sentimentalism that’s more milk than meat. Hymns renders that problem moot. Although sentimentalism taints “I’ll Fly Away,” “Love Lifted Me,” and “The Old Rugged Cross,” it’s reined in by a verbally terse colloquial orthodoxy. Musically, the lead cut, “Amazing Grace,” proves that something besides cockles-warming nostalgia is afoot. Gaither (bass); Michael English, David Phelps, and Wes Hampton (tenors); and Mark Lowry (baritone) intertwine their voices atop a musical foundation reverently a-writhe with key changes and instrumentation as diverse as it is inventively arranged. They don’t tamper much with the long-familiar melodies or tempos. Neither, however, do they reject revisionism out of hand, imaginatively imbuing the Fanny Crosby–William J. Kirkpatrick classic “Redeemed” with grandeur. And their “Love Lifted Me” could almost pass for blue-eyed soul.
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Seattle’s Kings Kaleidoscope has a younger, less-traditional audience in mind, one reared on the expansive templates of “jam bands” and for whom the idea of rocking outside the box is more than theoretical. Unlike the ensemble’s all-hymns EP Asaph’s Arrows, the only traditional number on its rousing new seven-song Live in Color (BadChristian) is “Be Thou My Vision.” But there’s nothing traditional about the way
fresh meaning to the “communion of saints.” Page CXVI targets a slightly older demographic. Awash in luminous softpop settings that play to the strengths of Latifah Phillips’ quietly arresting alto voice, Lent to Maundy Thursday, the trio’s latest hymns-based collection, comprises four th-century numbers and three originals that evoke the -day period immediately preceding Easter. Their approach on “And Can It Be That I Should Gain,” “Before the Throne of God Above,” “Were You There,” and “I Love the Lord” is to pour old lyrics into new melodies, effectively introducing the former’s inspirational durability to believers or seekers who came of age listening to Sarah McLachlan and Coldplay. Bridging the generation gap is Wendell Kimbrough’s dozen-cut Hymns & Friends. More musically stripped down than either Kings Kaleidoscope or Page CXVI, the album will appeal both to fans of alternative-folk Americana and to their parents. Kimbrough, a D.C.-area singersongwriter and Anglican Church worship leader, and his ensemble of
Email: aorteza@wng.org
4/1/14 5:09 PM
JOHN CURRY/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE/ZUMAPRESS.COM/NEWSCOM
Reviews > Music
NOTABLE CDs
New Bob Dylan tribute albums > reviewed by
From His Head to His Heart to His Hands Michael Bloomfield The blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield’s career peaked in the ’s. So the ’s performances that stretch this box’s audio portion to three discs feel anticlimactic. What doesn’t is Bloomfield’s collaborations with Paul Butterfield, the Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Muddy Waters, and Janis Joplin. Still, it’s the three unavailableelsewhere Dylan collaborations—especially the live early version of “Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” circa that somehow proved too little too late to keep Bloomfield from overdosing on heroin three months later—that will have consumers shelling out.
Bob Dylan in the 80s: Volume One Various performers “No one sings Dylan like Dylan” went an old Columbia Records ad slogan, and it’s truer now than ever. The best of these renditions succeed to the extent that they do by proffering little besides the sincerest form of flattery. And although it’s nice to hear the gospel-era songs “You Changed My Life” (Ivan & Aloysha) and “Pressing On” (Glen Hansard) taken at face value, Hannah Cohen’s “Covenant Woman,” which transforms the original into a goddess-worshipping lesbian love song, drifts way too far from shore.
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JOHN CURRY/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE/ZUMAPRESS.COM/NEWSCOM
From Another World: A Tribute to Bob Dylan Various performers The main knocks against this strangest of Dylan tributes are that the singing is in the languages native to the home countries of the performers and that many of the melodies get lost in their translation from familiar folk-rock instrumentation to weird world-music exotica. True enough. But Dylan fans already know the words, and most of the melodies emerge with repeated listening. And the singing, which is ecstatically serpentine by Western standards, grows on you. Alternate titles: Pre-Modern Times, World Gone Right.
SPOTLIGHT Long before he became famous for “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Charlie Daniels played bass on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, and New Morning, thus coming to the attention of music-industry pushers and movers. Now, Daniels is saying “Thank you” with Off the Grid: Doin’ It Dylan (Blue Hat), an album of mostly ’s Dylan songs in fiddle-laced, all-acoustic Southern-rock renditions. “We approached them as if they were new material,” says Daniels, “and did our own arrangements and adapted them to our musical style.” Hearing a proudly outspoken conservative sing songs associated with the counterculture left is certainly a revelation. And, speaking of revelations, what stands out the most in Daniels’ memories of his studio time with the Voice of His Generation? “Being chosen to be a part of something I knew was going to be historical,” he says, “and being among the very first to hear brand-new Bob Dylan songs.” —A.O.
The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (Deluxe Edition) Various performers Truth be told, this Madison Square Garden show wasn’t all that great the first time around. Many of the performances were lackluster, and some were just plain bad (John Mellencamp’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Sophie B. Hawkins’ “I Want You”). Even Dylan’s lead turns were—well, let’s just say he’s had better nights. Strangest of all is why this th-anniversary show is getting reissued on its nd anniversary and why, when even Sinéad O’Connor makes the bonus-bits cut, Dylan’s “Song for Woody” remains MIA.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
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APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/1/14 5:09 PM
Mindy Belz
Crowd sourcing Considering Pope Francis and the current Catholic influence
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P F lacks an army but has an extraordinary global reach. I came to understand that wedged among a throng of worshippers in the predawn cold heading for the Vatican. Many arrive by bus, about buses on an average Wednesday, the day for papal audiences. People of all ages, holding children by the hand or pushing them in strollers, coming surely from every continent to sidle through tunnels beneath St. Peter’s Square. Slowly they emerge into the sudden sunlight glinting off the square and make their way to security lines and waiting chairs unfolded in rows by the thousands just for the occasion. The square begins to fill by a.m.— over two hours before the service will start. The papal audience used to be a formal thing. Men wore morning suits and top hats; women were instructed to wear black unless they were a queen (queens could wear white). The protocol wasn’t officially ditched until the s. Now pilgrims and tourists show up on a blustery day in fleece and rain jackets. A surprising number stick to business suits and dresses. There’s plenty here to make a believing Protestant uncomfortable. Vendors on the edges of the square sell flags and magnets bearing the pope’s face, and there’s as much carnival atmosphere as moments for reflection and meditation. Pope Francis on this day arrived in
the Popemobile and moved as if floating on air through the crowd, his friendly round face visible through the bubble-shaped Plexiglas. His homily was frequently interrupted by calls of “Vive, Papa!” It wasn’t for no reason that Luther emphasized the need to abolish the papacy, even calling the office held by Pope Leo X “the damned seat of Antichrist.” But for the outside non-Catholic observer, a few things are worth pondering. The papal audience takes place every week, rain or shine. When I attended, on the day before the pope met privately with President Barack Obama, we had rain and shine, plus cold temperatures—yet over , people turned out. No one seemed to leave when the rains came; they just unfolded their umbrellas. As Easter and then summer tourist season approach, the Wednesday audience will swell to over ,. Do the math for a year’s worth, then consider: Millions of onlookers see the pope, seated on a covered stage in a high-back chair, read aloud from Scripture then give a homily. The day I was there he read from Hebrews, then spoke of vocation and pastoral ministry. Each message was then read out in a variety of languages, the pope’s Italian (sometimes the first-ever Latin American pope reads in Spanish), followed by French, German, Polish, English, and Arabic. Special delegations in attendance were recognized, among them groups from Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, and Philadelphia. Pope Francis ends each time by receiving designated visitors, always including children and the disabled. If you believe the Catholic and Italian press over the White House press, the next day’s meeting with Obama included a pointed discussion of religious liberty in the United States as it relates to Obamacare. A Vatican statement said the conversation centered on questions for the church in the United States, “such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection.” The White House said the two talked about the plight of the poor. Let both be right, I say. Seven years ago then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio led Latin American bishops in drafting a statement on evangelism and the church that took Catholics to task for reducing faith “to mere baggage, to a collection of rules and prohibitions …” and concluded, “We must all start again from Christ.” Vatican expert and historian George Weigel contends that summoning the church to evangelism and reform goes hand in hand for Pope Francis with downsizing the papacy and its finances. We Protestants can and should take issue with the Catholic Church on key matters of biblical doctrine (like justification by faith). At the same time, speaking about the Bible to an audience of tens of thousands or an audience of one is something to watch. A
Email: mbelz@wng.org
4/1/14 2:43 PM
Presidential search The Board of Trustees of Bob Jones University invites applications for the position of president. A non-denominational Christian liberal arts university, Bob Jones University focuses on educating the whole person to reflect and serve Jesus Christ. Our 3,000 students come to our Greenville, South Carolina, campus from across the country and around the world to experience BJU’s unique combination of rigorous academic programs, personal discipleship, and character and leadership development opportunities. BJU is committed to the absolute authority of Scripture and encourages students to excel in everything they do for the glory of God. Offering 100 undergraduate and graduate programs, BJU is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, a national faith-based institutional accrediting association recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Its engineering program is accredited by ABET, and its nursing program is approved by the South Carolina State Board of Nursing and its teacher education programs by the South Carolina Department of Education. Bob Jones University’s president is hired by and reports directly to the Board of Trustees and is the chief executive officer of the institution. Applications may be submitted at go.bju.edu/president-search.
For additional information contact the Chief Human Resources Officer at presidentialsearch@bju.edu.
GREGORIO BORGIA/AP
www.bju.edu (16104) 3/14
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4/2/14 10:32 AM
Opponents of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate
have a good day before the Supreme Court in their effort to avoid supporting abortion
by emily belz in Washington photo by brendan smialowski/afp/get t y images
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
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The Green family, owners of craft retailer Hobby Lobby, and the Hahn family, owners of cabinet maker Conestoga Wood Specialties, have a common cause but are very different. The Greens are evangelical and public with their faith while the Hahns are Mennonite and private. Even before Hobby Lobby founder David Green found himself in the middle of a national debate on religious liberty, he had sat for many interviews about his faith and his built-from-scratch business. The Hahns, though, hadn’t spoken publicly about their similar situation aside from written statements. 36
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for the first time, the supreme court will decide whether for-profit corporations, like nonprofit corporations, can challenge a government mandate on religious grounds, specifically under the religious freedom restoration act (rfra). Hobby Lobby owners David Green (gray suit) and his wife, Barbara, depart the U.S. Supreme Court with family and lawyers after oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby.
After the Obama administration decreed that businesses must provide contraceptive coverage to employees under Obamacare, the Greens won an injunction at the th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and announced they would not comply with the mandate with regard to abortion-causing drugs even if they lose at the Supreme Court and thus face million in fines. The Hahns, denied an injunction by the rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, complied with the mandate, under protest. On March , the Greens and the Hahns were at the Supreme Court to hear their case, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, argued before the nine justices. They sat among an audience of lawyers and members of the public who watched silently and attentively, the court’s security guards having confiscated their digital devices. One hundred and five reporters sat shoulder to shoulder in the press wing of the courtroom, scribbling notes. Outside, unseasonal snowflakes fell thick and heavy. Both Hobby Lobby and Conestoga already cover contraceptives in their employee health plans, but both object to covering the federally mandated Plan B and Ella pills on the grounds that they can abort new embryos. For the first time, the Supreme Court will decide whether for-profit corporations, like nonprofit corporations, can challenge a government mandate on religious grounds, specifically under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The stakes are high. Thirty-seven other cases from for-profits challenging the mandate are currently in lower courts. But this case concerns every religious employer, not only those who object to abortifacients. Can a for-profit religious hospital have protections like a nonprofit religious hospital? Could for-profit employers object on religious grounds if the federal government one day mandated surgical abortions? Could Muslims running a halal slaughterhouse object to a law on religious grounds? Justice Samuel Alito, citing a new Danish animal welfare law that outlawed kosher and halal slaughterhouse practices, implied that a ruling against Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would set American legal precedents on a European trajectory, where religious expression and practice is increasingly forbidden from public life. Anthony Hahn, CEO of Conestoga, declined an interview with me on the court steps but later agreed to an email interview. I asked Hahn to explain why his family decided to file a lawsuit when Mennonites typically avoid litigation. “Mennonites,” he replied, “do not live a life of retaliation.” He cited biblical commands to pray for those in authority in order to live a quiet and
JOCELYN AUGUSTINO/REDUX
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
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peaceable life but also the Bible’s commands to obey God rather than man: “The Obamacare mandate, as the government admits, includes products which take human life at its earliest stage. This is in direct conflict with God’s teachings in the Bible where we are instructed not to kill.” The mandate, he says, left him no choice but to go to court: “This is not a suit of retaliation to get money, but a suit to keep from being forced to do something that is against our beliefs and against the teachings of the Bible.”
B
‘this is ... a suit to keep from being forced to do something that is against our beliefs and against the teachings of the bible.’ Anthony Hahn, CEO of Conestoga Wood Specialties, gives a statement outside the U.S. Supreme Court.
compelling interest? Did it use the least restrictive means of accomplishing that interest? Religious freedom lawyers were mostly optimistic after the arguments, but some have chosen to remain pessimistic until they see a decision. The optimists noted that most of the justices, including liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, posed critical questions to the government. Breyer, though he said his question reflected “no point of view,” questioned whether the contraceptive mandate was really the “least restrictive means” the government could use to get contraceptives to women without imposing on religious beliefs. Couldn’t the government just provide the contraceptives itself? he asked. The government has argued that contraceptive coverage is cost-neutral because of the savings it generates. Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the true swing vote in this case, questioned the government’s argument that for-profit companies
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
their cases about months ago: Most cases that ascend to the Supreme Court take longer. The lawyers who handled the suits in lower courts on both sides of the cases relinquished the arguing privileges to the Supreme Court specialists. Paul Clement, former solicitor general, in his rd oral argument before the Supreme Court, jousted on behalf of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga; current Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. argued on behalf of the government. Verrilli and Clement famously faced off in the Supreme Court case challenging the core of Obamacare in . That time the arguments went well for Clement and badly for the unusually unglued Verrilli, but Clement lost anyway. Verrilli did fine this time, but Clement still got the better of him in the arguments. At the core of the arguments was whether the contraceptive mandate as applied to businesses passed RFRA’s “test.” RFRA gives courts a test to decide whether the government is imposing a “substantial burden” on a person’s religious practice. If the government is imposing a burden, then it must demonstrate a “compelling interest,” and it must use the “least restrictive means” of burdening religious practice. The Supreme Court justices seemed almost to take for granted that the two corporations could qualify as “persons” who fell under RFRA. “It surprised me how little the corporations issue came up,” said Becket Fund for Religious Liberty attorney Lori Windham, who handled Hobby Lobby’s case in the lower courts. The court went straight to debating the merits of the case. Was the mandate a substantial burden on the businesses? Did the government have a
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Corporate Europe BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
As Justice Alito’s question about Danish law indicated, not many would associate high conscience protections with European laws. But one strange amicus brief on behalf of the families leading up to the case came from a number of international law schools, mostly in Europe, arguing that European constitutional courts had recognized that corporations have human rights. In one example, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court protected a limited-liability company operating a hospital from government regulation on religious grounds. The German court wrote about the corporation: “The practice of religion encompasses not only the sphere of faith and religious service, but also the freedom to develop and be effective in the world, as its religious and social task requires.” The same court later ruled in favor of a Muslim butcher on religious grounds. The brief argues that Europe’s example of conscience protections shows that the U.S. government’s contraceptive mandate is not the “least restrictive means” of accomplishing its healthcare goals. —E.B.
can’t challenge a mandate on religious grounds: Would that require companies to pay for abortions? Verrilli responded, “There is no law like that on the books.” Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “There is no law on the books that does what?” Verrilli: “That makes a requirement of the kind that Justice Kennedy hypothesized.” Roberts: “Flesh it out a little more. There is no law on the books that does what?” Verrilli: “That requires for-profit corporations to provide abortions.” Roberts pounced: “Isn’t that what we are talking about in terms of their religious beliefs? One of the religious beliefs is that they have to pay for these four methods of contraception that they believe provide abortions. I thought that’s what we had before us.” Verrilli answered that federal and state laws don’t consider the drugs at issue to be abortifacients. Alito took a swing at Verrilli next, with the example of the Danish law against kosher and halal slaughterhouses. Both Breyer and Kennedy joined Alito’s colloquy, and asked Verrilli to explain how the contraceptive mandate was different. Breyer: “Take five Jewish or Muslim butchers. What you’re saying to them is if they choose to work under the corporate form, which is viewed universally, you have to give up on that form the freedom of exercise clause that you’d otherwise have.” The pessimistic religious freedom lawyers noted that Kennedy and the three female liberal justices posed hard questions to Clement too, mostly about the rights of the employees working at Hobby Lobby and Conestoga who may not share the owners’ beliefs. Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor emphasized that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga had a choice to drop insurance altogether and pay a tax that would amount to about the price of coverage. Some pessimistic religious freedom lawyers were also concerned that the court may throw nonprofits under the bus by ruling in Hobby Lobby’s favor, but accepting the government’s so-called “accommodation” to nonprofits for the mandate and applying it to for-profits. The accommodation asks nonprofits to certify a third party administrator to provide contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees. Nonprofits currently in court say the accommodation does not satisfy their conscience objections. Clement in the arguments suggested that the accommodation might be a workable alternative for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga, though he also suggested the government pay for the drugs itself. Before the oral arguments, the government and the two businesses had never discussed the possibility of applying the nonprofit accommodation to for-profits, so it
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would be strange if the court turned to that as a solution without further discussion.
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after Hobby Lobby filed its case, the day after the Supreme Court arguments, Lori Windham returned to the Becket Fund’s offices on the Georgetown waterfront. Windham was wearing more makeup than she would prefer for the battery of post-argument press interviews, and had polished off a Diet Coke. Her desk was organized. With the arguments behind her, Windham checked in with her other clients. Even if Hobby Lobby and Conestoga win, nonprofit cases against the mandate are still pending in lower courts, with Becket handling many of them. Windham initially thought one of the nonprofit cases would go to the Supreme Court first, but with the lag in the federal government releasing its final rules for nonprofits, those cases have moved more slowly. She was not one of the lawyers predicting a - win in the Hobby Lobby case, remembering the tough questions posed to Clement: “You don’t know what’s going to happen. ... Now we play the waiting game.” Conestoga’s Hahn family will be praying as they wait. “It is very hard to be in the national spotlight,” said Anthony Hahn in our email interview. Victory at the high court would mean a return to the life he longs to lead: “We want to continue to live our lives in a quiet and peaceable manner that glorifies God away from media attention.” A
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While the Hobby Lobby case draws attention to evangelicals and Catholics who oppose abortifacients or contraceptives on moral grounds, a surprising secular feminist movement against hormonal birth control is gaining momentum. In Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, published last October, Holly Grigg-Spall argues Western society has pushed birth control pills on women in the name of feminism with little thought to health consequences. She paints the suppression of women’s natural cycles as a form of left-wing misogyny meant to make women available for regular sex and office work. She blames the contraceptive pill Yasmin for harming her mental health, and notes how it can cause blood clots and dangerously elevate potassium. Carol Downer, a longtime pro-abortion activist, has endorsed the book. “I am not anti-contraception, pro-life, or a frigid man-hater,” GriggSpall wrote as a disclaimer. “I use condoms, spermicide, and the fertility awareness method. I am a feminist.” Her feminist critique of the pill is provoking bitter backlash from other feminists: One reviewer at the website Slate panned Sweetening the Pill as “poorly researched, shoddily argued, and fundamentally incoherent,” and insisted the health risks of hormonal birth control (the FDA says they include a small risk of stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer) were worth “the benefits of reliable, convenient, female-controlled contraception and the spontaneous sex life.” The popularity of Grigg-Spall’s book seems linked with broader interest in natural childbirth. Early this year former talk show host Ricki Lake, who has produced documentaries promoting home births and breastfeeding, optioned the rights to turn Sweetening the Pill into a documentary. —Daniel James Devine
LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS/LANDOV
Attorney for Hobby Lobby Lori Windham steps away from a press conference at the Supreme Court.
Intra-feminist fight
Email: ebelz@wng.org
4/2/14 10:39 AM
Australia Chile England France Greece Italy Zambia
Spanning the globe
LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS/LANDOV
At Harding University we don’t just talk about global experiences, we provide them. At seven international campuses spanning five continents, Harding students spend a semester studying outside the realm of a traditional classroom encountering different cultures, historic sites, foreign languages and amazing architecture. Nearly 50 percent of students in each graduating class have attended one or more of the international programs, which provide a Christian worldview.
Faith, Learning and Living Harding.edu | 800-477-4407 Searcy, Arkansas
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3/31/14 1:31 PM
World Vision reverses decision to hire employees in same-sex marriages, but questions remain about theological clarity
charitable confusion by Jamie Dean
pho t o by FA I S A L M A H MOOD/R e u t e rs/L a n d ov
massive U-turn. World Vision president
Richard Stearns announced on March 24 that the Christian aid organization would allow its U.S. branch to hire employees in same-sex marriages. Stearns announced on March 26 that the World Vision board had made a mistake and would reverse the controversial decision. How did that whipsaw come about? Maybe there’s a lesson in the U-turn that one board member, Stephen Hayner, president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, took two years ago. In spring, 2012, protest had surfaced at the Presbyterian Church (USA) seminary when the school denied a housing request to a lesbian couple. The Layman (a Presbyterian news agency) reported that Hayner sent an email to students in April 2012,
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vision test: A security guard stands in front of the World Vision office in Mansehra, Pakistan.
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saying the policy wouldn’t change. More protests followed, and the seminary established a housing commission to review its standards. By August , the seminary had reversed course: A new policy allows students and their “qualified domestic partners” and children to live in seminary housing. Hayner told The Layman the response to the reversal had been positive: “This is not to say that there is agreement about the definition of marriage, or about any number of other issues surrounding human sexuality among our constituents, any more than there is agreement in and among our churches. But our community is committed to being a place of open theological and biblical inquiry. …” That episode points to the importance of defining “our community.” World Vision is a billion-dollar poverty fighting ministry with , employees in the United States. It maintains substantial ties to evangelicals, but also to liberal churches, government agencies, and secular groups that don’t see homosexuality as an unbiblical practice.
Church (ECC). The ECC has affirmed heterosexual marriage only, and Rah recently contributed to a book on Martin Luther King Jr., with other evangelicals like Piper and Matt Chandler. But Rah also spoke favorably of World Vision’s initial move, telling CT the organization’s decision to leave theology to others “honors the church as a whole.” It’s unclear how other board members voted. (Stearns said the initial decision wasn’t unanimous, but that board members overwhelmingly favored it.) Board member Roland Warren, CEO of Care Net, an evangelical network of pregnancy resource centers, declined comment through a spokeswoman. Other board members referred questions to World Vision, but a spokeswoman said the organization doesn’t comment on internal board deliberations.
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V for its child sponsorship program that reaches . million needy children around the world. The group has an international arm, and the organization overall provides disaster relief, clean water, and food programs in more than countries, delivering critical supplies in some of the most desperate scenarios. To maintain its scale of work the organization relies on private donations and a heavy dose of government funds. The
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JOERG MODROW/LAIF/REDUX
A BILLION-DOLLAR POVERTY FIGHTING MINISTRY: MINISTRY Students play with balloons at a Vietnamese school supported by World Vision (above); Stearns (left) with the “Live, Learn and Thrive Partnership Awards” awarded to World Vision by Procter & Gamble. PAUL MORSE/PROCTER & GAMBLE/PRNEWSFOTO/AP
C swift dismay at World Vision’s original decision. Callers overwhelmed the organization’s call center in protest. Christian leaders from Franklin Graham to John Piper to Russell Moore lambasted the initial announcement. Piper called it “a tragic development for the cause of Christ, because it trivializes perdition, and therefore the cross. …” Thousands of donors dropped their sponsorship (Stearns said the number was fewer than ,; some reinstated them after the reversal.) When the World Vision board reversed the decision, it said the controversial policy “was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.” Stearns told reporters, “If I could have a doover on one thing, I would have done much more consultation with Christian leaders.” World Vision’s -member board includes at least seven who profess faith in Christ. Two are World Vision staffers, including Stearns. Another is John Crosby, the pastor of a PCUSA church in Minnesota. After the PCUSA voted to allow gay clergy in , Crosby spoke at a conference of ministers and laymen upset over the decision. He worried the denomination had “collapsed without a center.” His church is in the process of leaving the PCUSA. But Crosby told Christianity Today he voted in favor of World Vision hiring employees in same-sex marriages, saying the organization was trying to figure out how to represent itself as Christian in a diverse world. Another board member, Soong-Chan Rah, teaches at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, the denominational school of the Evangelical Covenant
PAUL MORSE/PROCTER & GAMBLE/PRNEWSFOTO/AP
JOERG MODROW/LAIF/REDUX
‘... the Christian church needs some evidence that this is not just a strategic change in direction because they got into trouble. ...’ — group reported million in grants of food and cash from the U.S. government and other agencies in . Stearns insisted the initial policy change didn’t stem from pressure from the government to change its hiring practices. In , the Supreme Court let stand a decision allowing World Vision the right to hire employees based on a Christian statement of faith. A few months later USAID (the U.S. government’s relief agency) announced that it “strongly encourages” contractors to adopt anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation of employees. World Vision leaders said they opposed the move. (Leaders at Food for the Hungry and Samaritan’s Purse—two other evangelical organizations that receive USAID funds—told WORLD they haven’t felt pressure from the government to extend hiring practices beyond the bounds of traditional marriage.) For World Vision, this isn’t the first hiring controversy. The organization’s international arm already hires non-Christians for unfilled posts overseas. WORLD reported in that a former director for international relations at World Vision estimated as many as percent of staff overseas were Muslims. Still, the group maintains close ties to evangelical groups in the United States. World Vision’s IRS forms from listed its five highest compensated independent contractors: The group paid Family Christian Stores million for sponsorship services, and the Women of Faith organization . million for artist associates. (Both groups promote World Vision.) World Vision also contributed to other organizations: It made small grants to Christian groups like Prison Fellowship Ministries, Focus on the Family, and Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. It awarded , to Sojourners and . million to the secular group Mercy Corps. Last year,
Email: jdean@wng.org
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the pro-life group Live Action criticized World Vision for giving a , grant to Save the Children in . Live Action noted an online report from Save the Children that says “adolescents should be provided with information and access to safe abortion services when legal.” The group reported a World Vision spokeswoman said the grant went to projects unrelated to maternal health. The spokeswoman noted World Vision is a pro-life group that does not recommend, support, or fund abortions. World Vision’s IRS forms from show the group gave Save the Children a , grant the next year. theological questions, some say their concerns go deeper. Peter Jones, a former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and the head of the truthXchange website wrote a blog post last year criticizing World Vision for producing Easter cards for sponsored children that don’t mention the resurrection. Jones noted World Vision says it must be careful to protect children in dangerous areas where Christianity is a minority religion, but he worries that eliminating the gospel message eliminates the Christian basis for that part of the work. He also says World Vision’s tremendous shift in less than hours on the issue of same-sex marriage should cause Christians to ask serious questions about the organization’s theological reliability: “I think the Christian church needs some evidence that this is not just a strategic change in direction because they got into trouble, but that it is a fundamental realization of a major principal error and a change of focus.” Cynthia Colin, a spokeswoman for World Vision, wrote in an email that the organization’s leaders realize they created concerns about their judgment. She said the board is looking for outside advisers “who can assist in better understanding and representing supporters and their concerns, as well as ensuring full consistency between our affirmations of scripture and traditional marriage and our practices.” Still, questions remain over the leadership’s position on the issue. The reversal statement spoke of “the biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman,” and the organization’s commitment to the Bible as the “only, infallible Word of God.” But hours earlier, Stearns had compared the issue of same-sex marriage to disagreements over baptism or women in church leadership. When it comes to his own views, Stearns—who attends a PCUSA church—told Religion News Service after the reversal that he wouldn’t discuss his beliefs about same-sex marriage: “I’m not telling people where I stand on the same-sex marriage issue because I don’t think it’s relevant.” A
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/2/14 11:41 AM
Growing authoritarianism and Islamism in Turkey put pressure on religious minorities
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by Jill Nelson
p h o t o b y O Z A N K O S E /A F P/G e t t y I m ages
erry Mattix remembers well his three friends who worked at a Christian publishing company in Malatya, Turkey: Uger Yuksel was baptized at his church in southeastern Turkey, and Necati Aydin often came to speak. The four of them worked together to coordinate events for youth in their area. On April 18, 2007, his friends were brutally murdered at the Zivre Publishing House by a group of men feigning interest in Christianity in a tragedy that shocked the nation. “Frankly, it was a terrifying experience going up to Malatya to bury Tilmann [Geske] just days after he was killed by the people there. However, it was a uniquely rewarding experience in that it gave us new insight into the meaning of martyrdom and Christianity in general.” Fast-forward nearly seven years: The trial drags on, and the courts released the five murder suspects on March 7, courtesy of a new judicial package passed by the Turkish Parliament on Feb. 2. The new law reduces the amount of time suspects waiting for a verdict can spend in prison from 10 years to five years. Susanne Geske, the widow of German victim Tilmann Geske, said that she and her three teenage children, who still live in the eastern town of Malatya, would “act like normal people” if they met one of the men at the mall or somewhere in town since they have forgiven the killers. But the dysfunctional legal system is troubling to her. “The system is just hopeless,” Geske told me. The ongoing “Malatya massacre” trial (as it has been dubbed in the Turkish press) underscores a deeper current in Turkey: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scrambling to tighten control over a country he feels is leaning westward. In the wake of a corruption scandal he blames on a cleric living in the United States and deadly summer protests against his government, Erdogan prepared for a series of crucial elections by banning Twitter and threatening further restrictions on social media he says promote “all kinds of lies.” The Islamist leader said he “cannot understand how sensible people still defend Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” Erdogan claimed victory for his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the March 30 local elections, and the results may embolden the prime minister to run in the August presidential
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masking questions: A supporter of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wears a mask depicting Erdogan and waves a Turkish flag during a rally in Istanbul.
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f Erdogan would have done the math, he might have predicted the backlash from Turks when he denied them access to their Twitter accounts on March 21. Turkey ranks among the 10 top Twitter nations with 12 million users, and Turkish hashtags frequently appear in worldwide trends. Twitter users were quick to find a way around the ban, painting buildings and walls with instructions on how to change settings. In an ironic twist, President Abdullah Gul tweeted his disapproval of the ban, highlighting the growing rift between the two former allies. “This is of course an unpleasant situation for such a developed country as Turkey, which has weight in the region and which is negotiating with the European Union,” Gul said during a press conference. When the futility of the ban became apparent, Erdogan shut down Google Domain Name System—the most popular method to circumvent the Twitter restrictions— but Turks continue to dig for new ways to access their accounts. Ankara claimed the ban was in place to prevent the circulation of scandalous audio recordings allegedly of Erdogan’s inner circle. The recordings could implicate Erdogan, his son, and members of his government for wiretapping and money laundering if proven authentic. Erdogan says they are fakes that were planted by Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Islamic cleric and ally-turned-enemy (See “Turkey’s inside man,”
July 27, 2013). In an election-night speech, the prime minister threatened to hunt down Gulen supporters who have infiltrated the police and judiciary in Turkey. Gulen is behind a global network of charter schools (including 135 in the United States) and lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania. Less than a week after the Twitter ban, the government blocked YouTube in response to a leaked conversation between high-level government officials discussing the possibility of provoking war with Syria. Social media was also instrumental in coordinating widespread protests last summer that were launched when the government fired tear gas at protestors trying to save Gezi Park in Istanbul. The brutality sparked nationwide anti-government protests that claimed eight lives and resulted in thousands of injuries. Erdogan’s supporters say the AKP has breathed new life into Turkey’s economy and that economic prosperity trumps the loss of certain freedoms. Others subscribe to an Islamist vision of a revived Ottoman Empire. When I spoke with Mattix seven years ago, shortly after the murders in Malatya, he said the AKP appeared to be going out of its way to protect religious minorities and push back against the nation’s secular path—a trend that benefitted Christians to some extent. This is no longer the case. “In the last three to four years they have been pushing a much more overt Islamist agenda. This has been evidenced by relaxing bans on head-scarfs and including religious curriculum in the school system on the domestic level and becoming chief antagonist of Israel and friends with Muslim regimes on the international level,” Mattix said. “All in all, the Turkish Republic has done an ideological U-turn in the past decade in which secularist Kemalism has been replaced by Islamist authoritarianism.”
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Mor Gabriel: Murad Sezer/ap • church: Tarek Wajeh/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
election (see p. 14). His term as prime minister is up in 2015, and after 11 years in power, Erdogan shows no signs of relinquishing control over this crucial country that links East and West.
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MOR GABRIEL: MURAD SEZER/AP • CHURCH: TAREK WAJEH/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
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under this shift. In early March, the country’s treasury returned less than half of the land it earlier had seized from the world’s oldest Syriac Orthodox monastery, Mor Gabriel. Erdogan announced last September that he would return the land as part of a “democratization package” after the controversial move became a stumbling block in Turkey’s bid for European Union membership. But the government is still holding onto acres that belong to the monastery. Mattix, who served as a pastor in Diyarbakir, Turkey, for years, has had his own share of troubles. Foreigners in eastern Turkey were having problems getting the usual resident permits, so Mattix returned to the United States in February of to apply for a religious worker visa. The Turkish government denied his visa request, fined him for religious work despite his never having been paid by the local church, and refused his family entry into Turkey—even as tourists. “I think they were simply looking for an excuse to get us out of the country,” he said. At least six other nonTurkish families have encountered similar problems in the past three years, according to World Watch Monitor. Mattix and his family are currently serving the church in Northern Cyprus, a Turkish satellite, and hope to return to Turkey pending a favorable outcome of several court cases addressing their status. TIMES ARE CHANGING: A board shows alternative There is also good news for ways to access Twitter the Turkish church. Geske— in Istanbul; Mor Gabriel; whose decision to stay in Coptic Christians worship in Turkey after her husband’s Turkey (from left to right).
Email: jnelson@wng.org
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death has been an inspiration to Christians in the region— said their church in Malatya will soon move into a building after many years of meeting in homes. This would not have been possible seven years ago when foreigners were few in the region and it took six months just to open a bank account. Thanks to a nearby NATO base, they are no longer the only foreigners in Malatya. “We know that when we finally open [the church] there will be people who come the first weeks and months and throw stones and do whatever naughty stuff. But this is normal so we are prepared for it,” Geske said. The Malatya murder case was scheduled to reconvene on April , and the current judge is pushing for a verdict by June. But the new law also dismantled the special courts, and the case could be moved to the regular criminal court system—a change that would likely involve new officials and a review of more than , pages of documents from the trial’s hearings. Many Turkish Christians reacted with alarm at the release of the murder suspects, prompting local authorities to assign the men to house arrest with electronic bracelets. Geske emphasizes God’s sovereignty and notes that April —the day her husband and two friends were murdered—is Global Day of Prayer for Turkey. Mattix says the journey they have walked together in this pivotal part of the world has given him a new perspective on life. “In the West it is easy to talk about dying to the world or self. But ultimately it is all metaphorical rhetoric until you have a chance to stand at the gravesite of a true martyr or try to comfort his widow and children,” Mattix explained. “All of a sudden the New Testament takes on full color and you realize that facing death is incredibly liberating.” A
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
4/2/14 11:21 AM
Remembering a The 20th anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide brings memories of violence and stories of reconciliation BY JAMIE DEAN Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. The skull of a murdered Tutsi lies on the earth in the Ribezo-Birenga sector of Rwanda in May 1994. Paula Bronstein/Liaison/Getty Images
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carrying Rwanda’s Hutu president, inflaming long-standing tribal conflict. Hutu militias responded with a systematic massacre of the country’s Tutsi minority and some Hutu moderates. The machete-wielding mobs left massive numbers of widows and orphans. As Winter traveled from village to village, he knew where to find carnage: “It was always the churches that people were massacred in.” Villagers in the predominantly Catholic country fled to churches for protection, but found themselves trapped and killed by mobs. Churches filled with bodies and hacked limbs. In one village, Winter found razed homes but an empty church: “There was still a little offering box on the table.” But in a school building nearby, the scene was horrific: “I have in my mind to this day what they did to the children.” The scene of hacked corpses had been sitting in the heat for two weeks: “You basically had human soup. … I can’t convey how ugly it was.” Winter didn’t work for a Christian group, but he said his Christian principles informed the grisly task of bearing witness
MACHETE: SCOTT PETERSON/LIAISON/GETTY IMAGES • ALL OTHERS: AP
W in Rwanda shortly after one of the worst genocides in modern history began unfolding in April . His self-imposed task as director for the U.S. Committee for Refugees: document atrocity. Two decades later, his memories are vivid: “What you see in photographs, I see in my mind frequently. You really don’t lose it.” This April marks the th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide—an abominable campaign of violence that left some , victims dead in days. The mass killings began when assailants shot down a plane
1994 RWANDAN GENOCIDE April 6 Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira die in a plane crash. Early reports suggest extremists shot down the plane, sparking violence and marking the start of the threemonth genocide.
April 7 Government forces and Hutu militia set up roadblocks and go house by house massacring Tutsis and moderate Hutu politicians, including Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and the Belgian peacekeepers assigned to guard her. Estimated death toll on Day : ,.
April 8 The Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) strikes offensively in an attempt to halt the genocide and rescue of its troops in Kigali.
April 9-10 French, Belgian, and American forces airlift their citizens out of the region. Estimated death toll by Day : ,.
April 21 The UN Security Council votes to withdraw most peacekeeping forces, leaving only of , troops. Estimated death toll by Day : ,.
April 30 The UN condemns the massacre but stops short of labeling it “genocide,” a step that would have enabled the UN to act.
End of April An estimated , Rwandans flee to Tanzania. Estimated death toll by Day : ,.
May 17
AP PHOTOS
HABYARIMANA: DANIEL JANIN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The UN votes to send , troops to Rwanda, stating that “acts of genocide may have been committed.” Arguments over who will pay for the mission delay the deployment. Estimated death toll by Day : ,. for silent victims: “The work placed a high value on human life. … This is the kind of thing Jesus would have done.” Theophile Rugubira has spent the last two decades trying to help Rwandans recover from the massacre. The pastor at Harvest Christian Church in Kigali says it’s been a long process of repentance and forgiveness for many church leaders who did nothing to stop or decry the violence during the genocide: “The church was silent.” Since then, Rugubira says many church leaders have repented, and many survivors have forgiven. His own congregation includes genocide survivors and relatives of killers. It’s been a painful, but remarkable dynamic: “We recognize it’s a supernatural power. Only the Holy Spirit has that power. God can do this.” As the genocide’s anniversary approached, Rugubira said he hoped Christians in the United States would remember the need to speak against violence and suffering in other countries around the world: “We are asking churches to remember that they are their brothers’ keepers. Don’t stay silent.” A
Email: jdean@wng.org
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June 22 The UN authorizes French forces to launch “Operation Turquoise,” which will attempt to establish a safe zone to provide protection for genocide victims. Estimated death toll by Day : ,.
July 4 The RPF gains control of Kigali.
July 5 French forces establish a “safe zone,” with an estimated million displaced persons flowing into the zone in a matter of days.
July 13-14 An estimated , refugees per hour stream into Zaire’s border town of Goma, sparking a humanitarian crisis. Estimated death toll by Day : ,.
July 18 The RPF declares the war is over.
Nov. 8 The UN passes a resolution creating the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
4/1/14 3:09 PM
y r to s g in z a m a e th s ll te y r ta n e m u c o d w e n A lo e b a R k e r e D r fe r u s d of blin n by JI LL N EL SO N in Sa
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C le m en te , C al if .
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THE BIG WAVE BLOG CALLS HAWAII’S PIPELINE “one of the most perfect and deadly waves in the world.” According to the blog, “Pipeline pitches really quickly as the wave moves over first reef, making for some intense late drops straight into the barrel. … Pipe is strictly for experts only.” Few people can say they’ve surfed Pipeline. Derek Rabelo may be the only person who has surfed it blind. The -year-old Brazilian native was born without sight but didn’t let his handicap stop him from pursuing his dream to surf. During the four years since he began his quest to master surfing, his inspirational story has caught the attention of surf legends across the globe and a movie producer in California. Beyond Sight is a full-length documentary that details Rabelo’s journey from an unknown boy in Brazil to a famous blind surfer whose life story has become a living example of “walking by faith, not by sight.” Rabelo was busy signing autographs and answering questions at the film’s March premiere in southern California, but he still made time to catch a few waves at a local surf competition sponsored by Soul Surf, a Christian surf organization. More than “groms”—surfers under the age of —and older teens competed in six different age brackets with contestants scored on the waves chosen and skills displayed. But Rabelo was the highlight of the event: A crowd formed around him as he clutched his yellow board with one hand and the shoulder of professional bodyboarder Magno Passos, also from Brazil, with the other. A guide took him to the water where he used his keen senses to paddle out, feel the sets, time his drop-in, and skillfully maneuver his board along the waves. Maura Short came to watch -year-old daughter Megan compete, but her camera was trained on Derek as he surfed the break at San Clemente’s T-Street Beach. She said watching him go outside of his comfort zone was “inspirational” and a moment she didn’t want to miss. Rabelo’s father dreamed that his son would one day become a professional surfer and decided to name him after Derek Ho, one of the sport’s legends. When Rabelo was born blind on May , , his father realized that his son might never set foot on a surfboard. But years later, Rabelo showed some interest in the sport and his father took him out for a quick lesson at the beach across from the family-owned surf shop in Guarapari, Brazil. The teen showed incredible determination and eventually attracted the attention of a local surf instructor who wanted to help Rabelo pursue his dream of surfing Hawaii’s Pipeline. In , Rabelo was ready: He flew to Hawaii with his surf coach in search of an epic wave that would give Rabelo the right height and pitch to accomplish his lofty goal. Local surfers reacted with skepticism when they saw the blind man paddling out but quickly joined his mission, helping clear out the crowded surf spot. While visiting a Brazilian church on the island, BLIND FAITH: he met Bruno Lemos, a film producer who took Derek surfing interest in his quest, connected Rabelo to some Hawaii’s Pipeline. Hawaiian pro surfers, and posted a YouTube video of MARCELO LIMA/ CAMERA PRESS/REDUX “blind surfer Derek Rabelo surfing Pipe” that went viral. “He’s an inspiration,” pro surfer Koa Rothman said in the video. “How many blind people do you know that surf and pull in at Pipe?” That’s when Bryan Jennings, a former professional surfer and founder of Walking on Water Films (WOW), picked up the story. Jennings started WOW in and has produced independent faith-based movies, including Heart of a Soul Surfer, a
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‘God exists and He is present in my life. If I surf, it’s because He gave me this gift and I’m really grateful for this gift.’ — Rabelo
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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MARCELO LIMA/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX
is not just another surfing story,” Rabelo told me through a translator. “God exists and He is present in my life. If I surf, it’s because He gave me this gift and I’m really grateful for this gift.” The film also highlights some of the pressures and temptations that come with fame and includes an appearance by Bethany Hamilton, who shares with the younger surfer some of what she’s learned documentary about shark attack survivor Bethany Hamilton that through her journey. inspired the movie Soul Surfer. More than , people attended the March Jennings met Lemos while in Brazil for a showing of Walking on theater debuts of Beyond Sight in southern California. Water, one of WOW’s earlier films. The two agreed to co-produce a The film is scheduled to hit select theaters in Idaho, documentary using the video Lemos shot in Hawaii and picking up North Carolina, Florida, and several other states in the the story with Rabelo’s renewed mission to increase training and coming months, and Jennings hopes the word will return to Pipeline for a “barrel”—a surfing challenge that involves spread and others will sponsor movie screenings. riding through the tube of a wave. Jennings created WOW—which also hosts surf camps During the summer of , more doors opened: Jennings in San Diego during the summer—as an outreach to youth created a lineup of legends to surf with Rabelo, including -time and the global surfing community but says Rabelo’s story World Champion Kelly Slater, Tom Curren, Lakey Peterson, and has a message that extends beyond the surf world: “God is Rob Machado. These are the “Michael Jordans” of the surf telling us to turn our eyes off even if they work and stop industry and Rabelo’s long-time heroes, but they were the looking at the circumstances of your life—why you can’t do ones impressed by Rabelo. something—and start looking at God,” Jennings said. “When The film is about more than surfing with legends, conyou get your eyes on God, you start to realize all the reasons you quering fear, and watching heart-stopping waves crash in can do something.” A on Oahu’s North Shore. “I want to show that my movie
Email: jnelson@wng.org
4/1/14 1:03 PM
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MARCELO LIMA/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX
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Notebook Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports > Money
From orphan to advocate BY SARAH PADBURY
Adopted from Romania, IZIDOR RUCKEL was an angry teen until he felt God’s call BY SARAH PADBURY
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I R works the night shift at a Denver Walmart. Adopted from Romania in at age , he also speaks around the United States about the plight of Romanian orphans, especially those with special needs. It’s an exhausting schedule, particularly because Ruckel wears a brace on his right leg and has constant back pain. He recently spoke in Wisconsin and worked all night upon his return. For the third time since his adoption, Ruckel’s story is making national news. The first time was in when ABC’s / ran a “Shame of the Nation” report that revealed
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8 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 59
the appalling warehousing of Romania’s special needs orphans. Thousands of Americans flocked to Romania to adopt until Romanian officials put a moratorium on international adoption in , and closed the doors altogether in . Ruckel lived in one of those dismal places, the Home Hospital for Irrecoverable Children, located in the northern town of Sighetu Marmatiei on the Romanian-Ukrainian border, for the first years of his life. The unheated, concrete structure housed special needs children with problems ranging from physical conditions like AIDS, tuberculosis, or epilepsy, to all levels of intellectual disabilities, to mental and emotional health issues, to blindness. Ruckel had wasted lower limbs, a result of untreated polio contracted as an infant. In his autobiography Abandoned for Life, Ruckel recounts the never-changing horrors behind the barred windows: Sleeping several
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Short temper aside, Izidor at first seemed to adjust well to life in America. His adoptive family taught him about God, unlike in the Romanian hospital home, where he had never heard anyone talk about God. He memorized the Westminster Shorter Catechism and attended a Romanian church with his parents so he could keep in touch with his roots. Over the years Los Angeles’ Shriners Hospital performed six surgeries on Izidor’s legs, but problems remained. One Sunday, when a Romanian couple talked with Izidor about heaven, he was ecstatic to learn that he could some day live with perfect legs and without tears or pain. But at about age 14, Ruckel became angry and took it out on his family: “You get so angry your heart is like heated and pumping.” He had flashbacks of his life in Romania. When he was 17 the Ruckels kicked him out, and for several years he rarely saw
stuck in Romania once again. He couldn’t wait to get back to California. A now-humbled Ruckel reconciled with his adoptive family. He felt God calling him to remind the world of the Romanian orphans’ plight. He describes in Abandoned for Life his realization that “God had loved me while I was in the hospital and had helped me come to America without me even knowing it.” Now 33, Ruckel believes the best answer for Romania’s orphans is to reopen the doors to international adoption. To promote that objective, he and a fellow adoptee, filmmaker Alex King, plan to travel to Romania later this year to film a documentary on the children left behind. After all, using video footage to rescue hurting children is something he knows works. Because of the upcoming documentary, reporters from NPR, The Washington Post, and other newspapers have again
them. At 20 Ruckel decided to return to Romania—permanently. ABC’s 20/20 paid for the 2001 trip in exchange for filming him meeting his biological family. Ruckel’s return didn’t go as he planned. At first eager to meet his birth family, he felt unexpected hurt and rage when they met. He found the hospital still reeking, the food still rancid, and the nannies still abusive. Some of his friends had “aged out” of the hospital, released to beg in the streets or transferred to an old folks’ home. A familiar panic set in: fear he would be
TRANSITIONING TO FAMILY: The orphanage in Sighetu Marmatiei in 1992; Izidor Ruckel at age 11 with his adoptive father Danny Ruckel.
descended upon Ruckel. Reporters ask him why he is successful, leading an independent and productive life, while other Romanian adoptees are still struggling. His answer doesn’t usually make it to print: “No human beings can understand what kids go through when traumatized. The reason I live is because God chose me to live for His purpose. It’s the power of Christ.” A
Tom Szalay
to a bed, the children woke at 5 a.m., stripped so the nannies could clean the soiled clothes, beds, and floors (no diapers or potty training provided), and ate while naked. Breakfast never varied: stale bread soaked in spoiling milk. Nannies rinsed the dishes in the bathroom sink, bathed and dressed the kids, and then sent them to wait for lunch in another room with no games, no toys, and no music. Because Ruckel was a smart child and could move around better than most, nannies frequently put him in charge of 50-100 youngsters. He controlled the group by mimicking the nannies’ cruelty. Often for the least infraction, a nanny beat Ruckel with a broomstick, put him in a straitjacket, or forced him to kneel on the concrete floor and hold his arms in the air for hours. Sometimes nannies drugged the disobedient, noisy, or crying children with “medicine” given via reused syringes, which made them sleep for hours, or punished them with pills that made them vomit. Meanwhile, a world away, Danny and Marlys Ruckel, a San Diego couple with three daughters, believed God wanted them to adopt a child as a way of living out their faith. After hearing about the Romanian orphans, Marlys called John Upton, a filmmaker whose goal was to rescue as many Romanian special needs orphans as possible. Upton told Marlys about Izidor, and by the time they hung up, she wanted him. After praying about it, Danny agreed. In October 1991, Izidor left Romania with a chaperone and met his new family at the San Diego Airport, which he mistook as his new house. Reporters and dozens of well-wishers from the Ruckels’ church came to welcome him. Izidor revealed his stubborn streak on the way home when he refused to wear his seat belt, believing it was some kind of straitjacket.
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4/1/14 10:39 PM
girl: TheStockyard/istock • phones: Mark Lennihan/ap, modified by world • laws: John F. Williams/US Navy/ap
Notebook > Lifestyle
Notebook > Technology
Open secrets
Anonymous sharing apps have become the Wild West of social media BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
TOM SZALAY
GIRL: THESTOCKYARD/ISTOCK • PHONES: MARK LENNIHAN/AP, MODIFIED BY WORLD • LAWS: JOHN F. WILLIAMS/US NAVY/AP
DO TELL: Yik Yak, Whisper (left to right).
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W, S, Y Y are among a new wave of social media applications for sharing comments among friends or acquaintances. In this wave, nobody knows who’s doing the talking. The apps are anonymous, allowing users to compose short messages—no names attached—others can read or reply to. You may wonder: What’s the fun in posting anonymously? Some find it lots of fun, and not always the good kind. This year the creators of Yik Yak temporarily disabled the app’s use in Chicago after it inadvertently became a platform for high-school bullying. Yik Yak is intended for college students, who allegedly make up the majority of its roughly , users. But it doesn’t require email or password, and has no way of checking age. After downloading the free app, a user can post anonymous thoughts—or gossip, or threats—visible to other Yik Yak users within a five-mile radius. I downloaded Yik Yak to my iPhone to see what the fuss was about. Since there was apparently only one other user within five miles of my house in
Email: ddevine@wng.org
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had issued an emergency mobile phone ban: “Yak started at my high school and it got really bad. … Don’t tell people about this app.” Beyond Chicago, anonymous Yik Yak users this year posted false bomb threats at two high schools in California and Massachusetts, prompting a lockdown and evacuation. In March, after high schools began banning Yik Yak, the makers of the app tried to stem criticism by disabling Yik Yak service, via GPS coordinates, at most high schools and middle schools across the country. Removing names removes accountability, which, for too many, removes respectability. You’d hope the app’s target audience, college students, would behave better, but on an app page displaying “All-Time Greatest Yaks,” sex, drugs, and drunkenness are recurring topics. Maybe this anonymous social networking is a flawed idea.
northwest Indiana, I scrolled through top posts (“yaks”) in the Chicago region, several of which referenced high schools. Many yaks contained vulgarities or sexual remarks. Although Yik Yak has a “zero tolerance policy on using people’s full names,” some did: “[Redacted name] is pregnant.” Another claimed so-and-so had an STD. Since everything is anonyThis summer the U.S. Navy will deploy a battle-ready mous, of course, laser weapon on a ship for the first time, a defense there’s no way to against guided missiles or enemy drones. The Laser distinguish truth Weapon System (LaWS), attached to the deck of the USS from a bad joke. You Ponce, will be able to blind imaging sensors on missiles can vote yaks up or or unmanned aerial vehicles, or heat them until they catch down, or report them fire. The system, resembling a telescope, has successfully as inappropriate. (I shot down several drones in tests since . The Navy helpfully reported says it costs less than a dollar to fire. —D.J.D. several.) “When I send in a Yik Yak I feel like I’m sending in a tip to gossip girl. Xoxo,” wrote one user. “I wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school,” wrote a second. A third broadcast an invitation to “smoke weed.” A fourth said her (or his) school
Ready, aim, zap
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
3/28/14 10:50 AM
Notebook > Science
Going blue A new documentary strikes back at the green movement BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
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BLUE is King’s second documentary about environmental issues. (The first, Crying Wolf, examined fraud and corruption connected to the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.) He’s a -year-old homeschool graduate, and created the film with the help of other homeschooled filmmakers and , in Kickstarter funds from nearly donors. King told me BLUE (an acronym for beautify, liberate, utilize, enjoy) is a positive vision for the Earth and environment: “The Bible says that we bear God’s image, and one of the best ways we reflect His image is by exercising wise, godly dominion over creation. This means beautifying the Earth. But this also means cultivating it.” Cultivation of the Earth’s resources creates jobs for people, who can then afford pollution controls. King concludes the film saying, “We can have a good environment, but we can’t have one without freedom and prosperity.”
Rock from water A pea-sized diamond discovered in a Brazilian mine is evidence of an ocean-sized amount of water beneath our feet. Scientists studying the diamond reported in Nature in March that the tiny gemstone, formed under high pressure miles or more below the Earth’s surface, contains ringwoodite, a mineral only previously seen in meteorites. The ringwoodite, by weight, is about percent water, lending support to geologic models suggesting a massive amount of water is mixed within the Earth’s mantle. —D.J.D.
WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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3/28/14 11:34 AM
BRIAN HIRSCHY/GENESIS
TACKLING TALKING POINTS: BLUE poster; Zubrin; King (from top).
BLUE POSTER & STILLS: HANDOUT • DIAMOND: UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
H the planet. The world is overpopulated. We’re about to run out of oil, and technological progress has come at the expense of a clean environment. BLUE, a new documentary from Jeffrey “JD” King, tackles extreme environmentalist talking points like these in minutes. Director and narrator King visits researchers and activists who have dedicated their lives to combating the “green” movement, like E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance and Lord Christopher Monckton, a leading global warming “skeptic.” The interviews reveal nuggets that aren’t so much new as rare: Few in mainstream media (or mainstream science) are eager to admit that carbon dioxide emissions are making the Earth greener, that humans are assets to the environment, and that respiratory disease rates in American cities have declined from a century ago. In one scene, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin points to a graph showing how global average income has increased proportionally with carbon use. “This is humanity’s escape from poverty,” Zubrin says, with a wild jet of hair shooting off his forehead and anger in his voice. “And now you have people come along and say, ‘We have to stop this.’” Zubrin and others explain why environmentalists who fret about overpopulation and the end of oil are misguided: Every mouth comes with two hands and a brain, and history shows that human ingenuity finds cheaper, cleaner ways of making products and energy. Oil reserves are higher than ever, but as they decrease, the price of oil will rise, encouraging businesses to invent alternative energy solutions. King also visits regular citizens and business owners affected by environmental activism. In the Pacific Northwest, a campaign to save the northern spotted owl has halted logging and depressed communities dependent on the industry.
blue poster & stills: handout • diamond: University of Alberta
Brian Hirschy/Genesis
Notebook > Houses of God
Christ Community Church is a new congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America that meets for worship at Dickson Theater, a dance club in downtown Fayetteville, Ark.
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Notebook > Sports
Shannon Szabados may be breaking barriers, but she’s also just playing hockey with old friends By Andrew Branch
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had a problem with it,” he said, “you wouldn’t be the person I thought you were, and I don’t think you would be here long.” Szabados played two of the Cottonmouths’ final four regular season games, losing both. But she saved 32 of 35 shots in her second game while earning the game’s third star. “When I called her about coming, I think she was under the impression I was talking about next year,” Bechard said, noting she had “proved herself” in her playing time. “I’d love to have her back for next year.” A
Kevin Liles/The New York Times/redux
seen,” Bechard says. It helps that she’s Jerome Bechard’s men’s hockey played with whoever would play with team may have played 56 games her since she was 5, including Johnson this year, but few had heard of and Columbus’ Jordan Draper and the Columbus Cottonmouths Andy Willigar while in college. before game 52. That’s when the coach Goaltender is a skill position, much and general manager started his newly less dependent on chromosomes and signed goaltender, gold-medalist testosterone than, say, an NFL linebacker. Shannon Szabados. And while goalies fear collisions, there’s The 27-year-old became the first no grabbing and shoving opponents’ woman to play in the Southern chests like NFLers do every down. It’s Professional Hockey League, less than a month after Canada pulled a last-gasp stunner to win Olympic gold in Sochi. The 3-2 comeback over Team USA gave the women—and the goalie who kept them within reach—as much publicity as Canada’s golden men. Szabados’ celebrity earned her a practice with her hometown Edmonton Oilers of the NHL and ultimately a call from Bechard. The Alberta native was soon on her way to Columbus, Ga., a town two hours south of Atlanta. Szabados started on March 15 against the Knoxville Ice Bears in front of 4,295 fans at the Columbus Civic Center. She was officially the goalie for the Cottonmouths of the SPHL, a 10-team league in the Southeast. icing on the cake: the team’s job to protect Even The New York Times Szabados prepares its last line of defense. profiled her. She was breaking for her first practice “I’m pretty sure my barriers for women everywhere, with the Cottonmouths guys are going to step the stories went. And it wasn’t in Columbus, Ga. in to make sure she simply a plea for tickets by doesn’t get bumped too Columbus management. “Maybe much, that’s for sure,” Bechard said. for me, it was a little bit selfish,” team The team still had to balance its captain Kyle Johnson told the Times. “I “equal opportunity” stance with privacy, want to win, and she’s won at every though. They don’t shower together, level she’s competed at.” and Szabados gets a room to change The situation has caused little confrom street clothes to the clothes she troversy, largely because Szabados is— wears under her pads. The rest of the well—a good goalie. “Shannon is one of time, she’s putting on her pads with the most technically sound goalies I’ve
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4/1/14 5:14 PM
Richard Drew/ap
A good goalie
her teammates, getting ready as goaltender to lead the team onto the ice. Though married, Szabados has a male roommate just like any other player, her college friend Jordan Draper. Bechard said having her makes the Cottonmouths better, and while he can’t treat her differently, he would have tried to make accommodations if she had wanted them. “It’s a tremendous help that she knows three guys on our hockey team,” he said. Bechard called it a “respect factor” to make every player comfortable, whether female or male, for the good of the team. “The guys on our hockey team are wellput-together young gentlemen. If there was anybody on my hockey team that
Notebook > Money WATCHING WORLD: A television screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s first news conference.
Rebel Yellen?
Investors weren’t happy with the new Fed chairwoman’s first press conference, but that may be a good thing By David Skeel
CREDIT
Richard Drew/ap
>>
The stock market jeered at Janet Yellen’s first press conference as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, tumbling when she hinted at the Fed’s plans for the coming year. In an ordinary world, stock market drops are a bad sign. But when your economy is run by the Federal Reserve, as ours has been for the past five years, what used to be bad actually is good. Yellen’s faux pas, as the markets saw it, was to suggest that the Fed might finally start to raise interest rates in “something on the order of around six months” after it ends the massive bond buying program it has engaged in for the past few
years. This means the Fed could finally raise interest rates from their current near zero levels in spring 2015, which is sooner than the markets expected. The Fed has tried to manipulate the economy by keeping interest rates low and buying $85 billion of bonds every month. Low interest rates are supposed to entice businesses and homeowners to borrow. The bond buying—which the Fed calls “quantitative easing” and has recently begun to reduce—is simply a way to print money. Thanks to the Fed’s policies, the S&P 500 is up 160 percent since March 2009. Zero interest rates mean
that safe investments like bank accounts, certificates of deposit, and even money market funds offer almost no return at all. Investors have responded by pumping money into stocks and other investments in their search for returns. Soaring stock markets aren’t all bad, of course, but the Fed’s manipulations are costly in three ways. First, the Fed’s easy money policy may be creating another bubble like the real estate bubble (also caused in large part by the Fed) whose bursting caused the 2008 crisis. It is unclear just where the bubble is, but we could be in for another disaster if it pops.
Second, the no-interest environment has been devastating for retirees and those who are near retirement. Everyone who moved savings out of the market, and into CDs or bank accounts, has been punished for his or her prudence. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the Fed’s policies have discriminated against the middle-aged. Finally, the policies have exacerbated the income inequality that many of the cheerleaders for the Fed’s policies point to as America’s biggest problem. The 1 percent have been big beneficiaries of the stock market bubble. The poor and lower middle class have not. Yellen’s comments were good news, not bad. The problem is that it’s not clear the Fed really will start to raise interest rates early next year. Yellen left herself plenty of wiggle room, and she, like her predecessor Ben Bernanke, favors easy money until the economy is back on its feet. Many years ago, another Fed chairman said that the Fed’s job is to take the punch bowl away (by raising interest rates) just when the party gets going. Chairwoman Yellen put her hand on the punch bowl at her first news conference. She didn’t actually promise to pick it up, but here’s hoping she does. A
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3/27/14 5:10 PM
Mailbag ‘Houston: a semisweet land of liberty’
March After living in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina for seven years, my husband brought me to Houston kicking and screaming. As a smalltown girl, I felt overwhelmed at the vastness of this city. Five years later I am truly thankful to be here. It’s not a utopia, but it is a place where opportunity to share the gospel abounds. —C D. N, Katy, Texas
My dad loved Houston. He moved there right after the war, married my mom, and settled in a close-knit neighborhood on the outskirts. He helped install the first air conditioning systems in many of the downtown buildings. Once I complained that the cranes atop the skyscrapers marred the Houston skyline. His gentle rebuke has stayed with me for years: “Those cranes, my dear, mean bread and butter for lots of families.” —C S I, North Augusta, S.C.
Learning about the lives of seven people who live in Houston was an effective way to show its diversity. But I think it is already America’s great global city. —E S, Newtown, Pa.
‘History makers’ March Stephen Mansfield was much too kind in his assessment of President Obama. He does not strike me as a “man in progress.” The president lacks integrity and continues to act disingenuously toward the nation he vowed to lead and protect. We need to be understanding and pray for him, but
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until he is repentant in word and deed we should view him with our eyes wide open. —H R, Sheridan, Ind.
Mansfield is trying to convince us that Obama’s faith is a Christian faith, but it does not seem to be Christ-centered. —R S, Millersville, Pa.
‘Walking through fi re’ March Seeing Elisabeth Elliot Gren’s name on the cover felt like receiving news about a much-loved family member. Her no-nonsense childrearing advice and her testimony of submission to the Word of God came to me daily on the radio like a phone call from Mom. I still hear her voice when I read Corinthians . —M M, Warren, Maine
I wept to see Elliot Gren’s aged face. It had never occurred to me that she might grow old. But I was delighted to see the light and love of God still shining in her eyes. —R B, Yakima, Wash.
This issue arrived the day after the
Academy Awards, and the contrast between Elisabeth Elliot Gren and the Hollywood set was stark. Lacking a glitzy gown, plastic surgery, and fear of aging, she looks genuinely joyful and prepared to meet her Maker. —C M, Boise, Idaho
In my frequent struggle with aging, the pictures of Elliot Gren remind me that this is what we are supposed to look like after a life graciously lived in His service. —L L, Bunnell, Fla.
‘House of Cards’ March Sophia Lee assured us that House of Cards is riveting and fascinating, and your reviews are usually reliable, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up a few episodes. Was she so “bleary-eyed” that she failed to notice the barrage of f-bombs, the use of Christ’s name as an expletive, or the graphic sexuality? I am appalled. —A P, Ocala, Fla.
Netflix calls House of Cards an “original” series, but it is original only by the dubious standards of the TV industry. Also on Netflix is a - British series of the same name that is not only the primary source of current series plots and characters but also for specific dialogue as well. —D L, Vero Beach, Fla.
‘Death and life’ March I’m so grateful that you addressed the differences between the Benson case and the Munoz case here in Texas. Pro-life advocates here protested
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
3/27/14 5:02 PM
Mailbag
TACTIC, GUATEMALA submitted by Teri Brown
outside the courtroom and posted nasty comments about Mr. Munoz on social media. That lacked grace. —T L, Arlington, Texas
‘Can we afford it?’ March Like Joel Belz, I too have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I’ve been tempted to indulge in pity parties as the disease hindered treasured activities such as hiking and writing by hand. I’ve resented wasted time, and complained and cried out, “Why?” But it has also been a faith-builder. I’m learning to let go of my ego-inflating schedule and equip others to do what I’d been doing. It is like God is telling me to use this condition to glorify His name. —D W, Syracuse, N.Y.
‘Pink slip speech’ March I went through the same situation with Pennsylvania State University. After a -year career, an administrator reprimanded me for saying, “Merry Christmas,” and for having two small Scriptures on my private office wall and a closed Bible on my desk. This reprimand led to
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my “layoff” in . The university can make up “Statements on Intolerance,” but its officials simply don’t like Christian speech. Thank you for exposing this hypocrisy and censorship. —G B, Ridgway, Pa.
‘Upside-down Golden Rule’ Feb. Wages are important, but other factors are whether workers know the company is concerned about their safety, welfare, opportunities, and advancement. Minimum wage laws just get in the way of employers balancing productivity, compensation, and the need to keep workers. —T S, Halfway, Ore.
I had never looked at minimum wage as “the least a boss can pay while maintaining some level of selfrespect.” If we want the federal government to stay out of the market as much as possible, we, the consumer, have to demand that companies act justly. —K P, Campbell, Australia
‘Lack of appeal’ Feb. Regarding the inability of the
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Obamacare system to process appeals, I loved the phrase, “The computer system won’t yet allow federal workers. …” Who’s in charge anyway: the men or the computers? Have we built monsters that we can’t control? Obviously it would be better to scrap the whole thing. —D M, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
‘Red state risk’ Feb. Of course the “areas with few traditional Christians” look better in a tally of marriages and divorces. Large percentages of people in those areas don’t get married; they cohabit. Such skewed data cannot legitimately malign traditional Christians or marriage itself. —N J. R, Culpeper, Va.
‘From the work of their hands’ Feb. I so much appreciated reading about Shelley Clay and the Papillon Enterprise in Haiti. The best way to help people out of poverty is to give them a hand up, to train them, but allow them the dignity of doing it themselves. We need more of this kind of thinking. —K B, Gaston, Ind.
‘Out with the old’
New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work!
Jan. The fall of Mindy Belz’s giant tree really is an example of what we all go through: It might end abruptly, but it all ends.
H
ere is a 60-Day Bible Study workbook for those who desire to break their bondage to overeating. God is glorified as you learn to feast upon Scripture and find a deeper fellowship with Jesus Christ. Ideal for individual study or small groups. Leader’s Guide available.
—P B, Winder, Ga.
‘Stings like a bee’ Dec. Thank you for making me aware of novelist Michael O’Brien. He is indeed wonderful. His books bring me closer to the Lord and make me think. —S K, Monticello, Ill.
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2/14/14 12:03 PM 3/28/14 11:31 AM
HITDELIGHT\SHUTTERSTOCK
Serving
Andrée Seu Peterson
Eating unto the Lord God promises food, and in that promise we can delight
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T all morning, and then o’clock comes and you remember that half a corned-beef-on-rye and the bottle of pop in the fridge—and you sit down and enjoy. Then the world resumes its out-of-control spinning in the afternoon, but at p.m. it all gets put on hold as you ensconce yourself at the table for a hearty bowl of homemade soup.
HITDELIGHT\SHUTTERSTOCK
During this particular season of my life, where the mornings are falling apart and the afternoons are spinning, I have started to notice what an underrated wonder food is. Food is something to look forward to no matter what else is going on. It is the common denominator of rich and poor, overachiever and underachiever, people getting engaged and people breaking up. I once hitchhiked through Ireland with one apple to nurse for two days. Upon consumption, it was the tastiest apple in the history of man. You only notice what a difference food makes on the day you choose to give it up to fast. I believe this is why God so highly prizes fasting as a spiritual discipline for drawing near to Him in prayer: To fast is to forfeit that which makes the drudgery bearable, that which breaks the interminable into the manageable. “I afflicted myself with fasting,” said the psalmist (:). The sage of Ecclesiastes concurs: “Man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun” (Ecclesiastes :).
Email: aseupeterson@wng.org
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“This will go with him in his toil through the days of his life” is a comforting thought, and I take it as a God-backed promise. If our suburban house is repossessed or our lifestyle goes down a notch, there will be food. Somehow. I sometimes imagine the worst case scenario of economic or personal collapse—and food is always there in my scenario. It is good to imagine the worst; it sets you free. And food, after all, is what Jesus said to pray for (Matthew :) and what he said to count on. He did not promise Porsches but potatoes: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ … your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew :-). As Paul said to Timothy, lest the acolyte occupy himself with things too wonderful for him (Psalm :), “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” ( Timothy :). And the apostle really means “content,” not merely stoic. For food in itself is meant to delight. God makes “wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart” (Psalm :). Our God is not a cosmic killjoy, begrudging us of fun. What is more fun than the picture of men hip to hip on a giant steel cross beam feet over Manhattan, taking a sandwich break from constructing the Empire State Building? In his great wisdom, God knows we function better as a species when we have something to look forward to. Hence, the Sabbath every seven days and the Year of Jubilee every . “It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan” (Leviticus :). And hence, also, pot roast and ice cream to divide up your workday. God understands anticipation. Partaking of food, when it suddenly occurs to me in the middle of catastrophe that I may do so, teaches me again and again how to live in the present, where his blessings never fail. There is something very existential about food in the Christian life, the way it returns our focus to the basics and God’s banquets in the desert. No wonder that when facing his own dark tunnel the Lord looked forward to a meal: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke :). A
APRIL 19, 2014 • WORLD
3/28/14 10:53 AM
Marvin Olasky
How now shall we give? As joyfully as Zaccheus—even if called to give in a different way
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WORLD • APRIL 19, 2014
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affluent know How the Other Half Lives, a great book published in . Another way is to use what God has given you for activities that will lead more people to follow Him. The right question is not “What would Jesus drive?” but how He would use it. In my old Austin neighborhood a baseball coach had a huge vehicle in which he would pick up for practice eight kids without dads: That’s when the fatherless got a small sense of what a Father in heaven might be like. Same thing goes for a house: The smallest ones can be castles of selfishness, the largest ones sites to create blessed ties that bind our hearts in Christian love. I could tell many stories about people thinking through such matters, but one I’ve been taken with recently involves a Houstonian I profiled in our March cover story, Julie Aldrich. She grew up with parents who were generous to the poor in both time and money. She and her husband now live in a mixed-income neighborhood: She chairs the board of a Christian charity that allows her to bring into a poor community resources from wealthy people she knows. Her husband, a lawyer and businessman, coaches poor kids. But they don’t claim to have sure answers and neither do I, except one: Seek to dine with Christ. It may be good to give away half of your goods as Zaccheus did—but maybe not. If you’re well-off but not wealthy, and you don’t want to force someone else to support you, it may be good to save now, make sure your family is not in need, and at your death give to ministries much of what you’ve saved. The advice in chapter of Proverbs is good—“Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me”—but neither I nor anyone else should foist on you a formula beyond the tithing that the Bible repeatedly mentions. Having been an extremist myself when I was young, I do suggest following Proverbs in avoiding extremes. If you grew up poor, don’t become a Great Gatsby. If you grew up rich, don’t reject all that and go dumpster-diving. Rejoice in the Lord always. A
KRIEG BARRIE
W S I in , I joked about a future career editing a small-town newspaper and aspiring to be a cracker-barrel philosopher. Through God’s mercy I can edit a magazine for a national town of several hundred thousand readers, some of whom are foolish enough to ask for advice, all too often on one of three topics: What college should my son or daughter attend? What movies should Christians watch? How, now that God has enriched me, can I help the poor? People ask me that last question because I’ve written four books on aspects of effective compassion, so here go some cracker-barrel comments on that subject. Let’s start with the sin we all have: idol worship of some kind. Let’s consider Christ’s admonition to give up our idols, whether they be money, career, self-righteousness, promiscuity, or anything else. He doesn’t give specifics of what our postidolatry life will be like, but typically says “follow me”—and as our focus of worship becomes Him, we’ll understand more about what to do. Chapter of Luke’s Gospel displays the process: Jesus informs Zaccheus that He will stay at the wee man’s house that day, but doesn’t tell the tax collector what to do with his wealth. Zaccheus joyfully makes his own decision: “the half of my goods I give to the poor.” Is that binding on everyone? No, but we should feel joy in giving. If we don’t, that signals something wrong with us or something wrong with the organization to which we are giving. One way to be of maximum service, and to find out whether money we give really does help people (as opposed to supporting a bureaucracy), is to become a volunteer. A lawyer might volunteer at a place like Administer Justice, our Hope Award for Effective Compassion national winner last year. A doctor or dentist might volunteer at charity clinics like the many WORLD featured in . A writer might emulate Jacob Riis, who labored up boiling tenement stairways and forayed to freezing basements to let the
Email: molasky@wng.org
3/28/14 10:56 AM
WM0414_Deal_VisionVideo 3/25/14 1:24 PM Page 1
Paul the Apostle From the Emmy award-winning director Roger Young (Joseph and Jesus) comes the spectacular story of Paul the Apostle. This augmented adaptation, largely based on the biblical account, profiles Christ’s most prolific messenger. Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was at the forefront of efforts to stamp out the early church until Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus, forever changing his life and mission. He joyfully faced persecution, imprisonment, and peril in order to share the love and redemption offered by Christ. Beautifully shot in the Moroccan desert, Paul the Apostle is a sweeping saga of the man who brought the Gospel to the Western world. Drama, 145 minutes (includes optional English subtitles). DVD - #501420D,
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A.D. vividly recreates the turbulent years following the death of Christ. The earliest experiences of the Christian church after Jesus' ascension are powerfully dramatized in this remarkably authentic TV miniseries epic covering the years A.D. 30-69. This Biblically and historically accurate drama comes complete with a 56-page study guide in PDF, providing a 12-week course. Performances from an all-star cast, together with the scope of the project, make this great Bible-based family entertainment. This Vincenzo Labella production features Anthony Andrews, Colleen Dewhurst, Ava Gardner, David Hedison, John Houseman, Richard Kiley, James Mason, Susan Sarandon, Ben Vereen and many others. Drama, 6 hours.
This Emmy Award-winning production, starring Anthony Hopkins and Robert Foxworth, captures the vitality, intensity, and humanity of two who were entrusted by Christ to carry the Gospel into all the world. Based on the Scriptures by and about Peter and Paul, this video shows how they were driven by a heavenly vision for a different kind of world. They paid a horrendous price for their devotion— Peter crucified and Paul beheaded—but their ministries transcended the cruelty of their enemies to become important pillars of the Christian Church. Drama, 194 minutes (includes Spanish, optional English subtitles, bios).
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3/31/14 3:24 PM
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4/1/14 2:11 PM