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for people of faith
If you are a committed Christian, you do not have to violate your faith by purchasing health insurance from a company that pays for abortions and treatments of conditions resulting from other immoral practices. You can live consistently with your beliefs by sharing medical needs directly with fellow believers through Samaritan Ministries’ non-insurance approach. This approach even satisfies the individual mandate in the recent Federal health care law (Sec. 1501 (b) of HR 3590 at pg. 327, 328). Every month the more than 19,500* households of Samaritan Ministries share more than $4.5 million* in medical needs directly—one household to another. They also pray for one another and send notes of encouragement. The monthly share for a family of any size has never exceeded $320*, and is even less for singles, couples, and single-parent families. Also, there are reduced share amounts for members aged 25 and under, and 65 and over.
For more information call us toll-free at 1-888-268-4377, or visit us online at: www.samaritanministries.org. Follow us on Twitter (@samaritanmin) and Facebook (SamaritanMinistries). * As of January 2012
Biblical faith applied to health care www.samaritanministries.org
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Contents
, / ,
FE AT UR E S
38 Finding the strike zone
COVER STORY As a new season begins, two upfront evangelical pitchers talk baseball and life
46 The trades alternative
Parents are reluctant to hear it, but college may no longer offer the best path of opportunity for a great many young people Beyond the B.A.: “Snob Speech” made space for national conversation about education, jobs, and vocation
50 Law and orders
Alabama church leaders say the state’s tough new immigration law is hostile to all Hispanics and creates obstacles to ministry
56 Viral crusaders
Ugandans question Kony video for opening old wounds and soliciting too little help too late
DISPATCHES 9 News 18 Human Race 20 Quotables 22 Quick Takes
60 Sudden impact
Becoming a focal point of the culture war was not Kirk Cameron’s goal, but he says he’s willing to suffer professionally to uphold biblical truth ON THE COVER: Photo by Marilyn Indahl/Getty Images; inset: Lionsgate
50
27
REVIEWS 27 Movies & TV 30 Books 32 Q&A 34 Music
46
NOTEBOOK 63 Lifestyle 66 Technology 68 Science 69 Houses of God 70 Business 72 Sports 73 Money 74 Religion
60
VOICES 6 Joel Belz 24 Janie B. Cheaney 36 Mindy Belz 79 Mailbag 83 Andrée Seu 84 Marvin Olasky
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At Covenant, we equip our students to live out extraordinary callings in ordinary places. We teach students to engage culture and cultures, to examine and unfold creation, and to pursue biblical justice and mercy.
“Covenant helped me learn how to learn, how to assess and be critical of ideas and concepts, how to ask questions and be engaged,” he says. “It provided me the foundation I wanted and needed to set out in the professional marketplace.
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Call 888.451.2683 or visit covenant.edu. 7 CONTENTS.indd 5
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Joel Belz
Chasing down truth
There is such a thing as reality, but finding it and reporting it are not easy
>>
T , I still can’t forget how perplexed I was. Here I was, heading up a group of eager reporters—and on at least two fronts, none of us were smart enough to know what was really going on. Remember the conflict in Nicaragua between the Contras and the Sandinistas? So who were the good guys, and who were the rascals? We had a vague sense of things, but we wanted to tell WORLD’s readers the unbiased, unvarnished, and definitive truth. Still, even after we paid a reporter to spend a couple of weeks on the front lines in a Contra camp, and even after I was privileged to go to her private office for a face-to-face one-on-one interview with Nicaragua’s president, Violeta Chamarro, we were bewildered. Yes, we knew that the Sandinistas were Marxists to the core. But we also got a strong sense
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KRIEG BARRIE
that many of the Contras were hardly the kind of heroes we’d be tickled to have in our homes as overnight guests. The ambiguities were both confusing and maddening. Just about then, a curious thing happened here on the home front. A personal friend who worked for the local fire department told me over lunch how distressed he was with corruption in the personnel department there. “How you do on the tests doesn’t really have much to do with who gets ahead,” he charged. “What matters is whether you know the right people to get advance copies of the tests you have to take.” I was startled by his certainty. The very next day I was with another friend who was a detective with the local police department.
That unit happened to operate under the same personnel jurisdiction as that of the fire department. So I asked him whether he had any sense that there might be some hanky-panky at work in the way promotions were handled. Was everything on the up and up? But he was almost scornful, detailing six different ways such charges couldn’t possibly be true. So I didn’t know then—and I don’t know to this day—who had the better handle on the truth. But the juxtaposition of those events taught me an enduring journalistic lesson. A little modesty about this thing we call “the truth” is usually in order. In the case closest at hand, City Hall was less than a mile from my office. There was no foreign language to confuse the stories. If I had to go back a second time, that was easy to do. There were no bullets flying, and no war would put me at lethal risk. My reports came from personal friends whom I trusted. And still—I didn’t know. In Nicaragua, my sources were all brand new. Hundreds of miles, a time zone, and a foreign language kept me from catching the nuances. No way could I dash back to Managua to double-check what I’d heard. And plenty of guns, pointed in both directions, prompted more than a little wariness. If I wasn’t all that sure about the easy assignment, shouldn’t I be very careful about the harder one? In our zeal here at WORLD to do a faithful job from issue to issue in reporting the news to you loyal readers, a little modesty seems in order. We can arrogantly pretend, as many in the media regularly do, that we know exactly what’s going on. But just as surely as we assume such a posture, God tends to upset the applecart one more time, sending us all back to the drawing boards. The point is by no means to deny the possibility of learning the truth. There is such a thing as reality— and the diligent investment of a serious journalist’s blood, sweat, and tears will bring results. It’s just that we should never pretend that those results are any easier, or more automatic, than they really are. God writes history with a unique handwriting, and there’s a discipline involved in learning how to read that handwriting accurately. When you pray for WORLD magazine, and its staff, pray that we will be attentive, adept, and trustworthy readers of all that God is providentially writing. A Email: jbelz@worldmag.com
3/22/12 3:25 PM
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Dispatches NEWS HUMAN rACE QUOTABLES QUiCK TAKES
Fifth-inning stretch >>
Charlie riedel/ap
NEWS: Money is tight and the delegate math is challenging, but riCK SANTorUM insists he’s staying in the Gop race by EDWaRD LEE Pitts
Asked by a pack of reporters in Illinois on March 19 if he had plans to quit the GOP presidential race, Rick Santorum didn’t mince words. “Did I give anybody the impression that I’m getting out of this race anytime soon?” he said with a look that was half grin and half grimace. “I’m not too sure you guys are quite getting the flow of this yet. Just hang in there with us, OK? We’ll be around for a while.” Santorum has exceeded expectations throughout this nominating fight. He has won over many of the Republican Party’s core supporters through a campaign that has featured frequent appearances at both churches
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and Christian schools where Santorum, a Catholic, speaks openly about his faith. But Santorum needs one key ingredient if he wants to continue pressing frontrunner Mitt Romney into this spring and beyond. He may have recently argued that “the issue in this race is not the economy,” but the future of his candidacy is all about campaign capital. “He doesn’t have to have Romney-type money, but he needs a lot more money than he has raised so far,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran political activist who organized a recent fundraiser for Santorum that brought in pledges totaling $1.8 million. “Romney outA p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Dispatches > News
An estimated , people will join President Barack Obama and family on the lawn of the White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll the day after Easter. But money can’t buy you a way in: Tickets for the April event will be distributed via an online lottery system.
LOOKING AHEAD Moonbuggy races
Students from around the world will gather in Huntsville, Ala., to compete in NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race on April . The teams of high-school and college students attending the two-day event will compete for cash prizes by racing prototype moonbuggies around a .-mile course constructed to simulate the Moon’s surface.
White House cooking
First Lady Michelle Obama’s cookbook debuts April at bookstores across the country. Titled American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools, and Communities, the first lady’s foray into the cookbook world fits hand-inglove with her anti-obesity initiatives.
Norwegian trial
Accused killer Anders Behring Breivik will stand trial April for a July , , bomb attack and subsequent shooting rampage that left dead and wounded in Norway. But because Norway has no provisions for a death penalty or even life imprisonment, Breivik could again one day be a free man.
Titanic anniversary
A century ago on April , the supposedly unsinkable Titanic struck an iceberg that would cause it to sink in the North Atlantic Ocean hours later on April , killing ,. Museums in Branson, Mo., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., will commemorate the day with ceremonies. Meanwhile, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter will drop . million rose petals at the site of the Titanic ’s sinking.
Rock honors
Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers headline a host of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April . The th annual induction ceremony will take place at the site of the Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
EGG ROLL: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES • MOONBUGGY: NASA/MSFC • AMERICAN GROWN: HANDOUT • BREIVIK: LISE ASERUD/SCANPIX NORWAY/AP • TITANIC: ADAM BRIMER/THE KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL/AP • GUNS N’ ROSES: REX FEATURES/AP
spent Santorum to in the Chicago area, so that is just a huge obstacle to overcome.” Santorum collected million in February, his best month, according to new Federal Election Commission reports. That put Santorum second behind the . million Romney raised that month, well ahead of rivals Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich’s February totals. Gingrich is carrying a debt of . million, signaling that his campaign may be running on fumes. Still, the . million Romney held in the bank by month’s end was nearly million more than the combined campaign accounts of Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich. (Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has stockpiled in his campaign account more than six times the amount of money of the entire Republican field.) “We feel like, you know, we are up there, running against the machine,” said Santorum on Fox News after Romney won Illinois. Santorum can be spared some organizational expenses by tapping into the network of social conservative groups that coalesced behind him as other candidates exited. This grassroots coalition boasts thousands of passionate members who are experienced with get-out-the-vote efforts. “That alone is worth tens of millions of dollars,” said Viguerie, who argued that the full engagement of social conservatives did not come too late to matter. “Only about half the delegates have been selected, so at the most it is not quite the fifth inning yet. We have a long ways to go.” But while Romney needs to win just under percent of the remaining delegates to get the GOP nomination, Santorum would have to grab more than percent of the available delegates to win. Santorum’s best chance may be setting up a showdown at the party’s August national convention by stopping Romney from gaining the , delegates needed before then. For that strategy to work, Santorum must win the April contest in his home state of Pennsylvania. Voters there dealt the former Pennsylvania senator an -percentage-point defeat the last time he was on the ballot. Maybe that is why Santorum picked Gettysburg, Pa., the site of one of the fiercest battles in military history, for his Illinois concession speech. A
White House Easter Egg Roll
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Dispatches > News global repercussions
Damascus
wounded more than 100. On March 18 a bomb detonated in a heavily Christian district of Aleppo near a church and two primary schools, killing a security guard and a Christian woman and injuring 30. In all, over 8,000 have been killed in the ever-widening conflict.
Muslims by the hundreds turned out to demonstrate against the killing of Joel Shrum, an American teacher in Yemen gunned down on March 18 while driving in Taiz, a city 170 miles southwest of Sanaa, the capital. Crowds filled Taiz streets on March 20 bearing placards with photographs of the 29-year-old Shrum, the phrase “…Why?” printed in Arabic and English across the bottom. Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead the Pennsylvania native, and shortly after al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror network’s affiliate in Yemen, claimed responsibility for the killing. A text message circulated by cell phone said that “holy warriors” had killed “a senior missionary.” But locals said Shrum did not proselytize, and the school where he taught English, the Swedish-run International Training and Development Center, identified him as a “development worker.” His sister, Pennsylvania resident Jessica Lloyd, told me: “Joel was a
Christian. And it’s not against the law to be a Christian in Yemen.” She said he was “motivated by the love of God and God’s heart for people” to work among Arab people and help Americans understand “they are not the killers we see on the news.” Shrum had lived in the strife-torn country at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula since 2008 and is survived by his wife and two sons, ages 4 and 1. “Mr. Joel came all the way from the United States of America for nothing but good intentions,” said a student who joined the protesters in Taiz. The crowd, which included men, women in full-length black chadors, and children, gathered outside government offices chanting “Stop terrorism” and “We love Joel Shrum.” One woman read from petitions stating, “We condemn the awful crime of murdering the American teacher Joel Shrum,” and “we demand authorities to seriously search for the murderers and bring them to justice.” —Mindy Belz
A Tea Party flip flops After Illinois Democrats redrew congressional districts, the Illinois Republican primary March 20 pitted two sitting congressmen against each other, and veteran Rep. Don Manzullo lost by a thin margin to freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the veteran Manzullo had Tea Party backing over the freshman Kinzinger. In 2010, Kinzinger, a young Air Force pilot who flew missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, secured Tea Party backing when he first won his seat, ousting a Democratic incumbent in the Chicago suburbs. But in the 2012 primary Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks switched their backing to the 20-year incumbent Manzullo, whom groups considered the true conservative in the race. Kinzinger had the backing of House Republican leadership, particularly House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Kinzinger is almost certain to win reelection because no Democrat is listed on the ballot.
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Aleppo
Countering terrorism
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obAmA And dubois: mike THeiler/epA/newscom • Towey: HAndouT
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon warned of an “extremely dangerous” conflict in Syria that could have global repercussions, bombings hit Christian districts, including March 17 suicide bombings in Damascus that killed 27 and
Capital Fund designed to help faith-based groups get technical assistance. The office also started initiatives to mentor children of prisoners, to increase access to recovery drug treatment programs for addicts, and to promote charitable giving incentives. “President Bush had a faith-based initiative in every state of the union,” Towey said. While the media closely scrutinized the faith-based office under Bush, the press seems to largely ignore the office’s activities under Obama, according to Towey. Last October the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refused to renew a $2.5 million grant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for its programs for human trafficking victims. The HHS funding announcement stated it would give preference to programs that offered the full range of care, which to the Catholic bishops meant groups that provided contraception, sterilization, and abortion services. “Can you imagine the uproar that would have taken place if we had done that under President Bush by pulling a Planned Parenthood grant?” said Towey, a former director of Florida’s health and human services agency under Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles. Towey Towey accuses Obama of “unleashing the armies of contraception to replace George Bush’s armies of compassion.” He fears that Obama, if reelected, will move to end the religious hiring protections of faith-based groups receiving federal funds: “The precedent is being set that the church is subordinate to what the government says it is. So you are allowed to have a certain range of beliefs as long as government says you can, and that is not the America that I grew up in.” A
OFFICE POLITICS: Obama and Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community partnerships.
Faith-based farce
Office meant to strengthen religious charities, says its former director, has become under Obama “a political outreach shop” by EDWARD LEE PittS in Washington
OBAmA AnD DuBOis: miKE THEilEr/EpA/nEWsCOm • TOWEy: HAnDOuT
>>
Jim Towey spent more than four years as the Director of the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives under President George W. Bush. With controversy often surrounding the office, Towey was surprised when Barack Obama decided to keep it open after becoming president. “I thought he deserved credit because I knew that the liberal flank of his party wanted it closed,” said Towey during a recent return to Washington, D.C., from his current post as president of Ave Maria University in Florida. Three years later Towey is appalled at the direction the office has taken under Obama. “I think it has become a faithbased farce,” Towey said. “The office has become nothing but a political outreach shop that has led the charge to trample on the religious rights of faith-based organizations.” The Catholic Ave Maria University is suing the federal government over its recent push to force certain religious employers to include contraceptives and abortifacients in their health plans even if it goes against that group’s beliefs. Towey said the regulation is just the most recent example of the Obama administration’s use of the faith-based office for federal overreach. In September 2010, the White House used the office to convince religious
leaders to promote the new healthcare law. During an Oval Office conference call, Obama pleaded with faith-based organizations to “get out there and spread the word” about the law. Joshua DuBois, Obama’s director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Partnerships, also got on the call, according to media accounts, telling the religious leaders to “make use of the resources we’ve described on this call: the website, door hangers, one pagers and so forth. We’ve got work to do.” DuBois met with leaders of the religious left about healthcare during the legislative debate over the reform bill, and he spoke at an interfaith healthcare rally in June 2009. “If that is all this office is doing, that is standard partisan political posturing,” Towey said. “Why are taxpayer funds supporting community organizing?” Towey said that, instead of conference calls and rallies, the first three years of the office under Bush featured the creation of new programs such as the $30 million Compassion
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Dispatches > News
Tehran crackdown As Christians around the world await news of condemned Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani,
Class warfare
authorities continued a campaign of persecution against Iranian Christians.
New White House rules for exemption to contraceptive mandate propose dividing religious groups BY EmiLY BELz
21 that an Iranian court upheld the execution orders. The American Center for Law and Justice, a D.C.-based Christian legal group, reported that Iranian contacts close to the case confirmed that Nadarkhani was alive as of March 16. Meanwhile, the U.K.-based Barnabas Fund reported that Iranian authorities have targeted Christians in waves of arrests this year, with sweeps of house churches in at least five cities. In Tehran, authorities ordered at least three Christian churches to stop holding Persian language services on Fridays, according to the Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN).
Dry Mexico Mexico is experiencing its worst drought in 71 years. Over 2.5 million people are affected by a 40 percent decrease in food production, according to the National Confederation of Peasants. Farmer Odon Leon told The Christian Science Monitor that he could only irrigate half of his land this year. Another farmer, Juan Manuel Ramirez, said, “We have no water. Nothing has come out. The land is so dry here.” Estimates suggest that at least 60,000 cattle have died, and in Chihuahua state 250 children were treated for malnutrition in 2011. Food prices will only increase as the shortage of food and water becomes worse.
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ConTRaCEpTIvE pIll: TIm IRElanD/pa/ap • naDaRkhanI: hanDouT • mExICo: mElanIE STETSon FREEman/ThE ChRISTIan SCIEnCE monIToR/GETTy ImaGES CREDIT
The White House released new proposals on March 16 in an effort to answer ongoing concerns about the religious exemptions to the administration’s contraceptive mandate. Some religious leaders greeted them unenthusiastically as “a series of ideas.” The basic premise of the mandate remains unchanged: Employees of all religious organizations outside of churches must be allowed to receive free contraceptives from their insurers. In the new proposals the administration suggested that third-party administrators work out contraceptive coverage for selfinsured religious groups—a major point of controversy. The proposals acknowledge that free contraceptives don’t appear out of thin air, and suggested a variety of funding ideas if religious organizations won’t pay for them. TOUGH PILL: The proposed rule also allows church schools, if they are A pack of under the same insurance plan as their churches, to be contraceptive exempt from the mandate. medication. Religious groups, like the Protestant Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), are still troubled by the administration’s creation of two classes of religious organizations in the exemption: churches that are exempted and other religious groups that are subject to the complex “accommodation” in the proposed rules. That “puts the federal government in the position of determining the sincerity of the religious commitment of various groups,” wrote CCCU president Paul Corts in a recent letter to the White House. Meanwhile, the first businessman filed a lawsuit against the mandate, adding his voice to the chorus of religious groups and universities that have taken legal action. The suit filed on behalf of Frank O’Brien Jr., a Catholic businessman in St. Louis, Mo., said the mandate would force O’Brien to violate his religious beliefs by paying for contraceptives and abortifacients for his employees. The administration’s religious exemption proposals do not address individual employers with religious objections.
An attorney for Nadarkhani, the pastor facing a death sentence for apostasy, reported on Feb.
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Dispatches > News
Time for peace
Energy shutdown The Mississippi Supreme Court dealt a blow to one of the nation’s suspected “crony capitalism” beneficiaries on March 15 when it unanimously reversed a decision permitting the Mississippi Power Company to build a $2.4 billion power plant. Lobbyist and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was a vocal supporter of the project, and Mississippi Power as a subsidiary of Southern Company was a client of BGR Group, the Washington lobbying firm Barbour helped found. BGR helped to secure a $270 million U.S. Department of Energy grant for the plant. Barbour resumed work at BGR after leaving office at the end of 2011. Approximately $1 billion has already been spent on Mississippi Power’s Kemper County IGCC project (see “Capitols and capital,” Oct. 22, 2011). Kemper would be the first commercial-scale plant NOT SO FAST: Barbour (fourth in the nation to capture its carbon dioxide emissions. from right) at the In its reversal the Supreme Court said state regulators groundbreaking for erred when they failed to provide specific reasons for plant the kemper county approval. Regulators initially placed financial restrictions coal plant in 2010. on the plant and expressed concerns for its high cost, to be borne by power company customers. After Barbour and U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu expressed their displeasure, regulators issued a more lenient approval that did not detail how financial concerns had been abated. Mississippi Power has previously gotten its way in state courts, but the state’s Public Service Commissioners will now have to explain why they changed their minds in the absence of new evidence and the presence of urging from Barbour and Chu. The coal plant’s economic justification was that it could provide electricity at a lower cost than a natural-gas-fired plant, but the price of natural gas has plummeted from $9 per mBtu to $2.25 and is not predicted to hit $5 again until 2020. If a new permit does not come through, Mississippi Power could have to eat hundreds of millions of dollars in costs and may face a reduced credit rating; meanwhile, the Department of Energy will have another failed nine-figure grant on its books. If the plant does receive a permit, Mississippi consumers will pay more for energy.
staged
Ira Glass (left), host of the weekly public radio show This American Life, had to apologize to listeners and retract one of the show’s most popular episodes after learning it was sprinkled with falsehoods. Glass had broadcast in January a stage monologue by Mike Daisey, a critic of Apple whose one-man show captivated audiences in New York City and elsewhere by describing Daisey’s visit with allegedly exploited workers in China who make gadgets like the iPad. But a reporter discovered that Daisey had embellished his stories, casting doubt on Daisey’s claims of meeting 12-year-old workers and some who had been poisoned or disabled on the job. Glass said Daisey lied to him by portraying the monologue as factual.
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State supreme court halts “clean energy” power plant by amy mccullough
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After two decades under house arrest, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi may find herself in a different house next month: parliament. The Nobel Laureate and longtime democracy activist (released from detention in 2010) was set to run in Burma’s parliamentary elections on April 1—a pivotal step for a country under complete military rule until last year. While military leaders have allowed a surprising series of political reforms, they maintain a tight grip. Eight months of fighting between the Burmese military and ethnic rebels in the Kachin Independence Army along the northern border have sent an estimated 60,000 Kachins—many Christians—fleeing to overcrowded camps that are running out of critical supplies. UN officials delivered relief to the region in December, but military officials won’t allow aid to flow to some of the most vulnerable populations. Many Kachins hang hopes on Suu Kyi’s election: The leader many affectionately call “Auntie Suu” visited the embattled state in March.
‘A hard country’ evangelicalism is, slowly, on the rise in Spain by WArren Cole Smith in Gaudix, Spain
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It’s Semana Santa—Holy Week— in Guadix, Spain. Guadix is a town of about 20,000 people about an hour north of the Mediterranean coast. Though today Guadix is overshadowed by Granada, its much larger neighbor to the west, this small town has a history going back at least 2,000 years. The town was mentioned in Pliny’s Natural History, published in A.D. 79. During Semana Santa, the town almost shuts down. More than two dozen slow-moving processions fill the town’s narrow streets at different times during the afternoons and evenings, with brass bands and cross- and candlebearing penitents. Each procession features elaborately decorated tronos, or thrones. The penitents wear pointed hats that call to mind the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan, which indeed used these hats as its model. The smells of flowers and incense fill the air. In Guadix, thousands will fill the streets to watch. In Malaga and other towns in southern Spain, where the traditions of Semana Santa are strongest, tens of thousands will turn out. But if you think these trappings suggest the practices of a devoutly religious people, think again. As one Guadix resident told me, “It’s almost all cultural, and almost not at all religious or spiritual.” Statistics bear out this melancholy assessment. Spain has 47 million people, and while most Spaniards were baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, less than 10 percent of the population attend church on a regular basis. The evangelical church is even smaller—less than 1 percent of the population, by most estimates.
Under the dictator Francisco Franco (who ruled from 1939 until 1975), Roman Catholicism was the state church, and evangelicals experienced discrimination and persecution. The 1978 Spanish constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, but for those living then, the damage to religion was done. Catholicism had become associated with Franco’s brutality, and evangelicalism was either nonexistent or seen as a foreign import by the famously insular Spanish. But there are growing signs of life. Over the past decade, the number of evangelicals in Spain has nearly doubled. On Palm Sunday last year, the first day of Semano Santa, about 30 evangelicals gather in a storefront in Guadix. It’s the only evangelical church in town, but that’s one more than existed a decade ago. This church is an outreach of the Colorado Springs–based OCI, One Challenge International. The pastor of this small congregation is away, so the ministry’s regional director, Jesus Londono, has brought his family from Granada, about 40 miles to the west, to conduct the service. Londono, dressed in khakis, penny loafers, and a button-down shirt, preaches the evangelical basics, leaning heavily on John 3:16. “How does God show His love?” he asks the congregation, many of whom are taking notes. “How do we show our love?” Manny Fernandez Jr. says this is a key question for Spaniards. Fernandez, a young graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, runs a seminary in Barajas, a
suburb of Madrid. His father started the school in 1991 with three students. Today it has about 25 full-time students. All attend tuition-free, paid for mostly by Irving, Texas–based Worldlink Ministries, also founded by the senior Fernandez. “Spain is a hard country,” says the younger Fernandez. “Most Spaniards don’t think they need to be evangelized. They can be stubborn in their resistance to what they consider to be non-Spanish, to non-Spaniards. Many Spaniards think evangelicalism is a cult.” This problem is heightened because many mature evangelicals in Spain are immigrants from Latin America. Even a missionary like Londono, the preacher of the Palm Sunday service in Guadix, is held at some distance: He speaks a sharp Latin American form of Spanish that is completely understandable to Spaniards but stands out in Guadix as much as an Irish brogue would at a Texas barbecue. The fact that many new converts are gypsies, or gitanos, adds to the cultural suspicions. Still, says Fernandez, Christian love is slowly breaking down these barriers. “We’ve spent lots of time just building relationships,” he said. “We become a part of their lives. It’s a biblical model. The very incarnation of Christ is the model. God became man to reach men. We are training—and becoming— Spaniards to reach Spaniards.” A
SIGNS OF LIFE: A service at the evangelic church of la Uncion in las Tres mil viviendas in Seville.
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Dispatches > Human Race counts, including charges he attempted to sell President Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat. Under federal rules, he must serve at least percent of his term—nearly years— before he’s eligible for early release.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, , announced he is retiring at the end of the year. Williams, who has served as the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion for years, assumes a new role as master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University. His departure comes at a turbulent time for the global body, which has faced deep divisions over homosexuality, Islam, and the ordination of women. Williams noted that his successor will need the “constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros.”
financial dispute with the directors. Senior Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman also announced she was breaking with the church her father started in so she could start a new church.
Crystal Cathedral founder Dr. Robert H. Schuller and his wife, Arvella, resigned from the megachurch’s board, saying they have lost hope of settling a
Convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, , began his -year sentence on March at a minimumsecurity federal prison in Denver, Colo. Last June during his corruption retrial, jurors convicted Blagojevich on
A British man has won the right to petition the courts for the right to die, marking the first time a British court will hear this type of euthanasia case. A stroke left Tony Nicklinson, , paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak, although his mental abilities are unaffected.
Dr. Peter Goodwin, considered the father of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, ended his life March after taking lethal medication that he obtained under the law he championed. Goodwin, , had a fatal brain disease that doctors said would end his life within months.
Pope Shenouda III, head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church for years, died March at age . Under Shenouda’s leadership the church grew amidst escalating tensions with Muslims as he advocated for Christian interests while offering support to former President Hosni Mubarak. His death comes at an uncertain time for Coptic Christians, who face an increasingly powerful Islamic presence in postMubarak Egypt.
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Authorities arrested Wheaton College professor Donald Ratcliff, , on child pornography charges after discovering hundreds of illegal images on his personal computers. Ratcliff, who had served since as a faculty member in the Christian education department, authored numerous books on the spiritual formation of children. Prior to working at Wheaton, he also taught at Biola University, Vanguard University, and Toccoa Falls College.
Nicklinson is asking the British High Court to allow a doctor to give him a lethal injection.
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Dispatches > Quotables “Obama’s Edsel.” RICH LOWRY, editor of National Review, on the hybrid car Chevy Volt, which has struggled to catch on despite substantial tax breaks and heavy promotion from the White House.
“We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.” Unnamed OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL, telling The Washington Post about U.S. pressure on Israel not to attack Iran’s developing nuclear program. “We must always remain the masters of our own fate,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (above, with President Obama) said of a potential attack.
“You want to get arrested? We’ll accommodate you.” New York City Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (right), on the resurgence of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“If we would have left a minute later, we would have been sucked into the storm.” Skydiver DAN EATON after safely jumping from a hot-air balloon with four other skydivers, on orders from balloon pilot Edward Ristaino (below, in a photo taken by one of the skydivers), right before a fast-developing thunderstorm caught the balloon and sent it crashing to the ground in south Georgia. The skydivers say Ristaino, who was later found dead at the crash site, found a field for their jump and told them to jump to safety during the March storm.
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ERIC FEHRNSTROM, spokesman for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (left), on whether the primary was forcing Romney too far to the right for the general election. He went on to say that Romney’s current positions already reflect those of most voters.
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“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart it all over again.”
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The thieves may be hardened, but at least their clothes are clean and fresh. Law enforcement officials across the nation are befuddled by a recent rash of Tide laundry detergent thefts. Anecdotal reports indicate theft of the brand-name detergent is widespread. Police in St. Paul, Minn., arrested a man after he stole , worth of it. A Safeway supermarket in Maryland reported losing thousands of dollars worth of Tide before a string of arrests by police earlier this year. Some speculate that Tide serves as a proxy for cash on the black market. They note that the product doesn’t depreciate in value and can usually be resold for a good price.
After a local uproar, state officials say they have taken off food stamps a Michigan woman who had won a million-dollar lottery prize. The hubbub followed an early March news report revealing that Amanda Clayton of Lincoln Park, Mich., was receiving and using per month in food stamps despite winning a million lottery prize in September. In the WDIV television report, the -year-old woman justified receiving the aid, saying, “I feel that it’s OK because I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay.” She also added: “I have two houses.” State legislators are now working on a bill to factor lottery winnings into eligibility for government assistance.
’ Miss Seattle apparently wouldn’t miss Seattle if she left. Beauty queen Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn became the target of criticism after comments she made about her city surfaced following her victory in the Miss Seattle pageant on March . In Twitter postings from December, Ahn wrote, “Ugh can’t stand cold rainy Seattle and the annoying people.” Ahn defended herself, saying in December she was undergoing culture shock after moving back from Arizona, where she had been studying at Arizona State University. Ahn had previously been crowned Miss Phoenix during her time in Arizona.
If Maryland Rep. Roscoe Bartlett gets his way, tax time could get a bit easier for Americans who choose to leave their upper lip fuzzy. In February, the -term Republican congressman introduced the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses Act, or the STACHE Act. The bill, the brainchild of the oftenhyperbolic American Mustache Institute, calls for tax credits for mustachioed men to help offset the cost of grooming supplies. And while a spokesman for Bartlett refused to say whether he supported the bill he sponsored, the American Mustache Institute promises an April Fool’s Day rally in Washington, D.C., titled the Million Mustache March in its support.
Having stuffed their sedans with as many airbags as will fit, Volvo is offering a new feature in airbag technology. The safetyconscious carmaker announced its new V wagon will feature an airbag specifically designed to protect pedestrians who are struck by Volvo drivers. The new U-shaped airbag device will pop up from the rear of the hood and cover much of the car’s windshield in the event of an accident.
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The next time 21-year-old Steven Mulhall sees Broward County, Fla., Circuit Judge Michael Orlando, he’ll have some explaining to do. Mulhall appeared before Judge Orlando on Feb. 23 for a parole hearing, and police allege that on his way out of the courtroom, Mulhall swiped the judge’s name placard off the door. The police’s evidence? Mulhall apparently posted photos of himself holding the stolen name plate on his girlfriend’s Facebook page. “The nameplate is like only $40, not that big of a crime, but what an idiot. He puts it on Facebook,” Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti told the Sun Sentinel. “Here he is flaunting it on Facebook. He violated the terms of his parole by stealing, from a judge he appeared before no less. He’s got multiple convictions for petty theft, so now this is a felony.”
At least one class at Michigan State University is a real killer. Specifically, the school is planning to offer an online course on surviving a zombie invasion. Titled “Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Catastrophes & Human Behavior,” the course will be taught by Social Work professor Glen Stutzky. The online course will last seven weeks beginning during the summer term.
Valuable nugget The meat may be mysterious, but the image on Rebecca Speight’s chicken McNugget was not. The Dakota City, Neb., resident picked one of the chicken pieces out of her McDonald’s purchase three years ago because, she said, it carried on it a profile likeness of the United States’ first president, George Washington. On March 5, Speight was able to sell the Washington McNugget on eBay for $8,100 to an undisclosed buyer. Speight told the Sioux City Journal that the money will go toward sending 50 kids to a summer church camp in Iowa.
Playing with fire The Krasna Horka castle in eastern Slovakia survived the ravages of nearly seven centuries— until it suffered severe damage from two boys playing with matches on March 10. Authorities in the Slovak region of Kosice say the boys, ages 11 and 12, were trying to light cigarettes when they set grass near the castle on fire. The resulting blaze spread to the castle and reportedly brought 84 firefighters to the scene. The Slovak National Museum, which maintains the castle, announced that 90 percent of the exhibits and collections at the castle were undamaged but that damage to the castle itself was extensive: “The castle’s roof burned down completely, as well as the new exhibition in the gothic palace and the bell tower. Three bells melted.” WORLDmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views
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Janie B. Cheaney
Into the depths of the sea God’s forgiveness includes remembering an ocean of blood and its high cost
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control. Old hurts may heal, but are they really forgotten? God says He forgets: “I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah :). If He says it, it must be true. He’s not like us. But I used to wonder how this could be. Can one who plumbs the depths of my heart, even deeper than I can go—can Omniscience Himself totally forget? How could God dismiss from His limitless mind all my traitorous thoughts and deeds? But that’s the wrong question. For God, it’s not about forgetting; it’s about remembering. Here’s what God remembers: darkness at noon; innocence declared guilty; the earth reeling in horror. Red, red blood of infinite value pouring unchecked from a sacred head, hands, feet. The Father, not being flesh, could not feel it in the same way as the Son, but surely He felt it. Did the abandonment hurt as much as being abandoned? Did the forsaking rip His heart, like being forsaken? Is there a scar on God’s perfection that aches even now? “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah :). There’s an old gospel song that speaks of the “sea of God’s forgetfulness”—it’s an ocean of blood, lapping up to the throne of judgment. That is the end of forgiven sins; they are cast into that bottomless sea where they sink completely out of mind. He remembers the cost, not the debt. It is seared into His very nature, a faultline running from the throne room of heaven through every redeemed soul. It is always before Him, the sacrifice of the beloved Son. Blessed forgetfulness … someday, it will be ours. A
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I , ’ than it is to forget. When a talk-show host tags a female student with an unflattering name or a candidate suffers a memory lapse during a debate, he may be forgiven in private. But political missteps will never, ever be forgotten. They’re far too useful. That’s often true in personal relationships, too. Most people recognize that forgiveness is healthier than marinating in the saltwater of bitterness and will make an effort to let go of their vindictive urges. The deeper the offense, the more difficult this is, but reasonable people can forgive. Forgetfulness, however, is another matter. Christians have a deeper well from which to draw forgiveness, because we’ve been dug out, so to speak: Our own sins are continually before us and we understand, more and more as time goes on, how much we’ve been forgiven. Receiving grace grants the power of extending grace. But forgetting? Well … In my worst moments, I actually enjoy remembering. In a twisted way, being wronged validates me. That time I was cheated by a co-worker or badmouthed by my sister-in-law or lied to by my husband: All those accumulated slights, great and small, make a platform from which to exercise the Christian virtue of forgiveness. In the darkness those memories creep out like lizards and surround me, their tiny throats pulsing, their beady eyes unblinking, their subterranean resentment bobbing up and down. So admirable you are (they tell me), not holding that against her, forgiving him as you’ve been forgiven. In spite of what they did, and may do again. Oh, we won’t dwell on it, but we remember. In better moments I recall my own sins, and wish I couldn’t. That’s why God’s way of dealing with offenses is so hard to grasp. As far as east from west, as high as heaven from earth. We’re told that God will hold an unbeliever accountable for a careless word, but will forget the heinous crimes of those who come to Him in faith. This is difficult to comprehend because we can’t do it. Our memory is vast and stubborn and wild and precious—it tells us who we are, it reveals what we cherish and what we abhor, and it resists our
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Reviews MOVIES & TV BOOKS Q&A MUSIC
Conscience killer?
MOVIE: The Hunger Games is a compelling story that can sensitize or desensitize teens to darkness BY EMILY WHITTEN
LIONSGATE
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D A’ dystopian future, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone) stands in her mother’s worn, blue dress—waiting. Along with the other young adults ages - in her district (much like a state), she and her little sister wait to hear who will represent their home in the far-away capital for The Hunger Games. Every year, the government chooses a girl and boy tribute from each district for something akin to American Idol meets Lord of the Flies. With obvious allusions to the games of the Roman Coliseum—horsedrawn chariots, golden laurel wreaths for the victors, and a game show host named Caesar—these games are what
you might expect in a similarly banal but technologically advanced culture: It’s a fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses. Small wonder then that it’s rated PG- for “violent thematic material and disturbing images.” What might surprise some based on the bare bones of the story is the strong moral center to the film, beginning with Katniss herself. When her sister’s name is called from the podium as the tribute from District , Katniss unhesitatingly steps to the front and yells, “I volunteer!” It’s a death sentence for herself, or so she thinks, yet she has essentially been mother to her sister, Primrose, for years now. To give Prim over to such a gruesome death is unthinkable. And
from that point on, though she doesn’t share her love interest Peeta’s conscious moral high ground, she fights to save not just her own life but also the lives of the other tributes she comes to love. Perhaps the most moving scene of the film occurs midstream, when Katniss kneels with a dying tribute, singing her a lullaby as the young girl loses consciousness. The value of life, even in such horrific circumstances, is drawn with bold colors. Author Suzanne Collins’ previous work in kids’ television (including Nickelodeon) is evident throughout the movie. The action moves succinctly and the plot manages depth, despite less opportunity for introspection than the A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 2
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Reviews > Movies & TV
GAME ON: lawrence, Josh hutcherson as peeta, and lenny Kravitz as cinna (from left).
terribly evil. Teenagers are dispatched throughout the movie by knives, swords, and mutated dogs; adults are either too powerless or corrupt to help; and Katniss herself experiences an inward despair that will (in coming installments) lead her to attempt suicide. For some viewers at least— especially younger or more impressionable teens—The Hunger Games may produce the same deadening effect on the conscience that Collins seeks to warn us against. A
images” become too dark? And at what point does kids’ entertainment run the risk of pushing young adults into that darkness? An interview with Suzanne Collins is instructive here. When asked why she thinks people are enticed by TV reality shows, she replied, “Well, they’re often set up as games and, like sporting events, there’s
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Monumental by Megan bashaM
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Let’s be clear about one thing—whatever you may have seen on CNN or ABC or Alan Thicke’s Twitter update, there’s nothing in Kirk Cameron’s documentary, Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure (rated G), about gay marriage, homosexuality, Rick Santorum, contraception, or the federal health insurance mandate. There’s not even anything in it about media manipulation of born-again former heartthrobs (though I imagine there will be in his next documentary). What is in it is a passionate, old-fashioned, and occasionally surprising lesson on the Christian separatists who fled religious persecution in England for hardship and freedom in an unknown land. Attempting to uncover the earliest principles that made the United States a great nation and asking whether we can use them to address our current cultural and economic woes, Cameron traces the footsteps of the pilgrims from their first rebellious worship meetings to their influence on the Founding Fathers. The picture he presents of a group of people fiercely dedicated to God and to each other will be a revelation to those who grew up learning that the pilgrims were mercenaries, morons, or both. Throughout Cameron touches on intriguing details—like that the Mayflower was originally a wine cargo ship and the pilgrims once sentenced one of their own to death on the testimony of two Native Americans—that give legs to his depiction of a heroic group of people. When he describes the cold, sickness, and starvation they endured, modern Christians will feel a new resolve not to squander the freedom to worship, evangelize, and shape the culture they gave us. What Cameron does less well is make the connections between the pilgrims and the problems facing the United States today. Too often, rather than digging deeper and presenting further evidence that our path forward lies in looking behind, he restates what his few experts have already said. This, along with lingering shots of Cameron staring earnestly into the camera acts as visual filler, wasting a lot of time that could have gone to making Monumental as serious and inspiring as the subjects it covers. See all our movie reviews at worldmag.com/movies
3/22/12 2:23 PM
JonAthAn FrAzier/roADsiDe AttrActions
an interest in seeing who wins. ... Sometimes they have very talented people performing. Then there’s the voyeuristic thrill—watching people being humiliated, or brought to tears, or suffering physically—which I find very disturbing. There’s also the potential for desensitizing the audience, so that when they see real tragedy playing out on, say, the news, it doesn’t have the impact it should.” This is a very poignant criticism of our culture, and one that deserves to be taken seriously. But for all the beauty and moral high ground this story contains, it’s just as true that the world Collins has created is
MonuMental: pyro pictures • hunger gaMes: lionsgAte
book. And the movie-makers go to great lengths to dampen the more horrific moments: During violent scenes, the camera shakes or in some way obscures the carnage. Death comes quickly to the tributes, most of whom die off-screen. A few moments rise to the level of Scream or other teenage horror flicks, but this is no Silence of the Lambs. In general, fans of the books will find the movie delivers the action-packed story without losing its heart. Still, is it good for kids? Following the sorcery of Harry Potter and the vampires of Twilight, at what point do “violent thematic material and disturbing
MOVIE
Blue Like Jazz BY HANNAH KAMINER
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B L J (rated PG-) is crisp, intelligent, and entertaining. Steve Taylor’s film adaptation of Donald Miller’s bestseller is—as you might expect from a film based on semi-autobiographical essays—a bit self-conscious. The filmmakers took great pains (as Miller describes in a Justin Welborn later book, A Million Miles in a Thousand (left) and Marshall Years) to deliver a movie that is genuine and Allman as Don rich in character development, and that hints at resolution, rather than simply handing it in the tension between the messy and the clean, the redemptive to the audience. Donald Miller fans will notice a few changes from and the degenerate. the original story, but the film resembles the book closely enough What it leaves out: an explicit roadmap to salvation that one to be satisfying to the devotee. might expect in a film about losing and finding faith. Instead of The protagonist Don (Marshall Allman) begins the film as a verbally presenting a message that the listener must take hold of, clean-cut, Southern Baptist Texan, starched khakis and all. He this film portrays a God who takes hold of the volunteers to work with the children at his sinner, who forgives and enables forgiveness, church, where they drink red Kool-Aid all while patiently weaving His love and together and dress up in plastic “armor of redemption into sinners’ messy stories. God.” The depiction of American evangelical The film leaves the audience with a few Christianity is both hilarious and painful; it lingering questions. What exactly is the true looks culturally insensitive, cheesy, and theology that replaces the religious clichés at downright disturbing. the beginning of the film? Is this film merely The film depicts what happens when, out about one man’s existential crisis, and how of disgust and pain from his ruptured family, he finds friends who will accept him, in spite the protagonist discards his Christianity and of his faith? Or does it, however subtly, point heads to Reed College, reputed to be the to something that transcends the “my truth, “most godless campus in America.” your truth, it’s all truth” attitude embraced Eventually, Don finds himself deeply hurting by many of Donald Miller’s generation? others, completely isolating himself, and And finally: What is so glorious that it literally crawling in excrement. Instead of would draw a young man back to God, “finding himself” at college, Don finds that particularly when he has the option of living he cannot outrun his own search for for himself in an environment where meaning and God’s love for him. limitless self-expression and hedonism are Blue Like Jazz will likely offend those celebrated? seeking Christian films that spell out - These questions may be unsettling, but Christian messages in large, Hollywood-signaccording to Box Office Mojo they are exactly the ones young Christians type letters. If you’re looking for the ending CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent are asking. This is not simply a film about one where Don’s lesbian friend becomes a (V), and foul-language (L) content on a - man’s existential crisis; it is about a young celibate Christian because Don finally scale, with high, from kids-in-mind.com man’s encounter with his own selfishness stopped being ashamed of his faith, you’re S V L and search for meaning, and with Someone not going to find it. Instead, you will find the 1̀ Jump Street R .................... whose love will not let him go his own way. film provocative both for what it leaves in 2̀ Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax* PG ... True theology is embedded in the film, but and for what it leaves out. 3̀ John Carter PG-13 ................... the viewer will have to dig for it. Perhaps the What it leaves in: Parents will want to 4̀ Project X R ................................. filmmakers want us to look for a beautiful, consider several explicit elements, including 5̀ Act of Valor* R ......................... holy seduction that is better than the best drug use, disturbing images, vulgar pranks, 6̀ A Thousand Words PG-13... that sex, drugs, intellectual superiority, and frank discussions of sex and homosexuality, 7̀ Safe House R ............................ moral free-for-all have to offer. A frequent profanity, and other realistic 8̀ Journey : The Mysterious Island PG.......... depictions of a wild college party life. Don —Hannah Kaminer works for 9̀ Casa de mi Padre R ............... gets into some interesting situations, caught World News Group in Asheville, N.C. 10 This Means War PG-13 ......... `
MONUMENTAL: PYRO PICTURES • HUNGER GAMES: LIONSGATE
JONATHAN FRAZIER/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS
BOX OFFICE TOP 10
*Reviewed by WORLD
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3/22/12 2:23 PM
Reviews > Books
Apocalypse when? Sticking to our callings rather than heading for the hills BY MARVIN OLASKY
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T seemed like the apocalypse to many Christian Rwandans, but America has also had its fascination with hard-to-imagine horror. Many Christians grew up with The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, an artfully written secular variant, made it to Oprah’s Book Club and onto movie screens. Riots in the late s and economic downturns in the s brought out predictions of
doom. A third of a century later, here we go again. Today, survivalists anticipate that economic downturns will lead to rioting and killing, because—the Christian ones say—man without God is a beast. That’s in some way the backdrop for hot-selling horror stories like Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse (Atria, ) by James Wesley, Rawles, who professes Christ. The comma between Wesley and Rawles is intentional: Rawles told one interviewer that the first two names belong to him but his family “owns” the surname. Odd, but it’s a useful reminder that all whom God kindly adopted into His family—John Doe, Christian—have a responsibility to stick to our callings and not merely head to the hills. Survivors is not as well-written as some articles Rawles has penned, but I’m more concerned that the tide of
apocalypse will sweep some of us away from our posts. Many have told the story of how early Christians refused to run when epidemics struck, and instead grew the church (and their own hearts) by nursing those close to death, and sometimes dying in the process. Our callings have significance, as Tom Nelson writes in Work Matters (Crossway, ) and Amy Sherman does in Kingdom Calling (IVP, ). We’ve been down this road before. Jay Rubenstein’s Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (Basic, ) is a page-turner filled with fascinating profiles of Western Europeans who fought their way to Jerusalem more than years ago. Like Perry Miller writing about the Puritans, Rubenstein doesn’t buy the religious arguments of those now known as crusaders—they called themselves pilgrims—but he takes seriously the ecstasies some of them felt and the sacrifices they made. He shows why the conquest of Jerusalem, after three years of betrayal and death, was so bloody.
Whistling past the graveyard?
RUBENSTEIN: HANDOUT • HOROWITZ: ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM
In A Point in Time (Regnery, ), David Horowitz praises stoic Marcus Aurelius, meditates on death, and writes that he is “comfortable with the idea that soon I will be no one and nowhere, and comforted in a stoic way by the knowledge that it doesn’t add up.” The first part of that seems extraordinary to me: I can understand how atheists might try to be resigned to nothingness, but comfortable? The second part makes sense: If we cannot solve a mystery, faith that there is no solution makes the fault lie not in ourselves but in the stars. Ex-leftist Horowitz includes a great story about his father, a Communist, who shaved every morning and “would tear a tissue into little squares and place them over the spots of blood where the skin had been nicked by the errant blade.” Young David watched and listened as his father would explain that the razor’s makers were “the capitalists” who desired “to make profits and not to serve human needs. Consequently, Gillette would never create a perfect blade, or one that would last longer.” Horowitz notes, “My razor now bears the same company name but comes with a track holding five finely spaced blades that vibrate with an electric pulse regulated by a microchip. The shave this complex device provides is so smooth I can hardly feel the hairs being severed as it passes. … To succeed, capitalists had to develop products that met their customers’ needs better than those of their rivals. In other words, what made profits possible was the satisfaction of human needs.” —M.O.
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
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NOTABLE BOOKS
Four Christian nonfiction books > reviewed by
The Explicit Gospel
Matt Chandler with Jared Wilson Matt Chandler’s excellent book will help Christians avoid common errors that occur when we make assumptions about the meaning of the word gospel. His clear presentation of the content of the gospel includes good discussions of God’s holiness, man’s tendency to worship idols, our need for Christ’s bloody sacrifice, and grace. He shows how the gospel also has cosmic implications, with the story of personal salvation fitting into God’s big story of Creation, Fall, Reconciliation, and Consummation, where God makes all things new. Chandler uses “on the ground” and “in the air” to describe the two vantage points from which we see the gospel, and he shows the warping that occurs when we neglect either of them.
The Next Christians Gabe Lyons Gabe Lyons asserts that a new generation of Christians will not make the mistakes of the older generation, which he attacks as judgmental, separationist, culture-warring, and damaging to the Christian brand. The book is filled with stories of young Christians who care about orphans, sex trafficking, clean water, and creation care. Lyons hopes their emphasis on human flourishing will make Christianity more acceptable to non-Christian neighbors. In his zeal to promote good works, Lyons glosses over the gospel of the cross of Christ. Matt Chandler’s book offers a necessary corrective for the weaknesses in Lyons’ approach.
Still: Notes on a Mid-Life Faith Crisis
Lauren F. Winner For those who have followed Lauren Winner’s faith journey through the books Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath,, it’s sad to read this series of reflections about the unraveling of her faith after her mother dies and her marriage disintegrates. At one point Winner describes a conversation during which she asks, “Don’t you ever get bored with the whole thing?”—meaning Christianity. The friend says Winner spends too much time thinking and analyzing her feelings about God—and that’s true. Winner’s academic interests are on display—poetry, church history, and th-century theology—but they seem to distract her from the living God. The book ends with her hanging on to a belief that has been transformed by her experiences.
RUBENSTEIN: HANDOUT • HOROWITZ: ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM
Flirting with the Forbidden: Finding Grace in a World of Temptation Steven James Steven James adds some fiction to his nonfiction analysis of biblical characters, with the goal of rescuing them from the pedestals upon which we sometimes place them. His firstperson accounts focus on their human longings and frailties—and the temptations common to us all. Some of his portrayals challenge typical readings of familiar stories. Is it possible Joseph didn’t flee quickly enough from Potiphar’s wife when he first sensed her desire? He plucks from obscurity Demas, mentioned in Timothy :- as one who deserted Paul “because he loves the things of this life,” and imagines his last conversation with Paul. By showing connections between the stories of biblical characters and ours, James deepens our understanding of grace. Email: solasky@worldmag.com; see all our reviews at WORLDmag.com/books
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SPOTLIGHT In From Santa to Sexting by Brenda Hunter and Kristen Blair (Leafwood, ), the authors—a psychotherapist and her daughter, an education writer—ably cover research into the lives of middleschoolers, including sobering statistics about sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, and other risky behaviors. The authors show the importance of parents and provide practical ways to encourage faith and virtue at a time when those are under assault. Those remedies— living out your faith, teaching character, praying with and sacrificing for your children, eating meals together—are important, but those wanting to know specifically how the gospel provides hope for our kids and our parenting will have to look elsewhere. Many churches need to improve their counseling of both parents and their children. They should invest in Robert Kellemen’s Equipping Counselors for Your Church (P&R, ). This comprehensive volume covers the who, what, why, and how of counseling.
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3/20/12 11:18 AM
Reviews > Q&A
Miracles of reconciliation >>
A anniversary of the start of one of history’s most poignantly evil episodes. On that day Rwandan Hutus started the mass murder of Tutsis, along with any Hutus who tried to protect Tutsis. They did not kill pseudoscientifically, in gas chambers or through bombs dropped from on high, but mostly with machetes. They killed neighbors who had lived beside them and helped them for years. An estimated , Rwandans—almost one out of eight—died. In Laura Waters Hinson, then , won the best student documentary Oscar for As We Forgive, a film about reconciliation in Rwanda between genocide perpetrators and survivors. What was the first movie you made? In the fifth grade, my friends and I on the cul-de-sac banded together and made a horror movie about a woman stabbed in the shower. We made sure the ketchup ran red down the drain. That was the beginning. Auspicious. Let’s fast-forward to college and a fellow named Tom. Tommy and I fell madly in love my junior year at Furman. We dated for three years and were engaged for about eight months. He ended up calling off the wedding. It was a very, very sad thing. No deception or
anything like that, but he realized he was terrified of marriage. We broke up. I sold my dress on eBay and had to pay back all my bridesmaids for their dresses. Eleven bridesmaids? Eleven. We lost thousands … or my dad did. But more than that, I thought it was the end of the world and that the man I was supposed to marry was gone. I was deeply devastated. Then what happened? I moved home to live with my parents, very dejected, asking, “What will I do with my life? I’ve lost everything.” I thought, “Hey! What’s crazier than going to film school? I have nothing to lose.” The only film I’d done was that fifth-grade one. Had things gone according to your happy plans, would you have gone to film school? I would have gotten a job, probably in marketing, and worked to put Tommy through graduate school. So you went to film school and had to make a movie for your master’s thesis ... I had no idea of what to do. In a group from my Anglican church was going to Rwanda to establish a partnership with a sister community there. My pastor said, “Laura, I don’t know why, but I have a very strong sense that you need to be on this trip.” I protested and protested and said I didn’t want to raise the money, ,. Two weeks
later the money appeared mysteriously and I went. What did you find in Rwanda? I went thinking we were would learn about the genocide and get to know the culture. Then the story took hold of me. This idea that you had tens of thousands of killers coming home to the places where they massacred people’s families … and people were being asked to forgive. I came home and spent the next year talking to people about the idea and raising funds. My church supported me. We took a student crew back a year later to make the film. How did you find the people you interviewed? It was providential because we landed in Rwanda with no idea about interviewees. Our wonderful translator Emmanuel, a survivor of the genocide, would go first into the homes of widows and hear their stories. They were surprisingly open and honest.
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TOP: IMAGE BEARER PICTURES, LLC. • BOTTOM LEFT: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES
Witnessing “radical forgiveness” in Rwanda taught filmmaker LAURA WATERS HINSON to forgive BY MARVIN OLASKY
INCREDIBLY HOPEFUL: Hinson films Rosaria who now lives next door to the man who brutally murdered her sister after the two reconciled.
TOP: IMAGE BEARER PICTURES, LLC. • BOTTOM LEFT: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES
I saw a foretaste of what will happen one day when all things are fully reconciled. The Bible likes to take the smallest, least likely characters and make them examples. I see that happening in Rwanda. Did you get any refusals? None. Both sets of perpetrators that we focused on had already publicly confessed their crimes. Their guilt and their shame were truly apparent on their faces. They wanted to tell the story, to lift the burden of guilt. Being in the film was a way for them to do it. What effect did those dozens of hours of interviews have on you? The experience was incredibly hopeful for me even though it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through—to listen, and then listen again and again through the editing process, to these stories of massacres and deaths, and to
hear on the other end the way the stories turn out. The way the women were, over time, able to forgive, humbled me. I thought I was a good Christian and understood God, but when I went to Rwanda, came back, and meditated on the idea of radical forgiveness, I realized my view of God was very small. Those women helped me to search out my own heart: Could I forgive? What was your understanding of the gospel before you went through this experience? I had the basic idea of Jesus, the Son of God, dying for the sins of the world, atoning for them, and reconciling us to God through His death. I understood
it on an intellectual level. I always cried out to God to reveal Himself to me more and more. I think He did that for me through this trip to Rwanda. Ever since then I have not doubted the reality of God and the gospel. Because, humanly speaking, what you saw could not have happened apart from God? Yeah. I saw a foretaste of what will happen one day when all things are fully reconciled. The Bible likes to take the smallest, least likely characters and make them examples. I see that happening in Rwanda. In you’re editing your film, and your ex-fiancée
comes back into your life. I kept wondering, “OK, Lord, if this is the story You want me to tell about radical forgiveness ... how is this going to play out in my life?” I worried that something horrific was going to happen … like my mom was going to be killed and I would have to forgive. But God was much more merciful. Tommy called out of the blue. We hadn’t spoken in two years. He asked if I was married. I said no. He said, “I still love you and would love to come visit you.” And then ... He came to visit. He told me he wanted to marry me for sure, but he wanted to give me space to think about it, so I should let him know when I was ready because then he would propose. About six months later I gave him the OK. He proposed. We were married about three months after that. You plan to have a new film out next year, Mama Rwanda. It’s about two women. One is a very poor village mom. She is starting an association of perpetrators and survivors and teaching them how to save cents a week in a joint bank account that they will use to get a piece of land where they will farm together. I contrast her with a city mom, a widow who is an up-and-coming rising star of entrepreneurship in the country. It’s an intimate portrait of these two women’s lives. A A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 2
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3/20/12 11:24 AM
Reviews > Music
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T P J has long been an annual feature of New York’s Village Voice newspaper. Determined by critics according to a strict rating system, the results often make more sense of the zeitgeist than the Grammys and Billboard, which by their very natures overemphasize the ephemeral. Of course, skewing young, liberal, and self-consciously hip as Pazz & Jop’s critics do, the poll has its limitations. But as it’s the young, liberal, and selfconsciously hip who increasingly wag the socio-political dog, knowing what music speaks to and for them is essential for anyone intent on holding that dog still long enough for those wagging it to grow up. The Pazz & Jop has just been published, and the top-five albums are particularly revealing. Three restless, musically fascinating women (PJ Harvey, tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus, all four members of Wild Flag), a predictably tasteless hip-hop tag team (Jay-Z, Kanye West), and a cantankerous white man old enough to be the father of them all (Tom Waits) collude to shove the graceful and modest Adele, who by any other measure defines the pop-cultural moment, down to No. . What can such results mean?
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For one thing, aural chaos is more in style than ever. In Waits’ Bad As Me (ANTI-, No. ), Harvey’s Let England Shake (Vagrant, No. ), and tUnEyArDs’ whokill (AD, No. ), genres collide, break, and recombine across time (Waits), space (tUnE-yArDs), or both (Harvey). Jay-Z and West’s Watch the Throne (Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation), meanwhile, continues hiphop’s tradition of mashing together sounds both found and original. And Wild Flag’s Wild Flag (Merge) strips catchy, Go-Go’s-style rock to its nofrills, garage-punk essence. But there’s philosophical chaos too. “My country, ’tis of thee, / Sweet land of liberty,” sings Merrill Garbus of America in whokill’s opening track. “How come I cannot see my future within your arms?” And although Harvey pledges “never-failing love” to her homeland in the song “England,” she also accuses that country’s wartorn history of “leav[ing] a taste, / a bitter one” in her mouth and declares, “I cannot go on as I am.” When neither America nor England is good enough for a woman, she has practically ruled out the entire Western world, leaving mainly poor, Communist, or Muslim countries in
BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
which to find her terrestrial freedom and peace. Given Garbus’ love of World Music rhythms and percussion, she might be willing to settle. Harvey, however, even at , might want to consider a career as an astronaut. Different kinds of claustrophobia haunt Pazz & Jop’s other three poll toppers. Waits’ could pass for stifled, Kerouac-ian wanderlust. (“I’m going away,” he repeats in “Face to the Highway”). Wild Flag and the rappers, on the other hand, narrow their worlds to romantic, or at least emotionally heated, relationships. Wild Flag’s concerns are expressed in language so generic that their insularity is almost beside the point. Jay-Z and West, on the other hand, express theirs in what has long been hip-hop’s default patois: a vulgarity-laced flow of boasts and threats so constricted it barely qualifies as speech, let alone the free kind. Even in the song they sing to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (“Made in America”), they can’t resist gutter slang. “The streets raised me,” raps Jay-Z. “So pardon my bad manners.” He’s as well. Apparently, the fad of perpetual— and perpetuating—adolescence is, like rock ’n’ roll itself, here to stay. A
TUNE-YARDS: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES • PJ HARVEY: ELMA OKIC/REX FEATURES/AP • JAY-Z & WEST: LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS/LANDOV • WILD FLAG: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES • WAITS : MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES
Aural and philosophical chaos reign in the latest Pazz & Jop music poll
Email: aorteza@worldmag.com
3/22/12 10:56 AM
HANDOUT
New York’s state of mind
NOTABLE CDs
Five new or recent pop-rock CDs > reviewed by
The Lion’s Roar First Aid Kit “Emmylou,” this Swedish folk duo’s latest single, is such an obvious masterpiece that the quality of the rest of the album almost doesn’t matter— even someone unfamiliar with the HarrisParsons, Carter-Cash romances about which Klara and Johanna Söderberg indirectly sing will relish the sisters’ voices. Elsewhere, they dismantle “Emmylou” for parts and reassemble them in various combinations to impressive if not always stunning effect. Prerequisites for relishing the title cut: unfamiliarity with Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” and indifference to God’s name used as an intensifier.
Wrecking Ball Bruce Springsteen Forget that Springsteen is a limousine liberal who rocks the vote toward politicians who raise taxes on the very “common man” he claims to represent, and you might think this album’s first single, “We Take Care of Our Own,” is a call to compassionate conservatism. Remember, and you realize it’s a big-government anthem. Sure he mentions Jesus in “Jack of All Trades” and “Rocky Ground” and alludes to Him in “We Are Alive.” He still doesn’t know the difference between rendering unto Caesar and rendering unto God.
With Love Rosie Thomas
HANDOUT
TUNE-YARDS: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES • PJ HARVEY: ELMA OKIC/REX FEATURES/AP • JAY-Z & WEST: LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS/LANDOV • WILD FLAG: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES • WAITS : MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES
Bat Chain Puller Captain Beefheart Bat Chain Puller is the twisted amalgam of blues, beat poetry, free jazz, and skronk that Captain Beefheart would’ve released in if legal conundrums hadn’t forced him to release Shiny Beast (Bat (Bat Chain Puller) Puller in instead. Thank Frank Zappa’s widow for finally releasing it from litigation limbo. It would’ve gone down huge as a countercultural bicentennial soundtrack. Then thank Beefheart for seizing the opportunity to improve it by composing “Tropical Hot Dog Night” and “When I See Mommy I Feel Like a Mummy” in its wake.
Six years after her last album unless her Christmas album counts, Thomas still drops just enough Christian breadcrumbs (“Like Wildflowers,” “Really Long Year”) to let those seeking for a home in the woods know that they too can find their way. Mainly, though, she has refined her gifts as a singer-songwriter to where even those happy with where they are can simply bask in the beauty of her craft. And if you enjoy “Over the Moon,” wait till you hear what she does with “Over the Rainbow.” See all our reviews at WORLDmag.com/music
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SPOTLIGHT Max Bemis has described himself as an “overly analytical and neurotic Jewish guy with almost no set political beliefs” and an “ADD-infected, clumsy, and rightbrain-centric dolt of a man.” And on Dear, the latest album Anarchy, My Dear by his band, Say Anything, he proves it. Or, rather, careening within post-punk parameters of his own devising, he proves it again, having already given evidence on previous albums that he contains self-contradictory multitudes. On ’s Say Anything he was “down with J.C.” This time he has “Randy Newman in [his] head” (“Night’s Song”), an influence that sharpens his humor (“Don’t want to hear about how the latest Rihanna single / Is a post-modern masterpiece”), his pop sense (“So Good” and “Overbiter” could qualify for Now That’s What I Call Music), Music and his misanthropy (“The Stephen Hawking”). If anyone ever makes Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary into a musical, Bemis clearly deserves a shot at scoring it.
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3/22/12 10:58 AM
Mindy Belz
Losing Afghanistan
When the only strategy is the exit strategy, chaos and distrust mount
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“The only strategy anyone knows ONLY STRATEGY: U.S. soldiers leave about now is the exit strategy.” Afghanistan in . When Obama moved Gen. David Petraeus from commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to head the CIA last year (and put a lifelong politician in charge of the Defense Department), in the minds of many he turned the war into a black ops operation—with the CIA stepping up unmanned and unpopular drone attacks—and left military strategy unclear, or subject to political expediency, until it was time to go home. This feeds handily into the Taliban strategy. The Taliban can’t defeat U.S. forces by overwhelming them; it succeeds only by undermining public support for the war, and by building Afghan distrust of Americans. This is part of the unraveling we now see: Instead of taking ownership for the mission, discovering and doing what is necessary to win, most U.S. military personnel have been left with one command, echoed from family and friends to the White House: “Just come home safe.” Ironically that’s an unsafe strategy, exposing forces to more attack, creating uncertainty and distrust instead of winning hearts and minds. It risks not only an already significant U.S. stake in the future of Afghanistan, not only the rise of Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan—but it risks the very ability of our country to fight any war in the future. We may do “operations” but we are learning that we are too layered up to do actual war: cumbersome rules of engagement on top of State Department directives under unclear strategies involving lukewarm coalition partners. It’s a brew to indemnify our forces for losses more than to equip them to win. Our future allies—and enemies—are taking notes. A
MUSADEQ SADEQ/AP
W it has been a tough month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The Feb. burning of Qurans at Bagram Air Base sparked unrest that had only begun to subside when U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales left his post in Kandahar Province on March , allegedly shooting and killing Afghan villagers, including nine children. Equally troubling but less reported have been multiple “green on blue” attacks, in which at least six U.S. military personnel and advisers have been killed by Afghan security forces since February. Two of those attacks took place inside the Interior Ministry in Kabul, suggesting that Taliban infiltration of U.S.-trained Afghan forces is capable of reaching the highest levels. Reaction to these episodes is predictable, as most Americans are war weary and see this kind of unraveling of morale and trust as more evidence that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan has passed its expiration date. It’s coming not only from the anti-war left but also the populist right. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich probably spoke for many frustrated Americans when he said that if Afghan President Hamid Karzai didn’t feel like apologizing for the riots and retaliation after the Quran burnings, “then we should say goodbye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.” The “time to go home” reflex may feel good, but it defies the logic of our enterprise in Afghanistan and the sacrifice of our military and civilian personnel engaged there. What we have faced since the - resurgence of the Taliban is a deadly force arrayed over difficult terrain in small numbers. Most U.S. military experts will tell you that for only a few months of - did we have U.S. forces sufficient to fight that kind of war: when the surge ordered by President Barack Obama reached its peak and before he began unexpected—and in my opinion reckless—drawdowns ahead of an expected withdrawal of all U.S. forces in . At that peak, U.S. military operations brought success, securing Kandahar and Helmand provinces, stabilizing Kabul and other key areas of the country, training Afghan forces, and allowing Afghans (also war weary) to return to their homes and begin to trust the anti-Talibans. But many of the obstacles to our winning in Afghanistan since that time have been of our own making. As officers in NATO headquarters in Kabul told me last fall,
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Justin Masterson (left) and Jeremy Affeldt
FINDING the S As a new season begins, two upfront evangelical pitchers
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e STRIKE ZONE
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by MARVIN OLASKY in GOODYEAR and SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 2
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FAMILY: HANDOUT; COURTESY OF BETHEL COLLEGE MASTERSON & JIMENEZ: DAMIAN STROHMEYER/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES
LAYNE MURDOCH JR./MLBPA/GETTY IMAGES • PREVIOUS SPREAD: TONY GUTIERREZ/AP (MASTERSON); DUANE BURLESON/AP (AFFELDT)
- has been an extraordinary period for high-profile Christians in sports, one that raises the question: What’s next? It started with Tim Tebow’s run of last-minute Denver Bronco victories, and kids all over the country kneeling— “Tebowing”—in imitation of their hero. It continued with Jeremy Lin’s out-of-nowhere ascendency to New York Knicks point-guard brilliance, the first Asian-American to be such a hit, and in a media market that magnified “Linsanity.” Neither Tebow nor Lin shied away from testifying to their faith in Christ when opportunities arose. Will a young evangelical baseball player similarly emerge this year? It’s harder, because baseball coverage is traditionally more localized than national, and with games rather than football’s , the spotlight on particular moments during the regular season isn’t that intense. But here’s one nominee for a baseball breakout star: Justin Masterson, who celebrated his th birthday on March . Masterson is a PK—preacher’s kid—starting his fifth major league season. He is scheduled to be Cleveland’s opening day pitcher on April , after compiling last year a . earned run average with wins. (That would have been or more with better hitting support, Cleveland sportswriters say.) He throws fastballs that can reach mph, heavy-drop sinkers (some say that’s his best pitch) that range from to mph, and sliders or change-ups that come in at to mph. Masterson, born in Jamaica where his dad was a seminary dean, grew up in the Midwest as his father pastored churches in Indiana and Ohio. The pitcher says PKs either follow their dads or become “crazy rebels.” Masterson did a couple of mildly crazy things as a teenager— police arrested him and a friend for stealing a street sign, and he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to work off a community service sentence—but he says he realized when young that he is a sinner and “needs Jesus.” In high school Masterson shaved his head as part of a Halloween costume—he was Mr. Clean—and kept the bald look to top off what is now a -foot--inch, -pound frame. He also read a WORLD cover story (Aug. , ) on Atlanta pitcher John Smoltz, who said he loved playing but also felt called to start a Christian school: The following year Masterson told a Dayton Daily News sportswriter, “My father is a pastor, and I want to spread God’s word too. If I make it in professional baseball, what better stage is there?” After playing baseball for two years at Bethel, a small Christian college in Indiana, Masterson transferred to San Diego State, coached by Hall-of-Famer Tony Gwynn. Then came minor league stints and a major league call-up in . Along the way some teammates nicknamed him “Jesus … because they’d go to a bar or a party and I’d go hang out with them, but not drink. They thought it interesting, with some of the other Christians they had encountered, that I’d still be willing to hang out with them and make sure they didn’t kill themselves. … I told them, ‘I’m not Jesus, but if you’re thinking about Him, that’s OK.’” In the minor leagues Masterson gained another nickname, “The Shepherd,” because he became known for paying attention
LAYNE MURDOCH JR./MLBPA/GETTY IMAGES • PREVIOUS SPREAD: TONY GUTIERREZ/AP (MASTERSON); DUANE BURLESON/AP (AFFELDT)
FAMILY: HANDOUT; COURTESY OF BETHEL COLLEGE MASTERSON & JIMENEZ: DAMIAN STROHMEYER/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES
to lonely and homesick Latin American players: “They stick with each other because they don’t really know English that well. I know enough Spanish to make a fool of myself, and once you do that they feel more confident to make fools of themselves when trying to speak English. … It blossomed into some fun relationships and the opportunity to hang out with them and try to get them to chapel or talk to them about God.” Masterson passed up the sexual opportunities that present themselves to college and professional THE SHEPHERD: Masterson with his athletes: Asked whether wife Meryl and girls were throwing themdaughter Eden Joy; selves at him, he laughed with Ubaldo Jimenez and responded, “They might before a game against the Boston Red Sox. try to, but girls scare me.”
don’t see them walk back to the dugout doing the same thing: “Thank you for the strikeout.” My prayer always before the game is that whether I give up five homeruns or have a perfect game, I’ll show Christ. … What the outcome is, I don’t know. … Maybe that man hit a home run off me today Masterson married four years ago a woman he met at Bethel: because God was trying to work in his life. Or maybe I just He and Meryl have a -year-old, Eden Joy, “and hope to fill the made a bad pitch.” world with a whole bunch of Many baseball players little ones.” Many major have manic-depressive league players have told me swings depending on how that it’s hard to turn down their last game went, but readily available sex on the Meryl Masterson speaks road, but Masterson says, “I Masterson said his dad “set a great example for me, as did about how even-tempered could not live with myself to my mother, of how to love Christ and love others.” her husband is, and he says even think about the idea of I called Masterson’s father to ask about bringing up Justin, the secret is faith that “Christ cheating on my wife.” who was “not a perfect child, but good.” The primary parentcontrols it all.” Trusting in Some pitchers have their ing key, Mark Masterson said, was “trusting God.” Second God’s sovereignty, Masterson own prosperity gospel— came involvement—playing catch, serving as an assistant says, does not make him less praise God from whom all coach—without making demands: no special traveling teams competitive: “Watch me strikeouts flow, ignore Him at with extended seasons, just regular baseball. (Justin play.” Once, when told he was other times—and Masterson Masterson recalled, “It was never the ‘you need to do this.’ It too nice to hit a batter crowdwants none of it: “In baseball was, ‘you enjoy it, let’s do it.’”) ing the plate, he replied, “‘I’ll you see a lot of guys who get Dad and boy both told me about one favorite memory, a hit the first guy of the game,’ a base hit and point up that Bethel College tournament game. Bethel trailed -. Justin and I did—with a fastball they’re giving glory to Christ. was at bat with a man on. Mark yelled encouragement from right in the gut. … Whether I Then they strike out and you the stands. Justin replied, “This one’s for you, Dad”—and he hit a game-winning homerun. Justin: “It was the most incredible experience—just having my dad there and screaming it out and being able to do it at that moment. … It has been a blessing to be able to play the game of baseball, and now I get paid to do it.” —M.O. A P R I L 7 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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the player best-positioned to become baseball’s breakout Tebow or Lin, but every team has Christians who don’t hide their faith. For example, Jeremy Affeldt of the San Francisco Giants writes weekly posts for his personal blog on topics such as “Living like Jesus,” discipleship, and social justice: He wrote recently about the importance of both clean water and indestructible soccer balls in poor countries, and also noted that the greatest injustice anyone could experience is not knowing who Jesus is. Affeldt, , went to Northwest Christian School in Spokane, then headed to Florida for minor league ball: “That’s when I took myself to church and read the Bible on my own.” In recent years he has been reading books by Christian authors including New York pastor Tim Keller: “The Reason for God is pretty awesome. I really enjoyed the book. I pass it out.” (See “Book of the Year,” June , .) Affeldt has seemed headed for stardom several times during his decade-long major league career, but each time a physical ailment— blisters, a partially torn rib-cage muscle, a groin injury—sidelined the left-handed relief pitcher: “I went through times when I was quitting this game because I failed so much. … I was wondering if I should be doing this for a living. … During those times I truly was leaning a lot on God. … So now when I’m dealing with some young guys who are going bad, I have stories to tell. If I was always LEANING ON GOD: succeeding, then I would have no stories.” Affeldt celebrates Now, Affeldt has a tattoo on his with his son Walker forearm that proclaims “Solus Christus,” after the Giants Christ alone. He got it on Mother’s Day won against the last year because his wife, Larisa, wanted Texas Rangers.
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an unsteady pitcher” to a prime-time starter. This year he’ll begin having the benefits and pressures of major league wealth, as his salary jumps from , in to . million for . Sportswriters will be watching carefully to see if success goes to his head.
They do say Masterson is well-regarded by his teammates, in part because of efforts like one last year that aided utility infielder Jack Hannahan, who was batting only .. The Indians were in Boston when Hannahan’s wife went into labor, two months prematurely. The only way for Hannahan to get to the hospital in time was by private jet—at a cost of at least , that Hannahan did not have. Masterson learned about the problem and talked with teammates: Together they came up with the money. Hannahan flew to Cleveland and rushed to the hospital. Fifteen minutes later his wife gave birth.
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win or lose I’m going to put it all on the line and know that whatever happens, I still have Christ in my life.” Masterson admitted that he is not immune to praying, “Lord, I could really use a strikeout right here”—but adds, “If He doesn’t give it me, I’m not like, ‘Oh, God, why have you forsaken me?’” He says his usual response is, “I could have made a better pitch.” He tries to communicate that attitude to others, but realizes he has a lot to learn: During the off-season he attends East st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, “a good Bible-believing church.” Sportswriters, often a cynical bunch, will be looking for evidence that Christ doesn’t make a difference. One Cleveland sportswriter, Jodie Valade, wrote last August, “It might be nice, perhaps, if one day Justin Masterson really exploded, really expressed the emotions churning beneath that perpetually cheerful exterior. … If he spouted off the bitterness everyone knows must be simmering somewhere deep down, if he’d stop being so gosh-darn merry and upbeat about everything tossed his way.” Valade did admit that Masterson’s “perpetual optimism” and “unflappable demeanor” have “helped him progress from
ELSA/GETTY IMAGES
AFFELDT: SCOTT ROVAK/MLBPA/GETTY IMAGES • SMOLTZ: JEFF ROBERSON/AP • EASLER: NATI HARNIK/AP • REYNOLDS: AP • SCHILLING: STEVEN SENNE/AP • VAN SLYKE: TONY DEJAK/AP
Jeremy Affeldt
a tattoo but she wanted him “to do it first, so I said, ‘OK, I’m a big church history guy and the five solas of church history are very important to me.’” (The Protestant Reformation emphasized five solas—living by Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, glory to God alone.) Larisa went for an “Eternity” tattoo on her wrist because during the baseball season her husband is on the road half the time: When she’s caring alone for their two small children, she wants a reminder of
the long-range perspective. (A third child is due in September.) I asked Affeldt how he gets along with San Francisco’s powerful gay contingent. Affeldt’s goal is to “love them as my neighbor. Then hopefully in my love for them they will have a situation where they can find Jesus.” He’s “gotten to know a few people from the community, and they are in a lot of pain,” in part because they “feel judged.” He said homosexuality is a sin but he doesn’t lead with that fact. A
FIVE FAVORITE EVANGELICAL INTERVIEWEES Outfielder Andy Van Slyke was the first Christian major leaguer I interviewed two decades ago. The first two players up for the Los Angeles Dodgers in a March Tempe training game this year were Tony Gwynn Jr. and Jerry Hairston Jr., both sons of major leaguers, but then came Scott Van Slyke, one of Andy’s four children. That brought back memories. On average, Christians in baseball are not more epistemologically articulate than the general populace—many belong to the “big man upstairs” school of theology—but some have thought through their faith and its implication. Here are comments from five who impressed me: D JOHN SMOLTZ on why Christian schools are important—“Kids need the ability to differentiate between evolution and Christian understanding. … They need the weapons to defend Christianity, to be able to understand and debate the differences between religions, to know what’s happening in the world and how to compete.” E MIKE EASLER, a star hitter who became a Baptist minister and hitting coach—“My job is to mold a guy, teach him to be humble. I pray that God will work on him so he will change not just on the outside but on the inside.” D HAROLD REYNOLDS “Christians who play passively haven’t gone deep enough into Scripture. Biblical meekness has nothing to do with weakness; you’re meek before the Lord by glorifying Him, and that means using all the talent He’s given you, and the only way to do that is by playing hard.” E CURT SCHILLING, who professed Christ in but didn’t talk about the change with reporters and fans until —“I’ve learned that you should never hide your faith. I wasted seven years. People didn’t know.” D ANDY VAN SLYKE “Before I became a Christian my baseball life was such a roller coaster—good days, bad days—that it was wearing me out. … But God doesn’t save us because of our performance, and whether it’s a good performance or a bad performance it’s not going to threaten our relationship with God. That’s a comforting thing to know.”
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Parents are reluctant to hear it, but college may no longer offer the best path of opportunity for a great many young people by joel hannahs in iowa & illinois
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he conventional wisdom says a 21-year-old should have a college degree to have the best shot at landing a job in a tough job market. But today’s unemployment landscape is hardly conventional. It may be that your highschool classmate who tinkered in the garage and became a mechanic might have been on to something. The sweet spot in a sour jobs market can be found where targeted education meets grime on the fingers. The marketplace’s natural balance of supply and demand is at work, bringing back an old alternative to college: learning a trade. Skilled trade workers are in demand, and that demand is set to rise. Testifying before the U.S. Senate last year, Mike Rowe—the rugged host of television’s Dirty Jobs—said nearly a half million trade jobs are out there for the taking across the United States. That sets up a huge dichotomy in a struggling economy: People can’t find jobs, and yet, good jobs can’t find qualified people. With national unemployment at 8.3 percent, these are unfilled jobs that demand trade skills and certification, not a liberal arts education. As Rowe said, “We’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.” Despite reminders about other avenues to a good living, many highschool students and their parents still TrisTAn sAvATier/geTTy imAges
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tend toward the college option, no matter the student’s aptitude. Mary Gibb has been at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, for 14 years, and heads up the counseling department. In this relatively affluent area, she sees many students ignoring tech courses, and she frets that students who don’t get a hands-on opportunity to try skills such as electronics might never realize they like the field: “I see the problem getting worse before it gets better.” Aaron Haunhorst, one of the owners of Professional Labor Support in Illinois, says the shortage of skilled labor is no myth, yet most recent highschool graduates are not aware of the possibilities. Haunhorst notes that highly skilled welders of alloyed materials, or top industrial electricians at major manufacturing plants, often clear $100,000-plus yearly incomes. Alicia Martin, CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Illinois, represents 325 non-union employers in the state: She says contractors are steadily looking for and hiring qualified people for needed trades. Her association is in the mix, offering its own certification and apprentice program for a journeyman’s card, and often matching up workers with member contractors. For a trade-minded teen or young adult, it’s a route to steady pay for a lot less time in class and far less tuition cost: “Our program is a bargain,” A p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Beyond the B.A. “Snob Speech” made space for national conversation about education, jobs, and vocation
R
S a national debate on Feb. when he remarked, “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!” Later he added, “Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some have incredible gifts with their hands, making things.” Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute has written extensively about the current educational system’s failure in preparing millions of young people for jobs. He told me, “The B.A. has become a fake credential. … Anything that can undermine the B.A. degree is a good thing.” He wants education to “take the talents of young people and allow those talents to flourish.” Robert Sloan, president of Houston Baptist University, values a liberal arts education but complains that at most colleges the liberal arts have become a proxy for liberal indoctrination. He notes that the words originally meant “the arts of liberty, freedom,” and in that sense the liberal arts are not just those learned at a university: “Construction, studio art, or any trade that leads to human fulfillment, creative expression, and innovation are not only reflective of freedom, they promote freedom.” Santorum acknowledges that for many people a high-school education is no longer enough. “By only percent of jobs will
be open to workers with a high-school diploma,” Santorum said in a written response to my questions. Those who graduate from college tend to do well economically: The Department of Labor says college graduates over the age of have an unemployment rate of . percent, a rate economists consider close to full employment. But only about half of high-school students in the largest U.S. cities graduate on time, and only about half of college freshmen graduate in six years, according to America’s Promise Alliance and the Department of Education. Should we try to get all those left behind to graduate, somehow, from college, or should they have alternatives? Mitt Romney has made economic issues the centerpiece of his campaign: He calls Santorum an “economic lightweight” and counters Santorum’s sound-bites with a -page economic development plan, “Believe in America,” that can be downloaded as an e-book. But the “human capital” section of his economic plan focuses mostly on graduate training in engineering and technology. The high-school and undergraduate education plan on his website emphasizes a “culture of high expectations, accountability for results, and increased parental choice” at the secondary level. He also supports school choice, including an expansion of charter schools, and wants to make college more “available and affordable.” Whoever wins the political argument, the philosophical questions related to vocation and liberty will likely remain. Christian Overman, who has written extensively about vocation, said a Christian worldview brings a vital perspective to this conversation. His own study has led him to advocate apprenticeships and trade schools for many young people. “Apprenticeship programs, for example, have been part of Christian communities for centuries,” he said. “Vocation depends on giftedness, and gifts are usually first discovered in families and local communities.” Overman added: “Martin Luther reminded us that milking a cow or changing a diaper are callings as holy as those of a priest or pastor. All legitimate work is God’s work. If that’s what Santorum was trying to get at, then he’s absolutely right.”
DALE WETZEL/AP • OPPOSITE PAGE: BOB WELLINSKI/MICHIGAN CITY NEWS DISPATCH/AP
HOUSE WORK: Jim Weiler of LaPorte, Ind., sets a roof truss on a home under construction.
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Martin says. “[These skills] are going to be a big need. We are an alternative to college, and we want to get the word out to highschool guidance counselors.” Companies like Professional Labor Support use the ABC training program to supply skilled labor to contractors. Students who complete one of the 130 vocational programs at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) are also in good shape, says Jacki Boldt, student employment specialist: “These students typically have jobs before they graduate.” DMACC’s one- and two-year training programs lead to certifications for various electronics specialties, along with diesel, welding, and tool and die jobs. Placement is often with businesses hiring one or two workers at a time, but major employers like John Deere Co. also come knocking: Graduates with two or more related skill sets are particularly desirable. Growing interest in trade fields is not news to Gary Senff, welding instructor at Central Community College in Columbia, Neb. The college added another welding teacher last year, and added classes two more nights a week to accommodate
DAle Wetzel/Ap • opposite pAge: BoB Wellinski/MichigAn city neWs DispAtch/Ap
GOOD JOB: electrician gary Wurtz working at the north Dakota state penitentiary in Bismarck, n.D.
growing interest. Employers call him “all the time,” he says: “It’s a growing career. I believe the wages are going to go up. People are retiring out, too.” Rowe of Dirty Jobs emphasized that changing of the guard in his congressional testimony: Many “baby boomer” tradesmen are getting set to hang up their tools, and not enough young people are stepping into these trades to replace them. Pointing young people toward a skill set they can enjoy and use to find work is a niche many schools seem unable to fill. In Des Moines, the Freedom for Youth ministry (winner of WORLD’s 2010 award for Effective Compassion) reaches some 200 middle- and high-school youths. “We teach them work skills,” director Mark Nelson emphasizes, in a way that’s “centered on Christ. He has given you gifts and abilities. Let’s see what those are and get after it.” Young people job shadow, visit DMACC vocational classes, and get to work at welding and other tasks. Middle-school kids build “chopper” bicycles and take them home, with the creative process of making a bike opening their eyes. They begin to learn what Nelson emphasizes: “God never said one job was better than the other.” A
“[These skills]
are going to be a big need. We are an alternative to college, and we want to get the word out to high-school guidance counselors.” Alicia Martin, CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors of Illinois
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Alabama church leaders say the state’s tough new immigration law is hostile to all Hispanics and creates obstacles to ministry by EMILY BELZ in Birmingham, Ala. Pablo Moscoso is the pastor of Iglesia Agape, an
evangelical Hispanic church in Hoover, Ala., where four families, three of whom were in the United States illegally, have left the small church since a new state immigration law went into effect last September. Moscoso tells the remaining members of his congregation to cooperate with police, who he said are just doing their jobs. “Our position is to take care of their lives,” Moscoso said. “I have to go visit them in jail. They are brothers in Christ.” The law the Alabama legislature passed last June, known as HB , is widely regarded as the strictest immigration law in the country, going steps beyond the more famous Arizona law and other recent imitators. Under the Alabama law, anyone who knowingly “harbors,” “transports,” or enters into contracts with undocumented immigrants can be held liable. It prohibits illegal immigrants from using local or state public services. It requires businesses to check employees’ status and schools to check enrolling students’ status. Police officers may check immigration status if they have a suspicion that an individual is illegal. After courts struck down portions of the bill, the Republican leaders in the legislature have said they plan to introduce legislation soon to tweak it further, but they promised to keep the main elements. The law is popular in Alabama but diverse church leaders—Reformed Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and Catholics—are bothered by the hostile atmosphere it has created toward all Hispanics, including those who are in the state legally and who tend to make up the state’s immigrant population (although the Alabama police memorably arrested a visiting German
executive from Mercedes-Benz soon after the law passed because he didn’t have his immigration papers with him). Church ministries say the law has driven many Hispanics from the state (the law was, after all, intended to encourage self-deportation), and many of those who stayed are reluctant to leave their homes for fear of being questioned. The pastors say they are especially sensitive about the law because of the state’s racial history. And some, who believe the Alabama law is rightly discouraging illegal immigration, resent the way the law recruits average citizens to be enforcers, requiring them to check immigration status in various aspects of everyday life.
Carlos Gomez, , is a sprightly Puerto Rican
pastor who moved to Alabama during the civil-rights movement and now pastors the Hispanic congregation at First Baptist Church of Center Point, a suburb of Birmingham. He doesn’t ask his congregants’ status, but he guesses half of his congregation is undocumented. Many families left the congregation after the law went into effect. Hispanic families are so close-knit, he said, that even HOSTILE if a family is legal, if an aunt were ATMOSPHERE: living in Alabama illegally, the Opponents of Alabama’s whole family would leave the state immigration law for her sake. gather for a rally Hispanic pastors say some of their outside the churches have lost as much as half of statehouse in Montgomery. their congregations. They have had trouble finding churches that will DAVE MARTIN/AP
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SOURCE: NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES
Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has loudly urged federal immigration reform, but he said he isn’t worried that churches would be prosecuted for their ministry under the Alabama law: “God help any government that tries to prosecute that.” But the average Alabaman is at least more cautious now. Laura Wolfe, an ESL teacher at a public elementary school in Birmingham, wondered whether she would face consequences for driving the Hispanic mother of one of her students to church. “Are you supposed to ask them before they get in the car, ‘Are you a U.S. citizen?’” she said. After the law passed, the mothers of many of her students were scared, she said, and they would come to her after school to help decorate her classroom and ask questions about the law. One of the mothers, who is undocumented, went to the county health department when her son was sick and the department said they couldn’t see him because of the law, even though the mother had money to pay. “So if they’re not getting healthcare from the health department, they’re going to the emergency room,” Wolfe said. Wolfe hasn’t lost many students due to the law, but the families she knows are more careful about leaving their homes. “It’s illegal to cross the border, it is, but we’ve let them in. They’re here,” Wolfe said. “My greatest fear is they’ll become part of the entitlement society.” Wolfe along with a half dozen people from her church, Altadena Valley Presbyterian, spent several years teaching English to parents in a trailer park where many of them live, and eventually in a church gym across the street.
SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
EXODUS: Praxedis rent space to them out of fear that those Teran, , is packing congregations might be charged with her trailer in Foley, “harboring” illegals. One church has Ala., and moving to had to move twice in the last year over Texas. She and her husband will leave those fears. Hispanic pastors have had behind several U.S.trouble convincing their parishioners to born grandchildren. get official marriage licenses, the one type of license undocumented immigrants are allowed to apply for under the new law. When they do, they find state officials aren’t educated on the law, either, because some refuse to grant marriage licenses, pastors say. The changes in Alabama are sending Hispanics to other states. Just over the border in Tennessee, La Paz Chattanooga, a nonprofit that offers various aid to Hispanics, has seen its client list from Alabama grow, according to the group’s director. The Alabama law’s provision against harboring or transporting undocumented immigrants, as well as the provision against contracts with illegals, worried some ministries that work with and provide housing for undocumented immigrants. The Catholic Church, along with the local Methodist and Episcopal bishops, filed a lawsuit in August against the state, arguing that the law could hold them liable for carrying out acts of mercy. A federal judge denied the churches’ challenge to the contract provision because they hadn’t suffered injury yet and thus lacked standing. But in ruling on a separate lawsuit from the Justice Department, the judge threw out the provision against harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants. Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist
But this is all anecdotal. The fate of many of these state laws (see below) rests in the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear the Justice Department’s case against the Arizona immigration law on April . The th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently heard arguments against Alabama’s law, temporarily blocked two sections of the law from going into effect but said it would withhold judgment on the state law until the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Arizona’s law. Alabama had an estimated , illegal immigrants in according to the Pew Hispanic Center, but the state had not experienced the acute immigrant burdens and drug trafficking of border states. Legislators said the immigration bill would be one way to reduce unemployment. And the state’s
Growth in illegal immigrants, - 3 % or less 3 .-%
3 .-%
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3
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unemployment rate has gone down over a point since the law passed, but economists and legislators debate the reason for the drop. Alabama’s labor force also has shrunk by about , from January to January , according the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations’ seasonally adjusted numbers, meaning the unemployment rate has gone down in part because people have quit looking for jobs. Farmers say they cannot find enough U.S. citizens to do the physical work of picking tomatoes or onions at the low wages they offer. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Land explains that the United States has put a “No Trespassing” sign at the border right next to a “Help Wanted” sign: “You can’t have the government ignore its own law for years without undermining the respect for the rule of law.” The Southern Baptist Convention at its meeting last year in Phoenix passed a resolution—with about percent of the vote—calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The resolution called on the U.S. government to secure its borders and hold businesses accountable for hiring practices, but also issued a “call on our churches to be the presence of Christ, in both proclamation and ministry, to all persons, regardless of country of origin or immigration status,” rejecting “bigotry or harassment against any persons.” The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) passed a similar resolution in that calls for border security and a path to citizenship for upstanding undocumented immigrants as long as they pay some kind of fine or penalty. World Relief, the relief arm of the NAE, has recently begun sending out two U.S. church liaisons, Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang, to address immigration on Christian college campuses and churches, including in Alabama. “We’re paying a lot of attention to these bills,” said Soerens. He finds it “disturbing” that such a law would pass in a state that is in the heart of the Bible Belt. “There’s an attitude, ‘They’re not going to enforce this against pastors,’” he said. “They shouldn’t be passing laws in the first place that make pastors fearful of doing ministry.”
SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
SOURCE: NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES
In February about black, white, and Hispanic pastors
In process: Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia introduced omnibus enforcement bills this year containing provisions such as requiring law enforcement to verify immigration status during a lawful stop, making it a state crime to fail to carry a federal immigration registration document, and creating penalties for transporting illegal immigrants. Tennessee’s bills have been delayed until after the budget. Alabama introduced bills to amend or repeal HB .
from Reformed Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and Pentecostal denominations met at Samford University, the red-brick Southern Baptist college in Birmingham, to talk over the new immigration provisions. When one of the organizers asked who in the room supported the law, only a few raised their hands. But toward the end of the day-long gathering, one woman leaned over to me and almost whispered, “Talk to him.” She pointed to John Killian, pastor of Maytown Baptist Church and the vice president of the Alabama state board of missions for the Southern Baptists. “He feels the way a lot of people feel,” she said, before slipping out of the room. Killian was ready to share his feelings outside in the relative balminess of a February evening in Alabama. In the room with the other pastors, “I was either Daniel in the lion’s den or a fly in the ointment, depending on your perspective.” He supports the law because he sees the government’s role as that of an enforcer. “They called it a hate law. … It’s not a racial issue,” he said. “Should I treat an illegal immigrant right? Absolutely. … But that doesn’t mean [they] don’t pay the consequences of the law.” Ideas like those proposed by A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 2
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“THERE NEEDS TO BE CHARITY”: Hispanics in Birmingham protest Alabama’s new law cracking down on illegal immigration.
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JAY REEVES/AP
Land’s commission and others—a “Marshall Plan” for Mexico, a national identity card, and the like—Killian waved off as just more government: “I wanna know, how you gonna pay for it?” In Washington, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which examines how the church can biblically interact with public policy, is preparing a mailing of “The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible” by Trinity International University professor James Hoffmeier. Copies of the book will go out to Southern Baptist clergy in Alabama with a cover letter from Killian. He writes, “Various denominational leaders have challenged the compassion of the [Alabama] bill, stating that Christian conscience demands a policy that would not wish to discourage massive illegal immigration into our state. Frankly I am proud that our Alabama Baptist leaders did not jump on the bandwagon criticizing HB . … I do NOT believe that a pro-open borders policy is consistent with biblical principles.” Land said the state convention had asked the national convention leaders to get involved on previous state legislature issues, like fighting the state lottery. But in the immigration debate, the Alabama churches never asked national leaders for help. Thomas Ackerman, the vicar over the Hispanic ministry at Prince of Peace Catholic Parish, has delivered several homilies to his congregation that mention immigration, on “the attitude we should have in approaching it, not so much the politics,” he said. “There needs to be charity.” He personally opposes the law but described his parish as “pretty conservative. … We’re not as conservative as other parishes in Alabama, but—we’re in Alabama.” Prince of Peace is a sizeable church with an attached school in
Hoover, Ala., a Birmingham suburb that has new blacktop roads and new strip malls filled with new cars. The church has about , families, as well as to Hispanics at an afternoon Mass every Sunday. On a Friday at the school down the hall from the church, classes changed and kids came pouring out of their Spanish class. The kids all greeted Ackerman, who looks like the cool adult on campus, excitedly in the hallway. Some of the children from Hispanic families in the church go to the school, but “cost is a big problem,” Ackerman said. A sign outside the Prince of Peace sanctuary said “No food or drink,” with a Spanish translation below it, and Spanish and English literature was sprawled out on tables. The church hosts ESL classes, medical screenings, and parenting courses. Since the law passed, Hispanic attendance at events at Prince of Peace during the week has dropped off, but the Sunday Mass has burgeoned. “People are worried so they’re turning to God,” explained Ackerman. Nine miles to the northeast, Briarwood Presbyterian Church, a Birmingham congregation with about , members, has planted a Hispanic church. Briarwood’s leaders heard enough rumblings after the immigration law passed that they feared it would interfere with the church’s ministry, so they along with the church’s legal counsel met with state officials. Senior pastor Harry Reeder said he told officials, “My job is a pastor, your job is to take care of the state. We’re not going to be checking citizenship papers for ministry. … Do you have a problem with that?” He said the state officials assured him that the state would not interfere in the church’s work, and so far that has held true. “I don’t know of a single instance where we’ve been stopped from anything. … I haven’t seen the state come in and look over our shoulder or make us their enforcement agency,” he said. The law “has affected the number of Hispanics in the state for us to reach,” Reeder said, but the Hispanic ministry is growing. World Relief’s Soerens concurred. “We’re seeing the church grow really dramatically in immigrant communities. … That doesn’t mean this is an easy issue, it means we can’t say, ‘This is not my problem.’” A Email: ebelz@worldmag.com
3/20/12 10:10 PM
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Christian Leadership to Change the World
3/20/12 11:28 AM
UGANDANS QUESTION KONY 2012 VIDEO FOR OPENING OLD WOUNDS AND SOLICITING TOO LITTLE HELP TOO LATE
Viral crusaders by E S in Kampala, Uganda
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Ugandans, but Oliam questioned the operations of Invisible Children, which he said has produced films about the same war. As pressure and controversy over the rampantly popular video mounted, Russell succumbed: He was detained in what authorities called a “psychiatric hold” after an alleged breakdown at a San Diego intersection near his home on March . The -year-old director, only weeks before a Facebook celebrity, “was detained after indecent exposure, vandalism (pounding on cars with his fists) and alleged public intoxication,” reported Reuters, noting that his antics had been caught on an also viral video. But none of that changed reality for victims of the Kony insurgency, like Jimmy Okello, who hails from Gulu district; he lived in an internally displaced camp between and , and now works in Kampala as a copy desk editor
K may go down as the most viral video in history—with million views on YouTube and other social websites in the first six days after its release—but popular Ugandan columnist Timothy Kalyegira refers to the film’s makers as “Western backpackers.” ¶ While the -minute film shot by Jason Russell, cofounder of U.S.-based nonprofit Invisible Children, continued its romp in America, Africans quickly viewed with dismay its portrayal of the reclusive rebel leader Joseph Kony in Uganda—now six years after he fled the country for neighboring Congo. Anthony Oliam, a social worker born in Eastern Uganda, captures the suspicion of some: “That documentary is simply misleading the world. Kony is no longer a threat to Uganda. I don’t want to judge the makers of the film, but if they had a motive with financial ends, I regret that. Their efforts should have focused on the rehabilitation [of northern Uganda]. Instead, this documentary is actually too late.” Joseph Kony launched the Lord’s Resistance Army years ago allegedly to topple the Ugandan government and install the Ten Commandments as the rule of the country. Many in the LRA’s early leadership were leftover fighters from previous Ugandan wars, including those who served under notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Over the years the group became known for indiscriminate killing and raids, including the kidnapping of children and other locals. By the LRA had abducted at least , children ages - and forced them to serve in its militias. In the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Kony and four deputies for crimes against humanity— and those warrants remain outstanding. But since the time of the indictments, most military experts say Kony retreated, first to Sudan then to Democratic
Republic of Congo—and now is believed to be hiding in Central African Republic with a force U.S. officials, including Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, believe has been reduced to about . Sporadic raids still take place, but not the mass attacks that once threatened northern Ugandans as portrayed in the film. Oliam says that as the raids ended in the mid-s, an influx of NGOs came in the area. Many have provided needed assistance to recovering
TOP 10 MOST VIRAL VIDEOS | Days to million views Kony
Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent
Lady Gaga: Bad Romance
Rebecca Black: Friday Justin Bieber: Baby
Miley Cyrus: Party in the USA
Modern Warfare
Beyoncé: Single Ladies
Katy Perry: Hot ’n’ Cold
Jeff Dunham: Achmed the Dead Terrorist SOURCE: VISIBLE MEASURES
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OLD WOUNDS: Ugandans watch the screening of Kony 2012 in lira district on march 13.
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soon going to ask us for more money,” said Seruwo, “to do what else—raise an army of invisible children? The ones we know, Kony has already seen and they have seen him too. Their job was to survive him and become visible again. Best way you can help: Don’t give them their bad memories. Help them keep their hope.” Ugandans say a problem with the viral video is its opening old wounds affected by the war. Grace Angee, raised in Kitgum District in the north, experienced LRA torture as a young teenager and herself was kidnapped by the rebel group three times. “Bullets, burning huts, death everywhere,” she said of the attacks. Her father, a driver for the Ugandan army, was killed brutally by the LRA. She learned of his death later, but saw many others die and breaks down when she tries to describe them: “The feeling of seeing someone killed … It’s very traumatizing.” Angee would like to see Kony captured, and she prays for him every day, but her life in the north is very different
now: “I can sleep without fear, I can even walk in the night without hearing any gunshots.” She thinks good may come of the interest from Kony 2012, but said, “During the war, that was the time we needed help most.” Asked how her family in Kitgum would react if she showed them the video, Angee said, “Some would be so aggressive, some would still demand that Kony is destroyed because they still have the anger, the reaction, some would ask why the voice wasn’t heard earlier … support was needed much earlier when we were helpless.” Puzzled by its timing, many Ugandans believe the release of Kony 2012 has more to do with events in the United States than a war in Africa: “This grossly illogical timing and statements on [Invisible Children’s] website—‘Click here to buy your KONY 2012 products’—makes me believe that the timing has more to do with your commercial interests than humanitarian interests,” wrote Ugandan blogger James Onen. “With the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the waning interest in Invisible Children, it seems to be perfect timing to start a crusade.” From their vantage point, it looks to many Africans like a U.S. group has tried to commercialize a conflict in which thousands of people have died, and thousands more want to heal and move on. A —Eddie Ssemakula is a 2012 World Journalism Institute/ Africa fellow and a writer living in Kampala
SCrEENiNG: STriNGEr/AFp/GETTy imAGES • SSEmAKUlA: DrEW BElZ
for the Daily Monitor. Okello and his wife are part of an upcoming new church planned near Gulu University, and they are preparing to move back north by next year as part of an effort to plant the church and rebuild the region. “I feel that attention needs to be drawn to more pressing needs. Bringing Kony to an end would be a desired accomplishment but it has been long overdue,” said Okello. “If it happens, people will rejoice … something above capturing Kony needs to be done and I don’t see it in the movie.” Okello said more pressing needs in the region include a concerted effort to fight nodding disease, with 3,000 cases in northern Uganda reported in the last year. Bernadette Nagita, another former war victim and resident of the northern district of Lira, worked as a communications officer for Invisible Children in 2010. Her reaction to the video is mixed: “People have not traced their [Invisible Children] history because this is the most powerful video produced. They are just reacting to the video, but don’t know what is on the ground. There are other programs like [Invisible Children’s] ‘legacy scholarship program’ and the ‘schools for schools’ program that are targeting people affected by the war, and the public is ignorant about these.” Invisible Children, she said, didn’t realize the film would get so much global attention, and they should have accompanied it with a video of their other programs: “The ‘behind the scenes’ work was not presented.” In addition to rehashing old material, another reason Ugandans are complaining about Kony 2012 is that it suggests that if average people take action, Kony can be caught and brought to justice. Kampala communications specialist Jack Seruwo said Invisible Children should “stay focused on what you were initially doing best,” and let the armies that have been fighting Kony (reportedly now including 100 U.S. military advisors ordered to Uganda by President Barack Obama last October) continue the hunt. “We might even suspect that you are W O R L D A p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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handout
becoming a focal point of the culture war was not kirk cameron’s goal, but he says he’s willing to suffer professionally for the sake of biblical truth
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nyone paying attention to media coverage of Kirk Cameron’s new documentary, Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure, could easily conclude the film deals with the most explosive social issues of our time. After all, when Cameron appeared on the CNN news program, Piers Morgan Tonight, the only subjects the host wanted to discuss were those that most often find American Christians at odds with their culture. “He [Morgan] wouldn’t speak about the movie,” Cameron tells me, to be released in theaters on March 27 (and reviewed on p. 28). “Instead he backed me into a corner and started asking me about homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, and the federal forcing of the Catholic Church to cover contraception.” Cameron says he was taken aback by the direction of the interview because his documentary concerns the journey that led the English separatists to found the American colonies and never alludes to such hot-button topics. But he went ahead and answered Morgan’s questions anyway, explaining that he opposes gay marriage in part because he considers homosexual behavior “unnatural” and believes that it’s “detrimental and
of Hollywood heavy-hitters like Debra Messing, Jesse Ferguson (star of today’s highest-rated sitcom, Modern Family), Kristin Chenoweth, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Neil Patrick Harris, to name only a few. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was so incensed, it launched an online petition against the actor, stating, “Cameron is out of step with a growing majority of Americans, particularly people of faith who believe that their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should be loved and accepted based on their character and not condemned because of their sexual orientation.” The incident even found its way into presidential politics when Morgan asked Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum about his thoughts on the former teen idol. (Santorum said he respects Cameron’s opinion and disagrees with those calling him a bigot.) Yet what may be most instructive about the entire episode is how quickly Cameron found himself in the national spotlight for expressing views that were, until recently, commonly assumed to be standard Christian belief. “I didn’t say anything different from what any Biblebelieving Christian would say if you want to be true to the Scriptures,” says Cameron. “In fact, the only thing that would have been surprising is if I had
While Cameron acknowledges that many teachers and professors may simply be repeating what they were taught when it comes to the pilgrims and the founders that followed them, he maintains that others are intentionally mischaracterizing them. “They are contending for a different worldview, they’re contending for a politically correct, secular-humanist worldview where it’s necessary to erase and rewrite history,” he argues, adding, “The greatest threat we face today is the secular totalitarianism of our current system.” Cameron defines secularism as a form of religion where the highest authority is man himself, and insists that the modern convention of a government and culture scrubbed free of all Christian influence is the opposite of the original American dream. “[The founders] wanted a system that allowed individuals to live out the principles of freedom they found in the Bible. They believed if they could govern themselves according to God’s ways, to raise their families to love God and others, it would produce the sweet fruit of liberty and blessing and freedom, and other people would be attracted to their success and want to come join them,” he says. “So their idea was to build the country from the ground up, not the top down, and build it from the inside out.” Like the subjects of his film, Cameron is adamant that he’s willing to bear whatever personal and professional hardship
ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.” The media firestorm that followed his statements seemed at odds both with the level of influence Cameron holds in Hollywood these days and the subject matter of the film. Though a regular in Christiantargeted, Christian-produced movies, Cameron hasn’t starred in a major film or television show since 1996. Yet his comments not only had his former Growing Pains co-stars taking to Twitter to condemn him, they also drew the ire
not answered the way that I did. That would have been more newsworthy than what I said.” Cameron believes the fact that his statements did make so much news perfectly illustrates the theme of his film—that the United States is rapidly declining because it’s failing to follow the example of those who started it on the path to greatness. And like the deliberate rewriting of Scripture to approve behavior it forbids, some are attempting to rewrite America’s historical record to advance their agenda.
he must in order to uphold the integrity of biblical doctrine on all matters, including sexuality. “One of these things I noticed when I went on Piers Morgan is how few people are willing to answer clearly on some of the questions that I was asked. … It’s been a great life lesson that Jesus was right,” he laughs. “He said the world will hate you because of Me, and don’t be surprised because they hated Me first. So it just confirms my confidence in God and in His goodness. I continue to want to love people and speak the truth and trust God for good results.” A A p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Notebook
LIFESTYLE TECHNOlOGY SCIENCE HOUSES OF GOD buSINESS SpOrTS MONEY rEliGiON
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Petition politics LIFESTYLE: How Change.org uses social media to push its agenda by susan olasky
>>
When Planned Parenthood took on the Susan G. Komen Foundation, social media site Change.org played a crucial role. It allowed thousands of activists to sign an online petition demanding that Komen recommit to funding Planned Parenthood. A recent story in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) highlights how activists are using Change.org to pressure governments, companies, and nonprofits to behave in certain ways. Each time someone signs a Change.org petition, the site sends an email to the
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offending entity, flooding inboxes and sometimes shutting down servers. Anyone can start a petition, although Change.org chooses to draw particular attention to some petitions and causes: Animal rights and gay rights are two popular categories. SSIR reported that since Change.org’s 2007 founding, 5 million people have joined. Individuals and organizations like the Guggenheim Museum have started more than 25,000 petitions. Change.org provides guidance for writing effective petitions, helps in finding the best email addresses to target, and advises how to use social media—Twitter, Facebook, Skype, blogs—to promote petitions. Sometimes Change.org puts its organizational prowess behind a particular petition. A p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Notebook > Lifestyle For example, last year Change.org sent out a press release drawing attention to a petition aimed at forcing Apple to remove its online iTunes store from the Christian Values Network (CVN), a shopping portal that allowed consumers to send a percentage of an item’s purchase price to the charity of their choice. The petition attacked CVN because it allowed consumers to direct money to Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, two groups that the petition referred to as “antigay hate groups.” Change.org’s press release repeated gay activist attacks on the two Christian groups and bragged that Tom’s Shoes and Microsoft had already responded to
attacks by cutting connections with CVN. Apple gave in after only , signatures. Change.org then boasted that REI, Macy’s, Delta Airlines, BBC America, and Wells Fargo had also ended their stores’ CVN connections. Meanwhile, CVN changed its name to CGBG, the Charity Gives Back Group. One current campaign on Change. org: a petition demanding that equal employment opportunity laws forbid discrimination against body modification. (Such laws typically list race, gender, religion, and ethnic origin.) The petition is a collaboration with SoTattooed.com, “the one true tattoo social network.” By March , , the petition had gathered , signatures.
Teen repellent
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People often check out review websites like yelp.com to find out how other consumers rank different services, restaurants, and shops. Reading through the comments can be illuminating—but it can also be confusing. How do you know if the review is trustworthy? Maybe that positive review came from someone’s mother, and the negative review from a competitor. Tapping into that unease over the trustworthiness of web reviews, Bundle.com offers ratings derived from Citibank credit card data. Bundle says its reviews are generated by people “who don’t know that they’re generating reviews. They’re going about their lives and creating data by using their credit card.” Each transaction is like a vote, showing where people actually spend their money. Bundle.com uses data from billions of anonymous credit card transactions, sorts it by city and category, and updates it weekly to discover which companies get the highest ratings according to three basic measures: how many people go there, how many people come back, and how much they spend. It can paint a picture of the type of people who go to a particular restaurant by seeing where they buy their groceries and shop for clothes or books. —S.O.
MOSQUITO: COMPOUND SECURITY SYSTEMS/AP
For years retailers and city leaders have used classical music to chase away loiterers and cut crime. That approach works because teenagers and young adults who are most likely to commit crimes tend not to like classical music. In Christchurch, New Zealand; London, England; Portland, Ore.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Minneapolis, Minn., police and others have played Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven and broadcast opera at busy transit stations and urban hotspots. They’ve seen declines in shootings, assaults, drug deals, and robbery. Schools, parks, and retailers are finding they can get the same result by using a device called the Mosquito. Invented in Wales, the device emits an annoying, highfrequency sound that only people between the ages of and can hear. Older people can’t hear it because of the natural hearing loss that occurs with age. One manufacturer of playground equipment bought the rights to incorporate the Mosquito into its equipment so as to keep teens from hanging around and vandalizing playgrounds. High schools are even using it to keep students from congregating in some hallways and courtyards. Civil-liberties groups in Europe and the UK have protested the device, saying it discriminates against young people. —S.O.
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Notebook > Technology
Senior moments
A london startup taps the skills and knowledge of retirees for younger generations By daniel jameS devine
>>
The number of senior citizens using social media websites like Facebook grew 150 percent from 2009 to 2011, suggesting the older generation doesn’t want to become disconnected from the world of the younger one. A unique startup in London could help two (or three or four) generations stay connected by enabling seniors to share not photos and links but old-fashioned skills and knowledge.
The venture has been named The Amazings, and its website (theamazings.org) explains why: “An Amazing is anyone who has retired or is about to retire who has something interesting they think they can turn into an activity. It could be anything from having lived in Hackney the whole of your life, knowing how to make jam, to owning a barge on the River Lea.” The organization’s staff of three handpicks seasoned citizens who are both knowledgeable and personable, then schedules classes where they can teach what they know to others and make a little money to boot. For example, “Introduction to Crochet with Bernadette”—a woman with short, snow-white hair who started crocheting when she was 5— is scheduled for two hours on April 11 in Broadway Market. Tickets cost £20 (about $30), and the yarn and needles are provided. An April 14 class, “Cook Hungarian Food with Jimmy,” is slightly more expensive, but offers six attendees the opportunity to cook
alongside a professional chef who has worked for Hilton Hotels & Resorts and cooked for the nowdeceased Queen Mother. Other options include dance, drama, and 1950s hairstyling classes; tours led by a local history expert; and a foraging walk where participants prepare their own lunch from edible plants they’ve collected. The Amazings launched last August, and its services for now remain limited to London. That’s too bad: Although some U.S. organizations, like ReServe and Civic Ventures, help baby boomers and retirees find jobs in the nonprofit and public service sectors, a networking hub like The Amazings could fill a niche by connecting the young with their elders’ wisdom.
IN THE KNOW: Seniors offer classes highlighting their amazing stories or skills.
PHONE AID
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THE AMAZINGS: HANDOUT • HAITI: ELIANA APONTE/REUTERS/LANDOv
This spring the United Nations Development Programme and the Haitian government will give $500 each to 1,000 poor families whose homes were damaged in the 2010 earthquake, enabling them to buy cement, lumber, and other construction materials needed to rebuild their houses. The aid won’t come as a check or wad of bills, though: With Haitians five times more likely to have a mobile phone than a bank account, the UNDP will dispense the money as mobile cash vouchers. It’s the first time such an arrangement has been used to subsidize home reconstruction after a disaster, according to the organization. Phone-based banking is wildly popular in Africa, and because mobile vouchers are safer than carrying cash, the technology is ideal for Haiti, where violent crime has grown in recent years. Despite a three-fold increase in police officers since 2004, the murder rate in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, stands at 61 per 100,000 residents, according to a study released in March. —D.J.D.
email: ddevine@worldmag.com
3/22/12 9:03 AM
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Notebook > Science
Gut check
Researchers say a cleaner environment may be making children more prone to asthma BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
BY THE NUMBERS
Length of time women ages to can safely go without a combined Pap smear and HPV test, according to new cervical cancer screening guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Last October the government panel had said there was too little information to recommend the HPV test, but its guidelines now align with those of medical groups. Many doctors continue to advise annual screening.
‘LOVED’ BUT UNWANTED
25%
Increased yields from a salt-tolerant variety of durum wheat that Australian researchers created using traditional interbreeding. A gene in the wheat blocks salt from traveling up the plant’s stem, and could boost food security in multiple nations where farmland salinity is a growing problem (Nature Biotechnology).
7 ACRES
Size of a new “public food forest” planned for Seattle, where locals will be able to plant their own vegetable plots and partake of apple and mulberry trees, berry shrubs, and other edible flora. The Beacon Food Forest is benefiting from a , city-backed grant, and will be the largest U.S. park of its kind when completed. —D.J.D.
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ASTHMA: ANTOINE ARRAOU/ALTO PRESS/NEWSCOM • HPV TEST: ROCHE/AP • DURUM WHEAT: JAMES MACPHERSON/AP • BEACON FOOD FOREST: HANDOUT
5 YEARS
In a rare “wrongful birth” case, a jury in Oregon on March awarded . million to Ariel and Deborah Levy, whose daughter Kalanit was born with Down syndrome in even though a genetic test had concluded her genes were normal. A doctor at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland had performed chorionic villus sampling on Deborah Levy’s pregnancy at weeks, but the Levys’ lawyer claims the doctor sampled maternal tissue instead of Kalanit’s, missing the Down diagnosis. The Levys said they would have aborted the baby had they known she had the chromosomal disorder. Although the parents claim they love their -year-old daughter, they wanted financial compensation from the hospital to cover the additional lifetime cost of caring for her. —D.J.D.
WORLDmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views
3/21/12 3:19 PM
GREG RUMMO
>>
C working with lab mice have discovered what might be contributing to rising rates of asthma in developed nations. When they gave a common antibiotic called vancomycin to young mice, the rodents’ gut bacteria ecosystem was altered and they became more likely to develop severe allergic asthma. The antibiotic didn’t produce the same asthma effect on adult mice, suggesting that early exposure to the drug had affected immune system development. The findings, published in EMBO reports, lend support to the “hygiene hypothesis,” which posits that children raised in cleaner environments miss out on exposure to bacteria and fungi that would ultimately strengthen their immune systems. Last year a study found that kids raised on farms were up to percent less likely to develop asthma. Other evidence suggests genes play a role in increasing risk. The asthma rate in the United States increased by a percentage point from to , with prevalence highest among children (. percent of kids have the disease, compared to . percent of adults). Brett Finlay, one of the Canadian researchers, thinks modern sanitation and antibiotic use is “causing the disappearance of ancestral species of bacteria in our gut that may be critical to a healthy immune system.”
Notebook > Houses of God
GreG rummo
asthma: antoine arraou/alto press/newscom • hpv test: roche/ap • durum wheat: James macpherson/ap • beacon food forest: handout
A small Roman Catholic chapel in the Andes Mountains near Puracute, Peru. Villagers built the structure to house and protect the village cross from the elements.
a p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Notebook > Business
Bad influences
Changes in investment banking have created strong temptations to sin By DaviD Skeel
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liable for its obligations, as the partners of a partnership are. This meant that executives could take on more risk, and possibly make a great deal more money, without being personally responsible if their bets went bad and the bank failed. Goldman held out longer than any of the other big banks. When it finally took the plunge and converted to a corporation in 1999, Goldman insisted that its unique culture would survive the shift. For a time, many people thought it had. But Smith’s op-ed is the latest evidence that it didn’t. Many argue that Goldman needs changed hearts, and must shift its focus back to making profits without taking advantage of clients. Surely this is right, but it’s also important to remember how Goldman and the other banks got here. The changes in investment banking have encouraged the change in behavior. Catholics call an environment that puts a person in the way of temptation the “near occasion of sin.” This is what investment banking has become. It’s probably not possible to go back to the days when investment banks were partnerships whose partners put their reputation and their own bank account on the line every day. But regulation—or the absence of regulation—that encourages DAMAGED REPUTATION: bankers to roll the dice Goldman should be revisited. As Sachs bad as they are, the headquarters recent financial reforms in New York.
As bad as they are, the recent financial reforms could help by adding more oversight of the complex financial contracts that have caused so much trouble. could help by adding more oversight of the complex financial contracts that have caused so much trouble. Sharp business practices will never disappear altogether in a fallen world. But the Smith op-ed is a reminder that character matters, and so does the environment in which our financial transactions take place. A —David Skeel Jr. teaches corporate law at the University of Pennsylvania
Mark Lennihan/aP
On March 14, Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith sent the investment bank a very public resignation letter—in the form of a New York Times op-ed. Unlike the bank he had joined 12 years earlier, Smith complained, Goldman no longer “revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients.” Now, the only thing that matters is how much money can be made off the clients. Wall Street insiders immediately dubbed Smith’s jeremiad “the shot heard round the world.” Although there is more than a little hyperbole (and self-importance) in the label, Smith’s resignation has highlighted a very serious moral crisis on Wall Street. This is the latest blow to Goldman’s reputation: It comes after a Rolling Stone article denounced the firm as a “vampire squid” and the SEC sued it for failing to tell clients they were purchasing mortgage-related securities selected by a hedge fund that was betting they would fail. The jolts to Goldman’s reputation have mesmerized Wall Street precisely because Goldman always claimed to be, and seemed to be, different than the dog-eat-dog banks around it. It claimed to be immune from the trends that have transformed investment banking in the past generation. The key difference is structural: In the old days, investment banks were all partnerships; in the 1980s, they became corporations. The change was important for two reasons. First, investment banks were desperate for funding because they increasingly were making money by trading for themselves, rather than by providing advice for clients. Selling its own stock was a great way for an investment bank to raise the money it needed for this trading. Second, becoming a corporation meant that the bank’s executives were not personally W O R L D A p r i l 7, 2 0 1 2
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Notebook > Sports OFF THE BALL: Derek Fisher (left) and Hines Ward.
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many players to resist. Prominent examples abound: I Brett Favre famously came out of retirement several times to play with multiple teams after parting ways with the Green Bay Packers in . Though he managed some statistical success in these final seasons, a return trip to the Super Bowl eluded him, and he significantly soured his once rosy public image, even turning fans in Green Bay against him. I Ken Griffey Jr. tallied homeruns and RBIs in , his last complete season with the Cincinnati Reds. The following year, as his numbers dipped, the Reds traded the slugger to the Chicago White Sox. He rejected rumors of possible retirement and played two subsequent years with the Seattle Mariners, batting . and then . before finally calling it quits midway through the season after being benched for lack of production. I Shaquille O’Neal captured the fourth NBA championship of his career in with the Miami Heat. Two years later, he was traded away and began a three-year stint in which he played for Phoenix, Cleveland, and finally Boston. His production dipped in each successive season as injuries mounted, and his quest for the elusive fifth title ring went unrealized.
I Michael Jordan achieved what seemed the perfect exit from basketball in , hitting a game-winning shot to secure the Chicago Bulls third consecutive championship. But he couldn’t stay away. In , he left retirement to play three seasons with the Washington Wizards. His individual production remained strong, but the team was plagued with in-fighting and went nowhere. His final game was a meaningless blowout loss. Hanging on for extra seasons added only rancor and embarrassment to these stars’ public legacies. Quitting at the first sign of twilight could have spared each man such grief. Why do so many athletes struggle to exit sports gracefully? Maybe it’s for the same reason they first aspired to play the professional game. Maybe playing at the highest level as long as possible is worth whatever scorn may come. Maybe they just want to compete. As Derek Fisher’s business manager Jamie Wior recently explained, “Derek’s desire to win a sixth championship is what drives him and will continue to drive him as he moves forward.” That sounds honorable enough. Maybe Green Bay fans should reconsider Favre’s legacy. Maybe Ward should reconsider his retirement. A
FISHER: JOE MURPHY/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES • WARD: MARK DUNCAN/AP
I , the L.A. Lakers selected guard Derek Fisher with the th overall pick in the NBA Draft. In , the Pittsburgh Steelers nabbed wide receiver Hines Ward in the third round of the NFL Draft. Both men would go on to help their respective teams win multiple titles. Both men would make crucial plays that rank among the greatest in championship history. Both men would set team records at their position. And then, this spring, both men would face a similar decision. On March , the Steelers released Ward. On March , the Lakers dealt Fisher to the mediocre Houston Rockets; the Rockets then traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Two aging veterans, both in the twilight of their careers, both brushed aside by the teams they loved. Ward elected to call it quits, holding an emotional press conference to announce his retirement. Fisher decided to press on, negotiating a buy-out with the Rockets that allowed him to pursue employment with a true contender. Who got it right? If history is any guide, Ward’s decision provides the best chance for an untarnished legacy. And yet, relatively few athletes choose that path. The temptation to hang on several years too long proves too strong for
Star athletes may have a good reason for not exiting the game gracefully BY MARK BERGIN
Email: mbergin@worldmag.com
3/22/12 3:21 PM
DOW JONES: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES • STANFORD CELEBRATES: TOM SHAW/GETTY IMAGES • STANFORD CHARGED: REUTERS/RICHARD CARSON/LANDOV
HANGING ON
Notebook > Money
Correction predictions
Some analysts say a temporary slide in stock prices on March is a harbinger of things to come BY WARREN COLE SMITH
FISHER: JOE MURPHY/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES • WARD: MARK DUNCAN/AP
DOW JONES: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES • STANFORD CELEBRATES: TOM SHAW/GETTY IMAGES • STANFORD CHARGED: REUTERS/RICHARD CARSON/LANDOV
>>
W D J Industrial Average was down more than points, on March , analysts immediately said it was the long-awaited correction. The tipping point seemed to be the Institute for Supply Management’s nonmanufacturing index, released the day before. Its price index, which measures inflation, jumped significantly. A separate report, released the same day, had manufacturing, which has fueled the recovery, declining in January for the first time in three months. Data from outside the United States also weighed down the markets. China cut its growth goal to . percent from an percent target, and Brazil, which had been a growth powerhouse, said last year’s GDP growth was a meager . percent. So the market, as expected, went down. What was not expected is that it didn’t stay down. By Friday, the S&P was actually up for the week. The plunge became the correction that didn’t actually correct anything. So is a real correction still coming? Almost certainly. Free-marketers say artificial stimulus from the government, financed by unsustainable debt, fueled the recovery. They say the economy is like a soufflé with a lot of hot air baked in: A loud noise before it cools will cause the whole thing to fall flat. Mainstream Wall Street analysts say much the same thing. Adam Parker, U.S. Equity Strategist at Morgan Stanley, says “risk aversion” will make a comeback. Any sign of trouble will likely motivate investors to take their profits and dump their stocks, and the longer it takes, the harder the fall will be. He expects the S&P to drop by percent from current levels sometime before year-end.
Stanford saga When we last saw flamboyant international financier Sir Allen Stanford (WORLD, April , ), federal prosecutors were charging him with running a “massive Ponzi scheme.” Prosecutors said he misappropriated billions of investors’ money and falsified the Stanford International Bank’s records to hide the fraud. After the charges became public, Stanford, , went missing. A nationwide manhunt caught up with him in Fredericksburg, Va., with his girlfriend, former employee Andrea Stoelker, described by London tabloids as a “pretty brunette” in her early s. He spent most of the next three years in prison awaiting trial. But even there Stanford made headlines. A cellmate beat him severely and Stanford spent eight months in a prison hospital. His attorneys argued that he was brain damaged Available in Apple’s App Store: Download WORLD’s iPad app today
7 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 73
and incompetent to stand trial due to memory loss. But that argument failed, and the Stanford soap opera came to a season finale on March when he was convicted on of the felony charges against him. He could get years in prison, but his sentence will likely be years or less. Even CELEBRATED this finale is a cliffhanger: Stanford HISTORY: Sir Allen Stanford intends to appeal. celebrates the Many of his victims are evangelical Twenty Super Christians who met Stanford financial Series match in . advisors through church connections. They will likely see little of the more than billion Stanford swindled. Prosecutors hope to return about million found in overseas accounts, but much of the rest was apparently squandered by Stanford on bad investments and a profligate playboy lifestyle. —W.C.S. A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 2
WORLD
3/22/12 10:22 AM
Notebook > Religion
TBN again
UNDER FIRE: TBN headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif.
pair of lawsuits allege crimes, cover-ups, sexual impropriety, and lavish spending By WaRReN COLe SmiTh
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directors,” some of whom are Crouch family members. The suit says “these unlawful financial transactions” exceed $50 million. She took that information to Davert & Loe, seeking legal advice. The firm “acknowledged that the conduct in question was unlawful but nevertheless advised … Ms. Koper to perform and cover up such unlawful activities,” according to the lawsuit. The suit also says lawyers in the firm harassed her sexually. She seeks more than $500,000 in damages. The other lawsuit is against Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana, one of TBN’s corporate entities, as well as other TBN entities and Davert & Loe. Joseph McVeigh, Koper’s uncle, says TBN sued him in retaliation against Koper. A judge dismissed TBN’s claims against McVeigh, who now seeks legal fees and “punitive and exemplary damages.” Both lawsuits paint a sordid picture of TBN, including allegations that Janice
ZUMA Press/NewscoM
A $50 million jet. Chauffeurs. Mansions in California and Florida. Clandestine affairs. Crimes and cover-up. Even a $100,000 motor home for the pet dog. These are just a few of the allegations directed against the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and its directors in a pair of lawsuits filed in February by former employees of the nation’s largest Christian broadcasting network. The first lawsuit, filed on Feb. 1 in U.S. District Court in California, contains charges by Brittany Koper, the former chief financial officer of TBN and the granddaughter of founders Paul and Janice Crouch. Her lawsuit is not against TBN but against Davert & Loe, one of TBN’s law firms. Koper’s suit says she discovered illegal activities when she became head of finance. Among the alleged activities: “the unlawful distribution of the TBN Companies’ charitable assets to Trinity Broadcasting’s
Crouch had an “affair with a staff member at the Holy Land Experience,” a TBN-owned amusement park in Florida. The suit also accuses Matthew Crouch, a TBN director and the son of Paul and Janice Crouch, of sexual and financial misconduct. Koper’s suit said that Matthew Crouch brought a gun to one meeting. He “began tapping the firearm … and asked Ms. Koper what she thought would happen [if] she wrote a memo to the board critical of Matthew Crouch’s financial improprieties.” Rusty Leonard, president of MinistryWatch.com, is not surprised by the allegations. “They have misled folks for an awfully long time,” he said. “They’ve been the subject of more Donor Watches from MinistryWatch. com than any other ministry.” A Donor Watch is a warning not to contribute to a ministry until the problems identified in the Donor Watch are corrected. But TBN has a history of dodging bullets, even those fired at point-blank range. The Los Angeles Times, MinistryWatch. com, and the Trinity Foundation, a ministry watchdog group, have all investigated TBN and have all published damning evidence, but with little effect. TBN attorney Colby May told me the accusations of Koper and McVeigh regarding TBN are “bold faced lies.” He accused Koper and her husband of embezzling and misappropriating money and property from TBN and International Christian Broadcasting (ICB), and said the lawsuits are attempts to divert attention from her wrongdoing. May also said TBN and ICB have turned documentation of Koper’s wrongdoing over to both the IRS and local law enforcement, but neither has charged Koper with any crimes. Years of negative publicity may be one reason TBN finances have taken a turn for the worse. The organization still lists nearly $800 million in assets, much of it in cash or other liquid assets, according to MinistryWatch.com—but deficits totaled more than $18 million in 2010, the last year for which numbers are available, and assets fell by about $30 million from 2009 to 2010 alone. A
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Mailbag
“Primary concerns”
(Feb. ) Thank you for your affirmation of the importance of primary care medicine. In Ohio only one in medical school graduates is entering the field. Earnings won’t cover their massive debts and family doctors are drowning in unpaid administrative work. But after years in family medicine I consider myself blessed beyond measure. Just when you feel at your lowest, an -year-old patient will hug you and tell you how much you mean to them—except that it’s the other way around! , Zanesville, Ohio This article was a thinly veiled attack on the Affordable Care Act. The act has at least five initiatives that promote primary care; change for the better is coming. Also, one of your sources criticizes the act as creating many “underinsured” people on Medicaid and in the subsidized state exchanges, but that will be better than what those people have now. .
ones “sweeping up all [the translators’] mistakes.” Indeed. I am very encouraged that these brethren are shining very brightly in a dark place. Creighton, Neb.
Although calling Jesus the Son of God may be an obstacle for unbelieving Muslims, it is certainly no more of an
obstacle than Jesus telling the Jews that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” That was “culturally insensitive” to a people with very strict dietary requirements.
Kansas City, Mo.
I was very disappointed in WORLD’s take on this. If a literal translation of “Son of God” communicates to Muslims that Jesus is God’s illegitimate child, is this really an accurate translation? If Muslims stumble over Jesus Christ because of a true understanding of the Trinity, so be it. But it is a shame if they stumble because of a twisted understanding of this biblical concept. Seattle, Wash.
There was a time when I sincerely believed that if we could make the message clear enough, without the hindrances of unclear translations, everyone would respond with real faith in Jesus. But that is simply not the case. Remember, the Word “came unto His own and His own received Him not,” not because of a lack of clarity but because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Strathmore, Calif.
Littleton, Colo.
SUMMIT OF SOUTH SISTER, OREGON / submitted by Korey Hehn
“Unhealthy decision?” (Feb. ) It is tempting to label advice to roll back screening as “rationing” or government meddling, but there are many examples of medical practices that are marginally helpful or even harmful. PSA screening seems intuitive but has no clear benefits and can lead to many clear harms (perioperative deaths, impotence, and incontinence). Not doing what doesn’t work is ethical, not frightening.
around the world
. Altoona, Pa.
“The battle for accurate Bible translation in Asia” (Feb. ) Thanks for the article on translation issues in the Muslim world and for bringing in the voices of converts from Islam, who worried that they will be the Send photos and letters to: mailbag@worldmag.com
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Mailbag
New
Youth Bible Studies
Relating Faith to Life & Life to Faith
“Living on SNAP” (Feb. ) We already are living on per meal per person and eating a bit healthier. I prepare everything from scratch— even macaroni and cheese—and try to “shop the edges of the store.” I buy meat on sale, but avoid food that’s less than fresh: no Little Debbies, donuts, or nasty Hamburger Helper. Free school breakfast programs prepare millions for a life of unnecessary dependency, but families should eat together. A nation is only as strong as its families.
Meansville, Ga.
Teens embark on a study about the church to discover our identity in Christ, diversity in the church, spiritual gifts and more. See available studies and download free lessons at www.sowhatstudies.org
Marvin Olasky wrote that because SNAP households often use the extra income for non-food items, many “weren’t hugely needy.” But food is not the only thing that needy people need. Many people struggle to pay all their bills and food, for obvious reasons, is the last thing that people stop paying for. But I wholeheartedly agree that those who really want to help people with their food needs should support food banks.
Odessa, Fla.
“Automaton army” (Feb. ) Having robots fight our wars would certainly cut down on the casualties, but implanting “ethical constraints” into a robot can only go so far. Robots can be useful tools, but men and women should make the choice to pull the trigger. Bristow, Va.
Notable Books (Feb. ) WORLD reviewed Elizabeth George’s book Believing the Lie. I was appalled by the description of the book. A different author with the same name, Elizabeth George, has written Loving God with All Your Mind and A Woman After God’s Own Heart. Would you please clarify for readers that this is not the same author?
Levering, Mich.
“Advantage America” (Feb. ) I’ve been thinking a lot about the plummeting fertility rate and how children are God’s most unpopular blessing. With our current fertility rate of . here in South Korea, a whole generation is growing up without the love of siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins. Young couples struggle to support two sets of aging parents. As parents demand the very best of their one or two children, academic pressure and workplace competition has led to an epidemic of depression and suicide. South Korea is just one example of how the “wisdom” of the world yields short-term material benefits, followed by long-term social devastation. Ilsan, South Korea
“Coming to America” (Feb. ) This article reminded me of how incredibly blessed I am to be homeschooled in a Christian environment and attend a college of my choice. Programs
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that transfer Chinese students to American private schools offer a great opportunity, but the real solution would be educational reform in the Chinese school system.
Port Royal, Pa.
“The Vow” (Feb. ) This review was disappointing. It was not just a “one-dimensional plot” and I wish the reviewer had noted that this story is based on a real married couple, Kim and Krickett Carpenter, who reportedly have a strong faith in the Lord.
Arroyo Grande, Calif.
Quotables (Feb. ) I love the high value WORLD places on human life as made in God’s image, and so I must quibble with the phrase “fatal birth defect” referring to Bella Santorum’s syndrome, Trisomy . I know T patients who lived into their s. Our own daughter with T lived six years before she died of pneumonia, and we learned more about God, unconditional love, and grace during our daughter’s life than at any other time. I have a hard time seeing her as “defective” despite her disabilities. Canton, Mich.
3/20/12 12:07 PM
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“Viral denial” (Feb. 25) As a foster mom who has cared for babies exposed to HIV in utero, I am appalled. If contracting HIV-AIDS were as one-dimensional as participating in reckless behavior, perhaps Fischer would have a reason to pursue this line of thinking. But to anyone who has seen this disease at work, this man’s views seem absurd.
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“Impractical magic” (Feb. 25) The quote from Steven Hawking, that certain physical laws like gravity are reliable enough to “create,” astounded me. He seems oblivious to the fact that first someone had to create matter. Joan M. HocHstetler
Charlotte, Tenn.
“Blessed by the dozen” (Jan. 28) After taking a few samples, the doctors told my mother that her baby would likely have Down syndrome and recommended an abortion. But she wouldn’t budge, believing that she had been given the child for a reason. She was right. I am here for a purpose no matter what my health is like, and those 12 kids are here for a purpose no matter what the world says.
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Valparaiso, Ind.
Correction The Hebrew scholar, seminary professor, and Bible translator who died on May 29, 2011, was Hermann J. Austel (“Departures,” Dec. 31, p. 66).
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3/7/12 12:55 PM
3/20/12 12:09 PM
When Jesus tells us to become like a child, what is he asking of us?
Discover today in The Call to Wonder how you can recapture a childlike spirit. God is calling you back to what you’ve lost.
. krieg barrie
CalltoWonder.com
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Andrée Seu
The gardener
Garden amid the thorns while joyfully embracing your new identity in Christ
>>
needed. Because whenever we speak out words of unbelief, putting ourselves in agreement with the devil, we hand him our authority and put ourselves under his: “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans :). It is important to know that God’s plan never changed—the plan that it should be a man who would rule over His garden and expand dominion to where the wild things are. But alas, Adam failed. God looked around: “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none” (Ezekiel :). Finally, His own Son came, emptying Himself of everything—of deity’s perquisites of power, position, and majesty. Being God, yet He operated strictly within human limitations, and secured our salvation as a perfect Man. The miracles? Jesus did everything He did as man in right relationship with God, as man in complete dependence on the Holy Spirit. As He Himself said, “The Son can do nothing on His own accord” (John :). This is not the last step. This Man became both the power and the model, that we might be restored to our original dominion as gardeners expanding God’s garden (God’s government) into the hinterlands. “But how can we do like Jesus?” we cry. “He had no sin to separate Him from the Father.” Do you not know, Christian, that we also have nothing now to separate us from the Father? We are grafted into His triumph. Jesus makes the point emphatically in His very next breath to Mary: “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John :). Not only freed from penalty but called to garden amid thorns, we should joyfully embrace our new identity and go forth alongside the Gardener whom Mary met outside the tomb. A
KRIEG BARRIE
“S the gardener, she said to Him, ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’” (John :-). It has happened now and then in history that a person spoke of God better than he knew. The unsavory Caiaphas unwittingly extolled him: “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (John :). The woman with the alabaster flask of costly ointment did not know she was preparing Jesus’ body for burial (Matthew :-). The soldiers fashioning thorns into a crown did so mockingly (John :). Abraham, unaware of describing an event far down the corridor of time, said to Isaac, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis :). “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed” (Genesis :). But it was not God’s intention to take care of His paradise directly, but indirectly, through men in His image. He gave the man, Adam, significant authority. He was to beat back the darkness and extend the boundaries of the beautiful garden to the ends of the earth. He was the gardener. We know that there was darkness out there beyond the beautiful garden, because it soon found its way in, the interloper entering in the form of a serpent. His gripe was really with God, not man. But since it is laughable that vermin such as himself could ever touch God, he set his hatred on the image-bearer. What is little understood in our day is that the serpent had no authority in the garden. None whatsoever. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, he could not do as he pleased. (You may remember Glenda’s rebuke in Oz: “You have no power here!”) Any hope of gaining authority would have to be by ruse. And so he loitered, and talked to the woman until he got her to agree with him—and that was all he
Email: aseu@worldmag.com
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Marvin Olasky
Tax time humor Poking fun at editors like me
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Fifty people swindled! Fifty people swindled!” Curious, a man walked over, bought a paper, checked the front page, and then said, “There’s nothing in here about people being swindled.” The editor-to-be started calling out, “Read all about it. Fifty-one people swindled!” The editor offered a few jokes about writing and grammar that he had read in McSweeney’s: “The bar was walked into by the passive voice.” No one laughed. “A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.” No one laughed. He tried one more: “Why did a reporter go into labor and yell, ‘Couldn’t! Wouldn’t! Shouldn’t! Didn’t’? Because she was having contractions.” The women stared angrily. The day after the party, the editor went walking and saw a sign, “Talking dog for sale in the back yard.” The editor looked and saw a black Labrador. “You talk?” he asked. “Yep,” the dog replied. “I used to be a reporter. I jetted from country to country and got into rooms with world leaders, ’cause no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. After getting lots of scoops and winning multiple Pulitzers, I retired.” The editor was even more amazed at the Lab’s price: only . The editor handed over the money but said, “I have to ask: “Why does such an amazing dog cost so little?” The owner replied, “He’s a stinkin’ liar.” That evening, lonely in retirement but now with a dog, the editor went through his final cartoon folder, labeled “Life.” The first one showed a dozen editors around a table as one said, “OK—Whose turn is it to set the moral tone?” The second depicted one prisoner telling another, “All along I thought our level of corruption fell well within community standards.” The third showed a man in hell complaining to a devil carrying a whip, “There’s been some ghastly mistake! My Times obituary exceeded two columns and included a photograph.” A
KRIEG BARRIE
I pre-April- joke columns for and I poked fun at accountants, psychiatrists, and others, so it’s time to point the finger at myself by assaulting editors. Question: How many editors does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one, but first he has to rewire the entire building. Question: How many copy editors does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Please clarify—do you mean “put in a different light bulb” or “put a new diaper on a light bulb”? Before the current newspaper depression, editors were often well-paid. One editor, about to retire, confided to a friend, “I’m years old, never married, and have million saved up. I’m madly in love with a -year-old. Do you think I’d have a better chance of marrying her if I told her I’m only ?” His friend replied, “Frankly, you would have a better chance if you told her you’re .” As the editor was cleaning out his desk, he ran across New Yorker cartoons he had filed away during the s under the category, “politicians.” One had a secretary telling her boss, “Excuse me, Senator, but each of your last three press releases has begun with, ‘It strains credulity.’” Another showed a man with no face trying on masks, with his butler saying, “Might I point out, sir, that this one goes particularly well with your tie.” A third showed a boy holding a chain saw amid a dozen felled trees and saying to his angry dad, “Father, I cannot tell a lie.” The next file, labeled pundits, had one man telling another at a bar, “Look, maybe you’re right, but for the sake of argument let’s assume you’re wrong and drop it.” A second had a filing cabinet with drawers labeled, “Our Facts,” “Their Facts,” “Unsubstantiated Facts,” and so forth. A third had a television commentator saying, “Meaningless statistics were up one-point-five percent this month over last month.” One more cartoon showed a machine distilling stuff coming from an enormous container, labeled “raw hype,” into a smaller barrel labeled “pure hype.” At the editor’s farewell party, he talked about how he got his start years ago as a newsboy standing on a corner with a stack of papers. No one was buying, so he started yelling, “Read all about it.
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
3/20/12 12:13 PM
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