WORLD Magazine Aug. 24, 2013 Vol. 28 No. 17

JOHN PIPER: THE ABSENCE OF GOD IN AMERICAN LIFE

Reaping a whirlwind

August 24 , 20 13

Expanded disability coverage undercuts both welfare reform and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Unless changed, the largest claims program will run short of money in 2016, and the truly needy will be hurt.

worldmag.com / $5.95

Build

FAITH For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (12014-2) 3/12

Challenge POTENTIAL

Follow

CHRIST

College happens once.

Make it count for the rest of your life.

Build Faith. BJU will help you strengthen your faith in the absolute truth of God’s Word through opportunities such as a biblically based curriculum, daily chapel, and discipleship and mentoring.

Challenge Potential. BJU challenges you to exceed your own expectations and grow academically, spiritually and socially through rigorous academics, liberal arts courses that prepare you for multiple careers, and a broad range of student and leadership-building activities.

Follow Christ. Because living for Christ is what really matters in life, BJU thoroughly prepares you to serve in whatever ministry or vocation He calls you to.

To find out how BJU can help you get the most out of your total college experience, visit us at go.bju.edu/markeitcount.

17 CONTENTS.indd 2

8/5/13 4:01 PM

Contents  ,  /  ,  

     

34 Be less than you can be

As this summer’s anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act recalls hope, federal disability programs are killing a liberal dream, undercutting a conservative victory, and leading millions to lie or lie around      

42 Paying the price

Christian landmarks are under increasing attack in Israel by ultra-Orthodox gangs

44 Obstacle course

Immigration reform has momentum but House and Senate consensus remains elusive

46 Labor Day love

These five people have found a way to serve others and earn a living through work they enjoy

50 Urban L’Abri

2013 Hope Award for Effective Compassion: Hope Christian Center offers discipleship—not rehab—for the homeless and drug-addicted Brotherly love: Hundreds of volunteers bring the gospel to prisons, nursing homes, homeless men, and others with Active Compassion Through Service

 

5 News 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes

23

  :    

 

23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music 

30

57 Lifestyle 59 Technology 60 Science 61 Houses of God 62 Sports 63 Money 64 Religion 

42

62

VISIT WORLDMAG.COM FOR BREAKING NEWS, TO SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY EMAIL UPDATES, AND MORE

3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 67 Mailbag 71 Andrée Seu Peterson 72 Marvin Olasky

WORLD (ISSN -X) (USPS -) is published biweekly ( issues) for . per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail)  All Souls Crescent, Asheville, NC ; () -. Periodical postage paid at Asheville, NC, and additional mailing offi ces. Printed in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. ©  God’s World Publications. All rights reserved.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD, PO Box , Asheville, NC -.

17 CONTENTS.indd 1

8/7/13 10:49 AM

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.” —Psalm 24:1 EDITORIAL editor in chief Marvin Olasky editor Mindy Belz managing editor Timothy Lamer news editor Jamie Dean senior writers Janie B. Cheaney, Susan Olasky, Andrée Seu Peterson, John Piper, Edward E. ­Plowman, Cal Thomas, Lynn Vincent

creative art director David K. Freeland associate art director Robert L. Patete graphic designer Rachel Beatty illustrator Krieg Barrie digital production assistant Arla J. Eicher ADVERTISING director of sales and marketing Dawn Stephenson account executives Al Saiz, Angela Scalli, Alan Wood the world market Connie Moses advertising office 828.232.5489

reporters Emily Belz, J.C. Derrick, Daniel James Devine, Angela Lu, Edward Lee Pitts correspondents Zachary Abate, Megan Basham, Anthony Bradley, Tim Challies, Alicia M. Cohn, John Dawson, Amy Henry, Mary Jackson, Thomas S. Kidd, Michael Leaser, Sophia Lee, Jill Nelson, Arsenio Orteza, Tiffany Owens, Stephanie Perrault, Emily Whitten mailbag editor Les Sillars executive assistant June McGraw editorial assistants Kristin Chapman, Mary Ruth Murdoch

CUSTOMER SERVICE customer service manager Jim Chisolm customer service office 828.232.5260

Invest Wisely.

Send Him. corporate chief executive officer Kevin Martin Founder Joel Belz Vice President Warren Cole Smith Marketing Director Steve Whigham Development Director Debra Meissner

god’s world news [gwnews.com] Publisher Howard Brinkman

BOARD of directors David Strassner (chairman), Mariam Bell, Kevin Cusack, Richard Kurtz, Virginia Kurtz, of native missionariesHoward in Peter Lillback, Miller, world digital [worldmag.com]Thousands poorer countries effectively take the Newton, to unreached people groups Russell B. ­Pulliam, Executive Editor Mickey McLeangospelWilliam in areas that are extremely difficult David Skeel, Nelson Somerville, Assistant Editor Dan Perkinsfor American missionaries to reach.

Ladeine Thompson, Raymon Thompson, speak the local languages Editorial Assistant Whitney Williams 4 They 4 They are part of the culture John Weiss, John White world radio 4 They never need a visa, airline tickets, or furloughs MISSION STATEMENT Executive Producer Nickolas S. Eicher 4 They win souls and plant To report, interpret, and illustrate the churches Senior Producer Joseph Slife Nativenews missionaries the Lord at ­accurate, enjoyable, inserve a timely, a fraction of what it costs to send an world on campus [worldoncampus.com]American and arresting missionary overseas. fashion from a ­perspective Editor Leigh Jones Helpcommitted to the Bible as the inerrant provide for a missionary with $50of per God. month.

Word world journalism institute [worldji.com] Director Robert Case II Dean Marvin Olasky Christian Aid Mission P. O. Box 9037 Charlottesville, VA 22906 434-977-5650

www.christianaid.org

contact us

800.951.6397 /// worldmag.com Danin Tulic/getty images

To subscribe, renew, change address, give a gift, order back issues, etc.

Email customerservice@worldmag.com Online worldmag.com Phone 800.951.6397 within the United States or 828.232.5260 outside the United States Write world, PO Box 20002, ­Asheville, nc 28802-9998 Reprints and permissions Contact June McGraw at 828.232.5415 or mailbag@worldmag.com world occasionally rents subscriber names to ­carefully screened, like-minded organizations. If you would prefer not to receive these promotions, please call customer service and ask to be placed on our DO NOT RENT list.

17 JOEL.indd 2

8/6/13 5:13 PM

Joel Belz

The great temptation

The danger signs are clear to all, but compulsive sexual behavior goes on

>>

DANIN TULIC/GETTY IMAGES

I P  —at least when it comes to the issue of sex. Just ask Anthony Weiner. Well, actually, that’s my point. It’s probably not going to do much good to ask the repeatedly disgraced Mr. Weiner. Most dogs you’ve known learn hard lessons faster than Mr. Weiner does.

Pavlov, the famous Russian physiologist, believed that all acquired habits are based on chains of conditioned reflex. He said his experiments showed that when any subject—a human being, a dog, maybe even a rat—made an association between a couple of happenings over a long enough period of time, that subject’s behavior would be affected accordingly. The association I recall from my not-so-detailed studies of Pavlov is of a cocker spaniel regularly beginning to salivate every time he bit and pulled a string that rang a bell.

So why has it been so hard for Mr. Weiner—and a host of others like him—to learn that dabbling in illicit sex earns a painfully negative response?

Pavlov’s theories, however well they might work out with other kinds of conditioned response, don’t seem to apply to a whole lot of sexual behavior. The evidence is overwhelming that people keep on choosing destructive behavior even when they have learned repeatedly how chintzy the rewards of that behavior may be.

For the last generation, no example could have been more dramatic than the AIDS epidemic. By the millions, men have engaged in sexual behavior that everyone knows is likely to have devastating results— including statistically premature death.

No one doubts the connection.

Does the behavior change as a result? Hardly at all.

But just as one kind of sex brings unwanted death, another kind of sex brings unwanted life. Oversexed teenagers aren’t really ignorant of the relationship between their activity and a possible pregnancy.

They’ve had the connection spelled out for them more times than any cocker spaniel has yanked on a

Email: jbelz@worldmag.com

17 JOEL.indd 3

cord. But the sexual impulse proves itself ever so much more urgent than any of Pavlov’s lessons.

The list of unlearned lessons goes on. Venereal disease is barely a deterrent to casual heterosexual relations. Splintered marriages and fragmented families may serve as a flashing warning light against marital infidelity—but the threats of custody battles, alimony, and lifelong emotional scars are regularly ignored in favor of the short reward of physical ecstasy and a fleeting emotional high.

Why? What makes this particular learning process so hard?

I’d suggest that it’s partly because God, for reasons good to himself, built sex into us humans as perhaps the most broadly volatile of all his gifts. Sex, by its very nature, tends to be compulsive—a term we use to refer to behavior we engage in even when all the evidence suggests that we shouldn’t. But while life includes a wide choice of compulsive behaviors, sex cuts a comparatively wide swath.

There are compulsive eaters, compulsive drinkers, compulsive gamblers, compulsive speeders, compulsive shoppers, and compulsive baseball fans.

(OK, so maybe baseball doesn’t deserve to be on this list—but it’s worth pondering.) But each of those, relatively speaking, exacts its toll from a proportionately small segment of society. Sexual compulsion, at one time or another, has sent its bill to almost every one of us. The very popularity of the temptation makes it hard to harness it.

On the other hand, the very personal nature of sex also suggests roadblocks to dealing with its wrong use. It may be embarrassing to talk about being overweight or being tempted to drink an extra beer or two. But we do it. We have frank conversations about those compulsions with our doctors and our counselors and our pastors—and even with each other. That’s hard to do on the subject of sex. It’s hard to tell someone—and especially to tell a friend—that we’ve got a problem—and maybe even a compulsion— with some aspect of our sexuality.

Anthony Weiner needed such a friend or counselor, years ago. Instead of good advice, however, Weiner was unfortunately conditioned to think he could live as recklessly as he wanted—with no negative consequences. Too many of us, including a number who call themselves evangelical Christians, should learn early what Weiner maybe is right now learning much too late. A

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/6/13 5:16 PM

Major Majors on the

onsidering what you are called to do? Maybe you’re called to be an engineer, a nurse, or a businessman, but before God calls you to a vocation, He first calls you to become like His Son. At Reformation Bible College, near Orlando, Florida, we believe knowing God is the foundation to CREDIT

lead lives that glorify Him in every vocation. Prepare for your calling with us.

ReformationBibleCollege.org | 888-RBC-1517

WORLD_FP_July_2013_FINAL.indd 1 17 NEWS 1.indd 4

6/24/13 9:45 AM 8/5/13 4:14 PM

Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes

BEATING THE HEAT: Swimmers overcrowd a water park pool in China’s Sichuan Province to cool down on a scorching day.

A record heat wave has killed dozens in China since July and is threatening its important rice and cotton crops.

IMAGINECHINA/AP

17 NEWS 1.indd 5

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/7/13 9:35 AM

Dispatches > News

More than , people signed an online petition denouncing sexual abuse in evangelical circles. The statement—published by the Christian group GRACE (an acronym for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment)—said churches sometimes respond to abuse allegations by “moving to protect her structures rather than her children.”

We d n e s d a y, J u l y  

Jailbreak Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a violent prison break at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The assault reportedly freed some  to  prisoners, including a number of top al-Qaeda operatives captured by the United States between  and . Aymenn al-Tamimi of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum lamented the damage: “A good deal of the progress achieved from  onwards has essentially been undone now.”

Tragedy in Spain Seventy-nine passengers died when their train in northwestern Spain derailed in a curve and smashed into a concrete wall.

Investigators said the train’s driver had been talking on the phone with supervisors and traveling  mph—nearly twice the speed limit. The dead included two Americans.

 

Painful politics Former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner admitted his lewd text messages to women he met online lasted more than a year after he resigned from Congress in . The New York City mayoral candidate insisted he would stay in the race, but his lead began to vanish.

Solidarity Former President George H.W. Bush shaved his head to support a -yearold boy battling leukemia. Patrick—the son of one of Bush’s security guards— lost his hair during chemotherapy.

Bush, , joined other members of his security detail who shaved their heads in solidarity. Bush and his wife, Barbara, lost their -year-old daughter to leukemia in .

ABU GHRAIB: WATHIQ KHUZAIE/GETTY IMAGES • BUSH: OFFICE OF GEORGE BUSH/AP • WEINER: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES • KRADDICK: RODGER MALLISON/FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/NEWSCOM

Church abuse

Died Radio and TV personality Kidd Kraddick, , died of cardiac disease on July  in New Orleans. Kraddick’s unexpected death occurred while he was at a charity golf tournament for “Kidd’s Kids,” an organization he started for chronically ill and terminally ill children. Kraddick, a three-time winner of Billboard magazine’s air personality of the year, began broadcasting in Dallas in  and eventually spread to nearly  cities. Days before his death, Kraddick did a special segment in which he explained what he would say if he was on his deathbed.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 NEWS 1.indd 6

8/7/13 9:41 AM

SNOWDEN: RUSSIA24 VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS TELEVISION • CAIRO: STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • ORGAN: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • BOGGS: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

T h u r s d a y, J u l y  

ABU GHRAIB: WATHIQ KHUZAIE/GETTY IMAGES • BUSH: OFFICE OF GEORGE BUSH/AP • WEINER: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES • KRADDICK: RODGER MALLISON/FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/NEWSCOM

SNOWDEN: RUSSIA24 VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS TELEVISION • CAIRO: STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • ORGAN: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • BOGGS: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Snowden (second from left) leaves the Moscow airport with his Russian lawyer (third from left)

F r i d a y, J u l y  

Pretty please U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised Russian authorities the United States wouldn’t seek the death penalty against NSA leaker Edward Snowden if he returned to face espionage charges related to leaking national security secrets. A week later, Snowden left the Moscow airport after Russian officials awarded him one-year asylum in the country. His attorney said Snowden had been learning about Russian culture by reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Seeing green The National Park Service briefly closed the Lincoln Memorial after a vandal splattered green paint on the famous statue. A week later, authorities questioned a -yearold woman after charging her with a similar crime: splattering green paint on a pipe organ in Washington National Cathedral.

Unaffordable care When a California-based call center opens in October to field questions about the Affordable Care Act, some workers will go without at least one benefit: healthcare. The Contra Costa Times reported about half the jobs at the Concord, Calif.–based call center are part-time, with no benefits. Some , applicants applied for the  jobs, and one employee told the newspaper it was ironic to inform people about healthcare while “we can’t afford it ourselves.”

S a t u r d a y, J u l y  

Chaos in Cairo Egyptians endured one of their deadliest days of upheaval since the  revolution: Clashes between security forces and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi killed at least  people. The violence reportedly began after Egyptian police fired tear gas at Morsi supporters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged the military to exercise restraint in dealing with protesters, but also said he believed the military acted to restore democracy by replacing Morsi with a civilian government.

Died Former congresswoman and ambassador Lindy Boggs, died of natural causes on July  at age .

Boggs, the mother of journalist Cokie Roberts, served nine terms in Congress after she won a special election in  to replace her late husband, House Majority Leader Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. The first Louisiana woman elected to Congress, Boggs was known as an ardent supporter of civil rights and served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from  to .

Stay connected: Sign up to receive email updates at worldmag.com/email

17 NEWS 1.indd 7

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/7/13 9:42 AM

Dispatches > News M o n d a y, J u l y  

Papal tour

Manning guilty A military judge convicted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning of violating the Espionage Act for leaking more than , State Department cables, terrorism assessments, combat logs, and videos. The website WikiLeaks published many of the government documents in , and the leak constituted the largest breach of classified secrets in U.S. history. Manning, , faces up to  years in prison.

Violence in Nigeria It’s a girl U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., and her husband, Daniel, announced the birth of their daughter, Abigail, months after doctors diagnosed the baby with a fatal disease.

Doctors told the couple their infant would die moments after birth from a condition known as Potter’s sequence. The couple pursued a prenatal treatment thought to fight the condition, and Beutler delivered the -pound, -ounce baby on July .

Abigail is the only known survivor of the disease.

Crackdown The FBI announced the results of a three-day, nationwide crackdown on child prostitution: Agents arrested  suspects and rescued  children between the ages of  and . City breakdowns were notable: Agents made no arrests or rescues in New York City but  arrests and three rescues in Oklahoma City. Ron Hosko of the FBI noted: “This operation serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere.”

As many as  people died in multiple explosions in a Christian quarter of Kano—a predominantly Muslim city in northern Nigeria.

Officials blamed the attacks on Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram.

Less than a week earlier, Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and urged the U.S. government to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization. The pastor also criticized President Barack Obama for not visiting Nigeria on his trip to Africa earlier this month: “America’s ambivalence on Nigeria is a stunning betrayal.”

Died Energy pioneer George P. Mitchell, known as the father of hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking”— died on July  at age . Mitchell, a philanthropist and one of the wealthiest men in America, was born to poor Greek immigrants in Galveston, Texas, and spent the s and ’s developing a way to economically extract oil and natural gas that geologists had long known was trapped in underground formations of shale rock. Mitchell founded the Houston suburb of The Woodlands in . 

POPE: L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AP • ABIGAIL: OFFICE OF U.S. REP. JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER/AP • MANNING: PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP • NIGERIA: MUHAMMED GIGINYU/AP • MITCHELL: NICK DE LA TORRE/ HOUSTON CHRONICLE/AP

On a return flight from his first international trip since assuming the papacy, Pope Francis answered a question about priests who are gay, but not sexually active. The pope responded: “Who am I to judge a gay person of good will who seeks the Lord?”

Some media outlets declared a fundamental shift in papal thinking about homosexuality, but the pope underscored homosexual acts were sinful.

The plane-bound press conference came a day after as many as  million people gathered for the pope’s mass in Rio de Janeiro after a weeklong trip in Brazil (see p. ).

Tu e s d a y, J u l y  

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 NEWS 1.indd 8

8/7/13 10:21 AM

pope: L’Osservatore Romano/ap • Abigail: Office of U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler/ap • Manning: Patrick Semansky/ap • nigeria: Muhammed Giginyu/ap • Mitchell: Nick de la Torre/ Houston Chronicle/ap

8/6/13 4:59 PM

17 NEWS 1.indd 9

Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, A u g u s t 

Hard time

We d n e s d a y, J u l y  

Substandard ‘model’

North Carolina health officials closed an abortion center in Asheville, N.C., after investigators found  “egregious violations” of safety codes during a surprise inspection on July . Abortion advocates had hailed FemCare as a “model” abortion facility in the state, but officials said violations included thick dust on operating room equipment and an anesthesia tube held together with tape. FemCare became the nd abortion center to close this year—up from  in .

A small band of former homosexuals gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court to demand recognition and equal protection under the Constitution. The dozen speakers from some  organizations said they worried about a growing intolerance of those who believe homosexuality is wrong. Former homosexual Christopher Doyle of Voice of the Voiceless told the crowd: “Anti-ex-gay extremists say that I do not exist—that we don’t exist.” Organizers had planned an evening reception at the Family Research Council but said they postponed the event after receiving email and phone threats from homosexual activists.

Losing intelligence Officials at Indiana’s Ball State University announced students would no longer learn about intelligent design perspectives in honors science classes. The decision came in the wake of fierce criticism of astronomy professor Eric Hedin’s honors class, “The Boundaries of Science.” Hedin included reading assignments by scientists and intelligent design proponents like Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe. The school’s president blasted intelligent design as a discredited theory.

Hedin’s supporters included state Sen. Dennis Kruse. “I come from a Christian perspective and a conservative perspective,” said Kruse.

“I’m under the impression academic freedom should be for everybody.”

Released The world’s longest-reigning monarch, Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, , left a Bankok hospital on Aug.  after four years of treatment. Doctors released Bhumibol, who was admitted in  for lung inflammation, along with his wife, Queen Sirikit, , who was hospitalized last year for poor blood flow to the brain. Thousands of well-wishers lined the streets as the couple was driven back to the royal palace, where more fans awaited their arrival. Bhumibol, who ascended to the throne in  at age , is worth about  billion. 

FEMCARE: HANDOUT • KNIGHT: TONY DEJAK/AP • SUPREME COURT: HANDOUT • ADULYADEJ: APICHART WEERAWONG/AP

Vocal minority

An Ohio judge sentenced sexual predator Ariel Castro to life in prison—plus , years—for kidnapping, raping, and imprisoning three young women in his Cleveland home for more than a decade.

Castro accepted a plea deal to avoid the death penalty for allegedly causing victim Michelle Knight to miscarry pregnancies during her captivity. Knight, , spoke at the sentencing hearing, and told Castro: “You took  years of my life away, and I have got it back. I spent  years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning.”

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 NEWS 2.indd 10

8/7/13 10:49 AM

FEMCARE: CITIZEN-TIMES • KNIGHT: TONY DEJAK/AP • SUPREME COURT: HANDOUT • ADULYADEJ: APICHART WEERAWONG/AP

8/6/13 5:08 PM

17 NEWS 2.indd 11

Dispatches > News

You’re out

S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, A u g u s t  - 

Questionable win Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe—the often-ruthless dictator who has ruled the country since —claimed victory in another round of controversial presidential elections. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted reports of “substantial electoral irregularities,” and said the United States didn’t find the results credible. Mugabe’s challenger Morgan Tsvangirai called the election “fraudulent and stolen,” and said it would plunge the country into chaos.

Firesale prices Boston Red Sox owner John Henry entered a deal to buy The Boston Globe for  million—a steep price cut from the . billion The New York Times paid for the Boston newspaper in . Two days later, The Washington Post announced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would buy its newspaper after  years of ownership by the Graham family. Analysts said Bezos’ digital expertise—and deep pockets— could help the paper survive declining revenues hitting hard at newspapers across the country.

Americans in Cairo Republican senators John McCain (left) and Lindsey Graham arrived in Cairo to urge a peaceful resolution to rising conflict between Egypt’s militarybacked government and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

Their arrival came days after military officials ordered security forces to break up mass demonstrations of pro-Morsi supporters. Ramez Atallah of the Egyptian Bible Society said pro-revolution Egyptians hoped for a peaceful resolution, despite their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood: “Most of us yearn for a civil state run democratically.”

MUGABE: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS/LANDOV • McCAIN & GRAHAM: AMR NABIL/AP • THE WASHINGTON POST: /LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE/AP • BENÍTEZ: ARCHIVO AGENCIA EL UNIVERSAL/RML/AP

Major League Baseball officials suspended  players accused of using performance-enhancing drugs in connection with the now-shuttered Biogenesis clinic. New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez said he would appeal his -game suspension that would keep him sidelined through the  regular season (see p. ). (He’ll continue to play during the appeal process.) The dozen other players accepted their punishments and will likely return to the field by the beginning of next season.

Died Thousands of Ecuadorians attended the funeral of Christian “Chucho” Benítez on Aug. , days after the country’s star footballer died of cardiac arrest at age . Benítez’s sudden death came after he played his first game with El Jaish, a soccer club in Qatar, and sparked debate about why a string of professional players have died in their primes over the last decade. Benítez, whose wife is left with twin -year-olds, spent the past several years playing for clubs in England and Mexico City, where fans held a mass in his honor.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 NEWS 3.indd 12

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at worldmag.com/iPad

8/7/13 10:55 AM

YEMEN: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • MOON: HALLBERGSF/ISTOCK • TAX: THERESA SCARBROUGH/LAREDO MORNING TIMES/AP • DETROIT: J.D. POOLEY/GETTY IMAGES • JEWS: URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES IRS: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • RATCLIFF: HANDOUT

M o n d a y, A u g u s t 

August 20

MUGABE: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS/LANDOV • McCAIN & GRAHAM: AMR NABIL/AP • THE WASHINGTON POST: /LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE/AP • BENÍTEZ: ARCHIVO AGENCIA EL UNIVERSAL/RML/AP

YEMEN: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • MOON: HALLBERGSF/ISTOCK • TAX: THERESA SCARBROUGH/LAREDO MORNING TIMES/AP • DETROIT: J.D. POOLEY/GETTY IMAGES • JEWS: URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES IRS: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • RATCLIFF: HANDOUT

Tonight’s full moon represents the third full moon of the summer season. Most people understand Blue Moons to be a second full moon of a calendar month. But the third full moon of a season with four also goes by the moniker. Not to say tonight’s moon will have a bluish hue: That phenomenon is caused by atmospheric disturbances.

LOOKING AHEAD August 21

Tu e s d a y, A u g u s t 

Fleeing Yemen The U.S. State Department ordered embassy personnel to evacuate Yemen and urged any U.S. citizens living in the Arabian nation to leave. Officials said the same terror threat that led them to close embassies across the Middle East prompted the evacuations. A U.S. drone strike killed at least six suspected al-Qaeda militants on Aug. , and Yemeni authorities said they had foiled a plot to seize a port and kidnap or kill foreigners.

   . Russian snubs, White house flubs, Iran’s rages, higher wages, film enjoyment, unemployment, natural gas, political sass, prayer in school, summer cool: Those were some of the stories at worldmag.com during the last two weeks: Please visit it often during the next two.

Lawyers for the debt-riddled city of Detroit come before a federal bankruptcy judge today for their next step in taking the city into Chapter  protection. Though stateappointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr insists bankruptcy is the only way for the city to navigate its debt crisis, pensioners have objected loudly, challenging the bankruptcy in court.

August 18 Many other states took

their turn earlier in August, but Connecticut will have the last back-to-school sales tax holiday from Aug. -. The practice is popular in Southern states in early August to coincide with earlier school year start dates.

By the time Connecticut’s sale ends, most of the rest of the nation’s students will be back to school.

August 28

A program designed to draw the Jewish diaspora in Ethiopa back to Israel will end today. Since , Ethiopians who could prove they had Jewish ancestors could immigrate to Israel in a special immigration system separate from the country’s normal practice. Under the aliya, more than , Ethiopians have relocated to Israel.

August 30

Employees at the Internal Revenue Service are set to take a four-day weekend starting Friday whether they like it or not. As a consequence of the sequester, the IRS scheduled five furlough days in . Due to cost cutting, the tax agency was able to cancel the scheduled late July furlough. But the day off without pay for Aug.  is expected to happen.

Guilty Former Wheaton College professor Donald Ratcliff, , pleaded guilty on Aug.  to aggravated child pornography possession in exchange for nine other charges being dropped. Authorities arrested Ratcliff in March of last year after finding on his home computer more than  illegal images, which police said he was making available for download on the internet. Wheaton fired Ratcliff, the author of several books on the spiritual development of children, two weeks after his arrest. The plea deal makes it possible he will evade a prison term.

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD

17 NEWS 3.indd 13



8/7/13 11:11 AM

Dispatches > News

Miraculous ways

Chinese church leader Samuel Lamb: 1925-2013 By jamie dean

>>

Early in his ministry, Chinese pastor Samuel Lamb often kept a small bag with clothes, shoes, and a toothbrush near his front door. The travel case wasn’t for ­weekend getaways: The leader in China’s underground church movement stayed ready for police to arrest him for his Christian activities.

Lamb didn’t resent it. His life spanned the remarkable surge of Christianity in China over the last ­half century—and he often said he could summarize his life and ministry in one principle: “more persecution, more growth.”

Lamb, who encountered both ­persecution and growth in extraordinary ways during his lifetime, died on Aug. 3 at age 88.

Lamb was born in a mountainous region near Macau in 1925. His father was a Baptist pastor, and Lamb began preaching his own sermons when he was 19 years old. By the mid1950s, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong began the first waves of persecution against many Chinese citizens, including Christians.

When Lamb refused to register his house church with the government, authorities arrested him in 1958. The sentence: Twenty years of hard labor.

Lamb spent most of the next two decades working in brutal coal mines, but he also taught Christianity to ­others suffering in the camp.

After his release in 1979, Lamb returned to leading a house church in Guangzhou. Attendance swelled, and today some 4,000 people attend four services at the church.

Authorities repeatedly pressured Lamb to register his church with the government. In one 1998 visit to his home, they told him his Sunday school

was illegal. He reminded them China was a signatory to UN conventions allowing children to follow the faith of their parents.

He also told them he was prepared to go to prison—again—for his faith.

The church remains unregistered to this day, with local authorities allowing it to ­continue—a dynamic repeated in other parts of China.

In some regions, local authorities still crack down on illegal Christian activity.

International Christian

Open Doors quoted Lamb as saying.

“My dear wife died while I was in prison. I was not allowed to attend her funeral. It was like an arrow of the Almighty until I understood that God allows the pain, the loss, the torture, but we must grow through it.”

Ryan Morgan of International Christian Concern met Lamb last year, and called his death “a momentous occasion” for the church in China. “His life and work are testament not only to the indomitable spirit of our Chinese brothers and sisters,” said Morgan, “but to the miraculous ways in which spiritual revival has sprung from what once seemed an almost impenetrable darkness.” A

Open Doors USA

14

Concern (ICC) reported multiple raids against churches in northwestern China in July.

Christian leaders say persecutions have helped fuel the growth of the church over the decades. OMF International (formerly China Inland Mission) reports the number of Christians in China in 1949 was 1 ­million. Today, the group estimates the number at 70 million.

Lamb’s church network helped ­distribute some 200,000 pieces of Christian literature in China over three decades, according to Open Doors. The pastor said being prepared for suffering was key to his ministry. “I can understand Job’s victories and Job’s defeats,”

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 D14 and D15.indd 14

8/7/13 11:20 AM

THE PIONEER

‘My dear wife died while I was in prison. I was not allowed to attend her funeral. It was like an arrow of the Almighty until I understood that God allows the pain, the loss, the torture, but we must grow through it.’

Dispatches > News

On the block

Charitable tax deductions are no longer a certainty, and a nonprofit coalition gets ready to fight the change

By J.C. derrick in Washington, D.C.

Open Doors USA

THE PIONEER

>>

City Rescue Mission serves a homeless population in Saginaw, Mich., a midsized town 100 miles northwest of Detroit. Founded in 1905, the mission helped a record number of people last year—more than 1,900—with food, clothing, housing, and the hope of the gospel.

But record numbers don’t mean record revenue: City Rescue Mission is running its three facilities at 2007 ­budget levels—despite a 37 percent client increase since then. Sixty percent of that revenue comes from individual private donors.

Dan Streeter, executive director of the mission, is worried those donors may soon have less reason to give: Taxwriting committees in the House and Senate are working behind the scenes on tax reform legislation, and some lawmakers want to cut, alter, or even eliminate deductions for charitable giving.

“Any adjustment the government makes causes problems for us,” Streeter told me, citing 2006 regulations that caused vehicle donations to drop 95 percent. “I can’t do like the federal government and spend what I don’t have.”

City Rescue Mission is one of 275 members in the Association of Gospel

Rescue Missions (AGRM), one of 23 groups banding together nationwide to form the new Faith & Giving Coalition— a group collectively educating lawmakers on the benefits of charitable organizations and the public on the brewing storm. Once a given in the U.S. tax code, deductions for gifts to charities are on the block as a way to increase federal revenue—and as a backdoor to regulating nonprofits more.

The coalition already boasts some of the largest Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish organizations in the country: The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, World Vision, Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Jewish Federation of North America.

Member groups are mobilizing during the August recess to write op-eds, call legislators, and attend town hall meetings with a clear message for lawmakers: Don’t touch charitable deductions.

Lawmakers have been laying the groundwork for tax reform for years, but both houses are coordinating efforts to introduce legislation by year’s end—as early as October. That means staff members are writing laws now.

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, chairman

Worldmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views

17 D14 and D15.indd 15

of the Senate Finance Committee, and Republican Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, say they want their legacies to include tax reform, and both are stepping down at the end of 2014.

Baucus and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Finance Committee’s ranking member, recently wrote a letter to senators announcing a blank slate approach to reform: All tax breaks are assumed out of the tax code unless MISSION: m ­ embers explain Students feed the homeless why it helps grow the at the Rescue economy, makes the Mission in tax code fairer, or Tacoma, Wash. promotes important objectives. In a July meeting with several committee ­members, the Faith & Giving Coalition contended charitable deductions meet all three criteria.

Changes to charitable giving would disproportionately affect religious ­nonprofits, since they average less ­government funding than secular nonprofits. Even if lawmakers don’t limit deductions—as President Obama has suggested in every budget he’s submitted (at an annual cost of $9 billion to charities)—the biggest threat to religious groups may be in a proposed “public benefit” test. The test would supposedly weed out groups that don’t deserve deductions, but it’s a short leap to ­envision the government saying churches not actively engaged in feeding or clothing the poor aren’t providing public benefit—or that a faith-based nonprofit isn’t “diverse.”

Worse still, in an industry that employes 1 in 10 Americans, the IRS would decide who is deserving: “A public benefit test would dramatically increase the power of the IRS,” said David Wills, the coalition’s co-founder and National Christian Foundation president. Wills said any change “would be like going to every charity in the country and asking them to contribute to the government’s bottom line. They’re saying, ‘We want you to receive less so the government can receive more.’” A

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

15

8/7/13 11:21 AM

Dispatches > Quotables

‘I would not worship a God who is homophobic, and that is how deeply I feel about this.’

‘I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case.’

Texas state Sen. WENDY DAVIS, when a reporter asked her to explain the difference between Kermit Gosnell’s murder of babies at  weeks and the legalization of abortions after  weeks that she supports. Davis gained national fame this summer for her filibuster of a pro-life bill in Texas and may seek the Democratic nomination for governor in .



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 QUOTABLES.indd 16

South African DESMOND TUTU, , a retired Anglican archbishop who won the Nobel Peace Prize in . “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. … I would much rather go to the other place,” he said.

‘We in the mujahideen are imperfect Muslims trying to establish the perfect religion. I apologize for any mistakes I made in this endeavor.’

U.S. Army Maj. NIDAL MALIK HASAN, in his opening statement during his court-martial for the  shooting rampage that killed  and wounded  at Fort Hood, Texas. Maj. Hasan, who admits to the shooting, is representing himself.

‘When I am done playing golf, I’d rather be noted for being a good husband and good father than anything else.’

Professional golfer HUNTER MAHAN, on leaving the Canadian Open and flying to Dallas on July  after receiving word that his wife went into labor three weeks early.

Mahan was at the time leading the Open, which pays its winner more than  million.

DAVIS: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • DUNFORD: JAY PRICE/MCT/LANDOV • TUTU: GERALD HERBERT/AP • HASAN: BELL COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE/GETTY IMAGES • MAHAN: HUNTER MARTIN/GETTY IMAGES

Gen. JOSEPH F. DUNFORD JR., commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan, in an interview with The New York Times. Dunford made the case for a continuing U.S. military presence, possibly through , while the Obama administration is considering a withdrawal by  and recent polls show only  percent of Americans believe the war is worthwhile.

Available in Apple’s App Store: Download WORLD’s iPad app today

8/7/13 11:08 AM

CREDIT

‘Afghan forces, at the end of 2014, won’t be completely independent. Our presence post-2014 is necessary for the gains we have made to date to be sustainable.’

CREDIT

CREDIT

17 QUOTABLES.indd 17

8/6/13 4:08 PM

Dispatches > Quick Takes

 

Impatient with the speed of official rescue workers, a -year-old Texas woman phoned in her own helicopter rescue. The trouble began for Nancy Allen on July  when she slipped and hurt herself while ascending Mount St. Helens in Washington with her daughter. The Houston woman phoned local sheriffs from , feet up the mountain saying she would need a rescue. Three hours later, rescue workers had reached the woman. But after several hours of descending the mountain in a rescue basket, Allen reportedly threw in the towel. From the side of the mountain, she chartered a ,-per-hour helicopter to stage an airlift the rest of the way down.

  Chicago police have tried a lot of things to shrink the violent crime numbers in their city, and now they’re trying a preemptive approach: the strongly worded letter. On July , district commanders in the Chicago Police force began delivering memos to those they suspect may soon commit a violent crime with a gun. The message: We’re watching you. The plan was developed with help from a Yale University professor who studied the city’s gun problem over a recent five-year period. Police officials hand-delivered the letters to  hardened criminals to put them on notice.

  For those whom traditional caskets and funerals aren’t sufficiently retro, a British company is offering to take your loved one’s ashes and turn it into a vinyl record. The company, And Vinyly, says it can take cremated ashes, mix it with vinyl pellets, and press the amalgam into  -inch records.

Customers must provide not only the ashes, but also the audio for the recording and about , for the basic package. The company suggests customers pick any audio they want but insist they aren’t responsible for any copyright infringement.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 QUICK TAKES.indd 18

CHINA: IMAGINECHINA/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • CHICAGO POLICE: M. SPENCER GREEN/AP • COFFIN/RECORD: iSTOCK

  

Stay connected: Sign up to receive email updates at worldmag.com/email

8/6/13 4:13 PM

JAPAN: NORIHIRO SHIGETA/YOMIURI SHIMBUN/AP • KERR & FUCHS: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE McDONALD’S: HANDOUT • SHANGHAI: HANDOUT

Who doesn’t get wary around an angered goose? According to a report in China’s The People’s Daily, police in the nation’s Xinjiang Province are encouraging citizens to trade in their guard dogs for guard geese. “Among all poultry, geese [are known] for being extremely vigilant and having excellent hearing,” Zhang Quansheng, a police chief near the Kazakhstan border, told the paper. “Geese are very brave.

They spread their wings and will attack any strangers entering [someone’s] home.” According to the government news service, the geese are making headway in curtailing local crime. In June, local thieves managed to drug two guard dogs, but were hemmed in by nearly two dozen guard geese that squawked so loudly they woke up the security guard.

  To save a Japanese woman who had slipped into an -inch gap between a commuter train and the station platform, passengers waiting on a platform outside of Tokyo banded together to tilt the -ton car just enough so the woman could be dragged out of harm’s way. The woman slipped into the tight squeeze during the morning rush on July . And when a public announcement asking for help went out over the loudspeakers, the scores of Japanese passengers sprang into action. The unidentified woman was not injured, but the train was delayed by  minutes.

  When all others in Lance Cpl. Myles Kerr’s age group passed the finish line at the Jeff Drench Memorial k in Charlevoix, Mich., on July , Marine Corps friends of Kerr became worried. Kerr had opted to run the race wearing combat boots and a rucksack, and his friends assumed that’s why he was lagging behind. But when Kerr turned the final corner and headed for the finish line, his fellow Marines noticed he was running alongside a young boy who was struggling to keep pace. Earlier in the race, Kerr had noticed the -year-old Boden Fuchs struggling and apparently separated from his running companions. “Sir? Will you please run with me?” the boy reportedly asked the Marine. Kerr obliged, encouraging the boy all the way to the finish line.

JAPAN: NORIHIRO SHIGETA/YOMIURI SHIMBUN/AP • KERR & FUCHS: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE McDONALD’S: HANDOUT • SHANGHAI: HANDOUT

CHINA: IMAGINECHINA/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • CHICAGO POLICE: M. SPENCER GREEN/AP • COFFIN/RECORD: iSTOCK

  They may have bought the farm, but that hasn’t stopped long-dead farmers from receiving subsidies from the federal government. The Government Accountability Office divulged on July  that the Department of Agriculture had paid out approximately  million in subsidies to farmers who were at least two years dead. The subsidies were part of the USDA’s program to help farmers afford crop insurance.

The revelation came as Congress entered debates over a proposed trillion-dollar farm bill.

 

  An unidentified flying object caused a stir in Shanghai when it was spotted overhead in late July. The object, which measured nearly  feet by  feet and weighed just over  pounds, was seen floating over the city’s Huangpu River. After concerned phone calls and some reporting by the Chinese news website EastDay.com, the object was confirmed to be a drone—but not a military one. According to reports, the drone was a test project by a local bakery that wanted to see if it could avoid Shanghai’s traffic by delivering a cake across town by air.

You can lead a horse to the drive-thru, but you can’t make the restaurant serve you. A woman tried riding her horse through a McDonald’s drive-thru outside of Manchester, U.K., on July .

The surprised store workers informed the woman, whom police did not identify, that she had to be in a car to take advantage of the drive-thru lane.

Undeterred, the woman entered the restaurant with her daughter and horse in tow. She left after being chastised by McDonald’s staff, but not before her pony deposited a mess on the restaurant’s floor. According to local authorities, the woman was later fined for causing alarm and distress to employees and customers.

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD

17 QUICK TAKES.indd 19



8/6/13 4:13 PM

Janie B. Cheaney

Chains of history

Americans have made progress in race relations, but are we ready for healing?

>>

H  Z/M  blown over yet? A week of simmering commentary followed the verdict that declared George Zimmerman innocent of murder, along with demands that President Obama say something. On the Monday after a nationwide “day of protest,” he did—to the surprise of newsmen assembled in the White House press room. The unscripted remarks prompted swoons from the left and scoffs from the right, proving once again that in politics there’s no persuasion, only position.

Still, the president’s words should be taken at face value: “There are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store …” or “walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars …” or “getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.”

This, he said, has happened to him, and we have no reason to doubt it. An intriguing video going around the internet shows a young white man vigorously sawing a bicycle chain near a walking path. Only once is he seriously challenged by passers-by, even after admitting that the bike isn’t his. But a black man of similar age and garb attracts a circle of accusing white people, one of whom even confiscates his bag of tools.

“Profiling” happens, but why? “[T]he African-American community is PAST IMPERFECT: looking at this issue through a set of experiences Demonstrators and a history that doesn’t go away.” The president in Columbia, S.C., referenced history five times in his speech, and on July .

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 CHEANEY.indd 20

JEFF BLAKE/THE STATE/MCT/GETTY IMAGES



understandably so: for many reasons, history has not been kind to a race exploited all over the world, including their native Africa. But invoking history raises two significant problems. For one, there’s simply so much of it that a truly comprehensive view is all but impossible. And for another, a subject so vast, as well as past, can’t speak for itself. It’s like a roll of fabric that can be cut and tailored to dress any agenda.

Anything so easily manipulated is soon despised, even or especially by those who do the manipulating. And with that goes any chance of learning from history—a despised teacher cannot teach.

Our own American story was largely idealized throughout the th century, leading to an era of cynical revisionism in the th. “My country, ’tis of thee” became “My country, phooey on thee” to many American kids. Drained of its uniqueness and inspiration, revisionist America is less than unappealing—it’s boring. It has all the charm of a scab that bleeds again every time a high-profile white-on-black “incident” occurs. Judging by the media, whites and blacks coexist like an unhappily married couple who can’t discuss anything without one bringing up past hurts and the other lapsing into sulky silence.

Here are some historical facts, unrevisable: Of the estimated  million Africans stolen into slavery, anywhere from , to , ended up in North America. Compare that number to the total of Americans who died in the Civil War: about ,.

Might it be that the blood-guilt of American slavery was paid then? Following emancipation, blacks suffered another hundred years of segregation, second-class citizenship, and even murder before the Civil Rights Movement brought about a remarkable reversal (anyone over  knows how striking it was).

Might we say equality, at least under the law, has made great strides?

Minds don’t change with laws, but they do change.

“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asked a crippled man beside a pool (John :). The man replied with his personal history of failure, but Jesus wouldn’t have it: “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” Do we want to be healed? History is not a chain that binds both races to its insatiable demands. Under God’s providence, it’s going somewhere, and we play a part in its direction.

The Civil Rights Movement succeeded by keeping its eyes on the prize; taking up its bed, and walking forward. Racial reconciliation can succeed also—if that is our prize. A

Email: jcheaney@worldmag.com

8/5/13 4:18 PM

The Intelligent Brain Taught by Professor Richard J. Haier lecture titles

IM ED T E OF IT

FE

off

R2 3

OR

D

ER

BE

70%

R

LIM

university of california, irvine

BY S P T E M E

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

What Is Intelligence?

Assessing Intelligence General Intelligence in Everyday Life To g or Not to g—Is That the Question?

Intelligence and Genius over the Life Span Early Childhood Experience and Intelligence Genes and Intelligence Can We See Intelligence in the Brain?

What Brain Imaging Reveals about Intelligence Intelligence and the Brains of Children Sex and Intelligence Race and Intelligence Are We Really Getting Smarter?

The Mind in Milliseconds Creativity and Intelligence Can Intelligence Be Enhanced?

Intelligence, Child Rearing, and Education The IQ Pill

Discover What Defines Intelligence No feature of the mind is as important, controversial, and mysterious as intelligence. And now, thanks to decades of research, we are closer to understanding it than ever before. Is intelligence constrained by genes? What’s right and wrong with IQ tests? Can intelligence be measured directly from the brain?

Jeff Blake/The State/MCT/Getty Images

In The Intelligent Brain, one of the world’s foremost researchers on intelligence, Professor Richard J. Haier of the University of California, Irvine, answers these questions and more as he introduces you to the fascinating history of intelligence testing and its leading thinkers. In18 stimulating lectures, he presents what brain imaging studies and recent research reveal about this most complex of human phenomena—including surprising differences in the brain function of males and females and the implications for education policy, child rearing, and beyond.

Offer expires 09/23/13

1-800-832-2412

www.thegreatcourses.com/5wm

17 CHEANEY.indd 21

The Intelligent Brain

Course no. 1642 | 18 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

SAVE $160 DVD $219.95 NOW $59.95

+$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee

Priority Code: 77893

Designed to meet the demand for lifelong learning, The Great Courses is a highly popular series of audio and video lectures led by top professors and experts. Each of our more than 400 courses is an intellectually engaging experience that will change how you think about the world. Since 1990, over 10 million courses have been sold.

8/5/13 4:19 PM

RECLAIMING THE GREAT

Christian Intellectual Tradition IN PHARMACY RESEARCH

decision that its new health sciences building

“

Union was the first place that offered me

would house the caliber of pharmacy labs that

the ability to follow

could support cutting edge research. Today, top

Christ as well as do

faculty and students work together in Providence

scientific research to

Hall designing anti-cancer agents and conducting

the best of my ability.

other research to benefit people’s lives.

To learn more about Union’s commitment to Christ-centered academic excellence, visit uu.edu.

F O UNDED IN 1823 | J ACKSO N, T ENNESSEE |

”

DR. ASHOK PHILIP Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences

uu.edu

EXCELLENCE-DR IV EN | CHR IST-CENT ER ED | PEOPLE-FOCUSED | FUTURE-DIRECTED

17 MOVIES & TV.indd 22

8/7/13 8:54 AM

ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

A few years ago, Union University made the

Reviews Movies  TV > Books > QA  > Music A

Sanitized life DOCUMENTARY: Public broadcasting’s look at Muhammad offers everything but a critical look at Islam’s founder

BY MEGAN BASHAM

ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

>>

W M   of good or evil? That’s the question British author, broadcaster, and professing Muslim Rageh Omaar promises to investigate in the early moments of the new documentary, The Life of Muhammad, airing on PBS beginning August . If Omaar seems to have a conflict of journalistic interest regarding the subject, it’s no more so than the film’s director Faris Kermani, writer Ziauddin Sardar, or executive producer Aaqil Ahmed (also the Head of Religion & Ethics at the BBC, and the man who originally commissioned the project).

All are Muslims.

This isn’t to suggest that those who follow Islam shouldn’t have had roles—even major roles—in a documentary aimed at the general public about Islam’s founder. It’s only to point out that almost no one associated with the movie seems to have been in a position to approach the question with much skepticism.

Even the name of the production company— Crescent Films—betrays a marked partiality.

TO THE (It’s hard to imagine, for example, public MOUNTAIN: Muhammad. broadcasting airing an investigative series into the life of Christ from an outfit called Ichthys Productions.)

There’s no doubt, from the outset, that the filmmakers are partial. Within the first few minutes Omaar explains that out of deference to Muslim standards, the three-part series will avoid depicting any images of Muhammad—whether in artwork or in dramatic reenactments. It shows the same sensitivity to his wives. We see paintings of the women, but their faces are carefully whited out.

The Life of Muhammad is well-paced and visually arresting, thanks to locations in Mecca

Email: mbasham@worldmag.com

17 MOVIES & TV.indd 23

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/7/13 10:05 AM

MOVIE

Elysium

  

geous,” author Karen Armstrong informs us.

T    All of this leaves the hasn’t been good to Sony viewer with one glaring and Pictures. The heavilyglaringly unanswered promoted Will and Jaden question—if all this is true, Smith vehicle, After Earth, why are so many of this went down in flames, and religion’s adherents getting seeming box-office gold it so publicly wrong?

Channing Tatum proved he The film’s characterizacan strike a tin note with tion of Muhammad as White House Down. Now, the a prophet of peace— word is the studio’s looking to the indeed a prophet of Matt Damon-led -led sci-fi film Elysium outright self-abnegato turn its balance sheet around. tion—might be more Unless audiences are completely persuasive if those taken in by a marketing campaign who espouse a very that promises innovative, space-age different sort of storytelling when the film delivers Muhammad were also little more than been-there-doneOmaar in The Life given a full hearing. that agenda grinding, Sony will likely of Muhammad But The Life of have to keep looking.

Muhammad doesn’t “Our movie is a political statement,” Sharlto Copley, one bother with the “extremof the stars, recently told The New York Times, which should the experts Omaar consults ists” who hold more hardtell you exactly how entertaining it is. display a sympathy for the line views of jihad until the Damon plays a futuristic have-not in a Los Angeles that religion as naked as his own. last five minutes of the last looks like a third-world nation (okay, so maybe the premise Nearly every element of episode. Then, though they isn’t all that far-fetched). Jodi Foster is the have who lives modern Islam that only have approximately  on Elysium, a glorified space station of mansions, manicured Westerners find troubling is, seconds to express their lawns, and miraculous medical equipment that can cure the array of talking heads views, two young Muslim everything from leukemia to a half-exploded head. assure us, the result of either radicals sound (though Naturally, Foster and her wealthy ilk jealously guard their a misunderstanding or a certainly disturbing), intelgalactic habitat and are happy to resort to mass murder if misrepresentation of the ligent, consistent, and not it means keeping sick, illegal trespassers off it. Such a Quran. Muhammad never at all as if they’re ignorant progressive theme alone might not be enough to earn the intended for anyone to be of what their faith teaches. movie an eye roll, but the cartoonish, Occupy-poster diacoerced into converting to Omaar and his scholars logue confirms it is.

Islam, and Sharia was by no speak often throughout the If writer/director Neill Blomkamp had gone for a PG- means intended to rule civil three hours about how the rating, Elysium might have had a chance at bringing Sony societies. By his own exam“enemies of Islam” the big win it so desperately ple, Muhammad meant for distort the tenets needs. Instead, heavy doses women to be equal to men, of its founder in of foul language and one and he never required them order to attack it, particularly bloody scene to cover their heads or faces.     . - and that Muslims secured the film an R that’s Nor did he view Jews with according to Box Office Mojo have never elected likely to keep many potential enmity, considering them, CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent anyone who advoviewers away. Add to that instead, brothers of an ear(V), and foul-language (L) content on a - scale, with  high, from kids-in-mind.com cates extremism to messaging so heavy-handed lier branch of his own belief represent them. (to wit, Elysium looks like a system. And he certainly S V L The filmmakers gigantic, glittering Mercedesnever intended for Muslims 1̀  Guns R ......................................   might think about Benz hubcap) even those who to prosecute a war of religion 2̀ The Wolverine PG-13 .............   mentioning that to support universalized healthby targeting innocents. “The 3̀ The Smurfs  PG .....................   the Egyptians, care and open borders are Quran says that if the 4̀ The Conjuring* R.....................   5̀ Despicable Me * PG ............   Iranians, and liable to find it exasperating, enemy asks for peace, you 6̀ Grown Ups  PG-13 .................   Turks, to name a and it’s hard to see how must lay down your arms 7̀ Turbo* PG ....................................    few recent immediately and accept any Elysium can manage more than 8̀ Red  PG-13 .................................   examples. A terms however disadvantamiddling box office returns.

9̀ The Heat R ..................................   10 Pacific Rim* PG-13 ...................   ` and Medina, but a pall of propaganda hangs over the entire production. With the exception of a few brief appearances by Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, whose sound bites are limited to what must be the least critical things he’s ever said about Islam, most of

>>



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 MOVIES & TV.indd 24

ELYSIUM: TRISTAR PICTURES • THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD: CRESCENT FILMS LTD.

BOX OFFICE TOP 10

*Reviewed by WORLD

8/7/13 9:49 AM

THE ACT OF KILLING: CINEPHIL • PLANES: WALT DISNEY PICTURES

Reviews > Movies & TV

MOVIE

Planes

  

>>

ELYSIUM: TRISTAR PICTURES • THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD: CRESCENT FILMS LTD.

THE ACT OF KILLING: CINEPHIL • PLANES: WALT DISNEY PICTURES

L’   : Planes isn’t a Pixar production.

But with John Lasseter—chief creative officer at both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios—as executive producer, this movie is clearly a follow-up to Lasseter’s  Pixar production, Cars, and its brightly colored trucks and planes invoke the same imaginary terrain.

The Disney production also resumes Cars’ racing storyline, though in this case, we follow a plane named Dusty Crophopper. Dusty (Dane Cook) is on his way from uninspired crop duster to world class racing contender. But that’s not an easy transition when you’ve got enemies like Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith) who’ll stop at nothing to ground you, and friends who echo put-downs that you’re “built for seed, not for speed.”

When Dusty qualifies for a race around the globe, though, his friends rally behind him. His mechanic, Dottie (Terri Hatcher), joins his best friend, Chug (Brad Garrett), to form a first-class support team. Most importantly, Skipper (Stacy Keach), the WWII vet with a skull tattoo, takes Dusty under his wing and prepares him to face his biggest challenge—his fear of heights.

For all its familiarity, there is new ground covered here.

Because the race involves planes from around the world, supporting characters range from the bizarre (i.e., Tibetan monk and burka-wearing trucks) to the beautiful. But most of the religious references have a humorous twist. And with John Cleese and Cedric the Entertainer in tow, there are plenty of laughs along the way.

Still, that’s not to say this movie has the heart of a Pixar classic. The complicated plot may be hard for younger viewers to follow, and it lacks the emotional punch of a Toy Story. Christian parents also may want to discuss the central idea that to succeed, Dusty had to supersede what he “was built for.”

Rated PG for mild action and rude humor, Planes sputters at times. But for kids who love the Cars milieu, it’ll get them where they want to go.

See all our movie reviews at worldmag.com/movies

17 MOVIES & TV.indd 25

DOCUMENTARY

The Act of Killing   

>>

S-    been a gateway to committing and living with atrocities. Rarely has a truth been as painfully documented as in director Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling account of an elderly mass murderer pleasantly relating and re-enacting his killings from nearly  years ago.

In late , Anwar Congo lived in an Indonesia that had just survived an attempted coup by factions of the military and elements of the Indonesian Communist party.

Indonesia’s neighbor to the north, South Vietnam, was embroiled in a violent war with Communists within its own country and with Communist North Vietnam.

The fear and anxiety many Indonesians felt over Communist influence led to exaggerated tales of atrocities Communists had perpetrated in the coup attempt and a subsequent dehumanization of their Communist neighbors.

Gangs enlisted men like Anwar, with the government’s approval, to round up and kill suspected Communists, leading to a roughly six-month slaughter of somewhere between , and  million people.

Oppenheimer takes an innovative and extraordinarily effective approach to this material by asking Anwar to re-enact, with actors and some of his comrades, the killings they perpetrated. Anwar happily demonstrates such techniques as stringing wire around a victim’s neck, which was, as he describes, less messy than other forms of killing. Another killer involved in the re-enactments unironically wears a black T-shirt with “apathetic” emblazoned on the front.

One particularly jarring sequence plays like a Saturday Night Live sketch with poor taste (a low bar, to be sure).

The victims actually thank their killers for dispatching them as they stand in front of an idyllic waterfall scene while the swelling chords of “Born Free” soar above the watery mist.

Even more incredible than these bizarre scenes is the effect all this playacting has on Anwar, draining the Novocaine from his soul and compelling him to face, for the first time in nearly  years, his horrific actions.

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/7/13 9:48 AM

Reviews > Books

Hard stuff

Nonprofit CEO gives a brutally honest but needed account of charity in action

BY MARVIN OLASKY

>>

M  of international charity work show the principals going from success to success.

A just-published (Aug. ) book, Peter Greer’s The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good (Bethany House, , with Anna Haggard), is impressively different. Greer honestly shows the dangers of pride, burnout, disillusionment, and marital stress when we concentrate so hard on achieving a philanthropic objective that we run over people on the way.

Greer, president and CEO of Hope International, provides some indicting specific detail, as in this account of how “the United Nations and some big nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) distributed blankets during a cold, rainy period in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Step one: Tack NGO logos on telephone poles and plaster bumper stickers on cars. Step two: Wait for a CNN news crew to arrive: “Each NGO wanted the spotlight; the leaders began debating who would give the blankets while being filmed.”

Greer writes, “Blankets were piled in our van, ready to go.

Yet the refugees went without blankets for two days.” Then came truly sad news: CNN wasn’t coming. “Because we were no longer competing for media coverage, the larger NGOs finally granted permission for us to distribute the blankets. … Our

partner organization herded a few Congolese with the ‘right look’—those with torn clothes and emaciated faces. … To capture the perfect pictures, they made the Congolese repeatedly walk back and forth as we handed blankets to them.”

Greer then gives “the part of this story that still causes my stomach to churn.” He writes, “I bestowed my blankets on people who orderly shuffled through a line. … A photographer snapped pictures, and I smiled wide for the camera as I did ‘God’s work.’ And the thought running through my head was not about the people receiving the blankets. I thought, I can’t wait until the people back home see these photos of me. When I saw the photos a few weeks later, I trashed them. … I recognized myself as playacting.”

Good stuff. Hard stuff. Necessary stuff from (based on my limited experience) a good group. Maybe CEOs of some bigger nonprofits will do less public relations and more self-examination.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 BOOKS.indd 26

HOPE INTERNATIONAL

The Oxford Dictionary of Reference & Allusion, written by lexicographers Andrew Delahunty & Sheila Dignen (Oxford, ) is a pleasant book to have at bedside so you can learn about—to cite a typical two-page mix—Narnia, “nasty, brutish, and short,” “naughty but nice,” Nautilus, Nazarite, Nebuchadnezzar, nectar, Nefertiti, Nelson (Admiral Horatio), Nemesis, and Nepenthe.

Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days (Nation Books, ) is a left-wing publisher’s imitation of a Catholic calendar of saints’ days. For example, on Oct.  we should remember the words of a woman who saw the corpse of Castro comrade Che Guevara, killed by Bolivian soldiers: She and other peasants “walked over here and he looked at us. He was always looking at us. He was really nice.” Except when he was torturing others.

Sean Chercover’s The Trinity Game (Thomas & Mercer, ) is a page-turning novel about a scamming televangelist who suddenly receives a real prophetic gift. No Joke: Making Jewish Humor by Ruth R. Wisse (Princeton, ) analyzes the comedic style that Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart pushed to cultural dominance. Wisse gives examples such as the joke about Mrs. Rosenberg buying a chicken for a Sabbath dinner (and it could be Mrs. O’Brien searching for the right Christmas turkey): “She is not satisfied with an examination from across the counter, but asks the butcher to hand her the bird.

She lifts each wing and sniffs suspiciously, then one leg at a time, and finally the orifice. The butcher, who has tired of her performance, says, ‘Frankly, Mrs. Rosenberg, I don’t know which of us could pass your test!’” —M.O.

Email: molasky@worldmag.com

8/5/13 4:23 PM

HANDOUT

Four easy-reading books

NOTABLE BOOKS Four popular theology books > reviewed by  

Love Into Light Peter Hubbard Homosexuality may well be the defining issue for the st-century North American church. Christians have long held that the Bible declares homosexuality to be sin, but today face constant calls to rethink and redefine that position. In a new book on this pressing issue Peter Hubbard bravely asks, “What if homosexuality is not a threat but an opportunity?” While affirming what Christians have always believed, he helps sharpen and strengthen our thinking on this issue. He writes carefully, compassionately, and pastorally while speaking words of hope to those who struggle with same-sex attraction, calling Christians to hold fast to both truth and love. Hubbard’s work is a welcome and much-needed contribution to this pressing conversation.

SPOTLIGHT

Not by Sight Jon Bloom

The Puritans get a bad rap. Many

Jon Bloom’s debut book is about walking by faith. He retells familiar stories from the New Testament (and a couple from the Old) in a fresh, imaginative way, using the real experiences of real people to challenge his readers on the meaning of “trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” In  short chapters, Bloom encourages Christians to live for Jesus even when times are painful or confusing. Each chapter stands alone and is best read slowly and meditatively. Not by Sight is one of those books you will best enjoy if you take the time to slow down and savor it.

times I have heard it said that Puritan works are dense and inaccessible, but when I read those books I find them readable and surprisingly simple. Thomas Brooks Brooks’ Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices Devices, though written  years ago, is no

The Glory of Heaven John MacArthur Today an increasing number of people claim to have been to heaven and to have experienced its glories, before returning to life here on earth. New York Times bestsellers like Don Piper’s  Minutes in Heaven and Todd Burpo’s Heaven Is For Real, and many others, represent a growing genre in Christian publishing. In this second edition of The Glory of Heaven, John MacArthur addresses these books, answers a long list of misconceptions about heaven, and, even better, shows what the Bible teaches about life after death. He goes constantly to the Bible, determined neither to overstep the boundaries of God’s Word nor to overstate what God chooses to make clear.

HOPE INTERNATIONAL

HANDOUT

Rid of My Disgrace Justin & Lindsey Holcomb Sexual assault is a tragic and tragically common consequence of mankind’s fall into sin. The Holcombs, he a pastor and professor of theology, she a deacon and counselor, define it as “any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority.” After describing the disgrace of assault, they go to Scripture to apply the healing balm of God’s grace. Victims in some chapters describe abuse and its consequences before proclaiming the hope they have found in Jesus. Those who have suffered abuse and those walking with them will benefit from this book.

To see more book news and reviews, go to worldmag.com/books

17 BOOKS.indd 27

exception. In his work, Brooks describes  devices Satan uses to lead the soul to sin, eight means through which the devil keeps Christians from taking hold of God’s means of grace, eight of Satan’s plans to destroy a Christian’s assurance of salvation, and five strategies he employs as he plots against the wise, seeks to overpower those in high positions, and attempts to destroy Christian unity. Brooks reveals Satan as ultimately malevolent but Christ as ultimately powerful, and proposes a biblical remedy perfectly and powerfully suited to every one of Satan’s attacks. —T.C.

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 4:24 PM

Reviews > Q&A

God strong

JOHN PIPER may have retired from the pulpit, but he’s still pursuing Kingdom work, by the grace of God By Marvin Olasky

>>

28

sense of what you believe and do? Yes and no. Yes, they get external things, but what makes a hard line a beautiful line, probably not. The natural mind cannot receive the things of the Spirit, so they grope to put words on it—and generally the words they put on it are unhelpful. What comes to their mind is something negative, and therefore they see it not as helpful, protective, healing, Christ-exalting, God-centered, Bible-sensible, but hard and rigid.

Most college students, if they read anything from the Puritans, read only one Jonathan Edwards sermon that was atypical for him, “Sinners in the Hands of an

Angry God.” I have noticed that journalists seem to know only of your comment when a tornado toppled the steeple of a church where liberal Lutherans were approving ordination of a practicing homosexual: Call it “Tornado in the Hands of an Angry God.” The reporter who interviewed me for that article more recently asked me, “You still want to stand by all that stuff you wrote about the steeple getting toppled?” I said, “Yes,” and she was baffled that after negative push back I would still say, “God was very displeased with what happened that afternoon, and the toppled steeple is emblematic of that.” I don’t

know the way God is working providentially in immediate, direct lines, but I do say this particular blasphemous activity by a professing Christian group was striking: God rules all things, and He coordinated that particular tornado.

Some folks say Christians should not talk about God (and particularly Jesus) when talking to a general audience, because that will alienate some listeners.

They say we should make arguments on natural law grounds without referring to God. Given our need to glorify God, is silence about Him self-defeating, even if it helps us win a particular victory? It certainly would be

Matt Crutchmer/Bethlehem College and Seminary

John Piper’s recent retirement from preaching, after 33 years in the pulpit of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, hardly means retirement from pastoral work through other means, including writing. I interviewed the 67-year-old author of 50 plus books in front of students at Bethlehem College and Seminary.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune referred to you last Dec. 29 as “the fiery preacher of hard-line biblical values.”

How would you describe yourself in seven words or less? Desperately dependent on grace, happy about it.

After 33 years, does the Star Tribune have any

W ORLD • A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3

17 Q&A.indd 28

8/5/13 4:28 PM

Matt Crutchmer/Bethlehem College and Seminary

self-defeating for me to leave that out, because my calling is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God, not to spread a passion for family values. I don’t dictate strategies to politicians who are Christians and care about the common good and want to take the fruit of Christian life and see it enacted in law, but my bent is this: If saying “Jesus” or “God” alienates, it’s still necessary, because if you leave Him out, what have you drawn people to? Family values minus Jesus is just pure Pharisaism, moralism.

Can the current debate about same-sex marriage be successful without bringing it back to first

Email: molasky@worldmag.com

17 Q&A.indd 29

principles? Not if you define success as coming back to first principles. The Bible never addresses homosexuality apart from its relation to God. Romans 1 is all about what happens to human souls if God in a culture is replaced by other things, especially what we see in the mirror: That chapter has profound reflections on homosexuality.

More broadly: Do you find the natural law argument convincing? Not by itself. To say that the human being is wired a certain way naturally is an argumentative tool that carries the day with a lot of people. Paul in Romans 1 notes that what’s happening sexually is against nature: That’s a subordinate point for Paul so I think it has a subordinate place in our cultural dialogue.

ABC’s evening news now has an “America Strong” segment, and after the ­m arathon bombings Bostonians started saying “Boston strong.” Instead of proclaiming strength should we be acknowledging our human weakness apart from God? Whenever

God-ignoring, God-minimizing, human-exalting, city-exalting, nation-exalting, it’s evil. That’s the main problem in America today: The absence of God in most spheres of life is perceived to be normal, and even Christians feel it as normal— which is why absorbing the culture all around us and its priorities is so dangerous.

Paul’s statement, “When I am weak, then am I strong” ... The power of Christ is magnified when I acknowledge I’m needy, I’m bankrupt, I’m sinful, He’s full, He’s strong, He’s forgiving, He’s supplying.

God put human beings on this planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator in every sphere of ­culture. When they lose conscious dependence on their Maker and start to exalt the strength of something else, they commit treason against their Maker—and nothing will go right when a nation or a family or a person does that.

When so much is going wrong in our nation, how do we come out of that spiral?

Revival: the one-sided, supernatural arrival of God to do

like an inexplicable wave across the culture. We haven’t seen that for a long time in America, but I doubt that short of that we will come out of a God-ignoring, God-belittling frame of mind, which pretty much grips the whole nation.

Some people might say: If it’s one-sided and our only hope is that God will show up, why should we make any effort? I say you obey what’s in the Scripture. If it says worship God, you worship God. If it says love your enemies, you love your enemies. If it says practice hospitality, you practice hospitality.

You do the hundreds of things that a Christward heart does in the hope that God will cause those little sparks to become a conflagration in a community or in a nation.

If we see a sign at a church, “Come to our revival the week of _,” that’s suspect? Yes, I would look with suspicion, but I have to speak with tenderness because my father did that. He totally believed that if God didn’t show up on that day there would be no revival, and

‘The absence of God in most spheres of life is perceived to be normal, and even Christians feel it as normal—which is why absorbing the culture all around us and its priorities is so dangerous.’ —John ­Piper the strength of God is not recognized as the source of our strength, we are breaking the First Commandment: Do not have any gods before me. If “Boston strong” or “America strong” is God-neglecting,

something extraordinary, to awaken people to their sinful condition and to waken them to the reality of God and then the reality of Christ, the reality of sin, and the necessity of repentance in faith. It moves

yes, he used that language of “We will hold the revival on _.” That’s what everybody did, and the roots of it were bad, but we don’t always fix the language of what we do before we fix the substance. A

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W ORLD

29

8/5/13 4:29 PM

Land-mined talent

New albums from JAY-Z and KANYE WEST feature sonic trailblazers trending in cultural destruction

BY ARSENIO ORTEZA

>>



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 MUSIC.indd 30

which remains too perverted to describe, was not an issue.

Something similar has occurred with West and Jay-Z. Sonically, they’re trailblazers, layering beats and hooks with an electronic sophistication that will provide musicians and producers with templates long into the future. The attitudes they’re expressing, however, once would’ve gotten their mouths washed out with soap.

Those attitudes are not without interest. Somewhere in the seemingly bottomless pit of West’s and Jay-Z’s anger and self-regard lie clues to nearly every dysfunction currently hastening Western civilization’s decline and fall.

Yet despite a practically Joycean array of “shout-outs” that include fellow pop stars (Nirvana, R.E.M.), the Bible, Kubrick films (Jay-Z), or the very “zeitgeist” itself (West), the road the clues map is so land-mined with profanity,

MAXPPP/LANDOV

D  remember Robert Mapplethorpe? He was the photographer who posthumously made federally funded obscenity a hot topic when a museum presented a display of his work in the early s.

The display featured homoerotic photos, the kind that would’ve previously been sequestered in society’s darkest corners. So the public could know what the fuss was about, they were reproduced in magazines available at checkout counters. Suddenly, the taboo had gone mainstream.

That watershed is helpful to understand why the latest hip-hop albums by Kanye West and Jay-Z, Yeezus (Def Jam), and Magna Carta... Holy Grail (Roc Nation/Virgin EMI), respectively, have become two of this year’s bestsellers.

Mapplethorpe’s defenders championed his aesthetics—the way he used lights and darks to create powerful effects and so on. The subject matter,

vulgarity, obscenity, and blasphemy that to travel it is to risk one’s sanity.

Quoting the lyrics is pointless.

Suffice it to say that were it not for overdeployed rhythmic grunts and what George Carlin once called the “dirty words you can’t say on TV,” neither West nor Jay-Z could easily get from one of their quick-edit thoughts to another. Compared to their latest songs, toilet-stall poetry is the Norton Anthology of Romantic Verse.

Gavin McInnes has quoted the TV producer Charlie Corwin as saying, “Tattoos used to mean ‘Get away from me.’ Now they mean ‘Ask me about my tattoo.’” To the extent that profanity is to language what tattoos are to the temple of the Holy Spirit, a similar shift has occurred regarding pop lyrics: What was once spoken in closets lest it offend is now proclaimed upon housetops lest it lack mass-marketable street cred. Rappers are prime players in this degradation of the gift of speech.

That such stuff sells is to be expected, but that critics acclaim it is confounding. If only the praise were written by journalists too young to know better, one could at least hope they’d mature.

Enter Lou Reed, the -year-old rock poet who in the s rode Andy Warhol’s pop-art coattails to a rock superstardom he still enjoys. In July, fresh from a life-threatening liver transplant, he took the unusual step of reviewing West’s Yeezus at TheTalkHouse.com.

Echoing Mapplethorpe’s admirers, Reed devoted his , words to defending West largely in terms of his technical achievements. “[T]he guy really, really, really is talented,” he wrote. “He’s really trying to raise the bar. No one’s near doing what he’s doing.”

“If you like sound,” he concluded, “listen to what he’s giving you. Majestic and inspiring.”

“Inspiring”? Perhaps. After all, that which inspires anyone to do anything can be called “inspiring.”

But “majestic”? Kings still in their graves are undoubtedly rolling over. A

Email: aorteza@worldmag.com

8/6/13 4:41 PM

MATT ROGERS

Reviews > Music

NOTABLE CDs

New or recent gospel and CCM releases > reviewed by  

Walking Song Ron Block The PR for this Alison Krauss band member’s third solo album cites the famous musicians who contribute to it, reiterates Block’s many accomplishments, and details how Block came to solicit the lyrics of  songs with someone he met online.

Interesting stuff, but what matters is what emerges when one pushes “play”: pleasant singing, masterly musicianship (Block’s guitar and banjo chief among it), shape-shifting roots genres, an instrumental version of “What Wondrous Love Is This?,” and a beautiful gospel song—with words—called “Rest, My Soul.”

Troubled Days Seabird Three-and-a-half years after their underrated sophomore album divided fans of their  debut, Aaron and Ryan Morgan get back to creating hooky, emotionally honest, piano-driven rock mini-dramas, this time with the help of a Kickstarter campaign.

They’ve spent their fans’ money well. The troubledmarriage songs “Love Will Be Enough” and “Something Better Change” will mean the most to couples facing the post-honeymoon blues. The enough-is-enough “We Can’t Be Friends” and the Jesus-is-enough “Stand Out” are for everyone.

MAXPPP/LANDOV

MATT ROGERS

Rise Skillet The most obviously metallic elements of this concept-album follow-up to the platinum-selling Awake—Seth Morrison’s guitars and John Cooper’s vocals—verge on “industrial”: abrasive, hard, and compacted into pummeling pistons of sheer sound.

They are not, however, the linchpins. That honor goes to the exuberant “Good to Be Alive” and the prophetic “American Noise.” As for the band’s outright declarations of faith, the plenty Americannoisy “What I Believe” beats “My Religion,” which derogates the visible Body of Christ whether it means to or not.

Wow Gospel 2013 Various artists In one of his World Youth Day homilies, Pope Francis cited “hope,” “openness to being surprised by God,” and “living in Joy” as Christian hallmarks. And although probably none of these  contributors are Catholic, those hallmarks are what they communicate. Their hope-and-joy cup practically runneth over. And while the surprise factor might be diminished for regular listeners of black-gospel radio, others might wonder where these songs—especially those of Andraé Crouch and The Walls Group—have been all their lives.

To see more music news and reviews, go to worldmag.com/music

17 MUSIC.indd 31

SPOTLIGHT The tradition of rural, a cappella, gospel-singing women is older and richer than the spotty availability of that tradition’s recordings. There is, in other words, more such music where Ester Mae Smith, Angela Taylor, and Della Daniels—the Mississippi sisters and cousin known as the Como Mamas—come from. But so satisfying are their performances on Get an Understanding (Daptone) that listeners who find themselves deepened and uplifted by them won’t be seeking greener pastures any time soon.

Get an Understanding was recorded at Mt. Mariah Church in June , i.e., one year before the Como Mamas were recorded at the same site as part of Daptone’s various-artists Como Now: The Voices of Panola County, Mississippi.

So, chronologically, it could create a disturbance in folks’ minds.

Otherwise, however, the raw power of these  traditional selections and one apiece by Thomas Dorsey and James Cleveland lay and build upon a rock-solid foundation.

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/6/13 4:43 PM

Mindy Belz

Handto-hand combat

Moving bodily into the battle is sometimes the only way to win

>>



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 MINDY.indd 32

STILL STANDING: St. Paul’s Cathedral on Dec. , .

you get a connection, could you tweet your detention?”

Borri confronted hand-to-hand combat where a distant editor saw but words on a page.

In one of the last century’s wars, during the London Blitz, volunteers formed a cathedral watch.

At the end of a workday they headed to St. Paul’s Cathedral to stay the night. Their job was to protect from German air raids the church, built in  at the highest point in the City of London and the masterpiece of Christopher Wren. The skies fell quiet for most of the month of December , but on the th the Luftwaffe returned—with over  bombers—and St. Paul’s in its sights.

As hundreds of bombs fell, and the City of London burned as it hadn’t since the Great Fire of , the men and women of the cathedral watch climbed among the joists of its ancient lead roofs, staying ahead of the firebombs with sandbags and water buckets. In all they extinguished  incendiary bombs that fell on the cathedral that night—saving St. Paul’s.

The only way I found finally to defeat the harlequin bug was to get on my hands and knees in the lettuce bed, face down into the green leaves to pluck the little pests by hand, one by one, sometimes feeling their tiny pincer legs and their slime run down my grimy thumb before dropping them into a bucket of hot soapy water.

I had to examine each leaf, up close, and sometimes chase the little bugs with my fingers through the dirt.

In the incarnation of Jesus Christ—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John :)—we have the miraculous coming of God into the mire of life. In the coming of the Holy Spirit we His followers become His temple ( Corinthians :), His hands and feet. Our translation even in this life gives us freedom to move toward people, toward problems.

And sometimes to get our hands dirty. A

HERBERT MASON/DAILY MAIL/GETTY IMAGES

P   ’ work has been to wage war with the harlequin bug. Also known as murgantia histrionica, harlequin bugs don’t just eat crops, they suck the life out of them. So I’d find the eggplants on their sides, spray them, only to discover the Swiss chard wilting from an infestation the next day. Once I sprayed the chard, the harlequin bugs moved on to the lettuce, then the arugula, and so on. The rotation continued, as I grew increasingly discouraged and, stupidly, went through bottle after bottle of insecticidal soap and other remedies.

I have said before that every year the garden teaches me something new about life under the sun.

Every growing season the vegetable patch confronts me with a different lesson, a new way I need to grow.

Here’s what I’m learning from this year’s battles with the harlequin bug: Sometimes there’s nothing left but hand-to-hand combat.

We live in a world of aerial sorties where flying at , feet is the optimum altitude for solving life’s problems—figuratively and literally. We vent frustrations on Facebook. We no longer need to leave our desks to pay our debts. We hire middlemen to manage our details. And when it comes to national security, we send drones to do our dirty work.

This isn’t all bad. There are things you can see at , feet that get lost at ground level. But virtual, arm’s length warfare shouldn’t be the default: Sometimes only a close eye and a ready hand will do.

Sometimes it takes a willingness to get dirty, hands and all, to risk fingernails, limbs—maybe one’s life— to rout an enemy.

After months of covering combat in Syria and risking her life, Italian journalist Francesca Borri described it as “a war of the last century; it’s trench warfare between rebels and loyalists who are so close that they scream at each other while they shoot each other.” Yet this spring when an editor thought she’d been kidnapped, he sent her an email asking, “Should

Email: mbelz@worldmag.com

8/5/13 4:32 PM

Worship Him who made heaven and earth . . .

– Revelation 14:7

20 Years Strong as the Leading Bible-based Nature Journal!

Readers call it, “The Christian answer to National Geographic! ” • Stunning Photography • Eternal Lessons in Nature • Creation Science • Outdoor Travel Adventures • Gardening Tips • Instructional Study Guide • Even Genesis Cuisine Recipes for healthful living!

HERBERT MASON/DAILY MAIL/GETTY IMAGES

Spiritual Food You Can’t Thrive Without!

=

OR

ORDER ONLINE NOW and SAVE $5 ! Only $14.95 per year Logon to: www.CreationIllustrated.com/world or Call: 1(800) 360-2732

17 MINDY.indd 33

8/6/13 4:36 PM

than you can be Be less

by M A RV IN OL ASKY                        



I

 J.R.R. T’ T Hobbit, Gollum almost stumps Bilbo with a riddle: This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down. Grasping for more seconds, Bilbo pleads for “Time,” and realizes he’s hit upon the answer.

Here’s a contemporary Washington riddle: Which federal programs have most savaged the goals of not only conservatives but liberals as well, not only adults but children, not only would-be workers but content-to-be-takers, and sometimes the truly needy?

The answer: a complex of federal disability programs led

by Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Smaller programs are also a mess—the Railroad Retirement Board last month revoked the disability benefits of  Long Island Rail Road retirees who were allegedly part of a massive fraud—but SSI and SSDI are the twin gorillas that cost a total of  billion.

Unsurprisingly, House hearings in late June revealed enormous amounts of fraud and mismanagement in the programs. Surprisingly, liberal legacies like The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and National Public Radio also castigated

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 34

8/5/13 4:41 PM

CREDIT

As this summer’s anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act recalls hope, federal disability programs are killing a liberal dream, undercutting a conservative victory, and leading millions to lie or lie around

credit

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 35

8/5/13 4:41 PM



- months before getting onto SSDI again.

THE BEST LAID PLANS: The result: In  only  President Bush signs ADA on the South Lawn of the percent of recipients left White House on July , the government disability  (above); David Cox rolls. That’s exactly the (right) helps a friend who opposite of what ADA’s suffers from degenerative disc disease with his grocery liberal backers wanted. shopping (facing page).

That’s also two-thirds less than the  percent who go back to work each year after being on private disability insurance.

Despite all the good intentions at the time ADA became a law, the overriding federal message to people with disabilities is: We don’t expect you to work. More than  of every  in federal disability funds goes to

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 36

8/5/13 4:42 PM

GREG SCHNEIDER/GENESIS

because of a twisted umbilical cord. He’s had neurological problems but has still shown determination, spending  years to get a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

Cox says, “I don’t like government assistance. All those crazy rules and regulations.” He says he could earn , on his own as a para-teacher of incarcerated youth, but then “I’d have no security if I lost my job, no Medicare.” So he restricts his teaching, not earning more than  per month, and in that way retains his SSDI payments from Washington. His disability is real. He’s entitled to what he receives. His financial calculations are sensible—but he’d rather work more, in the spirit of ADA. Multiply Cox by several million. If those on SSDI and able to work do so, they lose benefits. If they save money, they lose benefits. If they return to work and have problems, they typically have to stop working for

BARRY THUMMA/AP

the programs. Journalists so far, though, have not connected the dots, showing how the failure of SSI and SSDI undercuts almost every disabled person, every government povertyfighting activity, and every taxpayer.

That’s what I’ll attempt to do in this story—and the place to start is with the anniversary of what in  seemed a progressive breakthrough, President George H.W. Bush’s signing into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). His attorney general, Richard Thornburgh, called ADA “this bright moment in modern American history ... truly another emancipation.” Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a key sponsor, labeled ADA “an emancipation proclamation for people with handicaps” that will “fundamentally change their lives” by bringing them “into full participation in society.”

Press accounts reflected that optimism. A front-page USA Today article with the headline, “Disabilities no longer a job barrier,” called ADA “The most significant civil rights legislation in more than  years.”

U.S. News & World Report, noting that companies now had to make their workplaces disabled-friendly and make sure their hiring and firing practices were nondiscriminatory, rhapsodized about “Liberation day for the disabled.” A Harris poll showed two-thirds of unemployed disabled people excited about going to work.

The reality was different.

According to analysts Richard Burkhauser and Mary Daly,  percent of working-age men with disabilities had earnings in . That dropped to  percent in  and  percent in .

The percentage of workingage women with disabilities who earned some money declined similarly and was down to  percent in .

The decline isn’t because disabilities are worse and more people are unable to work: Working-age people in  and  had the same degree of work limitations and a similar unemployment rate.

The big difference is that official Washington through ADA said one thing—We’ll help you to work—but created incentives not to work. An SSDI-eligible person with minimum wage skills typically receives , per month from the government, plus free Medicare coverage after two years, plus other benefits. Overall he does better economically, in the short run, by staying home than by going to work.

It’s no surprise that the number of people on SSDI (about  million with work histories) and SSI (about . million with little or no work background) has tripled since ADA passage. Let’s see how this works out in the life of one WORLD reader, David Cox. Cox was born with oxygen deprivation

Barry Thumma/ap

Greg Schneider/Genesis

support or increase dependency, not to help disabled persons find work and develop their skills.

L

iberals should be distressed by the huge gap between ADA predictions and reality.

Conservatives should be equally distressed by the way federal disability programs have undercut the 1995 Republican Revolution’s one big claim of success: welfare reform, which reduced by half the number of people on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (and

changed AFDC’s name to Temporary Aid to Needy Families).

It turns out, though, that TANF was temporary for hundreds of thousands because they moved onto the disability rolls.

Some stats: From ADA’s passage in 1990 to 1997, the first year after welfare reform, the number of SSI recipients increased by nearly 1 million, with most of them claiming disability. A General Accounting Office survey in 1997 found 12 percent of households that lost AFDC benefits began receiving SSI, and hundreds of thousands more moved to SSDI. By 2002, former AFDC/TANF recipients made up onethird of all the women on SSI. Ten years after ADA’s passage, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that “When access to benefits is expanded the employment rate of individuals with ­disabilities drops.”

The SSDI/SSI rolls also expanded as ­disability definitions loosened. In earlier years officials granted disability claims on the basis of objective medical evidence ­concerning hearts, lungs, paralysis, and so forth. After welfare reform the most common claimed disability was bone and muscle pain, especially lower back pain—and that’s hard to prove or disprove. Disability awards for “back pain” over the past three decades have increased at least fivefold. We’ve seen a similar increase in disability awards because of mental disorders, including “feelings of guilt or worthlessness” and “difficulty ­concentrating.” About 60 percent of all ­disability awards now are for back pain or mental illness.

Some of those awards are for severe problems. I’ve gone through 77 pages of medical records and correspondence sent me

by Virginian Keallie Wozny, 54. She had severe scoliosis that went untreated until it was too late to do a full correction, so ­surgeons fused her spine with about a 65% curve. She wanted to be a nurse, but her back did not allow her to bear the weight of patients, so she went into respiratory therapy and eventually began work at a local hospital.

Wozny learned to lean—against a wall, against the corner of a night stand, against a bed frame. She leaned whenever she could to take pressure off her back. She fought against pain, sometimes stopping at a bathroom up the hallway to cry privately. She developed osteoporosis in her mid-40s and lost three inches in height as her fused spine slowly broke down and her curve increased to 75 degrees. She had more fusion surgery but was never pain-free. She reluctantly applied for SSDI in 2007 and, after a final hearing that lasted only three minutes, gained approval.

Wozny’s need was real, but the federal Office of the Inspector General recently

A u g u st 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 37

37

8/5/13 4:42 PM

found one in four SSDI applicants in  and  actually employed, and more than half probably would have been two years later had they been denied SSDI benefits.

SSA has not done a full study of its SSDI and SSI recipients, but the British government did one of its officially disabled residents in programs similar to the American ones. Asked to submit medical tests to confirm disabilities, one-third of recipients dropped out of the program rather than submit to an examination. Of those tested, doctors found  percent fit for work, and an additional  percent fit for some work.

In essence, there’s good reason to believe that while Republicans boasted of TANF success in trimming the rolls, and some former recipients did go to work, SSI and SSDI for many became the new, improved welfare: Improved from the recipients’ perspective because they often received much higher stipends, without any pressure to work. Some Republicans had complained about “welfare queens,” but no one wanted REAL to seem so unfeeling as to speak of NEED: NEED Keallie disability queens—and kings. A Wozny. national anti-welfare mood meant that from  to  the maximum cash benefit for AFDC/TANF families stayed the same or declined in  states and went up in , although not by as much as inflation. Meanwhile, the federal SSI rate increased by  percent.

Napping conservatives did not realize that not only individuals but states had strong financial reasons to make disability the new welfare. States received TANF block grants, with Washington agreeing to give states the same amount they received in  even as TANF expenses fell. Meanwhile, the federal government paid directly all SSI and SSDI costs, which meant that states could make money by urging TANF recipients to move on over to the federal disability programs.

National Public Radio was shocked to learn that some states even hire firms to contact welfare recipients and push them to qualify for some kind of disability, with states then able to shift recipients from state welfare rolls onto the federal dole. Some modern bounty hunters receive , for each person they can move from TANF to disability: NPR reported that one out of four working-age adults in poor Hale County, Ala., was receiving disability payments, and called SSDI “a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills.”



STEPHEN WOZNY

W

’  covered in WORLD the huge increase in the number of children on SSI, and the tragic results of overmedication as some grasping parents seek mental disability status for their youthful meal tickets (see “Disabling Security,” WORLD, Dec. , ). But what are the effects on adults of disability

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 38

8/5/13 4:42 PM

EDWARD LEE PITTS

reported that many SSDI applicants “purposely withhold or fabricate information to collect government benefits they are not entitled to receive.” A U.S. Senate investigation concluded that “insufficient, contradictory, and incomplete evidence” underlies one-fourth of all disability insurance decisions, with “nondisabled persons” often joining the rolls. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and two other senior members of a House committee declared in March, “Federal disability claims are often paid to individuals who are not legally entitled to receive them.”

How many? Hard to say, but the Government Accountability Office recently examined data from a dozen states and concluded that , individuals determined by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to be fully disabled had “received or had renewed commercial drivers licenses.”

A  paper from the RAND Center for the Study of Aging

lures? Christian poverty-fighters a century ago shared an 11th commandment: Do no harm. Do not remove work incentives.

Now, analysts Burkhauser and Daly write about hundreds of thousands who “weigh the advantages of a continued ­struggle in the labor market relative to … application for SSIdisabled adults benefits.”

Americans, long known as people with a can-do attitude, now plot to have themselves declared: Can’t do. Last year 3 million people were new applicants for SSI or SSDI: Benefit claims have increased by 25 percent during the past five years. Scoliosis-burdened Wozny has seen how at ground level “the system is flooded with people just trying to get a

Chopping up a living

Stephen Wozny

Edward lee pitts

Disabled workers at Wildflour Bakery find purpose and a paycheck in the kitchen by Edward lee pitts in Chantilly, Va. On a recent morning when Brian Glen rolls a cart filled with lunch items ready for delivery, he almost bumps into a visitor.

“Excuse me,” Glen says, smiling. “It’s a nice day we are having, isn’t it?”

Glen, 24, has spent the last two years working at Wildflour, a deli, bakery, and catering business 30 miles outside of Washington in Chantilly, Va. Glen is one of 35 employees with intellectual disabilities at this nonprofit that began in 1994. Five days a week these workers perform a ­variety of tasks for a paycheck. And they seem to love every minute of it.

“It’s kind of like being at Camelot,” says Glen. “I have my brothers and sisters here.”

Inside Wildflour’s 5,000-square-foot kitchen, a half dozen workers with cognitive disabilities stand at steel workstations dicing and slicing tomatoes, jalapeños, cheese balls, and red peppers. Jonathan Chester McCambly’s task today is cutting onions. He is meticulous about getting them the right shape before scooping them into a plastic container.

“I will let you in on a little family secret,” says McCambly, 29. “Cooking and being a chef is a family legacy. I’m trying to make a name for myself.”

Alberto Figueiredo Sangiorgio, Wildflour’s general manager, spends months teaching a new worker how to use a knife. Often he lets them cut just one pepper a day until they get it right. He tells his employees not to rush and to make every cut beautiful.

“Even if you don’t see it on the surface, they need that challenge,” says Sangiorgio, whose four decades as a chef sent him to 15 countries. “We are not here to babysit.

They come here to work.”

Workers are paid $7.25 an hour and earn sick leave, vacation, and profit-­ sharing. The office hallway is lined with so many framed employee-of-the-month certificates that space is running out.

“Some of the guys, their knife skills are better than prep cooks I’ve had in the past,” says Paul Miller, a Wildflour chef with 30 years of cooking experience. ”In a regular work environment I think some people look for reasons not to go to work. These guys love coming here.”

In a room near the kitchen, workers use cookie cutters to press dough into bonelike shapes before placing them onto sheets for baking. Others pack cooked dog biscuits into plastic containers that are shipped to grocery stores. Jessica Dempsey, 24, is taught to pack the biscuits so tightly they make no sound when someone shakes the package.

Dempsey says work is a “really cool idea.” Her job, she says, helps her focus on her future and teaches her how to do new things. She likes impressing her supervisors by showing them how hard she works.

“This is my dream job,” Dempsey says.

“Catering is part of my life.”

Many of the workers with disabilities enjoy talking about what they are saving their paycheck for. McCambly wants to go on a cruise this December with his sister.

He’d also like to get his own apartment.

Caitlin Corrigan, 24, who helps make chicken and tuna salad, just bought her dad golf tees for his birthday.

Sangiorgio has his employees set aside a small portion out of their paychecks every month. At the end of the year they take those savings and buy presents for patients at a local children’s hospital.

Wildflour’s model works. The business is experiencing its biggest year so far: Twenty catering orders were pending ­during the last week of July. Last year Sangiorgio opened up another deli at a

nearby office complex and plans to expand to 50 employees with developmental disabilities by the end of the summer. He has a waiting list of parents wanting to get their children a job.

Sally Dempsey, Jessica’s mother, says her daughter has grown more independent and thoughtful. She does her own laundry, cooks pasta dishes for her family, and took her mother out for sushi on her birthday.

“In past years she would have struggled getting up and been in a foul humor,” her mother says. “But she said they are ­counting on her being here. She said it is her responsibility.”

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W ORLD

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 39

39

8/5/13 4:43 PM

free ride.” She sees lawyers shouting in TV ads, “Disabled?

Get the money you deserve!” (One she contacted assumed she wanted to fake it, and told her what to do.) She sees doctors who think they’re doing unemployed patients a favor by certifying them as helpless.

Denied applicants typically request reconsideration: It might seem that twice turned-down applicants wouldn’t have much chance, but congressional investigators found the vast majority of last-chance judges approve benefits more than half the time. Some judges are umpires who almost never call third strikes: The Wall Street Journal reported that one West Virginia judge awarded benefits in , of the , cases he decided in , and in , of his , decisions in . And yet, a study last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago showed that if applicants denied benefits initially did not have an appeal option, their employment rate would be  percent higher.

SSI and SSDI do psychological harm to individuals and financial harm to the United States as a whole. If we stay on our present course, federal programs like Social Security and Medicare will run out of money within two decades—but SSDI, which ran a  billion deficit last year, will run out of



HANDOUT

money in , according to projections by Social Security’s trustees. They predict the system that year will collect only enough money in payroll taxes to pay  percent of benefits, triggering an automatic  percent cut in benefits—unless Congress acts.

For some who can work, a  percent cut is survivable. For others, it would be devastating. This is not an abstract problem for Josh McFarland, a pastor with a -year-old daughter who has “the mental cognition of roughly a -year-old child, and severely autistic tendencies. She receives SSI and a lot of state help which, for the record, both my wife and I have struggled with over the years. Unfortunately, her need is great, and we simply have had no choice but to accept the

programs which exist for people like her. Sometimes dealing with her needs seems to consume us, and I cannot imagine what would happen if the help she is getting now simply stopped.”

But if the number of less-needy recipients grows, at some point that help will stop or decrease—or we’ll raise taxes so high, or inflate our currency, that the economy will be devastated. In , Congress probably will redirect money from the broader Social Security program, because many politicians want to be seen as compassionate helpers of the beaten-down, especially if they can do it with someone else’s money. But that just brings the whole Social Security structure closer to collapse.

We could take three steps toward a better way.

First, recognize that tinkering won’t work. Near the th century’s end, a lavish disability program was flooding Holland’s governmental budgets: Dutch politicians lowered benefit levels, tightened eligibility rules, and in other ways tried to reform their program at the margins. Nothing worked until the Netherlands stopped having government run everything and started using private-sector insurance firms to provide case management of rehabilitation.

Second, realize that only a “work-first stratNOT AN egy” works. Now, SSI and ABSTRACT SSDI offer support only PROBLEM: PROBLEM McFarland after individuals have and his spent a long time showing daughter. they cannot work. It would be far better to erase that firm dividing line between the able and the disabled, and to understand that almost everyone can do something.

Washington should no longer encourage state officials to make SSI “the new welfare,” and should instead encourage through block grants state-by-state, work-oriented innovation.

Third, stress what individuals can do with family support. Shortly before ADA’s passage, U.S. News quoted Iowa mom Sylvia Piper saying she had saved taxpayers . million by ignoring physicians who urged her to institutionalize her son, Dan, who had Down syndrome. Instead, she sent him to public school and encouraged him to get a job when he turned . U.S. News reported that Dan saved  from his pay as a drugstore stockroom worker, purchased with his earned money a gray bedroom rug, and slept on it the night it arrived: Dan “grew when faced with a challenge.”

In , at age , Piper died after a car hit him—and a decade later,  members of the “Remembering Dan Piper” group on Facebook were still writing and reading comments about him: “Dan loved life and didn’t seem intimidated by anything. … Dan gave me drive … he wanted to be treated like everyone else. … his integrity and his motivation showed me how to be a better person.” The National Down Syndrome Society conference every year gives out an award in his name. A —with research by WORLD intern Andrew Branch

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 40

8/5/13 4:43 PM

handout

17 COVER STORY-DISABILITY.indd 41

8/6/13 4:30 PM

Paying the pric Christian landmarks are under increasing attack in Israel by ultra-Orthodox gangs

by JILL NELSON              /   /           

A

  nine cars in Israel’s West Bank and slashed the tires on  cars in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on June .

The Hebrew word for “revenge” was scrawled across a number of the vandalized vehicles. Just weeks earlier,



vandals spray painted Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion with the words, “Christians are monkeys” for the second time in two months.

Both incidents are believed to be part of a growing trend in Israel called “price tag” attacks, a form of retribution for violence against Israeli settlers or the government dismantling of illegal settle-

ments. The perpetrators claim a “price” must be paid for any anti-settlement activity and often label the vandalism with their trademark phrase, “price tag.”

These attacks are on the rise in Israel, and their targets have expanded from primarily West Bank Arabs to peace activists, churches, and monasteries. For a region accustomed to the

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 ISRAEL.indd 42

8/5/13 8:58 PM

rice

unknowns of terrorist attacks, Israel finds itself grappling with how to define these attacks, and what they mean.

Some victims claim the government hasn’t done enough to track down and prosecute the perpetrators in a country known for its superior security forces.

The number of price tag attacks has grown from only a few in  to more than  in .

Already the number of incidents reported during the first half of

HEAVY TOLL: A Trappist monk walks between graffiti reading in Hebrew, “Jesus monkey” (left) and “mutual guarantee, Ramat Migron, and Maoz Ester” (West Bank settlements), which was sprayed on the wall of the Latrun monastery.

this year has surpassed last year’s total. The violators have desecrated mosques and churches, demolished olive trees owned by Palestinians, torched cars and places of worship, and scrawled offensive graffiti across Christian sights in Israel.

The primary suspects are disaffected youth among ultraright Jewish settlers, and while some acts seem to be coordinated and tied to a particular event or announcement by the government, others appear random and unrelated.

Email: jnelson@worldmag.com

17 ISRAEL.indd 43

On May , a group of Palestinians, a mosque, and a Greek Orthodox monastery filed a case in a New York district court against five U.S.-based organizations. The lawsuit alleges that these nonprofits have supported terrorist activities through the funding of Israeli settlements.

Christian Friends of Israeli Communities and The Hebron Fund are among the list of organizations cited in the lawsuit. Both organizations refuse to comment on the allegations, which accuse the groups of violating the material support statute, a law that has been primarily used to ban funding of Palestinian terror groups by U.S. charities. The indictment of the Holy Land Foundation is the most notable example of prosecution under this law.

Omri Ceren, a senior advisor at The Israel Project, says the allegations are a far stretch. “It’s going to be tough to tie settlements to the price tag attacks.

The settlement leaders are almost unanimous in ostracizing these guys for obvious reasons. It makes them look terrible and it brings attention that they don’t want.”

With price tag attacks on the rise— particularly against churches and monasteries—the Israeli government is also garnering unwanted attention.

Last fall, price taggers defaced three Christian properties in Israel, including the Trappist monastery in Latrun which was lit on fire and spray painted with graffiti. In February of last year, the Valley of the Cross Monastery and the Narkis Street Baptist House were vandalized with offensive phrases such as “Jesus drop dead” and “death to Christians.”

“This is a criminal act and those responsible must be severely punished,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack in Latrun.

“Religious freedom and worship are two of the most basic institutions.”

Some Christian leaders in Israel say the government isn’t doing enough to hunt down the perpetrators of such crimes, pointing to a much quicker government response when a Jewish site has been vandalized.

After the monastery attack in Latrun, senior Catholics and Protestants issued a statement complaining not only about government

inaction but ultra-Orthodox teaching they say tells children they have an obligation to attack Christians. “What happened in Latrun is only another in a long series of attacks against Christians and their places of worship,” said Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the head of the Franciscan Order in the Holy Land.

In , price taggers targeted the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, spray painting such phrases as, “Hitler, thank you for the holocaust,” with a signature of “the global Zionist mafia.” The culprits were quickly apprehended and turned out to be an anti-Zionist and ultra-Orthodox gang trying to “copycat” the price tag attacks launched by settlement youth. Police may have had an easier time tracking down the culprits, knowing that only extremist haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, groups would write slogans with such blatant anti-Israel sentiments.

Members of the extremist cell were arrested within three weeks and the leader of the group told police he wanted to bomb the Knesset.

In June, the Israeli security cabinet voted against labeling price taggers as “terrorists” but did adopt stricter measures for preventing and punishing such attacks. These new regulations allow law enforcement officers to treat price tag attacks the same way they would acts of terrorism.

Police in the Jerusalem area arrested  suspects with alleged connections to the  price tag attacks in their district during , but most of them were released. Ceren, however, disagrees with accusations of a lackluster government response: “It’s just very difficult to make the case that these are anything but a fringe group of a fringe group, let alone that the government is providing them with immunity.”

Analysts are quick to point out that Christians still fare far better in Israel than surrounding Muslim countries where persecution involves much more than offensive graffiti and vandalism. Israel’s price tag attacks have not led to any injuries or deaths. Still, Christian and Muslim leaders are hopeful that stricter laws targeting price taggers will prevent a slippery slope of growing minority persecution in a country that is no stranger to trials and tribulations. A

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 8:58 PM

I



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 IMMIGRATION.indd 44

Wisconsin town hall meeting. He said the plan is to begin in October bringing up a string of five or six bills that would address border security, interior enforcement, overhauling the visa system—which many conservatives say is most important—and a path to legalization (and possibly citizenship) for the country’s estimated  million illegal immigrants.

Boehner pledged only to allow bills to the floor that have support from the majority of Republicans. With most Americans broadly supporting reform but not necessarily the Senate bill, Josh Culling with Americans for Tax Reform, one of the leading conservative groups advocating for reform, said the GOP has an opportunity to take credit for passing potentially popular legislation. “The number of Republicans who are broadly ‘no’ on everything is very small,” he told me. “The vast majority of the caucus is working on something [related to immigration].”

The chief obstacle to immigration reform may be Democrats: Behind the scenes Republicans are frustrated that some Democrats, led by Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., are undermining negotiations in order to kill reform and blame Republicans in the  election.

Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, dropped out of a bipartisan House group that included Becerra, saying Democrats reneged on an agreement that legalized immigrants would have to purchase private health insurance: “What might be the story at the end of the year is that Obamacare killed immigration reform.”

Many evangelical leaders, although not all, have continued to play a prominent role in pushing for MAKE-OR-BREAK MOMENT: A Border Patrol reform, holding a string of agent looks out over events in home districts Tijuana, Mexico (right); and on Capitol Hill, and a July  rally in favor of designating days of prayer immigration reform outside the White House (above); and lobbying. Samuel Rodriguez (below).

Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told me he left a recent meeting with Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and other House leaders optimistic that reform will happen. He predicted Christians will make the difference: “The evangelical community will be primarily responsible for the passage of immigration reform.”

But, with Congress scheduled to work only nine days total in August and September and a new round of budget fights on tap for the fall, time and the will to reform could make it an uphill effort. A

BORDER: GREGORY BULL/AP • PROTEST: EVAN VUCCI/AP RODRIGUEZ: LEZLIE STERLING/SACRAMENTO BEE/MCT/LANDOV

 , U.S. Customs and Border Patrol employed , agents—with  percent stationed on the U.S. border with Mexico. By , border patrol agents had quintupled to ,, and  percent were located on the southern border. The border between North Korea and South Korea is the only international boundary in the world with more patrol agents, but that didn’t stop the U.S. Senate from promising to double border patrol agents to , as part of a massive immigration reform law passed in June.

“Did the chief of the Border Patrol say that that’s what they needed get the job done, or did senators just come up with those nice, round numbers to get some additional votes for the immigration bill?” Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., asked at a congressional hearing in late July.

House members are asking the hard questions as they sift through the good and bad points of the Senate’s ,-page immigration overhaul, which House Speaker John Boehner immediately pronounced dead on arrival. Republicans, armed with the knowledge that many Americans may not like the Senate bill, headed to their districts during the August recess focused on delivering a softer, gentler message on immigration reform.

The GOP will likely find plenty of people who want to talk about it: Advocacy groups on both sides—viewing the recess as a make-or-break moment for reform efforts—mobilized grassroots to wage ideological war on the issue in home districts. In late July more than  business groups representing every state in the country wrote to House leaders urging them to “not let this momentum slip and progress vanish,” and more than  conservative donors penned a similar letter.

Polls indicate House Republicans are winning the argument that the piece-by-piece approach to reform is a better way to deal it. Even the Los Angeles Times called the House’s Border Security Results Act—potentially the most divisive part of reform—a “sensible piece of legislation” that “strikes a fair balance between enforcement and fiscal responsibility.”

Of all the things the Senate bill is, fiscally responsible isn’t one of them: It includes  billion in spending—roughly equivalent to the entire  budget request for the State Department and USAID— on everything from drones and night vision goggles to a . billion “jobs for youth” program (a pet project of Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and a once-rejected part of the Obama jobs bill).

House leadership remains mum on its time frame for bringing up immigration bills for a vote, but Rep. Paul Ryan, last year’s GOP vice presidential nominee, may have let it slip at a recent

Email: jderrick@worldmag.com

8/7/13 8:45 AM

Obstacle course

Immigration reform has momentum but House and Senate consensus remains elusive

by J.C. Derrick in Washington, D.C.

17 IMMIGRATION.indd 45

8/7/13 9:31 AM

y a D r o b La These five people have found a way to serve others and earn a living through work they enjoy

by Andrew Branch, Alissa Robertson, Aimee Stauf, Rachel Aldrich, Graham Gettel, and Marvin Olasky in Asheville, N.C.

46

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 LABOR DAY PROFILES.indd 46

McClendo

8/5/13 4:47 PM

e v o l ay

many TV commercials tell us to tolerate our jobs and live for weekends. Nineteenth-century Boston pastor Phillips Brooks, though, wrote about the importance of enjoying work, “the actual doing of it, and not only in its idea. No man to whom the details of his task are repulsive can do his task well constantly, however full he may be of its spirit. He may make one bold dash at it and carry it

over all his disgusts, but he cannot work on at it year after year.”

How do people find work they enjoy? Sometimes they have a breakthrough. Sometimes they have to endure years of frustration before they see the way to go. As we move toward Sept. 2, Labor Day, here are (in ascending order of age) five stories of people in one small city—Asheville, N.C.—who like what they do.

Artist Daniel McClendon, 28, lay in bed agonizing over his future. At 4 a.m. on March 21, 2011, something clicked: That night, in the face of personal failure and a belief

that we live in a chaotic world, McClendon decided to express himself through abstract art.

McClendon grew up in Michigan, gained an arts education, but produced realist paintings he came to believe were “fraudulent,” without personal meaning. Two years after moving to Asheville, N.C., two months after getting married, he quit painting. He BUSINESS MAKERS: Daniel felt he was failMcClendon; Beth ing, “and no Schaible; Melinda one likes to fail.

Vetro; Lori Woods; I felt a little lost Tyrone Phillips (left to right). when I decided to quit.”

McClendon: Andrew Branch • Schaible: Alissa Lee Robertson • etro: Aimee Stauf • Woods: New City Christian School • Phillips: Graham Gettel

17 LABOR DAY PROFILES.indd 47

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

47

8/5/13 4:49 PM

He searched for five months for a creative process that was his own, not someone else’s. He always came back to painting, and after his long night two years ago, started splattering, drizzling, and globbing black paint on prepared, white planks. When the black paint dried, he visualized an animal and, with a pallet knife and rubber-tipped brush, scraped on oil paint.

He’s continued to do that, finishing each painting in a session ranging from 45 minutes to 12 hours. He says the process “parallels who I am. … The mistakes, the little flaws, or however you want to look at them … those things make us different, make us unique.”

He didn’t know if his new paintings would sell, but more than 50 of them have. To remember the night he found his spark again, McClendon framed the paper on which he wrote down his idea to go abstract and convey a feeling of looseness but intensity.

In 2008 Beth Schaible, 28, moved to North Carolina to take classes at Penland Crafts School, all the while looking to buy a letterpress she could afford. Letterpress printing is a tedious process that infuses ink into tiny hand-carved plates and blocks that are then rolled onto a traditional printing press to create unique stationery and artwork.

Schaible had grown to love seeing the print press into the paper. She loved the smell of ink.

It took four years of searching—but Schaible finally found a rusty press that was falling apart in the back of a ­building. Schaible took the two-ton press apart, refurbished it, and put it all back together. In that way, she taught herself how the press worked and how to fix it. She opened her shop, Quill and Arrow, in Asheville last year.

She quickly learned that being a small-business owner required a difficult set of skills: “In art school, they pretend like they teach you about business things,” she said, but managing a business in the real world was more difficult than she expected. Paperwork, taxes, and licensing stressed Schaible out. She finally hired an accountant to take over some tasks: “I could have tried to learn about [business] things for forever and the timing would have never been

48

LOVE’S LABORS: McClendon studio; Vetro’s desserts; children at New City Christian School; Phillips hard at work; Schaible with press (clockwise from top left).

right. At some point, you just have to do it and learn as you go.”

Her ideal dream is to have an assistant who handles business details.

For now, she tries to stay organized with paperwork so that she can tackle it when she has time: “On the press, I pull prints and think, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I love.’”

Hungarian immigrant Melinda Vetro, 42, with a son to support and no money, looked forward to her first paycheck in 16 years—until she opened the envelope. With 20 years of baking experience, she had made only $600 in

two weeks serving seniors at a retirement home.

It was a hard time for Vetro, who grew up in Hungary baking on a child-sized wooden table next to her grandmother. She wanted a better life, and when Zortan Vetro offered her a free ticket to America, she emigrated and married him in 1992. Her new ­husband told her his idea of opening a small bakery and coffee shop: She would bake and he would manage

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 LABOR DAY PROFILES.indd 48

studio: A

8/5/13 4:48 PM

everything else. The two moved to Asheville and eventually found a good location downtown.

Every day for the next 12 years, Vetro woke up at 6 a.m. and didn’t fall into bed until 11 p.m. Money rolled in. They expanded and purchased a house

on a golf course with a pool—but the ­ conomy tanked soon after. The couple e tried to refinance their loans, but in 2009 they lost their business, and their marriage fell apart. Depressed, Vetro stayed at home for a year living off money from her ex-­husband, then took the poor-paying retirement home job.

But then she examined her paycheck and decided, whatever it took, to reopen her own bakery. She would be her own boss again. She sold her luxury car and jewelry, and begged loans from friends and banks. She started up her new business two years ago, now has a manager and a full-time pastry chef, and loves to bake: “Isn’t it a good thing that a customer could come in and have a warm cookie?”

While Lori Woods, 45, was volunteering at the school her two sons attended, someone told her she should volunteer at New City Christian School, formed to help minority children falling through the large cracks in the public school system.

That suggestion changed her life. She loved New City and eventually became principal. Now, with her black hair tightly pulled back into a bun, she exudes an air of authority. Her sharp, amber eyes seemed to see everything. Woods talks about the school’s primary mission: reaching the “under-resourced” kids in the city: “I want them to get a sense of God’s purpose in their lives. If we can do that and help them academically, then we’ve done a lot.”

With two sons, 21 and 18, Woods applies her mothering skills to a new— and much larger—set of children with more needs. Some students struggle academically, others come from rough backgrounds. Between requests to pass the crayons a little girl mentioned, “I was on TV once—that was when my daddy died.” Woods combines academic learning with spiritual lessons to help the students grow: “I say I have 58 little babies,” she said. “I can hopefully influence them for Christ, that’s the bottom line.”

The school meets in a small Baptist church. Backpacks hang underneath

colorful handprints in the corridor, waiting for students who should have left already. Students tell stories of how Woods prays with them about family and academic problems. Others talked about kindness when they were in trouble. One girl who had skinned her knee shrugged and said, “She said that everything was going to be okay … I feel safe around her.”

Tyrone Phillips, 54, uses his wildlife knowledge to protect people and ­animals. For the past 10 years the state-certified Animal Damage Control agent has gone from property to property removing, trapping, or killing damage-causing wildlife: “I evaluate the property to see if there is a way for them to coexist without me having to use trapping or killing.” He says people and animals can coexist if the people remove birdfeeders and trash that attract mice, bats, woodchucks, ­coyotes, and snakes.

Wearing jean shorts, utility belt, and full beard, Phillips slaps on a pair of gloves, hefts a ladder over his shoulder, climbs 20 feet to the ceiling, and seals off any cracks and holes that provide entry to defecating bats. Bat removal is a frequent job for Phillips, but not a job he does every day. At other times he throws open the covering of a customer’s grill and removes a possum with his bare hands. Or, he might snatch a snake off a hot water heater before it realizes he’s there. On one job Phillips had to trap and kill two parasite-ridden foxes to end their incurable misery.

Phillips also catches skunks. He clearly announces his presence to the skunk by loudly entering the room.

Next, he places a cage three feet from the skunk and chats with the skunk as if it were a puppy. He scrunches his ­finger to attract the interest of the ­naturally dim-eyed skunk, using its poor sight to his advantage. Seconds later, he walks out with a full cage as onlookers stare with dropped jaws. He also keeps a fake one in his black, equipment-packed Chevy truck to pull a squeal out of his passengers and give himself a laugh or two. A

studio: Andrew Branch • children: New City Christian School • Schaible: Alissa Lee Robertson • desserts: Aimee Stauf • Phillips: Graham Gettel

17 LABOR DAY PROFILES.indd 49

—Rachel Aldrich, Andrew Branch, Graham Gettel, Alissa Robertson, and Aimee Stauf wrote these vignettes as World Journalism Institute students

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

49

8/5/13 4:50 PM

Hope Award for Ef fective Com passion

Urban L’Abri T EAST Regional winner

Hope Christian Center offers discipleship—not rehab—for the homeless and drug-addicted

by Emily Belz

in T he Bronx

photos by tiffany owens

50

his University Heights block of New York City’s poorest borough has seen good times, but more recently they’ve been bad.

On one street Bronx Household of Faith is completing a new church building, though someone busted out a ground-level window. On the next street is a home that the city has designated as a juvenile prison, with bars on the windows and fences around the property.

Down the street is the deep green campus of Bronx Community College, which was New York University’s northern campus from the 1890s until the neighborhood declined in the 1970s. (NYU consolidated in Greenwich Village.) University Heights is still recovering from the crack cocaine and HIV devastations of the 1980s, and still bears a disproportionate share of the city’s homicide deaths, even as New York’s overall murder rate has dropped.

Jack Roberts moved to University Heights four decades ago and has lived through violence and crack epidemics. He heads up Hope Christian Center, a ministry on the block for homeless or addicted men. Roberts is also co-pastor of the Bronx Household of Faith, the church in the center of the major case about whether churches can rent public schools in New York for worship services. (See WORLD, “Reckless prudence,” March 24, 2012.) He studied at L’Abri with Francis Schaeffer in the 1960s and describes Hope as not a rehab center but a discipleship course.

The Hope program has four phases.

Phases one through three happen in the yellow brick house, which holds 25 residents at a time. Phase four— for those transitioning to normal life—happens in a house across the street, which Hope used in the 1980s as a home for men dying of HIV. The residents start by going to discipleship classes, praying through the afternoons, and learning to refinish furniture. They deal with ordinary problems: On a Wednesday afternoon one staff member helped a resident go to meet his new probation officer across town, and another brought a meal to the bed of a resident who had just had a hernia operation.

Part of discipleship is work. George Stewart, a graduate of the program who refinished furniture before he got into “drinking and drugging,” now teaches the other men to refinish. “This furniture comes in messed up, and they can see their accomplishment,” said Stewart. “I take a dead piece of furniture and I bring it back alive, just like Jack take a dead soul and bring it back to life.” Stewart also has a pie business, Brother George’s Sweet Potato Pie (“With That Heavenly Flavor!”), and is working on his college degree.

Another part of discipleship are the men’s weekly studies, which include time to talk about the evil of abortion.

Many of the men in the program have impregnated women, and Roberts wants them to “commit to never putting a woman in that position again.”

BACK TO LIFE: George Stewart (right) teaching how to refinish a chair.

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 50

8/5/13 9:02 PM

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 51

8/5/13 9:02 PM

INTENTIONAL LIVING: Hope residents sharing a meal; Dwayne Hobbs; students take a test during class (clockwise from top).

One of the graduates, Dwayne Hobbs, wrote a rap song about abortion titled “Death Roe,” a reference to Roe v. Wade: “I’m on death row, convicted for breathing, haven’t been charged with murdering or stealing, but they tell me I don’t have the right to live. …”

A third part: volunteering at places like the Relief Bus (a ministry to the homeless) and a World Vision warehouse in the Bronx. Hope wants residents to get a sense that they can help others and not just accept help. When the men reach phase four, they’ve almost graduated: They move across the street to rooms where they pay room and board ($50 a week, a steal for New York) and look for jobs. Only after a year in phase four, when the men have a jobs and are staying involved in a church, do they graduate from the program.

52

Part of the men’s discipleship is a certain asceticism: No cell phones, and phone calls from the house limited to 10 minutes. No television, smoking, or psychotropic drugs. (Roberts acknowledged that some men could use medication for their psychological demons, but they will have to go elsewhere: “We’re not a psychiatric ward.”) No welfare checks or food stamps. Hope Christian Center, like a more famous Bronx institution, the New York Yankees, even has a “no beards” rule.

“I don’t think it’s that strict but some of them think it’s mad strict,” said Roberts: “We’re not into behavior modification, we’re here to change hearts.” Hope gets referrals from ­probation officers and church relatives and other rehab ministries in the city, like the Bowery Mission. Few problems surprise Roberts and his wife Patricia, who have given birth to six children and adopted seven more, one of whom is a mentally retarded adult continuing to live at home. Both are former proba-

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 52

8/5/13 9:05 PM

‘We’re not into behavior modification, we’re here to change hearts.’

—JACK ROBERTS tion officers who wanted to work with troubled people, but with the freedom to talk about the gospel. Hope doesn’t take any government funding for that reason. (Residents don’t pay anything unless they’re in phase four, so Hope relies on contributions.)

Mennonites started the ministry in , in a different part of the Bronx, but Hope moved to a yellow brick

house on this particular block of University Heights in . Several years later Hope bought another house across the street to use for people who came to the ministry with HIV. Much of Hope’s work during those years emphasized giving a home and the gospel to people who were dying. One man with HIV reconciled with his wife the year before he died: Roberts remarried them in his living room.

Hope stopped housing people with HIV as the city developed public services in the s.

Today, Hope has no one type of resident—it has hosted illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the well-to-do who fell prey to one substance or another— but the story of one graduate, Dwayne Hobbs, shows how stress and grace often work. Abandoned at birth and then adopted, Hobbs as a teenager joined a gang on Long Island and started selling drugs. Living in a crack house, which he described as “ percent

Mass Reformation Jack Roberts’ L’Abri experience helped to make him a Reformed evangelical, but he notes a problem: “The whole Reformed model has been geared toward the educated elite. … It can’t be just for educated people.” He guesses that out of several thousand men who have come through his program, fewer than five had college degrees.

Roberts thinks Reformed churches should start addressing the gap by offering seminary scholarships to minorities–especially to African-Americans and Latinos–on the condition that they return to minister in neighborhoods like University Heights for five years. He stipulates that the seminaries must be biblically faithful: “I know an African-American who received such a scholarship to a liberal seminary and has been in a liberal denomination ever since.” He wants Reformed denominations to support minority church planters in these neighborhoods, and churches to pool resources to create evening Bible schools.

He concludes that church worship services should help those in the community feel at home—not exactly reflecting the surrounding subculture, but “The language of the messenger must be in words that are accessible to the listener.” Reformation doctrines should be explained “in ways that are faithful to the content … and yet not with vocabulary that is foreign to the student.” —E.B.

Email: ebelz@worldmag.com

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 53

MONEY BOX 3  income: , 3  expenses: , 3 Net assets at the end of June : , 3 Executive director Jack Roberts’ salary: , 3 Staff: Five employees and three regular volunteers

chaos,” Hobbs became desperate to escape his situation and called out to God to help, if He existed. A Catholic nun showed up in the kitchen of the crack house one day and asked to host a Bible study there.

Hobbs says God began working in his heart through that study, but he wasn’t convinced yet. He tried going through one rehab program, but it frustrated him, and someone mentioned Hope as an option. He contacted Hope and began to think about recognizing and responding to God’s calling in his life. Hobbs ate up the teaching at Hope—“I wish I had went to this place right out of high school, with no drugs or baggage,” he said—and changed his rap name to Malachi Monster: Malachi meaning “my messenger” and monster, in Hobbs’ interpretation, means he “went hard for the other side.”

Hope’s close tie to Bronx Household of Faith helped too: Hobbs would recognize people from church in the neighborhood, which he said helped hold him accountable. Two years out of the program he went to work for Youth With a Mission, but the University Heights neighborhood kept pulling him back. He loves the kids there and volunteers at a local youth sports ministry: A little posse follows him around. At , Hobbs just received his undergraduate degree in the mail from Liberty University, after doing all the work online, and he’s now looking for a new job, hoping to work with young people in the neighborhood. A

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 9:07 PM

Hope Award for Ef fective Com passion

Brotherly love M EAST Regional RUNNER-UP

Hundreds of volunteers bring the gospel to prisons, nursing homes, homeless men, and others with Active Compassion Through Service

by Emily Belz

in Philadel phia

photo by Peter Tobia/genEsis

54

any churches try to do what Tenth Presbyterian Church in ­center city Philadelphia does through its mercy ministry, Active Compassion Through Service (ACTS). Volunteers hold Bible studies in the city’s prisons and nursing homes, and with the staff at a public library. Church members host a weekly meal for homeless men and a weekly worship service with patients at an AIDS hospice. The church has spun off a crisis pregnancy center and Harvest USA, now a national ministry to those with sexual struggles.

David Apple, ACTS’ director these last 25 years, recalls that when the church tried to get its mercy ministry off the ground in the 1980s, people would get up and move to other pews if a homeless person came in: “I had to pray that God would do the changing.” Now, Tenth’s worship services themselves have become a picture of a less divided city: Rich and poor pack together in the church’s historic wooden pews.

Vivian Dow, a member of the church who was part of the homeless ministry from its beginning in 1984, became famous with the first meal she cooked: spaghetti. The day I visited she had made jambalaya, to rave reviews. Her food became so popular

that she would get covered in kisses and hugs to the point that she jokingly told her late husband Lawrence to do something about it. The church had to begin capping the number of guests at 120.

The Dows lived on the street for a week in the 1980s to get some sense of what it’s like materially. She grad-

WORLD • August 24, 2013

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 54

8/5/13 9:10 PM

MONEY BOX 3 2012 contributions: $24,454 3 2012 expenses: $19,613 3 Executive director David Apple’s salary: $70,000; Tenth Presbyterian Church pays Apple’s salary 3 Staff: Apple and 250-300 volunteers

ONE IN THE BODY: ACTS director David Apple (red shirt), with the group at Sunday worship service.

ually took over the organization of the weekly meals at the church, and went through the trash after meals to see what wasn’t eaten. She and others interviewed those in the program about what food they didn’t like (pork and beef were unpopular) and why—most often it had something to do with their background.

Vivian Dow even wrote a masters thesis about developing the ministry to make it enjoyable to the guests: The thesis included new menus and atmospheric standards like tablecloths and ­floral centerpieces on round tables for easier friend-making. I asked, “More like a restaurant?” She replied, “Not a restaurant! Home. Home. Our whole

purpose practically is to get them back home. It’s—‘Hey, don’t you miss your grandmom, your mom? Don’t you think you should talk to your wife?

When was the last time you saw your children?’”

In addition to a Bible study time before the Sunday meals, ACTS has classes during the week for the homeless on healthy eating and family issues. Its prison ministries include a Bible study with the staff of a juvenile jail, and classes for prisoners there on everything from sexual abuse to ­relationships to anger management.

ACTS also hosts Bible studies for the inmates at the federal prison in center city: One prisoner who became a Christian through the studies was transferred to spend 23 years in a prison in western Pennsylvania, and he has started his own ministry in that jail.

One Sunday after church, seven ACTS volunteers walked a few blocks to a nursing home, where they held a worship service in a room filled with chairs, five wheelchairs, and two walkers. When one volunteer read chapter 8 of Romans aloud and came to “The body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousness,” one of the wheelchair-bound ladies gave a loud “Amen!” A loudspeaker announcing emergencies sporadically dueled with congregational singing. A

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D

17 HOPE-EAST WINNER.indd 55

55

8/5/13 9:10 PM

C12 Members significantly outperform their peers in all economic climates.

When you join the C12 Group, you’re joining America’s leading Christian roundtable serving CEOs and business owners of companies from $1M to $1B. C12 Members gather monthly for a unique, proven peer forum to engage in worthwhile continual learning, brainstorming, intentional accountability, and to share proven best-practices, combined with eternal perspective. Members also receive monthly counsel through one-on-one sessions, an annual business review, and an online library of high-impact leadership tools.

Consider membership today -

call us at 336-841-7100 or visit C12Group.com to find a group near you

r eg i s t e r

now

Calling All Christian CEOs & Owners

2013 Leaders Conference OCT. 31 - NOV. 2 NASHVILLE, TN Join the C12 Group at the stunning Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center for “Living and Leading It Forward”

REGISTER TODAY

• • • • • •

Deal with the Affordable Health Care Act in a God-Honoring Way Mentor & Develop Your Leadership Team Finish Strong with Leadership Succession and Wise Tax Planning Provide Servant Leadership to Fuel Powerful Christ-centered Ministry Conduct Trust-based Sales and Marketing Plus much more (8 plenary and 9 breakout sessions!)

Visit C12Group.com to reserve your space. Just $595 covers all meals & sessions. Discounts for spouses and early registration.

Building GREAT Businesses for a GREATER Purpose™ • Call (336) 841-7100 • www.C12Group.com

17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 56

8/6/13 4:00 PM

Tiffany Rose

YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO:

Notebook

Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports > Money > Religion

Office sharing New trend draws individuals out of isolated home offices and into community

TIFFANY ROSE

BY ANGELA LU

>>

W J C started his own architecture firm from his home in , he felt isolated. He missed the office camaraderie at his old architecture jobs, sitting around hashing out new ideas with coworkers. Everyday he would schedule lunch meetings just so he could get outside and interact with other humans.

Chang considered renting office space to share with another business before stumbling upon the concept of “coworking,” which brings remote workers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers together to share a workspace and create community. At the time only a few coworking

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at worldmag.com/iPad

17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 57

spaces had popped up in tech-heavy San Francisco, and Chang saw this as a solution not just to his own problem, but a problem plaguing a growing number of Americans: finding human connection—and the innovations that come with it—in an age of working remotely.

With the internet, video conferencing, and instant messaging, companies often find it more cost-effective and convenient for employees to work from home, sometimes thousands of miles away from the main office. Currently  percent of employees in America work from home some hours of the week, and that number will increase to  percent by , according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And while some studies show working HUMAN CONNECTIONS: from home increases Blankspaces, Chang’s coworking space. productivity, studies

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 9:16 PM

also show it blurs work-life balance and increases isolation.

For these reasons, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently banned working from home, calling all Yahoo employees to return to the office. Best Buy followed suit, while other large companies like AT&T, Accenture, and Twitter are sending employees to coworking spaces to inspire creativity and find talent.

“When I heard of coworking, the ideas of collaboration and community fit perfectly with what I had in mind,” Chang said. He found an office for sale in West Los Angeles above a beauty store and within walking distance from all the major home business needs: Staples, Kinko’s, a post office, restaurants, and coffee shops. Using his architecture background, he created a modern space designed to cultivate collaboration.

Skylights bring in light, making windows unnecessary, which blocks out distractions from the busy Wilshire Boulevard. A wall of glass separates private offices from the main space and a table for group meetings sits in the middle of each cubicle cluster.

When Chang opened Blankspaces in 2008, it was the first coworking office in Southern California, and one of the first 10 offices in the country. Today, nearly 2,500 coworking spaces exist worldwide from Bangkok to Austin to Amsterdam, with 781 in the United States, according to the Global Coworking Census. Coworking spaces increased more than 300 percent since 2010.

Chang, now 40, said managing the workspace was tiring at first, as he had to stay at the office from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day until he could afford to hire more staff. But as word spread about Blankspaces, more remote workers, especially those in the tech and entertainment industries, joined. In 2011, Chang opened a second location in Santa Monica. He plans to open a downtown space soon.

Under the West L.A. office’s exposed wood trusses, about 40 people work on individual projects, occasionally chatting with neighbors about current events and new ramen restaurants. An older man critiques a movie script over the phone.

Across the table a young man with his feet propped up types furiously to develop a computer program. Two brothers in the corner write the next installment of the National Treasure

movie series as a realtor confers with his bookkeeper in a s­ eparate cubicle.

The close proximity of different industries has led to connections and job offers. Chang said he’s seen startup founders working at Blankspaces hire the web designer sitting next to them. Recruiters also come to events looking for people with specific skill sets, such as a certain coding language.

Kristen Abitabile, 26, says working at Blankspaces has led to new clients seeking her bookkeeping services. She was originally the bookkeeper for a tech recruiter working in the building. As she made friends, she soon started working for a computer programmer and a realtor.

Abitabile finds the coworking setup a happy medium between working from home and from a typical office: “If I’m working from home I can get distracted, but here I’m always working.” She says it is less stressful than working in a typical office because no one really knows what other people are working on. It also cuts down on office politics since people aren’t competing with each other: “In traditional offices, there’s more pressure to work late, or there’s a stigma if you’re leaving for lunch. But here nobody is paying attention.”

Blankspaces works more like a gym than typical rented space, with month-to-month membership ranging from $100 per month to work at the workbar to $1,300 for a private office. The short-term commitment is attractive for young freelancers and contractors, but it also means frequent ­turnover. Chris Martens, a web developer in his mid-20s, said turnover is the biggest downside: Many of the people he worked next to when he joined in August no longer work there.

Still, Martens finds coworking better than working from home: “It’s lonely and depressing working by yourself, but there’s an energy here and it’s fun. … The environment motivates you to come in, especially since you’re paying for it.”

Chang sees his job as a business matchmaker, introducing people to others who work in similar fields, or are at the same stage of growing their company. He invites experts to help mentor startup founders, holds roundtable sessions for business owners, and plans weekly happy hours and parties so Blankspaces workers can meet each other.

Chang thinks the demand for coworking spaces will continue to grow: “Coworking creates that third space where you go to stay connected.” A

Labor theology

58

W ORLD • A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3

17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 58

Tiffany Rose

The Theology of Work Project (theologyofwork.org) includes articles on what most books of the Bible say about work. “Often the most interesting resources come from the most unexpected places,” says William Messenger, executive editor of the TOW Project. “Who would have thought that the Song of Songs would have so much to say about workplace relationships and employee satisfaction, or that the best example of a manager in the Bible is the valiant woman in the Book of Proverbs?” He adds, “I was surprised that Paul’s discussion about yoking oxen in 2 Corinthians would have so much practical guidance for workplace relationships in business today.” —A.L.

Worldmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views

8/5/13 9:17 PM

police: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ap • mug shots: handout

Notebook > Lifestyle

Notebook > Technology Mug shot racket A spate of innovative websites like MugShots.com and JustMugShots.com have apparently hit on a lucrative business model: They troll law enforcement databases for millions of public arrest records and

Driven data Scanners that track vehicle license plates are showing up everywhere By daniel james devine

Tiffany Rose

police: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ap • mug shots: handout

>>

Last year the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an online map showing 34 locations around the city where Mayor R.T. Rybak’s car had been spotted during the previous 12 months. The newspaper’s goal wasn’t to spy on the mayor but to make a point: Such location data was publicly available for virtually any vehicle in the city, thanks to license plate scanners the Minneapolis Police Department uses to monitor traffic.

A wide majority of U.S. police departments now employ license plate readers—high-speed cameras mounted on police cars or at stationary roadside locations. Their primary purpose is to record visible plate numbers and check them against a “hot list” of vehicles stolen or used in crimes. But privacy advocates worry massive databases of plate records could be put to bad use.

A new report from the ACLU outlines the scale of plate record collection: Maryland, for instance, added more than 85 million license plate readings to a central database in 2012.

Through May of that year, 99.8 percent of the records were not associated with any wrongdoing.

That may not be a problem if such databases are purged regularly. But the policies for retaining plate data or making it publicly

Email: ddevine@worldmag.com

17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 59

publish them within accessible vary by jurisdiction. In Deerpark, N.Y., plate records are erased every 30 days. Plano County, Texas, stores plate location data for two years. Other jurisdictions hold them indefinitely.

Surveillance is a concern for all political stripes: Technology can be used for good or ill, and without appropriate policies in place, it may be a short skip to ill. The ACLU notes, “In New York City, police officers have reportedly driven unmarked vehicles equipped with license plate readers around local mosques in order to record each attendee. Police departments in other parts of the country could easily do the same thing to Tea Party groups, anti-abortion protesters, or the political opposition of a sheriff running for reFULL PLATES: election.” The Scarsdale A police officer scans license Police Department in New plates in York boasts the use of plate Alexandria, Va. data “is only limited by the ­officer’s imagination.”

And what if the person with the data isn’t even a police officer? Private companies now collect license plate records en masse, and sell them to repossession businesses or law enforcement agencies. There’s a good chance your own vehicle plate is recorded in such a database. The largest, the National Vehicle Location Service, run by Vigilant Solutions in California, holds more than 800 million plate readings, tagged with time, location, and a photo of the vehicle. The database adds up to 50 million plate records each month. Only five states have passed laws governing such records.

easy reach of a Google search. When an embarrassed arrestee complains, the website offers to take down the photo for a fee (perhaps $10 or nearly $200, depending on the site).

Now the websites face a legal challenge from a class-action lawsuit in Ohio: Attorneys claim the websites operate merely to “extort” money from arrestees. —D.J.D.

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W ORLD

59

8/5/13 9:19 PM

Notebook > Science

New Orleans officials want energy companies to pay billions to restore the coast By daniel james devine

>>

oil and gas has contributed to subsidence, resulting in the loss of 1,900 square miles of coastland since 1932. The levee board says the loss of this wetland buffer zone increasingly ­threatens coastal communities during hurricane storm surges.

It wants oil and gas companies to begin filling in canals and pay for coastal protection and restoration projects.

Yet much of the erosion is due to other factors, like natural subsidence, rising sea levels, and engineering projects that direct the flow of the Mississippi. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, condemned the lawsuit, saying the levee board had been “hijacked” by trial lawyers.

The idea for the lawsuit came from John M. Barry, the nonscientist vice president of the levee board and author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.

Archaeologists say they’ve found the site of the oldest European fort in the interior of the United States, constructed four decades before the English settled Jamestown in Virginia. In the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains near what is now Morganton, N.C., Spanish explorers built Fort San Juan during a gold-hunting expedition in 1567. It was the first and largest of six forts the explorers, led by Juan Pardo, built around that time. But after about 18 months, conflict with the local Mississippian tribe escalated. The natives burned the fort and killed all but one of its occupants. The Spanish ultimately abandoned the area, leaving the territory open to the English. —D.J.D.

By the numbers 12 miles Diameter of a newly discovered moon that orbits Neptune every 23 hours. An astronomer noticed the tiny, yet-unnamed moon while studying photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. Neptune, the most distant true planet in our solar system, now has 14 known moons.

83 Patients who died in 2012 under Washington state’s assisted suicide program. Since the state’s Death with Dignity Act went into effect in March 2009, annual assisted suicides have increased 130 percent. In May Vermont joined Washington, Oregon, and Montana in legalizing the practice.

DELTA FLIGHT: Oil production facilities in the Barataria Bay region of Louisiana.

60

W ORLD • A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3

17 SCIENCE and HOUSES.indd 60

2,556 Total genes in the largest virus ever discovered. Two new giant viruses—one found in an Australian pond and another in seawater near Chile—are each about 1 micron in length, 1,000 times larger than a flu virus. They are so unlike other species researchers have given them their own genus, Pandoravirus. (Science) —D.J.D.

fort San Juan: Warren Wilson Archaeology • Louisiana: Bill Haber/ap • neptune moons: NASA/ESA • Pandoravirus: © IGS CNRS-AMU

Should the oil and gas industry be held liable for eroding wetlands in the Mississippi River delta? A major lawsuit, filed July 24, will answer that question: A board responsible for maintaining levees that protect New Orleans, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, claims energy companies have “ravaged Louisiana’s coastal landscape” for nearly a century, creating an “extensive network of oil and gas access and pipeline canals that slashes the coastline at every angle” and causes the erosion of “mountains of soil.”

An attorney for the board said it was seeking “many, many billions of dollars” in damages from 97 oil, gas, and pipeline companies.

Scientific and government reports blame a third or more of the wetland loss in southeastern Louisiana on the energy industry, and claim the extraction of

Early outpost

Stay connected: Sign up to receive email updates at worldmag.com/email

8/7/13 8:26 AM

Patrick Murphy-Racey/Genesis

Soil and gas

Notebook > Houses of God

Presbyterian Church in

Patrick Murphy-Racey/Genesis

fort San Juan: Warren Wilson Archaeology • Louisiana: Bill Haber/ap • neptune moons: NASA/ESA • Pandoravirus: © IGS CNRS-AMU

Children attend Vacation Bible School at Ryder Memorial

Bluff City, Tenn. The church, which is part of the Bible Presbyterian Church, was founded in 1934. It is named after Edna Jeanetta Ryder, a New Jersey teenager who died at age 18 and had wanted to be a ­missionary. Ryder’s mother donated the money for the church building.

A u g u s t 2 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W ORLD

17 SCIENCE and HOUSES.indd 61

61

8/5/13 9:38 PM

Before a fall Pride leads to sports scandal for baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez

BY ZACHARY ABATE

>>



Florida. While  players, including stars Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers and Jhonny Peralta of the Detroit Tigers, accepted their -game ban without a fight, Rodriguez has filed a grievance to challenge his discipline— the strictest of the  penalties given.

Along with a -game ban for using PEDs, MLB handed Rodriguez an additional -game suspension for interfering with an investigation and attempting a cover-up.

The evidence is strong, and while all the players linked to the Biogenesis scandal have become villains in the eyes of fans, no one looks worse than Rodriguez. In addition to cheating multiple times, Rodriguez has displayed dishonesty and arrogance.

Instead of admitting guilt and at least showing remorse, Rodriguez said his suspension was too harsh. That doesn’t sit well with fans. “I grew up before the steroid time, and baseball players were my heroes and I’d like to keep

CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

F  , Alex Rodriguez looked like a repentant man. In an ESPN interview he confessed to using banned performanceenhancing drugs (PEDs) while playing for the Texas Rangers early in his career.

He cited his youth, his naïveté, and the external pressure from expectations as reasons for his baseball crime. Rodriguez fought back tears during the interview and swore never to violate baseball’s rules in such a way again.

The New York Yankees slugger even joined the Taylor Hooton Foundation, a nonprofit organization combating steroid use among youth. “I’m finally beginning to grow up. I’m pretty tired of being stupid and selfish,” Rodriguez said. But his words now seem to have been empty.

Rodriguez was one of  players suspended from Major League Baseball this month for purchasing performanceenhancing drugs from an anti-aging clinic, Biogenesis of America, in

them my heroes,” said Nancy Hollomon, polled at Fenway Park

by The Boston Globe last month.

“I’d like to know they’re honest ballplayers.”

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, once one of baseball’s most popular figures, has also proven himself dishonest. In December , Braun failed a random drug test, and while facing almost certain suspension, pled his innocence in front of fans and teammates. The suspension was overturned on a technicality—an MLB collector mishandled Braun’s urine sample—and Braun quickly declared “the truth is on our side.”

Just one year later, Major League Baseball uncovered evidence that Braun had purchased PEDs from the Florida clinic. Braun accepted a -game suspension without complaint, though he has yet to admit guilt or apologize.

Steroid use is not baseball’s unforgivable sin. In , baseball great Hank Aaron publicly spoke of his forgiveness for known steroid user Mark McGwire—even going as far as to advocate McGwire’s acceptance into the Hall of Fame. New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, a Sunday school teacher and father of four, admitted to using human growth hormone on one occasion while recovering from an injury. He apologized to fans and has never failed a drug test.

While his usage is still a stain on his career, most fans around the league respect Pettitte.

Rodriguez, stumbling on his own pride, as all of us tend to do, has destroyed his career. Scouts labeled him “a sure All-Star” before he was even drafted at age , and he has since then seemed full of himself. Four years ago, he spoke to a crowd of reporters at the Yankees spring training facility in Florida: “I’m in a position where I have to earn my trust back. The only thing I ask from this group today and the American people is to judge me from this day forward.”

The judgment is in. A

WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 62

8/7/13 10:33 AM

STRIKE: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES • FORD FIELD: JONATHAN FERREY/GETTY IMAGES

Notebook > Sports

Notebook > Money

Job killer

Movement to raise the minimum wage will have unintended consequences

BY WARREN COLE SMITH

>>

W in fast food restaurants in several U.S. cities went on strike July , calling for higher wages, in some cases as high as  per hour. The nonunion workers want the right to unionize, and the campaign—focused mostly in union-friendly cities such as New York, Detroit, and Chicago—received funds from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The one-day strike is part of a targeted national campaign by the SEIU and other union and liberal groups to create a so-called “living wage.” The campaign is meeting with some success, but is producing unintended consequences. Washington, D.C., officials passed a law in early July requiring Walmart and other (but not all) retail-

WAGE WAR: Employees and union activists protest outside Whole Foods in Chicago.

ers to pay at least . per hour.

Walmart had three stores on the drawing board for the District of Columbia.

Those plans are now on hold. In Seattle, Mayor Mike McGinn, running for re-election, opposed upscale retailer Whole Foods’ plans to build a store in an up-and-coming neighborhood over the issue of worker wages, even though Whole Foods says it pays  per hour, well above the minimum wage for the state. The issue has become a significant one in the mayoral race.

Jay Richards, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said these battles are about politics and not economics.

“Setting wages is a form of price fixing,” he said. “And the impact of price fixing

is perhaps the best understood area of economics. Raising labor costs by fixing wages will reduce the supply of jobs. It’s as simple as that.”

Richards said the irony is that “artificially raising wages hurts most the very people such policies are supposed to help: the poorest of the poor and the least skilled workers.” He said an employer willing to pay  per hour for a low- or unskilled worker often balks at paying  per hour. At that price, says Richards, the employer must hire only skilled and experienced workers: “Minimum wage and living wage laws raise the lowest rung of the ladder so high that those on the ground can no longer reach it.”

CREDIT

STRIKE: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES • FORD FIELD: JONATHAN FERREY/GETTY IMAGES

Big league spending It was front page news in July that Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. What didn’t make the front pages was the fact that despite a long slide into financial insolvency, Detroit continued to provide financial support for its sports teams, essentially subsidizing millionaires and billionaires with taxpayer money.

The Tigers’ home stadium, Comerica Park, opened in  with the help of more than  million in public financing. Ford Field, the Lions’ domed stadium, opened in  thanks in part to  million in taxpayer money. The Lions, owned by Henry Ford’s grandson William Clay Ford Sr. (net worth: . billion), paid just  million.

The economic impact of sports stadiums—and even big league sports teams—has received greater scrutiny in recent years.

Owners and promoters point to full stadiums and packed restaurants on game nights. But critics say most of the money spent would have been spent anyway, often closer to home with local entrepreneurs and restaurateurs. Andrew Zimbalist, a professor at Smith College and an authority on sports team economics said, “All of the independent, scholarly research on the issue has come to the same conclusion: A team or a facility by itself will not increase employment or raise per capita income in a metropolitan area.”

Major League Baseball’s historian John Thorn has a different perspective, though. He told Reuters, “You can show me a spreadsheet, and I’ll still trump you because it’s the psychic benefit of having a sports club. It separates a city from thinking of itself as big league or thinking of itself as bush league.”

Perhaps, but Detroit might have trouble selling that idea to a bankruptcy judge. —W.C.S.

Email: wsmith@worldmag.com

17 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 63

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 9:52 PM

Notebook > Religion

Papal homecoming Pope’s visit to Brazil sparks outpouring, controversy

BY THOMAS KIDD

>>

B  J welcomed Pope Francis for his first international trip, occasioned by Catholic World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro. Officials expected as many as . million pilgrims to come to Brazil during his visit, which concluded July  with a papal mass.

Touching down at the Rio airport, Francis gave his opening address in Portuguese, adopting his now-familiar humble tone. “Let me knock gently at this door,” he said, “I ask permission to come in and spend this week with you.” By all accounts, Brazilian

Catholics eagerly received the Argentine-born pope. With about  million adherents, Brazil remains the largest Catholic country in the world, but evangelical and charismatic Protestants have made remarkable gains there in recent years. In ,  percent of Brazilians identified as Catholics; today, only  percent do.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 RELIGION.indd 64

North Carolina legislators passed a bill July  prohibiting courts from considering “foreign law” in marriage, child custody, and other family-related cases.

Although it does not mention Islamic Sharia law, critics and supporters agree that the measure mainly targets the Muslim legal code and its possible role in courts. Earlier state attempts to ban Sharia by name raised constitutional concerns. A federal court struck down an Oklahoma anti-Sharia law in , saying it discriminated against Muslims.

Defenders of the North Carolina statute hope that its more expansive ban of foreign law will pass constitutional muster. The bill’s sponsor, Republican state representative Chris Whitmire, says LAW OF THE LAND: that it will The view from the force judges to state Senate gallery consider only as the bill is approved.

U.S. statutes, and protect “constitutional rights, especially of women and minorities.”

But critics call the bill “a ban in search of a problem,” and note that it would also prohibit recognition of other religious groups’ procedures, such as Orthodox Jews’ internal handling of divorce cases.

Religion News Service reports that while the U.S. Muslim community has no Islamic courts, American judges do occasionally have to deal with Shariabased foreign law, such as marriage contracts granted by Muslim courts overseas. Some Muslim-majority countries, such as Saudi Arabia, enforce notoriously harsh versions of Sharia, which critics see as discriminating against non-Muslims and women.

Other Muslim nations, such as Turkey, maintain secular courts and do not recognize Sharia. —T.K.

POPE: TASSO MARCELO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • CAR: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES • NORTH CAROLINA: CHUCK LIDDY/MCT/ABACA USA/NEWSCOM

RIO BRAVO: Francis at the St. Francis of Assisi Hospital; in the Fiat (right).

On the visit, Francis continued to cultivate his image as the “people’s pope.” For much of his ride through the city, he abandoned the traditional “popemobile,” with its bulletproof glass cover, in favor of a basic Fiat with the window rolled down. At one point, his motorcade took a wrong turn and the adoring crowd mobbed his car. Ultimately Francis took a helicopter to reach Rio’s presidential palace. His own security detail was light, but Brazil mobilized more than , police and military personnel especially for his stay. The day of his arrival, officials discovered a pipe bomb at a Catholic shrine Francis planned to visit.

Francis also caused controversy in the leadup to World Youth Day when the Vatican announced that those who could not attend could still “obtain Plenary Indulgence”—credit for less time in Purgatory—by participating in the week’s devotions “via the new means of social communication,” including Francis’ Twitter feed. Popular Christian blogger Justin Taylor incredulously tweeted about that story with the hashtag #ReformationNotOver.

In comments to reporters following the visit, Francis also created a furor when he said of gays, “who am I to judge?” Catholic commentators said he was referring to forgiving repentant gays, including gay clergy, and not denying that homosexual acts were sinful.

 

Email: tkidd@worldmag.com

8/5/13 9:56 PM

THE WORLD MARKET Classifieds are priced at  per line with an average of  characters per line and a minimum of two lines. Bold text and uppercase available for  per line; special fonts and highlighting available for an additional charge.

You will receive a  percent discount with a frequency of four or more.

All ads are subject to the approval of WORLD. Advertising in WORLD does not necessarily imply the endorsement of the publisher. Prepayment and written confi rmation will be required of all advertisers.

Indigenous ministries assisted by Christian Aid Mission

send native missionaries to the frontlines, bringing the gospel to unreached people.

: Connie Moses, WORLD, PO Box , Asheville, NC ; phone: ..; fax: ..; email: cmoses@worldmag.com

SCHOOL EMPLOYMENT I Make a deeper dent in this world with your Parenting/Teaching experience.

Cono Christian School provides boarding programs for teens struggling with relationships and academics. We are looking for a few more versatile adults who understand both. See www.cono. org/involved.html. Contact Headmaster Tom Jahl at thomas.jahl@cono.org.

MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES I Serve Jesus. Serve Muslims. Serve now. Join our teams in northern Iraq and help us change Iraq one life at a time. Visit www.servantgroup.org to learn more.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

POPE: TASSO MARCELO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • CAR: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES • NORTH CAROLINA: CHUCK LIDDY/MCT/ABACA USA/NEWSCOM

I Proverbs  Women and Others: Solid Ethics, Solid income. From Home. www.proverbsbusiness.com.

Call Beth () -.

I Make a difference +  with healthy green technology. Recording @ () -.

I Christian Home Based Business: High Tech Manufacturer offers unique opportunity for Christian families; () -.

I Experience Retirement the Way It Was Meant to Be. “Go Ye Village,” a Christian Life Care community located in Tahlequah, OK, in the foothills of the Ozarks, has over  residents from across the country. Take the next step.

Visit our community and stay in one of our beautiful guest rooms. Call () - or visit our website at www.goyevillage.org.

FUNDRAISING I NEED HELP WITH FUNDRAISING? WORLD magazine has expanded its ministry to help nonprofit organizations with Fundraising. We offer HUGE % profits on new subscription sales. Just send in your orders and your work is done. No unloading boxes or delivering bulky products. WORLD provides real value for your buyers and lasts all year.

For more details call WORLD today at () -.

WEB RESOURCES I Share & defend truth: heart, soul, mind, strength. www.WitnessKit.com.

EDUCATION

CHRISTIAN CEO

JOURNALISM EDUCATION I Major in journalism at a Christ-centered liberal arts university— www.cornerstone.edu/journalism.

REAL ESTATE I Maine Properties. Recreational, woodland, investment, & residential.

Owner financing; () -; www.themainelandstore.com.

I Home & Business in small Midwest town. Super nd biz. Excellent for semi-retired. Low investment, low taxes, etc. ,; () -.

RETIREMENT I Retire to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Come enjoy the Florida sunshine at il Villaggio, an active + evangelical gated community in Bradenton, FL. Settle on one of four picturesque fishing lakes.

Enjoy a maintenance free lifestyle rich in amenities. Very affordable leases. Close to beaches, shopping and great golfing opportunities. Call () - or visit www.ilvillaggiohomes.com.

17 RELIGION.indd 65

Christian Aid

. . . because we love the brethren.

TM

SERVICES I Christians helping Christians with medical expenses. Samaritan Ministries; () -, ext. .

I Moms/Dads work from home & make a difference. Toll free () -.

I OPEN YOUR OWN READING CENTER: Make a difference in the lives of others.

Operate from home. It’s needed. It’s rewarding. Great results. NOT a franchise. Earn -/hr. We provide complete training and materials. www.academic-associates.com; () -.

To Invest in God’s Work: Phone: 434-977-5650 www.native-missions.org

Are you a mature Christian who has enjoyed a successful business leadership career as Owner, CEO, President or Executive Coach/Consultant & are now called to use these gifts to help other leaders fulfill their God-given calling & potential? Do you believe Christ is Lord, the Bible is true, God has an eternal plan for each believer’s life, & this plan includes their business?

Would you be excited to build a high-impact professional practice to equip, encourage & inspire like-minded Christian leaders based on this truth? If so, you may be called by the Lord to be an Area Chair for The C12 Group, America’s leader in helping Christian CEOs & Owners Build GREAT Businesses for a GREATER Purpose. If you’re in a position to investigate a great franchise opportunity, visit www.C12Group.com to learn more!

Cash flow problems risking your company’s future?

Feeling lonely at the top…more prone to stress?

Procrastinating on necessary decisions or changes?

Need fresh ideas to rejuvenate strategic direction?

Shortchanging your family, balance & ministry?

Today’s economy calls for trustworthy peers and wise counsel to link strategy, execution, and the timely application of best practices with God’s purpose. Take advantage of America’s leading Christian CEO Roundtable provider, as a C12 Member or Area Chair, and leverage the proven power of expertly facilitated peers, one-on-one follow-up, and our repository of targeted resources to enhance current performance and eternal impact. C12’s uncommon focus yields proven results!

C12 Group can help!

www.C12Group.com Franchises Available

Why isn’t your ad here?

For information about advertising contact

call: 828.232.5489 | fax: 828.253.1556 | email: advertise@worldmag.com

8/5/13 9:57 PM

UNCOMPROMISING SUPPORT

for children and families struggling after adoption, divorce, remarriage

Cono Christian School

3269 Quasqueton Avenue | Walker Iowa 52352

Good News for Your Car

We can get exceptional mileage from your old car. When you donate your vehicle to WORLD, you help drive the expansion of Christian worldview journalism.

Call 800-822-9286 or visit worldmag.com/cardonation

Our students are young people who have experienced trauma. Because of this they are struggling. Strained family relationships and stalled childhood development as a result of trauma are a common story for Cono.

Changes in family systems such as divorce or remarriage can cause disruption in the development of children. In adoptive familes these kinds of traumatic events occurred earlier in a child’s life.

Cono provides families and their children a place that fosters hope and reconciliation. We offer a safe place for our students to move beyond current confusions and conflict, disruptive, aggressive and even violent behaviors, a community in which every child can discovers at a deep level that they belong.

Needs are met. Safety is found. Children are given voice. Healing begins.

Whether you need help for a child, or want to join us in this work.... Contact: Dave Toerper, Admissions: 888-646-0038 x250 or dave.toerper@cono.org Thomas Jahl, Headmaster: thomas.jahl@cono.org www.cono.org

WorldMag-Template-20.indd 1

5/10/13 9:31 PM

PREPARING STUDENTS

TO IMPACT THE WORLD FOR CHRIST SINCE 1883.

800.777.2556 houghton.edu

17 MAILBAG.indd 66

8/6/13 4:23 PM

Mailbag ‘Holding the line’

July  It took me better than a week to regain control of my blood pressure after reading the first three paragraphs. I never thought I would end up on the wrong side of the law after serving  years in the U.S. Air Force, but I could be in worse company than with “hate groups” like evangelical Christians, Catholics, and Chick-fil-A restaurateurs. What happened to sanity in our military?

—G R, Celina, Ohio

My wife’s father received a pocketsized New Testament and Psalms when he was an enlisted man in the Navy during WWII. On the inside front page a message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt begins, “I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States. …”

—J S, Morganton, N.C.

‘Leaving Exodus’ July  Your story emphasized Alan Chambers’ “weariness in fighting the battle against homosexual sin,” but the issue is really his reduced emphasis on repentance for rebelling against God’s design. Chambers himself now repents of things for which he should not apologize, such as believing that his marriage was better than a gay marriage. Why does he apologize for upholding God’s design?

—L A N, Encino, Calif.

Chambers was the public face of Exodus, but the local leaders, staff, and volunteers who worked with the sexually confused and broken people did the real labor. Chambers should have left Exodus over a year ago. Instead, he

Send photos and letters to: mailbag@worldmag.com

17 MAILBAG.indd 67

dug in his heels and tried to remake the organization in his own image. Praise God that faithful leaders and ministries will carry on the vital work of sexual sanctification.

—K B, Monroe, Wis.

You quoted Christopher Yuan noting that Christian churches should work harder to affirm celibacy “as a robust way of life.” Amen!

—G R S, Raleigh, N.C.

‘Staring at death’ July  Biblical anthropology has the answers for Dmitry Itskov, now and in . Jesus defines eternal life in terms of relationship to God, so the difference between living forever and merely lasting forever is the difference between heaven and hell.

—R F, Tampa, Fla.

Marvin Olasky asks if we are “all in with Paul.” I am, completely! I can’t wait to go home and meet my Maker.

—N N, Ocala, Fla.

‘Back to the states’ July  The Supreme Court’s majority decision striking down part of DOMA

demonstrates how little interest there is in religious freedom. The First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers are vanishing.

—N N, Eugene, Ore.

‘Stretch marks’ July  The main issue is not how long you date or how well you know a person before marriage, but God’s will. My wife and I dated mostly by mail. I am still growing in love for her after  years of marriage.

Knowing that our marriage is and always will be God’s will for our lives makes unconditional commitment a no-brainer.

—F S, Sebring, Fla.

Many thanks to Andrée Seu Peterson for identifying the lie of “Shacking Up.” As a wise friend said, no matter what you do to try to prepare, you will never know what it’s like to be married to him until you marry him.

—G G, Asheboro, N.C.

‘Prison bars or pillars?’

July  The church’s greatest witness to the world is in honoring marriage.

In marriage the church understands its role as the bride of Christ, and through it the world may glimpse the wonderful love of God available through Christ.

—J M, Carrollton, Texas

‘God bless the USA!’ July  Eighteen years ago I arrived via Air India at the JFK Airport to start living my American dream. My family

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/6/13 3:38 PM

Mailbag

BANGKOK, THAILAND submitted by Bill Heaton

and I could not have arrived where we are now in life but for our founding fathers’ confession: that all men are created equal and invested with dignity because of their Creator. I would pitch my tent here in the U.S. of A.—warts and all— rather than anywhere else in God’s wide world.

—D P, Richmond, Mo.

‘Civil War storyteller’ June  I disagree with Maxwell that the Copperheads have “not been justified by history.” War is a righteous means of protecting a nation from invasion, but as a social change agent war is a gross failure and a disgusting waste of human lives, and this was especially true in the Civil War. History has instead vindicated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who helped accomplish, without violence, what brothers killing brothers failed to do.

—C S, Clarksdale, Miss.

‘Commodity control’ June  The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow brought tears to my eyes in every chapter. When I tried to explain the desperate situation in Africa to my -year-old daughter,

17 MAILBAG.indd 68

she said, “Mommy, should we pray about it?” We did. It is thrilling and a relief to read about One Acre Fund and its focus on being a servant.

—R W, Cambria, Wis.

‘Against the mental grain’ June  Given the mess our country is in, it was not reassuring to read that our leading law schools no longer teach the principles that our nation rests upon. Is it any surprise we get a president like Obama and Supreme Court justices like Sotomayor and Ginsberg?

—M B, Hudson, Wis.

‘Beware of “comfort care”’ June  As a registered nurse, I was shocked at how some healthcare professionals are interpreting the term “comfort care.” To me it always meant doing everything to relieve a patient’s suffering while supporting the patient and his loved ones in their choice to decline advanced interventions. It certainly does not mean hastening death.

—B R, Oak Park, Ill.

‘Rotten to the core?’

June  This is the best Joel Belz column I have ever read. Thank you

8/6/13 3:50 PM

Are Are You You Frustrated Frustrated with Your Current with Your Current Level Level of of Income?

Income? for expressing this serious concern about our dying nation.

Call Call

—D S, Lake Tapps, Wash.

800-903-0890 800-903-0890

For For a a 1-Minute 1-Minute Recorded Recorded Message.

Message.

‘The morning after’ June  Judgment is just the background against which the New Testament sets the message of saving grace.

—W MM, Sutherlin, Ore.

FREE FREE

More More than than 500 500 Bible Bible Verses Verses Put Put to to Music Music Absolutely Absolutely FREE FREE = = FreeBibleMusic.com FreeBibleMusic.com

‘One monster among many’ May  Over the years I have been getting less and less shocked reading accounts of abortion, and it bothers me that I can be so desensitized about things that ought to be too horrifying to read.

But thank you to Andrée Seu Peterson for reawakening me. I don’t want to condemn anyone.

I just want it to stop.

—K G, Chaska, Minn.

‘Nice going’ April  I just received this issue here in Zambia where I am teaching temporarily at a Lutheran seminary.

I appreciated this column. Keep fighting for the Truth. As Martin Luther said: “Peace if possible, truth at all costs.”

—K. S, Avondale, Ariz.

We appreciate WORLD’s attractive format, its cultural eye keeping us aware of books, music, movies, the sound-bite news along with indepth feature articles, all your online stuff, and most recently, your email peeks at the coming issue. Our family has grown up with WORLD and we trust our newest generation will continue.

Thanks from all of us.

—D C, Charlotte, N.C.

LETTERS & PHOTOS Email: mailbag@worldmag.com Write: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box , Asheville, NC - Please include full name and address.

Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.

17 MAILBAG.indd 69

Announcing:

1

The st Christian homeschool curriculum developed for the iPad... ...and the same engaging online curriculum available on any browser-enabled device.

All digital curriculum for iPad Online access on your Mac or PC Teacher’s guide, transcript, and report card Christian worldview Videos, activities, and quizzes Includes God’s World News Radical customer support 100% money-back guarantee

In partnership with the publishers of

Register online for an opportunity to win your choice of a:

FREE iPad Mini or FREE full year of curriculum

GOD’S WORLD NEWS

Dew Learning curriculum includes access to current Christian worldview content from WORLD Magazine and God’s World News. Age-appropriate news stories in select lesson plans enliven and bring practical insights to lessons in all eight subjects – a benefit to both student and teacher. These timely, well-crafted stories will help your student learn to understand real-world current events from a distinctly Christian, biblical perspective.

Demo and Preorder online at DewLearning.com

Phone: 770-240-1005 | Email: info@dewlearning.com | Website: dewlearning.com

Preorder by September 15, 2013 for a 35% discount!

Use discount code: dewworld

8/5/13 10:11 PM

Your

just got bigger.

Whether you enjoy reading WORLD in print or electronically—now you can listen to WORLD, too.

As a current WORLD subscriber, now you have access to exclusive, highly engaging WORLD content you can listen to while driving your car, walking your dog, or working around the house.

WORLDontheWeb.com

17 SEU PETERSON.indd 70

It’s simple. It’s convenient.

Visit WORLDontheWeb.com and get set-up for your daily fix of up-to-the-minute news reporting and analysis from a decidedly Christian worldview.

Getting the real stories behind the headlines has never been easier.

real matters.

8/6/13 3:56 PM

DANIELA PELAZZA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Introducing the Half-Hour Daily Podcast The WORLD and Everything in It.

Andrée Seu Peterson

It’s the small things Stop skipping them and start doing them!

>>

DANIELA PELAZZA/SHUTTERSTOCK

A   I skipped the small things that I thought wouldn’t make any difference. Guess what: They made a difference. The phone calls I didn’t get to, the birthday cards I didn’t send, the promptings to leave the dishes and grab the kids for an outing. What forfeit is mine.

Against the inner screaming banshee chorus of “It’s too late now,” I have started, slowly but consciously, doing small things. In this I am inspired by my grandfather’s memory: Dad tells me that in , as they stood amid the wreckage of the family business wiped out by a flood, he looked at his father and said, “What do we do, Pa?” His father said, “Pick up a shovel.”

At church on Sunday I happened to remember that Eowyn is getting married next week. Eowyn was born, went to Sunday school, youth group, and the college and careers group in our church, without me ever engaging her in a single conversation, though her mother is a friend. That’s awkward. I went up to her after the service and said, “Eowyn, I realize I have no relationship with you, but I would like to pray for your marriage.” I put my hand on her arm, and we both lowered our heads while I prayed a blessing. Eowyn said it meant a lot to her, and we went our separate ways. I will probably not see her again.

It so happens that after that same worship service, Norma came up and asked if I wanted to go for lunch with her ladies’ group, an invitation she regularly makes and I regularly decline. This time I figured: What the heck, I am practically at the end of my life anyway. And I went, and had a good time.

I even got to know some of my sisters’ struggles, and we prayed about them before parting.

I thought of skipping the seminary graduation this year, though I live practically down the street and always know at least one person who’s graduating. I skip it just about every year. “What difference does its make?” I always think. I come up with reasons why it doesn’t matter: They won’t notice I didn’t come; graduations are just formalities; graduations

Email: aseupeterson@worldmag.com

17 SEU PETERSON.indd 71

are not the important thing in life. But this time I decided to go. I don’t expect it to change my life suddenly and make me Jesus’ proverbial tree that the birds of the air come to nest in. But it’s something. And something is always better than nothing.

My children and I have “issues” reaching back decades, so the temptation is to mentally rehearse the whole sorry history in preparation for holiday gatherings and to take my assigned penitent place. This year I said, “My Mother’s Day wish is to play baseball.” So I located a field with a baseball diamond, and my elder son scrounged up a bat, balls, and gloves. And we played baseball in God’s fresh air under clouds like sailing ships. It doesn’t change the past, but it puts something new into it, for the future, in the positive column instead of the negative column.

My th college reunion is this year. I always pitch the invitation in the trash, every milestone year that comes up. This year I circled the phone number of the reunion class liaison and phoned her.

I wanted to know if Mary Jo Ball is on the list of respondents who plan to attend. I need to drive to Worcester, Mass., to ask her forgiveness. We won’t ever be best friends again, but that’s okay. This is better done than not.

Jesus told a story of man who went along merrily messing up his life until one day it all caught up to him. This did him good because he suddenly had a moment of salubrious sobriety that put him in his right mind and energized him to action.

Knowing his goose was cooked anyway, he made the best of a bad situation and went around doing the little he could to improve his situation under the circumstances. Jesus commended him as wise (Luke :-).

Last week while walking through the cemetery I took a picture of a sycamore tree I like and texted it to my daughter in Brooklyn. It isn’t something I am wont to do. A

AUGUST 24, 2013 • WORLD



8/5/13 10:16 PM

Marvin Olasky

Summerhill school

Past economic mistakes are lessons for the future—but only if we heed them

>>

A      of the murder conviction of Leo Frank, a -year-old Jewish-American factory superintendent who lived in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, just south of downtown. Frank had purportedly strangled to death an employee, Mary Phagan. In  Georgia’s governor commuted the sentence, arguing a miscarriage of justice had occurred. In response a mob lynched Frank, then cut down his corpse, stomped on his face, and cut off pieces of his nightshirt and rope to sell as souvenirs.

A plaque on the wall of a building on Georgia Avenue, Summerhill’s main drag, testifies that Frank’s house once stood there. I walked that neighborhood (and wrote about it) two decades ago, did so again in  to see what had changed (see “Summerhill revisited,” WORLD, July , ), and did so again last month. Once-vibrant Georgia Avenue is now a desolate stretch of deserted storefronts and weeds.

South of it lies the part of Summerhill lynched by federal programs, philanthropic schemes, and a promised  Olympics surge that ended with a few slappedon coats of paint.

Summerhill, poor but with generally intact families, began dying in the s and s as federal urban renewal, along with expressway and stadium construction, reduced population density. So did Lyndon Johnson’s Model Cities program, which in six years spent  million in Summerhill and vicinity with the goal of creating “new homes, schools, parks, community centers, and open spaces,” since Summerhill had “less than half as much land per person devoted to recreational purposes [as the rest of] the city.”

One problem: As population density declined, so did the number of customers.

Businesses closed. Unemployment, welfare, and crime grew. Jimmy Carter as president threw more money at the problem and did the same years later as head of the massive, nonprofit Atlanta Project in the s.

More than  million from governments and nonprofits entered the Summerhill neighborhood during the six years before the  Olympics. The major

Entrepreneurs are public servants much more often than politicians who play with the money of others.



WORLD • AUGUST 24, 2013

17 OLASKY.indd 72

result: Corruption increased, with political, regulatory, and community leaders lying and stealing.

Bob Lupton, a veteran, usually successful Christian anti-poverty leader who lives in Atlanta, rues what happened: “Summerhill is my best example of community development gone wrong. … Very savvy, respected business leaders checking their business sense at the door in the name of servanthood to the community. Handshake loans, multimillion-dollar real estate decisions with no collateral or even organizational structure to back them up. … Within a month a vision that had taken five years to grow was dead in the water. It set race relations back a decade or more.

No one has wanted to touch Summerhill since. … The Summerhill well has been poisoned.”

The only bit of good news (and it’s mixed) is what’s happened north of Georgia Avenue, the area of Summerhill closer to downtown: Gentrification, with new and refurbished houses selling in the s. As more private money comes to Summerhill, a neighborhood now without supermarkets, pharmacies, and banks will gain them. That doesn’t help long-term residents priced out of their neighborhood, for market forces can be brutal: As Wilhelm Ropke wrote in A Humane Economy, capitalism works best only with a Christian sensibility.

But overall, the Summerhill lesson is that entrepreneurs are public servants much more often than politicians who play with the money of others.

Atlanta politicians now are repeating the mistakes of the past by clamping down on hard-working, selfemployed street vendors who for years have set up kiosks on street corners near Atlanta ballparks.

(Former heavyweight boxing champ Evander Holyfield was a Summerhill resident who earned money that way.) City officials, though, signed a deal with one big company that gave it a monopoly over all street vending: The city would get some money and the kiosks would have a uniform look. Larry Miller, a vendor for -plus years, has organized the Atlanta Vendors Association and is fighting City Hall with the help of the Institute for Justice: “All we want to do is work and feed our families.”

By the way, the souvenirs from Leo Frank’s lynching sold so fast that police said sellers needed a city license. Two new organizations emerged in the lynching’s aftermath: the th century Ku Klux Klan and the (Jewish) Anti-Defamation League. In  the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Leo Frank a posthumous pardon. A

Email: molasky@worldmag.com

8/5/13 10:18 PM

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM AMERICA’S GREATEST THREAT THE

DEBT BOMB!

“The biggest national security threat facing our country is our national debt.” - Admiral Mike Mullen, Fmr. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff History clearly shows how many of the world’s greatest empires have fallen, not as a result of brute military force, but rather, as a result of reckless government spending and the massive accumulation of debt. The current and approaching debt of the U.S. is the largest sum in the history of the world. Renown Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, (“This Time It’s Different”), point out the historical record clearly demonstrates the “tipping point” when a nation generally passes the “point of no return” is when a nation’s debt to GDP ratio hits 90%, a figure America recently surpassed in 2010!

HOW EMPIRES FALL

SUDDEN DESTRUCTION, LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

The U.S. does not have years to defuse the debt bomb. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson states, “the economic collapse normally comes quickly, like a thief in the night”. A massive hidden tax (in the form of higher inflation) could soon be coming as the government desperately tries to harness the debt dragon. The value of the dollar could be decimated, along with traditional retirement savings in 401K’s and IRA’s.

For centuries, both savers and investors have turned to hard assets, most notably gold and silver to protect their purchasing power in the face of a paper currency devaluation or even collapse. If you are concerned about our current fiscal nightmare and want to learn more about some proven methods you can take to protect your financial assets from what could be a devastating economic scenario, call now for your FREE OFFER.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR PURCHASING POWER

TWO SPECIAL FREE REPORTS:

A Better Way to Own Gold - Investing in precious metals is simple, but understanding the right method and form of gold and silver to purchase is paramount. This informative report clearly describes the various pitfalls, benefits, and unique opportunities in acquiring the right gold and silver products for you.

How to Survive The Coming Meltdown in America - The writing is on the wall. U.S. debt is accelerating at

an unsustainable pace. As the Fed continues to debase the dollar, the threat of a hyperinflationary depression looms on the horizon. This report will explain in detail how to be completely prepared.

FREE Bonus CD -

“Understanding America’s Debt Crisis” A complimentary CD containing the recent interview with Focus on the Family and U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, author of “The Debt Bomb” will be sent FREE with our two special reports.

To Receive All Three FREE Offers, Call anytime on our toll free 24 hour recorded information line. ICA, “America’s Most Trusted Precious Metals Firm”, serving our customers coast to coast since 1972 and carries the highest A+ rating with the BBB. www.mcalvany.com

1-866-211-7606

17 OLASKY.indd 3

8/5/13 10:20 PM

Health care for people of Biblical 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 (United States Code 26, Section 5000A, (d), (2), (B)).

Every month the more than 24,000* households of Samaritan Ministries share over $6 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 membership of any size has never exceeded $370*.

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 June 2013

Biblical faith applied to health care www.samaritanministries.org

17 OLASKY.indd 4

8/5/13 10:23 PM