fracking // eating // plagiarizing
Tidings of
D ecem b er 28, 20 13
Discomfort and joy In breaking with The Episcopal Church, many Anglican congregations have lost beautiful buildings but gained something greater
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Contents , / ,
34 Tidings of discomfort and joy In breaking with The Episcopal Church, many Anglican congregations have lost beautiful buildings but gained something greater
42 To protect and project
Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore wants to help Christians in a broken culture that increasingly sees their religion as strange
46 Extreme makeover
For one Midwest town, the price of a U.S. oil resurgence has been transformation, for better or worse
5 News 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes
52 Asian-American struggles
The stereotype of a naturally thin people is contributing to a quiet crisis of eating disorders :
5
23
46
63
—.—
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23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music
57 Lifestyle 59 Technology 60 Science 61 Houses of God 62 Sports 63 Media 64 Religion
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12/10/13 4:31 PM
Joel Belz
Around the corner, part II Readers give a gloomy forecast, but also a little cheer
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KRIEG BARRIE
W I six weeks ago what major cultural changes might lie ahead of us Christians over the next few decades, I was hardly ready for your thunderous response. I listed there (it was our Nov. issue) four big changes I’ve watched in my lifetime—and asked you to identify issues of similar import that may shake our lives, for good or for evil, in the years just ahead. The four changes from the past I mentioned were a lessening of racism, strident feminism, abortion on demand, and the normalization of homosexuality. What similar changes, I asked, are likely to characterize the next generation? You readers were more than ready with your suggestions. More than of you wrote me, with well over , specific proposals of cultural changes that you think are likely to be just around the corner. I have read, word for word, every one of your responses. In the process, I note that you’ve blithely ignored my request that you not write long essays. I don’t have a secretary, and when I promised to get back to you with the results, I had in mind only the most nonscientific and informal of replies. Here it is. I’ve divided your responses into three main categories—with my very approximate estimate of how your responses broke down. First ( percent): your identification of issues that you think will dominate the world’s culture. Second ( percent): your identification of factors that will specifically threaten God’s people. Third ( percent): your identification of factors that will describe God’s people. ) Descriptors and characteristics of the dominant culture of the future. Many of you see a culture increasingly defined by sexual deviancy, including pedophilia and bestiality. A surprising number of you see a future when euthanasia will be an accepted way for society to deal with an aging population. Many of you foresee a world society dominated by Islam; others are optimistic that growing supplies of natural gas in North America and elsewhere will make the Middle East (and therefore Islam) less and less important in geopolitical affairs. Just how Israel fits into that scenario puzzles a number of you. A
Email: jbelz@wng.org
26 JOEL.indd 3
worldwide economic collapse is part of the forecast suggested by many of you, and some of you suggest a parallel collapse of the evangelical parachurch infrastructure. A deepened secularist, humanistic, and naturalistic outlook on life seems expected by almost all respondents—but many suggested that’s more a continuation of present trends rather than a new direction. ) Factors that directly threaten God’s people. While most respondents seem to assume such a secularist drift, a significant number see future cultures as going much further—actively trying to press God’s people into their secular mold. For some, that simply means polite intolerance and political correctness. For most, it means more overt opposition—including actual loss of specific freedoms, loss of tax-exempt benefits, actual prohibition of taking some positions in public, further application of hate speech structures and penalties, and even more explicit “persecution” of Christians. ) Factors that describe God’s people. It struck me, as I sorted through the hundreds of your responses, that while most of the issues listed so far had tended toward dark gloominess, a relative handful of you seemed determined to see the future through a more optimistic grid. You were not folks who denied the realities of a fallen world. But you were folks who did not hesitate to describe God’s people as “thriving” in the face of persecution. You see God’s people as those who still might model the joys of proper sexuality and Christian families, prompting unbelievers to pursue biblical patterns for marriage and parenting. You see Christians’ obedient stewardship of money and material things—including biblical care for the poor and needy—as a pattern that might catch the attention of the world at large, just as it did at the time of the early church. You were a bright-spirited minority in a sometimes seemingly downcast group. May your tribe increase—and may we all be blessed, a few years from now, to be able to look back and point to your accurate predictions as cheery exceptions in an otherwise gloomy forecast. A
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/10/13 9:43 PM
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12/6/13 4:17 PM
Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes
Man knows not his time Nelson Mandela: -
MANDELA IN 1988: THEMBA HADEBE/AP
BY MINDY BELZ
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
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12/10/13 9:56 AM
Dispatches > News
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6
WORLD • December 28, 2013
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ACTIVIST: Mandela revisits his prison cell on Robben Island in 1994; at his law office in 1952 (inset).
learned African history from the elder chiefs, he studied English and Xhosa, and later excelled at track and boxing at a Wesleyan mission school. At 16, Mandela was circumcised according to tribal tradition. Attending the only university open to blacks at the time, he studied Dutch law, anticipating a career in civil service. But in 1942, feeling the brunt of rights denied blacks under apartheid, he joined the African National Congress. He spent the next 20 years organizing and then leading boycotts and other forms of civil disobedience against South Africa’s white-led government. The ANC had links to communist leaders and guerrilla movements during the Cold War, as Mandela led political activities and also helped it form an armed offshoot. He was first arrested for leading a nationwide strike but received a life sentence for political crimes and sabotage. But the white Afrikaaner government, eventually isolated by economic sanctions and international scorn, was by 1986 entering into secret talks with Mandela aimed at charting a path toward majority-led government. Hard-liners within his own ANC, as well as the white-ruled government, disapproved, yet the talks led to
istoric negotiations with President F.W. h de Klerk, and Mandela’s 1990 release. Mandela shared a joint Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk in 1993, following successful negotiations toward an interim constitution that for the first time gave blacks the right to vote. It marked the peaceful termination of a system that led to violence and the deaths of thousands. In 1994, following the first election in which he and other blacks were allowed to vote, Mandela became president. De Klerk became his deputy, and the two steered a historic transition to democratic government. In office Mandela learned to appreciate those he scorned in his Marxistleaning days, including businessmen: “I realized, as never before, that if we want investments … we had to remove the fear of business that their assets will be nationalized.” Mandela could have become a dictator, but he stepped down in 1999, after only one term, never again to run for office, and assumed in his 80s a role as elder statesman. He kept at arm’s length scandals and corruption in the administration of his successors, all members of the ANC. Weakened by tuberculosis, Mandela in recent years struggled with recurring lung infections. Robben Island is now a museum reached by regular ferry service and crowded with tourists. They come from all over the world to see the tiny cell of the man now affectionately known as “Madiba,” and to recall that sometimes systematic oppression and injustice meet their just end. A
Jurgen Schadeberg/Getty Images
Nelson Mandela endured three months of hospitalization before going home to die at age 95 on Dec. 5, but South Africa’s former president had known far greater confinement. Section B at Robben Island Prison was Mandela’s home for 18 years. During that time he came to represent black South Africans’ struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s elaborate system of discrimination that denied blacks jobs, education, and even the right to vote. Mandela already had been active for 20 years in the antiapartheid African National Congress (ANC) when authorities sent him to Robben Island in 1962 on a life sentence for his political activity. Mandela would spend 27 years in prison altogether, most of them at Robben, a 40-minute ride across the water from Cape Town, accessible only by boat and dubbed by ANC the last outpost in the apartheid system. Prison officials allowed Mandela out of an 8-foot cell each morning to empty his toilet bucket outside, then to walk in a cramped courtyard for a few minutes. Over time he won permission to tend his own small garden in the courtyard in the afternoons. He contracted tuberculosis, and during 13 years working in a limestone mine came near to blindness from hours spent chipping at white rock beneath a blazing sun. Yet Mandela managed to dupe the censors, and with fellow ANC inmates (three later become presidents) fanned a revolution from inside his prison walls. Mandela’s 2010 book, Conversations with Myself, revealed the extent to which he was able to communicate with his wife at the time, activist Winnie Mandela, and others to draw international attention to the plight of the black majority in South Africa. At birth the village name Mandela received, “Rolihlahla,” meant troublemaker. He was baptized in a Methodist church and became the first member of his family to attend school. While he
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12/10/13 10:07 AM
What are students saying about Life at BoB jones university?
Earlier this year our students grabbed their cameras and started recording. The resulting 13-minute documentary tells their story.
For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (15609) 9/13
See what they have to say
www.lifeatbju.com
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12/6/13 4:20 PM
Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, N o v.
Captives at home
Fernando Richter, , and his wife Sophia, , appeared in court on multiple counts of kidnapping and child abuse the day after police discovered the couple had imprisoned their three daughters, ages , , and , in their Tucson, Ariz., house for up to two years. Police said the girls, daughters of Sophia and stepdaughters of Fernando, were filthy and malnourished when found. The girls said their parents had confined them to their rooms, forced them to listen to loud music around the clock, and given them only one meal a day. Prosecutors also charged Fernando with sexual abuse.
Sun burned Challenge in the air
China acknowledged that two American B- bombers had flown observed but unhindered through an area in the East China Sea that China had said it would defend against foreign aircraft. The area includes islands that both China and Japan claim as their own, and China only days earlier had said it would police an “air defense identification zone” around the islands. The Pentagon said the flights were part of a routine training mission but, one official told The New York Times, were also “a demonstration of long-established international rights to freedom of navigation and transit through international airspace.”
The comet ISON, which scientists have been watching closely for the past year, came within , miles of the Sun’s surface on Nov. . Scientists at first thought the Sun had destroyed the comet, but then they weren’t sure. “It now looks like some chunk of ISON’s nucleus has indeed made it through the solar corona, and re-emerged,” Karl Battams, a comet scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, told CNN. “It’s throwing off dust and (probably) gas, but we don’t know how long it can sustain that.”
FERNANDO AND SOPHIA RICHTER: TUCSON POLICE DEPARTMENT/AP • RICHTER HOME: AP B-52: JULIAN HERBERT/GETTY IMAGES • ISON: ESA/NASA/SOHO/JHELIOVIEWER • CROUCH: HANDOUT
We d n e s d a y, No v.
Died Paul F. Crouch, controversial founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, died on Nov. after a fight against degenerative heart disease. Crouch, his wife Jan, and other senior TBN executives had come under fire for their lavish lifestyles that included private jets and mansions and their promotion of the prosperity gospel (see “Sex, lies & television,” Sept. , ). TBN often features prominent prosperity gospel preachers including Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and Kenneth Copeland.
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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12/11/13 11:41 AM
DAVIS: BUTCH DILL/AP • ZIENTS: CHARLES DHARAPAK • FROZEN: WALT DISNEY PICTURES • BRONX: MARK LENNIHAN/AP • WALKER: STUART C. WILSON/GETTY IMAGES FOR UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Working holiday At least a dozen major retailers broke with tradition and opened their doors on Thanksgiving Day. Millions shopped at the stores on Thanksgiving, including , who lined up for the p.m. opening of a Macy’s store in New York City, but it wasn’t clear whether the holiday opening helped sales. The National Retail Federation estimates that spending over the four-day period that ended Sunday was . percent lower than last year. Overall, though, retailers expect Christmas sales to be stronger this year, with early November discounts attracting shoppers to stores before Thanksgiving.
DAVIS: BUTCH DILL/AP • ZIENTS: CHARLES DHARAPAK • FROZEN: WALT DISNEY PICTURES • BRONX: MARK LENNIHAN/AP • WALKER: STUART C. WILSON/GETTY IMAGES FOR UNIVERSAL PICTURES
FERNANDO AND SOPHIA RICHTER: TUCSON POLICE DEPARTMENT/AP • RICHTER HOME: AP B-52: JULIAN HERBERT/GETTY IMAGES • ISON: ESA/NASA/SOHO/JHELIOVIEWER • CROUCH: HANDOUT
S u n d a y, D e c.
Big tickets
S a t u r d a y, N o v.
Happy return
Frozen was hot at the box office. The Disney animated film brought in million during Thanksgiving weekend, the biggest opening ever for the holiday weekend. The record opening was not enough to give Frozen first place at the box office, though. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire hauled in million, giving it million worldwide after only two weeks.
College football’s annual “Iron Bowl”—which pits in-state rivals Alabama and Auburn—was one for the ages this year. With one second remaining in the game and the score tied -, Alabama attempted a field goal. The kick missed its target but was fielded in the back of the end zone by Auburn’s Chris Davis, who then returned the kick the length of the field for the game-winning touchdown. “When I was running, I said, ‘God is good,’” said Davis. With the victory Auburn landed a spot in the SEC championship game against Missouri. The next weekend Auburn won that game and landed a spot in the BCS national championship game against Florida State.
Night and day?
Bronx disaster
The self-imposed deadline for the Obama administration to fix the Obamacare website arrived on Nov. . The next day Jeff Zients, who directed the repair operation, said the administration had fixed about bugs and the site was “night and day from what it was” after its disastrous Oct. rollout. On Dec. , insurers were warning of a new headache: The problem of faulty data they were receiving from healthcare.gov had not been addressed. If millions are able to sign up for insurance on the repaired website, insurers could be flooded with forms containing erroneous information or missing applications.
A train wreck in the Bronx, N.Y., killed four passengers and injured about . The train derailed on Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson Line while going around a steep curve. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, after retrieving two data recorders from the wreckage, reported the train entered the mph curve going mph.
Died Actor Paul Walker, and the father of a -year-old girl, died in a car crash in California on Nov. . Walker, well-known for his role in the Fast and Furious movie franchise, grew up Mormon but had recently been outspoken about his newfound Christian faith. Walker and a friend were returning home from a charity event at the time of the crash. His body was so badly burned that authorities had to use dental records to identify him. Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad
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DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/11/13 9:13 AM
Dispatches > News We d n e s d a y, D e c.
Far from home A fishing guide and park volunteers spotted dozens of pilot whales trapped in Florida’s Everglades National Park on Dec. . Rescue efforts began for the whales, which apparently had traveled miles from waters deep enough to support them and then became stranded in the park by the low tide. By Dec. , at least whales had died in the park and five were unaccounted for. Rescuers, meanwhile, tried to herd the remaining whales into deeper water.
Password heist The cyber security firm Trustwave reported that hackers over the previous seven weeks had stolen more than million passwords from such sites as Facebook, Google, and Twitter and stored them on a server in the Netherlands. Trustwave said thousands of the victims had weak passwords such as “” or “password.”
Out at MSNBC Nearly three weeks after Martin Bashir read on-air a scripted and disgusting attack on Sarah Palin, the MSNBC host resigned from the network. Bashir had called Palin an “idiot” and a “dunce” with “a long-diseased mind.” He said someone should defecate in Palin’s mouth, making reference to the punishment a slave owner had reportedly ordered for his slaves. (Palin had compared U.S. debt to China to slavery.) Bashir later apologized and took a two-week vacation before resigning.
WHALES: JOE SKIPPER/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • PASSWORD: PAVEL IGNATOV/SHUTTERSTOCK • OBAMA: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES • BASHIR: MSNBC • SINNI: LAURA ANNE SMITH
Tu e s d a y, D e c.
Victorious Ryan Sinni,, , became the first male winner in the senior division of the National Bible Bee since . Sinni, a homeschooler, won the contest’s , grand prize and said he plans to go to law school or seminary after he attends college. The bee included top contestants from around the country competing in Scripture recitation and answering Bible knowledge questions.
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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12/11/13 9:16 AM
SMITH: OMAIMA ELFAITORI/AP • OBAMA: ALLAN JUNG/METROWEST DAILY NEWS/AP • TEXAS: LM OTERO/AP • KLINE: THAD ALLTON/TOPEKA CAPITAL-JOURNAL/AP
Sea change A survey of young Americans had bad news for President Obama. The poll, conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, found the president’s approval rating among Americans between ages and had fallen to a record low of percent. Forty-seven percent of these “Millennials” even said they would support removing Obama from office. For the youngest of this age group—those between and — percent wanted to fire Obama. The Millennial generation voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama in and .
T h u r s d a y, D e c.
Family ties
WHALES: JOE SKIPPER/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • PASSWORD: PAVEL IGNATOV/SHUTTERSTOCK • OBAMA: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES • BASHIR: MSNBC • SINNI: LAURA ANNE SMITH
SMITH: OMAIMA ELFAITORI/AP • OBAMA: ALLAN JUNG/METROWEST DAILY NEWS/AP • TEXAS: LM OTERO/AP • KLINE: THAD ALLTON/TOPEKA CAPITAL-JOURNAL/AP
Gunned down
It turns out that President Obama does in fact know his -year-old uncle, Omar Obama—pretty well in fact. White House spokespersons had previously said the president had never met Omar, who has been in the United States illegally for two decades. But on Dec. , the White House confirmed Omar’s claim in court that Barack Obama had stayed with him briefly while going to law school. Spokesman Jay Carney said the uncle and nephew had not spoken in years, and that spokespersons had not asked the president directly about Omar before making previous statements.
Assailants murdered American teacher Ronnie Smith, , as he was jogging near the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Hospital officials said Smith, a chemistry teacher for the past months at the International School Benghazi, had been shot multiple times. Smith’s wife and young son had returned to the United States for a Christmas break, and Smith was planning to join them in a matter of days. He was a long-time member of Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Texas. His murder came months after a terrorist attack on the consulate killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Daddies needed
New research from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre found that the absence of a father during childhood may cause defects in a child’s brain structure that can lead to negative social and behavioral consequences. The researchers studied monogamous mice, but senior research author and psychiatrist Gabriella Gobbi told Science Daily the findings are “extremely relevant” to humans. The findings, said Gobbi, are similar to studies that measure the behavior of human children raised without fathers.
F r i d a y, D e c.
Icy cold A strong winter storm brought snow, freezing rain, and frigid temperatures to much of the country, including the South. The National Weather Service issued winter storm and ice warnings for several states, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Earlier in the week, Texans enjoyed temperatures in the s. The website willigetawhitechristmas.com gave Dallas, Texas, a percent chance of snow on Christmas Day.
Fighting back Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline on Dec. filed a -page motion challenging the suspension of his license to practice law in Kansas by the Kansas Supreme Court. The motion seeks a rehearing of the ethics case against him. Kline is strongly pro-life, and in office he aggressively gave scrutiny to Planned Parenthood, a record that pro-life observers believe motivated the court’s decision.
Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more
26 NEWS 1&2.indd 11
12/11/13 11:04 AM
Dispatches > News Dealing with Iran U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to sell a skeptical House Foreign Affairs Committee on the merits of the nuclear agreement the United States— along with Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia—struck with Iran last month in Geneva, Switzerland. Kerry said the United States and its allies in the region “are more secure
Search terms
Apple, Facebook, and Google were among the web giants that penned an open letter to President Obama calling for “global government surveillance reform.” The companies specifically want limits on governmental authority to collect information about users from service providers, better judicial oversight of the process, and transparency about the scope of government demands for user information. The letter came in the wake of revelations this summer by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the web companies had allowed governmental access to users’ personal data.
Hindu wave
The BJP, a Hindu nationalist party associated with militants who have used violence against non-Hindus, won percent of the assembly seats in elections in four of India’s states. The sweeping victories come as the BJP and its leader, Narendra Modi, prepare for next year’s general elections.
L.A. Law
Federal prosecutors announced indictments against current or former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies, alleging they had beaten and humiliated prisoners and tried to cover up their crimes during an FBI investigation. U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. said “these incidents did not take place in a vacuum—in fact, they demonstrated behavior that had become institutionalized.” Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca disputed that assessment, saying that “. percent of our employees are on the right track, doing the right thing.”
than they were the day before we entered into this agreement.” The deal aims to slow Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons in return for limited relaxed sanctions. Republicans and Democrats alike challenged the secretary on the deal. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said Iran will continue to operate , centrifuges over the next six months. He said Kerry was “asking us to be asleep and do nothing while , centrifuges turn.”
NSA: PATRICK SEMANSK/AP • MODI: AIJAZ RAHI/AP • KERRY:T.J. KIRKPATRICK/GETTY IMAGES • VENIZELOS: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
M o n d a y, D e c.
Concerned The Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Piraeus, Seraphim, told lawmakers in an open letter that he would excommunicate them if they vote for legalizing same-sex marriage. Seraphim directly addressed Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos, saying: “I beseech you from the heart not to proceed.” He said Venizelos would deny himself “the blessing of the most just Lord whose help and protection we daily need as much personally as nationally … during these critical times for our country.”
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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12/11/13 11:28 AM
BIEBER: HANDOUT • SCOUTS: HIRAMTOM/ISTOCK • CHRISTMAS TREE: J. ALBERT DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD/AP • BEES: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • DOCTOR: ADAM BERRY/GETTY IMAGES • NEWMAN: KYODO NEWS/AP RYAN: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP
Tu e s d a y, D e c.
Dec. 25
NSA: PATRICK SEMANSK/AP • MODI: AIJAZ RAHI/AP • KERRY:T.J. KIRKPATRICK/GETTY IMAGES • VENIZELOS: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
BIEBER: HANDOUT • SCOUTS: HIRAMTOM/ISTOCK • CHRISTMAS TREE: J. ALBERT DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD/AP • BEES: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • DOCTOR: ADAM BERRY/GETTY IMAGES • NEWMAN: KYODO NEWS/AP RYAN: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP
Canadian pop star Justin Bieber releases his new concert film Believe today in time for Christmas. The film, a follow-up to the Canadian star’s Never Say Never, portrays the seemingly troubled Bieber as a victim of media scrutiny and his difficulty transitioning away from his image as a squeaky clean teen idol.
LOOKING AHEAD Dec. 25
The Christmas tree lighting up your Christmas morning probably cost you a fair sight more this year than last. According to research firm International Strategy & Investment, demand for large, real Christmas trees rose percent the week after Thanksgiving compared to last year. But that increased demand, the firm says, came after retailers had made their orders for the year.
Budget deal Negotiations between the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees resulted in a deal to fund the government for the next two years at a higher spending level. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., reached the deal, which restores some of the sequester cuts and sets spending at . trillion next year. Without the deal, the government would have spent billion. The deal achieves deficit reduction by increasing some fees, such as those for airlines. It also promises to reduce long-term spending on military and federalemployee pensions. Ryan called those cuts a step in the right direction: “This bill reduces the deficit by billion, and it does not raise taxes, and it cuts spending in a smarter way.”
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Dec. 31 The European Union
flexes its political muscle today when it imposes a continent-wide ban on pesticides that scientists blame for declining bee populations. A majority of EU nations supported the ban, but the European Commission, the seat of EU executive power, made the final decision. EU critics say the pesticide ban will be just the first of many future continentwide bans on commercial products.
Keep up with reviews of upcoming movies, the latest news of the new year, and the online commentary of Marvin Olasky, Janie B. Cheaney, Andrée Seu Peterson, and other WORLD writers.
Jan. 1
Beginning today, The Boy Scouts of America membership policy on gay youth changes. Stemming from a decision, homosexuals will be able to join Boy Scout troops beginning in . The organization’s prohibition against homosexual adult leaders remains in effect.
Jan. 1 Shoppers fortunate enough to complete the enrollment process on healthcare.gov or a corresponding state exchange website will theoretically see health insurance coverage begin today—the first official day of Obamacare. Big changes are in store for insurers too. Beginning today, health insurers are prohibited by law from declining coverage to customers based on preexisting medical conditions.
Released Korean War veteran Merrill Newman spoke publicly on Dec. for the first time since his release after more than a month being held by North Korea. Military officials had taken Newman into custody on Oct. when he came to visit the area in which he fought with guerrillas during the war. North Korean officials forced him to videotape a confession: “To demonstrate that I was reading the document under some duress, I did my best to read the ‘confession’ in a way that emphasized the bad grammar and strange language that the North Koreans had crafted for me to say.”
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26 NEWS 3.indd 13
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/11/13 11:30 AM
Dispatches > News and before that the tyranny of the czars. Such a legacy is hard to shake. When liberation miraculously came in , government leaders often sold stateowned industries to their pals, who became rich. Andre Barkov, managing director of Nadiya Ukrainy, a HOPE International maker of micro-loans, told me last fall of “huge industrial operations privately owned by guys who wear Versace and have a dozen mistresses.” Some business A long history under a brutal Russia has owners want to turn pro-Western Ukrainians concerned about their future west toward Europe and others north toward BY MARVIN OLASKY Moscow: The battle is philosophical for many demonstrators but pragmatic for many Protesters occupied a city adminisW industrialists. Missionary trainer tration building. The Associated Press burst into the downtown Kiev Shannon Ford emailed me from Kiev reported that they planned to defend offices of an opposition party on that the problem is complex: “Christian themselves against riot police “with Dec. , party member Ostap leaders know that Europe may offer wood planks, metal rods, and bottles of Semerak called the situation “insane.” some economic or political benefit to sunflower oil, hoping to make riot If so, it was the latest mix of rage and Ukraine’s people, but that Europe also police slip if they advanced.” Vitali craziness in Ukraine’s tragic history. has a moral and spiritual climate that Klitschko, head of one of the main My great-grandparents were apparcould negatively impact the people opposition parties, UDAR (Punch), also ently among the millions who died and the Church. Some have said that happens to be the world boxing heavyduring the famine intentionally stronger ties with Europe could open the weight champion: He asked police “to brought about by Josef Stalin in the way for more Ukrainian missionaries restrain from using force against s and the holocaust decreed by serving in Europe which could be a peaceful demonstrators.” Adolf Hitler in the s. Ukraine step toward spiritual revival.” Reporting from Ukraine a year ago, I finally gained its independence two U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry saw that on billboards the faces of decades ago, and the pro-democracy didn’t help earlier this month when he political leaders looked as if they had Orange Revolution of seemed to suggested that his priority was smallpox: Almost every billboard had put it on the road to political freedom. American ties with Russia, not with suffered paintball attacks. Leaders of Not so fast: Earlier this month “the Ukraine.” That irritated the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are President Viktor Yanukovych gave in to Ukrainians who will not say “the often no more popular than politicians: Russian boss Vladimir Putin’s pressure Ukraine,” a wording that suggests Many church hierarchs enjoy governand attempted to ditch his country’s Ukraine is merely a region of Russia’s mental patronage and provide no real growing ties with western and central empire rather than an independent alternative to worship of the state, Europe. That brought hundreds of thounation. Missionary Ford noted the which means ordinary Ukrainians sands of protesters into the capital city’s direction from which real help could often turn to worship of the bottle. streets, where they toppled a statue of come: “Prayer has been continuous as Headlines tell of the demonstrators’ former Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, people are seeking God’s will to be desire to bond not with Russia but with sang the national anthem, blockaded done. Even among the demonstrators the -nation European Union. Behind key government buildings, and shouted there is a prayer tent on Independence the headlines lies history: Ukraine at those in the buildings, “Resignation!” Square.” A suffered under Soviet rule for years, and “Down with the gang!”
Insanity, tragedy, or hope?
>>
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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12/10/13 4:38 PM
Dispatches > Quotables ‘If you’re eating free-range chicken from an organic farm down the road, with side orders of locally sourced arugula and kale, just remember you’re not acting politically. You’re just having dinner.’ ADRIENNE ROSE JOHNSON, in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that “eating local” doesn’t, as advocates claim, help the environment or the poor.
‘Students learn from having a good professor in front of the room teaching them. I don’t think buildings teach them.’ Pennsylvania State Rep. BRAD ROAE, arguing that state universities in Pennsylvania should stop spending money on overly “fancy” facilities. The state’s -university system is cutting programs and faculty in the face of budget constraints.
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
‘$14.2 million’ SELLING PRICE for one of the surviving copies of the Bay Psalm Book during a Nov. auction at Sotheby’s in New York. The price was a new world auction record for a printed book. The Bay Psalm Book, printed in in Cambridge, Mass., was the first book printed in what became the United States. Buyer David Rubenstein said he will lend the book to libraries around the country.
Pastor RICK WARREN during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, on his opposition to same-sex marriage.
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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Copy goes here
WARREN: TERRY WYATT/GETTY IMAGES FOR GOSPEL MUSIC ASSOCIATION • BLOOMSBURG: PASSHE.EDU • BAY PSALM BOOK: REX FEATURES VIA AP
‘I fear the disapproval of God more than I fear your disapproval or the disapproval of society.’
Attorney JONNA SPILBOR, on the suspension of th-grader Johnny Jones by the South Eastern School District of Fawn Grove, Pa., for playfully shooting an imaginary arrow at a friend who had fired an imaginary gun at him. The district suspended Johnny under its “zero tolerance” policy against weapons.
12/10/13 12:09 PM
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‘If we’re going to punish this poor kid for pretending to shoot a bow and arrow, let’s ticket his parents for parking their unicorn in a fire zone.’
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warren: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Gospel Music Association • bloomsburg: passhe.edu • bay psalm book: Rex Features via Ap
12/10/13 12:28 PM
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Dispatches > Quick Takes
It must have been one mighty toothache. An inmate held on a short-term sentence couldn’t wait for his looming release, so he broke out to go see a dentist. The -year-old Swedish prisoner, unidentified by authorities, had two days to go on his one-month sentence. But his inflamed tooth was causing him so much pain, the man decided to break out of the minimum-security jail so a dentist could yank the tooth. “My whole face was swollen. I just couldn’t stand it any more,” the man told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. After the procedure, the man called police and turned himself back in. Jail officials reprimanded the prisoner and extended his sentence by a single day.
Soon teenage boys in Pennsylvania may have to find another way to mask their shameful odors. State Rep. Marcia Hahn, a Republican from Northampton County, said she’s thinking about pushing a bill that would ban powerfully scented body sprays like AXE from school campuses where some students suffer from fragrance allergies. Hahn is currently seeking co-sponsors for the proposed legislation.
Tailoring their populist campaign around promises to increase the thickness of campus toilet paper and to make tomato basil ravioli soup available in school cafeterias every day, two Massachusetts students cruised to a five-point victory in student elections on Nov. . The school that elected Samuel Clark and Gus Mayopoulos on their toilet-paperand-soup platform is the same school that has spawned more U.S. presidents than any other college: Harvard. Clark and Mayopoulos admit their campaign was satire. But despite Harvard undergraduates’ willingness, the pair say they will resign as soon as they take office. That may be a disappointment to the plurality of voters who cast ballots for the joking pair. “All we really want is more soup,” undergraduate John Koscis told the Harvard Crimson.
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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Julann Roe may have rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, but she certainly wasn’t a joyful renderer. The libertarian political activist decided to pay her ,. property tax bill to Pasco County, Fla., on Dec. in the most aggravating way possible—with more than , one-dollar bills and pennies. It took clerks at the tax office more than an hour to count the bundle. But county tax collector Mike Fasano said he doesn’t mind. He just wonders how many banks she went to before collecting enough small bills.
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The charge says theft, but the defendant says police are being unreasonable. Authorities in Chamblee, Ga., have charged Kaveh Kamooneh with stealing about cents of electricity when he hooked up his electric car to an outdoor plug at Chamblee Middle School. Police say officers were dispatched to the scene on Nov. after an anonymous complaint. There, officers found Kamooneh’s Nissan Leaf plugged into a school outlet near the tennis courts. They arrested Kamooneh, who spent hours in the DeKalb County Jail. Chamblee Police Sergeant Ernesto Ford told WXIA television that the charge is moving forward: “A theft is a theft.”
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12/10/13 12:14 PM
LIGHTS: ALAN PORRITT/AAPIMAGE/AP • STATUE OF LIBERTY (VEGAS): JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/AP • STAMP: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • TOY GUN: PHOTOALTO/GETTY IMAGES • MAZE: HANDOUT
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LIGHTS: ALAN PORRITT/AAPIMAGE/AP • STATUE OF LIBERTY (VEGAS): JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/AP • STAMP: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • TOY GUN: PHOTOALTO/GETTY IMAGES • MAZE: HANDOUT
- Who knew the post office goofed when it based the popular “forever” stamp on the wrong Statue of Liberty? The person whose statue they copied, that’s who. When the USPS released its Lady Liberty stamp more than two years ago, post office officials accidentally used as a likeness a “sultry” and “fresh-faced” version found outside Las Vegas’ New York-New York casino hotel instead of the original. Robert Davison—the sculptor of the Vegas copy—says his version of Lady Liberty is more feminine than the original. And he now wants the USPS to pay up for profiting off his work.
It may have caused a spectacle, but David and Janean Richards of Canberra, Australia, have lit their way into Guinness World Records. In a project that began in October, the Richardses recently flipped the switch on their ,-light Christmas display at their home. According to Guinness, it’s the most Christmas lights in one display on a residential property. With enough lights to stretch for miles, the couple says the blinding display comes with a downside—a , monthly electricity bill.
What trumps a robber’s gun? A bigger gun, of course. A convenience store clerk in West Seattle, Wash., kept his cool when a pair of thieves attempted to rob his register on Nov. . “This is a robbery,” clerk Robert Moore recalls one of the thieves saying. Then, one of the robbers brandished what Moore believed was a fake gun. “I looked at his gun and said, ‘I have a bigger one than you do.’” With that, Moore reached for his firearm, and the would-be bandits fled.
It’s the sort of bad publicity a political candidate can have trouble recovering from. Marshall County, Ala., sheriff candidate James Maze said condolence letters and calls began flooding in to his family after the local newspaper ran his obituary. The death notice carried a picture of candidate Maze, and even contained some correct information about him. But the article was supposed to be for a different Marshall County man of the same name who recently died. Maze said he’s worried the false obit may hamper his electoral prospects. “It’s going to take me awhile to get everybody to understand I’m not dead,” he said. “It would be kind of hard to get people to give to a dead man.”
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DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/10/13 12:14 PM
Janie B. Cheaney
Seeking the image The emergence of the ‘selfie’ tells us a lot about ourselves
>>
L : The Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” (WotY) for is selfie, referring to a self-portrait taken with a smartphone. This year’s word got some stiff competition from showroom (vb., to examine or test a product in a store before buying it online), bitcoin (n., digital currency), and twerk (a vb. we’d be happier for not encountering), but outlasted all of them. The OED, grand master of English since , uses the latest technology to trace both frequency and most likely origin of new words. The first known instance of
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
this year’s WotY was by an Australian in , who posted a picture of himself after a drunken encounter with a set of stairs: “… sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.” Opinions about good judgment or taste don’t figure in determining the Word of the Year, though there’s plenty to be said about both—for instance, the lack of the former displayed by high-school girls sending topless selfies to less-than-trustworthy friends. And the Huffington Post, among others, got huffy about Selfies at Funerals—which is both a trend and a Tumblr page. The origin of the word may be traceable to , but the origin of the impulse is more obscure. Selfportraits were a prerogative of artists until the advent of photography, and even then they required expertise and expensive equipment. Pocket cameras made the process simpler, but the result was likely to be fish-eyed and fuzzy and couldn’t be seen until the film was developed. With a digital camera one could picture oneself over and over and discard the duds, which far outnumbered the keepers.
Smartphones, with the button on the same side as the image, make the selfie a snap. Here’s me driving to work, in my new ’do, at the beach, with the Eiffel Tower; here’s me, in short, often crowding the frame so you’ll have to take my word about where I am. Most selfies are arranged to make the subject look good, but not always—the subject can look goofy, slutty, or pie-eyed depending on the photographer’s mood. The unflattering ones mystify: Why would you want to post or send a picture of yourself looking like a goon or a porn star? Is this a negative form of image control? Walker Percy’s The Message in the Bottle is an examination of selfexpression and self-image. In it the author asked a question I’ve wondered about ever since reading it: “Why is it that, when you are shown a group photograph in which you are present, you always (and probably covertly) seek yourself out? To see what you look like? Don’t you know what you look like?” We know what we look like. Unlike most of humanity until the manufacture of cheap quality mirrors, we are not taken aback by our own appearance. But maybe we keep looking because we long to be surprised—by an unsuspected quality, or a hidden beauty, or some sense of location or belonging. Percy’s major theme was that man is the only creature on Earth who cannot comfortably locate himself: a foreigner on his own turf, a stranger to his own face. We look to each other for clues, strike poses, and wait for feedback. The selfie permits posing on a grand scale, and every tweeted image seeks an audience among our peeps: Here’s me. How do I look? What do you think? God made our eyes to look outward, but our vision boomeranged when we took our eyes off Him. Now the whole world is a mirror reflecting us, an image Jesus took upon Himself. Here’s you: needy as a newborn, guilty as a criminal on a cross. Also “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew :). The Son of Man mirrored us so that we could know ourselves at last. The wonder is that now we can find ourselves in Him—a continual surprise, seeking fulfillment in the day when “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” ( John :). A
Email: jcheaney@wng.org
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12/6/13 4:22 PM
Reviews Movies & TV > Books > Q&A > Music
Bilbo returns >> MOVIE: Desolation of Smaug makes for a monstrously entertaining movie
warner bros.
by Stephanie Perrault
The biggest release of the month will arguably be Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (PG13), the second of a three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s 1937 novel. Early reviews are already lauding its praises, calling it a “vast improvement” on the lucrative first installment, which, despite a few entertaining scenes, was a snooze. That didn’t seem to inhibit box office receipts for the 2012 film, which were over $1 billion worldwide. Unlike its plodding predecessor, The Desolation of Smaug jumps right into the
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story, following the dwarf party as they seek refuge from the orcs with Beorn the skinchanger. The quest keeps on at a good clip until the dwarves are snagged by a monstrous batch of spiders and imprisoned by the isolationist elf of Mirkwood, King Thranduil. At this point, Jackson’s plot gets entangled with an elfish love triangle between Legolas (a slightly older, but dashing as ever, Orlando Bloom), Tauriel, an orc-slaying She-elf of Jackson’s imagining (Evangeline Lilly), and a diminutive Aiden Turner as Kili the Dwarf. Thankfully, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) comes to the rescue and saves everyone from a Middle Earth–induced doze, launching one of the most entertaining and humorous scenes in the film involving barrels, dwarves, a smorgasbord of hideous orcs, and a dollop of elfish
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12/11/13 9:39 AM
Reviews > Movies & TV
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bated breath for is the great, the terrible, the most fantastically created computergenerated dragon of the 21st century—SMAUG! And he is no disappointment. Voiced with a masterful blend of seductive evil by Benedict Cumberbatch, Smaug is everything a treasure-hungry dragon should be: vain, terrifyingly beautiful, and malicious down to the last glittering scale. According to some, he is the highlight of the overly long movie. It’s hard to disagree. Smaug’s villainous cunning and serpentine sparkle overtake the final sequences of the film, leaving everyone feeling the burn of his breath and their sore muscles as they exit the theater to wait another year for the final installment of the franchise. In the meantime, I’ll be reading the book to my kids, watching as they hear the story for the first time of a home-loving hobbit who becomes a hero and the adventures he has going there and back again. That will truly be epic. A
MOVIE
Philomena by Megan Basham
Box Office Top 10 For the weekend of Dec. 6-8 according to Box Office Mojo
cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
S V L 1̀ Frozen* pg.................................. 1 3 1 2̀
Catching Fire* PG-13...............3 6 4 Out of the Furnace r....... not rated 4̀ Thor: The Dark World* PG-13...............................3 6 3 5̀ Delivery Man PG-13.................4 4 5 6̀ Homefront r..............................6 7 10 7̀ The Book Thief* PG-13........... 1 5 2 8̀ The Best Man Holiday r......6 4 6 9̀ Philomena* PG-13.....................3 3 5 10 Dallas Buyers Club r.............8 5 10 ` 3̀
Few movies in theaters right now are being as universally hailed by critics (and heavily favored by Oscar oddsmakers) as British import Philomena. Certainly there’s a lot to like about this purportedly true story of an atheist journalist who helps an elderly Catholic woman track down the son she placed for adoption, including charming odd-couple humor, stunning Irish vistas, and crackling performances from leads Steve Coogan and the always-captivating Dame Judi Dench. And yet, as former Labor Party adviser Martin (Coogan) and romance-novel-loving biddy Philomena (Dench) travel from country roads to slick Washington, D.C., hotels, their elite-mouse/bumpkin-mouse story begins to lose some of its authenticity. It’s hard to believe, for example, that a woman who has adhered to church teaching all her life feels no qualms disregarding Scripture’s proscriptions against homosexuality. Likewise, the movie offers no evidence of its assertion that a deceased character despised the Reagan administration for which he worked. But the film loses the most credibility when, near the end, it portrays the Catholic clergy as snarling, Machiavellian bullies. This isn’t to suggest that the nuns at the convent where Philomena gave birth weren’t guilty of selling babies against the mothers’ wishes or destroying records of adoptions to cover their tracks—perhaps they were. (The nuns are publicly disputing the movie’s account.) But it seems a little too convenient that all Philomena’s villains— both implicit and explicit—consistently behave exactly as the most clichéd liberal stereotype would imagine. Though Philomena defends her beliefs against Martin’s obscenity-laced anti-Christian tirades (language, including some spicy sex-themed dialogue accounts for the PG-13 rating), the resulting implication is that Philomena herself is a force for good, not that Christianity is. If the abbey forsook their obligation to offer love, support, and forgiveness to lost, unmarried pregnant women as egregiously as the film suggests, why then has the real Philomena maintained her faith in Christ and the Catholic Church? There are compelling possible answers to that question. But the movie has no time for them after spending so many minutes making everyone else associated with the church look so unappealing.
*Reviewed by world
12/11/13 9:59 AM
François Duhamel/Disney Enterprises, Inc.
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Alex Bailey/The Weinstein Company/ap
mojo. This is Jackson-actionfare at its best, and for a few moments he manages to capture the winsome humor of Tolkien’s tale. Written as a children’s story, the book focuses not only on Bilbo’s deeds of derring-do, but on his growth from a safety-loving hobbit to a brave figure of legendary renown. The book is filled with original, species-specific poetry and just enough bad guys to be frightening but not terrifying. Unfortunately, in Jackson’s effort to capitalize on the oodles of money available in another Tolkien franchise, he lopped off much of the droll humor and childlike innocence of the original and added more Mordor darkness than necessary. This doesn’t ruin the movie, which is definitely entertaining, but it does transmogrify Tolkien’s original intent and moves the prime age of the audience from childhood to early adulthood. It comes as no surprise then, that the diverting charm of the dwarves barrel-rolling escape from Mirkwood is lost in the icy, grey mist of Lake-town, where the travelers find themselves in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain. The next sequence covering the dwarves’ interaction with Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans), their grand send-off from Stephen Fry’s Master of Lake-town (who has a couple of sly political oneliners), and their entrance to the mountain could have been cut in half. Truth be told, what everyone is waiting with
MOVIE
within her father to be the dad he wants to be, as well as Travers’ struggle to honor the man she loved, despite his flaws. While this is a story about the making of the original Mary Poppins movie, beloved by children since its creation in 1964, the themes of this PG film make it clearly a movie for adults and mature teens. We see Travers’ father drinking himself to death, and the severe mental strain this puts on her mother. And Disney himself reveals abuse in his Hanks and own past. (All reasons I was Thompson very glad I left my young Mary Poppins–lover at home.) But like any great story—and this movie is truly great, as evidenced by the many reviewers who are mentioning it and Oscar in the same sentence—Saving Mr. Banks goes beyond the particular tragedies of its characters to show us something of ourselves and all of mankind. Director John Lee Hancock uses everything at his disposal—music, cinematography, sharp writing, and stellar acting—to hilarity only grows as she moves pull the heartstrings tight and focus the toward the fateful moment when she mind on the story’s message. finally sets foot in Disney’s office. And what is that message? In one When a smiling Walt greets her with a flashback, Travers’ father teaches her hearty shoulder shake, endearingly that money and success in this world calling her “Pamela” or “Pam,” she are “just an illusion, old girl.” As he continually corrects him to keep him at swigs from his bottle, he sets his own a distance: “It’s Ms. Travers.” rebellion of drink and imagination Clearly, these two towering figures against the cruelty of life, telling her couldn’t be more ill-suited to share a the men of the bank where he worked, room, much less a movie. Still, Walt along with the rest of the world, “can’t presses on as wide-eyed and optimistic make us endure their reality.” as ever, and his attempts to untangle Likewise, in Travers and Disney, we the knots in Travers’ soul and bring see the familiar theme of a postmodern Poppins to life become the driving culture idolizing man-made pictures of force of the movie. redemption. However, viewers whose Alongside that drama is a series of broken hearts have been ransomed by flashbacks, painting Travers’ childhood the King born in Bethlehem will likely relationship with her father, the realhardly notice. For the salvation on life Mr. Banks. A devoted but flawed display here points so movingly to a father, he comes across as a town greater Wind, and behind Him, the drunk with ever a song on his lips, a King Love, Who is even now rewriting gleam in his eye, and a whiskey flask in my story and yours with a redemption his pocket. Anyone who has known or far beyond all human imagination. A loved a sinner will recognize the battle
Saving Mr. Banks By Emily Whitten
Alex Bailey/The Weinstein Company/ap
François Duhamel/Disney Enterprises, Inc.
>>
From the moment that east wind begins to blow, Emma Thompson’s portrayal of Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers is both inspired and deliciously funny. As her chauffeur, played movingly by Paul Giamatti, comments on Hollywood’s sunny weather, Travers points out that the city smells “like chlorine and sweat.” When he remarks on the fantastic view from Hollywood’s hills, she grudgingly admits it’s nice, “if you like that sort of thing.” And what about the gigantic stuffed Mickey Mouse on her hotel bed? She carries him by the ear and indignantly plops him against the wall until he can “learn the art of subtlety.” Forced by financial constraints to consider selling the movie rights to her Mary Poppins books to Walt Disney (played ingeniously by Tom Hanks), Travers’ collision with Disney’s fanatically hopeful world of “flim-flam” and pixie dust is laugh-out-loud funny. The
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Reviews > Books subjectivity is not navel-gazing: She uses all her senses to accumulate evocative specific detail about others. Explaining how a red-diaper baby grew up, she notes that the first word Pani Ryszarda learned was revolution, and Ryszarda’s father only “sat and read. He went into the bathroom with a CZECH CURTAIN: book, he went on a walk with a Prague, . book. When I would go on a walk with him, he would read the paper. I would hold his hand, looking around.” Shore brilliantly quotes former propagandists such as Aleksander Wat concerning the guilt they felt: “I never allowed myself to forget my basic duty—to pay, to pay for those two or three years of moral insanity. And I paid, and paid.” She also finds wonderful columns, such as one by Antoni Slonimski criticizing a right-wing, anti-Semitic publicist: “Mr. Piasecki claims that Jews invented communism. If one considers the fact that Jews Lessons from Europe’s totalitarian era and a warning invented capitalism as well, it could seem that about America’s possible future BY MARVIN OLASKY in relation to us their accounts are all squared. We could likely add that Jews also invented Christianity, but let’s not complicate Mr. Piasecki’s ideological situation, which is already so complicated as is.” A A’ Iron Curtain: The Crushing of The United States was an exception to the international Eastern Europe, - was on our recent Book of the growth of tyranny in the s and s, but may not be Year short list (see “Terrific and timely,” June , ). so blessed in the s if debt cascades, inflation becomes I suspect Marci Shore’s The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife uncontrollable, and despair grabs our hearts. That’s one reason of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe (Crown, ) will be on why libraries should purchase The Black Book of the American next year’s. The two books have in common a geographical Left (Encounter), a multivolume collection of the conservative area and good writing, but Applebaum’s tone is objective, writings of David Horowitz, the s radical who saw closewhile Shore begins her acknowledgments by saying, “This is a up the left’s bonfires and the ashes that remain. Horowitz for deeply subjective book.” decades has fought the left emphatically: More Americans need That it is, the story of a young woman trying to come to grips to learn from his experience. with old hatreds. The Taste of Ashes works because Shore’s
Ashes to ashes
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PRAGUE: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
University presses for many years were pits of literary depression, turning out unreadable tomes that facilitated professorial tenure-seeking but did not serve readers well. Driven by creativity or financial necessity, some now pick specialty areas and produce books that are readable. Noteworthy among the up-and-coming: University Press of Kansas, which has had the good judgment to turn out books about political campaigns that are reportorial rather than propagandistic. For example, W.J. Rorabaugh’s The Real Making of the President () is a readable debunking of Theodore White’s seminal The Making of the President , which began not only White’s series of romanticized presidential campaign books (, , ) but dozens of others in which liberals are almost always heroes and conservatives villains. Rorabaugh writes fluently about John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and the election, showing how the Kennedy juggernaut rolled over Hubert Humphrey and others who didn’t know what was about to hit them until they were flattened. University Press of Kansas has also published books about the elections of , , and : R. Hal Williams’ Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of provides an incisive portrait of William Jennings Bryan in his first national campaign, and also explains how anti-inflation Republicans picked up workers’ support. (The McKinley coalition was Karl Rove’s model of what he hoped George W. Bush would accomplish, and now I know why.) Kelly J. Baker’s Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, -, which shows that racism once had a solid footing among some conservative Christians, is also instructive. —M.O.
Email: molasky@wng.org
12/4/13 1:16 PM
WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC
JAYHAWK POWER
NOTABLE BOOKS
SPOTLIGHT
Four new sci-fi/fantasy books > reviewed by
The Ocean at the End of the Lane Neil Gaiman When a -year-old boy finds his family’s lodger dead in the family car, he turns to three ladies at the end of the lane for aid in dealing with the shock. But a foolish mistake lets evil in the guise of a family-favored nanny invade his home and seek his family’s ruin. Like the unnamed protagonist, readers will wrestle with the remembered pain of adulthood’s intrusions into the innocence of youth. Neil Gaiman knits together a dark and agonizing semiautobiographical fable in which stories provide the balm for fear and pain and help recapture the once-upon-a-time of childhood. Cautions: one scene of infidelity misunderstood by a -year-old as “wrestling,” and frightening imagery. Ironskin Tina Connolly This Nebula-award-nominated dark fantasy blends ancient Celtic myth with a plot loosely based on Jane Eyre.. Scarred by the evil Fae during the Great War, Jane Eliot must wear an iron mask to keep others safe from the scar’s angry magic. Forced by her deformity to take a governess position at a remote estate, she soon finds herself falling in love with a mysterious nobleman/artist. The secrets of the estate may soon be Jane’s undoing: Debut author Tina Connolly cleverly undermines reader recollections of Bronte’s famed story in a moody, brooding gothic novel with unforeseeable twists. As Jane learns how to turn physical deformity into moral strength, she experiences self-discovery, triumph over tragedy, and victory over vanity. Transcendental James Gunn Noted science fiction writer James Gunn borrows from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for his newest novel. Riley, an undercover agent of a human cabal, takes passage on the spaceship Geoffrey as it searches for the Transcendental Machine. As the ship leaves known space to follow a legend, each alien passenger relates the story of why it seeks transcendence. Meanwhile, backbiting and infighting among passengers and crew threaten to destroy the ship. The oddly captivating narrative expresses the human desire to find the infinite and become perfect, but ultimately the story denies the value of the soul. Riley’s search ends with the conclusion that transcendence perfects only the body, as an evolutionary accident, the unintended byproduct of an unfulfilling search for significance in the universe.
PRAGUE: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC
The Best of All Possible Worlds Karen Lord When destruction comes to the Sadiri homeworld, a proud and reclusive all-male, mate-seeking group of refugees arrives at Cygnus Beta, where many cultures have melded. Delarua, the biotechnician assigned to help them rejuvenate their destroyed society, helps them explore the self-contained cultures of Sadiri splinter groups. She and her Sadiri counterpart Dllenahkh find that true love doesn’t undermine cultural values. This romance is beautiful and sweet, though the “live and let live” attitude toward most of the cultures Delarua encounters may rankle some Christian readers. Lord’s poetic and pleasant novel allegorizes themes of cultural assimilation.
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
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Is there more to Bilbo Baggins’ adventure of “There and Back Again”? In The Hobbit and Philosophy (Wiley Blackwell, ), editors Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson use Tolkien’s story as a way to introduce readers to the ideas of great thinkers. By melding academic rigor with childlike whimsy, contributors explore the wonder of walking, riddles and luck, cosmopolitanism and romanticism, just war, and the importance of play. Each essay is well researched and concise without being obscure or unapproachable. For anyone familiar with The Hobbit, this volume is an excellent and accessible introduction to philosophical ideas, both ancient and modern. Readers who prefer science fiction to fantasy may prefer another book in this series, Ender’s Game and Philosophy (). It offers an introduction to similar philosophical concepts. —J.O.
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/4/13 1:17 PM
Reviews > Q&A
Today’s classrooms, says Christina Hoff Sommers, are comfortable places for girls but terrible places for boys— and it is showing in educational outcomes By Marvin Olasky
Disparate impact
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What does that tell you? That boys and girls are different. There are exceptions, but as a rule a little girl’s choice of play, at the earliest age, involves a lot of theatrical, imaginative, turn-taking games. As they get a little older, they love to exchange confidences with a best friend. Boys tend not to do this. The theatrical, imaginative games: not so much. Exchanging confidences with a best friend: haven’t seen it. Boys prefer ... Rough-andtumble play: a lot of running around, mock fighting, usually with sound effects, and the
boys tend to be very happy— but many parents and teachers have confused such play with violence. When children are violent, there’s a lot of unhappiness and they part as enemies. Violent children are usually not popular. It’s just the opposite with “rough-and-tumble” play: Children are happy and boys who are good at it will tend to be popular. They’re building critical social skills. What happens if we clamp down on that? In some cases little boys are suspended for their drawings, or for playing cops and robbers or imaginative superhero
play. If the earliest experience a little boy has is disapproval, we threaten his social development and make him unhappy with school. This may be in part an explanation of why boys are so far behind in reading and writing. What happened when Hasbro, the toy makers, hoped to market a doll playhouse and a toy baby carriage to both boys and girls? Hasbro brought in children to interact with this playhouse, which they hoped to market to both boys and girls—not because they were egalitarian feminists, but
handout
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers is best known for her notable—and controversial—books about feminism and American culture. A new and revised edition of her 2001 book, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men, came out in August. You wrote last year about your granddaughter receiving a toy train, placing it in a baby carriage, and covering it with a blanket so it could get some sleep.
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handout
because you double your profits if you come up with a toy that interests boys as much as girls. Girls came in, put the baby in the carriage, played with the toy stove and refrigerator. The boys catapulted the miniature baby carriage from the roof of the toy house. Why can’t some academics accept the obvious? On college campuses it is now an article of faith that we are all born to be bisexual. One feminist put it dramatically, saying, “We are transformed into male- and female-gendered human beings, one to command, the other to obey.”
Email: molasky@wng.org
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If we understood these differences, how would schools be different than they are now? First, teachers would learn in teachers’ colleges what they’re not learning today, that girls are readier for school. A 5-year-old girl is a more mature being than a 5-year-old boy: It is very hard for him to sit still. We’d have two different styles of classrooms. A school superintendent once acknowledged that all our classrooms are very comfortable places for girls, with flowers and snowflakes. They’re pretty. I told him, “Maybe you should put in something boys like— dangerous insects, or rockets.” A lot of teachers are uncomfortable with that. What would the school day look like? Lots of recess. Different classroom settings, not just one style that is sedentary, competitionfree, and risk-averse. Most of the students here at Patrick Henry College are from homeschooling backgrounds. How should the differences between boys and girls affect homeschool curricula? It’s going to be easier to get your daughter to read: She’s probably more verbal and probably started talking earlier. Typically, boys have better visuals and are better at finding a way out of a maze. Girls are better at remembering everything they saw along the way. You may have a bookish boy who’s quiet and automatically loves poetry and things,
but chances are you will not. He feels like a caged animal and wants to get out. So, be aware of that and work with it. Let’s keep going on this: What difference would a better understanding have on high school? Oh boy. There are exceptions, but boys and girls, on average, find different sorts of books interesting. Airport bookstores don’t have signs saying “Men’s magazines” or “Women’s magazines,” but we know they’re there. The women’s magazines typically show faces and all sorts of human interest and fashion. The men’s magazines are usually about stuff. Ninety percent of people who subscribe to Popular Mechanics are males. High schools should accommodate Popular Mechanics people. Not everybody is going to college. Our colleges are 57 percent female, and 62 percent of master’s degrees last year and the year before went to females. Women have surpassed men now even in getting Ph.Ds. To survive in the new economy you need education beyond high school, so we should keep up with the Europeans: They’re offering in their high schools career and technical training. Aviation High School in Queens, New York, is doing some things right. It has more than 2,000 kids in this gritty part of Queens. I thought, “This can’t be a high school because it looks like a factory.” I went inside and thought I was in the wrong place because it was so quiet: These kids weren’t merely interested, they were enthralled. They have aca demics half the day, and they have to get through those
classes to spend the other half of the day tinkering with an airplane that’s parked out in the parking lot, or taking courses in aviation. Overwhelmingly boys, I suspect. The school’s 87 percent male. I met some girls there: They’re fabulous, and they know they’re different. Many of the kids come from struggling, urban communities, mostly Hispanic, black, and Asian. It has one of the highest graduation and college matriculation rates. They move on to fantastic careers. This should be a model for other parts of the country, and it’s not just me saying this. At a recent Harvard University graduate school conference called “Pathways to Prosperity,” educational leaders from all over the world agreed that our high schools should be partly career training that offers pathways into good jobs. But young men and women might have different job desires. The girls tend to go into early childhood education. Cosmetology is popular, as well as various medical professions. The boys are in welding, automotive repair, and computer technology disproportionately. Some women’s groups in Washington consider it inequitable that not as many girls show up for welding and refrigeration and trucking. I try to introduce a little common sense. Yes, introduce the girls to these fields, because you will make more money if you’re a metallurgist or an aviation mechanic than you will as an early childhood educator. Let the young women know that, but don’t have a quota system. A —For additional Sommers comments, go to wng.org.
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Reviews > Music
Joanna’s joy
Severe joint disease doesn’t stop young musician from making beautiful music
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nearly miraculous. With only the forefinger and thumb of each hand, Joanna slows down and simplifies the Clementi and Haydn pieces until they sparkle with a pedal-free precision and clarity not unlike that which emerges from a music box. “I can do the pedal,” she says, “but I like those pieces without it.” Music lovers will too. Joanna simplifies without oversimplifying. And her decreased tempi make appreciating the melodies easy—so easy, in fact, that some listeners may notice for the first time that it’s Clementi’s “Sonatina No. in G Major, Op. ” upon which the songwriters Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager based the melody for the Mindbenders’ hit “A Groovy Kind of Love.” Joanna’s recorded performances may not remain simple for long. She’s currently experimenting with the hammer dulcimer (“We talked about [using] it for this album,” says Joanna’s father, Roy, “but we figured, ‘Let’s keep it simple this time’”). And both her year-old brother, Stephen, and her -year-old brother,
Nathanael (who also suffers from AMC), play the guitar. “When I first met Joanna eight years ago at an initial music-therapy assessment,” says her music therapist and piano teacher Janet Robertson, “I could not have predicted the path our journey would take. I have been surprised, challenged, and amazed.” Anyone who watches the other YouTube video in which Joanna stars will be too. Simply titled “Limitations,” it captures her unique technique and proves that there’s no sleight of hand involved in her album. Or not much. Due to the demands of her homeschooling, her physical- and occupational-therapy regimen, and her susceptibility to fatigue, Joanna and her family eventually discovered the technology-age possibilities of splicing together various takes into a coherent whole—possibilities that no doubt came in especially handy during the -minute Haydn selection. “A lot of times,” she recalls, “I’d play the whole piece and make a mistake. It was frustrating to have to go back and do it all again.” The entire process took three years. The secret to her perseverance? Her faith in God. “A lot of times, especially when I was starting high school,” Joanna recalls, “I was pretty depressed because I didn’t look like everybody else, and I wanted to. But, from reading the Bible, I knew that God had made me the way I am, and he doesn’t make mistakes. “And even though I look different, he has a purpose for me.” A
SARAH ELIZABETH FISHER PHOTOGRAPHY
U “ music stories of ” as an internet search phrase, and you’ll score a few worthwhile hits. But none of the stories will surpass the one behind Four Fingers, Two Hands, One Piano, the self-released piano album of four Muzio Clementi sonatinas and the first movement of a Joseph Haydn sonata by Joanna Joy Costa. Born years ago with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (AMC), a rare disease that significantly, and sometimes drastically, hinders joint flexibility, Joanna relies on leg braces to walk and the WREX exoskeletonrobotic device pioneered by the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., to lift her arms above her head and feed herself. “She was their ‘guinea pig,’” says Joanna’s mother, Nancy, of Joanna’s right-time, right-place role in the hospital’s development of what has come to be a lifechanging technology. And, lest anyone need evidence, a YouTube video titled “Nemours WREX Robotic Device Helps Children Reach Higher” features Joanna at age in full demonstration mode. But it’s the homeschooled, New Jersey teen’s limited use of her fingers that makes Four Fingers, Two Hands, One Piano
Email: aorteza@wng.org
12/10/13 10:46 PM
HANDOUT
BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
NOTABLE CDs
New or recent releases > reviewed by
The Maestro and the Elephant Fierce Bad Rabbit The frontman Chris Anderson owes a little too much to Bono vocally to qualify as an original. But the nonapocalyptic lyrics and ingratiating melodies, which Anderson and his two male bandmates capably rock, are (mostly) his own, and Alana Rolfe’s violin gilds them without recalling Robbie Steinhardt or Scarlet Rivera. (Rolfe’s lead singing on the two songs that she wrote isn’t bad either.) Most ingratiating of all is the whistling-gilded “When All You Got Is Worry ... Let Go,” which is simply good advice at its catchiest.
Lily & Madeleine Lily & Madeleine This U.S. answer to Sweden’s First Aid Kit does itself proud. The Indiana-based Jurkiewicz sisters would do themselves even prouder, however, if amid all of their tuneful, acoustic, cusp-of-adulthood, sensitivity-flaunting vignettes they’d come up with something as instantly stunning as the Enskede-based Söderberg sisters’ “Emmylou.” Instead, Lily & Madeleine tiptoe through their tropes, leaving it to Paul Mahern’s subtle production touches to put them all the way over—and to their adult co-writer Kenny Childers to help them give up their adolescent ghost. Collapsible Lung Relient K Determined to avoid slavery to its meal ticket (instantly identifiable CCM), the band farms out the composing to co-writers of dubious spirituality but a proven track record of generating relentless hooks. And, for the most part, the mesh takes. A winsome vulnerability emerges, only succumbing to vulgarity by acceding to “suck” in “Can’t Complain.” Does the reference to “church” in “Disaster” compensate? Not entirely, but it does provide context. And when in the title cut Matt Thiessen longs to hear more from the Holy Ghost, hope springs eternal.
SARAH ELIZABETH FISHER PHOTOGRAPHY
HANDOUT
Sing and Never Get Tired The Sojourners This Vancouver-based vocal trio takes a shopworn concept—gospel-blues as inducement to socialgospel activism—and deepens it just enough to allow even non-fellow travelers to board “This Train” and ride shotgun in the “Christian’s Automobile.” The singing and unobtrusive yet expressive rock ’n’ roll backup, in other words, raise the songs to a place where not only moth and rust but also politics do not corrupt, giving Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” their most redemptive contexts ever.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
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SPOTLIGHT The tracks on Far Away from Everyday (Harp Guitar), the latest album by the jazz pianist and harp guitarist Brad Hoyt, play like a rich, mysterious soundtrack, not least because the liner notes link the compositions to dramatically suggestive scenarios. The Ennio Morricone–worthy “Impossible Liason,” for instance, resulted from Hoyt’s being smitten by the photo of a girl in a high-school yearbook published in , and the gypsy-jazzy “Sharper’s Revenge” grew from Hoyt’s imagining a clever criminal on the run after bungling a heist. But it’s the tender “Look Inside,” featuring Phil Keaggy on the six- and -string classical guitars, that will pique Christians’ interest. “John Catchings played cello on some of Phil’s stuff back in the day,” Hoyt told WORLD, “and I always loved hearing his guitar with that instrument.” So Hoyt wrote a part for the cellist Sascha Groschang. “I really like how it all came together.” Hoyt’s—and Keaggy’s—fans will too.
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/10/13 10:46 PM
Mindy Belz
Waiting and singing
Advent is for anticipating the One who came and is to come, the one who fixes the evils of
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They are garbage collectors, and mostly poor (as are many Christians in Pakistan). Yet they have come back to the scene of the bombing. They collect the scattered shoes of the children killed. They clean up the Sunday school papers and books that litter the churchyard. They rinse and clean the bloodstains inside the church (which still reeks of death). As they work, they wail and weep and sob. Then they gather themselves into the pews, a very small collection now that their numbers have been so decimated—and they sing. The women raise their hands in prayer, and they worship the God who gave life and has taken it away. This is not the only moment of redemption out of Peshawar the world missed. That same week Muslims and Christians alike took to the streets to protest the bombing, a rare moment of solidarity in Pakistan. In England an Anglican layman of Pakistani descent took it upon himself to raise more than , for the Peshawar victims. He traveled there in October to distribute the funds to more than families hurt by the bombing. And this month All Saints Church, one of the oldest in Pakistan, will celebrate its th anniversary. Stepping into the hardship and horror doesn’t fix everything. But it reminds us of Advent, our season of waiting. Because that is what Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, does. He has come to be God with us. He has come because He wanted to, not because He had to, binding up the world’s misery and healing its wounds, and making a way for evil men to come to God. In Advent season we are waiting. Mindful of those who waited in darkness for a coming Messiah, we wait for His return, but we wait in the light—the light of His love and the loving example of His incarnation, His willingness to draw near to the hardships and horrors of this world to redeem them. It’s what makes men and women return to a blood-soaked church, and sing. A
ARSHAD ARBAB/EPA/LANDOV
H’ the world gives in . Sunday, Sept. , , Peshawar, Pakistan: In bright fall sunlight—and I assume bearing full hearts—worshippers are leaving All Saints Church when two members of the Taliban, each wearing vests weighed down with pounds of hardwired explosives, show up at the church and blow themselves up near its entrance. The attack kills churchgoers and seriously wounds another . Among the dead are two brides, married the day before, who returned for the Sunday service to give thanks for their marriages. Also dead is a primary school headmaster and his entire family—his wife and two young daughters, along with his brother and a nephew. The force of the explosions was so great, investigators later said, they found the skull of one of the bombers on the rooftop of the church. If you look at the testimony the world gives, you have to face facts: There is no peace on earth, no good will to men. Like most every year before it, has been a year when men enjoyed thinking up more ways to do evil under the sun. Some of the explosions are loud, as in Peshawar. Others are explosions of the human heart, ricocheting off family and friends in ways the outside world only dimly perceives. And still others explode publicly into our culture, but bounce against bulwarks of institutions, families, and hardworking cities and towns across America as though hitting off an oversized feather mattress. Make no mistake, the shrapnel wounds are real but the downy insulation keeps us from feeling them for a while. The challenge is to step inside the suffering and grief of this present world with its wars and abuse and hatred of God and men, and there find the testimony the church gives. Monday, Sept. , , Peshawar, Pakistan: The survivors return to All Saints Church. Most of its parishioners live in a nearby colony for sanitation workers.
Email: mbelz@wng.org
12/10/13 9:15 PM
greetings! my name is Brother yun. many of you know my story through the book The Heavenly Man. i was spiritually birthed through the underground Church in China, and was called by god to preach the gospel. through many years in prison, beatings, broken bones, starvation…god has formed me and my calling…to bring the gospel Back To Jerusalem. the countries from China to Jerusalem comprise over 80% of the unreached people in the world, and we’re working to send over 100,000 Chinese missionaries into those countries to live and spread the gospel. the ministry of Back To Jerusalem is also spreading the gospel to Chinese children and their families through Christmas in China. We work with many house church networks to supply backpacks and items to put in the packs (gospel message, toys, useful items), and present this gift to children that don’t know Jesus. they are taught that Jesus is the “greatest gift” given to mankind and over 60% of them attend Sunday School for the first time!
We need your help! Please read below on how to partner with us!
Join the largest missionary movement in history! For a donation of $50 or more we’d like to send you the book, Crimson Cross — which uncovers the mysteries of the Chinese house Church.
CHRISTMAS in
CHINA A m i n i st r y of B a ck t o J er u s a le m
ARSHAD ARBAB/EPA/LANDOV
Christmas in China is a project that partners people in the “west” and house churches in China to do outreach to Chinese children (and their parents) who have not heard of Jesus Christ. To learn more about how you can bring Christmas to China, visit our website: www.ChristmasInChina.org. Remember, every $5 you donate will deliver a backpack to a child that needs the hope of Jesus! Help grow God’s Army!
www.ChristmasinChina.org
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The Heavenly Man is the story of one of China’s courageous persecuted house church leaders, Brother Yun. To receive a free condensed version of Brother Yun’s story, visit www.BackToJerusalem.com/v3/bookstore and click on “Free e-Book”. Brother Yun is coming to Atlanta in the spring of 2014. Check out the BTJ website for dates and times. ALSO, Brother Yun and the BTJ team are available to come to your church or organization. Call Al Young at 601-543-5683 for more information.
www.BacktoJerusalem.com
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JAMIE DEAN
CREDIT
TIDINGS OF DISCOMFORT AND JOY
In breaking with The Episcopal Church, many Anglican congregations have lost beautiful buildings but gained something greater by JAMIE DEAN in Connecticut, New York, and California
CREDIT
JAMIE DEAN
- . That’s how Anglicans who have left The Episcopal Church (TEC) and its endorsement of unbiblical beliefs and actions often describe TEC’s response. From depressed Binghamton, N.Y., to affluent Newport Beach, Calif., TEC leaders have fought dozens of court battles to force congregations leaving the denomination to forfeit the buildings they, their parents, and their grandparents paid for. Here’s one example: Church of the Good Shepherd stood for nearly years on a main road through Binghamton, a former manufacturing hub that now has a high unemployment rate. Members were long concerned about theological drift, and the consecration of a homosexual priest in by TEC’s General Convention was the last straw. Binghamton rector Matt Kennedy began a conversation with the bishop of central New York, telling him the church would likely leave TEC to seek oversight of an Anglican bishop in another province. Kennedy says the initial meetings were productive, and the congregation offered to buy its building from the diocese for ,—but TEC hierarchs rejected the offer. After the congregation disaffiliated from TEC in , the diocese filed suit for the building. CHANGING HANDS: The former Church of the Good Shepherd building is now the Islamic Awareness Center; new building for Church of the Good Shepherd purchased at a discount from the Roman Catholics (left to right).
Kennedy says the congregation considered walking away, but would have had no resources to continue. Plus, the rector said: “We thought it would be good for outsiders to see that those who claim to be about tolerance and inclusivity really aren’t about those things. It’s really more a kind of tyranny.” In , though, a judge ruled against the congregation, which had to leave immediately. Kennedy remembers “one of our more stoic men standing in front of a plaque bearing his father’s name, tracing the inscription with his finger.” The plaque would have to stay. In the diocese sold the church to local Muslims for ,, according to Virtue Online, three times less than what the departing Christians had offered. The Muslims used a crane to remove the cross. A sign on the building now reads, “Islamic Awareness Center.” Anglicans mourned the loss, but Roman Catholics offered them an abandoned church building at a reduced price the Anglicans could afford. Church of the Good Shepherd Anglican now meets on a property that includes a sanctuary four times larger than the old one, with times the parking capacity. The rectory for Kennedy’s family (now with six children) is larger than the one he had to give up. A local day school rents a school building on the property that covers the church’s mortgage. On a recent Thursday evening, local community members sat around long tables in the fellowship hall for a weekly soup kitchen. The extra space has allowed the church to accommodate more people. Some visitors to the
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soup kitchen have become members of the church. And the larger campus has allowed the church to expand outreach to a nearby low-income neighborhood. But despite the church’s material blessings, Kennedy says the primary lesson has been about letting go: “The experience of standing firm for the gospel and suffering loss has taught us that Christianity is not about Jesus giving you a new car and a better job. … It’s about giving everything for Jesus.”
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ince TEC consecrated Gene Robinson as its first openly homosexual bishop a decade ago, hundreds of churches have fled the denomination. TEC is one of 38 provinces in the 70-million member worldwide Anglican Communion. The departing parishes emphasize that TEC’s approval of homosexuality is one outgrowth of deeper doctrinal problems: TEC leadership has questioned the authority of Scripture for decades. Many departing parishes sought oversight from African bishops in other Anglican provinces, and in 2009 the American churches formed the Anglican Church in North America. The association reports more than 100,000 members in 1,000 parishes. Episcopal dioceses and TEC often have sued departing parishes for their property using the Dennis Canon—a 1979 TEC law that declared local parishes hold their
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former building: handout
ioceses leaving TEC, says it’s encouraging to see d God blessing many of the new Anglican parishes, he also says the conflicts are a kind of “first fruits” of what Christians outside TEC could face in coming decades (see sidebar). Ashey says the AAC now advises many churches to walk away from property and focus on their mission. “For far too long we’ve been more in love with our buildings than lost people,” he says. “And God in His wonderful, severe mercy is giving us a new opportunity to have our hearts changed and broken for lost people … and to let the buildings take care of themselves.”
Anacleto Rapping/Genesis
he scorched-earth policy is also evident 3,000 miles away at St. James Anglican Church, which for more than half a century owned property in Newport Beach: The 300-member congregation now meets in a fluorescent-lit room with exposed pipes and concrete walls. It’s a humble setting for an affluent congregation accustomed to soft lighting and stained glass, but a fitting one this month for celebrating the birth of a Savior in a barnyard stable—and that’s one of the providential results of the scorched-earth policy. St. James lost its building even though the church had a written agreement with its diocese that seemed to ensure the congregation’s ownership of the building—but when it was time to part, the diocese and TEC sued the congregation, and a judge cited an Episcopal Church canon declaring that all church property belongs to the diocese and the denomination. Judges across the country have used the same rationale to expel dozens of congregations from their buildings over the last decade, as TEC and local dioceses wage a relentless campaign against departing churches. But many Anglicans, while suffering significant material loss, are finding substantial spiritual gain. Caroline Crocker, the wife of St. James’ rector, compares the dynamic to the account of Joseph in the Old Testament: “What one meant for evil, God meant for good.” Other churches around the country share similar stories. Some don’t get other buildings. Some don’t even survive. Yet, many Anglicans say they’ve learned more about humility and ministry by losing material possessions. Many say they’ve also learned about unity in the broader church, with other local congregations offering help. Meanwhile, TEC membership continues to fall. At 1.9 million in 2010, it’s about half of what it was in 1960, and 16 percent lower than in 2002. But while Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council (AAC), an advocacy group for parishes and
Anacleto Rapping/Genesis
former building: handout
ST. JAMES ANGLICAN CHURCH: The Rev. Richard Crocker (center) leads in prayer before the worship service held at the Mariners Christian School in Costa Mesa, Calif.; sign for new location; church building that was lost; worship transcends location (top to bottom).
property in trust for the diocese and denomination. Many parishes have argued civil trust laws don’t allow an entity to declare that another group’s property belongs to them. Courts in some states have agreed with that analysis, but most have ordered parishes to relinquish their property. The campaign has peaked under Katharine Jefferts Schori, who became in 2006 the first female presiding bishop within the Anglican Communion. Before her consecration, some departing churches offered payments to their dioceses for the properties they had built and maintained, but Jefferts Schori intervened and said TEC would not sell to congregations that intended to remain Anglican. TEC has sold buildings to Baptists, Methodists, Jews, and—in at least two cases—Muslims. Eleven churches in northern Virginia were among the victims of the new policy. They were negotiating buyouts with Virginia bishop Peter Lee, who said he was ready to
accept the offers—but with Jefferts Schori’s hard line cratering negotiations, the diocese of Virginia sued the parishes and won the properties (see “A great divorce,” June 16, 2012). The AAC reports TEC leadership has initiated at least 78 lawsuits against parishes and departing dioceses. (Five dioceses have left TEC.) Some lawsuits include multiple parishes. A TEC spokeswoman said Jefferts Schori wasn’t available for an interview for this story. Allan Haley, an attorney representing two of the departing dioceses, estimates TEC has spent nearly $26 million on litigation: “It’s a policy of wearing people down by outspending them.” Many of the lawsuits include individual rectors and vestry members by name. Some seek punitive damages. Most suits demand church property and everything inside, as well as money in parish bank accounts. In some cases, TEC has asked banks to freeze the funds of departing dioceses during litigation, a dynamic that makes hiring attorneys difficult. Keith Ackerman of the Diocese of Quincy (Ill.), one of the dioceses that left TEC, says one frozen account in his diocese includes funds for widows and retired priests. In one case, Ackerman says the diocese had used the funds to purchase healthcare for the widow of a rector who died from Parkinson’s disease: “We can’t do that anymore.” Still, Jefferts Schori insists allowing conservative parishes to leave without a battle wouldn’t be “faithful,” and has said she wouldn’t set up “competitors that want to either destroy or replace the Episcopal Church.” In 2008, she told Religion News Service, “Bad behavior must be confronted.” ack at St. James Anglican, many members long worried they’d have to confront the bad doctrine of TEC. By the early 1990s, Bishop John Shelby Spong was publicly deriding the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ, and the reliability of the Bible. Others followed, including Bishop John Chane in his 2002 Easter sermon declaring Jesus’ resurrection “at best conjectural.” Jefferts Schori has also questioned the resurrection, and adamantly denies Christ as the only way to God.
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When members of St. James—founded in 1941—considered building a new sanctuary in 1991, they worried about what would happen to their property if they withdrew from TEC. St. James’ leaders obtained a letter from the attorney for the bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles stating church leaders could purchase and own property “not held in trust for the Diocese of Los Angeles. …” The congregation built a new sanctuary, but by 2004 voted to leave TEC. The diocese of Los Angeles filed suit against St. James, and named the rector and vestry members in the litigation. TEC joined the lawsuit. A California judge didn’t consider the waiver letter in his rulings, and awarded the multi-million dollar property to the diocese in July. In August, the court gave the St. James Anglican congregation 45 days to leave, and the church moved to a Christian school in September. The diocese is still seeking additional funds from the church. A spokesman for the diocese of Los Angeles said he couldn’t comment on pending litigation. Longtime members of the church remember family weddings, baptisms, and funerals at the Newport Beach property. One church member had donated a stainedglass window in memory of his son who died of leukemia. Other members collected the ashes of family members interred on the property. But if the separation has been grim, it’s also been fruitful: A carpenter in the congregation made wooden kneelers for worship. Volunteers have
ack east, the 80 members of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Bristol, Conn., didn’t know what God had in store for them. The congregation—formerly Trinity Episcopal—was founded in 1747, and built its last building in 1949. Don Helmandollar, 74, became Trinity’s rector in 1999 when he entered the ministry at nearly 60 years old. By 2003, Helmandollar was meeting with other conservative Episcopal priests to discuss TEC’s alarming trajectory. “Our main thing has never been about homosexuality,” he says. “It’s about whether the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is the only way.” Eventually, six parishes (known as the Connecticut 6) asked a judge to declare their properties belonged to them and not the diocese. A judge dismissed the suit, and Helmandollar says national TEC leaders summoned him and other priests to TEC’s New York headquarters to ask them to back down. They didn’t. A handful of the churches, including Trinity, left TEC in 2007. The Diocese of Connecticut defrocked Helmandollar and demanded the church leave the property. Trinity settled with the diocese in 2008, surrendering everything except some of their funds. On May 25, 2008, Trinity members held their final service in the building and then sang hymns in the churchyard. “Then we turned out the light, locked the door, and left,” says Helmandollar. “And we have never regretted it.” On a recent afternoon, Helmandollar and two longtime church members walked through the yard of their former building. A large “For Sale” sign sits in front, and dried leaves and vines partially cover the “Trinity” marker. The building has been empty for the last 5½ years, as members of Holy Trinity meet in a nearby school gym. Fred Clark, a member since 1974, ticks through a list of experiences his family marked in the building: Clark and his wife married here, worshiped and prayed, baptized their babies, rejoiced at their children’s weddings, and grieved at their daughter’s funeral. “Those are hugely important milestones,” he says. “And yet they pale in comparison
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mastered setting up and breaking down for worship. Others are looking for outreach opportunities. During the Sunday morning service at St. James, rector Richard Crocker told the group: “We are resurrection people. We are people of hope.” After the service, Marian Michaels, 82, and a member since 1965, said the loss was difficult, but “in a way it’s kind of exciting because we’re waiting to see what the Lord has in store for us.”
with standing up for the truth of the gospel. … When you put it in those terms, it’s really simple.” Since their move, Helmandollar says the church lost a few families, but gained others. The church has worshiped under a basketball goal at a school gym, and prayed for guidance. A few months ago, an unexpected answer arrived. A local Baptist pastor called Helmandollar on a Sunday afternoon to tell him his congregation was growing old and had decided to disband. Then he told Helmandollar: “We’d like to give you our building.” On a recent Wednesday night, Trinity members flowed into the 150-year-old church building in the nearby town of Plainville. Green wreaths with red ribbons adorned black lampposts outside the town hall across the street, as members of Holy Trinity stood inside the white building with high ceilings. “All we can do is praise God,” says Helmandollar. “We certainly didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
Rex C. Curry/ap
Jamie Dean
LARGER STRUGGLE: Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church; Trinity Episcopal building for sale; new building for Holy Trinity Anglican Church; Fred Clark (left to right).
Trinity members are making some renovations before holding services in the church early next year, but an engineer told them the building is a structural gem. Downstairs, nearly two dozen members packed around long tables in the fellowship hall, sipping coffee and listening to a sermon by John Piper for a Wednesday night Bible study. The sermon’s theme: “God did it.” Senior warden Marie Bartz reminded the group: “We didn’t get the building because we’re good people. … We got it because we have something to do.” Bartz says she’s
Email: jdean@wng.org
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glad they moved on when they did. “We spent a lot of time being distracted from the things we really should have been doing,” she says. “Once you leave, there’s freedom, there’s peace—there’s life after.” nglicans in nearby Watertown, Conn., have found “life after” as well. The 60 members of New Hope Anglican—formerly Christ Church Episcopal—left TEC in 2007. After a few months of preparing for a legal battle, longtime church member Paul LePine says the congregation decided to walk away: “To fight for the property wasn’t worth the spiritual damage it was causing, and there was no end in sight.” The congregation’s former stately building in a picturesque neighborhood now belongs to a prestigious private high school, and is worth an estimated $3.2
million. A sign outside says a group meets for worship on Sunday mornings. At a coffee shop nearby, LePine says worrying about lawsuits and TEC’s direction became toxic for the congregation: “So we laid down our arms.” The vestry met with the bishop, resigned their positions, and started a new church with scant resources. LePine’s daughter, Sara, now 16, still remembers leaving the only church building she’d ever known: “Leaving that was scary, but it’s how we learned to be the body of Christ outside church walls. … It was painful, but it was painful with a purpose.” Since then, the congregation has worshiped at a hotel, a middle school, and a senior center. On a brisk
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Connecticut morning, LePine gave a tour of the church’s current rental space in a former tool factory. The modest room inside includes simple altar furniture a member built, and rows of wooden chairs, folding chairs, and a camping chair. A smaller room serves as Sunday school space and a place to collect items for local ministry. Since the congregation left its building, LePine says it has been more focused on outreach to the community, holding events at the local senior SANCTIFIED SPACES: New center and for youth in a worship space low-income neighborhood. for New Hope LePine says the congreAnglican; the building that gation hopes to reach more was lost. people in the blue-collar area of town, and says the move has pushed it to become more missional.“We’re an orthodox church in an unorthodox environment,” he says. “There’s nothing glamorous about this. But it’s good to be free to be about the mission.” A
—J.D. in Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga.
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Anglicans aren’t the only Christians fleeing their denomination. Hundreds of churches have left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the last few years, and the exodus accelerated in 2011 when the denomination approved ordination for homosexuals. At least 110 congregations left the PCUSA in 2012, and the denomination lost 102,000 members last year. The group’s membership (now 1.85 million) is half its total from 1965. Regional presbyteries decide property issues in the PCUSA, and some have allowed departing churches to keep their buildings. Other congregations have paid a steep price: In 2008, Kirk of the Hills in Oklahoma paid its presbytery $1.75 million for its own property. Though many parishes leaving The Episcopal Church (TEC) have lost their buildings, some departing dioceses have fared better. The nowAnglican diocese of Quincy (in Illinois) won its case earlier this year, though Episcopal leaders have filed a new suit in another county. In 2012, the diocese of South Carolina became the fifth diocese to leave TEC. (In an address to remaining congregations in South Carolina, TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori equated leaders who fight TEC with murderers: “It’s not terribly far from the state of mind evidenced in school shootings. …”) Mark Lawrence—bishop of the diocese of South Carolina—says the diocese remained in TEC as long as possible, but couldn’t ignore serious departures from biblical orthodoxy: “The gospel is at stake. It’s either revelation or speculation.” When the denomination approved liturgy for homosexual weddings in 2012, most churches in the diocese voted to leave. So far, judges have ruled in favor of the South Carolina diocese, though the litigation is only beginning. But if departing dioceses eventually do prevail, others might consider a move. Meanwhile, other departing Southern churches have moved on without their property. In Savannah, Ga., congregants of Christ Church Anglican lost the building they had occupied for nearly 170 years. The church argued the congregation had held title to its property since 1733, and shouldn’t have to relinquish its building. A judge disagreed, and the congregation surrendered the building to the diocese of Georgia in 2011. The nearby Independent Presbyterian Church (IPC) offered the Anglicans use of their space rent-free. (The Anglicans meet before IPC’s morning service.) After the final service in their former building in December of 2011, more than 400 Christ Church Anglican congregants processed down Bull Street to the open doors of IPC. More than 500 members of the Presbyterian congregation were waiting for them. As they entered the sanctuary, IPC pastor Terry Johnson declared: “Our faith is your faith and our buildings are your buildings.” The congregations sang together: “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord.”
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Together for the Gospel
Obstacles Opposition & Opportunities Considering the Task of Evangelism Plenary Speakers Ligon Duncan 1 Albert Mohler 2 Mark Dever 3 David Platt 4 John Piper 5 Kevin DeYoung 6 Thabiti Anyabwile 7 Matt Chandler 8 Breakout Speakers Ed Copeland Leonce Crump Juan Sanchez Simon Gathercole Peter Williams Dave Russell Owen Strachan David Sinclair Mack Stiles Ligon Duncan Albert Mohler Mez McConnell Mike McKinley
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Louisville, KY April 8–10, 2014 Register at T4G.org Jamie Dean
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12/9/13 12:05 PM
TO PROTECT AND PROJECT
Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore wants to help Christians in a broken culture that increasingly sees their religion as strange by EDWARD LEE PITTS in Washington |
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M, , held up a jagged shard of glass before Southern Baptist leaders assembled earlier this year to install him as the eighth president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm. A relic from his Mississippi youth, the shard still provides Moore with a reminder of childhood days playing ball outside Woolmarket Baptist Church. One particular Sunday evening, a boy threw a ball and shattered a church window. As others scattered, Moore bent down and picked up a piece of the glass: He’s kept it “through every stage of my life to remind me of what I owe to those people in that little church in that little town in Mississippi who taught me everything.” Now, Moore meets with White House and congressional officials to fight for religious freedom, unborn children, and marriage. It’s an ideal gig for someone who loved watching election returns as far back as kindergarten in Biloxi, Miss., and who volunteered and then worked full time for U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). Moore comes to the ERLC after serving as professor and dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. His new office is within eyeshot of the U.S. Capitol, but his vision is sharply focused on helping roughly , SBC churches navigate an ever-changing political culture that increasingly marginalizes most Southern Baptists’ beliefs. Moore often tells Christians that their votes to receive new church members is more significant than their votes for president of the United States. Moore’s grandfather was pastor of Woolmarket Baptist Church: He died when Moore was . At age , Moore professed faith in Christ during a revival meeting. Two weeks later—following in his grandfather’s footsteps—he preached during Woolmarket’s youth night, sickened from jangled nerves. It was, he jokes, a “miserable sermon, six to eight minutes covering the entire cannon of Scripture and not very well.” He met his wife at Woolmarket, and he married her there. He still visits whenever he is in Biloxi. All that time, Moore regularly watched the church’s members care for each other, and that deepened his appreciation for God’s work through churches. Now he sees congregations losing influence “as Christianity becomes increasingly freakish-sounding to American culture,” but he offers perspective. “We are a long way from the sort of persecution that our brothers and sisters are going through in Sudan and China and Iran.” The “Mayberry church”—which Moore also calls an “almost-gospel church”—is dying in the Bible Belt, he says, and is taking with it a nominal Christianity that wouldn’t survive anyway. People who see the church as a spiritual version of the Lions Club will lose any social motivation for attending—and Moore is fine with that:
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“The message of the church is the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the forgiveness of sins. The kind of Christianity that can withstand what is happening in the secular culture is the kind that brings good news.” Moore says he sees his job as twofold: keeping Christians out of jail, and making sure Christians go to jail for the right reasons if they do. He wants to protect them in their churches, but also project them into the culture. Christians should not avoid controversial policy issues any more than they should avoid difficult faith issues, he says. “If you and I do not speak of justice and morality, we do not love our neighbors,” he recently told members of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “But we must never speak to these issues simply in order to get ‘amens’ from the people who already agree with us. … You and I are advocates for justice and advocates for righteousness, but we are not prosecuting attorneys. We are ambassadors of reconciliation who are pleading with broken hearts. It would be devilish to be people with values right-side-up and crosses upside-down.” If it doesn’t point to the blood of Christ, Moore says, “justice” is not enough for the Christian engaged in policy debates. He defines the Great Commission role of the ERLC as modeling for churches how to apply the gospel to current issues while disagreeing with a mix of conviction and kindness that reflects the gospel. For example, on immigration he opposes blanket amnesty but wants to find solutions that respect human life and the integrity of the family. A good example, he says, is the pro-life movement, which cares for unborn children but also the men and women scarred by the abortion culture. Moore hopes to help the next generation of Southern Baptists stand for Christ when that may be less socially acceptable, more confounding as technology creates greater ethical and spiritual quandaries, and more complex as Americans push the envelope artistically and relationally. To connect with young believers, Moore may have to expand his musical library beyond his love of “old, outlaw country.” Moore grew up with songs by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard. He hosts a podcast, The Cross and the Jukebox, where he plays a country song and talks about its meaning and what the Bible says about how Christians should respond to those life situations. Moore already has branched out: This year he wrote an article on Christian hip-hop. It is vital for mature believers to be “training up a new generation of children to know what it is like to
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STANDING FOR CHRIST: Moore and Archbishop William E. Lori (left) following a press conference announcing an open letter asking the Obama administration and Congress to expand conscience protections in the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate.
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Moore’s plea for living a value- and cross-centered life is more than just words. In — and already the father of three—Moore and his wife, Maria, adopted two Russian boys. Both were a year old, having spent their first year with little human contact. When the Moores came to the Russian orphanage in a little mining community near the Black Sea, the couple noticed how the orphanage was quiet despite being filled with children. “Is this silence normal?” Moore asked a worker. “Yes,” said the worker, explaining that the orphans do not have someone to answer their cries, so they eventually stop crying. Every day for days the Moores visited the boys. Each day the boys stayed silent when the Moores walked in and silent when they departed. On the last day of their visit, Moore laid his hands on the boys’ heads. “I will not leave you as orphans,” he prayed aloud. “I will come back to you.” As the couple walked out of the room, one of the boys began crying. “That was the most beautiful sound I ever heard,” Moore recalls. “He knew he had parents. He knew someone was going to hear him.” The two adopted sons, Ben and Timothy, are now years old. The early years were difficult due to their past. For instance, the boys had not eaten solid food, so the Moores had to teach them how to eat without choking. Through Ben and Timothy, however, Moore has better grasped the teaching in Romans and Galatians about believers being adopted into the family of God. And the entire experience has further fired his advocacy work. “I had been an advocate for all sorts of ideas,” says Moore, who has written a book on adoption. “After that experience, I became more of an advocate for people.” —E.L.P.
ANDREW HARNIK/THE WASHINGTON TIMES/LANDOV
live among a people who will see Christianity as very strange.” Without them, no amount of testifying before Congress, filing briefs for Supreme Court cases, and meeting with sitting presidents will do much long-range good. He wants his own children to embrace versus abandon the strangeness of Christianity because “the strangeness of Christianity is what saves.” He wants them to have the same sense of belonging to the body of Christ that he did when he was a boy who picked up and pocketed a shard of glass from the window of the church he called home. A
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12/11/13 9:54 AM
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e makeover For one Midwest town, the price of a U.S. oil resurgence has been transformation, for better or worse by Daniel James Devine in Williston, N.D. p h o t o b y K e n C e d e n o / C o r b i s /A P
he Milky Way isn’t the only nighttime spectacle illuminating western North Dakota’s grasslands. Drive along U.S. Route 2, and you’ll pass dozens of blazing torches casting orange halos among the hills. Oil here is so abundant that energy companies drill wells without bothering to capture all the natural gas leaking from them. So they burn it off, in flares that sometimes streak sideways 10 feet in the wind. Route 2 doglegs through Williston, a bustling town and a hub for the region’s oil development. Williston and its environs, its wells and the seesawing pump jacks atop them, are smack centered on the Bakken, a huge underground shale deposit that is defining America’s energy future. Thanks to workers tapping the oil riches of the Bakken and of shale formations in Texas and elsewhere, the United States will jump ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil sometime between this year and 2015, depending on whose forecast you use. Growing 3.2 million barrels a day since 2009, America’s four-year surge in oil output is the greatest the world has seen since the 1970s. The manpower needed for this surge means drillers, cementers, and haulers have flocked to Williston from surrounding states. They’re showing the world what the U.S. Midwest can do with oil. On the flip
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I found Tarbox at one of the man camps, lounging in front of a TV playing Thursday Night Football after a camp-provided dinner of prime rib. Oil companies here work around the clock, and Tarbox was expecting to head out to his job after midnight. He works two-week stints and then drives 15 hours back home to his girlfriend and daughter in Walworth, Wis., for a few days. The recent U.S. oil and gas boom has been made possible by new technology that allows workers to drill deep into the earth, down and then horizontally, and crack open shale rock to release oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Once a well is drilled and fitted with casing, Tarbox and his co-workers pump cement around it. Wells can be miles deep, including the curve at the bottom: “I think the highest I’ve ever pumped was 20,000 feet.” After a well is drilled and fracked, workers top it with a pump jack. Much of the oil is shipped to the Gulf Coast on rail cars. Problems have grown along with Williston’s population. Newcomers are disproportionately young men, oftentimes single, creating a gender imbalance. Men prowl in bars for dates, and locals say crime, prostitution, and the strip club business have grown, with dancers regularly flying in from out of state. Some longtime residents are leaving. Ted “Frog” Krogen and his wife Marilyn, both 67, were born and raised around Williston, only leaving for about a
‘I was so glad to move here because it was so quiet and peaceful, and then it just exploded.’ home for $1,950 a month, a three-bedroom with a garage and basement for $3,400. Williston’s overflowing workforce is exemplified by the iconic “man camps,” rows of temporary mobile housing units. One of them, the Black Gold Williston Lodge, provides three meals a day, room service, pool tables, and small rooms for $130 to $200 a night. “Basically you’ve got a bed, a closet, a TV, a little desk,” said Colton Vaughn, a 23-year-old security guard on duty. He said most of the lodge’s occupants are in their 20s or 30s and stay for several months at a time. Vaughn, whose home is in northern Idaho—15 hours away by train—works seven days a week. After six weeks, he returns to Idaho to spend two with his wife: “The money’s good. It’s hard being away from home, but you get through it.” In Williams County, where Williston lies, the average wage was a whopping $76,942 last year, and it had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. Kyle Tennessen, manager of the Williston branch of Bakken Staffing, said his office places 15 to 25 new workers per day, including truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, and office positions. Workers often come from out of state. When Williston got its first snowfall this season, many left for home, unwilling to brave the North Dakota winter, which brings 50 days or more of subzero temperatures. “You can always put on more clothes,” said Brandin Tarbox, 25, a cementer working for Sanjel, a pressure pumping company.
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decade while Frog served in the military, and returning in the late ’70s. “We moved back here because it was a good place to raise kids. Not anymore,” said Frog, wearing black suspenders and eating ketchup over scrambled eggs at Gramma Sharon’s Family Restaurant, a three-decade-old establishment. With housing so expensive, the couple’s daughter, in her 30s, lived with them until recently. “We used to leave our door unlocked,” Frog said, but after the boom they forbade their daughter from going out at night alone. “Women have been followed home from nightclubs and raped,” Marilyn added. For the Krogens, the solution was to get out of town: They moved to Sturgis, S.D., several months ago, and returned this week to clean out and sell their three-bedroom house. After putting it on the market for two days, someone bought it for several thousand dollars above their asking price. The Krogens said many of their friends have already moved away. “This will never be the same town,” bemoaned Frog. Domestic violence has increased too, according to Bonnet, who directs the Family Crisis Shelter in Williston, the only shelter for domestic and sexual abuse victims in the North Dakota oil patch. Since 2008, the number of adults and children staying at the shelter has tripled. The Williston Herald reported the Williston Police Department gets an average of two calls a day for domestic violence situations. The calls increased 10 percent from 2011
clockwise from top left: Ken Cedeno/Corbis/AP; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux; Danny Wilcox Frazier/Redux; Mark Ovaska/Redux; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux
side, Williston is showing the rest of us what oil can do with a town—some of it pretty, some not. Williston’s population has approximately doubled since 2010, to somewhere between 25,000 and 33,000. The town and vicinity have grown so much they ranked first on the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent list of “Fastest Growing Micro Areas.” “I was so glad to move here because it was so quiet and peaceful,” said Lana Bonnet, a social worker who moved to Williston from Utah in 2006. “And then it just exploded.” Bonnet first moved to Williston in 1976, in her early 20s, when a previous oil boom was getting underway and Williston was a rural, “clean town where neighbors kept their yards up.” Today, things have changed: “[There’s] not enough housing. People are living in campers, trailers, or their cars.” There’s so much new development Bonnet barely recognizes the place. In town, Route 2 is reduced to one lane each way because workers are renovating the roads. Beige dust floats in the headlights of pickup trucks and sticks to their sides like a special oil town paint job. Roads are lined with new apartment complexes and hotels, and construction workers are building a Famous Dave’s, an Outlaws Bar & Grill, and a Fuddruckers: Oil development is bringing in not just rig workers, but an entire economy to serve them. Even with new apartments, housing remains in high demand and expensive. Local classifieds advertise a two-bedroom rental
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clockwise from top left: Ken Cedeno/Corbis/AP; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux; Danny Wilcox Frazier/Redux; Mark Ovaska/Redux; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux; Kristoffer Finn/laif/Redux
“This will never be the same town”: A man is detained by Williston police while being questioned in regard to an incident in downtown Williston; a man sleeps on the floor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Williston (the church has opened its doors but can only accept 29 guests because of regulation; most nights the church is forced to turn people away); an oil flare burns near Williston; advertisement for new homes; men line up before sunrise looking for work; because housing is in short supply, many workers in Williston are forced to live out of their cars (clockwise from top left).
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Prairie plant One hundred and thirty miles south of Williston, another dusty town called Dickinson is reaping the benefits of the region’s oil drilling. It hosts dozens of businesses, muddy roads that fling dirt beneath pickup trucks, a Ukrainian Cultural Institute, a railroad carrying black tank cars, and an oil pump jack bobbing next to a subdivision full of new homes and duplexes. Dickinson ranked third on the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent list of “Fastest Growing Micro Areas,” and is home to the first new U.S. oil refinery to be built on an undeveloped site in years. In late October construction of the million refinery, the Dakota Prairie Refinery, proceeded at the end of a mud and gravel driveway with a posted mph speed
limit. Brown-and-white cows grazed in adjacent fields while cranes jutted up above cylindrical steel tanks that will hold crude oil, naphtha, diesel, and kerosene. Train tracks ran alongside the site. Once completed, the refinery will use the region’s crude oil to produce , gallons of diesel fuel per day, enough to fill tank trucks. Oddly, although North Dakota is pumping over , barrels of crude oil each day (second only to Texas in production), because much is shipped elsewhere for refining, the state imports much of the diesel needed to run trucks and heavy machinery. The Dakota Prairie Refinery, built by MDU Resources Group, is scheduled to be finished in late . Plant manager Dave Podratz said the company is in the process of hiring engineers, accountants, and clerks to run the facility. “We’re getting applications from all over the country. ... I’ve seen Montana, I’ve seen Nebraska, I’ve seen Arkansas.” —D.J.D.
An oil truck drives on I- just north of Dickinson, N.D.
MAN CAMP: JENN ACKERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX • DAKOTA PRAIRIE REFINERY: DANIEL JAMES DEVINE • DICKINSON: KEN CEDENO/CORBIS/AP
to , and as of October were on track to increase another percent in . An annual report provided to WORLD from the Williston Police Department indicates local calls doubled between and . Arrests for felonies and misdemeanors increased percent in alone. Crime in North Dakota overall, a historically safe state, ticked up percent in . Drugs are running in Williston: In November federal officials announced they were adding Williams County to their High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. While some see Williston’s rapid growth as a problem, others see opportunity. The town is building a million recreation center with indoor tennis courts and a golf simulator. Instead of coming into town alone a few weeks at a time, many men are moving their wives and children here permanently. Although Williston’s increase in children has been overwhelming to public schools (they’re renting “portable classrooms” to handle the lack of space), pastors see an opportunity to reach young families or single workers looking for new community or spiritual direction. “We’re tripling our square footage,” said Mike Skor, the lead pastor of New Hope Wesleyan Church, which has installed huge steel beams in the ground for a facility that will include an indoor playground and coffeehouse. “Just our middle school and high school ministry—every week it seems we have a record number of kids. It just keeps climbing.” Ashley Olinger was a logger in northern British Columbia, Canada, before he moved to Williston in to become the senior pastor of Cornerstone FBC. The Southern Baptist church began building a new facility with a sloping -seat auditorium in a Williston field in . Now the facility is surrounded by OVERFLOWING WORKFORCE: a new medical clinic, a new An oil field worker from Minnesota in one of the man camps in Williston. Motel , and a row of new apartments. “Our church has gotten drastically younger in the last couple of years,” Olinger said. “Between and percent of our church is under feet tall.” Since local kids sometimes live in camper trailers or apartments, Cornerstone opens its building on Thursday mornings to give moms and kids space to play. Every second Sunday the church hosts lunch, with much of the food provided by a local man camp, to provide fellowship for its members or for workers in town without their families. After a short-lived oil boom in Williston a few decades ago, Olinger said, “there was an underlying assumption that [this one] was going to be another flash in the pan.” Now people speculate the current boom will last years or more. He’s hoping to find the resources to build a second facility that would include more kids’ classrooms and a gym. During a recent weekday evening sermon, the former logger spoke of the Great Commission and God’s sovereignty: “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills—and the oil that lies a mile beneath the earth.” A
Email: ddevine@wng.org
12/10/13 3:43 PM
man camp: Jenn Ackerman/The New York Times/redux • Dakota Prairie Refinery: daniel james devine • Dickinson: Ken Cedeno/Corbis/AP
12/10/13 3:43 PM
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Asian-American
struggles
by Sophia Lee J L /W I /G I
EDITOR’S NOTE:: Here’s the third and last of a WORLD series on the trouble many Americans have with something that should be simple: eating. Reporter Sophia Lee last year wrote about eating disorders (“Food and loathing,” Nov. , ). Last month she wrote about special diet programs (“What goes into the mouth,” Nov. ). In this issue she examines how disorders affect members of her own demographic group, Asian-Americans.
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D
successful years of her career, actress Lynn Chen was destroying herself. After months of selfstarvation to play a petite ballerina in a film, Chen was bingeing behind closed doors. For hours, she would stuff cookies and chips into her mouth, heart pounding with agitation and self-disgust: sweet, salty, sweet,
CULTURAL DEMAND: Lynn Chen.
salty, and always ending with sweet chocolate for “dessert.” Her binge, as uncontrollable and hedonistic as it seemed, was meticulously planned. As soon as her husband was out the door, the all-day binge would begin, her stomach painfully distended but her hands still continuously feeding it. With the last icing licked and the last crumb swept off the floor, Chen would replace all the
missing food items in the pantry so her husband would not suspect a thing. The next day she would fast. She both loathed and lusted for this vicious binge/ restrict cycle: “The only way I knew how to maintain my weight was to binge one day a week, be anorexic for two consecutive days, and then diet for the rest of the week.” She finally realized the problem stemmed from something more powerful and deep-rooted than fear of fans calling her chubby: It had to do with her identity as an Asian-American woman. Chen isn’t the only one struggling with this issue. Research has found that Asian-American women are an ethnic group that has one of the highest suicide and lowest self-esteem rates in the nation. For many of these women, that translates into disordered body image and in more serious cases, eating disorders. Traditionally, eating disorders have been seen as a middle- and upper-class white women disease, which means people like Chen have felt alone and silenced. With her jet-black straight hair and dark almond-shaped eyes, Chen has distinct Chinese features that set her apart from other Hollywood actors. Chen knew that being an Asian-American meant she had to work harder to land good roles. It also meant she had to fit “this underlying stereotype that we Asians are naturally small people. You can eat whatever you want and still be tiny, [but] there’s also this cultural demand from Asian families to ‘eat, eat, eat!’” Later, Chen heard an interview on NPR’s Tell Me More in which Lisa Lee, now
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
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’ ! l l e w o o t g n i t a e ’ ! e r y ’ a d u r e o t s ‘Y e y n a h t r e t t a f e ‘You’r ‘You! You need this!’
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opened up a public forum for all Asian-Americans struggling with eating disorders and body image issues. Thick Dumpling Skin published its first post in February 2011. Since then, many more AsianAmericans, both men and women, have submitted their stories to the blog. One of the submitters, Melissa
Lisa Lee (right)
as a young woman, she recalled taping down her chest and being ashamed of her curves as she tried “to live up to that Asian stereotype.” Esther Suh, a 21year-old KoreanAmerican student at Smith College, is 5'7", wears a size 8, and used to eat a small carton of yogurt and then burn the calories off by running 10 miles. She lost 30 pounds, only to gain double the weight back once she realized she would never reach the ideal 100 pounds. She says the AsianAmerican community tends to ignore weight questions: “No one talks about it.” According to the National Eating Disorder Association’s latest statistics, 20 million women and 10 million men in America struggle with some form of clinically significant eating disorder, which includes anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or an eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS). But we still have no statistics on how many of these individuals with eating disorders or serious body image issues are Asian-Americans. Susie Roman, program director of NEDA, said part of the reason is because the information available is drawn from
handout photos
a Facebook diversity program manager, talked about an article she wrote concerning her struggles as a size 10 Asian-American and the lack of Asian-American role models regarding body image. Since Lee at 5'5" then weighed 60 kilograms (132 pounds), advertisements in Taiwan hit her hard when they showed before-andafter pictures of a woman with the headline, “Before: 60kg! Now: 40kg!” She also hated it when her relatives or her mother’s friends pinched her arms and said she’s “eating too well,” and when a weight-loss product salesman at a crowded market pointed directly at her and yelled, “You! You need this!” A Facebook search later, Chen sent Lee an excited, nervous email: “Hey, please don’t think I’m crazy, but I want to do something with you. I don’t even know what it is or what I’m thinking, but I feel like I’ve been wanting to talk about this forever.” Lee flew to Los Angeles from San Francisco to meet Chen. And over scones and tea, they decided to start a blog, Thick Dumpling Skin, that
Schlothan, a 28-yearold JapaneseAmerican, wrote about developing anorexia when she entered college, but said triggers to her eating disorder can be traced back to when she was 9 and her Asian aunts told her, “You’re lucky you’re Asian because you don’t have any boobs or butt.” “That’s how my eating disorder started,” Schlothan said. “Somebody said something.” When Schlothan started filling out
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HANDOUT PHOTOS
treatment centers. AsianAmericans are less likely to seek help for mental issues. For example, Stefani Tran, , a Korean adoptee who has never been clinically diagnosed with an eating disorder, says she obsesses about her body image daily. When she moved to Korea to teach English for two years, the constant comments (“You’re fatter than yesterday!”) her students and co-workers made on her weight “really messed with my head. This was years ago, but it’s still with me today.” Chad Yoo, a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate at California School of Professional Psychology, did a yearlong study in on Korean-American women and disordered eating. Yoo’s research focused on young Korean-American women ages -, many whom he found at local churches. His studies found that KoreanAmericans who struggle to fit into both sides of their cultures have significantly increased risk of developing disordered eating. When juggling this issue with other external factors like racial and weight teasing, the risk for disordered eating further increased. If Yoo’s research result is true, that puts every AsianAmerican woman at a higher risk for disordered eating, because all of them experience certain levels of stress from acculturation, whether they want it or not. “Consciously or unconsciously, they all have to figure out their racial identity,” Yoo said. Yoo said his research could also be applied to other Asian-Americans with similar backgrounds, such as Chinese- and Japanese-Americans who
Email: slee@wng.org
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share Confucian influences: “Parents worry about their children becoming fat, so parents will always say that to their children, that is natural to them.” Yoo said the problem has gotten worse because AsianAmericans think struggling with a mental illness is shameful to their family and society. Grace Cheng, a -yearold Taiwanese-American who once struggled with bingeing and cutting, said Asian-Americans need to “ask questions: Who are you to tell me how I should look like? We need to create our own culture. We need to scream and shout or nobody’s going to listen to us.” Thick Dumpling Skin isn’t meant to “cure” AsianAmerican women of their food issues, but Chen and Lee hope to open up a dialogue. Chen has had a bittersweet feeling reading submitted posts because some of the writers are so young: One post featured a -year-old hospitalized for anorexia in eighth grade. Chen, though, found that talking about her disorder was her first step toward treatment. Initially, she worried that revealing her problem “would be career suicide. I was afraid people won’t take the risk of hiring me. I was afraid of the shame. And I didn’t trust myself to be able to come clean about it and not relapse.” But ever since she opened up, Chen said her recovery has been steady: Although she still binges occasionally, she no longer follows it up with days of self-condemnation, and “was surprised by how everyone I knew started coming clean to me that they have food issues, too.” A
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WORLD’s November story on eating disorders began with a profile of Jessica Perez, whom I met through Skype, phone calls, emails, and Facebook. I remember the day I first got an email from her: She had read about my own battle with eating disorders and wrote, “It is obvious that your religious background has been a font of strength and wisdom to you. Personally, I consider myself an eternal seeker—I want to know God, I want to feel as though God hears me, will help me … loves me.” Jessi concluded, “I feel like I can’t do this by myself. … Only something stronger than me can help me, and the only thing I can think of is God.” I told her then, that she was blessed through her suffering, because she realized a truth that not many people accept. Jessi Perez died in her sleep on Jan. , . She was and weighed less than pounds. After almost years of struggling with an eating disorder, her body finally gave up. When I heard the news, my first thought was: “Oh no. No, no, no.” The second thought was: “I hope she’s with God right now.” And the third: “That could have been me.” I remembered the nights when I would stir awake to my parents gently cupping my shrunken face, checking that I was still breathing. One morning, after I talked with her about the gospel via Skype, she clasped her tiny hands to her cheeks and gasped, “I understand. I get it!” That was grace. —S.L.
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/10/13 10:17 AM
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Notebook
Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports > Media > Religion
A home for the holidays Organizations across the country offer tangible help and real hope to the homeless BY RIKKI ELIZABETH STINNETTE
>> STINNETTE
S K J, now , became homeless in Virginia two days after Christmas . Her father had supported her and her two children under , but finally could not afford the rent on his house. The children’s father, an ex-boyfriend stationed with the Army in Colorado, had SAFE HARBOR: never paid child Mary’s House of support. Hope; Johnson This Christmas with her children season we’re (top to bottom).
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26 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 57
telling Johnson’s story in WORLD not because her story is unique but because it’s all too typical—and because she was able to get hope at Good Shepherd Alliance (GSA), a Christian, nonprofit homeless relief organization that isn’t unique either. Hundreds of small organizations like GSA exist throughout the United States, and Johnson and her children were able to move into the group’s -bed emergency center in Leesburg, Va., then into a transitional house for single mothers with young children. That house has a great Christmas name: Mary’s House of Hope. Johnson and other moms cooked in a kitchen stocked with two refrigerators, shared a washer and a dryer, and watched television in the Purcellville, Va.,
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
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Notebook > Lifestyle Reliving the games The website Statlas (statlas. co) charted every play of the 2013 World Series, so baseball fans can relive in their minds favorite moments of the fall classic. Nifty charts give an at-a-glance view of entire games, making clear visually where turning points occurred, and showing each game’s progress batter by batter. Those who really like to dig around in baseball statistics will enjoy charts showJohnson landed a job at an Ashburn day care center and began moving up on the triangle. In addition to her full-time job at the day care center—she takes her kids there as well—Johnson meets with her caseworker every two weeks to deposit savings into an escrow account, get financial counseling, and set new goals. She has paid down a large chunk of debt and even saved enough to afford a new Kia when her old car sprung a leak in the gas tank. As a full-time student, she is earning her early and elementary education certifications so she can get a permanent job after she leaves Mary’s House. Johnson did not attend church much before she came to Mary’s House, but she has begun attending her caseworker’s church in Leesburg, Va., where church members regularly pray for her. “There are a lot of people in my corner,” she said.
ing what the pitcher threw and what the batter did with the pitch. —Susan Olasky
The internet is home to both fascinating stuff and time-wasters. On Thursdays, wng.org points readers to the best of the web. In the past several weeks, Web Reads has included links to websites featuring historical map animations (youtube.com/user/ EmperorTigerstar/), the sounds of Roaring Twenties New York City (vectorsdev.usc.edu/NYCsound/777b.html), eight free lectures on The Hobbit (openculture.com/2013/02/download_eight_free_lectures_on_ithe_ hobbiti_by_the_tolkien_professor_corey_olsen.html), and an interview with novelist Marilynne Robinson (theamericanconservative.com/articles/marilynne-robinson-on-faith-and-conservatism/). —Susan Olasky
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Koth: Stinnette • Tigerstar: handout
Worthy web reads
Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com
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farmhouse. All of them also entered a Six Steps to Self-Sufficiency program. Vickie Koth, GSA’s executive director, implemented the program when she arrived in 2008. Before, GSA had simply provided a bed and a meal, but Koth noticed the same people returning for aid. She believed the homeless needed to learn job and financial skills: “If people don’t understand that, nothing changes,” she said. The symbol of Koth’s work, a diagram of a triangle divided into six rows, hangs all over the GSA office above Hope’s Treasures thrift shop in Ashburn, Va. Koth explained the chart to me as we sat in a conference room overlooking the parking lot, which was half-filled with large toys, bikes, and furniture. Surrounded by the supports of “assets,” “neighbors,” and being “strong in faith,” the homeless person transitions from emergency services to education to, at the pinnacle of the triangle, securing a house and independence.
Notebook > Technology boyfriends by posting their impression of his manners, appearance, commitment, or other traits. The concept may sound like a logical next step beyond dating websites, but it could be a step An increasingly popular girls’ app backward for relationships. for rating guys may bode ill Women can’t write Amazon-style comments BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE about guys on the app, but they can review them by filling in a multiple-choice quiz. In the “Humor” category, for example, a girl can choose how she reacts to a particular guy’s jokes. (I “congratulate myself on finding a funny guy” or just “laugh to make him feel better.”) She can also choose from a wide variety of descriptive tags (#TallDarkAndHandsome, #HasADog, #DudeCanCook, #AlwaysHappy, #BigFeet, #ObsessedWithHisMom). Guys receive a - rating based on the number of positive or negative reviews. The creator of the app, Alexandra Chong, says its purpose is to give girls a place to share F of short-term collective wisdom about the guys they relationships comes a mobile app know. Many seem to like the idea. Since attempting to solve an age-old Lulu launched in February , more problem: knowing too little than a million girls have downloaded about a potential mate. Or a potential the app. date, in this case. Lulu, designed for But it’s not a network filled with women ages and up, allows women glowing reviews of nice guys. Women to rate male friends, boyfriends, or ex-
Dating gone Lulu
KOTH: STINNETTE • TIGERSTAR: HANDOUT
PHONE: FILADENDRON/ISTOCK, MODIFIED BY WORLD • STARCHASE: HANDOUT
>>
leave highly unflattering tags, too. After an unhappy date (or a series of them), a girl might nail a guy with #ManChild, #CheaperThanABigMac, #WanderingEye, or #StillLovesHisEx. The app also takes a positive view of extramarital sex, encouraging women to rate bedroom behavior or note if he #NeverSleepsOver. If a guy with #NoGoals and #NoCar gets tagged with #TemperTantrums, is that all his fault? Maybe, and Chong thinks the pressure to get good reviews will help men improve their behavior with women. Lulu (the company) claims , men have asked for their profiles to be added to the app. They are apparently optimistic that past girlfriends will recommend them to new ones. Reactions to Lulu vary. Some girls love it. Some guys hate it. It raises questions of whether the reviews are fair and whether it’s appropriate to rate ex-boyfriends on a public network for women to peruse like a used car lot. In addition, it points to a culture in which women have been used and abused by so many men they feel a social networking tool will help them spot phonies. Actress Sam Ressler, writing on The Huffington Post, panned Lulu as “an unacceptable invasion of privacy,” where women ultimately pour salt in one another’s wounds by broadcasting the faults of men they once loved. She argued: Women can’t demand respect from men while demeaning them.
Bumper tagging High-speed police car chases result in about one death each day in the United States, but those casualties could be reduced by an innovative GPS projectile launching system. Police departments in Iowa, Texas, and elsewhere have started using a , system called StarChase that, mounted in the front of a patrol car, fires a laser-guided, sticky GPS tag. After tagging a fleeing vehicle, the police officer can back off, then monitor the vehicle’s location on the internet. —D.J.D.
Email: ddevine@wng.org
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Notebook > Science
‘Publication bias’ gives doctors a skewed picture of pharmaceutical products BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
>>
published in a science journal. When they were reported in journals, the resulting articles were less likely to completely reveal trial results or fully disclose side effects from the drug or intervention in question than the original ClinicalTrials.gov reports had. While percent of the original reports listed “serious” observed side effects, only percent of their corresponding journal articles listed them. Such bias may be understandable from a human perspective. No pharmaceutical company or researcher wants to publish a bad or disappointing outcome from months or years of work. But bias in research can mislead doctors who are searching medical journals for evidence that the drugs they prescribe will work and not harm patients. The moral of the PLOS Medicine report? Doctors should search ClinicalTrials.gov, too.
Ancient kindred Native Americans may be able to trace up to two-fifths of their genome to Europeans, say researchers reporting on ancient DNA in Nature in November. The team sampled the arm bone of a young boy buried with an ivory diadem near Mal’ta in south-central Siberia (a grave they claim is , years old), and found DNA markers related to populations in early America and Western Europe. If true, that means Native Americans may not be solely descended from East Asians as previously believed. —D.J.D.
The fine Duke Energy Renewables agreed to pay Nov. after its Wyoming wind farms killed federally protected golden eagles and other birds. The case was the first such criminal prosecution by the Justice Department. Although the deaths of protected birds at traditional electric facilities can elicit large fines, the Obama administration has gone easy on wind farm casualties.
6
th century
Possible date of the dawn of Buddhism, based on the age of an apparent tree shrine archaeologists discovered beneath Lumbini, the traditional birthplace of Gautama Buddha. The researchers who conducted the dig called it “the first archaeological evidence regarding the date of the life of Buddha,” a date scholars have disputed. Not all archaeologists are convinced by the discovery, though. (Antiquity)
1
millisecond
Speed of a seahorse nabbing its prey. Scientists found that seahorses, clumsy as they may appear, are stealthy predators: The shape of their head allows them to sneak up on copepods without disturbing the water. Copepods—tiny crustaceans—can escape at a velocity of or milliseconds, but that’s a little too slow. (Nature Communications) —D.J.D.
PHARMACEUTICAL: FRANK PERRY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • BURIAL: HERMITAGE STATE MUSEUM, RUSSIA • EAGLE: STUARTB/ISTOCK • BUDDHA: LIANG BAOHAI/IMAGINECHINA/AP • SEAHORSE: IZI1947/ISTOCK
W tells you all of a vehicle’s positive aspects and none of the negatives, you might call him dishonest but shrewd. When pharmaceutical companies test new drugs and publish positive results without publishing negative ones, it’s called “publication bias.” And it happens a lot. In a study published in the online journal PLOS Medicine in December, French researchers described a striking example of this bias. They looked at medical trials reported on ClinicalTrials.gov—a website the U.S. government set up to track trial data—and searched to see how often the results were published in scientific journals. Their investigation was startling: Just half of the trials reported on the ClinicalTrials.gov database, judging by a random sampling, had ever been
$1
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ROCCO LAURIENZO/GENESIS
Drug problem
million
PHARMACEUTICAL: FRANK PERRY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • BURIAL: HERMITAGE STATE MUSEUM, RUSSIA • EAGLE: STUARTB/ISTOCK • BUDDHA: LIANG BAOHAI/IMAGINECHINA/AP • SEAHORSE: IZI1947/ISTOCK
ROCCO LAURIENZO/GENESIS
Notebook > Houses of God
The congregation of Lancaster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, N.Y., formed in and constructed its building in . The church left the Presbyterian Church (USA) in and joined the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
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Notebook > Sports
Demand for Super Bowl ad time is higher than ever BY ZACHARY ABATE
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When the Atlanta Braves asked to build a new ballpark in Cobb County, Ga., a county committee quickly voted to approve the deal, which included million of taxpayerfunded support for the project. When the Washington Nationals asked for a similar amount to finance a stadium renovation project, D.C. mayor Vince Gray started laughing. If the Nationals want a new roof, they will BALL PARK have to pay out of their AND CHAIN: Nationals Park in own pocket. Washington, D.C. For Cobb County, the appeal of this investment includes hopes for new jobs and money from tourism in the area. Another positive effect of a new stadium is the potential revitalization of an economically depressed area— although that idea bore little fruit when the Braves moved into Turner Field in . Those who argue that taxpayers should not pay for stadiums point out that ballparks create very little new revenue for a city— fans spend money at the stadium instead of spending it on some other entertainment source in the area. Opponents also argue that a significant portion of the money invested in the area leaves the community. In other words, players and owners make a profit; small businesses and citizens who live in the area do not. When Baltimore spent million in taxpayer dollars to help build Camden Yards in the early s, proponents promised the stadium would revitalize the city’s downtown, create jobs, and amass tax revenue. Twenty years later, these promises remain unfulfilled. Cincinnati suffered a similar outcome when it approved million to build new baseball and football stadiums in the early s. Not all public investments have been fruitless, although success stories appear to be exceptions to the rule. In his book, Major League Winners, Mark S. Rosentraub noted that Coors Field (Denver), Progressive Field (Cleveland), and Petco Park (San Diego) have brought economic success and revitalization to their surrounding areas. —Z.A.
SUPER BOWL LOGO, BUDWEISER’S & DORITOS: HANDOUT • NATIONALS PARK: CHRIS BERNACCHI/AP
T NFL , the Super Bowl may be all about football, but to advertisers across the nation, Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest advertising day of the year. With viewership rising every year—the Big Game averaged million viewers per year throughout the s, million viewers per year throughout the s, and million viewers per year since —advertisers are desperate to get a piece of the marketing gold. And, according to Neil Mulcahy, executive vice president for sales at Fox Sports, commercial airtime was sold out before Thanksgiving—more than weeks before Super Bowl XLVIII takes place. The demand for airtime is good news for Fox, which is charging around million for a -second spot, and is a good sign for the economy. In previous years, most notably during the economic recession, commercial airtime was still available for purchase during the week leading up to the game. Mulcahy told The New York Times the rebound of the automobile industry is a key factor in Super Bowl ad time demand. General Motors announced in August that it would return as a Super Bowl advertiser after skipping three out of the last five years. The strategy for making a Super Bowl commercial varies greatly by company and by product and includes storytelling (Budweiser’s “Brotherhood”), comedy (Doritos’ “Goat Sale”), celebrity endorsement (Mercedes-Benz’s “Soul”), and shock tactics (any GoDaddy.com commercial). Even if Super Bowl advertisements do not boost product sales, word of mouth regarding the commercial can lift stock prices: “Companies with well-liked commercials see, on average, a quarter of a percent increase in their stock prices the following Monday,” Kenneth Kim, a finance researcher at the University of Buffalo, told NBC News. Come February, there will be more than one team celebrating a Super Bowl victory.
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Notebook > Media Mark Driscoll
Celebrity jeopardy
Driscoll accusations highlight the dangers of an evangelical celebrity machine BY WARREN COLE SMITH
PASTORMARK.TV
SUPER BOWL LOGO, BUDWEISER’S & DORITOS: HANDOUT • NATIONALS PARK: CHRIS BERNACCHI/AP
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H produce and market books? That question surfaced again over the past month as talk show host Janet Mefferd first criticized Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll for plagiarism, then under pressure removed evidence from her website and issued an onair apology for the way she handled an interview with Driscoll—but without retracting her accusations. The controversy began on Nov. , when Driscoll appeared on “The Janet Mefferd Show” to discuss his new book A Call to Resurgence,, published by Tyndale House Publishers. Mefferd maintains Driscoll’s representatives initiated the request for the interview. As part of her
Email: wsmith@wng.org
26 SPORTS and MEDIA.indd 63
preparation for the interview, Mefferd had encountered several passages in Driscoll’s book that turned out to be verbatim but not-in-quotation-marks passages from writing by Peter Jones, scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California. Mefferd confronted Driscoll in what quickly became an awkward and contentious interview on her radio program, syndicated by the Salem Radio Network, the nation’s largest Christian radio network. After the interview and in part as a response to criticism that Mefferd had unfairly criticized Driscoll for a “mistake” that did not rise to the level of intentional plagiarism, Mefferd put on her website more examples of Driscoll’s
uncredited use of other people’s material. On Dec. Mefferd took down that material and became publicly silent on the matter. This fed numerous blogosphere comments that Tyndale House or other organizations had pressured her or Salem. Tyndale House issued a statement defending its author: “Tyndale House takes any accusation of plagiarism seriously and has therefore conducted a thorough in-house review of the original material and sources provided by the author. After this review we feel confident that the content in question has been properly cited in the printed book and conforms to market standards.” But InterVarsity Press, publisher of the New Bible Commentary, released a statement saying “several paragraphs” of Driscoll’s book Trial: Witnesses from & Peter “improperly” used the IVP commentary “without quotation or attribution.” Mars Hill—Driscoll’s church and publisher of Trial—pulled the book from its website and issued a statement saying in part, “We have discovered that during the editing process, content from other published sources were mistaken for research notes. These sentences were adapted instead of quoted directly. We are grateful this was brought to our attention, and we have removed that document from our website to correct the mistake. Additionally, we are examining all of our similar content as a precautionary measure.” Many questions remain. In a day when many celebrity authors use ghostwriters, they may not have the close contact with development of their work that makes plagiarism less likely. Others only use researchers and do the writing themselves, but (as in the children’s game of post office) it’s easy in the course of transferring files numerous times for quotation marks and citations to disappear. Plagiarism suggests lying but ghostwriting suggests deception, and sometimes an evangelical celebrity machine leads to a mix-up of the two. WORLD had a cover story on this subject in and plans to revisit it in . A
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/11/13 10:47 AM
Notebook > Religion
Going with the flow?
Mennonites and Church of England waver in their commitment to biblical marriage BY THOMAS KIDD
>>
A
by the Church of England is recommending that Anglicans allow ministers to perform “appropriate services to mark a faithful same-sex relationship,” but not offer formal gay marriage ceremonies. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, noted that the Pilling
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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CHANGE OF HEART: EMU’s campus; Welby.
Report did not represent a “new policy statement,” conservatives worried that it would lead to official church blessings of homosexual unions. The committee, chaired by former government official Sir Joseph Pilling, said that the “foundation” of their report was the desire to “warmly welcome and affirm the presence and ministry within the Church of England of gay and lesbian people,” including homosexual clergy. They further asserted that the Church needed to repent of homophobia in its ranks. The report cautioned, however, that conservatives were not by definition homophobes just because they articulated “traditional Christian teaching on same sex relationships.” The Church, the committee said, should also consider continuing scientific advances in understanding homosexual attraction, as well as the dramatic shift of opinion, especially among young people, on gay relationships—but the public’s view should not “of itself determine the Church’s teaching.” Lee Gatiss, director of the traditionalist Church Society, welcomed an open discussion of the report, arguing that some liberal Anglicans were trying to change “the gospel into an affirmation of immoral behavior.” Committee member Keith Sinclair, the Bishop of Birkenhead, refused to sign the report, saying he feared the Church was heading toward “cultural captivity” instead of biblical faithfulness. “The Christian Church has consistently taught from biblical times that the sexual holiness … involves the restriction of sexual activity to the context of marriage between one man and one woman,” Birkenhead insisted. Recent years have seen growing divisions in the worldwide Anglican Communion, with conservative Anglicans in Africa and elsewhere not embracing homosexual activity. A
EMU: HANDOUT • WELBY: DOMINIC LIPINSKI/PA WIRE/AP
E M U (EMU) has announced it will suspend a policy against same-sex relationships for faculty, as the school enters a “listening period” to review its stance on homosexuality. If the policy change becomes permanent, EMU would become the first member institution of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) to allow practicing gays and lesbians to serve as professors. The school’s board of trustees unanimously approved the review. EMU President Loren Swartzendruber said that the period of reflection would allow the school “to engage in community discussion and discernment over issues that Mennonite congregations—indeed almost all denominations in the United States today—are wrestling with.” The board also reaffirmed EMU’s relationship with the Mennonite Church USA—but that denomination’s “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective” states that “God intends marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman for life.” Now, faculty candidates at EMU must explain any objections they have to the Confession, and professors must also sign the school’s “Community Lifestyle Commitment,” which prohibits “sexual relationships outside of marriage.” The state of Virginia, where EMU is located, does not recognize same-sex marriages. The CCCU, which has not commented on EMU’s deliberations, is an association of North American institutions. The CCCU says its mission is “to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education and to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.” The Mennonite Church USA has had its own struggles regarding same-sex marriage. In , the denomination rebuffed attempts to discipline pastor Joanna Harader for performing a same-sex “covenant ceremony.” Instead of suspending her, as some conservative churches had requested, delegates to the Mennonite Church’s Western District Conference simply noted that her action was “at variance” with Mennonite Church guidelines.
Email: tkidd@wng.org
12/10/13 9:53 AM
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Faculty openings for 2014-2015 school year: physics teacher, math teacher Our strategic focus is currently centered firmly on our math and science programming. In the ’13-’14 school year Wheaton Academy launched a brand-new International Space Station Program (ISS), an intensive, yearlong program in which a team of ten students designs an experiment, sends it into space, and analyzes the effects of zero gravity on the experiment as it is run in space. Because we believe so passionately that excellent programs are built by excellent teachers, our first and most important priority is to continue to assemble a team of cutting-edge faculty members with the academic credentials, professional experience, and entrepreneurial bent to take our program to the next level. The mission of Wheaton Academy, “to nurture growth in students through excellence, relationships and service, to the Glory of God,” has remained the centerpiece of everything that has gone on at our school since 1853. The most important element in making a WA education effective is the strong leadership of “Living Curriculum TeachersSM.” We believe LCTs must have a growing and dynamic relationship with Christ, must be excellent in their field, must hold high standards, and be capable of inspiring a range of students to reach their potential. If WA sounds like a good fit for you or someone you know, please check our website, www.wheatonacademy.org for current openings; send resumé and pre-application responses to employment@wheatonacademy.org.
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FUNDRAISING I Donors needed. Development Companions International is seeking donors to expand their Adult Literacy Education program that is teaching women in Uganda to read, write, calculate, study the Bible & be entrepreneurs. See us on Facebook.
EMU: HANDOUT • WELBY: DOMINIC LIPINSKI/PA WIRE/AP
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12/10/13 12:31 PM
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Mailbag ‘Give me your tired’
Nov. The plight of refugees worldwide is heartbreaking, and Mindy Belz’s plea for the United States to accept more refugees is commendable. However, as a volunteer refugee mentor, I see what they must endure to make it in this country. It’s not easy. Caseworkers are badly overloaded and government benefits are mindboggling to navigate. I have seen refugee men so frustrated by it all that they snap. If we are to welcome more refugees, we must offer more resources. —E L, Richardson, Texas
I disagree that the U.S. government should do more to aid Syrian refugees. Instead we need to remember our close friends and allies and do a much better job at helping them. We don’t have the resources to help every nation going through a natural disaster, self-induced crisis, or civil war. —M M, Idaho City, Idaho
‘Don’t be so predictable’ Nov. I normally appreciate your thoughtful perspective but was taken aback by how this column used Bible verses as sledgehammers to attack Miley Cyrus. As Christians, we can do better at engaging our culture with wisdom and love. —L A, Winchester, Va.
We shouldn’t be surprised by Cyrus’ public meltdown. Her sudden fall from teen idol to edgy and unhinged -yearold is just a well-orchestrated publicity stunt. The object lesson is for the rest of us. It wasn’t any more acceptable to idolize the pop star when she was the squeaky-clean Disney persona than it is now. —P H, Marietta, Ga.
Send photos and letters to: mailbag@wng.org
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‘Salt over sugar’ Nov. I am thrilled that CCM culture is shifting from “missions to profits,” and it’s great to see these new artists relying on honesty and musical excellence rather than popular culture and radio play. —E T B, Warsaw, N.Y.
‘Broken music’ Nov. J.B. Cheaney’s comparison of the breakdown of families to the breakdown of music nicely complemented “Salt over sugar.” Modern music, which had “established principles of harmony and melody,” as Cheaney said, is dying along with Western culture. CCM lyrics need sound theology. —N G, Cedaredge, Colo.
‘Cease your sulking’ Nov. Reading Andrée Seu Peterson helps me be honest with myself, God, and others, and she did it again with this column. I’ve had a long struggle with anger and have now resolved to finally let it go. Often I have reread “From this day forward” (Dec. , ) and wept over the losses of the past and the hopes of the future.
Perhaps I shall weep less over the losses and more for future blessings. Perhaps it is really not too late. —K M, Gray, Ga.
‘Not bluffi ng’ Nov. I am weary of Christians attacking other Christians for matters of conscience. Thank you to WORLD for not casting stones and thank you to Jerry Jenkins for reminding us that being in the world and not of it enables us to “rub shoulders with unsaved people” and share Christ. —L A B, Colorado Springs, Colo.
Perhaps we need to judge things such as poker by asking, Would Jesus do this? Does it glorify God? Is it good stewardship? Am I avoiding the appearance of evil? As for finding unbelievers to rub shoulders with, we are surrounded by hurting people if only our eyes will see them. —M B, West Unity, Ohio
Although the Bible does not explicitly forbid poker, in the interest of love and mutual edification Jenkins should quit playing publicly. —J H, Prescott, Ariz.
Reading about Jenkins’ poker playing was deeply disappointing. As a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, I believe he should step down from his position as chairman of the board. I have seen the devastating effects of gambling in several families and pray he looks for another way to spend his leisure time. —J J, Prairie Village, Kan.
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/3/13 3:38 PM
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‘Still going strong’ Nov. How about trading a paying job for the joy of productive retirement? Rather than valuing only work for pay, we should consider retirees who demonstrate the many productive activities in which “retired” people engage. That might move the conversation beyond the stereotype of healthy seniors living off the government so they can golf every day. —C D, Roscommon, Mich.
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‘Whole new ballgames’ Nov. Your article on the rise of Gaelic hurling in the United States reminds me of when it was occasionally featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports back in the ’s. This exotic yet brutal sport fascinated me. Given our nation’s love affair with sports, I wonder how long until it has its own cable network? —S A.D. B, San Jose, Calif.
‘Science supremacists’ Nov. Steven Pinker’s position looks like it was stripped from the pages of C.S. Lewis’ science fiction novel, That Hideous Strength. It appears to be a resurgence of logical positivism (if it ever faded). Should Pinker ever
become chairman of the humanities table, his approach means that he would soon be the only one at the table. —B MP-F, Fenton, Mich.
‘The high cost of negligence’ Nov. Thanks for the article on reporting sexual abuse. A few years ago a relative called me crying because her brother, who had abused her in childhood, had violated her daughter. She initially refused to call the police because “it would destroy” her family, but turned him in when her pastor said he had to if she wouldn’t. Now her brother is in prison. She kept this secret for years and as a result others became victims. I hope your article will encourage others to report sexual abuse. —J R, Winston-Salem, N.C.
‘Dead seriousness’ Oct. As well as asking, “How many innocent people die because we enforce the death penalty?” we should also ask, “How many innocent people die because we fail to enforce the death penalty?” —C H, Louisville, Ky.
12/10/13 4:43 PM
Thank you for this thoughtful treatise. I thought I already had a biblical perspective on capital punishment, having been taught years ago that Genesis 9 was the final word. I appreciated the challenge to my conviction and am persuaded that I’ve been wrong all these years. —Beverly Jacobson, Naples, Italy
Many Scriptures emphasize that the object of putting an offender to death was to eliminate an evil influence from society. Our system has executed innocent people, but the alternative of life in prison is also barbaric and does not really “purge the evil from among you.” Thank you for an insightful article. —Paul E. Leightner, Pisgah Forest, N.C.
Andrée Seu Peterson
—Amy Tanaka, Poulsbo, Wash. WORLD’s online archive of Peterson’s columns is available on wng.org.
Corrections The U.S. commitment to take 10,000 Syrian refugees is 0.5 percent of the number of asylum seekers (“Give me your tired,” Nov. 16, p. 32). Jennie and Mike Landreth have been married 18 years and have three children, the oldest adopted domestically (“Not Annie The Musical,” Nov. 30, p. 44).
letters & photos Email: mailbag@wng.org Write: world Mailbag, PO Box 20002, Asheville, nc 28802-9998 Please include full name and address. Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.
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70½ OR OLDER?
ROLL OVER!
I recently spent a profitable morning reading through many of Andrée Seu Peterson’s columns in the WORLD online archive. She helps us see the obvious, remember simple truths, and learn from everyday life.
Are you age 70½ or over? Did you know you can roll over the required minimum distribution of your IRA (up to $100,000) to a qualifying charity—like WORLD News Group—without owing any income tax on the distribution? If you’d like to take advantage of this tax savings, please contact your financial adviser soon because the provision expires on December 31, 2013. Why not make the most of this tax break while supporting WORLD’s important mission? Visit wng.org/rollover for details.
12/10/13 4:43 PM
R. Albert Mohler Jr. August 20, 2013
“This is not merely about some cultural conflict over moral questions; it is about an eternal conflict over the souls of men and women. Nothing less is at stake.”
Don’t just stand there: say something KRIEG BARRIE
sbts.edu/saysomething
Serious about the gospel.
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12/6/13 3:35 PM
Andrée Seu Peterson
Angels unawares Angels are in our midst—and they have our backs
>>
KRIEG BARRIE
F , I would find an envelope in the mailbox during the Christmas season, containing an untraceable money order and a holiday card signed by “the young adult group of a Korean church.” It always took me by surprise, because I always forgot about the visitation from one December to the next. I have joked with friends that I must be kind to every Korean I meet, because I never know if the person is one of my anonymous benefactors. I should be kind all the time, of course, but even Scripture gives incentive for vigilant virtue in the possibility of an angel encounter: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews :). My friend Kathleen broke down on a desolate road out West. She prayed for a white knight in shining armor, and a white pickup truck (an unusual sighting in those days) came up the road and fixed her flat tire. Was it? Angel assignments include ministering to humans: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews :). Angels comforted Jesus (Matthew :). They minister to the children of God whenever God sees fit: “Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. … And behold, an angel of the Lord … struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly’” (Acts :-). Angels have our backs. We forget this because we don’t normally see them operating, although some fortunates have: “When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ He said, ‘Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O L, please open his eyes that he may see.’ So the L opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” ( Kings :-). Picture it—encircling infantry of the Lord, robes flowing, banners flapping, manes of horses rippling, nostrils snorting, hooves pawing the ground, spear and javelin quivering. Yet angels are gentle enough to watch over your child at sleep. “For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew :).
Email: aseupeterson@wng.org
26 SEU PETERSON.indd 71
It is important not to worship angels (Colossians :): “Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God’” (Revelation :). It is important not to ignore them either, because we are disadvantaged if we shrink the dimensions of our earthly calling to the measure of what the eye can see. Those who think little of angels probably think little of demons too, and that will never do, for “we … wrestle against … the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians :). Daniel knew this on the day when a Shining One nearly apologized for being late to his assistance: “The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia” (Daniel :). Weeks before the Salvation Army bell ringers and kettledrums set up camp at the local mall, I made my way over and asked random teenage patrons for their thoughts on Christmas. Finding little resonance with the idea of a baby born to save the world, I ended up proclaiming as much as quizzing. “God came to rescue you,” I told a young man holding his sweetheart’s hand. He suddenly brightened: “I’m a volunteer firefighter, and one day I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me out of the flames.” I smiled and wished them Merry Christmas and they went on their way. And a flutter of wings was almost heard. A
DECEMBER 28, 2013 • WORLD
12/6/13 9:22 AM
Marvin Olasky
Message: God cares
We may not have all the answers, but the truth of Christmas should undergird us
>>
WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
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oncoming car, couldn’t a loving God have done more to keep Adam and Eve from eating the forbidden fruit? Keller points out the problems of other theodicies, including those based in natural law or emphasizing punishment. He concludes that each theodicy provides plausible explanation for some evil in the world but falls short of explaining all suffering. He then indicates his preference for “a defense” rather than theodicies: Instead of trying to say we know God’s mind, we acknowledge we don’t know all of God’s reasons, and ask skeptics whether they can prove that “God could not possibly have” any reasons for allowing suffering and evil. When skeptics have the burden of proof, they flunk. What we do know, Keller says, is that (flashing neon sign) GOD CARES. We know this because of Christmas, God coming to Earth and setting out on His mission of eventually suffering and dying on the cross “not to justify himself but to justify us. … We do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not. … It cannot be that he does not care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself.” Parents make mistakes, but children as they grow older forgive them as long as they understand that they’re cared for. Nonbelievers in Christ think that God, if He exists, makes mistakes; but worst of all is thinking that God, instead of caring, merely watches from a distance. That’s why some Christian community benevolences, such as DurhamCares, signal their goals in their names. That’s why President George H. W. Bush lost his reelection bid in after mistakenly reading aloud a cue card and telling his New Hampshire audience, “Message: I care.” (Which showed he did not.) That’s also why, in a th century marked by Nazis and Communists who didn’t care how many they murdered, so many good movies, from Casablanca in to Tender Mercies in the s and The Family Man in the s, involved people learning or deciding to care. That’s why others had heroes risking (sometimes sacrificing) their lives for others, as in It’s a Wonderful Life, The Great Escape, The Last of the Mohicans, or Saving Private Ryan. But the best story of all is that of God showing how He cares, and it began at Christmas. A
KRIEG BARRIE
C , but Christ’s birth is unique. No other major religion has a founder who is God or one who dies so others may live. Muhammad and the Buddha both died from eating bad food. The Prosperity Gospel is bad theology and bad storytelling. When someone notes every week a bank account growing larger, who cares? Memorable heroes face powerful and evil antagonists. They overcome obstacles to accomplish vital missions. Sometimes they sacrifice themselves for others. This works even in tales for children. We might be mildly interested in the three little pigs and their mission of building houses, but the story is memorable because of the wolf’s big lungs and murderous disposition. The saga of Jack and Jill is intriguing not because Jack fell down and broke his crown, but because Jill went tumbling after: Did she sacrifice herself to help her mate? Pastor Tim Keller, in his new book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering (Dutton), examines several major theodicies—justifications of God’s ways. One major theodicy is that suffering can “empty us of our pride and lead us to find our true joy and only security in Christ.” That’s true, but it’s not slam-dunk satisfying because some people do not encounter the adversity they need, some get much more than seems fair, and some who are murdered do not have the opportunity for their hearts to grow two sizes. Keller also asks hard questions about the popular “free will” theodicy, the idea that “God cannot lead us to do the right thing without violating our free will, and so evil is inevitable for free agents.” He writes that the Bible often shows God sovereignly directing our choices without violating our freedom. He notes that many atheists logically ask: Since we’re ready to violate the freedom of choice of a child walking into the path of an
Email: molasky@wng.org
12/10/13 10:39 AM
krieg barrie
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