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CHRIST
7/9/12 9:58 AM
Contents , / ,
34 Outside the camp
Egypt’s minority Christians, already shut out of mainstream life and politics, fear more legal—and perhaps violent—forms of oppression under the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood government
40 The organization man
John Roberts is a product of esteemed institutions, and his attachment to the “institution” of the Supreme Court may explain his controversial healthcare ruling
44 Winning against wildfires
Colorado Springs faces hundreds of homes and millions of dollars lost to the record-breaking Waldo Canyon fire, but with a renewed spirit of togetherness
48 Noxious or neighborly?
Many of us know about pawnshops only from television, film, and suite-level depictions of all pawnbrokers as “predators.” The street-level reality is more complex, and the best place to find out is a pawnshop center, New York City
54 Hope in the heartland
2012 compassion award: Our Midwest region winner balances discipline and grace : ’ ’ ( / /); : / ; : / //
5 14 16 18
23
News Human Race Quotables Quick Takes
23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music
54
61 Lifestyle 63 Technology 64 Science 65 Houses of God 66 Sports 67 Money 68 Religion
44
66
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3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 71 Mailbag 75 Andrée Seu Peterson 76 Marvin Olasky
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KRIEG BARRIE
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Joel Belz
What ails us In your own words, here are your big concerns about our culture
KRIEG BARRIE
>>
I ,, when I explicitly asked for your opinions a couple of issues ago, that I might discover something statistically defining about WORLD readers, and perhaps even about evangelical Christians at large. Or, if not defining, at least suggestive. Here’s what I asked, in WORLD’s June edition: “If you could identify just one issue that is terribly askew in our culture today, and then were granted as a gift from God the ability to set that one issue right, what would it be? What specific cultural victory, if we could win it, would provide the most leverage to produce a society that is closer to the cultural blueprint God has designed for us?” And I asked you to respond in words or less. Your replies, even after some brutal editing, constitute a short book. Because I wanted your thoughts, and not just your reaction to mine, I didn’t give you a multiple choice or an “on-a-scale-ofone-to-ten” quiz. You created your own categories, and in your own words. I’m glad we did it that way—but it makes for a little fuzzier statistical analysis. By my reading of your responses, nine categories of concern dominate your thinking. In the order of the number of your responses, they are: 1. The secularization of our society—led by the rejection of a Creator God and the dominance of evolutionary thinking. 2. Loss of the distinctive identities of men and women, leading to a loss of understanding of marriage and family. 3. Abortion. 4. Loss of the tools to educate and shape the rising generation. 5. Sense of entitlement, selfishness, and complacency. 6. Loss of a defined dominant culture, with attendant culture wars. 7. Loss of specific freedoms. 8. Loss of honest and civil public discourse. 9. Obsession with sex. Because the overall survey includes fewer than respondents (more are arriving almost every day), dogmatic inferences are risky. Don’t go too far too fast comparing any of the categories. But a few observations may be legitimate and worth noting. For example, issues , , , and all drew at least twice as many responses as did any of
Email: jbelz@worldmag.com
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the lower-ranking issues. Our experience with sampling suggests that such a ratio would almost certainly continue no matter how much we enlarged the universe. Nor is it likely, we think, that some new issue will pop up as item No. on some other list in the near future. The extensive overlapping of these several categories is, of course, obvious. And some respondents would argue (indeed, some did) that items - flow from item just as night follows day—and that fixing one of the lower-ranking issues wouldn’t necessarily do much for those higher on the list. Biggest surprise of the exercise? For me, it was that only one respondent mentioned Islam as a major concern. Notable throughout the responses was a balance between what you might call cultural activism on the one hand and pietistic devotion on the other. One respondent did list as his primary concern that “Christians are forgetting that Christ is coming back for them.” A handful of others suggested various forms of evangelistic enterprise as the main need. Most folks, though, pointed to loving cultural engagement based on the absolutes of biblical truth as the best route forward. What will that engagement look like? Reader Randy Worley was helpful when he challenged us to consider as our culture’s greatest need: “Relating properly to God sets all other issues right.” He added: “Continue to inform, challenge, exhort, and encourage me. Don’t let me off the hook. Get ‘in my face’ a little bit more! When I lay down the magazine, I need to pick up my tools and go to work for Christ’s kingdom. Please challenge me to shorten the distance between the WORLD magazine on my coffee table and the world Christ wants me to serve outside my door. Challenge me to apply something I’ve read. Go ahead—ruffle my feathers!” A J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2
WORLD
7/10/12 9:33 AM
Abdi Rahman/REUTERS/newscom
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Dispatches News > Human Race > Quotables > Quick Takes
‘Evil’ >> Abdi Rahman/REUTERS/newscom
Church attacks in Kenya are more reason for U.S. focus on growing African terror groups by mindy belz
The men who showed up outside the African Inland Church during a Sunday prayer service on July 1 wore masks and came with a plan. They drove into the church compound in Garissa, got out of their car, walked over to two policemen posted primarily to keep village kids from throwing rocks on the church’s tin roof during services, and shot them dead with pistols. Taking the policemen’s automatic weapons, they entered the church firing guns and throwing grenades. The attack killed 17 and wounded over 60, including many women and children. The pastor, a Kenyan, was unharmed, but the armed men shot his wife in the leg and killed his sister-in-law. Less than 2 miles away gunmen at the same time attacked a Catholic Church in Garissa, leaving three worshippers wounded but no one dead. Both assaults were the most lethal terror attacks in Kenya since terrorists killed
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18 at the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa in 2002—and the first time churches have been specifically and solely targeted. Garissa Mayor Ismail Garat called the assaults “evil” and said: “We are not used to witnessing such kinds of acts in our country, where people are just shot in broad daylight. We really want to know who the heartless people who did this are.” The attacks are the work of Somalia-based al Shabaab militants, who claimed responsibility via Twitter as retaliation for Kenyan Defense Forces incursions into Somalia. Garissa, a town of about 65,000 in Kenya’s North Eastern province, is mostly Somali Muslim, and it has grown alongside the prolonged heartless: A Kenyan war in Somalia and in step policeman walks with the region’s famine. inside the African Just over 50 miles from Inland Church Garissa is Dadaab, a after the attack. J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Dispatches > News
WORLD
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Summer Olympics will officially commence on July during opening ceremonies put together by a cast and crew of more than ,. This year’s opening ceremony theme—termed “Isles of Wonder”— will come with all the normal Olympic pomp, but will also include Queen Elizabeth II and volunteer performers from Britain’s socialized healthcare service, the NHS.
LOOKING AHEAD UN mandate in Iraq expires Unless Twins Days
Twinsburg, Ohio, will play host to thousands of twins—and curious scientists—when the annual Twins Days Festival opens its three-day gathering on Aug. . Twins and other multiples have been flocking to the small Ohio town since in what has turned into arguably the world’s largest gathering of its kind. For scientists eager to dig into the nature vs. nurture debate, the Twins Days Festival offers research opportunities.
the United Nations Security Council extends it once again, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq will see its mandate expire on July . The Iraqi government has agreed to a oneyear extension of the assistance mandate, but in order for it to be finalized, the Security Council’s -member panel must approve.
President Obama’s birthday
In the middle of a hotly contested campaign, President Barack Obama can be excused for taking a break on Aug. . The president will celebrate his st birthday on that day, but it’s probable that, during an election season, he will dial back the wattage of the star power of his guest list. Last year, rapper Jay-Z, musician Stevie Wonder, and actor Tom Hanks all helped Obama celebrate his th.
Men’s 4x100 medley relay finals In his quest to add
more medals to his trophy case, Michael Phelps—past winner of Olympic medals— should buoy the U.S. -meter medley squad as it likely competes in the Olympic finals on Aug. . The team of Phelps and three other American swimmers took first place in the event in last year’s World Championships.
OLYMPICS: HANDOUT • TWINS DAYS: CHARLES-ROBINSON • UN: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES • OBAMA: NUCCIO DINUZZO/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/MCT/LANDOV • PHELPS: JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES
refugee camp that should be emblematic of the international community’s inability to arrest the humanitarian crisis, particularly when the root of the crisis is Islamic insurgency. The United Nations built the camp to house , when civil war in Somalia began over years ago. Today it houses about ,. Al Shabaab is showing its ability to take advantage of the humanitarian crisis, and not surprisingly has rooted terror cells within Dadaab. Many suspect that the attacks on Garissa churches were launched from Dadaab and modeled after recent Boko Haram attacks on churches in Nigeria. The terror group also is targeting U.S. citizens in Kenya. After specified threats to Americans in Mombasa, the U.S. embassy in Nairobi issued a travel warning to Americans living or traveling in the area over a month ago. The embassy lifted it just a week before the Garissa attacks, and reissued it—this time for the entire country—on July . Kenyans have seen at least attacks involving grenades or explosive devices in the past year, with at least people killed and more than wounded. Nine of those attacks were in North Eastern Province near Dadaab. For their part, Kenyans feel caught in the terrorists’ war on the West, remembering especially the al-Qaeda bombings at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. That attack was clearly a precursor to /—yet over Kenyans were killed compared to Americans. The latest attacks, together with threats across the Horn of Africa and in Nigeria, suggest a need for a heightened U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa. Yet they come at a time when the embassy in Nairobi faces intense scrutiny amid the sudden resignation of U.S. Ambassador Scott Gration. Gration is the son of U.S. missionaries to Kenya and a former U.S. envoy to Sudan, where his soft handling of the Islamic government in Khartoum also brought controversy. Now he stands accused of bullying and threatening embassy staff and has resigned effective the end of the month, citing “differences with Washington regarding my leadership style.” A leadership style to confront terrorism is needed before it widens well beyond Kenya’s North East. A
Isles of Wonder The London
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7/10/12 5:49 PM
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Establish a Foundation for Your Child’s Future OLYMPICS: HANDOUT • TWINS DAYS: CHARLES-ROBINSON • UN: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES • OBAMA: NUCCIO DINUZZO/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/MCT/LANDOV • PHELPS: JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES
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7/10/12 9:05 AM
Defunded
The North Carolina legislature voted earlier this month to override Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of a state budget bill that redirects , in family planning funding from Planned Parenthood to county health departments. “This budget adjustment does not cut a dime of family planning funding,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “It does protect the consciences of pro-life taxpayers by sending funds to county health departments which do not perform abortions.”
A different path? When the head of Libya’s transitional government described the country’s future after the downfall and death of dictator Muammar Qaddafi last year, he declared: “We are an Islamic country. We take the Islamic religion as the core of our new government. The constitution will be based on our Islamic religion.” Eight months later, Libyan voters may be trying to take a different path. The country held its first elections in decades on July , and preliminary results indicated a surprising tally: A coalition of secularists looked poised to make a strong showing against Islamist political groups. That’s striking in a country that’s percent Islamic. But secular-based politicians may have prevailed by focusing on the dynamic most pressing for many voters: rebuilding the country and the economy after years of Qaddafi’s corrupt rule.
APPENDAGES NO MORE
Republican governor-led states are jumping on the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling, which said states will not be required to expand their Medicaid rolls. The healthcare law required states to expand their Medicaid rolls or face the prospect of losing all Medicaid funding, and the Supreme Court ruled - that states should have the option to refuse the expansion without losing all funding. Republican governors from Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Wisconsin have said they will not only decline the Medicaid expansion, because they’re concerned about how it could balloon their budgets, but also will refuse to administer the insurance exchanges required under the law, leaving that job to the federal government. “I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab. Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care,’” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a July letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to healthcare.”
WORLD
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Let it end
After a photo of a forced abortion victim in China went viral last month, discussion of the country’s one-child policy has moved from the blogosphere to academic circles. First a government-affiliated think tank recommended that China relax its one-child policy and consider a two-child option, pointing to the growing elderly population and shrinking workforce. In the census, . percent of Chinese were over the age of , compared to . percent in . At the same time only . percent of Chinese were under , compared to percent in . A few days later, a group of prominent Chinese scholars penned an open letter challenging the one-child policy, speaking not just of its economic implications but its human-rights violations. It specifically mentioned -year-old Feng Jianmei, whom authorities forced to abort her baby at months because she could not afford to pay the , yuan (,) fine for a second child. “From an economic perspective, the one-child policy is irrational,” signatory and Chinese internet entrepreneur James Liang told The Wall Street Journal. “From a human rights perspective, it’s even less rational.”
LIBYA: ABDEL MAGID AL FERGANY/AP • PERDUE: SHAWN ROCCO/THE NEWS & OBSERVER/AP • PERRY: RON T. ENNIS/FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/NEWSCOM CREDIT
MOVING ON: Libyans hold up their ink-marked fingers as they celebrate in Tripoli.
WORLDmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views
7/10/12 5:18 PM
CRUZ, DEWHURST: LM OTERO/AP • PROTEST: AGELIKA WARMUTH DPA/LANDOV
Dispatches > News
Senate
showdown
libya: Abdel Magid Al Fergany/ap • perdue: Shawn Rocco/The News & Observer/ap • perry: Ron T. Ennis/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT/newscom CREDIT
cruz, Dewhurst: LM Otero/ap • PROTEST: AGELIKA WARMUTH DPA/LANDOV
Conservatives Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst fight it out in Texas by Edward Lee Pitts When Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst faced off in a recent debate, the two Republican candidates vying to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate took the stage wearing similar dark suits and nearly matching blue ties over white dress shirts. The wardrobe similarities symbolized the common ground they share on most issues: They both support repealing Obamacare, getting tougher on illegal immigration, passing balanced budgets, and abolishing certain federal agencies like the Department of Education. They are pro-life, favor term limits and lower taxes, and oppose the DREAM Act. But that has not stopped the two candidates from going after one another ahead of a July 31 runoff election to decide which of the two will be the Republican nominee to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. With voter turnout expected to be low, both candidates likely will ramp up their attacks in the campaign’s final weeks. Cruz, a former Texas Solicitor General with endorsements from Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum, argues that Dewhurst is tied too closely to the Texas
Cruz
political establishment. “Everyone who has business in front of the state legislature, 100 percent of them, are with David Dewhurst, and they have to be,” Cruz said. Dewhurst, the sitting lieutenant governor of Texas for the past nine years, paints Cruz as beholden to Washingtonbased special interest groups. “We’ve always had an independent streak here in Texas,” Dewhurst said. “We’re ornery, we’re tough, and we’ve never been very good at taking orders from Washington.” Campaign finance records seem to back up both assertions: Cruz has taken in nearly $4 million from conservative groups around the nation. Meanwhile, registered Texas lobbyists have given 26 times more money to Dewhurst than to Cruz. The two campaigns and outside groups combined have already spent more than $25 million in a race that’s likely to determine the new senator,
Dewhurst
since a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Dewhurst, who has received Gov. Rick Perry’s endorsement, said during the Dallas debate in late June that he has “never compromised my conservative principles once” and that he has the experience necessary to pass legislation. “We’re the fastest growing job creator in the entire country,” Dewhurst said of Texas, “and I want to take those skills to Washington and get our country back to work.” Cruz is casting himself as a conservative outsider who needs support from grassroots activists to send him to Washington. There, he pledges, he would ally himself with the bloc of Tea Party lawmakers that Cruz said are needed to keep moderate Republicans in check. “Now is not the time for conciliation and moderation,” Cruz said at a recent event north of Dallas. “Now is the time to draw a line in the sand.”
Iranian injustice Iranian Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani marked 1,000 days in prison on July 8, nearly three years since officials arrested the 34-year-old pastor and charged him with apostasy. Iranian judges may level new charges against him, including blasphemy and crimes against national security, reports the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). A new conviction could give JUSTICE DENIED: Protest in Hamburg, judges more reason to carry out a death sentence Germany, for the he already has received, following a trial date release of pastor CSW says is set for Sept. 8. Youcef Nadarkhani.
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Dispatches > News
Back to the future
After spending two years launching protons inside the world’s largest particle accelerator, physicists in Switzerland announced July 4 they’d finally found evidence of the Higgs boson, an elusive, elemental particle first hypothesized in 1964. Two independent teams found signals pointing to the Higgs boson in the aftermath of 800 trillion proton collisions. The chance of those signals being false is 1 in 3.5 BIG EVENT: CMS protonmillion, the scientists said—although it’s possible they represent proton collision in which some other, undiscovered particle. 4 high energy electrons Physicists believe the Higgs boson, sometimes nicknamed the (green lines and red towers) are observed in “God particle,” is responsible for giving atoms their mass. Some an event that shows hope the particle will help explain the beginnings of the universe, characteristics expected or illuminate other mysteries, such as the invisible “dark matter” from the decay of a that pervades space. Higgs boson.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced July 3 that his state ended the 2012 fiscal year with a $500 million budget surplus and more than $2 billion in reserves. The numbers are large enough to trigger an automatic tax refund of at least $100 per person, returning to taxpayers about $300 million when they file this year’s tax returns. When Daniels became Indiana’s first Republican governor in 16 years in 2005, the state had a biennial budget process—and the two-year deficit ran to $800 million. Daniels, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director under President George W. Bush, set up an OMB for Indiana and gave it real power. Spending slowed, causing Democrats to howl. But Daniels was a bipartisan offender: A temporary tax increase upset fellow Republicans. But results came quickly, and Indiana has repaid more than $750 million to schools, universities, and local governments, and has taken dramatic steps to fund the state’s currently unfunded pension liability. Will the budget bona fides put Daniels on Romney’s short list for veep? Unlikely. Daniels is slated to become president of Purdue University when his term as governor expires in January 2013. He told Fox News in May that the vice presidency is “not an office I want to hold, expect to hold, have any plans to hold. If I thought that call was coming I would disconnect the phone.”
President Barack Obama on July 9 proposed extending Bush-era tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year—in exchange for raising taxes in 2013 for everyone above that threshold. Mitt Romney responded: “To add a higher tax on job creators and on small business is about the worst thing I can imagine to do if you want to create jobs.” The chart (at right) highlights the differences among the current tax rates and rates under Obama or Romney.
10
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Tax rates under current law in 2012, in 2013 without changes in law, and in 2013 as proposed in the Obama budget and Romney economic plan Income
2012 2013 Obama Romney
Over $388,350
35% 39.6% 39.6% 28%
$217,450-388,350
33
36
36
26.4
$142,700-217,450
28
31
28
22.4
$70,700-142,700
25
28
25
20
$17,400-70,700
15
15
15
12
Top dividend tax rate 15
43.4* 43.4*
15
Top capital gains tax rate
15
23.8* 30
15
Estate tax rate
35
55
0
45
*Includes the 3.8% investment tax under the Affordable Care Act Source: ISI Group and The Wall Street Journal
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting this month approved a resolution calling for “an end to the practice of corporal punishment in homes, schools and child care facilities.” Fifty-one percent of the church leaders meeting in Pittsburgh voted for the measure, while 47 percent opposed it. The General Assembly also affirmed and expanded the PCUSA’s support of abortion. In 1992 the PCUSA said abortion can be “morally acceptable” under certain circumstances. This year, it said the church supports “full access to reproductive health care for both women and men in both private and public health plans.” Such positions are why churchgoers are fleeing the PCUSA in droves. The church has seen a precipitous decline in attendance—more than 10 percent in the last five years alone. Today the PCUSA has less than 2 million members, down from a high of more than 4 million in the 1970s, and the average PCUSA church has less than 150 in attendance on a Sunday.
Higgs boson: CERN/ap • Daniels: William B. Plowman/NBC/ap CREDIT
by the numbers
Abortion? Yes. Spanking? No.
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7/10/12 4:49 PM
James Estrin/The New York Times/redux
The people’s money
Summer break
District judge’s injunction allows churches once again to rent New York city school space By tiffany owens in new york
CREDIT
James Estrin/The New York Times/redux
>>
A battle over whether religious groups can rent space in New York City public-school buildings may be heading to the Supreme Court. Since 1995, New York City’s Board of Education has been contending against The Bronx Household of Faith over whether allowing churches to meet inside a public-school building violates the separation of church and state. The lawsuit climaxed with a city-wide eviction order earlier this year kicking out all religious groups that use public-school buildings. But on June 30, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska issued a permanent injunction against the city, calling its policy prohibiting church access to school property a violation of the religious groups’ First Amendment rights. Two days later, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged to appeal the decision, a process that some predict might bring contending sides to the high court in Washington. “If they agree with us, then they can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Bill Devlin, pastor of Manhattan Bible Church and a leader in fighting the city’s eviction orders. “If they do not agree, then we will appeal.” The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which has represented the Bronx church in court, fully expects the city to press its case through the federal court system. “That is going to be more of an uphill climb,” said ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence. “The 2nd Circuit has not been as receptive to arguments about equal access as the District Court has been.” In the midst of the litigation battle, Councilman Fernando Cabrera is working to present Bills 882 and 883 to the City Council to overturn the city’s policy and allow religious organizations equal access to public-school buildings. In guiding the city’s decision, the Board of Education had contended that
religious services held in public-school buildings represented a threat to the minds of “impressionable youth.” They claimed that young students would believe that the views presented during a religious service after school
joyful: Children play during a service for a Presbyterian congregation holding services at John Jay Public High School in New York.
hours were also the official views of the state since the school and church meet in the same building. But Judge Preska wasn’t convinced. “The fact that a youth basketball program holds tournaments in a school at the same time that a church holds Sunday services there, both pursuant to a neutral policy that promotes the general welfare of the community, does not suggest to the informed objective observer that the school is endorsing religion just as it does not suggest the school is endorsing basketball,” she said. With a permanent injunction, some local churches proved eager to renew
their school-renting permits.“I have renewed mine until Sept. 2,” reported Rick Del Rio, pastor of Abounding Grace Ministries on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His church meets in P.S. 34 and is moving ahead with a full slate of summer activities for the neighborhood, including basketball competitions, food for the homeless, and street outreach. “We’re seeing an unprecedented rise in stabbings and shootings,” he said. In response, he’s putting together a team of church members who will circuit the
area on rotation and hopefully create a crime-deterring presence. Del Rio himself has been on the scene talking with youth and parents for hours late at night. “With kids out of school and high unemployment, you have an atmosphere of trouble,” Del Rio explained. “We’re trying to step in before this gets out of control.” Abounding Grace has been known for this type of intervention since the congregation planted itself on the Lower East Side 20 years ago. “This type of thing is what we’ve always done,” Del Rio said. “We do it out of mission … it’s our heart to serve.” With the court reprieve allowing his church back into P.S. 34, Del Rio said, “We’re excited for the stability.” A J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Dispatches > News
Made in Japan
‘Nothing is left’ Torrential monsoon rains triggered massive flooding in parts of Bangladesh and India, killing some 200 victims and forcing millions from their homes. The floods swept through mostly rural villages during the last week of June and destroyed tens of thousands of acres of crops. Throngs of hungry and exhausted villagers began trekking back to their communities in early July to survey the damage. Officials estimated the flooding destroyed thousands of homes. The U.K.-based Barnabas Fund reported that it was providing emergency aid to Christian families struck by the disaster. The report said families would likely need help for the foreseeable future “as they will have to rebuild their lives from scratch.” deluge: Meanwhile, in Russia flooding on July 6 killed at least 171 A flooded victims and devastated the southern mountain town of Krymsk. house in Boramari Residents of the town of 57,000 said warnings from local offivillage, cials came too late, and many in the town were sleeping when near the flood waters hit. “Nothing is left,” resident Ovsen Torosyan, Guahati, 30, told the Reuters news service. “We are like tramps.” India.
Derecho damage may not have been as secure against quake damage as officials thought, and that other nuclear plants could be in danger if another major quake hits. Commission head Kiyoshi Kurokawa wrote that government officials made the disaster worse by interfering with the response. And in a candid rebuke of Japanese society, Kurokawa wrote that the tepid disaster response stemmed from the culture: “our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’: our groupism; and our insularity.” The author concluded: “This was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’”
ALL WET: Tsunami waves approach the Fukushima plant on March 11.
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On the morning of June 29, a powerful “derecho”—a wall of powerful, fast- moving thunderstorms—was born over Chicago and swept across Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The storm’s hurricaneforce winds killed 24 in its path and left millions without power in the midst of one of Washington’s all-time worst heat waves. The 100-plus temperatures made the storm especially violent, and then heat burned on for more than a week as cities set up cooling stations for those still without power. Some meteorologists used the weather as evidence of man-made global warming: “It’s very consistent with what we’d expect in a warming world,” Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center, told The Washington Post. Just over two years ago Washington was under record-setting snow and experiencing one of its coldest winters, which some saw as evidence against global warming. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NPR then, “It is important that people recognize that weather is not the same thing as climate.”
india: Anupam Nath/ap • Fukushima: Kurita KAKU/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images • indiana: Samuel Hoffman/The Journal-Gazette/ap CREDIT
An independent Japanese commission published a remarkably blunt conclusion about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011: “It was a profoundly man-made disaster—that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.” The July 5 report by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission challenged the claims of officials in both the Fukushima plant and the Japanese government. Officials had insisted that the tsunami—not the earthquake—caused the massive damage at Fukushima that led to the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. The tsunami, officials said, was a once-in-millennium event that no plant could withstand. The commission rejected that idea, and said the earthquake might have caused the damage. That’s significant because it means the plant
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InspIratIon for Men of All Ages
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Dispatches > Human Race post-Mayberry years, he eventually found success playing Southern lawyer Ben Matlock. He was forever linked, however, to sheriff Andy Taylor, who Griffith once reminded was merely a persona: “I am not any favorite dad; I am not any kind of all-American person. … I have many failings. … I am a man, like any other man.”
DIED Former WED U.S. Rep.
DIED America’s favorite sheriff Andy Griffith died July at age . During an era of social and political upheaval, The Andy Griffith Show resonated with viewers charmed by folksy Mayberry widower Andy Taylor promoting small-town values within his family and community. Throughout its eight-year run the show consistently ranked in television’s top before claiming the No. spot during its final - season. Although Griffith’s career struggled in the
WORLD
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DIED One of the last surviving French agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), the espionage group that aided anti-Nazi resistance fighters, died May (and was not reported widely until late June). The brazen Count Robert de la Rochefoucauld, , escaped death and imprisonment during his
missions in occupied France, eluding the enemy once disguised as a Nazi guard and another time as a nun.
DIED Peter Gillquist, a former Campus Crusade for Christ leader who during the s led a migration of evangelicals into the Orthodox church, died July at age . He served as director of missions and evangelism for the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese. A former editor with Thomas Nelson, Gillquist authored several books including Orthodox. Becoming Orthodox DIED Sterling Huston, , who directed North American Crusades for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as one of Graham’s closest aides, died June of cancer. DIED Ernest Borgnine, , died July . From the starring role in the s comedy Navy, he played the McHale’s Navy bad guy in over films, won one Oscar, and became the oldest actor ever nominated for a Golden Globe in for his vocal role in the animated SquarePants. SpongeBob SquarePants TAPPED Medical Ministry International has tapped Samuel Smith to serve as its executive director and CEO. Smith, who spent more than two decades in retail brand development and marketing, most recently worked as the CEO of Mercy Ships.
FRANK: JAIME E. CONNOLLY/FOTIQUE/AP • SHAMIR: MARCY NIGHSWANDER/AP • GRIFFITH: CBS/LANDOV • GILLQUIST: HANDOUT • BORGNINE: FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES CREDIT
Barney Frank, D-Mass., , married Jim Ready, a -year-old carpenter and welder on July . The New York Times described the event, legal in Massachusetts and granted only in five other states, as “low key”—though members of Congress attended, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Gov. Deval Patrick officiated. Frank, who publicly acknowledged that he was gay in and plans to retire at the end of this term, is the first member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir—the Shamir hardliner who staunchly resisted land-forpeace compromises with the Palestinians— died June at age . During his tenure in -
and -, Shamir’s leadership was tested by the first Intifada, the Gulf War, and the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The Polish-born Shamir was active as an underground militant pressing for Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine, and he served in Israel’s Mossad.
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These lectures, based on Dr. Mangalwadi’s book, The Book That Made Your World, fill a vital need for anyone who wants to understand the root cause of the West’s decline and what must be done to reverse it. With charm and passion, Dr. Mangalwadi argues that the Bible is the soul of Western Civilization and its rejection and replacement by the secular narrative has led to a gradual but ever-intensifying decline. But far from being a prophet of doom, Mangalwadi gives hope for Western renewal based on a return to biblical values. Includes ten lectures plus a bonus lecture, approximately one hour each: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
From Michelangelo to Freud: The Devolution of Human Dignity From Bach to Cobain: Losing the Soul of Music and Hope From Da Vinci to Dan Brown: The Decline from Reason to Mysticism From Science to Sorcery: Why Witchcraft Appeals More Than Science From Luther’s Vicarage to Hefner’s Harem: Turning Men into (Play)boys and Women into ‘Desperate Housewives’ From the Scottish Reformation to the Iraqi War: Does Washington Know the West’s Recipe for Freedom? From the Great Awakening to a ‘New Age’: Beyond Good and Evil From Paul to Paris Hilton: Can a Defeated Messiah save Hollywood Heroes? From Tolerance to Terrorism: Why Do Taxpayers Pay Advocates to Defend Lawbreakers? From Darkness into the Light: Must the Sun Set on the West?
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Dr Vishal Mangalwadi has been described by Christianity Today as “India’s foremost Christian intellectual.” The late Chuck Colson called Mangalwadi, “one of the greatest Christian worldview thinkers of our day.” Born and educated in India, Mangalwadi founded a community development organization in the 1970s to serve India’s rural poor. He went on to author or co-author 13 books including The Book That Made Your World upon which these lectures are based. For more information, please visit www.vishalmangalwadi.com.
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TRACI RIECHMAN, who was part of a lunchtime crowd at Kozy Corners Restaurant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, visited by President Obama on July , on her doubts that the president will carry the area in the November election.
‘We did not have answers. We have a dead border guard. We have a program that didn’t work. We have guns that are still missing. And we need answers.’ U.S. Rep. LARRY KISSELL, D-N.C., on his vote to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Kissell has declined to endorse President Obama’s reelection campaign.
‘That’s like saying, “Now that I’ve cut your head off let’s bury the hatchet.”’ U.S. Rep. PHIL GINGREY, R-Ga., on a comment by Democratic Rep. David Scott that Republicans and Democrats should put Obamacare behind them and work together on healthcare issues in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that the law is constitutional.
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‘Oh my gosh. I pushed green.’ North Carolina state Rep. BECKY CARNEY, a Democrat, overheard on her microphone as she accidentally voted in favor of making fracking legal in the state. Carney’s vote was the deciding one in overriding Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of the fracking bill and could not be changed.
‘This is really over.’ -year-old swimmer TORRES,, after she failed to DARA TORRES qualify for the Olympics, finishing fourth in the -meter freestyle. Torres, who has won Olympic medals, is the only American swimmer to compete in five Olympic games (, , , , and ).
OBAMA: SUSAN WALSH/AP • KISSELL: NELL REDMOND/AP • GINGREY: TOM WILLIAMS/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES • CARNEY: HANDOUT CREDIT• TORRES: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES
‘We have a lot of houses for sale.’
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Dispatches > Quotables
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OBAMA: SUSAN WALSH/AP • KISSELL: NELL REDMOND/AP • GINGREY: TOM WILLIAMS/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES • CARNEY: HANDOUT CREDIT• TORRES: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES
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Dispatches > Quick Takes
The first problem in acquiring a bottle of Penfolds Block Cabernet Sauvignon is the price tag. With an asking price of , for each of the existing bottles, the Australian Cabernet Sauvignon is among the priciest wines ever to be offered for sale. According to vintners at the Australian Penfolds winery, the wine’s value comes from the pedigree of its grapes. The Australian wine was made with the oldest producing cabernet sauvignon vines, transplanted from France to Australia in the s. The grapes the Penfolds vines produce aren’t great in quantity, but wine experts laud them as exceptionally flavorful. Which brings the second problem into sharper focus: Exactly what do you pair with a , bottle of wine?
If you’re wondering what happens when you turn a -year-old loose on the internet, one New Zealand mother has the answer: He attempts to buy a , train. In June, one Kiwi mother identified only by her online name accidentally left her account on a New Zealand auction site up. That’s when her -year-old son got on the computer and began clicking around. Eventually, the child landed on a listing selling an old dilapidated electric passenger train. And, somehow the youngster managed to place a winning bid on the relic for ,. After a frantic email by the mother, the boy’s bid was removed and on July a real buyer was found for the train.
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During a trip through airport security on June , actor William Shatner boldly went where no man ought to go. He was wearing unusually baggy clothing in preparation for his flight, and the Star Trek actor’s pants fell down during the security check, exposing his underwear to dozens of onlookers. “It was awful to have people looking at me with my pants down, probably the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me,” Shatner admitted. Shatner blamed the faux pas on his baggy clothing and lack of a belt to avoid setting off metal detectors.
PENFOLDS: HANDOUT • JONES: © SWNS GROUP • TRAIN: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • SHATNER: KEVIN WINTER/NBCUNIVERSAL/GETTY IMAGES CREDIT
When residents of Bethel, Alaska, realized the fliers announcing the opening of a Taco Bell in their remote town of about , were a hoax, their elation quickly turned to despair. Residents in the tiny and difficult-to-reach town know fast food from cable television ads, but because of the town’s place in the far West of the already-remote state, they’ve never had a fast food restaurant. But executives at Taco Bell who heard about the hoax decided to arrange for a one-time feast for town residents. On July , Taco Bell executives arranged for , tacos to be flown from Anchorage, Alaska, (the nearest Taco Bell location) miles west to Bethel. Even better: The fast food chain picked up the bill.
One British woman learned the hard way that if you want to defraud government benefit programs, you might stay on the safe side and not go to work for the government. For years, Rose Jones collected public benefits from the government of the United Kingdom, claiming that a spinal condition left her bed-ridden and incapacitated. But the truth, which was revealed at a trial that ended on June , was that Jones had been collecting disability benefits of nearly , while holding down two full-time jobs— including one for the government’s own Ministry of Defense. Jones was ultimately convicted of seven counts of fraud.
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LANDWEHR: BILL INGRAM/THE PALM BEACH POST/ZUMA/NEWSCOM • SAN DIEGO: BEN BALLER/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • BROWNS: FRIEDA VAN DE POLL/CONNECT CULTURE CREDIT
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Residents of San Diego who showed up for the well-known Big Bay Boom July fireworks show certainly got a big show, but it lasted only seconds instead of the scheduled minutes. A technical malfunction meant the show began and ended simultaneously with the entire fireworks program being set off at the same time. The result was a spectacular—and spectacularly short—display.
Some artists use canvas, others marble. Wisconsin’s Troy Landwehr specializes in cheese. Called by some the nation’s foremost (and only?) cheese artist, Landwehr crafted a -pound block of mild cheddar cheese into a likeness of Mt. Rushmore for the lobby of the West Palm Beach, Fla., City Hall for the Fourth of July. The title of the work: My Country ’Tis of Cheese. Landwehr also decided to donate all the chipped-off chunks of his sculpture to The Lord’s Place, a local charity that feeds the homeless. “We’re expecting,” said The Lord’s Place’s Robert Coleman, “to be getting about to pounds of cheese in various chunks.”
Perhaps if Hooksett, N.H., town administrator Dean Shankle understood why someone has been systematically littering on Route A for months now, he could accept it more easily. As it is, Shankle knows neither who is responsible, nor why a stretch of road in his community can’t stay clean. According to local authorities, every Sunday morning, someone dumps hundreds of blank lottery slips (ones where players select their own numbers) along the roadside on Route A. And according to Shankle, the weekly litterings have been going on for more than three months. “I have no idea why someone would be doing it,” Shankle told the Union Leader. “If someone does have any notion who it is, it would be good to know.”
A pub crew’s decision to turn away a few uniformed British soldiers may end up costing them dearly. Taking a break from practicing funeral maneuvers for a slain British soldier, six pallbearers in full military dress tried to step into Browns, a pub in Coventry, U.K., for a tea break. But staff at Browns turned the six soldiers away, citing a pub policy of prohibiting the entrance of anyone wearing a uniform. The soldiers then found a pub nearby that offered them free tea. But once the snub became public, a backlash against Browns has grown. Facebook groups are calling for a boycott, and the pub has required police protection after its front window was shattered by a thrown brick. Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at WORLDmag.com/iPad
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7/9/12 10:39 PM
Janie B. Cheaney
Heaven and earth The Kingdom is here, and the church is its staging ground
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blessing. With the appearance of Jesus, a new era begins: the Kingdom of Heaven. Not a smooth transition, according to Matthew :, where (depending on translation) it is suffering violence or violently advancing. But the Kingdom is here; as the Temple was an outpost of heaven on earth, the church is heaven’s staging ground, scattered all over the globe in millions of flickering lights. Ever since creation, heaven and earth are paired, just as Christ, ever since the incarnation, is the union of God and man. And at the end of time both will be recreated. That’s something to keep in mind as we boil through summer, when the a/c fails and the kids snap at each other and campaign rhetoric soars to new heights of absurdity and the Supreme Court hands down infuriating decisions. In the thick of earthly chaos, the invisible walls of the Kingdom of Heaven rise around us, cool and serene. Seeing it takes faith, just as Abraham somehow saw a living heir in the bound boy trembling under his knife (Hebrews :). But all the heroes of faith in Hebrews were commended for exactly this: seeing beyond their natural horizon. And now they are part of a vast cloud of witnesses, looking on with profound interest. Heaven is not a default “better place.” It is part of our drama, intimately connected. Heaven will not dispose of earth, or leave her behind, or forget her. The New Jerusalem is poised to come down with a loud proclamation: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation :). And it begins here and now. A
KRIEG BARRIE
L , The American Spectator published a “Symposium on Heaven” inspired by Peter Kreeft’s book, Heaven: the Heart’s Deepest Longing. A Christian believer, a Jewish believer, and a skeptic contributed to the discussion. The skeptic, John Derbyshire, used up most of his space mocking C.S. Lewis, whom Kreeft perhaps over-quoted in his book. The Christian, Jonathan Aitken, took Derbyshire’s demand for evidence at face value, offering hauntingly similar near-death experiences (including his own) as hints of an afterlife. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s “Heaven is Overrated” calls everyone back down to earth: We can leave the afterlife to God, because there’s plenty to appreciate and address here and now. I often wander into the rabbi’s camp. Words fail Isaiah and Paul when attempting to describe heaven; how can mortal minds comprehend it? I anticipate it through faith, and it’ll be great—but in the meantime, we don’t want to be too heavenlyminded for any earthly good, do we? For the most part, Christians leave heaven-talk for funerals. So does the general population, to go by the common observation when some unhappy soul has shuffled off: “He’s gone to a better place.” But heaven is not a white hanky of consolation in times of grief, nor a windy platitude. It’s closer than we realize, joined to earth at the hip. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” sing the Sons of Korah (Psalm ). An image of heaven springs to our minds, but the place of the song is on earth—the Temple in Jerusalem, a grand structure by all accounts, but surely it pales in comparison with God’s actual throne? Not in the mind of the devout Jew who traveled there once a year. The Temple was the actual dwelling of God on earth, anticipated in the “songs of ascent” chanted by pilgrims on their way to meet Him. Before dismissing the idea as crude and “unspiritual,” we might remember how God actually works. Discussing his book, Simply Christian, N.T. Wright contrasts the pantheist view of God-as-everything and the deist view of God-aselsewhere: “Judaism and Christianity have a view of God in the world that is much more interesting and complex—where God and the world, heaven and earth actually overlap and interlock.” In the Old Testament, heaven is God’s place, but also an overarching providence (“under heaven”), a witness, a place of appeal, the origin of earthly
Email: jcheaney@worldmag.com
7/9/12 12:07 PM
Taught by Professor Steven L. Tuck
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7/9/12 12:08 PM
From Lost Boy to
oLympic AthLete One Lost Boy’s Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan
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Jaimie Trueblood/columbia/sony
overcoming, triumph, and redemption. It is the once-in-a-lifetime story of a Sudanese lost boy who became an American citizen and Olympic athlete. His life is a powerful picture of the fact that we can overcome, that what seems out of reach is within our grasp if we’d believe and if we’d only try.
Reviews Movies & TV > Books > Q&A > Music
Jaimie Trueblood/columbia/sony
Broken web MOVIE: Spider-Man remake doesn’t live up to its predecessors or to its studio’s boasts by Megan Basham
>>
Other than the obvious cash grab, it’s hard to understand why Sony decided Spider-Man was ready for a reboot a mere five years after Columbia released the final entry of Sam Raimi’s version to theaters. The studio’s marketing angle, promoted heavily in press releases to the media and in interviews with the film’s stars, was that director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) would do for the web slinger what Christopher Nolan had done for the dark
Email: mbasham@worldmag.com
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knight—namely, make him grittier, smarter, and more realistic. But by the time Nolan launched a new Batman franchise (eight years after the previous run), the brand had become a joke. Batman’s earnings in the mid-’90s were average to awful compared to their cost, and the films were most noteworthy for the campy performances of stars who seemed embarrassed to be there. Raimi’s Spider-Man, by contrast, ended on a high note, still popular with both critics and audiences. To make matters even more inexplicable, not only is Marc Webb no Christopher Nolan, he’s no Sam Raimi. There’s nothing overtly awful about The Amazing Spider-Man (rated PG-13 for language and fairly cartoonish violence) except that it J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Reviews > Movies & TV
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Though only a high-school intern, Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone), Peter’s love interest, apparently has full knowledge of every bit of classified research going on in Oscorp MOVIE and has all the passwords to prove it. And realistic? Leaving aside for the moment that the villain is a humanoid lizard (which I would have no probby Stephanie Perrault lem with but for Sony’s Nolan boasts), Spider-Man manages A good movie is as much about what’s in it as what’s not. to inspire the love and devoIce Age 4: Continental Drift—this summer’s follow-up on tion of the entire city only the prehistoric adventures of Manny, Diego, and Sid—would days after his first public have been a B movie had it peddled the jaded wares of conappearance. Ask Tim Tebow temporary culture (obscene humor, a weak father figure, how quickly New Yorkers and a politicized idea of family and community). are won over by those whose The PG film makes the A-list by tossing those elements in reputations are built on good the rubbish heap, offering instead an old-fashioned adventure works. A scene where a cadre story about a father who is strong and good, a close-knit of construction workers go family, and the gift of true friendship. Be forewarned: There into over-time to give Spiderwill be frequent laughter. Man a hand is particularly The films opens with the obsessed squirrel, Scrat, doing irksome in that it looks so what he’s been doing since the dawn of time—trying to get much like one in Spider-Man an acorn. Blindly pursuing happiness, he plummets to the 3, except here it feels center of the earth, chasing his coveted prize around the manipulative and unearned. planet’s spherical core with seismic consequences. Earth’s As for that cash grab, central landmass begins to split, becoming Africa, Asia, there’s no doubt that Sony’s Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Antarctica. carefully orchestrated buzz While Scrat struggles to catch his acorn, things are falling and major ad campaign have apart on terra firma. To make matters worse, Manny the done their work and that mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano) is coping with the fact they will turn a profit on that his daughter, Peaches (voiced by Keke Palmer), is not a their Spiderlittle girl any more and wants to go Man venture. where the cool crowd goes and But marketing nothing good happens—The Falls. isn’t everything. When Peaches sneaks off to the For the weekend of july 6-8 Adjusted for forbidden destination with her friend according to Box Office Mojo inflation, The Louis, Manny goes to find her and cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), Amazing Spiderbring her home, much to her chagrin. violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, Man took in less “I’m trying to protect you,” Manny from kids-in-mind.com than half of what tells her. “That’s what dads do.” At that S V L Raimi’s final instant, things get interesting. The 1̀ The Amazing webbed advenearth splits and Manny, Diego, and Sid Spider-Man* PG-13........ 3 6 4 ture managed to are cast adrift on a floating iceberg. 2̀ Ted R................................... 8 5 10 3̀ Brave* PG.......................... 2 4 1 snare in its “No matter what it takes,” Manny 4̀ Savages R......................... 8 9 10 opening weekyells across the widening chasm to 5̀ Magic Mike R................... 8 4 10 end. That alone his wife and daughter, “I’ll come 6̀ Tyler Perry’s offers reason to back.” And he does, despite pirates, Madea’s Witness suspect this sirens, and a cantankerous granny, Protection PG-13............ 4 4 4 webbed wonder proving what we all know to be true: 7̀ Madagascar 3 PG.......... 2 3 1 8̀ Katy Perry: may have a Nothing is more powerful than a Part of Me PG.................not rated much shorter man’s or a mammoth’s love for his 9̀ Moonrise shelf life. A family. Kingdom PG-13................ 5 4 3 10 To Rome with Love R... 6 3 5 `
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift >>
*Reviewed by world
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belle isle: Magnolia Pictures • beasts: Jess Pinkham/cinereach
Box Office Top 10
blue sky studios
replaces the best elements of the previous versions with something far more cynical and calls it progress. Under Raimi’s guidance Tobey Maguire brought a sort of awkward charm to the headline role. With his geewhiz courting of Mary Jane and his squeaky-clean appearance, Peter Parker was a bit of a nerd, but he was genuine. And he resonated with the nerd in all of us. As played by Andrew Garfield, Peter is still something of an outsider, but he’s a sulky, superior outsider— the type who sneers at the popular kids and congratulates himself for being too smart to be one of them. Wearing oversized hoodies and with trendy retro posters covering his walls, he tends to sneer at his guardians Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) as well. After Uncle Ben gives him all the information he can about the mysterious disappearance of Peter’s father, Peter nonetheless lashes out at him. He eventually comes to regret some of his actions, but his general attitude of rebellion is, for the most part, treated as a phase, as though selfish rage were merely a part of growing up. If grittier means brattier, then I suppose one could say Webb has made a somewhat grittier film. But besides the fact that the new Spidey is less likeable, the film fails on Sony’s other two promises as well. Plot lines, like when Peter conveniently stumbles onto unlocked doors in a highly secretive, highly secure genetic testing facility, are as undercooked as any other, less-vaunted superhero fare.
MOVIE
The Magic of Belle Isle by Emily Whitten
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If Belle Isle holds any magic for washed-up Western novelist Monte Wildhorn (Morgan Freeman), it’s in the town liquor shop. Or so it seems when his nephew drops him off in the sleepy coastal town to dog-sit for the summer. And that suits Wildhorn, confined to a wheelchair, just fine: His only aspiration is to be left alone with his first love (40 proof) and the ghosts of his past. But Finn (Emma Fuhrman), a budding 9-year-old storyteller from next door, has other plans. With $34.18, presumably her entire life savings, she prompts Wildhorn—strapped for cash by his drinking—to teach her about imagination, “the most powerful force ever made available to humankind.” And despite his rough edges, Wildhorn soon finds himself drawn to her family, especially Mrs. O’Neil, Finn’s recently divorced mother. For director Rob Reiner, the “powerful force” of imagination once displayed in his classics like When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride has been noticeably absent of late. Which may explain why this PG film is only on the big screen in a handful of cities. Unfortunately, despite Wildhorn’s sparkling connection to Finn and a number of honest laughs, Reiner doesn’t manage a renaissance here.
With a desperate lack of drama and no legitimate obstacle to keep Wildhorn and O’Neil apart, the story has no motion pushing them or the viewer forward. Case in point: In a dream sequence where anything could have happened— murder, mayhem, a runaway horse—O’Neil and Wildhorn only talk and slow-dance in the still night air. All this, combined with immature and inappropriate humor, leaves a lot to be desired. As Wildhorn says, “Most times, real life doesn’t measure up to what’s in our heads.” Considering the talented people involved, this movie is similarly disappointing.
MOVIE
Beasts of the Southern Wild by Alicia M. Cohn
blue sky studios
belle isle: Magnolia Pictures • beasts: Jess Pinkham/cinereach
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Beasts of the Southern Wild portrays a young girl learning to harden herself to survive. But it does a lot of rambling to tell a dead-end story. Independently filmed in Louisiana, the movie won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Director and co-writer Benh Zeitlin puts first-time actor Quvenzhané Wallis, 6 years old at the time, front and center as “Hushpuppy.” The fantastic Wallis carries the film, the story told from her perspective.
In interviews, Zeitlin has indicated the point of the film is to celebrate the fierce independence of the people who demand their right to live south of the levee on a flood-threatened Delta in Louisiana. In the movie, that community is called “the Bathtub” and Hushpuppy lives there with her father. Against its will, this community is forced to evacuate,
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taken in by a “processing facility” that provides medical care and apparently attempts to civilize residents, meaning a dress and braids to tame Hushpuppy’s hair. The community escapes, preferring independence to civilization even if it means danger. It is clear these people are misfits (some borderline crazy) but unclear why they chose a mostly
miserable existence on the outskirts of industrialized life. And although Hushpuppy has never known anything different, her rebel attitude is thriving here. (The movie is rated PG-13 in part for “child imperilment,” and Hushpuppy is “imperiled” as a regular part of life.) The movie plays with comparisons between people and beasts. But ultimately, Hushpuppy separates herself from the animals by embracing her compassion for her father and others. She cannot save them, of course, but what she can do is face down the prehistoric (possibly imaginary) beasts that the movie shows trampling inexorably toward the community. “I have to take care of mine,” she tells them. And her defiance in the face of this mysterious threat is meant to be the sole redemption of the movie. J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Reviews > Books
ECON 101
Book chronicles wrongful convictions and some changes needed to prevent them in the future BY MARVIN OLASKY
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T capital punishment rages around both philosophy and practice. While both sides make strong points about what should be, Brandon Garrett’s Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong (Harvard University Press, ) leaves little doubt about what is, or at least what has been. University of Virginia law professor Garrett and his research assistants have performed a public service by collecting and analyzing cases involving innocent people who went to prison and were later exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing. Two-thirds of them were convicted of rape, and percent either murder or murder plus rape. Seventeen were sentenced to death. They served an average of years in prison. Chapter after chapter explains what went wrong. Some suspects succumbed to police pressure and confessed to crimes that they did not commit, as DNA evidence later showed. Some reportedly
confessed to details about the crime that only the killer or rapist could have known—but it appears that police or others improperly disclosed those facts to the accused. Repeatedly, prosecution experts were not as expert as they claimed: They concocted false probabilities, used unreliable techniques, and had let the title of Dr. before their names go to their heads. Repeatedly, jailhouse informants claimed to have heard the accused utter self-incriminating words, and prosecutors rewarded lies by lightening the liars’ sentences. Repeatedly, defense lawyers for poor individuals did not provide adequate representation, and appeals court judges did not grant new trials when they should have. Garrett recommends changes in criminal procedure, crime labs, use of eyewitnesses, and interrogations: At least police departments now videotape interrogations, and all should. All prosecutor conversations with jailhouse informants should also
be recorded. Garrett’s further recommendations all along the line have a common denominator: less reliance on unreliable human memory and unrecorded procedures that are hard to review. Increased use of DNA testing is necessary but not sufficient: Prosecutors, police, and others within the judicial system need to up their game, because it’s no game. PRISON: PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON/GETTY IMAGES
THE CLINTON YEARS
Newt Gingrich’s candidacy is over, so I happily do not have to examine further some still mysterious Clinton-Gingrich connections during the mid-s. Those wanting to explore that period might start with Elizabeth Drew’s Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House (Simon & Schuster, ), and John F. Harris’ The Survivor (Random House, ). Both are better than Bob Woodward’s The Agenda (Simon & Schuster, ). For useful tell-alls (probably tell-somes) by courtiers who yearned to be in the Inner Ring, try Behind the Oval Office by Dick Morris (Renaissance, ) and All Too Human by George Stephanopoulos (Little, Brown, ). For records of hubris, try Bill Clinton’s My Life (Knopf, ) and Newt Gingrich’s Lessons Learned the Hard Way (HarperCollins, ). Nigel Hamilton’s Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency (Public Affairs, ) kisses up too much to be helpful.
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Email: molasky@worldmag.com
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Innocence ID’d
Two collections of essays published by the Independence Institute in —Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit, and Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development—show that economic freedom fosters economic growth, that government-togovernment aid doesn’t help, and that regulatory and judicial reform are essential. Two books published in show the trouble America is in. Back on the Road to Serfdom, edited by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (ISI), includes scholarly but readable essays on the economic and cultural effects of government growth over the past century. Peter Ferrara’s The Obamacare Disaster (Heartland Institute) succinctly shreds the laughably named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Finally, Obama staffers would not have wasted billions of dollars had they absorbed the lessons of Josh Lerner’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed—and What to Do About It (Princeton, ).
NOTABLE BOOKS
Four books set in the Appalachians > reviewed by
The Ballad of Tom Dooley Sharyn McCrumb McCrumb bases her story on the ballad made famous by the Kingston Trio. It involves a cold-hearted young mountain woman—Pauline Foster—who comes to live with her married cousin, Ann, while seeking treatment for syphilis, called the pox. Her cousin, not knowing what really ails Pauline, allows her to stay in exchange for work. A complicated relationship develops between Tom Dula, Ann, Pauline, and another cousin, Laura. Laura gets murdered, and suspicion falls on Dula, who eventually hangs for the crime. McCrumb’s extensive research helped her piece together events surrounding the crime. She tells the story through Pauline’s twisted narration of Dula’s defense attorney, Zebulon Vance, who went on to become a U.S. senator. McCrumb wonderfully evokes life in the North Carolina mountains after the Civil War.
A Land More Kind Than Home Wiley Cash A mysterious snake-handling preacher comes to a North Carolina mountain town, bringing with him secrets and a perverse reading of Scripture. Old newspapers pasted over the windows hide from outsiders bizarre church activities. When Jess’ mother takes his autistic brother Stump into a healing service at the church, Jess can only peek in from outside. What he sees, and the tragedies that unfold, overtake the family, the church, and the whole community. Cash tells the story through Jess’ eyes, through the eyes of an old woman who left the church to protect the children, and through those of sheriff Clem Barefield. Cash’s evocative tale contrasts childhood naiveté with adult hypocrisy and evil.
The Good Dream Donna VanLiere VanLiere’s honey-toned narrator, Ivorie, lives in the Tennessee mountains, where her neighbors consider her a spinster. She tells about a time shortly after her mother’s death when she’s blocking out grief by working herself hard, putting up fruits and vegetables, and cooking more than she could ever eat. As the summer goes on, a neighbor man begins to court her, and she begins to feel a glimmer of hope about her future. Then a mysterious boy shows up in her garden. Friends warn her against getting involved, but Ivorie ignores them, and her life heads in a completely new direction. VanLiere shows how a close-knit community can rally around its neighbors and turn a deaf ear to the cries of a stranger. She also shows the joy that comes through sacrificial love.
CAIN: GEOFFREY SWAINE/REX FEATURES/AP
PRISON: PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON/GETTY IMAGES
Travelers Rest Ann Tatlock Jane Morrow travels to Asheville, N.C., to see her fiancé in the VA hospital, where he is recovering from war wounds that made him a quadriplegic. In despair, he wants to die. Tatlock gives us enough about Seth before his injury so that we understand the depths of his loss. She also shows Jane’s dayby-day struggle to understand and cope with this new normal. Gradually she develops friends at the hospital. They also gather around Seth, helping him to see beyond his immediate circumstances. Asheville’s quirkiness—the drum circle and restaurants—figures in the story. Tatlock’s sensitive handling of her characters keeps the story from being maudlin or sappy. Email: solasky@worldmag.com; see all our reviews at worldmag.com/books
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SPOTLIGHT In Quiet (Crown, ), Susan Cain argues for the value of introversion in an extroverted country. She notes that introverts come in many varieties, but in general they thrive with less “stimulation,” listen more than talk, and prefer focused work to multi-tasking. Cain traces America’s love affair with extroversion back to Dale Carnegie, through Harvard Business School, and into corporate boardrooms and school classrooms. She says that risktaking extroverts made the bets that resulted in the financial crisis. Not every culture values the bold extrovert: Asian-Americans in Cupertino thrive in a high school that values the chess team more than the football squad. Most Americans, by contrast, tend to equate introversion with shyness and think it needs fixing. The book combines great storytelling, research, and practical advice. Although the book has a weak understanding of evangelicalism— “Contemporary evangelicalism says that every person you fail to meet and proselytize is another soul you might have saved”— she highlights the way some evangelical practices make introverts feel like misfits in the church.
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Reviews > Q&A
Worship on the mound New York Mets pitcher R.A. DICKEY on practice and faith, Christianity and knuckleballs BY MARVIN OLASKY
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N Y M pitcher R.A. Dickey at age is a first-time All-Star but a long-time member of West End Community Church in Nashville. A literature major at the University of Tennessee, he names his bats after literary weapons such as Hrunting, a sword in the epic poem Beowulf. Dickey languished in the minor leagues from to , when he almost drowned trying to swim across the Missouri River. That became a turning point in his career: That year he mastered the knuckleball, which is ideally thrown without spin so that slight air movements over the ball’s stitched seams cause it to move in erratic and unpredictable ways. In your recently published autobiography, Wherever I Wind Up, you’re explicit about how God saved and changed your life. Journalists have interviewed you a lot over the past several months. What percentage of the interviewers have asked about your Christian faith? Probably to percent. The subject didn’t come up in your NPR interview. I brought it up. They edited it out. I always look for opportunities to talk about my faith in a way that is congruent with the story or the question that they ask, because it is important to me that people know. Most of the time it will be edited out. Your description of the knuckleball—“The pitch has a mind of its
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own. You either embrace it for what it is—a pitch that is reliant on an amalgam of forces both seen and unseen—or you allow it to drive you half out of your mind”—seems like a metaphor for the mysteries of God’s providence in the Christian life. To a certain extent it is, at least for me. An element of surrender has enabled me to get to the next place with the knuckleball. An element of surrender in my own life has helped me get to the next place in my faith and relationship to Christ. I didn’t necessarily draw the parallel intentionally, but as a Christian there were so many times in my life where I wanted to control things and I would hold on to them so tightly that God couldn’t get anywhere near them—or so I thought. What things? My career for one. My past. My relationships. Finances. All those things in my life I tried to control and manipulate. When you let go of the knuckleball, it’s completely outside of your control. It is an unperfectable pitch. It’s too chaotic, with many forces at play that you’re not in control of. But you had to work hard to be in a position to throw a pitch you can’t control. I would throw countless balls against the gym wall. I can close my eyes and remember the feeling— the sound of that ball hitting the cinderblock gymnasium
wall and coming back to me, and me doing that again and again all over again, thousands of times. It took that for me to be where I am as a player. Phil Niekro said you have an angry knuckleball. A traditional knuckleball you throw at – mph. Mine is – mph, so when it gets to the plate it is going to break violently, whereas a traditional knuckleball will float. Some fastball pitchers talk about their anger on the mound. Do you have to put aside the anger to throw a little slower? It’s much more for me than that. I need to be in a place of peace. Early on as a conventional pitcher I tried to pitch angry
because that’s what I was taught to do. It didn’t work for me. Pitching angry takes me out of where I need to be. I’m much better in a serene place. I take deep breaths. I slow the game down and enjoy it. How do you feel serene when it’s late innings, tie game, bases loaded, fans roaring? I view what I do on the field as an act of worship. God has given me the gifts to do what I do, and when I use them fully I glorify Him. In those moments when it might seem most tense, in my mind I start singing a song. What song? “My God is an Awesome God,” or any song that I recall in the moment. It’s in my mind: I’m not necessarily mouthing the words out there, but in my mind it always helps me to breathe, to feel the moment. What were your expectations as you were growing up? I was always waiting for the next trauma around the
LEFT: JIM McISAAC/GETTY IMAGES RIGHT: CHRISTOPHER BERKEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
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corner. That grew out of sexual abuse and growing up in an unstable home where my parents got divorced early and the only validity I felt was through sports. It’s taken years for me to come to the place where I am able even to think about celebrating things. You professed Christ at age . How did that help you, and how didn’t it? It probably kept me from going over the edge with suicidal thoughts: I couldn’t do that because of my faith. The hard part, though, was living it out. I had a past that was broken and fractured, and I didn’t know what
to do with it. I would read the Bible, but I wouldn’t understand it. I was ashamed of my past and couldn’t be completely authentic. I didn’t have much shepherding. I had a relationship with Christ but a thousand questions that were never answered. Are you able AN ELEMENT OF SURRENDER: Dickey pitches a knuckleball against now to answer the Arizona Diamondbacks; with his children—from left, Eli, , Lila, , the question of Mary Gabriel, , Van, months—and wife Anne (above). why those evil things occurred or leaving this place. It took me going to the in your childhood? There is a mystery to bottom literally and figuratively. some of it, but although the evils that are And your wife put up with this? She’s manifested in this world are tough to incredibly forgiving. When I wanted to give up reconcile a lot of times, that baseball, she wouldn’t let me. For her to stand doesn’t mean God can’t in front of me, after what I put her through, use them in some and the lifestyle we had led, and for her to way. The say, “I don’t want you ever to have a regret.” For someone who knows the worst things about you and loves you despite those—I don’t know if there’s a greater power on earth. A
sexual abuse, for instance— because my wounds were deep the healing has been great. I now have a very intimate relationship with a living God whom I believe in. The deeper the wound and the more healing that has to take place, the greater God becomes. I don’t have all the answers and I don’t think that I will this side of eternity. There was a point in my life when I wasn’t OK with that, but now I’m OK with not knowing and just trusting. What happened during your almost-fatal attempt to swim the Missouri? I was years old and had three kids and was on the brink of being released. In the river I had to come to terms with either living differently J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2
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Reviews > Music
Sounds of Stoker
Nosferatu compellingly transmutes Dracula into music BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
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J Z releases more albums in a year than some musicians do in a career. Pondering the quantity of his output, it’s hard not to recall Steve Martin’s response to the productivity of Leonardo da Vinci: “That’s why I took up juggling.” Figuratively speaking, Zorn is a juggler too—of styles, of concepts. So far, his discography includes five albums, ranging from the sparklingly beautiful (The Gnostic Preludes, featuring
harp, bells, and vibes) to the abrasively harsh (Templars: In Sacred Blood, featuring the maniacal vocals of the ex–Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton). The most arresting, however, partly because it combines the best elements of the others, is Nosferatu, a soundtrack to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, released to mark the centennial of Stoker’s death. Five of the songs are titled after the novel’s characters (“Mina,” “Van Helsing,” “Lucy,” “Jonathan Harker,” “Renfield”), the other after various plot elements (“Death Ship,” “Fatal Sunrise,” “Hypnosis,” and the like). Yes, having read the novel makes it easier to appreciate Zorn’s music. But, more to the point, from the most mysterioussounding cut (“Hypnosis”) to the most frenzied one (“The Battle of Good and Evil”), the music is fascinating enough to induce even those without a
taste for gothic horror to read the novel on which it’s based. And Dracula deserves to be read. Due primarily to its various film incarnations, it tends to be one of those literary works that people think they know because they’ve experienced it secondhand. But no amount of secondhand exposure can recreate the pleasure deriving from reading Stoker’s skillful use of various first-person perspectives (journal entries, letters) to advance the plot or the sense that, rather than glamorize evil, Stoker actually intended with Dracula to valorize heroic—even Christian—goodness. Zorn is at his best in successfully transmuting Stoker’s intentions into music with the songs based on the novel’s two main female characters, “Lucy” and “Mina.” On the one hand, the two young women share not only beauty and vulnerability but also a close friendship. So it makes sense that Zorn’s pieces should utilize similar-sounding, euphonious combinations of piano and vibraphone. That Zorn also somehow manages to evoke and contrast, ever so subtly, Mina’s depth with Lucy’s relative superficiality is no mean artistic achievement.
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DRACULA: UNIVERSAL PICTURES/AP • MC LARS: HANDOUT
On the lighter side of the literary-pop ledger is the latest release by the rapper MC Lars, The Edgar Allan Poe EP (Horris). Unlike the Alan Parsons Project and Lou Reed, the Poe-inspired recordings of whom were intended to reflect their source material’s “mystery and imagination,” Lars goes for clever and, surprisingly, the gambit pays off. “Hip hop?” he asks at the outset of “Anabel Lee R.I.P. ().” “Nah, this is lit. hop.” And he isn’t kidding. “Flow like Poe,” set to Pachelbel’s Canon, even teaches the basics of poetic terminology. “An iamb is two syllables, unstressed stressed,” he raps, eventually touching on the other feet, meters, and sound terms before he’s done. But there’s more to the EP than Schoolhouse Rock. In “Lenore (IMiss You),” “Mr. Raven,” “(Rock) The Bells,” and “The Tell-Tale <,” Lars retells the tales you’d expect. But he also weaves in details of Poe’s biography when the need arises. The best news is that Lars’ raps are clean. The second best: They’re funny. The -second “The Abridged Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” begins “This is the abridged Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” “A man on a whaling ship ends up in Antarctica, / it’s a good book, you should read it” is how it ends. —A.O.
Email: aorteza@worldmag.com
7/10/12 3:16 PM
NAVARRO: HANDOUT
‘Lit. hop’
NOTABLE CDs
Five new jazz releases > reviewed by
SPOTLIGHT
Bending Bridges
The new album by the nylon-string
Mary Halvorson Quintet Clever album title. A bridge is part of a guitar, Halvorson is a guitarist, and “bending” is certainly one way to describe her quintet’s approach on these nine original compositions. Or maybe the “bridges” are those linking Halvorson and Co. to other jazz traditions, and what’s “bent” are the routes by which listeners can trace a song such as “Hemorrhaging Smiles,” say, to Ornette Coleman. Free jazz has sounded freer. But not since musicians started confusing bending bridges with burning them has freedom often sounded this jazzy.
guitarist Ken Navarro is called The
Got to Be Real Ithamara Koorax Koorax is Brazilian, so her enunciation of English lyrics is sometimes just “close enough for jazz.” There’s no faulting her taste, however, and she slows down artists from the soundtrack of her youth and uses them as vehicles for holding high notes. The th Dimension, Jackson Five, Cheryl Lynn—she has obviously been savoring the sultry, “tropical” potential latent in their songs for some time. Then come eight more, which, except for maybe “Vesti Azul,” belong, if anywhere, on another album.
Test of Time (Positive Music) and for good reason: Its melodies have stood that test. Admittedly, only Bach’s approximately -yearold “BWV ” (aka “Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat Major”) has really stood it. But “When You Wish upon a Star” and “The Days of Wine and Roses,” which turn and this year, aren’t exactly spring chickens. And, let’s face it, to today’s youth, the John Lennon, Bob Dylan (an imaginative medley of “Just like a Woman” and “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”), the Police, Beatles, Beach Boys, Pat Metheny, Santana, and Jimmy Webb are hoary artifacts too. But you’d never know it from the way
The Ocean: Music by Led Zeppelin LED
Navarro plays them. Virtuosically
The brainchild of the Swedish musician Peter Danemo, LED takes Led Zeppelin songs, strips them of vocals, and re-imagines them for trumpet, sax, clarinet, trombone, flute, tuba, and (Danemo’s main instrument) drums—turns Led Zeppelin into a mini-marching band, in other words. “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Kashmir” sound the best, almost as if they were meant for such treatment. And because there’s no “Stairway to Heaven” and/or words, no one will be tempted to waste time playing these songs backward in search of Satanic intent.
its worth without making their
plucking their every nuance for all wholes seem less than their parts, he simultaneously fortifies their durability and lets us hear them afresh.
It’s hard to tell what’s more enjoyable, that, even at , Pizzarelli sings with the insouciance of a young Chet Baker or that his rhythm section makes swinging intuitively sound like the world’s second-easiest task. The first-easiest is relishing the inventiveness of Pizzarelli’s arrangements of hits and “deep” album cuts by guitar-strumming singer-songwriters and concluding therefrom that he still has a bright future—that is, if he has more tricks like making a silk ascot out of a Seals & Crofts hit up his sleeve.
NAVARRO: HANDOUT
DRACULA: UNIVERSAL PICTURES/AP • MC LARS: HANDOUT
Double Exposure John Pizzarelli
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Mindy Belz
Democracy and dualism Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt is a wakeup call, not a triumph
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COMMON VIOLENCE: A church set on fire by Muslims in the Imbaba neighborhood of Cairo on May , .
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had “laid the foundation of a new life—absolute freedom, a genuine democracy and stability,” but those are not the calling-card values of the Muslim Brotherhood. And some experts now are wiser for what the last decade has wrought. In late June, Islamic scholar Judith Mendelsohn Rood withdrew her endorsement of A Common Word, saying the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was her wakeup call. “I confess that I have been in denial about the extent to which Salafi Islam is faithful to the texts of the Islamic religion,” she wrote to Common Word drafters Volf and Joseph Cumming (also at Yale), “without taking seriously the way that the Quran itself twists biblical truth.” Rood is a professor of history at Biola and director of its Middle East studies program, a rarity among Christian colleges. More, she is the great-granddaughter of Holocaust victims and a convert to Christianity who is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. As a post-grad student, she studied in Jerusalem under a retired judge and former imam of Al-Aqsa mosque, himself a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s ascent today in Egypt is again marked by the populist Islamist rhetoric of jihad, martyrdom, caliphate, and the conquest of Jerusalem, preached in mosques throughout the years, despite the enormous historical changes in the [Middle East] since the end of WWII,” Rood writes. The Brotherhood’s roots are common to the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia and the Salafists in Egypt (the former begetting al-Qaeda and the latter claiming Anwar Sadat’s assassination in and recent attacks on the Israeli embassy and churches in Egypt). The Obama administration has taken pains to distinguish the Muslim Brotherhood as “moderate Islamists” while Salafists are “radicals.” A Common Word adherents, too, have worked to minimize the common lineage. But many experts say their ideology and goals are the same, it’s just that the Brotherhood is more patient. “Several of the Common Word letter signatories are what I would call ‘radical Muslims’ and would be entirely supportive of the Brotherhood’s goals,” author and theologian Mark Durie told me. Western political leaders have an obligation to listen to history when it comes to the new leadership in Egypt—and it wouldn’t hurt if they listened to religious experts like Rood. For the Christian the obligation is to hold fast to the distinctives of the faith, and then to live them amidst the turmoil. A
KHALIL HAMRA/AP
S the bombing of Karbala and the killing spree in Mumbai, leaders from the Muslim and Christian worlds sensed an era of good feeling. In Muslim scholars and clerics signed an open letter called “A Common Word Between Us and You.” In turn, over Christians—liberal, traditional, and evangelical—signed “Loving God and Loving Neighbor: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You.” As controversy over that text ensued, a few dropped off, including then-president of Wheaton College Duane Liftin. Controversy over the text included its premise that Muslims and Christians worship the same God and an apology by Christians for violence against Muslims, with no reciprocal apology from Muslims. “What’s missing from this document is a clear statement about what Christianity really is and how we can come together to talk with Muslims from our unique, distinctive, biblical standpoint,” said pastor John Piper. The critics didn’t dampen conferences of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars—at Yale, where the Common Word response had been drafted by author and theologian Miroslav Volf and others, at Cambridge, the Vatican, and elsewhere. In the streets of Iraqi cities like Baghdad and Mosul attacks on Christians—bombings, shootings, and kidnappings—ran high. By late over half a million Christians had fled Iraq for refuge in neighboring countries. Iraqi refugees I met in Syria in showed me threatening texts received on their phones and notes shoved under their front doors (“Be informed that we will cut your heads and leave your dead bodies with no organs …”), all driven by radical Islamic teaching. No one should soft-pedal the dualism— conciliatory rhetoric running alongside streets of blood—in the flourishing of “democracy” in the Middle East. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said at his inauguration (see p. ) that Egyptians
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Outside the camp Egypt’s minority Christians, already shut out of mainstream life and politics, fear more legal— and perhaps violent— forms of oppression under the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood government by Jamie Dean in Cairo p h o t o b y m atj a z k a c i c n ik / s t e p h e n ’ s c h il d r e n 34
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n a barren village just outside Cairo, two barefoot toddlers
in tattered shirts perch on a pile of rotting garbage and play with a trash-heap find: a six-inch kitchen knife plucked from the refuse. Deeper inside the enclave of tin shacks and one-room dwellings, heaps of trash serve a distinctly grown-up function for villagers in this predominantly Christian community. Egyptian aid worker Emad Beshay explains: “They get their daily bread from the garbage.” That’s the daily reality in at least six garbage districts scattered across Cairo: Nearly 60,000 Egyptians live among the garbage and scour the refuse for materials to sell to local factories or to recycle. Nearly 90 percent of that population is Christian. Women and children here in the Helwan district swat the swarming flies and rummage for materials like plastic, metal, glass, and cardboard. A good day’s work might yield a dollar in sales. Most days, it’s closer to 50 cents. This treeless patch of hot sand on Cairo’s outskirts is home to several thousand Egyptians, but it lacks nearly every major service: no electricity, no phones, no schools, no hospitals, no churches, and no markets nearby. Villagers rejoiced when water began running to a few spigots earlier this year. Walking along the village’s rutted paths, Beshay, a worker with Egyptian aid group Stephen’s Children, says the short distance to Cairo makes a huge difference for villagers with scant resources. “This is what happens with Christians,” he says. “They send them outside the camp.”
These days, poverty-stricken Christians aren’t the only ones wondering if they’ll live outside the camp of Egyptian life. Just months after my visit to Helwan, a new question confronts all members of Egypt’s minority Christian population: How will they fare under a Muslim Brotherhood president? It’s a gnawing question. When Egyptian officials announced on June 24 that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi had won the presidential run-off, thousands of Egyptians erupted in cheers in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Indeed, it was a momentous moment. After 30 years of former President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian rule, Egyptians had accomplished a remarkable feat: Less than 18 months after ousting Mubarak, they freely elected a president for the first time in the nation’s modern history. At a somber inauguration ceremony, Morsi pledged: “Today, the Egyptian people laid the foundation of a new life—absolute freedom, a genuine democracy and stability.” A few miles away, some Christians weren’t convinced. In an email on the eve of Morsi’s inauguration, Pastor Nagi Said of Kasr el Dobara Church just off Tahrir Square described the mood among Christians as depressed. “Just minutes after the announcement of the results, some Christians felt uncomfortable treasures walking the streets of some parts of Egypt and even in the trash: A young boy Cairo,” he wrote. “Many are afraid of the future works as a under an Islamic regime.” garbage It isn’t a far-fetched fear. Despite Morsi’s picker in assurances that the government won’t oppress Helwan.
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“the Koran is our law”: Morsi (third from left) prays at Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo (above); Egyptian men hold up a national flag as they celebrate at president-elect Mohamed Morsi’s June 29 address in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (left).
pledges: “We have no guarantees. We are just adding moral pressure to them so that one day we can make them accountable.”
Half a world away, Coptic Christians in the United States wonder if the Brotherhood aims for accountability at all. At a June conference on Capitol Hill of the Virginia-based group Coptic Solidarity, the tone of the meeting was lament over Morsi’s election. “In a word, it’s a disaster,” said board member Halim Meawad. Meawad, 70, fled Egypt more than 43 years ago during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. (He worried his political activism had endangered his freedom.) He became a U.S. citizen, but still advocates for Egyptian Christians and minorities.
top: Ahmed Fouad/Egyptian Presidency/ap • bottom: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images
Egyptian Christians, many point to the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” That doesn’t inspire hope for many Christians, but some remain determined to press for equal rights in a country where they’ve long faced oppression. They compare the new dynamic to freshly poured cement: Though it’s beginning to harden, there’s still time to make an impression. That adds urgency to a set of critical questions: How should Egyptian Christians interact with the Muslim Brotherhood? How should the United States—with its billion-dollar aid package to Egypt and a commitment to protecting the rights of all—use its influence before an Islamist agenda is set in stone? And what happens to millions of poverty-stricken Christians—like those in Helwan—who have no chance of fleeing the country, no matter what the future holds? Atef Gendy has been grappling with how to interact with the Muslim Brotherhood since last year. The president of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo says the question became unavoidable after the Brotherhood’s political party gained nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament. After that victory, Gendy and other evangelical leaders got a surprising call: The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to talk. At first, the leaders declined, but they eventually agreed to a February 2012 meeting to discuss their concerns about Christians living under an Islamist parliament. The two groups published a joint statement that agreed on a number of items, including equal rights for Christians and other minority groups. From his office in Cairo (before the presidential elections) Gendy acknowledged the statement was controversial: Some Christians opposed the meeting and doubted the Muslim Brotherhood’s sincerity, particularly on points like allowing Christians to build and renovate churches—something the country hasn’t allowed without substantial obstacles for decades. Coptic Christians, who make up the majority of Egypt’s Christian population, are especially suspicious of interacting with the Brotherhood. Gendy acknowledged he didn’t know what the Brotherhood would do, or whether they would keep their
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Meawad worries that an Islamist parliament and president pose an imminent danger for Christians, and says: “They [the Muslim Brotherhood] see democracy as a ladder. Once they reach where they’re going, they’re going to burn the ladder.” Those fears—together with the violence and significant human-rights abuses in Egypt over the last year—have led some Christians and others to question the Obama administration’s ongoing aid to the Egyptian government. The U.S. Congress voted last year to place conditions on U.S. aid to the Egyptian military, including requirements that the Egyptian government meet a slate of pro-democracy standards. After a series of Egyptian crackdowns on pro-democracy groups in Cairo, including charges made against 16 Americans, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered some lawmakers and human-rights activists by waiving the conditions for economic aid in March. Despite the Egyptian government’s failure to meet the conditions, the Obama administration released $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military. (The administration said the aid helped protect U.S. security interests in the region.) If activists were concerned about releasing aid to Egypt’s military, they’re now concerned about continuing that aid to a country under Muslim Brotherhood leadership. Indeed, some are alarmed at the Obama administration’s interaction with the Brotherhood over the last year, and say White House officials are overlooking the Muslim Brotherhood’s past connections to terrorism and its current Islamist ambitions.
The U.S.-based group Investigative Project on Terrorism describes the Muslim Brotherhood this way: “The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 with the goal of establishing a worldwide Islamic state through jihad and martyrdom. The group is considered the parent of all Sunni terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” White House officials met with a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood members in April. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said “mid-level” officials from the National Security Council met with Brotherhood members to engage Egypt’s “emerging political actors.” Sondos Asem, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood delegation, told The Washington Post that the group represents “a moderate, centrist Muslim viewpoint.” During the same week, Khairat al Shater, at that time the Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, told a meeting of the Religious Association for Rights and Reform in Cairo: “Sharia was and will always be my first and final project and objective.” The Egyptian electoral commission eventually disqualified Shater (and 10 other candidates) from the presidency. But Shater remains a central leader in the Brotherhood, and his views are key to understanding the group’s political ambitions. In March, Shater told The New York Times that the Brotherhood believes that Islam requires democracy, and that the group would uphold democratic ideals. But the group’s English-language website has stated that the Western concept of “secular liberal democracy” is undemocratic because it excludes religion in public life. Shater said: “The Islamic reference point regulates life in its entirety, politically, economically, and socially—we don’t have this separation between religion and government.” The newly elected president Morsi has been less verbose in his political philosophy, but in 2007 he led a committee that wrote the Brotherhood’s political platform. The principles included appointing Islamic clerics to review legislation to conform civil laws to Islamic law. Morsi also said he would press the United States to release Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian-born Islamic cleric serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison for his role in planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Those circumstances led to a heated question-and-answer session at the Coptic Solidarity conference when Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner addressed the crowd late last month. Nearly a dozen audience members lined up at a microphone in the packed conference room and drilled Posner with rapid-fire questions: “Why did the American government give the green light for the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt?” “How can we support a group that is the mother of all terrorist groups?” “What real actions are you going to take?” Posner told the group that the White House “doesn’t pick winners and losers in elections,” and that they were interacting with the Muslim Brotherhood “not because we agree with them, but because they are in power.”
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“[the Muslim Brotherhood] see democracy as a ladder. Once they reach where they’re going, they’re going to burn the ladder.” Halim Meawad, board member of Coptic Solidarity
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Nasser Nasser/ap
initially include more cases of blasphemy against Christians and Other questions centered on why the United States apostasy charges focused on Muslim converts to Christianity. ontinued military aid to Egypt, particularly after the Egyptian c Egyptian Christians and the U.S. government must use the military used tanks to plow down more than a dozen Coptic “window of time,” Werthmuller says, when the Muslim Christians demonstrating against the burning of a church last Brotherhood is still responding to outside pressure. October. The clash, known as the “Maspero Massacre,” left at By early July, tensions already were rising as Morsi sought least 27 dead, mostly Coptic Christians. to reconvene the Muslim Brotherhood–dominated parliament Posner said the United States has serious concerns about that the ruling military council had dissolved. human-rights abuses and religious liberty in Egypt, and that In the meantime, organizations like Stephen’s Children the government would revisit the issue of funding this fall. A continue their work among Christians in places like Helwan. handful of Republican congressmen have called on Congress to The group has no political affiliation—and it doesn’t make withhold funding unless Egypt meets human-rights conditions, political comments—but focuses on serving groups that Emad including religious liberty standards. Beshay calls “the poorest Walid Phares, advisor to the of the poor.” anti-terrorism caucus of the Like thousands across U.S. House of Representatives, the garbage districts of is a Lebanese-born scholar who Cairo, and in slums and has studied Coptic rights for rural regions across the more than 22 years. He says the rest of the country, many United States should establish Christians here face little clear religious liberty standards hope of advancing under as a condition of foreign aid. an Islamist government, And he suggests something and virtually no hope of else: The Obama administration escaping the country if should meet with Coptic violent suppression Christians. “It’s the oddest of increases. An outbreak of all things—we’ve never seen a violence against Christians delegation of Copts in the in the Mokattam garbage White House or the State district last year killed at Department,” he says. “The expecting suppression: An injured Coptic demonstrator is helped by least nine, and some weakest should get more a fellow protester during the October 2011 “Maspero Massacre” in Cairo. Christians fear that an attention.” Islamist government won’t If the administration fails to protect them in the future. And though their poverty is already give more attention to minority groups, Phares says the Muslim extreme, some worry about the possibility of losing help from Brotherhood will likely consolidate its power: “In Egypt you’ll relief groups if those organizations face suppression. have an Islamist state—partly built by American money—and For now, Egyptian aid groups continue to help as they’re then they will use that power to gain more influence against us.” able, and poverty-stricken Egyptians who make up as much as Phares believes that the Brotherhood will also eventually 40 percent of the population continue to survive. So do clamp down on Christian activity in Egypt, including churches churches. Back at Kasr el Dobara in Cairo, Pastor Said wrote and groups trying to serve needy populations: “They have to that the church will continue its work: “We are holding more expect suppression.” prayer meetings, and trying to encourage our people. The leaders of our church are not pessimistic. … We might go through Most religious liberty experts don’t expect immediate suppression a hard time, and the road will be a steep hill, but we trust of Christians in Egypt. Kurt Werthmuller of the Hudson God’s grace that will enable us to survive and persevere.” A Institute says it will likely be a gradual process that might
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The organization man John Roberts is a product of esteemed institutions, and his attachment to the “institution” of the Supreme Court may explain his controversial healthcare ruling E B in Washington //
WORLD
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In the summer of 2005
, when the Senate was considering John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, the Democrats were mainly the ones concerned about his lack of judicial record. Roberts had spent his career lawyering for Republican administrations and at private firms, but his judicial philosophy was a big gray blob. “We need to know what kind of Supreme Court justice John Roberts would be,” insisted Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., then the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Roberts, in his confirmation hearings, was vague and safe, like most Supreme Court nominees are now post–Robert Bork. He famously compared his job to an umpire calling balls and strikes. But even then there were clues about the philosophy of the chief justice who would become the key vote upholding President Obama’s healthcare law this year. People who knew Roberts throughout his life—at Harvard, in the Washington legal world—noticed his respect for “institutions,” and most especially for the court as an i nstitution. Today many of the legal minds parsing Roberts’ healthcare decision think he sided with the liberal justices to bolster the court’s institutional reputation as minimalist rather than activist. “By temperament, he’s not a flame-thrower, not somebody you’d expect to willingly or readily overrule a precedent,” Paul Mogin, a roommate of Roberts at Harvard Law School for two years, told The New York Times in 2005. “He’s somebody who has respect for institutions. I think institutions have been important to him in his life, like Harvard, the Catholic Church and the Supreme Court. He’s not likely to be anybody to do anything too radical.” And Bill Kayatta, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Roberts, told the Times, “He had a sort of thoughtful respect for institutions, history, precedent, a willingness to consider change but not revolutionary.” John Yoo, a conservative lawyer at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, was more blunt to The Washington Post at the same time: “He’s the type of person that business conservatives and judicial-restraint conservatives will like but the social conservatives may not like ... he represents the Washington establishment. These Washington establishment people are not revolutionaries, and they’re not out to shake up constitutional law. They might make course corrections, but they’re not trying to sail the boat to a different port.” Upon his nomination to the court in 2005, Roberts noted his “profound appreciation for the role of the court in our constitutional democracy and a deep regard for the court as an institution.” Roberts is the product of what some deem elite institutions. He grew up in Indiana along Lake Michigan, the son of a Bethlehem Steel executive. He attended private Catholic schools, excelled at Latin, and captained his football team in high school. At his all-boy boarding school, he played Peppermint Patty in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. He attended Harvard, graduated summa cum laude, and went on to Harvard Law where he helmed the Harvard Law Review.
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“Almost across the board, every conservative said he’ And now the level of disappointment amongst a lo
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D.C.-based outreach to Washington leaders called Faith and Action, quickly asserts that he is not a lawyer, so he is simply defending Roberts’ integrity.
Everyone in Washington is parsing Roberts’ motives
nconstitutional. But as the term neared its conclusion, he u switched his position. Some think he caved to political pressure from Democrats. Others think Roberts really does have a minimalist view of the court, and he decided to rein in the court’s influence over American life and let Congress do its job. (But Roberts has overturned federal statutes in the past, most famously in the Citizens United case that threw out certain campaign finance laws and changed campaigns completely.) “If Roberts’ supporters are right”—that Roberts ruled the way he did to preserve the court’s reputation—“this decision
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Scalia: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ap
for voting with the liberal justices on such a major case. Jan Crawford of CBS News reported that at a meeting where only the justices were present, Roberts initially voted with the conservative justices that the individual mandate was
young roberts: La Lumiere School/ap Wuerl: J. Scott Applewhite/ap
Out of law school, Roberts quickly leapt to legal prominence, clerking for a circuit court judge and then for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He was counsel in the upper echelons of the Reagan administration, then left for a private firm, then returned to work in the senior Bush’s administration. After President George H.W. Bush lost reelection, Roberts returned to a lucrative practice in a D.C. law firm, where he argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court. In 2003 President George W. Bush nominated him to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he served for two years before Bush nominated him to fill Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court. A couple months after Bush nominated Roberts, in the midst of Hurricane Katrina, Rehnquist died. He was 80 years old. Bush elevated Roberts, one of Rehnquist’s pallbearers, to the nomination of chief justice. An overwhelming majority of the Senate, including about half the Democrats, confirmed Roberts—though then-Sen. Barack Obama voted against his confirmation. At age 50 Roberts was the youngest chief justice in a century, and he arrived with just two years of experience as a judge, providing very little record of what kind of chief justice he would be. A prominent figure in the Bush world before he became chief justice, Roberts came under criticism from senior Bush advisers after the healthcare decision. Michael Gerson, an advisor to President George W. Bush, blasted Roberts in a column. Dana Perino, Bush’s press secretary, said on Fox News that she talked to President Bush about the healthcare decision but she declined to share the details of their conversation. “Almost across the board, every conservative said he’s a solid guy, he’s the one we want,” she said about the nomination process. “And now the level of disappointment amongst a lot of people, including myself, is really high.” Of the 12 justices Republican presidents have nominated since President Richard Nixon, at least seven have “drifted left,” or denied conservatives a majority on significant cases. Chief Justice Warren Burger voted with the majority in Roe v. Wade. Justice John Paul Stevens became the court’s “liberal lion.” Justice Anthony Kennedy voted to uphold Roe, Justice David Souter became reliably liberal, and O’Connor became a swing vote. Since Nixon’s administration, Democratic presidents have appointed four justices, all of whom have remained reliably liberal. “In the way that I know John Roberts, nothing that’s happened has changed my opinion of his character,” said Rob Schenck, who has a pastoral relationship with the Catholic chief justice. “I know some are worried that he’s ‘growing in office.’ I’ve not seen anything like that.” Schenck, an ordained minister of the Evangelical Church Alliance who heads the
aid he’s a solid guy, he’s the one we want. ... gst a lot of people, including myself, is really high.” — Da na P e r i n o
power to regulate—which would amount to a significant curb on a federal power that has swelled over the last century. But some legal experts wonder whether that part of the decision will last. “Although a majority of the court agreed on a limitation of the Commerce Clause, there’s at least disagreement about whether a future court would view this as binding precedent,” said Jordan Lorence, a constitutional lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund. The four liberal justices dissented from that part of the opinion. The four conservative justices agreed in substance with Roberts on that part of the opinion, but they noticeably did not join his opinion. Usually when dissenting justices agree with the majority on a part of the opinion, their dissent will say they concur with the majority on that portion. But the four conservative justices refused to concur, which is so unusual that court observers thought the dissent was an expression of the conservative justices’ deep anger with Roberts. Usually a dissent argues with the majority opinion point by point, but in the healthcare dissent the four justices barely acknowledge that Roberts’ majority opinion exists. courtroom drama: Roberts at the then “The court regards its strained statutory interpretaall-boys Catholic prep school in La Porte, Ind.; with tion as judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl at the a vast judicial overreaching,” read Kennedy wearily on Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, in Washington, June 28 from the dissent’s blistering conclusion, one of D.C.; with Justice Antonin Scalia (from left). the only parts that acknowledges the majority opinion. CBS News reported that Kennedy intensely lobbied Roberts to come back to the fold after he switched his vote, to no minimalist while gutting the legal avail. In the past, Kennedy, a Republican appointee, has received framework behind the healthcare the label of “traitor” himself. He and O’Connor voted with the law. Former circuit court judge liberal justices in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case that Michael McConnell, who was along reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. But his alignment in that case jibes with with Roberts on Bush’s short list for what he sees as protecting individuals from government. That Supreme Court nominees, told me “betrayal” perhaps made more sense than Roberts’ decision to Roberts’ opinion was “quite deft” uphold a mandate he thought was unconstitutional on its face. even though he thinks the healthcare The next president, whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, law is a “disaster.” will likely select at least one new justice. Justice Ruth Bader “I think he has a genuine Ginsburg is 79. Justice Antonin Scalia is 76. Justice Anthony commitment to judicial restraint, and we saw that,” McConnell Kennedy is 75. said. “I think he also has a long-term desire to make the Supreme Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, clerked for Justice Samuel Alito at Court less of a controversial and politically charged institution.” one time and now serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, In pursuing that goal in this case, McConnell said, Roberts which holds confirmation hearings for Supreme Court established tight limits on federal power: “If you think about the nominees. He said the healthcare ruling “reinforces the case raising long-term constitutional questions, the challengers importance of confirming Supreme Court justices who will be [of the healthcare law] prevailed on all the important points.” faithful to the plain meaning of statutory text, and who will Those in McConnell’s camp point primarily to the part of adhere to the Constitution’s limits on federal power, regardless Roberts’ opinion that declares the mandate unconstitutional of political pressures.” A under the Commerce Clause, or the federal government’s
young roberts: La Lumiere School/ap Wuerl: J. Scott Applewhite/ap
Scalia: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ap
was made politically. It was not a legal decision,” said Randy Barnett, a conservative constitutional expert at Georgetown Law School. “He is the only jurist with any connection to this case who held this position,” Barnett continued, referring to Roberts upholding the individual mandate based on Congress’ taxing power. “How compelling is that? Everyone’s been looking at this case for two years.” Still others think Roberts pulled off a triple Lutz jump, solidifying the conservative court’s reputation as moderate and
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Winning against wildfires
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Colorado Springs faces hundreds of homes and millions of dollars lost to the record-breaking Waldo Canyon fire, but with a renewed spirit of togetherness by Sarah Padbury in Colorado Springs, Colo. n Tuesday, June 26, a three-day-old wildfire on the northwestern edge of Colorado Springs screamed out of control and roared into the city, forever changing the landscape and the reputation of the community known as much for its idyllic mountain views as for being an evangelical mecca for Christian nonprofits. The Waldo Canyon fire burned through 18,247 acres to become the most damaging fire in Colorado history. Hundreds of families only had minutes to flee when sudden, 65 mph winds blew 100-foot walls of fire into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood and western parts of the city, destroying 346 homes, damaging dozens more, and killing an elderly couple trapped at home. But even though 32,000 people evacuated at the height of the disaster, only 300-400 showed up at emergency shelters. Where did everybody go? I went to Colorado Springs last week to find out. From the air, Majestic Drive used to look like a gently curving flower stem that had a dozen cul-de-sacs branching off with houses like petals. Ten days into the blaze, the picturesque setting had turned apocalyptic. The air reeked of burned wood and chemicals. Two-story homes lay reduced to piles of ash with what used to be metal beams and furniture—here patio chairs, there what used to be a set of bunkbeds—twisting in the sunlight. Blackened tree trunks looked fake, stripped of leaves or needles in midsummer. The silence too was eerie—no birds singing, no crickets chirping. Even homeowners met with insurance adjusters in hushed conversation. To the west, 67 houses in a row were gone. East, 72 houses were missing. A block over also was devastated—there 18 homes had vanished.
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t his home in Mountain Shadows, 15-year-old Jonathan Hammerstrom sat scrolling through Facebook on the Saturday afternoon that the Waldo Canyon fire started. He saw a picture of smoke posted by a friend and recognized the landscape. “I wondered if it was a fire from a long time ago near my house,” he told me, “but then I noticed it was posted just six minutes ago. A couple minutes later my dad came and got me.” Doug Hammerstrom, a family practice doctor and church elder, snapped into action. His wife Jodi was away at a wedding on the East Coast, leaving him to handle the crisis and their three children by himself. Doug grabbed his camera and began snapping photos of every room in the house for insurance records while dishing out instructions. His greatest concern was Sarah, the close call: Jonni and couple’s 20-year-old daughter, Beau McCoy visit the who is wheelchair bound. A rare site of their house. brain infection at birth left Sarah handout/the McCoy family
with cerebral palsy, deaf, and functioning at a 3-year-old level. Sarah’s certified nurse assistant (CNA) was on hand to pack her things, and Jonathan called his mother to ask what items in the house to save. Daughter Lauren, 22, at work just down the hill at the Flying W Ranch, helped frantic staff load animals and antiques onto trucks as the fire marched closer. When the smoke turned into visible flames coming over the ridge, Doug called Lauren and told her to come home. Time to go—now.
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wo weeks before the fire, Jessica McCoy, 20, had a nightmare three nights in a row where fire came down and burned the west side of Colorado Springs. She dreamed she fled to a friend’s house for safety. In the second dream she couldn’t find her cat during the fire. And in the third dream, she blew off the fire to go be with friends and then couldn’t get home to save something very important. Jessica told her family and friends about the dreams, but only her mother took them seriously. When her family first evacuated, they stayed with the friend Jessica had fled to in her dream. Her cat, probably terrified by the strange smells in the air, disappeared. She found the animal hunched in the back of a closet. Because of her dreams, Jessica and her mother Jonni McCoy—author of Miserly Moms and a popular speaker and blogger—made a pact that one of them would be home at all times until authorities made evacuation mandatory. Whatever the “something important” was in her third dream, someone needed to be there to save it. But neither Jessica nor Jonni was close to home on Tuesday when the fire suddenly blew into an inferno, bearing down on their neighborhood. Both hurried home, but within 15 minutes of their arrivals, police halted traffic into the neighborhood. When the phone rang, it was reverse 911 calling to announce they had to evacuate. Time to go—now. In the master bedroom, they discovered Jessica’s dad sleeping. Beau McCoy, a contractor at Schriever Air Force Base, had worked the graveyard shift and was supposed to sleep with his cell phone by his bed, but forgot. With the roads closed and no phone access, there would have been no way to let Beau know it was time to evacuate if mother and daughter had not returned home. Jessica’s third dream may have saved her dad’s life.
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olorado Springs has endured disparagement as a red city inside a blue state. Fifteen years ago the state became one of the first to pass a citizens initiative blocking discrimination laws based on gay rights. Amendment 2 was struck down by the Supreme Court in a landmark case, Romer v. Evans, and liberal social activists had a heyday portraying the city, home to Focus on the Family, J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Disaster and Relief: The McCoys’ driveway; the charred mountainside above Mountain Shadows with burned homes and homes that were spared; volunteer Esther Fleece carries her friend’s child through rows of relief supplies at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs (from top).
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ive days after the evacuation, Mountain Shadow residents were allowed to visit their property for the first time. The McCoy family stared at the flattened ruins that used to be their 4,400-square foot home. Picking through the rubble, Jonni found a small pot Jessica made as a child. They also realized how many irreplaceable things they forgot to save, including an 1865 Singer sewing machine, antique quilts, and the Christmas tree ornament set.
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chart: Current as of July 9 • Mountain Springs Church: sarah padbury
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top: Jerilee Bennett/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/newscom • middle: Jerilee Bennett/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/ap • bottom: Susannah Kay/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/Getty Images
as mean and backward. But as disaster struck and a large portion of the city had to be rescued, Colorado Springs, with its population of over 416,000, mobilized. From pastors and ministry leaders to the Starbucks baristas and hotel front desk clerks, everyone I talked to either took a family into their home or knew someone who did. Some people took in several families at a time, and some took in strangers. “There’s a sense out there that our city is broken up by liberal and conservative [people]. That just isn’t true,” said Steve Holt, pastor of Mountain Springs Church. “I’ve lived here 17 years and I’ve never been in a more caring community.” When headquarters for The Navigators came under evacuation orders, Focus on the Family provided space for 50 Navigators employees. Focus partnered with the liberal-leaning Colorado Springs Independent to put on a benefit concert for the fire’s victims and firefighters—a July 4th event that brought in over $500,000. The Mission Training International campus evacuated dozens of trainees to Vista Grande Baptist Church. Village Seven Presbyterian Church and several other churches pitched in to provide supplies. New Life Church received several truckloads of nonperishable food from Gleaning America’s Fields, a relief organization out of Virginia. Hundreds of high-school students helped unload supplies into the church lobby where they were sorted and given away. Church pantries and food banks across the city threw open their doors and pooled resources. By the time El Paso County Department of Human Services asked Mountain Springs Church to organize a toy drive for children who came in with dislocated families seeking assistance, the church already was hosting 300 evacuated students from the Summit Ministries campus. “Frankly, I wasn’t sure if we should ask our congregation to do more,” confessed Holt, “but in the end they gave over and above. Whatever we asked for, they gave twice as much.”
Major Colorado Fires in 2012 date started fire name
number of days burned
acres burned
homes lost
3/26 Lower North Fork Contained 4,000 23 5/13 Little Sand 58+ 24,900 0 5/14 Hewlett Contained 7,700 0 5/25 Sunrise Mine Contained 6,100 0 6/4 Stuart Hole Contained 200 0 6/9 High Park Contained 87,300 257 6/17 Springer Contained 1,100 0 6/22 Weber 18+ 10,100 0 6/23 Treasure Contained 400 0 6/23 Woodland Heights Contained 27 22 6/23 Waldo Canyon 17+ 18,200 346 6/23 State Line Contained 350 0 6/25 Last Chance Contained 45,000 4 6/26 Flagstaff Contained 300 0 6/26 Lightner Contained 90 0 6/27 Pine Ridge Contained 13,900 0 7/7 Mill Creek 2+ 1,200 0
deaths
3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Canyon fire was 98 percent contained by mid-July, 100 percent of Colorado is in a “severe” drought. Over a dozen wildfires have hit Colorado already this season, the worst in a decade. And other Western states are battling blazes brought on by regional drought conditions, including Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Like hundreds of other Colorado Springs families, the Hammerstroms and McCoys will need ongoing assistance to rebuild their lives. But city residents and organizations have shown themselves up to the task. “This is the end of the era where Colorado Springs will be remembered for Amendment 2,” said Holt. “Instead, we will be remembered for the Great Commandment: We loved our neighbors as ourselves.” A
Let’s make a deal
Ministries came together in their fiery ordeal chart: Current as of July 9 • Mountain Springs Church: sarah padbury
top: Jerilee Bennett/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/newscom • middle: Jerilee Bennett/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/ap • bottom: Susannah Kay/Colorado Springs Gazette/MCT/Getty Images
Friends from church housed the McCoy family until they rented a house. Thirty of the 33 homes on their street burned. All but two families have pledged to return and rebuild the block. “Somewhere in the Bible it says God sends rain to the just and the unjust,” Beau McCoy reflected. “So we have to take our knocks with the unbelievers. Throughout our life, God has been good to us. … It’s enough to know my family is safe. I’ve been stripped naked: What does life mean? What’s important? My family.” Jessica, however, said she still goes through “the seven stages of grief” several times a day, and though she’s grateful God used her dreams, she is still confused about why God let her house burn down, yet saved others. Several miles north, the Hammerstrom family returned to find their home spared from direct fire damage, but needing months of cleanup before it can be occupied again. The view behind their home is gone, burned up along with the Flying W Ranch. “People smile and say to us, ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’” Doug said. “But I say, ‘No. It’s not good.’ If your house burns to the ground, you can start over with insurance. But if it doesn’t, insurance won’t cover [all your losses].” But Doug is grateful for other provisions. A pastor from his church immediately took the family in, despite their daughter Sarah’s special needs: a first floor bedroom and wide doorways for wheelchair access. The family recently moved into another donated home for a month. Where they will go after that, they don’t know. “I’m grateful to have the 100-year-old hutch passed down through the family and the 25 years of things that made our house a home,” Jodi said, “but I’m devastated about going to live [again] in a place that looks like Mt. St. Helens erupted.” Property damage from the Waldo Canyon fire is expected to exceed $110 million. And while authorities said the Waldo
Over lunch in June, Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, and Steve Holt, pastor of Mountain Springs Church, made a deal to do a service project together sometime soon. Two weeks later Summit, a nonprofit that hosts worldview educational conferences for teens, had to evacuate its property ahead of the Waldo Canyon fire with its campus in full swing. Myers asked Holt if his church could house 300 Summit students. Holt readily agreed and told attendees at the Saturday night church service to spread the word. When evacuation orders came at 1 a.m. Sunday morning, Summit students raced onto five buses and headed to the church. The congregation delivered food, clothing, toiletries, and bedding. By 5:30 a.m., they had enough sleeping bags for all the students, plus towels and washcloths, hundreds of cases of bottled water, paper products—and over $3,000 in cash. Chains like Einstein Bagels donated food, Mattress Firm gave 100 pillows, and the YMCA provided daily showers. Students remained at the church for a week, and in their spare time cleaned up the extensive church property, including pulling weeds, putting in landscape, scrubbing baseboards, and washing blinds. Summit’s property survived the blazes, but classes have been relocated to Colorado Christian University near Denver because of air quality issues. But not before the students posted a thank-you video on YouTube and left behind a collection of $95 in small bills and change. —S.P.
quick HELP: Donated water, sleeping bags, and pillows for the 300 Summit students.
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Noxious or neighborly? Many of us know about pawnshops only from television, film, and suite-level depictions of all pawnbrokers as “predators.” The street-level reality is more complex— as more than 30 million Americans learn—and the best place to find out is a pawnshop center, New York City
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heck ’em out. Check ’em out. Check ’em out. Cash for Gold!” Two yellow pieces of cardboard sandwich Willy Neuius’ five-foot frame. Nearby, people pour from a New York City bus. They jostle past Neuius, who stands outside Fast Cash of Apollo, a pawnshop across from the famous Apollo Theater on 125th St. in Manhattan. “Have a good day. God bless you,” he calls after them. Other men pause to slap a hug around him. Every day for the past three years, Neuius, 45, has walked this stretch of pavement, arriving at 10 a.m. and beckoning customers until dusk. On a street crowded with similar shops, Neuius works hard to promote Fast Cash by building relationships and fostering loyalty. His job is to bring customers into the narrow retail space where gold necklaces, colorful watches, and silver rings line the white walls and fill the glass display cases. In that space stands Morris Rafailov, 22, manager of this Fast Cash, one of five shops his brother owns. Rafailov wears a cream hoodie with a gold chain around his neck. He says his customers prefer pawning to banks because it’s faster—most come in and leave with money in five minutes—and doesn’t require a credit check. He
says most people pawn items because a paycheck was late or they need money for rent. Some get rid of items they associate with bad memories. Customers at one of New York City’s 400 licensed pawnshops can buy back the item anytime within four months by paying back the money they received plus 4 percent interest per month. After four months the item belongs to the pawnshop, although Rafailov says he sometimes waits one more month before trying to sell it: He wants customer loyalty. Rafailov speaks of the personal service he offers. He says that if a regular customer wants $500 for an item normally pawned for $400, he will give $500 “if the customer is in need. … It’s a case-by-case basis. I look at the customer.” And Willy Neuius, his flagman on the sidewalk, has become a neighborhood staple. Neuius thrives on the excitement: “I love working with the public. I love meeting new people.”
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hat talk of personal concern, and even “love,” differs sharply from the depiction of pawnbrokers in the most famous film ever made about them, The Pawnbroker. Fifty years ago actor Rod Steiger began work on the film, shot largely on
by Marvin Olasky & World Journalism Institute students photo by elbert chu
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CASH ON THE NAIL: Fast Cash manager Morris Rafailov with customers.
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n New York City’s Amsterdam Avenue, amid a residential neighborhood with markets and delis, a huge CVS, a Dunkin’ Donuts, and a local gelateria, stands a 5-foot-high black-and-white sign that proclaims, “Lincoln Square Pawn, LOAN, WE BUY GOLD & DIAMONDS.” The shop’s front room twinkles with gold and diamonds. The white walls gleam with rows of polished guitars hanging like trophies, and the sales team dresses in black business suits.
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Provident Loan Society: George Silk/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images pawnshop: TopFoto/ The Image Works
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Daniel, the manager of this third-generation pawnshop that has been under the same ownership since 1946, has wrinkles on his face and cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He smiles when a customer approaches, but dust and scratches on the screen make it hard to see his face, so customers often lean in until their noses almost touch the glass that separates buyer and seller. He explains to newcomers the process of pawnbroking— then sometimes explains it again, slowing his words when the customer doesn’t understand. The store sends three reminder letters and holds things eight months longer than the legal minimum to encourage clients to reclaim their items. In a city like New York where competition is fierce, pawnshops like Lincoln Square Pawn have to work to retain customers—and those who get their items back are more likely to pawn again. When one customer wants to sell her gold necklace, Daniel eyes the gold chain hanging around her neck and says, “That doesn’t seem to be worth much. It looks really light.” He agrees to test the value of the customer’s jewelry, then weighs and tests the purity of the gold, then meticulously examines the stones with a backlight. “Yeah, sorry, the most I can give you would be $20,” he says, slipping the necklace back.
pawn stars: Joey L./AETN/ap • Steiger: ap Hardcore Pawn: Brian Kaufman/Detroit Free Press/MCT/newscom
New York’s 116th St., one mile away from Fast Cash of Apollo— and it became the highlight of his career. Steiger played Sol Nazerman, a German-Jewish concentration camp survivor with emotions so deadened that he buries himself in a dismal job, with a racketeer using his pawnshop as a front. Asked why he is bitter, pawnbroker Nazerman replies, “I am not bitter. No, that passed me by a million years ago. … Everything that I loved … was taken away from me.” Nazerman says he does not “believe in God, or art, or science, or news papers, or politics, or philosophy.” His God is “Money. … That’s all life is about. … Money is the whole thing. … Next to the speed of light, which Einstein tells us is the only absolute in the universe, second only to that, I rank money.” These days many Americans learn about pawnshops from popular cable television shows that make the business look like fun. Pawn Stars, in its second year, is the big hit of the History Channel: Up to 7 million people watch the saga of an upscale, family-run pawnshop in Las Vegas. Other new shows include Cajun Pawn, a Pawn Stars spin-off set in Louisiana, and The Learning Channel’s Pawn Queens, which stars two women running a “female friendly” pawnshop in suburban Naperville, Ill. The National Pawnbrokers Association, though, dislikes the new TruTV network’s “sensational, edgy” show, Hardcore Pawn, which takes us inside Detroit’s downscale American Jewelry and Pawn. Up to 2 million viewers watch members of the Gold family (Jewish) yelling at sad sack customers (mostly African-American) and each other. It resurrects long-buried ethnic and racial stereotypes. Hardcore Pawn could be the Ku Klux Klan’s dream show, and its negativity raises questions. Was Shopresale.net accurate when it recently asked, “Remember the days of the seedy looking pawnbroker in the dingy looking store that just looked like they were ready to rip you off?” The website then waxed exuberant: “Fast forward to the new millennium where the pawn shops look like high end jewelry stores. … Mirrors, imported Italian marble, glowing lights, glass cases that shine so you can clearly see the Rolex watches on display. Wow. … and the service that you receive! A smiling face. …”
pawn care: The stars of the History Channel’s Pawn Stars; outside the Provident Loan Society in 1951; a pawnshop in 1933 where every Monday morning women waited to pawn bundles of clothes they hoped to redeem on Saturday when their husbands were paid; filming TruTV’s Hardcore Pawn; Steiger in a scene from The Pawnbroker (clockwise from top left).
pawn stars: Joey L./AETN/ap • Steiger: ap Hardcore Pawn: Brian Kaufman/Detroit Free Press/MCT/newscom
Provident Loan Society: George Silk/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images pawnshop: TopFoto/ The Image Works
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awnbrokers in America have been saying “the most I can give” since colonial days, as historian Wendy Woloson (In Hock, U. of Chicago Press, 2009) notes. Nineteenth- century records show one item in pawn for every man, woman, and child living in New York City. On one typical day, Aug. 21, 1838, pawnbroker John Simpson took in 130 pieces of collateral at his pawnshop at 25 Chatham Street, close to where Madame Restell, who became New York’s most famous abortionist, plied her trade. Simpson gave $2 for an accordion, 50 cents for a pistol, 25 cents for eyeglasses, $1 for a music box, $3 for a quilt, $4 for a violin, and $18 for a gold watch chain and key. (Multiply those amounts by 100 to get a rough sense in 2012 of the dollars and cents.) Pawnbrokers throughout the country made similar offers: Ulysses S. Grant pawned his gold watch and chain in 1857 for $22. Although some early 19th-century reformers wanted to outlaw pawnshops, most acknowledged that pawning— “banking for the poor”—had a necessary role in an urban economy. In 1838, an association of 17 Philadelphians asked the Pennsylvania state legislature for permission to establish a
pawnshop that would make small loans on materials goods. They argued that pawnshops gave the “necessitious poor relief of the most valuable kind, enabling them in Seasons of difficulty to provide funds for their immediate Support and in many instances preserving themselves and families from utter ruin.” As Woloson relates, those Philadelphians did not succeed, nor did a proposal in 1848 to establish a Benevolent Loan Institution for the City of Brooklyn. But in 1849 Hunt’s Merchants Magazine, a leading business journal, observed that pawnshops were necessary but some pawnbrokers took advantage of “the neediest of the needy.” The magazine supported the establishment of reduced-cost pawnshops that would “increase the power of the poor to help themselves.” The Chattel Loan Company in Philadelphia (1855) and the Pawners’ Bank of Boston (1860) were the next two compassionate conservative attempts—and the Boston venture worked. It allowed customers to redeem their goods by paying 1.5 percent monthly interest rates. The Pawners’ Bank was still in business in 1893, when a business crash put new pressure on charitable groups and the most famous benevolent pawnshop, the Provident Loan Society of New York City (see page 76), began to operate.
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rica, 25, her dark wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail, sits behind thick glass at N. Simpson Pawnbrokers at 149 Canal Street in lower Manhattan. (Simpson is such a famous name in pawnbroking that the Saturday Evening Post in 1937 asked its readers, “Is Your Watch at Simpson’s?”) Across the street from the pawnshop, jewelry shops glitter with gold and silver necklaces encrusted with diamonds, but at N. Simpson the only decoration is a 19th-century gold scale that gathers dust on top of a filing cabinet. Customers are rarely the chatty types of Pawn Stars. More frequent: A short, slender man shuffles in under the red awning that spells out LOANS. He slides an envelope under the partition in the glass. Erica dumps the contents on the counter: several smooth gold nuggets. She studies them, then looks up and asks: “How much do you need? Nine hundred?” He responds, “Can I have one thousand?” Then he slides another gold item under the partition and asks for $1,100. Erica nods. Ten years in the pawnshop business has taught her to spot false gold. She tests jewelry with acid or by scratching it. She knows her regulars—many of Asian ancestry—by name, and says most of the loans at Simpson are for gambling debts. Many of her Asian customers don’t trust banks: They hold their savings in gold and sell some the way others withdraw money from a bank. Others have no savings and a generation ago might have fallen prey to loan sharks who break the legs of non-payers. (That was Rocky Balboa’s job at the beginning of the famed film series.) Now, Erica asks concerning her customers, “Where else are they gonna go?” Simpson charges 4 percent monthly interest and a 4 percent handling fee. For his $1,100 loan, the customer pays $88 interest/handling the first month, and $44 every additional month. About 80 percent of customers reclaim their items. Many will sell them the next time they need gambling cash. One regular customer, Denise, is talkative. Dressed in red sweatpants and a grey hoodie, she says she regularly pawns jewelry and games, and once pawned her valuable Nikon camera—and never reclaimed it. Her hand shakes as she J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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silver and gold: Gavriel Shaulod with a customer at Arthur’s Gold Market.
attempts to light a cigarette: “I’ve been pawning since the shop opened.” She cannot quite remember when that was, but guesses about five years ago: “I need the money.”
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avriel Shaulod for 10 years has managed Arthur’s Gold Market in East Harlem, buying and selling to customers from the surrounding poor neighborhood. He calls himself the neighborhood guy because he helps his customers in financial difficulties: “People are absolutely grateful that I’m giving them money because it means that they aren’t getting evicted from their homes.” One customer asks the value of her wedding and engagement rings. Shaulod peers through a jeweler’s loupe, sighs, and meets her eyes apologetically. The rings cost $1,500, and Shaulod offers $300, explaining that he bases his offer on the amount he knows he can get for the ring. A diamond’s price, like a car’s, falls the moment it leaves the jewelry store. Shaulod hides a smile each time one particular man makes his monthly trip to the shop and pawns his wedding band. Every month the man’s wife drags him back to the shop, yelling and screaming at him to buy it back. Shaulod says, “She doesn’t understand that he is the man of the house and has to pay the bills. She just thinks he doesn’t care about the ring.” Shaulod charges 3 percent interest for four months (1 percent less than New York state law allows) plus a $5 ticket and taxes fee. He gives his customers a two-week grace period, sometimes more: “People call me and say, ‘Gavriel, don’t sell my things,’ and it’s been more than four months. I tell them to come pick up their stuff. I ask them how much time they need.” Arthur’s Gold Market is 10 blocks away from the intersection of Park Avenue and 116th St., where a half-century ago filmmakers shot most of The Pawnbroker. A —with reporting by Christina Darnell, Kara Hackett, Abigail Maurer, Kira Clark, Sophia Lee, Samantha Gilman, J.C. Derrick, Kara Bettis, and Catherine Rogers; for more about pawnshop benevolence and today’s opportunities, see my column on page 76
elbert chu
bout 30 million people each year need the money or come to pawnshops looking for bargains. The National Pawnbrokers Association keeps records of customer numbers and average loan amounts: $100 in 2009, maybe up to $150 now. Banks generally don’t make loans that small, or to people with poor credit—and since the 2008 banking collapse they’ve been more reluctant to take chances. Pawnbrokers do take chances with their loans, because they hold the collateral and can make money whether the customer reclaims his item or gives it up. The question is how much money. Pawnshops generally charge more than banks and even credit card companies do, but 17 million American adults do not have bank accounts and access to loans, some by choice and some because banks have stopped throwing money at people with bad credit. Some say past bank overdraft fees and credit card late fees have cost them more than pawnshop interest. Others like speed: When they offer an ID and hand over a piece of their property, they can get a loan without requiring a credit check, bank account, or a co-signer. Because the loan is based on collateral, borrowers do not have to keep paying and paying: The most they can lose is the item they’ve handed over to the pawnbroker. One danger is that pawnshop loans can hook users into a cycle of debt, but the risk is not as high as with other types of loans, since pawn loans tend to be smaller. The Obama years have seen the rise of pawnshop chains. Two of the biggest, EZCorp and Cash America International, both Texas-based, do about 10 percent of the business done by the 13,000 mostly mom-and-pop pawnshops in the United States. The two companies target middle-class consumers who earn $30,000 to $80,000 a year. Pawnshops used to be known as places trading in stolen items, but now pawnshops typically need to submit reports to local police that include serial numbers of items and identifying
information concerning sellers. Since police can confiscate stolen merchandise and the pawnbroker has to take the loss, pawnbrokers have a financial interest in avoiding stolen property—but some shoplifters at stores reluctant to prosecute, and drug abusers who steal from families reluctant to prosecute, still get away with it. New York City’s Department of Consumers Affairs (DCA) has other concerns about pawnshops. DCA investigators last fall went undercover into businesses that dealt in gold, including pawnshops, and found widespread deception in weighing and pricing. The DCA also examined whether pawnshops stayed in business largely because banks did not have branches in poor areas, with residents lacking bank accounts turning to pawnbrokers instead. The study, though, showed no correlation between the number of bank branches per capita and the number of people with bank accounts.
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the 2012 Hope Award for Effective Compassion
Hope in the heartla
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eavey Park, in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, has a wading pool, basketball hoops, red-painted playground equipment, and soccer fields. The park doesn’t live up to its potential, though, because it’s a hub for drug deals, gang activity, and prostitution. Most children in the poor neighborhood of
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brick storefronts and aging blue, green, and gray homes don’t live up to their potential, either: Only one out of five students at the nearby public school, Andersen, performs at grade level in math. Hope Academy, a Christian private school, sits one block south of Peavey Park in a former hospital with an old coal
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tland
Our Midwest region winner balances discipline and grace by Daniel James Devine in Minneapolis, Minn.
photographs by james allen Walker
smokestack out front. Every morning principal Russ Gregg greets arriving elementary students by name. “Is it raining out there?” he asks a girl, bending to give a hug. “You look so beautiful in this pink raincoat.” Then he assures a third-grade boy that a good-behavior trip to McDonald’s will come next week.
Third in a series; last issue: Eastern region
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Hope Academy educated 325 K-12 students during the 2011/2012 school year. About three-fourths came from low-income families, and among them Hope has tripled the math proficiency rate. The 26 full- and part-time teachers at Hope don’t just want to teach math, music, Latin, and rhetoric to poor kids, though. They want to shepherd them away from the false communities of gangs and drugs that beckon students emerging from neglect or turmoil at home. Creation of a new community begins as school opens with 150 elementary students—boys in red collared shirts and girls in blue-and-green plaid jumpers—crowded around an overhead projector. A teacher strums an acoustic guitar while the kids sing “Praise the Lord with a big bass drum!” They beat the air with pretend drumming. When worship time ends, students enter into lines and file quietly to classrooms. To open hearts, teachers work to balance discipline and grace, and admit to students when they make mistakes. In the fourth-grade classroom, teacher Melissa Hoilien apologizes to a student for not clarifying the difference between “collage” and “college” on a previous spelling test. As Hoilien administers today’s test, her students bend their noses to their desks and try to spell “odor,” “cheddar,” and “zipper.” They also discuss memory verses like Romans 8:28: A student who had moved in with an aunt and uncle because of family problems recently told classmates that God is working her trials for her good and showing how much He loves her. Meanwhile, second-grade students are rehearsing for an upcoming recital. Rajah West, 7, stands on a plastic stool with his chin down, looking nervous. “Go ahead, Rajah!” one classmate says, and 24-year-old teacher Creation Scott Watkins starts a crunk-style of a new soundtrack with police siren sound effects. community: Rajah raps along, singing lyrics he wrote Children himself: “Every day is basketball time. It’s arrive at Hope hang time, game time, we keep it goin’ a Academy. friend of mine. ...” Hope is trying to form a new community with kids who carry emotional baggage from outside. Hope students sometimes call each other names, scratch one another, ostracize others, and occasionally have outright fistfights. School policy requires a student serving a detention to fill out a “reflection sheet,” writing down what he did wrong, whom he offended, and what he’ll do differently next time. The goal is to finish with a prayer for heart change. This year Hope lost about a dozen students by May through expulsion or through families moving away. Some students come to Hope after years of educational abuse. “At my old school, we didn’t really learn anything, and teachers would kind of just give you a grade randomly,” said Teia Mosley, a sophomore with hoop earrings. When she first came to Hope five years ago, her grades dropped from A’s to C’s and D’s because the work was harder and grades were not inflated. Now she earns B’s.
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Hope limits class sizes to 20 students so teachers can help individuals who fall behind. It faces the challenge of finding teachers from the minority groups that now make up three-fourths of the school: More than four out of five teachers are white. School counselor and Bible teacher Darrell Gillespie could probably draw a higher salary elsewhere, but as an African-American pastor he feels called to Hope because of his opportunity to dispel black stereotypes in the minds of minority and white students alike. Finances need constant attention. Because low-income families in the neighborhood pay as little as $60 per month for a student to attend Hope, sponsors need to cover the remainder of the annual $7,300 tuition. Hope’s network of corporate and private sponsors covered 88 percent of the
opening hearts: school’s operating costs this year. Principal Gregg with a Partly due to budget restrictions, student; Scott Watkins Hope still lacks a formal sports protalks with Rajah West; gram for elementary- and middleMarlene and Treyton school students. High-school students Bailey-Thomseth play boys’ football, girls’ soccer, (from left to right). basketball, baseball, and softball. Academic results from Hope students suggest the school is succeeding: Some 97 percent of high-school students who have attended Hope for two years or more read at grade level. Teachers also talk about the spiritual lessons both they and students learn. Hoilien tells how one of her fourth-graders persistently bullied a classmate, and she begged principal Gregg to suspend the girl.
A job to do together Before classes began at Hope Academy one day in April, teachers at a men’s Bible study sat in a circle and talked about Psalm 51 and confession. Second-grade teacher Scott Watkins told the group he had to teach some students how to say, “I’m sorry.” No one had ever apologized to them before. “I get frustrated and snap on kids in gym,” added athletic director Hugh Brown. That becomes an opportunity to confess his own wrongs to students, he said, and maybe soften the hearts of those who harbor grudges: “Our students will try to mask what’s going on.” Principal Gregg says the relationshipbuilding needed to remove masks best occurs outside of school hours. He takes students out for cheeseburger Happy Meals
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and Minnesota Timberwolves basketball games. Hope teachers meet with students in mentorship groups and annually visit each school family at its home. With some parents, deeds of kindness help break down ethnic barriers of mistrust. Gregg once corralled five volunteers and two pickup trucks on a Sunday afternoon to help a student’s mom move out of her apartment, and in doing so changed her attitude: “The next week I was meeting with a completely different person.” Wayne Bugg, whose 12- and 13-yearold children attend Hope, speaks of how the school has helped him grow as a dad. Bugg meets with the school’s board chairman one Friday a month to get guidance on finances, family, or Bible questions. The mentorship has prompted Bugg to make
Bugg and his children
changes in his home, including monitoring what TV shows his children watch. Even though it’s inconvenient sometimes, Bugg appreciates Hope’s annual requirement that all parents volunteer at the school for at least 10 hours and attend “Saturday School” twice: “They’re not saying, ‘Just give me your child and we’ll raise him up.’ They say, ‘No, we’ve got to do this job together.’”
To learn more about Hope Academy go to worldmag.com for more photos and a short video
7/9/12 4:33 PM
eo
the 2012 Hope Award for Effective Compassion
runner-up
A St. Louis refuge A
Gregg refused to do so unless Hoilien first talked with the girl about the gospel and gave her a chance to repent. Hoilien says she didn’t want to: “My heart was hard.” She did, though—and a surprising thing happened. The bully broke down in tears and asked for her classmate’s forgiveness. Then she asked for God’s. Hope students here seem to hate one another at times, Hoilien said— but then “have these moments of glory where they see Jesus.” Parents also have moments of glory. One of Hoilien’s students, Treyton Bailey-Thomseth, had it tough five years ago. I talked with his mother, Marlene Thomseth, who was recovering from drug addiction at a nearby halfway house at the time. She says she didn’t want to care for Treyton, but she then attended a moms’ Bible study at the school. She saw how kindly the parents spoke and acted toward their own children. She was surprised—and intimidated. Thomseth said the moms and Hope teachers emailed and MONEY BOX called her: They “patiently and so Hope Academy received lovingly” taught her $2.86 million in 2010, about the heart issues including special contribufueling disobedience tions for a building fund and rental income from in her son. Now she Minnesota Teen Challenge, volunteers in Treyton’s which leases the school’s class as often as possithird floor. ble, and Treyton Expenses were $2.52 recently wrote a note million. to her on blue construction paper: Principal Russ Gregg had a “Thank you mom for salary of $73,000. loving me each and Hope’s net assets every day and were $1.86 million at the f orgiving me when I end of 2010. don’t deserve it.” A The school, which employs 24 full-time and 16 part-time staff members, has about 240 regular volunteers, most of them parents.
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t 5 p.m. men trickle in the side door of the old, four-story brick headquarters of Sunshine Ministries, a rescue mission in St. Louis. They put coats, wallets, and pocket contents into clear plastic bags for the night, grab coffee, and sit down to wait for dinner, chatting like old friends. One problem is that some are old friends: They’ve been eating and sleeping here for years, instead of leaving homelessness behind. Tim, wearing a gray sweater and glasses, is a regular who says he makes $55 a week donating blood. He complains that St. Louis has the lowest paying plasma centers in the nation. Kevin, with tattooed arms, is a newcomer. He’s hoping to get on disability for what he calls mental reasons. He says Sunshine’s shelter is “top-notch,” and has great food but strict rules. Blame the rules and food on Bryan Polk, the shelter’s sympathetic but nonsense-intolerant chef. While cooking up a meal of hamburgers, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn, Polk explains that he kicks men out of the shelter for cursing, fighting, or trying to eat without attending chapel. Some he bans for failing to shower before bedtime: The more hygienic clients squeal on them. Polk exhibits a dismissal list with dozens of names and Social Security numbers: “If I put you on that list, it’s because you’ve been warned several times.” During dinner, some men sit close to the kitchen so they can be first in line for seconds and thirds. When food runs out, old-timers know the drill: They move to the opposite side of the dining room, where a cross hangs behind a wooden lectern. Tonight’s speaker, James Dunbar, exhorts the men to lean on the strength of Christ: “I was a drug addict. I was a sinner. But God stepped in at the just the right time.” “Amen!” some shouted as he preached. People in St. Louis’ Old North neighborhood have shouted “amen” at Sunshine for more than a century. Founded as a soup kitchen in 1903, Sunshine soon opened its doors to the homeless and nowadays gives away groceries and educates preschoolers. Like 231 other members of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions that also deserve recognition, Sunshine provides physical support for the downtrodden—but getting the downtrodden to change habits can be a challenge.
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the 2012 Hope Award for Effective Compassion
feeding body and soul: Jim and Carol Clarkson outside of Sunshine Ministries (far right); Chef Bryan Polk (top); James Dunbar speaks to the men (bottom).
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Sunshine’s nine full-time and 19 part-time employees work with about 75 regular volunteers.
Daniel James Devine
Sunshine irectors Jim and d Carol Clarkson know that breaking generational patterns of dependency requires more than evening chapel. When the husband and wife took leadership of the organization in 1996, they launched a 13-month recovery program designed to The Clarksons want to prod more shelter clients down help men drop addictions, improve their attitudes, and the same path of accountability Easley walked. They plan write resumés. But right now only three men are in the to begin construction soon on a 22,000-square-foot program. dormitory that will replace the shelter and turn 50 One of the men Sunshine truly helped is Irvin Easley, homeless men into residents, with assigned caseworkers. who one night was cold, numb, and soaked by a freezing Sunshine is prepared to build debt free, with $5 million rain. Easley, middle-aged and newly homeless, had sold already in the bank. his guns and gloves to buy drugs. Now he waited to Jim Clarkson said the most discouraging part of his collect crack cocaine from a 19-year-old. As Easley tried job is when clients who have temporarily gotten their to light a wet Benson & Hedges cigarette, it finally hit lives in order later “walk out on you” and relapse into old him: His lifestyle of getting high on drugs and robbing habits: One recovery program graduate, he heard the drug dealers he followed home from nightclubs was recently, had gone to Memphis, Tenn., and started about to land him in penitentiary or a grave. hanging out with the wrong crowd. But the rewarding Easley knew about Sunshine because he had picked part, when lives truly change long-term, is priceless. up free bags of groceries there—but what had enabled As they rework the recovery program, the Clarksons him to continue in misery he now, finally, saw as a road have added a food pantry for low-income families, to change. After three days at a detox center, he slept one created summer camps for children and teens, and built night at Sunshine’s recovery dormitory and awoke a preschool building. Sunshine’s feeling hungry and peaceful. He shared preschool is bright and cheerful: Children secrets about his past with a “conservaplay wheelbarrow in the gym, learn tive, Republican, white” counselor, He MONEY BOX about Adam and Eve, practice writing began overcoming his “dirty mouth” Sunshine Ministries’ total the letter of the week, and huddle with and his mistrust toward others. revenue in 2010 was outstretched necks around two new Easley’s road back was long, but seven $3,363,000, including goldfish named Norman and Squirt. years after his descent into h omelessness investment income. Preschool staffers say none of their the 53-year-old makes $21.37 an hour Expenses totaled 12 students lives in a home with two doing historical renovation. As an $2,079,000 and the married parents. Recently, when a addict, Easley quarreled with his dad organization’s net assets teacher asked one boy where his dad about every subject except baseball. were $11,383,000. was, the 5-year-old replied, “He’s out Now he visits him in a nursing home: Jim and Carol Clarkson are hustling today.” A “To see the joy in his eyes when I on call 24/7 and come ... it’s really good.” —by Daniel James Devine in St. Louis, Mo. together earn $250,000.
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Notebook
Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports > Money > Religion
Community spirit
The growing popularity of farmers markets has to do with food—and much more by Kira Clark
Robin Loznak/ZUMA press/Newscom
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“Try this chocolate linguini, it’s great with vanilla ice cream,” offers Molly Sharp, a 20-something pasta seller at Seattle’s 105-yearold Pike Place Market. The market, which stretches over nine acres close to Seattle’s waterfront, attracts more than 10 million visitors each year. Its popularity is part of a nationwide trend, with the number of farmers markets increasing by 17 percent from 2010 to 2011. The reason seems clear: Customers shop for locally grown and produced items, but they particularly appreciate a sense of community. Pike Place pasta seller Sharp has loved the market for as long as she can remember. In the third
grade, she recalls, she sauntered among the vendors in floral leggings and a pink cloth beret, making her lunches out of free samples. Even before she started working as a vendor, Sharp said she never felt alone: “I always came here to be with people.” When Seattle city councilman Thomas Revelle proposed opening Pike Place Market in 1906, he said customers would “meet the producer” directly. Three years later, Sosio Manzo got off a boat from Sicily and began farming in Burien, a small town 10 miles south of Seattle. His grandson, Mario Manzo, has been selling the family’s produce in the market since 1965. In those days the
market was closed on Sundays, so on Saturdays Manzo bargained to get rid of produce that would spoil by Monday: “That’s when the families with five or six kids came.” Thomas Ochoa has been a fishmonger in Pike Place Market for three years. He knows his customers by name and can predict whether they will select freshly caught cod or 3-inch shrimp. Ochoa’s relationships extend beyond selling seafood: One customer took Ochoa and his co-workers to a vacation ranch in westGET FRESH: ern Washington. Ochoa Seattle’s helps another customer historic Pike with her gardening. Place Market. J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Notebook > Lifestyle
Margaret Cosh, years old and with no previous convictions, served two months of hard labor in the Newcastle (England) City Gaol for stealing a coat. Her picture, and pictures of other convicted criminals in Newcastle from to , are available on Flickr. The sepia-toned photos show faces, clothes, and hair–styles of poor English people: flickr. com/photos/twm_news/sets. —Susan Olasky
Agence France Press reported that glass beads made in the Roman Empire between the first and fourth century .. were found in a fifth-century
Japanese tomb near Kyoto. The government-funded Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties analyzed three mm beads and discovered a chemical, natron, used in the Roman glass process. The beads, which had gold leaf between layers of glass, offer clues about early trade between the Mediterranean and Japan, , miles away. Could Christian teachings have traveled along with
beads and other material goods? (See “Japan: Buddhism and Christianity,” WORLD, June , .) —S.O.
Millions of neighbors In , Fred McFeely Rogers donated one of his zip-front cardigan sweaters to the Smithsonian Institute. A recent blog post at the Smithsonian website reminds readers that his mother Nancy knit the sweaters—and four of them (red, green, purple, blue) appear in the new Mr. Rogers video remix, “Garden of Your Mind,” produced by PBS Digital. More than million people have watched it on YouTube. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a remarkably quiet and calm contrast to the shows with frenetic movement that have come to dominate television for kids. The Smithsonian notes that for more than three decades Mr. Rogers began each episode of his PBS show by “entering his house from some invisible outside world and singing ‘Won’t you be my neighbor?’ as he took off his sport coat, hung it up in his hall closet, and reached back in for one of his many trademark cardigans, zipping it up, and then sitting down to swap out his classic oxfords for sneakers, singing all the while.” —S.O.
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ITU: MARTIAL TREZZINI/KEYSTONE/AP • BURGLARY: ANDERSON COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
TRADE WARES
PRISON PEEK
COSH: WHITEHOTPIX/ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM • MANZO: KIRA CLARK • BEAD: NARA NATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE/AFP/GETTYIMAGES/NEWSCOM • ROGERS: BETTMANN/CORBIS/AP
Vendors at the market A small crowd forms MEET THE PRODUCER: know that communication around two buskers Mario Manzo. is good for business. playing folk music on Customers buy from the corner near the those they know and like, original Starbucks. A says Rosy Primeri, who fruit seller expounds on works for Manzo. Just the superior quality of then her boss raises an his apricots. A bearded eyebrow and nods toward fishmonger celebrates a a girl in her early s: “Do sale by throwing the you see Lizzy the Lizard?” decapitated salmon He directs her gaze to a over the head of a green plastic lizard that buyer to his “catcher” appears to be devouring for packaging—the his green beans. The market’s famous customer laughs and they “flying fish.” ATMs and begin chatting. self-check lines offer Former homeless man Josh Mosley speed but not human contact. found his roots in the market in . After All of this interaction occurs as the five years of living on the streets, Mosley smell of freshly baked bread and lavender started working for a dried fruit vendor. soap blends with the fragrance from row “If you don’t like this dried pineapple, you after row of colorful cut flowers. Open can punch me in the face,” he teases two jars of blackberry honey, pumpkin butter, hipster college students. His co-worker and raspberry jam invite sampling. rolls her eyes and continues chatting with Customers find Russian piroshkis, taro another customer. The college kids root, and aged Italian cheeses, popular at chuckle. So far no one has punched him. A Pike Place decades before they were trendy at Whole Foods. —Kira Clark is a WORLD intern
Notebook > Technology
Virtual power grab
Nations move to exert control of internet communications By daniel james devine
ITu: MARTIAL TREZZINI/Keystone/ap • BURGLARY: Anderson County Sheriff’s Office
cosh: Whitehotpix/ZUMA PRESS/Newscom • Manzo: Kira Clark • bead: NARA NATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE/AFP/GettyImages/newscom • rogers: Bettmann/Corbis/AP
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Are Russia, China, and other world powers plotting to restrict internet freedoms through a United Nations agency? U.S. observers from both sides of the political spectrum fear they are, and are calling on the Obama administration to stand against it. A global treaty managed by the International Telecommunication Union, a body made up of 193 UN member nations, sets overarching guidelines for how international phone calls and internet traffic is handled. The ITU will meet in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in December to update treaty text for the first time since 1988, and according to a 212-page conference planning document leaked online in June, some nations are lobbying for changes that jeopardize virtual free speech.
FACEBURGLARY
Russia and Iran, for instance, ropose allowing countries to impose p a toll on incoming internet traffic, a move that could limit foreigners’ access to U.S.-based companies with a large web presence, such as Google and Apple. Other nations want the right to inspect private email. China proposes that countries be allowed to force websites to operate only “in a rational way” within their borders. China was blocking Facebook and Bloomberg news websites in July even while the country endorsed an unprecedented resolution by the UN Human Rights Council calling for internet freedom of speech.
“We made it to Disney World! Here I am with Goofy!” As thrilling as it may be to share photos and updates about your summer vacation with friends and acquaintances on Facebook and Google Plus, police recommend you think twice. Investigators in Anderson, S.C., say Robert Landreth Jr., 44, and Candace Landreth, 39, burglarized four homes after watching for Facebook users to announce their vacations. In April the duo allegedly stole thousands of dollars’ worth of electronics and valuables from the home of a Facebook “friend,” including $6,400 in jewelry. According to a preliminary FBI report, burglary is the only property crime that did not decrease in 2011. If you simply can’t resist posting about your Grand Canyon trip on Facebook, here’s a tip: Create a “list” of friends and family you trust, and make your vacation updates visible only to them. —D.J.D.
Email: ddevine@worldmag.com
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UN DIALOGUE: Some nations Hamadoun I. propose giving Toure, Secretarythe UN power to General of ITU. g overn internet addresses— especiallyworrisome since that responsibility now falls to the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a self-regulating, nonprofit organization that governs internet structure and enjoys a warm relationship with the U.S. government. Some foreign powers want to downsize U.S. influence on internet policy, and the Dubai meeting will be their opportunity to do so. An amended treaty wouldn’t bind the United States, but it could disrupt the international flow of information. In a column in The Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz said the leaked documents showed U.S. diplomats had thus far couched their objections to the foreign proposals in the politest terms, “weak responses even by Obama administration standards.” Last month’s revelation that the United States has conducted secret cyber-attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities doesn’t help the U.S. argument favoring less government control. But if the Obama administration doesn’t exert its weight in Dubai, experts say, Russia and China certainly will. J u ly 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 W O R L D
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Notebook > Science
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The United States, Japan, and the European Union ratcheted up pressure on China in June over its export policy for molybdenum, tungsten, and rare earth minerals. The three nations asked for a World Trade Organization panel to resolve a dispute that began in March, when they filed a complaint claiming China’s tariffs and restrictions on rare earth exports were effectively forcing manufacturers to move into China. Rare earths are essential to technology like hybrid car batteries, smartphones, and missiles. The new pressure came seven days after Chinese officials released a white paper blaming rare earth mining for polluting rivers and causing landslides in the country. They promised to tighten environmental controls—a move Western observers suspected could function as an excuse for continued export restrictions. China currently controls percent of the world’s production of rare earths. —D.J.D.
BIODIESEL: JACOB JONES/THE DAILY WORLD/AP • RARE EARTH: XIE ZHENGYI/IMAGINECHINA/AP
RARE ACTION
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Renewable racket
cooking oil in Portland, Ore., told the Houston Chronicle his company was stuck with unsold credits because the “marketplace just basically froze and locked up for smallFraud cases leave petroleum and medium-sized producers.” producers wary of biofuel credits Part of the problem is that the EPA leaves it to buyers to BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE determine whether the renewable credits they’re purchasing G refiners are legitimate. If not, the buyers not are spooked after a series of only lose money on worthless credits, revelations, beginning last the EPA fines them. In two of the recent November, that three companies fraud cases, the agency fined fuel created millions of fraudulent credits companies that purchased fake credits. for renewable fuels. The credits, worth a Settlements reached six figures. combined million, were sold under This “buyer beware” approach the scheme Congress initiated in unnerves refiners, and they’re buying to promote the use of “green” fuels like from fewer biofuel producers. The biodiesel and ethanol from plant waste president of a renewable credit and corn. Fuel makers that cannot brokerage, Ocean Connect, said there produce their own renewable fuel must were active makers of biodiesel last buy it—or buy credits—from those that year, but only this year. The can. But the specter of phony credits has brokerage is suing the EPA for its chilled the renewable market, causing handling of the situation. The House refiners to avoid buying from smaller Energy and Commerce Committee producers for fear of more fraud. launched its own investigation in May. In June, even while one of the In the Maryland case, federal alleged violators went to trial in prosecutors charged -year-old Maryland, the Environmental Rodney R. Hailey with creating . Protection Agency was investigating a million in fake biodiesel credits on his fourth suspected case of fraud. computer. Hailey allegedly sold the Biofuels such as ethanol are credits to petroroutinely blended with standard leum companies gasoline and sold to U.S. drivers. By BIO DUEL: Lisa and used the law, renewables must comprise about Smith, a manager money to buy jewpercent of all fuels consumed in the with Imperium elry, real estate, and Grays Harbor, United States this year. The industry explains the luxury cars, includwon’t stop buying and selling, but biodiesel ing a Rolls-Royce, a smaller producers may get sidelined: A production Lamborghini, and representative for Aspen Biofuel, a process at a plant in Aberdeen, Wash. two Bentleys. company making biodiesel from used
Notebook > Houses of God
Church of Highland Park, N.J.
++MEL EVANS/AP
BIODIESEL: JACOB JONES/THE DAILY WORLD/AP • RARE EARTH: XIE ZHENGYI/IMAGINECHINA/AP
Nine Indonesian refugees reside in the Sunday school classrooms of The Reformed The church is giving sanctuary to eight men and one woman and is trying to stop their deportation, arguing that the nine Christians would face persecution and violence in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.
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WORLD
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Faithful champions
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After discovering weight lifting at age , Anderson was soon using automobile axles for bars and iron wagon wheels for weights in his home gym. Anderson went to the Melbourne Games as a heavy favorite,
WORLD
but a -degree fever made it seem he would miss the competition. On his final lift, weak and exhausted from sickness, Anderson told God, “I want to be part of Your kingdom.” He hoisted ½ pounds overhead to secure the gold medal, then spent the rest of his life telling anyone who would listen that he couldn’t live a day without Jesus. He and his wife Glenda founded the Paul Anderson Youth Home, which has helped to change the lives of more than , young men since . Anderson died in , but the Home continues to operate.
Zamperini earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team as a runner at age . He gained pounds on the ship that carried the team to Europe—“all the food was free”—and finished eighth in the , meters. Seven years later, Zamperini survived seven weeks adrift at sea after the Japanese shot down his plane, and then spent two years in brutal Japanese captivity. He returned home to a hero’s welcome in but descended into alcoholism until he professed Christ at a Billy Graham crusade (see “We had adversities,” Dec. , ). He has spent the rest of his life—he’s now —as a motivational speaker. Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of him, Unbroken, was a New York Times bestseller.
RETTON: STAFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • WILKINSON: AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES • ROBINSON: JOHN GAPS III/AP • ANDERSON: AP • ZAMPERINI: BETTMANN/CORBIS/AP IMAGES
sport in which she could train for the Olympics. Eight years later, Wilkinson won Olympic gold Olympic greats from the past despite recovering from a who have put their trust in Christ broken foot: BY J.C. DERRICK “God gives you different gifts W ceremony of the and talents, London Olympic Games scheduled and when you for July , we’re looking forward to the have the stories of human gracefulness and opportunity to God’s grace that will emerge. Here are quick do that for a looks at five past American Olympians who living it doesn’t displayed both. feel like work. I was using the gifts He gave me, so it felt like worship.” Today Wilkinson, a mom and motivational Mary Lou Retton was years old in speaker, runs the Laura Wilkinson when she twice landed a perfect in the Foundation. vault to become the first American woman to win Olympic gold in all-around gymnas tics. She had grown up in a Christian home, but last month told me she didn’t get seriThe Olympics was the first in which ous about her faith “until my mid-s professional basketball players could when I had my first child. compete, and the U.S. That’s when it really hit me.” team had an average Today Retton is busy raising winning margin of four daughters—three are points in its undefeated gymnasts—and traveling as a run to Olympic gold in motivational speaker. She Barcelona. Robinson calls her faith in Christ “the helped the United core of who I am” and speaks States to another gold of it extensively in her medal finish in , in speeches: “I think that’s why the midst of a Hall of [God] had me win, to put me Fame NBA career that on a different platform.” included two championships and a most valuable player award. Robinson professed An adolescent growth spurt Christ in , and his ended Laura Wilkinson’s subsequent charity dreams of becoming the next work led the NBA to name its Community Mary Lou Retton, but she found platform Assist Award after him. He’s invested diving at age after setting out to find a parts of his last decade—and more than million—in The Carver Academy, a San Antonio charter school he founded.
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MERKEL: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES • SEEHOFER: MATTHIAS SCHRADER/AP • HOUSING: CHRIS O’MEARA/AP
Notebook > Sports
Notebook > Money
A new Europe?
Markets react positively to plans for a more centralized Eurozone BY WARREN COLE SMITH
RETTON: STAFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • WILKINSON: AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES • ROBINSON: JOHN GAPS III/AP • ANDERSON: AP • ZAMPERINI: BETTMANN/CORBIS/AP IMAGES
MERKEL: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES • SEEHOFER: MATTHIAS SCHRADER/AP • HOUSING: CHRIS O’MEARA/AP
>>
NEW PLAN PREVAILS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (above) and other MPs prepare to cast their ballots to ratify the financing measure of the European Union fiscal pact; Horst Seehofer disagrees (below).
T D J Industrial Average lost more than , points in May, giving up all of the first quarter’s gains, and more. European fears, a soft housing market, and flagging consumer confidence brought the big drop. Then, suddenly, a turnaround. The Dow rose more than points on the last trading day of the second quarter, and gained nearly points for the week. Why the change? Investors are starting to believe that the eurozone might actually solve its -month-long debt crisis. On June , leaders of the European Union countries agreed on an aggressive plan that looked to the markets like it was more than just kicking the can down the road. EU leaders declared they would centralize regulation of European banks and, if necessary, bail them out directly, instead of funneling loans through governments that already have
too much debt. Leaders also said they would ease borrowing costs on Italy and Spain, the eurozone’s third- and fourth-largest economies. Two more agreements turned this summit—the th since the debt crisis began three years ago—into what could be a historic event. Leaders agreed to rescue floundering countries, without forcing them to make painful budget cuts if they’ve already made economic reforms. And Germany and France agreed to tie their budgets, currency, and governments more tightly to others in the European Union. The prime minister of Ireland said the plan marked a “seismic shift in European policy.” British Prime Minister David Cameron said that “for the first time in some time we have actually seen steps ... to get ahead of the game.” But some Germans, who will largely foot the bill for the plan, were not as pleased as global investors and EU leaders were. Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, who leads a conservative party that is a key member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, was skeptical of the plan and told Stern magazine that he would turn next year’s elections into a vote on Europe. “The fact that others want to get at our money without asking too much of themselves is deeply human,” he said. “But it won’t solve the problem.”
2.1 STEPS FORWARD, 1.9 STEPS BACK
The U.S. housing crisis was disproportionately responsible for the Great Recession, so it was positive news that the number of Americans signing contracts to buy existing homes jumped nearly percent in May to the highest level since April . The National Association of Realtors’ report, released in late June, said spring buying was particularly strong out West. Investors are driving the market there, racing to buy distressed properties and take advantage of today’s hot rental market. But there was other news: U.S. manufacturing slowed sharply in June to a level that indicates the sector is now contracting, marking the end of almost three years of growth in domestic manufacturing. Manufacturing had been one of the few bright spots during the sluggish recovery, and the sector had expanded for months in a row before June. The index’s new orders component, a forward-looking indicator, was hit particularly hard. It fell . percentage points in June to .. Any number below indicates contraction in the sector. Most analysts still believe the news is a net positive, as other indicators such as car sales looked strong. Nonetheless, in late June the Commerce Department reiterated its estimate that U.S. Gross Domestic Product growth this year would be only . percent, a number that barely keeps pace with population and productivity gains, and leaves virtually no capacity for new job creation. —W.C.S. Available in Apple’s App Store: Download WORLD’s iPad app today
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Notebook > Religion
PCA votes
Identity kept
Denomination affirms stances on evolution, God’s Word BY THOMAS KIDD
>>
I’ , and for many American church leaders, that means annual denominational meetings. Debates over evolution and Bible translations in Muslimdominated cultures highlighted the STANDING FIRM: Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) th General Delegates attend Assembly. On evolution, the conservative denomination a seminar on the affirmed that Scripture and the Westminster Confession of age of the earth Faith make clear that “Adam and Eve are real, historical and the historicity of Adam and Eve. human beings directly created by God.” Some delegates wished to state more explicitly that the Bible contradicts any evolutionary interpretation of Adam’s origins, including theistic evolution. But by a majority vote, the denomination agreed to let its traditional stance remain the final word on evolution, for the time being. Representatives of the ,-member PCA also voted to rebuke Wycliffe Bible Translators and other missions organizations that, in order to avoid causing offense to Muslims, have steered away from using the term “Son of God” as a descriptor for Jesus in Arabic and other Middle Eastern Bible translations (see “Inside Out,” May , ). The Quran teaches that God cannot have a son, and the phrase “Son of God” carries implications in Arabic of God having had conjugal relations with Mary. Some translators have substituted terms such as “Christ” or the “spiritual Son of God” for the designation “Son of God.” The PCA assembly, following a similar action by the Assemblies of God, suggested cutting funding to organizations that tailor translations to Muslim sensibilities.
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PCA: JOEL DUFF • RCA: HANDOUT • LUTER: GERALD HERBERT/AP
The Reformed Church in America (RCA), a mainline denomination of Dutch Reformed origins, also held its General Synod, during which delegates voted to remove a controversial “conscience clause” that had allowed objecting ministers to recuse themselves from ordaining female clergy. The denomination began ordaining women in 1979, but also adopted the conscience provision in order to reduce friction over the policy. The removal of the clause, which local RCA governing bodies must still approve, would make acceptance of female pastors the unequivocal policy of the denomination. The RCA, like most mainline denominations, is also grappling to settle its positions on homosexuality and gay marriage. The synod voted to create a committee to consider ways to manage denominational turmoil over these issues. Unlike more liberal mainline denominations such as The Episcopal Church, the RCA has consistently affirmed that homosexual acts are sinful, and that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. —T.K.
The election of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) first AfricanAmerican president, New Orleans pastor Fred Luter, headlined that denomination’s meeting in New Orleans. But the SBC also confronted other issues that have generated controversy in the 16-million-member denomination in recent years. First, messengers (SBC delegates) voted by a slim margin to give their churches the option of calling themselves “Great Commission Baptists” instead of Southern Baptists. For years, Southern Baptists ministering outside the South have indicated that the denomination’s name could be a problem in evangelism and church growth because of negative cultural stereotypes or an awareness of the denomination’s slave-owning past. The denomination will keep Southern Baptist Convention as its legal name. The SBC also adopted a resolution affirming the legitimacy of the “Sinner’s Prayer,” the traditional evangelical prayer in which non-Christians are encouraged to invite Jesus into their hearts. David Platt, the Calvinist SBC pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., ignited a furor in March when he decried the Sinner’s Prayer as unbiblical and superstitious, and suggested that it gave many a false assurance of salvation. In an unrecorded vote, a majority of messengers declared the prayer “a biblical expression of repentance and faith.” —T.K.
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Mailbag ‘Effective compassion’
June I love horses, I love Wyoming, and I loved learning about Fathers in the Field, the West Region winner of WORLD’s Hope Awards. I want to have a part in it and intend to support it. This is the body of Christ working as it is designed to do. —K M, Gray, Ga.
‘The politicized pulpit’
June Marvin Olasky dealt quite well with two of the three statements in the Belgic Confession regarding how to recognize the true church but did not focus on the third: “it practices church discipline for correcting faults.” Many of our churches have failed in their responsibility to discipline both individual leaders and members, much as some Christian parents have left their parenting responsibilities up to social institutions such as schools. Surely God will hold both churches and parents accountable. —D Y, Wichita, Kan.
As a pastor and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, I have seen firsthand the dangers Olasky described, and his balanced words of advice were spot on. —J M, Duluth, Ga.
As a pastor and writer, I do not endorse candidates or policies. However, I will respond when anyone makes statements that challenge the biblical worldview. If that person is running for public office, that is incidental. —G B. K, Lake City, Fla.
‘The poor in mind’
June I really liked Janie B. Cheaney’s insights into the real reason for
poverty in America. As a pastor for many years in a low-income area of our town, I know. Those who work with the poor must ask all who come in their doors seeking help, “Do you want to be well?” Many are poor and remain poor because they are not willing to give up their lifestyles and addictions to truly live. We always give them food and invite them in, but will not invest any more time or resources until by their actions they say, “Yes, I want to be well.” —J C, Reno, Nev.
I agree that churches are the best way to help the poor, and it certainly does take more than responding to a pulling of our heart strings to decide where to apply charity. I pray we use the brains and wisdom God gives us before we open our wallets. —D S, Lake Tapps, Wash.
‘Kid-glove treatment’
June Come November, a theologically vetted Romney is far and away preferable to President Obama, still unvetted thanks to the fawning and complicit liberal media. With our nation poised at a crossroads, it will be disastrous for America if evangelical Christians seeking doctrinal purity sit on the sidelines and don’t vote for the resoundingly better of the two choices in November.
Send photos and letters to: mailbag@worldmag.com
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—P K, Portland, Conn.
‘A great divorce’
June Emily Belz’s poignant piece reminded me of the sorrow I felt after my own exodus from The Episcopal Church. The way she took us through all the details, worldly and spiritual, were heart-wrenching, but in the end the grace and mercy shown by The Falls Church overwhelmingly surpassed all else. The love of Christ won the day. —K W, Yorktown, Va.
‘Mind changes’
June This article is a relevant headsup. It introduces the question of whether a government agency should have some role, along with psychiatrists themselves, in making changes to the guidelines for diagnosing mental illness and prescribing psychiatric medications. These decisions should not be made solely by psychiatrists, who may tend to over-medicate large segments of our population. But under the authority of the government the guidelines would be vulnerable to political misuse. Can we do anything to reduce the chances of having governmental authority over yet another part of our lives? —J S. G, Decatur, Ga.
‘Songs with staying power’
June I noticed that WORLD’s iPad app had in this article an embedded recording of the Bach motet you mentioned. For a few minutes, the article became a concert and my doctor’s office was lifted up with “alleluias.” The ability to supplement information and ideas with sound and video is exciting, but the format would be of J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2
WORLD
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Mailbag
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no value without the God-honoring content, which I cherish. —J M, Carrollton, Texas
WORLD has figured out how to publish for Kindle in a way that is practical, interesting, and userfriendly. Also, I have noticed a real increase in the volume and quality of your information in various media formats. The websites, political cartoons, and print and digital publications you produce all have a subtle Christ-centered focus. It is so refreshing in this age. —S W. W, Bandera, Texas
‘Fracking: fact or fiction?’
June This article cleared up a lot of fiction I had heard about fracking and explained it in layman’s terms. I’ve sent the information to local and state representatives to help them make wise decisions. —J H. R, Winston-Salem, N.C.
‘Ruling on counseling’
June Thanks to the efforts of those tolerance fighters in Britain and in many declining Western societies, progressives (including homosexuals,
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atheists, and feminists) soon may not have to suffer the indignities of those pesky Christian moralists. Instead they’ll have to deal with Sharia law, which is so much more accommodating. —A G, Sudbury, Ontario
‘Quite a perk’
June Identifying presidential perks funded by taxpayers is a great start. However, why not broaden the scope and identify nonessential benefits received by all government service personnel? Perhaps our esteemed living presidents will support Rep. Jason Chaffetz and his bipartisan colleagues. United leadership might achieve a greater benefit for us all. —M Z, Gretna, La. —B B, Greenbrier, Tenn.
‘Just for men’
June Yes, in a democratic society, any club reserves the right to choose its members, but this does not excuse discrimination. For the Augusta National Golf Club to refuse membership to the CEO of IBM simply because she is a woman is discrimination, and discrimination is harmful to women. And I
7/10/12 3:37 PM
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‘Ticket talking’
May The choice of a presidential candidate’s running mate is usually a pandering attempt to balance a ticket, but Mitt Romney’s choice is a chance to show whether his conservative change of heart in was real or just Etch A Sketch rhetoric. The choice is also important because the next VP may have an active role in the legislative process if the Senate splits -, a not unlikely scenario. From Chapman’s list I’d say this favors Sen. Portman or Rep. Ryan, but others to consider are Sens. John Thune, Rand Paul, or Pat Toomey.
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This summer: go deeper.
—J P, Brooklyn, N.Y.
‘In the shadow of war’
May Thank you to Jamie Dean for her coverage of the refugee camps in South Sudan. The statement of the little boy who had had only a cup of boiled sorghum to eat that day has often echoed in my mind. Asked if he would get any dinner, he replied, “No, that’s all for today.”
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—M B, Wasilla, Alaska
Corrections
The name of the musical directed by Michelle McCarten, children’s choir director at The Falls Church, is Joseph: From the Pit to the Palace (“A great divorce,” June , p. ). Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus (“The brain trust,” June , p. ).
Fall 2012:
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Path to destruction
Winsome names from the homosexual “community” don’t hide the coming collapse
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time you notice your house is honeycombed with E : The big news is holes, it is as brittle as a sugar confection. Marvel Comics X-Men superhero Northstar Think avalanches. The stresses of weight and shear got married this June to his longtime and gravity are building a long time before some boyfriend Kyle, prompting DC Comics to push natural trigger finally overloads the snowpack; then its own Green Lantern character out of the closet. it all comes tumbling down. God only knows when Things are moving faster now. In the early days the tensile strength of a corrupted nation is reached. homosexuals came hat in hand, kissing up to the Once they would have been indignant at the media, testifying gravely on NPR that they were gay suggestion of a connection to the dungeons and by an accident of birth. Their gayness was as fixed fantasy rooms of mid-town Manhattan; now they and ineluctable as gravity. celebrate it on mainstream programming. See how Fast-forward years and the “fixed” part is so easily, Wormwood, without the slightest resistance, passé: Now we swing both ways and it’s all good. LGBT became acceptable, the “B” and the “T” riding The cheat is never pointed out, of course, nor even the coattails of “L” and “G” on nothing more than brought to mind. We were had, but like Jeremiah an acronym. said: “They were not at all ashamed; they did not Homosexuals had to win the winsome word know how to blush” (:). “community” by a thousand numbing repetitions on I know of a woman who left her family for a thousand talk shows, yet the BDSM crowd co-opted another woman, having evidently discovered some it overnight. Once a shock barrier is broken, the latent gene for lesbianism that had slept quietly subsequent ones fall like dominoes and shame through four pregnancies and decades of a normal parades brazenly in the land. marriage. I’m nostalgic for the Karl Marx was highsimpler genetics of the ’s. minded and philosophical. No, all that is over now. All The end of his vision was the the charade of apologia, crass spectacle of looting pseudo-science, natureRussian manor houses and nurture discussions, ginned-up raiding the larder. experts, and pandering to “The land that you are social sensibilities—none of it entering, to take possession of is necessary anymore. At some it, is a land impure with the point philosophy was tossed in COMIC BELIEF: A copy of Astonishing X-Men impurity of the peoples of the the dumpster on the way to #, in which Northstar and Kyle get married. lands, with their abominations the bathhouse. Everybody that have filled it from end to suddenly looked at each other end with their uncleanness” (Ezra :). and said, “Hey, let’s just all be bad, OK?” When One Million Moms complained about homoI had an uncle by marriage who lived in the poor sexual appropriation of comic book superheroes that side of town and insinuated his way into the family. their children might read, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance I was a child and remember him standing in the doorway of my grandparents’ grand old house, not Against Defamation (GLAAD) replied: “From Christian daring even to step over the threshold without churches to sports fields, to now even fictional comic permission. In the end, when he had married my book worlds, our culture overwhelmingly supports plain-featured aunt and my grandparents had died, gay and lesbian Americans and that’s what anti-gay he was running the family business (into insolvency), groups like this are working against.” and his wife braved cold mornings to warm his GLAAD got that impression about churches Cadillac so he could get into a heated car, as he from somewhere. Let us not imagine ourselves bedded half the town. impervious to the forces that have brought the “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the collapse of the supporting beams around us. Things righteous do?” (Psalm :). are moving at breakneck speed now. “Wham! Bam! How are the foundations destroyed? I pondered. Slam!” The only escape from the avalanche is Christ. Think termites. First come legions of them, and But “if you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm their best work goes on behind the scenes. By the at all” (Isaiah :). A
Email: aseupeterson@worldmag.com
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7/9/12 2:55 PM
Marvin Olasky
Mission field: Pawnbroking Southern opportunities in the - percent window
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keeping of the pledges and the regular running expenses (including a moderate return on the required capital).” Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan donated funds, and Theodore Dreiser, when evicted from his room for non-payment, pawned his watch for : He bought shoes, a hat, and a hotel room, and later wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. By Provident had branches; in , it had . But Provident’s theological base weakened during the second half of the th century. Now, only five branches remain, doing good by offering an interest rate slightly over percent per month rather than the New York legal limit of percent, but not offering what some who are poor need more than money: the sympathetic ear of a person ready to propose spiritual help and not just a quick financial fix. With monthly interest rates at – percent in some Southern states that also have strong evangelical churches, it would be great to see some “benevolent pawnshops,” to use the th-century expression, offering – percent and still making a living for some Christian entrepreneurs. They could make a huge difference economically and spiritually for individuals experiencing hard times. Is this trip worth taking? Why not just teach people to stick with banks and credit cards? Maybe: If men were angels government would be unnecessary, as James Madison wrote, and if all people were financially wiser, pawnshops would be largely unnecessary. Yet, in this fallen world many do not save well, and some face unanticipated bills. At that point they now have several choices. Some carry balances on their credit cards, with interest compounding and finance charges lurking. Others borrow money in other ways, don’t pay what they owe, and end up in the hands of collection agencies, with ruined credit ratings. In comparison, those who pawn goods may never get them back, but the damage stops there. Variants on pawnshops such as “payday loan” and “title loan” shops can be predatory, with desperate or mentally deficient folks losing their cars and getting little in return. A Christian-run pawnshop, operating on biblical principles, would be a great improvement. Missionary strategists speak of the / window, referring to regions - degrees north of the equator that need evangelism. Let’s not forget the - percent window: States where pawnshops charge that much in monthly interest offer opportunities for benevolence. A
KRIEG BARRIE
P Read our story on page and then ask: Should a few evangelicals boldly go where no Christian, according to some thinkers, belongs? Theologians have debated for centuries whether the Old Testament opposes interest on loans generally, or only loans to impoverished Israelites. They have debated whether usury is charging any interest, or interest beyond percentages that take into account the cost of doing business with a moderate profit. They have debated whether ancient Israel’s civil law applies to different places and times, and whether Christ’s parables legitimize charging interest. Facing a variety of positions based on different Bible verses, American ministers have generally approved the charging of some interest. City and state officials, instead of banning pawnshops, have regulated them in line with advice from the seminal free market advocate, Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations (). Smith’s Christian beliefs led him to oppose exploitation of “prodigals” but hoped “sober people” would be financially motivated to loan money and make a small profit. Given costs involved in making small loans, Smith would probably approve of New York’s percent per month maximum, but not the percent allowed in Texas on typical loans of , let alone Florida’s percent or North Carolina’s percent. (Loans typically last up to four months.) High rates, though, provide Christians with the opportunity to create “benevolent pawnshops,” as our thcentury predecessors did. The New York Times in reported on the most famous one, the Provident Loan Society of New York City. Pawners who used it, the Times said, “want some assistance, without being willing to accept charity.” Provident’s annual report called its customers “a self-respecting class anxious to preserve their self-respect by borrowing on a business basis rather than by applying for charity, and undoubtedly the self-respect of many has been preserved by the aid thus extended to them.” Provident charged an interest rate “fixed just high enough to cover the expenses connected with the
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
7/9/12 3:00 PM
Where in the world can you make a difference? To the small town of Port Gibson, God is calling men and women to make an eternal difference in the lives of young men from around the world.
KRIEG BARRIE
Explore the possibilities
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