WORLD Magazine, May 14, 2016 Vol. 31 No. 10

VIRTUAL REALITY FILMS | BOARDROOMS AND BATHROOMS

MAY 14 , 2016

Home on the range A week in the life of Hank the Cowdog creator John R. Erickson

CONTENTS |

May 14, 2016 • Volume 31 • Number 10

28

17

26

46

50

F E AT U R E S

28 Children’s Books of the Year

These stories of magic, mystery, and providence are best read through the eyes of a child R RUNNERS-UP (novels) R THEOLOGY SERVED FAMILY-STYLE R RUNNERS-UP (picture books) R SLAVERY WITH A SMILE? The birthday cake that became a conflagration R THE PAST AND ITS SINS: How should we teach history?

R BEST NONFICTION R JOHN R. ERICKSON: The cowboy in autumn R STORYTELLER ESSENTIALS: Q&A with John R. Erickson

46 False profits

Many corporations that denounce bathroom protections and religious liberty laws cash in on millions in state subsidies.

Is losing their business really such a loss for states?

50 All in your head

Believers in virtual reality think it will be the new cinematic medium. Skeptics think it could crumble under its own hype.

ON THE COVER: Illustration by Krieg Barrie and Gerald Holmes Give the gift of clarity: wng.org/clarity

DISPATCH E S 5 News / Human Race / Quotables / Quick Takes CU LT U R E 17 Movies & TV / Books / Children’s Books / Music NO T EBOOK 55 Lifestyle / Technology / Sports / Religion VOICE S 3 Joel Belz 14 Janie B. Cheaney 26 Mindy Belz 61 Mailbag 63 Andrée Seu Peterson 64 Marvin Olasky

NOTES FROM THE CEO A few months ago, many of you participated in WORLD’s member survey. We do these surveys occasionally so we can better understand how you interact with WORLD’s content: what you like and what you don’t like, what you pay attention to and what you ignore.

The survey helps us set our priorities as we work to serve you better. For ­example, you emphatically told us that you wanted more Features—our long-form reported pieces. Your response was gratifying, because we agree that the big, meaty Features ­represent our greatest strength.

You were less emphatic about the Dispatches ­section of the magazine, and you were downright ambivalent about the Mailbag section, so we tightened up the space we devote to both of those sections to make room for additional Feature stories. Most issues, you’ll see five Feature stories instead of the four we’ve provided in the past.

You also told us that you love our columnists— Joel, Mindy, Janie, Andrée, and Marvin (sometimes front to back and sometimes back to front). While we think five pages of editorial columns is the right amount in each issue of the print magazine, we are giving three of our occasional online “Virtual Voices” contributors regular columns on WORLD Digital. We hope you’ll add Anthony Bradley, La Shawn Barber, and D.C. Innes to your list of WORLD columnists you love.

You told us much more about yourselves in the survey. I likely will use future editions of these “Notes” to talk about the other ways we’re responding to your input.

Kevin Martin kevin@wng.org

CONTACT US: 800.951.6397 / WNG.ORG  Follow us on Twitter: @WORLD_mag  Follow us on Facebook TO BECOME A WORLD MEMBER, GIVE A GIFT MEMBERSHIP, CHANGE ADDRESS, OR ACCESS OTHER MEMBER ACCOUNT INFORMATION: Email memberservices@wng.org Online wng.org/account (current members) or members.wng.org (to become a member) Phone 800.951.6397 (within the United States) or 828.232.5260 (outside the U.S.) Monday-Friday (except holidays), 9 a.m.-7 p.m. ET Write WORLD, PO Box 20002, ­Asheville, NC 28802-9998 FOR BACK ISSUES, REPRINTS, OR PERMISSIONS: Back issues 800.951.6397 Reprints and permissions 828.232.5415 or mailbag@wng.org WORLD occasionally rents subscriber names to c ­ arefully screened, like-minded organizations. If you would prefer not to receive these promotions, please call customer service and ask to be placed on our DO NOT RENT list.

WORLD (ISSN 0888-157X) (USPS 763-010) is published biweekly (26 issues) for $59.95 per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail) 12 All Souls Crescent, Asheville, NC 28803; 828.232.5260. Periodical postage paid at Asheville, NC, and additional mailing ­offices. P ­ rinted in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. © 2015 WORLD News Group. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD, PO Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998.

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.”

—Psalm 24:1 Chief Content Officer Nick Eicher Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky Senior Editor Mindy Belz

Editor Timothy Lamer National Editor Jamie Dean Managing Editor Daniel James Devine Art Director David K. Freeland Associate Art Director Robert L. Patete Washington Bureau Chief J.C. Derrick Reporters Emily Belz • June Cheng Sophia Lee • Angela Lu Senior Writers Janie B. Cheaney • Susan Olasky Andrée Seu Peterson • John Piper Edward E. P ­ lowman • Cal Thomas • Lynn Vincent Correspondents Megan Basham • Julie Borg Anthony Bradley • Andrew Branch • Bob Brown James Bruce • Tim Challies • Michael Cochrane Kiley Crossland • John Dawson • Mary Jackson James Marroquin • Jill Nelson • Arsenio Orteza Joy Pullmann • Emily Whitten Mailbag Editor Les Sillars Executive Assistant June McGraw Editorial Assistants Kristin Chapman Amy Derrick • Mary Ruth Murdoch Graphic Designer Rachel Beatty Illustrator Krieg Barrie Digital Production Assistant Arla J. Eicher

Website wng.org Executive Editor Mickey McLean Managing Editor Leigh Jones Assistant Editors Lynde Langdon • Dan Perkins Reporters Onize Ohikere • Evan Wilt Editorial Assistant Whitney Williams

Website wng.org/radio Executive Producer/Cohost Nick Eicher Senior Producer/Cohost Joseph Slife Correspondents Paul Butler • Kent Covington Jim Henry • Mary Reichard Producers Johnny Franklin • Carl Peetz (technical) Christina Darnell • Kristen Eicher (field) Listening In Warren Cole Smith • Rich Roszel

Chief Executive Officer Kevin Martin Founder Joel Belz Marketing Director Jonathan Bailie Development Director Debra Meissner Chief Information Officer Greg Groppe Account Reps Arla J. Eicher • Al Saiz • Alan Wood Member Services Alison Foley • Summer Langford Matthew Miller • Nicole Miller • Brandi Sagar

K IDS ’ AND TEENS ’ PUB LICAT I O NS Website wng.org/children Publisher Howard Brinkman Editor Rich Bishop

wo rld jo urnalis m inst i t u t e Website worldji.com Dean Marvin Olasky Associate Dean Edward Lee Pitts

B OARD o f directo rs

John Weiss (chairman) William Newton (vice chairman) Mariam Bell • Kevin Cusack • Peter Lillback Howard Miller • Russell B. Pulliam • David Skeel David Strassner • Ladeine Thompson Raymon Thompson

MIS S IO N STATEMEN T

To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, a ­ ccurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a ­perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.

VOICE S

Joel Belz

Favorability contest

LET’S WEIGH THE CANDIDATES, AND CONSIDER THEIR PROPENSITY FOR TRUTH-TELLING I still remember in junior-high math being introduced for the first time to ­negative numbers. I wondered: How could that possibly be? How could a number be worth less than nothing? How could you add two numbers together and end up with a sum that was even smaller?

Now I’m having to learn the same thing all over again. All my life I’ve watched the popularity ratings of various politicians. That was a pretty simple concept. What seemed a lot ­trickier was factoring in what the experts called a “favorable/unfavorable” popularity ­rating. It’s no longer enough to know that Candidate A has a “favorability” rating of 40 percent with the American public. Now you must also keep in mind that Candidate A simultaneously carries an “unfavorability” rating of 55 percent—so that his actual, true-to-life score is more like negative 15 percent.

Got it?

All this is hard enough if you’re dealing with a campaign featuring just one especially obnoxious candidate. How do you accurately compare that candidate’s negative numbers to Mr. Nice-Guy’s positives? That’s challenging enough. But if you happen to find yourself in a unique contest offering a whole gaggle of would-be officeholders—and virtually all of them have high negatives—well, then you have a new mathematical challenge. You may even need a new app on your smartphone.

We’ve all wrestled, in various contexts, with the challenge of settling for the lesser of two evils. Which of all the possibilities before us offers your conscience the minimal number of negatives? If you’re a Democrat, does Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders force you into the most compromises? If you’re voting Republican, does Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or

ESOLLA/SHUTTERSTOCK

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 jbelz@wng.org

Truth-­ telling is a bipartisan virtue, and lying should be an embarrassment to any political party.

John Kasich make you pinch your nose most tightly as you get ready to cast your ballot?

Since we’re talking about negative numbers, I suggest you stand this process on its head.

Instead of trying to tell your friends and colleagues (and your own conscience!) all the good things about the candidate you’re presently backing, try compiling an honest list of negatives for each of the candidates. Then see if you can reasonably settle on the one with the s­ hortest list.

And while you’re about the task of deciding which criteria matter most, try this: Is the ­candidate known as a truth-teller? Whether he or she is running for president or for dogcatcher, don’t you want somebody you can trust?

That challenge includes two important facets.

First of all, you as a citizen have a basic right to expect public servants to tell you the straightforward truth about what has happened in the past. This is where Hillary Clinton seems to stumble so often, and it’s why over two full decades she’s established a reputation for falsifying the past (see this column in WORLD’s Feb. 20 issue). So every time you hear a candidate make a claim about something significant that has already taken place, ask yourself whether the claim can be verified. Keep a list of what you find out. Does the record suggest a pattern of truth-telling—or of truth-dodging, truth-fudging, or truth-denying?

Second, you have a right to expect a candidate to tell the truth about the future. Have we learned any lessons through the cycle of rosy declarations about healthcare? Glib guarantees about free college tuition or a massive wall along the Mexican border are no more than empty bribes. In God’s eyes, stacks of unkeepable promises about the future are just as repugnant as false statements about the past.

Truth-telling is a bipartisan virtue, and lying should be an embarrassment to any political party. Just how many promises need to be broken before total cynicism takes over a society?

The public knows the difference between inability to deliver and a straight-out lie. We’re pretty close already to the place where politicians’ platforms are totally discounted.

There are, to be sure, dozens and perhaps hundreds of legitimate criteria by which a ­candidate’s favorability—or unfavorability— might be properly measured. But for a Christian citizen, I suggest that nothing may be as important as the candidate’s reputation for consistently telling the truth. A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 3

DISPATCHES News / Human Race / Quotables / Quick Takes

Marking Chernobyl

EFREM LUKATSKY/AP

People lay flowers at a memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters during a ceremony in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, on April 26. The event commemorated victims of the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl, the worst such accident in history, on the 30th anniversary of the disaster.

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May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 5

D I S PA T C H E S

News

Target on target

HOW DO WE DECIDE WHOM TO BOYCOTT— OR NOT? by Marvin Olasky

6 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

want a country, like Spain in the 1930s just before its civil war began, where you can look at a person’s shirt or shoes and instantly know his politics?

“Just war” theory offers a way of analyzing when it’s right to go to war, so let’s work through a parallel checklist for boycotts: Protecting the innocent: Innocent people must be in imminent danger.

Abortion providers are good boycott targets. But when Breitbart.com headlined an April 23 article, “Top 25 stories proving Target’s pro-transgender bathroom policy is dangerous to women and children,” only one of the stories seemed connected to new transgender rules. How big is this problem? Is a Target boycott premature?

Comparative effects: While all sides of a conflict may display rights

LYNNE SLADKY/AP

On April 19th, the 241st anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, the Target department store chain announced a transgender policy by which male, female, and confused customers and employees may use whichever restroom (or fitting room) they choose. The American Family Association quickly responded with a “pledge to boycott Target stores” that by April 27 had gained 840,000 signatures.

To sign or not to sign? Assuming you don’t want your daughters walking into a women’s room where men might be lurking, that is the question. Market systems are based on peaceful trading growing out of economic interest.

Boycotts are an act of economic war.

Once boycotts begin, counter boycotts are inevitable, and a society’s divisions become more intense. Do we really

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and wrongs, the suffering by one party must significantly outweigh suffering by the other. If this problem is big, we might concede that the rare guy who doesn’t feel like a guy could prefer a women’s restroom, but does that justify upsetting many women and girls?

Last resort: Since boycotts do have a downside, it’s often better first to try other approaches. What about stockholder action, behind the scenes or at annual meetings? What about a class action suit brought by women who now view Target restrooms as hostile environments? What about electing more leaders willing to stand up to LGBTQ pressure? (So far, portraits of cowardice outnumber those of courage.)

Probability of success: Boycotts should not be used in a futile cause, since evil shot at and missed becomes even stronger—but success is more likely when alternatives are available.

The family of one WORLD staffer has shopped regularly at Target, spending about $2,000 per year there. If 1 million similarly spending families boycott Target, its annual revenue of $74 billion falls by $2 billion—not a bankruptcyinducing hit for a chain with $3 billion

953

BY THE NUMBERS

in net income, but painful, and a cautionary tale for other companies.

Right intention: Boycotts should be used only in a truly just cause, not for material gain. The American Family Association has done good work over the years, but some organizations ­fundraise by turning little into big. Sometimes a boycott can be an attempt to plea bargain with God: I buy products made by slave labor or in dictatorial regimes, but since I boycott X I’m still righteous. And Christians can easily overuse boycotts, since so much of ­contemporary society reflects a pagan outlook.

Consistency: Once we start boycotting, when do we stop? Football fans: Since the NFL uses Super Bowl pressure to support the LGBTQ agenda, will you not watch its games this fall?

Do we boycott Edward Jones, Express Scripts, Marriott, MasterCard, Monsanto, Nestlé Purina, and Pfizer, which are among the big companies fighting religious liberty legislation in Missouri? What about Apple, Dell, Disney, Dow Chemical, Time Warner, Twitter, Yelp, and others that convinced Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to surrender?

Similarly, do we boycott the companies of CEOs and executives who have called for “all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as ­protected classes”? That list includes Airbnb, Cisco, Dropbox, eBay, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Intel, Intuit, LinkedIn, Lyft, Microsoft, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Verizon, Yahoo, Yelp, YouTube, and Zillow. Corporate leaders from Adidas, American Airlines, Citigroup, Gap, JetBlue, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Orbitz, and PepsiCo are among signers of a statement opposing religious liberty bills that purportedly “could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”

Jeremiah advised the Israelites ­living within Babylon’s pagan culture, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” How do we apply that in America today? WWJB: What would Jeremiah boycott? A

 molasky@wng.org  @MarvinOlasky

The minimum number of delegates GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump had clinched nationwide after sweeping primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island on April 26. The victories edged Trump closer to the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination without a contested convention.

8½ months

The time it took for Fox Business reporter John Stossel to hear back from New York City on his application for a gun permit. As part of his reporting, Stossel filled out the 17-page application in 2015 and paid the $430 application fee. The New York City Police Department ultimately denied the permit.

No. 6

The Bible’s place on the American Library Association’s 2015 Top 10 list of most frequently challenged books in libraries and public schools.

Looking for Alaska by John Green and Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.

439 minutes

The duration of the online trailer for the experimental film Ambiancé.

The project is the brainchild of Swedish director Anders Weberg, who says he’ll release the full version of the film in December 2020. It will have a ­running time of 720 hours, or roughly one month long.

13

The number of Americans, per 100,000 people, who committed suicide in 2014. It was the highest rate since 1986, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 7

D I S PA T C H E S

Human Race name to an unpronounceable symbol, leading to his moniker as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

He entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

See full obituary at wng.org.

Honored

Harriet Tubman

Buried

Using a bulldozer, demolition workers in China’s Henan province on April 14 shoved a house church leader and his wife into a pit as they protested the demolition of their church.

“Bury them alive for me. …

I will be responsible for their lives,” one worker said, according to advocacy group China Aid. The bulldozer covered Li Jiangong and his wife, Ding Cuimei, with soil. Li was able to free himself, but Ding suffocated and died. China Aid said a developer wanted control of Beitou Church’s valuable land.

Though accused of a slow response, police have arrested two men.

Died

Prince Rogers Nelson, the pop

icon known for his flamboyant style, died unexpectedly on April 21. He was 57. The 8 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

seven-time Grammy winner was 19 when he released his first album in 1978. He rose to stardom in the 1980s, with his 1984 album Purple Rain at No. 1 for 24 weeks, winning him an Oscar for Best Original Song Score in the film by the same name.

His songs’ sexually explicit lyrics—which prompted the movement for parental advisory labels—often ­contrasted with spiritual themes. “Don’t die without knowing the cross,” he sang in his 1987 song, “The Cross.” Prince for years changed his

would become the new face of the $20 bill, replacing President Andrew Jackson.

Tubman helped lead more than 300 slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad. The devout Christian later served as a Union spy and directed a raid that freed 700 slaves.

Jackson will be moved to the back of the $20. New backs for the $10 and $5 bills will feature iconic ­figures from the women’s ­suffrage movement, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt. Lew expects the changes to come by 2020, in time for the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Overturned

A federal three-judge panel on April 19 ruled that a Virginia school district ­discriminated against a transgender s­ tudent by requiring the use of girls-

Sued

A gay Texas pastor has filed a lawsuit against Whole Foods Market for allegedly writing a homosexual slur on a ­customized “Love Wins” cake he purchased at its flagship store in Austin.

Jordan Brown

posted a video of his cake on April 14, saying he rushed out of the store before looking at the decorative writing. But Whole Foods has countersued, claiming Brown lied. The cake decorator is also “part of the LGBTQ community,” the store said, and security footage appeared to show the box seal had been moved.

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CUIMEI: CHINA AID • PRINCE: LIU HEUNG SHING/AP • TUBMAN: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES • BROWN: RICARDO B. BRAZZIELL/AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN/TNS/NEWSCOM

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced on April 20 that former slave and abolitionist

only or ­private restrooms.

The decision from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and was a win for Gavin Grimm, a female high-school student who identifies as male.

Gavin, 16, had sued the Gloucester County School Board for not allowing her to use the boys’ restroom. In its 2-1 decision, the federal panel said the Title IX sex discrimination ­statute applies to ­gender ­identity, and that requiring Gavin to use single-­occupancy ­restrooms amounted to “humiliation.”

The school board plans to appeal.

this is more than

a vacation

Book your faith-focused family adventure today at:

www.glorieta.org/family

D I S PA T C H E S

Quotables

TIM WILDMON, president of the American Family Association, on gaining in less than a week several hundred thousand pledges to boycott Target stores over the company’s new transgender bathroom policy (see p. 6). Target stood by its decision to allow transgender customers and employees to use whatever restroom they choose.

‘If I get a lunch with LeBron James, that might be a turning point.’

South Dakota Republican delegate CHAR CORNELIUS, who at the GOP convention will be bound only on the first ballot to vote for the winner of her state’s primary, on the Kasich campaign’s offer to “take care” of her while she’s in Cleveland.

‘If it’s a Trump coronation, I’m not going. If it’s a fight, it may be fun to watch.’

U.S. Sen. JEFF FLAKE, R-Ariz., on the growing number of GOP lawmakers who say they may not attend their party’s convention in July.

10 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

‘I know a lot people have been threatening to do this, but I really will.’

Actress LENA DUNHAM on saying she would leave the United States if Donald Trump wins the presidency. “I know a lovely place in Vancouver,” she said, “and I can get my work done from there.”

‘Your business is to govern Anaheim. Keep your noses out of the national election.’

Anaheim, Calif., resident TREVA WISHART to members of the City Council as they considered a resolution denouncing Donald Trump. The April 26 meeting drew protesters from both sides to City Hall, and they reportedly fired pepper spray at each other. A woman and two girls hit by pepper spray required medical treatment.

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TARGET: STEVEN SENNE/AP • LEBRON: AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES • FLAKE: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES • DUNHAM: SCOTT EISEN/GETTY IMAGES • ANAHEIM: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/AP

‘This is the best response we’ve ever had this quick.’

D I S PA T C H E S

Quick Takes

Fries without end

Chris Habiger is making the future, and the future is delicious. Habiger, who owns six McDonald’s franchises in Missouri, wants his new, 6,500-square-foot McDonald’s to be the restaurant of tomorrow. The new St. Joseph, Mo., location will boast comfy armchairs, ordering kiosks, customizable burgers, and (at least for the first two months) one other thing: an all-you-can-eat french fries menu item. According to the company’s website, a large order of McDonald’s fries serves up to 510 calories. Habiger said his restaurant, and his bottomless fries promotion, will open in July.

First-century brew

An Israeli brewery claims to have recreated a craft beer similar to that imbibed during the time of Jesus. With help from Tel Aviv University geneticists, brewers at the Herzl Brewery in Jerusalem concocted 5 gallons of suds from the same strain of wheat grown in the Holy Land two millennia ago. The six-month experiment concluded in April when brewery owner Itai Gutman and his friends drank almost all of the small batch of Bible-era beer. By Gutman’s account, the poor taste of the brew was nothing to feel nostalgic about. “It’s really not the kind of flavor that has a market,” Gutman explained, according to Reuters.

Eight-legged escape

Midwife gets delivered

Heavy flooding in the Houston area on April 18 did not prevent a pregnant Texas woman from ensuring that her midwife was on hand for her baby’s delivery. After record rainfall trapped midwife Cathy Rude in her home in Katy, Texas, the expectant mother planned to send a kayak to pick her up. But when that plan fell through, the pregnant woman spotted a neighbor floating down the flooded street on an inflatable swan. “How about giving my midwife a ride on your swan to come deliver my baby?” the unnamed woman yelled, according to the McClatchy news service. The neighbor agreed to float Rude from her house to higher ground where she could reach her clinic by pickup truck. There, Rude safely delivered a 9-pound, 12-ounce boy.

12 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

FRIES: ELLENMORAN/ISTOCK • RUDE: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE

A common New Zealand octopus taken from the ocean and sent to live in an aquarium apparently decided he’d had enough. Inky, an octopus caught by a fisherman two years ago, lived in the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier until recently, when he made a daring nighttime getaway.

Squeezing through a gap in the mesh above his tank, Inky apparently climbed out of the water, slid to the floor, and stuffed his football-sized body down a 6-inch drainpipe. From there, Inky wriggled some 160 feet to freedom in the Pacific Ocean.

The escape occurred earlier this year but only came to media attention in April. Aquarium officials are not planning to organize a search party.

New leg on life

A fake leg has likely saved the life of a small horse in Colorado. Shine, a 3-year-old miniature horse from Florence, Colo., was in bad shape after an apparent dog attack left him with a mangled back leg and hoof. His coowner, Jacque Corsentino, tried to nurse him back to health, but to no avail: The leg had to be amputated. “Every day I prayed and pleaded and cried out to God for a miracle,” Corsentino said.

The answer to prayer came in the form of a prosthetic leg with a tire-treadlike hoof that Colorado State University veterinarians used to replace the lame limb. At just 30 inches tall, the miniature horse’s small size made him an ideal candidate for the prosthetic: Larger horses with similar injuries are usually euthanized. Shine is already trotting around on his new leg.

Call the midfielder

SHINE: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • NISSAN STADIUM: HANDOUT • PALMER: ABC NEWS CAMPS: CHRIS BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGES

One for the burglar

Last year Fred Foreman and his wife, Tracy, discovered a burglar in their Suffolk, U.K., home. Once spotted, the 34-year-old burglar, Alexander Hockett, took flight on foot. Startled but determined, Foreman, 55, gave chase and eventually caught Hockett as he attempted to slip into a neighborhood pub. When confronted, Hockett congratulated Foreman on the chase, telling him he was fast for a “geezer.” Foreman replied, “Do you want a pint?” and the two then drank beers together. Authorities called to the scene were not as forgiving. On April 18, Hockett was sentenced to four years behind bars for multiple burglary offenses.

Sprinkler surprise

A mistake by the Tennessee Titans grounds crew left fans soaking wet at a special event at Nissan Stadium. On April 16, the team hosted fans for a movie night on the field of its Nashville, Tenn., stadium. But as patrons watched Minions on the team’s video board, the field’s sprinklers went into action and soaked the crowd. According to the team, someone at the stadium forgot to turn the sprinkler system off before the movie.

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Gratuity included

Overhearing waitress Alesha Palmer discuss her college expenses caused one Texas man to leave an astonishingly generous tip. The man, who desired anonymity, left the 18-year-old high-school senior a $1,000 tip on his $9.69 check at Vetoni’s Italian Restaurant in Gun Barrel City, Texas, on April 9. When Palmer saw the customer walk over to her manager with the bill, she at first thought she was in trouble. Now she says the customer’s 10,000 percent tip will help her when she goes to college this fall.

Midway through the first half of a ­soccer game at Spotland Stadium in Rochdale, U.K., on April 19, the stadium announcer reported someone in ­attendance had forgotten to turn off his car headlights. There on the field, participating in an official English soccer match between Rochdale and Gillingham, 20-year-old Rochdale player Callum Camps had a sinking realization. “I was ­listening because the ball was out of play, and as soon as I heard the [­registration], I was thinking, ‘That’s my number plate,’” Camps told the BBC. The English midfielder ­persuaded a team assistant to go turn off his lights. He then scored a goal later in the half.

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 13

VOICE S

Janie B. Cheaney

Children of the state

SCIENTISM IS NO BASIS FOR SOUND EDUCATION OR A HEALTHY SOCIETY

14 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

Dennett is recommending that ­scientists determine the content and rationale of education— not only the what but the why, and by extension, the ought.

 jcheaney@wng.org  @jbcheaney

REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES

Last summer The Atlantic rounded up a cross section of writers and thinkers and asked an interesting question: What contemporary habit will be most unthinkable 100 years from now?

The answers, published in the June 2015 issue, may not be much use as prognostication, but they are very telling about the prognosticators. For instance, philanthropist Melinda Gates looks forward to the day when the birth control pill will be a quaint, tedious device nobody needs. She adds the well-worn quip “If men had to take the pill, there’s a good chance we’d have something better by now.” (Why were you ­waiting for the men to do it, Melinda?)

What does humorist Dave Barry see as unthinkable within a century? “Driving. Future humans will get around in cars controlled by Google, which will also own the roads and much of the solar system.” (Could happen!)

Other current commonplaces destined for future head-scratching are email, fossil fuels, and depression. It’s all good fun until Daniel Dennett chimes in. Dennett is a philosopher and a founding member of the “new atheist” contingent that includes Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He anticipates the end of “Unsupervised Homeschooling. When we come to recognize that willfully misinforming a child—or keeping a child illiterate, innumerate, and uninformed—is as evil as sexual abuse. …”

Whoa! That’s a lot of assumption to cram into a single dependent clause, professor.

Putting aside the sexual abuse reference, which strikes me as a deliberate poke to rile up the rubes, what does he mean by willfully, illiterate, innumerate, and uninformed? Later in the paragraph he concedes that home educators might be left alone if they teach the “uncontroversial facts about the world’s religions”—but does he

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mean facts about a religion’s doctrine, history, or truth? He looks forward to the day when “we will forbid parents to treat their children as ­possessions whom they may indoctrinate as they please”—but who is “we”? And why should we have the right to indoctrinate as we please?

Somebody has to teach something, for “the human mind is something of a bag of tricks, cobbled together over the eons by the foresightless process of evolution by natural selection” (Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon). Now that we know, it’s past time to take charge of this bag of tricks and stop leaving its development up to individual whim and unexplored instinct. “Our future well-being—the well-being of all of us on the planet—depends on the education of our descendants” (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life).

Obviously to Dennett, baseless ideas like the immaterial soul and the special ­creation of human beings have no place in the Brave New World of spiritual disenchantment.

His sacred cow—excuse the expression—of teaching is “incontrovertible” facts: what can be observed or reasonably deduced from the material world. Since observing and deducing has become so specialized only a relative few can engage in it, professor Dennett is recommending that scientists determine the content and rationale of education—not only the what but the why, and by extension, the ought. In effect that makes science a moral arbiter, and many scientists are fine with that. Some would love to pursue ­questionable projects, just because they can or because there’s a potential fortune involved.

Among those projects, proposed or already underway: human cloning, human/animal “­chimeras,” three-parent embryos, gene editing, and creating designer fetuses to be destroyed after they’ve served their turn for research.

This is not to trash science as a profession, only to acknowledge that scientists are human too. Yet it takes little imagination to foresee humanity becoming something other than humanity as a result of scientism run amok. In which case, the only thing standing between man and the Abolition of Man is the very education Dennett fears: parents teaching children out of their deepest-held beliefs. In a fallen world, some of those beliefs will be false, and even destructive. But better a democracy of scattered falsehoods than a tyranny of one gigantic lie. A

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T EL E V I S I O N

HELEN SLOAN/COURTESY OF HBO

Morality games EVEN THE NIHILISTIC AND OBSCENE WORLD OF GAME OF THRONES ARGUES FOR AN IMMUTABLE MORAL ORDER by Megan Basham If The Lord of the Rings was the seminal standard of the fantasy genre in the modern age, then, without question, Game of Thrones claims that crown in the postmodern

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(and post-sexual-revolutionary) one, where what constitutes evil and depravity is always up for debate.

HBO had plenty to work with in the depravity department from George

 mbasham@wng.org  @megbasham

R.R. Martin’s medievalstyle novels in which rape, incest, mutilation, and violent death occur nearly as often as the banquets and jousting (probably more often). Yet the cable network upped Martin’s ante, adding explicit brothel and gay-sex scenes that never appear in the books. (At one point, the frequency of female nudity reached such a level, Saturday Night Live Alfie Allen and Sophie Turner film a scene from Game of Thrones

joked that one of the producers must be a teenage boy.)

Plenty of teenage boys must be watching, and plenty of everybody else as well. Thrones’ ratings have grown exponentially every season until it now ranks as cable’s second-mostwatched show, topped only by the similarly nihilistic Walking Dead—an especially eye-popping feat given that it airs on a pay channel while the competition is available with any basic package. And those May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 17

C U LT U R E

Movies & TV

v­ illains. Or at least putting us in a position to root for their redemption rather than their damnation.

Tyrion’s brother, Jamie, begins the story as the worst of sinners. A would-be child-murderer, he deserves the disgust the viewer naturally feels toward him. Little by little, however, we see glimmers that there is still a soul inside Jamie’s corruption. A soul worth saving that, through painful loss, comes to know some level of repentance.

In subtle, probably sometimes unintentional

Peter Dinklage (left) as Tyrion

offed, again for trying to do justice amongst unjust men (though, of course, whether he will remain offed and whether he is really Ned’s son is a matter of raging speculation).

And yet, there are a few forces for good who’ve avoided the knife in the dark by being as crafty as the forces for oppression.

Arguably the most beloved character of this sprawling, congested epic is the halfman Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage). Tyrion stands as the antiFrodo, an alcoholic cynic who keeps company with prostitutes and was raised in the snake pit of politics with the deadliest of vipers. However, while he knows how to scheme and plot with the most treacherous of his family, he uses his background primarily to befriend outcasts and protect the weak.

This brings up Thrones’ other surprisingly uplifting quality— its Lost-like penchant for redeeming its

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18 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

*Reviewed by WORLD

ways, Game of Thrones argues for an immutable moral order. A critique at TheFederalist.com persuasively demonstrates that for all the sexual content, the story’s heroes are those who most exhibit the most sexual virtue.

Martin offers messy choices to deeply flawed but still-principled characters, and then shows them trying to choose the best of a bad lot. The implications aren’t as simple as, if the good guys win, peace and justice are restored. Sometimes, smear campaigns effectively redefine good (or, at least, best possible) decisions. As when Tyrion risks his life to protect the city of King’s Landing but is soon after viewed as a tyrant and liar by the very people whose lives he’s saved. Still, he keeps trying to save them.

Unlike the buzzy but lower-rated House of Cards, Game of Thrones isn’t entirely a contest of which conniver will triumph in a deathly power struggle.

Some in Westeros are selfsacrificing, some are righteous. They’re also sometimes sinful and unwise, and often at the mercy of the unrepentantly wicked. From the Bible we know the truth of this scenario. But Thrones doesn’t know the whole truth that J.R.R. Tolkien knew. And if Martin were Tolkien, his heroes would be better able to bear both their shortcomings and their trials knowing that a “burned hand teaches best” and a “far green country” where all wrongs will be righted awaits them at the end. A

HELEN SLOAN/COURTESY OF HBO

are just the legitimate numbers. Because Thrones also happens to be television’s most pirated show, tens of millions of viewers aren’t officially counted.

But you probably knew that. Because, unless you’ve been living in a television-, magazine-, and internet-less world, you must have heard at least some of the buzz surrounding Thrones. Given the extreme content listed above, it would be easy to credit its popularity to the prurient interests of an indiscriminate audience.

I’m not recommending anyone watch the show (and not attempting here to add to the cottage industry of debates about whether Christians should watch it).

However, as an entertainment analyst, I would argue that, along with superb world-building, plotting, and characters, Game of Thrones’ themes are the greater draw for fans.

The Seven Kingdoms is a world in which the wicked routinely prosper, and, as in Christ’s parable of the unrighteous steward, it rewards its own for their duplicity. (Note: spoilers ahead.)

In the first season, the upright family man, Ned Stark (Sean Bean), is hoist on his own honor and loses his head for extending mercy to an enemy. The show frustratingly undercuts the following irony from the book, but Ned’s son Rob is similarly assassinated when he tries to do the moral thing by marrying a girl he sleeps with in a moment of emotional weakness. Then, in the fifth ­season, Ned’s other son, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), is

M OV I E

Sing Street Nostalgia likes to refurbish the past into something more ­razzle-dazzle than it was, and that’s what Irish writer-director John Carney does to the 1980s with Sing Street. Spruced up with classic ’80s pop hits and jaunty original songs, the m ­ usical drama is like a 106-minute music video of the wacky decade.

The movie (rated PG-13 for vulgarities, juvenile bullying, and teen smoking) whisks us back to 1985 Dublin, in an era of kaleidoscopic selfexpression when women wore gaudy eye shadow and cotton-candy hair— as did the male rock stars. It’s also a decade in which MTV popularized synth-pop bands that pushed artistic and moral boundaries with their lurid, surreal music ­videos. With such role models, it’s no wonder 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) decides the best way to impress beautiful, model-­ wannabe Raphina (Lucy Boynton) is to star her in his music video. Never mind that he doesn’t even have a band, or that the girl has her sultry eyes set high on London—such

THE NIGHT MANAGER: ?? • SING STREET: THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

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obstacles fizzle under the supreme force of teen fantasy. Within days, Conor scrabbles together a decidedly uncool, pubescent ensemble of pipsqueaks and dorks.

Though the film is light and humorous, brief glimpses of realism— financial and marital problems, mental illness, domestic abuse—occasionally slip out, until the characters retreat into their world of music, ­costumes, and romance.

While Raphina covers her naïveté with sophisticated makeup, Conor experiments with his newfound identity as a “serious artist” by borrowing fashion cues from Dracula. During this period of soul searching, Conor shares his most sincere moments with his older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor), a college dropout who plays a mentor role.

Sing Street is delightful so long as you don’t take it too seriously. The boy-meets-girl storyline is as predictable as its “just follow your dreams” theme, but the tunes ­outshine everything else.

If you’ve ever appreciated music from Duran Duran, The Cure, and Hall & Oates, this movie is for you.

—by SOPHIA LEE

See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies

T EL E V I S I O N

The Night Manager The Night Manager is a very competent, movie-quality spy thriller done as a joint project by the BBC and AMC. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddlestone) is a James Bond type working as the night manager of a series of high-price hotels. The only thing less improbable than this scenario is the morality of the show.

Some things are bad and other things good: Arms dealers, amoral government functionaries, and unattractive womanizers are all bad. The British villain, Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), is very bad, and so Pine tells his government contact Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman) that as a British person he must act. When Pine says he has only done what “anyone would do,” Burr comments that most would not.

Given the world ­pictured, this seems true enough.

Why do we buy Pine?

For most of his 80 years, the man who writes under the pen name John Le Carré (David Cornwall) has entertained us with espionage stories. His

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new series Night Manager presumes on the sort of morality he inherited from Christian Britain and that his readers in the 1960s and 1970s still mostly shared. The hero engages in sexual immorality (with some brief nudity) as do the villains, but often the moral difference seems to be Hiddlestone is attractive and the villain not so much.

But the plot is satisfying, the action thrilling without being dominated by car chases, and the sets elaborate. Hugh Laurie is a satisfying bad guy, playing the role as a seedy Wooster gone to arms dealing. The supporting cast lives up to the best of the BBC, very good indeed, and Hiddlestone makes a strong case for being the next Bond.

The moral muddle at the center of the show is not fatal, but it makes what could have been a brilliant show if set in the 1960s a near miss. Pine is risking his life for Queen and country in a Britain where only Elizabeth seems worthy of the sacrifice.

—by JOHN MARK REYNOLDS

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 19

C U LT U R E

Books

Not just nice PURSUING KINDNESS WITHOUT SELLING OUT by Marvin Olasky

Do church folks sometimes choose niceness over kindness? Biola President Barry Corey’s Love Kindness (Tyndale, 2016) distinguishes well between “fierce” kindness and “cosmetic … bland” niceness: “Niceness is keeping an employee in the job, knowing he’s no longer the

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right fit but failing him and the company because you don’t have the courage to do the right thing. Kindness calls you to tell him he’s not the person for the position and then dignify him in the transition.”

How this distinction plays out in politics and public policy will require

BOOKMARKS

lots of discussion among Christians who want to maintain biblical standards and also want gays to understand “that a biblically conservative follower of Jesus is not the same as a closedminded, right-wing fanatic.”

Corey knows that “kindness that bends to accept as valid everyone else’s viewpoint is not kindness. … Kindness frees us to hold deep moral convictions minus the vitriol.” True, but I wonder how that communicates with left-wing fanatics who believe that holding deep moral convictions against homosexuality, or abortion, is in itself vitriolic.

What about a denomination that aspired to kindness but not niceness? In For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America (P&R, 2015) Mississippi pastor Sean Michael Lucas thoroughly recounts the birth of

Depressed about current American leadership in a warring world? Jonathan Jordan’s American Warlords: How Roosevelt’s High Command Led America to Victory in World War II (NAL Caliber, 2015) readably shows how Henry Stimson, George Marshall, and Ernest King made possible military triumph, although at great cost. They really were public servants, and their carefulness contrasts powerfully with the generals and admirals described in Alistair Horne’s Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century (HarperCollins, 2015). Horne harpoons arrogant Russian, Japanese, and German leaders, and shows how Douglas MacArthur’s arrogance turned American success in stopping North Korean aggression into failure against a Communist Chinese assault that should have been avoided.

Chris Bachelder’s The Throwback Special (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016) has as its fictional premise the annual reunion of 22 men to re-enact the infamous 1985 NFL play in which linebacker Lawrence Taylor broke the leg of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann. Publicists describe the novel as “a moving and comic tale filled with pitch-perfect observations about manhood, marriage, middle age, and the rituals we all enact as part of being alive”—but the tale is uniformly depressing, and “pitch-perfect” seems to mean apehood, divorce, and despair among the walking dead. —M.O.

20 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

the PCA, now “the largest conservative Presbyterian denomination in the English-speaking world” and one “committed to the inerrancy of Scripture, the Reformed theology of the Westminster Standards, and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.” Lucas explains how the rise of Presbyterian “progressive” thought forced conservatives to define the mission and integrity of the church, but he doesn’t dodge discussion of the segregationist impulses of some.

Politics also played a role, as L. Nelson Bell and others rightly emphasized the importance of fighting ­communism; yet the central issue was always biblical authority and the commitment to inspiration and inerrancy that undergirded it.

What about a small nation, outnumbered 100to-1, that emphasized survival over niceness, and on occasion kindness as well?

Eric Gartman’s Return to Zion (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press, 2015) traces in 330 readable pages the development of Israel from the late 19th century through the troubled present. Gartman is particularly helpful in portraying stillcontroversial events of the 1940s, including the Israeli killing of Arab civilians in Deir Yassin, a village near the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem highway. That terrible deed threw Arabs into a panic, and retribution—including the killing of nearly 80 Israeli doctors and nurses near Jerusalem—was also terrible. Those who live by the sword often cause others to die by the sword.

FOUR RECENT CHRISTIAN NOVELS reviewed by Sandy Barwick IF I RUN Terri Blackstock Casey Cox is on the run. The prime suspect in a friend’s brutal ­murder, she doesn’t trust the corrupt local police to seek the truth.

Dylan Roberts, a private investigator hired to find her, begins to doubt her guilt. The plot takes an unexpected twist when Casey meets a woman grieving her abducted granddaughter. Her new friend shares with a skeptical Casey her faith in Jesus, saying, “One day he’ll wipe away all my tears.” The first-person narrative deftly jumps from Casey to Dylan at a satisfying pace, but an abrupt ending leaves the reader longing for more.

SONG OF SILENCE Cynthia Ruchti Not falling apart when your world does … isn’t that supposed to be one of the perks of faith? That’s what 55-year-old Lucy Tuttle ­wonders when her world crumbles: She loses her job teaching music, and her adult children move back home. Even her retired ­husband’s good intentions feel suffocating. Lucy tries desperately to heed what she taught her students: Even in the silence between the notes, something is happening. In her case, God is preparing a new song. A poignant, but often funny, depiction of how life doesn’t always work out the way we plan.

BACK IN THE SADDLE Ruth Logan Herne After years of working on Wall Street, Colt Stafford reluctantly returns to Washington state and the family cattle ranch, expecting to face his estranged father and resentful brother. What he doesn’t expect is Angelina Morales, the beautiful house manager who wields influence over the ranch with her calm demeanor and spiritual strength. Mutual attraction has Angelina rethinking her plans to return to Seattle while Colt reconsiders his return to Manhattan. This predictable and sometimes syrupy romance ­illustrates the importance of forgiveness and how God’s grace can change people. The family saga will continue in Book 2 of the Double S Ranch series.

HANDOUT

ANNABEL LEE Mike Nappa The title character is an exceptionally bright, instantly likable 11-year-old, safely locked in an underground bunker in rural Alabama with a month’s supply of food and a ferociously loyal German shepherd. Her uncle’s last command: Don’t open this door for anyone—even me—without the safe code. Only two people know the reason she’s hidden, and a battle between good and evil rages: Who will find the girl first? This thriller contains an abundance of violence. Sprinkled throughout, subtle suggestions remind readers that despite the wicked schemes of man, those who trust in Jesus can already claim victory.

To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books

EPILOGUE In Land of Silence (Tyndale House, 2016) Tessa Afshar retells imaginatively the story of the woman with a 12-year bleeding disorder, recorded in Mark 5:25-34 (and Matthew 9 and Luke 8). In this novel, the woman, Elianna, comes from a prosperous family and is betrothed to the man she loves, but hard events unravel her plans. Guilt, sadness, and shame are Elianna’s constant companions. Then, a mysterious ­illness plunges her into ­isolation. She depletes her financial resources desperately searching for a cure.

One day, Elianna hears rumors about a prophet from Galilee who can do miracles. Does she dare hope for healing? Little does she know this man will restore her body and soul.

This captivating story of love, loss, faith, and hope gives a realistic glimpse of what life might have been like in ancient Palestine.

—Sandy Barwick is a World Journalism Institute graduate May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 21

C U LT U R E

Children’s Books

Heads and tails

ANIMAL STORIES FOR AGES 9-12 by Janie B. Cheaney FIRSTBORN Tor Seidler When Maggie the magpie grows bored with domestic life, she seeks excitement in the wrong places, necessitating a rescue by Blue Boy, an alpha wolf. Allying herself to Blue Boy as a scout, Maggie follows her hero as he acquires a new mate, pack, and family. Once past the notion of animals talking to each other, even across species, readers will find this a realistic adventure that seems true to life in the wild. Nature is red in tooth and claw, but also strangely beautiful; and though the narrative is not “faith-based,” Christian readers may find themselves marveling at God’s care in providing for all His creatures.

THE TALE OF RESCUE Michael J. Rosen This novella, lavishly illustrated by Stan Fellows in full color, recounts the terrifying experience of a freak storm on the plains.

A small family (mother, father, boy) is caught and lost in a blizzard, losing hope until a cowdog plunges into the snow shelter they’ve hastily constructed. The “tale of rescue” that follows is dramatic and amazing, underscored by spare prose. The story takes a semi-legendary tone: Only the dog is ever named, and all the human characters are simply identified. It’s the dog’s story, and the author uses canine perspective to capture extreme danger and extreme gratitude.

THE NINE LIVES OF JACOB TIBBS Cylin Busby No one wants Jacob, the runt of Mrs. Tibbs’ latest litter, so Captain Natick takes both mother and son aboard the Melissa Rae when he sets sail for New York. Days out of Liverpool, a furious storm claims Mrs. Tibbs and disables the captain, ­leaving Jacob to find his way through a mutiny plot. His story is a realistic portrait of 19th-century sailing, where both the mettle and malice of men are tested. Filtering the experience through a cat’s eyes softens the edges for young readers, who will soon be caught up in the adventure, danger, and romance of the sea.

LUCKY by Chris Hill

22 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

Pax by Sara Pennypacker, author of the Clementine series, has won starred reviews and generous coverage from major news outlets. The title character is a young fox raised by Peter, a 12-year-old boy whose father has just re-enlisted in the military. War is brewing (a domestic conflict, never fully explained), and Dad makes Peter return Pax to the wild. After one night, Peter packs some provisions and goes looking for his beloved fox. Two alternating quest n ­ arratives, boy and fox, will converge at the end.

The story includes loving descriptions of nature—with mankind as a blot on the landscape. The war threat looming in the background underscores our potential for damage. You humans.

You ruin everything—or so Peter imagines the message in a doe’s accusing eyes. A doe’s perspective is limited, but humans bear the Image: Our capacity for destruction is also capacity for greatness.

—J.B.C.

To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books

HANDOUT

Lucky doesn’t feel so lucky: As a red squirrel adopted into a family of urban gray squirrels, he’s outsized and outclassed by the larger, hierarchical grays. But his tribe, the Cloudfoots, has a long-standing rivalry with the Northenders across the park, and Lucky’s agility and quick thinking might prove an advantage.

Touching lightly on themes like accepting differences and maximizing strengths, this entertaining tale features distinctive ­characters, including a feisty young fox and a duo of admirable dogs. A light fantasy tone reminiscent of The Cricket in Times Square makes this a fun family read-aloud.

EPILOGUE

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Music

Blue-collar bard

MERLE HAGGARD SANG THE SONGS OF THE COUNTER-COUNTERCULTURE

by Arsenio Orteza

24 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

exception. But “inconsistent” gets nearer the mark than “uneven.” Whether boldly stating plain truths or snuggling up to mawkish corn, Haggard seldom deployed his limber, baritone voice with anything less than loving care. A more even vocal instrument America won’t likely produce.

America meant a lot to Haggard, especially its freedoms, which he appreciated more than most if only because he’d done time in jail. And despite his lovehate relationship with his Vietnam War–era countercounterculture classics “Okie from Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” he never completely

released last June, gave no indication of his nearness to death’s door.

Neither did the joint interview that he did with the up-and-coming country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson for the April-May 2016 issue of Garden & Gun magazine. “I’m a fan,” Haggard said of Simpson. “I want to see what he comes up with.”

Simpson’s new album, A Sailor’s Guide to the Earth (Atlantic), hit the streets six days after Haggard died.

But, given Haggard’s respect for declarations of independence, he’d have liked it.

What the 37-year-old Simpson declares indepen-

dence from includes country music’s instrumentation (horns, synthesizers, and bagpipes lurch the album toward heavy soul) and its source material (“In Bloom” comes courtesy of Nirvana).

What Simpson remains bound to includes country music’s family-centered subject matter (in nearly every song he addresses his soon-to-be-2-year-old son) and country music’s voice. Try as he might, he can’t help singing in an accent that Merle Haggard fans will recognize straightaway. A

 aorteza@wng.org  @ArsenioOrteza

HAGGARD: EBET ROBERTS/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES • SIMPSON: MIKE LAWRIE/GETTY IMAGES

The country singersongwriter Merle Haggard died on April 9, 79 years to the day after his birth. In doing so, he joined Shakespeare and the painter Raphael, April-born artists who also died on their birthdays.

Only time will tell whether Haggard’s albums (67 studio, nine live, 100plus compilations) or his 71 Top 10 singles (38 of them No. 1s) will earn him a commensurate place in history.

What’s indisputable: His rugged visage clearly deserves a place on country music’s Mount Rushmore.

The output of any musician as prolific as Haggard will have its ups and downs, and Haggard’s was no

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­ isavowed them or the d blue-collar folks for whom they were meant to speak.

He spoke for them with particular eloquence on his 1977 album A Workin’ Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today.

Released by Capitol Records after Haggard had departed for MCA and made up of previously ­unreleased material, it somehow not only cohered but also struck a chord among a demographic that had just begun to understand the precariousness of its position in the nascent ­multicultural paradigm. “I ain’t black and I ain’t yella,” Haggard sang in “I’m a White Boy,” “just a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing.”

Another aspect of America that meant a lot to Haggard—his five ­marriages and his ­battles (and truces) with alcohol and drugs notwithstanding—was its Christian heritage. On the evidence of 1971’s live The Land of Many Churches, the first of his four gospel albums, it seems that Haggard asked Jesus Christ to be his personal Lord and Savior at least once.

When his fellow country great George Jones passed away in 2013, many mourned. Haggard’s passing, however, feels like even more of a loss if only because, up until late 2015, when he began canceling concerts due to poor health, Haggard seemed as if he still had a few, and maybe quite a few, productive years left in him. Certainly Django & Jimmie, the album with Willie Nelson that he

RECENT POP-ROCK ALBUMS reviewed by Arsenio Orteza ERIC BACHMANN Eric Bachmann Like his 2006 album To the Races, this latest effort from the Archers of Loaf frontman is as acoustic and quietly introspective as Archers of Loaf were electric and ­noisily extroverted—North Carolina’s answer to The Replacements if you will. Bachmann’s only misstep this time is “Mercy,” an atheist’s insistence that he’s moral enough on his own, in which he protesteth too much. In the other 11 songs, he sketches moving portraits of ­people who believe in more than themselves whether they know that they do or not.

SECOND LOVE Emmy the Great Emma-Lee Moss’ nom de chanson connotes not hubris but a sense of humor, a humor, it should be noted, that does not extend itself to the interpersonal concerns that Moss thoughtfully addresses in her latest 12 songs. Not that her approach feels heavy. On the contrary, her ­gossamer voice and her gentle electro-pop settings float. They do not, however, float away. They possess a gravity that draws you in, engendering—then rewarding— a curiosity about both what she has to say and why she’s saying it.

GOD DON’T NEVER CHANGE: THE SONGS OF BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON Various artists Blind Willie Johnson was the most primally intense ­gospel singer who ever lived, and this homage comes so close to doing him and his faith justice that its ultimate failure to do so feels, if not tragic, then at least like a pointlessly blown opportunity. The blame lies not with Tom Waits, Sinéad O’Connor, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Luther Dickinson, or Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks. It lies with Lucinda Williams, who bungles the magnificent title track by referring to God as both a “He” and a “She.”

SCOTT DUDELSON/GETTY IMAGES

MAN ABOUT TOWN Mayer Hawthorne Delete the two R-rated songs (for language and/or ­suggestiveness) and you’ll still have eight examples of exemplary blue-eyed soul worth adding to a feel-good playlist. “The Valley” could even qualify as an exemplary Steely Dan tribute. Hawthorne’s falsetto could be ­creamier, but it’s his perfectly acceptable vocal blend of Daryl Hall and John Oates that predominates, and it’s just fine. “Love Like That” could even pass for an ­exemplary Hall & Oates tribute—that is, if it weren’t one of the two R-rated songs.

To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music

ENCORE At the risk of giving Robbie Fulks fans and James Taylor fans the wrong idea, it should be noted that Upland Stories (Bloodshot), Fulks’ latest album, delivers everything that Fulks and Taylor fans have ever desired from their heroes: poignancy, tunefulness, and roots-­ conscious instrumentation that serves both without shading into over- or underkill. That Fulks has beaten Taylor to this goal says as much about Fulks’ superior sensitivity to the heart’s nooks and crannies as it does about his superior indifference to the demands of pop radio or its streaming-age equivalence.

Dip in almost anywhere, and common sense uncommonly expressed rears its head. “America Is a Hard Religion” renders both unto Caesar and unto God. Most of the rest render unto family, a fulcrum that Fulks, at 53, is more sensitive to than he ever was during the days of his wiseacre ascendancy, if only because he was so much younger then. He’s older than that now. —A.O.

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 25

VOICE S

Mindy Belz

Mother’s Day mourning

MOMS PERFORM THE ESSENTIAL TASK OF TEACHING THE NAMES THAT FILL A WORLD

26 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

Naming a wider world would become a way to cope with the raging killer within. My mom helped me see beauty this way on the hardest days.

 mbelz@wng.org  @mcbelz

NAOMI SCHINDLER

“Buttercup,” my mother said, waving the soft petals beneath my chin.

It’s one of my earliest memories, standing in our grassy bank, my mother crouched before me on a bright warm day. The word became the flower plus all it encompassed, smallness and sun overhead and a color that can only be described as buttercup.

Mom named for me all that absorbed her— birds, flowers and all manner of plants, history, and every aspect to things she treasured. I learned from her what a “primitive” antique is, the difference between crewelwork and embroidery, that the grain of fabric mattered, and how to tell pewter from tin, silver, or silver plate. I absorbed even when I didn’t understand, and for years she loved to tell how I once asked her, “How old were you when the Silver War started?”

From my dad I learned a wider world, how to swim and hit a tennis ball, how to saddle a horse and skin for cooking the doves we hunted. My mother mapped out a world of things close at hand. She filled up my Eden, you could say, while my father charted the rivers flowing out of it.

This naming of the warp and woof of life is something we tend to overlook, especially if it gets in the blood early on. As Adam and Eve learned in the garden, it gave them an ability to navigate and to have a say in how things went.

When my mother came to the other end of life, the brutal side, she struggled with names.

For weeks after we learned she had cancer one year ago, she avoided the word in conversation.

“This disease,” she’d begin, vague, keeping its meaning at bay.

On the late spring day we visited the oncologist, saw the scans and learned the cancer had spread, well, everywhere, she didn’t want to

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talk about it. We each had tears and tended them quietly in the car. But as I drove, she began to comment out the window: “Look at the roses,” then called my attention to creeping phlox spilling over a rock wall. Naming a wider world would become a way to cope with the raging killer within. My mom helped me see beauty this way on the hardest days.

A short prognosis forced difficult conversations. “It’s not a question of having faith,” she told my brother and me in early summer, “it’s that I’m just not ready to die.” Bit by bit we struggled to name her looming death and see it also “swallowed up in life,” latching onto words as rafts when the day-to-day reality of her awful sickness, and caring for her in our home, overwhelmed us.

I had so many fears, I listed them one hot day: fear of Mom losing her mind as cancer advanced to her brain; fear of the day she would no longer walk, no longer clean or feed herself; fear of how long the hard days might last, and how short they might be; and fear of failing at everything else in my life as I faced a road with Mom doomed to end in failure, too.

Some days felt full of wilderness. Wandering Israelites faced God’s wrath in the desert not so much over breaking His law but forgetting His goodness. Like them, in our home we needed to see “how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son” (Deuteronomy 1:31).

My mom grasped this Father-like carrying.

While I listed out fears, she’d begin the mornings naming all she was thankful for. She had a smile ready for visitors, even as she worsened, and winter days forced a slowing and grim patience on us.

One snowy day in January I sat at her bedside, holding her hand, quiet. Her eyesight had dimmed, her breathing had grown shallow, and her words slurred. A flock of birds I’d never seen fluttered onto a birdbath piled high with snow just beyond her window. She noticed.

“Look at the towhees,” she said. Then she saw a cardinal on a high branch and chickadees, naming each and smiling as she did. Her death came two days later, her face toward the window from the same bed, death swallowed up in life and the hope of the world to come. A

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Books These stories of magic, mystery, and providence are best read through the eyes of a child

by Janie B. Cheaney & Susan Olasky PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT ROSE

C

ircus Mirandus is WORLD’s 2016 Children’s Novel of the Year. Out of the Woods is our Picture Book of the Year. Those are the picks of two WORLD committees that sifted through dozens of books and engaged in spirited debates.

Later in this special section we display books that made the shortlist in each category, chart some top nonfiction books for ages 10-15, discuss depictions of slavery in children’s books and audio dramas, and profile John R. Erickson, author of the long-running and hugely ­popular Hank the Cowdog series.

But first, here’s information about two delightful books, starting with Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015, 292 pages). Some plot: Micah’s Grandpa Ephraim, who raised Micah from toddlerhood, has developed such a debilitating cough that his sister Gertrudis has come to take charge of the sickroom. If Grandpa dies, Micah will have to move to Arizona with Great-Aunt Gertrudis, his only remaining relative, who seems as humorous and sympathetic as a dead fish.

The boy fears this grim turn of events is “reality,” after an idyllic childhood embellished by Grandpa’s tales of the magical traveling show he visited as a boy. But what if the stories are true? Grandpa believes in them. He’s even written a letter to someone called the Lightbender, care of “Circus Mirandus”: “You promised me a miracle.” When a self-important parrot named Chintzy delivers a discouraging reply, Micah determines to banish all doubt, find Circus Mirandus, appeal to the Lightbender, and see that Grandpa gets his miracle.

28 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

Year

of the

themes of building and repairing relationships. The book stayed with us long after reading it: We think it will linger in young readers’ minds, too.

W Circus Mirandus has an old-fashioned sensibility that recognizes the painful consequences of wrong choices, but also offers a picture of heaven and hope.

A world infused by “magic” is a classic theme of children’s literature, but the magic is seldom accounted for—it’s just there, somehow, without context. Circus Mirandus is different—a traveling show that’s invisible to most. You have to believe it to see it, runs the tagline, reminiscent of John 7:17, where Jesus implies that only those willing to believe will know. In Circus Mirandus, magic is explicitly linked with faith.

Is this Christian faith? The author leaves that open, but Christian readers will pick up on details like the Bible in Grandpa Ephraim’s nightstand drawer. Also, the magic is not his to command but belongs to a greater power—greater even than the Lightbender’s. Circus Mirandus itself bears some resemblance to the kingdom of heaven, which exists alongside everyday reality and can be seen only by faith.

The author rests much of this ability to “see” with children— a detail which, in less capable hands, could slide into sentimentality. But who first said we must enter the kingdom as a little child?

Though told in gentle, luminous prose, the story scrapes some hard edges. A cruel bait-and-switch robbed Gertrudis of her childlike faith. Now she not only refuses to believe but attempts to stamp out Micah’s faith and break his ­connection with Grandpa Ephraim. In one scene, Micah’s anger boils over into rage: “I hate you!” But Gertrudis isn’t the villain; that distinction belongs to another character whose consuming selfishness leads to an act of violence that may disturb younger readers.

Yet hope prevails: “Grandpa Ephraim and Micah aren’t the type to despair,” remarked the author in an interview with School Library Journal. In an age leaning toward ­disappointment and cynicism, these characters strike a refreshing note of optimism and good cheer.

Our five-member committee voted unanimously for Circus Mirandus. It has an old-fashioned sensibility that recognizes the painful consequences of wrong choices, but also offers a picture of heaven and hope. We appreciated its 30 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

ORLD’s second annual Picture Book of the Year Award goes to Rebecca Bond’s Out of the Woods (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 40 pages). The subtitle—A True Story of an Unforgettable Event—helps explain why the committee loved it. It’s a story set in 1914 Ontario at a hotel owned by the protagonist’s mother.

Cooks, maids, and hired men do the manual labor required to run such an establishment. In sepia-toned pen-and-ink illustrations we see the dining hall full of men eating, the upstairs rooms where travelers stay, and the one-room bunkhouse for trappers, miners, and lumberjacks. A dense forest surrounds the hotel.

One day, though, smoke wafts overhead as a forest fire consumes the dry trees. All the people at the hotel seek ­refuge in the lake “as the fire came closer and closer.” And then the surprising thing: The forest animals—moose, foxes, rabbits, bobcats, wolves, deer, elk, possums—all take refuge in the same lake. “Wolves stood beside deer, foxes beside rabbits. And people and moose stood close enough to touch.”

When it was safe to leave the lake, the animals and ­people went back to their ordinary lives. Miraculously, the hotel didn’t burn down.

Our committee loved this well-told true story about the author’s grandfather. The illustrations reminded us of ­photographs from the period. Although the author doesn’t note it, we appreciated how the story shows God’s kindness in providing a refuge and way of escape for both people and creatures. The book leads easily into discussions about God’s care for all His creatures (“not a sparrow falls ...”) and His very personal care for us His children. We also noted the book’s strong boy appeal. Although some on the ­committee had other favorites, this was a strong consensus choice. A

Although the author doesn’t note it, we appreciated how Out of the Woods shows God’s kindness in providing a refuge and way of escape for both people and creatures.

Runners-up (novels)

by Janie B. Cheaney & Betsy Farquhar

Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel

A Pocket Full of Murder R.J. Anderson

Megan Morrison

What more could a beautiful maiden want? A secure home, constant praise, ­literally everything she wishes for, all supplied by her beloved Witch. But when a boy named Jack invades her tower and plants the subversive idea that Witch may be lying, Rapunzel wraps up her expansive hair and escapes the tower to prove him wrong. This series opener makes a substantial addition to the popular subgenre of fairy tale reboots as it plumbs old storylines for universal applications.

Themes of self-discovery, forgiveness, compassion, and integrity may challenge younger readers, but most will enjoy the engaging characters, humorous touches, and nonstop action.

Isaveth Breck’s family has fallen on hard times— and it gets worse when authorities accuse her father of murder. With the help of Quiz, a streetwise boy, Isaveth sets out to crack the case. This classic mystery takes place in an alternative pseudo-­ Victorian world of ­nefarious bureaucrats, energy-producing magic spells, and despised ­religious minorities.

Headstrong Isaveth and daring Quiz will draw even reluctant readers into plotty twists and turns.

Religious and political angles add interest and depth, and the story gets in its digs at political figures who think they know what’s better for the ­people than the people themselves.

H O N O R A B L E In The Seventh Most Important Thing (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) by Shelley Pearsall, Arthur brings his anger under control by collecting “junk” for a folk artist who sculpts beauty from broken things. Binny in Secret (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2015) by Hilary McKay continues the adventures of high-spirited Binny as she adjusts to an unwelcome move, confronts bullies, and makes a true friend. In The Fog Diver (HarperCollins, 2015) by Joel Ross, a crew of misfits protects their adopted grandmother in this dystopian fantasy with humorous touches. Mechanical dragons and an unlikely

32 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

The Sign of the Cat

The Way Home Looks Now

Lynne Jonell

Duncan is far from average: He can speak cat. Despite his mother’s desperate attempts to keep him in the shadows, Duncan plunges into the adventure of a lifetime when his ­talent comes to light. Cats large and small, wild and domestic, play a prominent role in aiding Duncan’s rise to heroism as he learns his family history and daringly rescues a damsel in ­distress. Skillful world-­ building and strong characterization distinguish this fantasy novel for middle-graders. Readers who enjoy swashbuckling tales along with a cat or two will find this story (great for family readalouds) hard to put down.

Wendy Wan-Long Shang

Baseball unites cultures, family members, and teammates in this story of a Taiwanese family struggling with the loss of an older son followed by a mother’s depression. Peter tries to reach his mother through their shared love of baseball, but it’s his father’s quiet (and underappreciated) leadership that eventually makes the difference. The sports theme lifts the novel from weightiness, while Shang handles the cultural conflicts of first- and secondgeneration immigrants delicately, using them to sketch the father-son relationship. As Peter grows to appreciate his father, the reader sees a strong picture of a man who ­sacrificially loves and serves his family.

M E N T I O N S friendship make Fires of Invention (Shadow Mountain, 2015)

by J. Scott Savage an absorbing fantasy with a steampunk edge. Night on Fire (Albert Whitman & Company, 2015) by Ronald Kidd follows two girls, one white and one AfricanAmerican, as they witness a church’s faith rising to the occasion during the 1961 Freedom Rides. I Don’t Know How the Story Ends (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2015) is not eligible for official consideration, but author Janie B. Cheaney does bring early Hollywood to life as she comes to understand herself and her father’s involvement in World War I. —B.F.

Theology served familystyle Author Marty Machowski explains why he wrote a systematic theology book for children

by Janie B. Cheaney & Hayley Schoeppler

HANDOUT

F

ew full-time pastors are also best-selling authors, but Marty Machowski’s latest book, The Ology: Ancient Truths Ever New, is clearing shelves at Christian bookstores and attracting glowing endorsements from author-speaker Albert Mohler and many others. The Ology is systematic theology for kids ages 6-12 and their families.

Machowski explains: “When you think systematic ­theology, you think, ‘Oh, my! Stuffy, hard-to-understand theological concepts.’ But really, systematic theology is just an orderly study of God. I wanted to provide something that would communicate the important theological truths that we’ve come to love as Christian adults, in such a way that

they would be accessible to children.”

Among the truths: “God is eternal. God is all-powerful. Sin permeates every aspect of man, and one day Jesus will return again. … Oftentimes parents are a little ­confused about these things. By creating a book that is easy for children to understand, I actually educate the parents as well.

Together parents and children learn some of the fundamental theological truths that underpin our Christian heritage.”

The Ology is engaging, interactive, and beautifully illustrated. The publisher, New Growth Press, matched Machowski’s desire for representative rather than stylized i­ llustrations with the talents of artist Andy McGuire, who had stopped by the publisher’s booth at a conference and left his business card. Author and illustrator worked together on challenges, such as how to represent Jesus without showing Him. (Some churches do not allow images of God.) Machowski remembers showing the birth of Jesus: “You’re going to show a manger, and you can’t have the m ­ anger empty. We came up with the idea of ­putting a present in the manger, and that conveys Jesus as God’s gift to us.”

Machowski saw a need in his own church about 15 years ago, when the children’s ministry director asked him to provide object lessons to go along with the curriculum the church was using. A “pretty extensive supplement to eight lessons” led eventually to an entire curriculum, Gospel Story for Kids, which includes a Bible storybook and two devotionals. “If I knew how much work (about a million words all total) it would be, I would not have signed up for that project!”

Machowski rises early in the morning to write, then launches a typical day as husband and father of six kids (ranging from 13 to 22 years old) and family life pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pa. He’s seen the calling of “author” fit with his other callings: “Ultimately I’ve learned that a writer is a servant. In my pride, I want to be the greatest. But if people come to know Christ from what I write, and forget the name of the author who wrote ‘that devotional for kids,’ that’s fine by me.”

Next output from him: “I recently finished an allegory called ‘Dragon Seed’ that retells the story of redemption from the perspective of the Gadarene demoniac, who passes the story of the Dragon down to his children.” Also in the works: Wise Up, a family devotional based on the book of Proverbs. A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 33

Runners-up (picture books)

by Pamela Palmer, Betsy Farquhar, Christina Darnell, & Megan Saben

Bernice Gets Carried Away Hannah E. Harrison

Bernice heads off to a birthday party with high expectations, but then things go horribly wrong.

The other animals get a rose on their cake, but not Bernice. Events go from bad to worse until the little cat gets carried away with self-pity, grabs all the balloons, and sails into the sky. From that lofty perspective she sees the world—and her situation—with new eyes. Harrison uses the weather and a shifting color palette to reflect Bernice’s changing mood. The winsomely expressive animals pull readers into this instructive and relatable tale for anyone who’s had a bad day.

Water Is Water Miranda Paul

This nonfiction picture book depicts the water cycle, seasons, and the importance of water in our lives. Lyrical text describes the state of water: “Misty.

Twisty. Where is the town?” The illustration accompanying “Fog is fog unless …” shows a brother and sister in their school bus, houses encased in fog, and a tree losing its golden leaves. The next page, “it falls down,” shows the children getting off the bus at school in the rain. The book celebrates the intricacies and wonders of the created world.

An appendix includes additional facts about water (including one mention of “millions of years”).

This Is My Home, This Is My School Jonathan Bean

Bean depicts the joyful chaos of homeschooling life through a child’s eyes, where the world is your art room, the kitchen is your cafeteria, and physical education is a game of soccer in the backyard with dad. Simple text and bright illustrations that bleed outside the lines convey an accurate impression of a busy, ­loving household. As the author says of his homeschool days: “No moment, whether at desk, dinner table, stream, play, or work, was too insignificant to be scavenged for ­something to learn.”

Homeschoolers will ­appreciate this portrait of their lives.

Float

Daniel Miyares

In this wordless book a boy floats his newspaper boat in puddles until it sails down the storm drain. He rescues it with a stick, but the boat is ruined. Crushed, he returns home to his father, who comforts him, makes hot chocolate, and folds a newspaper airplane. Miyares’ mostly black-and-white illustrations convey energy and movement with just enough detail to intrigue even young children.

Parents may draw parallels to our relationship with our heavenly Father who comforts us in life’s disappointments with mercies anew. The endpapers include instructions for making a newspaper boat and airplane.

A F T E R W O R D Two additional books almost made our runners-up list. Lily: The Girl Who Could See by Sally Oxley and Tim Ladwig (Oxvision, 2015) combines vibrant illustrations and an engaging text that finds a middle ground between oversimplification and complexity. It tells the story of Lilias Trotter, who sacrificed artistic fame in England to pursue her calling as a missionary in Algeria.

As a print-on-demand title it may be harder to find, but families, church libraries, or

34 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

other educators who are studying missions will find it worthwhile. In Lenny & Lucy (Roaring Brook, 2015), husband-wife team Philip and Erin Stead tell the story of Peter, his single father, and the loneliness of moving to a new home. The story’s simple words, breathtaking illustrations, and two-is-better-thanone theme make Lenny & Lucy ­valuable for kids and grown-ups alike.

—Megan Saben and Chelsea Boes

Slavery with a smile?

The birthday cake that became a conflagration

by Janie B. Cheaney

W

hen George Washington celebrated his first birthday as president of the United States, he couldn’t have known that a children’s story about his favorite cake would one day rock the publishing world and lead to the actual b ­ anning— not just censoring—of a picture book.

Admittedly, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, published on Jan. 5 by Scholastic, suffered from bad timing. Only months before, another picture book on a similar theme came under intense scrutiny.

A Fine Dessert tracks the progress of “blackberry fool” from the 1700s to the present day by showing a family in each century making and enjoying the cobbler.

The book enjoyed a fine reception until some reviewers, several months after publication, expressed their discomfort with the depiction of one family, a South Carolina slave mother and daughter. The book shows the two gathering berries, mixing batter, and whipping cream to go on top.

They seem reasonably content, and on some pages they are actually smiling.

That was the problem, and in A Birthday Cake for George Washington the slaves—particularly Hercules, the president’s personal chef—smile all the way through. Does this not perpetuate the myth of “happy slaves” that whites once used to justify the peculiar institution?

Already smoldering with A Fine Dessert, controversy flared with the birthday cake, fueled by the Twitter hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile.

Critical commentary popped up in major media outlets like NPR, and one-star reviews swamped the Amazon.com page.

After a statement defending the book on Jan. 15, Scholastic changed course two days later and pulled it from distribution, offering to buy back copies from dissatisfied customers. (Readers can still purchase A Birthday Cake for George Washington from online booksellers as a collector’s item: New copies go for as much as $150.)

Scholastic’s response was almost unprecedented. In her first interview after the recall, the book’s author, food critic and journalist Ramin Ganeshram, reiterated her admiration for the slave Hercules and her desire to give him his due as one who made the best of his talents. She also cited a little-known fact about picture book publishing: “Authors and illustrators often do not speak, or interact. I never had a conversation with Vanessa [BrantleyNewton, the illustrator], just a few tweets.” (It’s worth ­noting Brantley-Newton is herself African-American, as is the book’s editor, Andrea Davis Pinkney.) When Ganeshram saw the illustrations, just weeks before publication, the “over-joviality” of Washington’s dark-skinned kitchen staff seemed to her a smile too far, but her objections went unheeded.

When should children aged 3 to 5 be exposed to the evils of America’s original sin? There’s no easy answer, but Scholastic should have seen trouble coming, especially after the controversy over A Fine Dessert. When the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) accused Scholastic of self-censorship, the publisher insisted it had withdrawn the book because it “did not meet Scholastic’s standards for appropriate presentation of complex subject matter”—not because of the criticism.

Both Scholastic and the NCAC may be missing a point.

“The range of human emotion and behavior is vast,” wrote the author in her explanatory statement after the recall.

Indeed it is. Did actual slaves ever experience moments of joy? All humans do. Did they ever take pride in their work?

Those who mastered a skill for which they received praise undoubtedly did. Not because they were less than human but because they were fully human. The very thing that made chattel slavery so heinous—the humanity of the slave—also allowed even slaves to experience life in its ­complex, deep, and mystifying dimensions. That included occasional happiness and satisfaction.

Should troubling periods of history always flash a moral directive, like a neon sign? Should we define an entire slice of humanity by its historical condition? Children should know that slavery is bad, but also that slaves possessed the human capacity of rising above their circumstances.

Although children should see accurate depictions of slavery (appropriate for their age), relentless depictions of miserable slaves could become a form of overkill, robbing developing minds of any sense of nuance. A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 35

The past and its sins Controversy over author G.A. Henty raises the question: How should we teach history?

by Michael T. Hamilton

I

n a Christian school classroom the day before their Gettysburg battlefield visit, students called out ­reasons North and South took up arms against each other: “To end slavery.” “To stop the South from seceding.” “To protect states’ rights.” Which of those loomed the largest?

With Lee in Virginia, a 2.5hour audio drama based on a novel of the same title by British author G.A. Henty, features some familiar voices: Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings), Kirk Cameron (Left Behind), Brian Blessed (Star Wars), and Chris Anthony (Adventures in Odyssey). It also minimizes a Henty familiar reason why brother fought against brother: The drama portrays the North fighting to preserve the Union, and the South to preserve states’ constitutional rights, but neither side primarily struggling about the issue of slavery.

The audio and the book have some significant differences. The audio drama portrays black slaves as intelligent.

Henty portrays them as clownish. For instance, one slave does not understand why he can go west by heading toward the setting sun: “That very useful about the sun, sah; but suppose we not live in de west de sun not point de way den.” The same character insists, “Me not sea-sick, massa; de sea have nuffin to do with it. It’s de boat dat will jump up and down instead of going quiet.”

Regarding slavery, though, both works cast the central tension as not between owner and slave but between devoted slaves whose benevolent owners recognized their human dignity, and a minority of extreme racists whose unforgivable brutalization of black slaves made every owner seem a Simon Legree.

“If you’ve ever wanted to teach your family about the Confederate flag and the real Civil War, then I have

36 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

the most important message that you may ever hear,” says actor John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark) in a 60-second video ad for Heirloom Audio Productions, which put out With Lee in Virginia. The ad has generated racism-related concerns that influenced Heirloom’s advertising arrangements with organizations including the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

According to Bill Heid, executive producer of With Lee in Virginia, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and several other big TV channels refused to run the ad, saying the subject matter was too controversial. HSLDA distributed an email ad, but on Jan. 11 Suzanne Stephens, HSLDA vice president of marketing and communications, said the video “provoked a strong negative response from our members. Based on the concerns expressed by our members with this video and with racism in G.A. Henty’s novels, we decided not to advertise any more Henty-related materials.”

H

enty. That name is big in many homeschool reading lists. Becky Bearden homeschools all six of her children, currently in grades two through 12, in Woodstock, Ga.,—and the family reads Henty novels aloud.

“We love With Lee in Virginia,” Bearden said, referring to the audio production and book: “It’s one of our favorites.”

Bearden and her sister-in-law bought copies of the audio program as a package special last Christmas after listening to Under Drake’s Flag, another Henty/Heirloom work.

Heid says the Heirloom audio’s elimination of stereotyping, and its sympathy for the slaves, makes With Lee in Virginia a story about reconciliation and redemption.

Bearden views the novel the same way and says it “portrays the ugliness of slavery, but it also portrays the beauty of love and devotion.” Her kids, she added, all understand slavery should have been eliminated.

For Marci Ytterberg of Halfmoon, N.Y., ethical and moral shortfalls in literature serve as teachable moments. If Henty’s books offer her daughters a few when she homeschools them, so be it. Her daughters read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which many schools have banned for its use of a racial slur.

Glen Peterson, 55, has not listened to Heirloom’s productions but is “familiar with G.A. Henty and has read nearly every one of his books” to his son and daughter, who enjoy Henty’s signature framework: inserting a young man into a historical setting where he learns, overcomes, and accomplishes something through character development.

Peterson listed more than a dozen favorite titles while walking to his living room, in which he and his wife have hosted a home church for nine years in Redmond, Wash.

Many Henty books on his shelves are “almost falling apart they’re so old.” He finds a 1903 hardcover and turns its yellowed pages, pointing out an inscription to its previous owner and notes scribbled in the margin.

ROBIN RAYNE NELSON/GENESIS PHOTOS

The Bearden family Heirloom’s With Lee in reads Henty Virginia preserves the character development process Peterson loves—and adds to it. The drama’s Christian producers (Heid and John Fornof, a former writer and director of Adventures in Odyssey) took license by incorporating explicitly biblical overtones—particularly where slavery and ­racism loom.

Most notably, Henty protagonist Vincent Wingfield, the son of a Virginia plantation owner, frees his slaves (who universally admire their master) in the book’s final pages.

The slaves will eventually gain their freedom, Wingfield reasons, so better to transition sooner than later. Heirloom’s version of Wingfield frees his slaves upon growing convicted by the Bible’s testimony that all are equal as image bearers of their Creator and that stealing another man is wrong (Exodus 21:16).

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ith Lee in Virginia has also garnered criticism because it emphasizes points that Confederates stressed: high tariffs and federal encroachments upon state sovereignty.

Peterson says he “was raised in Seattle, like any kid in the North”: “The Civil War was right vs. wrong, black vs. white. … But I’ve come to appreciate the Civil War was in some ways different from the way I was taught—very ­complex. There was a constitutional question involved.”

Discussing complex race-related issues in their historical context helps to educate balanced children, says Idora

Price, an African-American with 25 years of homeschooling experience: “I love Henty for giving you the feeling of being there, [and bringing up] issues regular people faced that history books would not touch on.” She and her husband avoided whitewashing history’s evils, without leaving out the good, “as so many textbooks do.”

The Price family lived in Virginia while several of their children were studying the Civil War, so they visited multiple battlefields. During a re-enactment one spring, two of her sons ran down a hill at Bull Run carrying flags. Price said her children “did not grow up with ­personal experiences of racism, so they don’t carry ­baggage based on any kind of inferiority complex, or air of entitlement. I believe this is because of two things: studying history in its context, not the current politicized view of history, and studying history in the context of a biblical worldview.”

Heid asks regarding slavery: “What do you do if you’re born into a culture where this sinful institution is like a tumor that is part of your body? … It’s unfair to pull people out of history, like a [Ulysses S.] Grant or a Robert E. Lee, and crucify them because they had slaves in their households.”

He calls on Christians to oppose racism, which he says only Christ can remove: “A Christian should be tougher on ­slavery than non-Christians. … I talk about other sins. I see racism as a sin, so why wouldn’t I talk about that?” A —Michael T. Hamilton is a World Journalism Institute graduate May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 37

Best nonfiction

by Janie B. Cheaney & Betsy Farquhar

Give Me Wings: How a Choir of Former Slaves Took on the World

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland’s Good Fortune

Even though the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865 released her from slavery, teenage Ella Sheppard faced formidable walls of prejudice in her quest for an education.

But the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a choral group she co-founded with her ­mentor, opened doors of opportunity and goodwill worldwide. The author makes clear that without a firm Christian faith the group would not have flourished in spite of its many obstacles. Occasional sidebars illuminate the issues and culture of the times, while the main ­narrative is inspiring yet clear-eyed about the bigotry—also the kindness— these young people encountered. (Ages 12-15)

Knud Pedersen, the 13year-old son of a Lutheran minister, was incensed by the Nazi invasion of his native Denmark in 1940, but even more so when his countrymen didn’t fight back. Taking inspiration from Britain’s prime minister, Pedersen and some of his schoolmates vowed a campaign of sabotage and intimidation. The author, who befriended Pedersen in his final years, is candid about the boys’ wounded pride and immature judgment, but their courage is beyond doubt—and they ultimately help to inspire the Danish resistance movement. Their story makes thrilling reading for anyone interested in World War II history.

(Ages 12-15)

Much more than a Thanksgiving story, this lengthy, text-heavy picture book shines a light on early American history.

Full-color illustrations beautifully reflect the ­narrative as teenage John Howland describes his adventures on board the Mayflower—including one near-fatal accident—and through the Pilgrims’ harsh first winter in America. The text treats their faith respectfully but doesn’t gloss over the hardships they endured or excuse their missteps with Native Americans. Though it borders on historical ­fiction when detailing Howland’s “thoughts” and feelings, this is nonetheless an outstanding familyfriendly read. (Ages 6-12)

Kathy Lowinger

Phillip Hoose

P.J. Lynch

The Boy Who Became Buffalo Bill: Growing Up Billy Cody in Bleeding Kansas Andrea Warren

Billy Cody’s boyhood was nearly as turbulent as the Civil War–era Kansas Territory where he grew up. Forced to help support his family when his abolitionist father went into hiding and later died, Billy preferred jobs that offered adventure on horseback, like the Pony Express or the vigilante “Redlegs.”

Lively text coupled with photographs keeps the story flowing even as Warren weaves important historical issues into Billy’s story. Meticulous research, an evenhanded approach to controversies of the day, and attention to how these shaped Billy Cody into “Buffalo Bill” create a wild read worthy of its namesake. (Ages 9-12)

A F T E R W O R D As author Kevin DeYoung explains, The Biggest Story: How the Snake Crusher Brings Us Back to the Garden (Crossway, 2015) began as a Christmas sermon meant to showcase the Nativity in light of “the biggest story” of the Bible as a whole.

Too long for a picture book, too condensed for a Bible storybook, it carves out a niche of its own.

The narrative touches on all the great biblical themes while sketching a classic plot: setting, conflict, development of the conflict, solution presented, climax, and denouement.

38 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

The stylized full-color illustrations complement this approach beautifully. DeYoung likes to present contrasts (such as, “We run from God, so he comes to us”), and illustrator Don Clark pictures many side-by-side contrasts and symbolic images. The presentation is best for children who are capable of slightly abstract thinking. Some parents may find the style too informal in places (e.g., “bad guys,” “a whole bunch”), and basic concepts like sin could be more fully developed; but The Biggest Story makes a worthwhile addition to the family bookshelf. —J.B.C.

The

cowboy in autumn Spending a week with Hank the Cowdog creator John R. Erickson by Marvin Olasky John R. Erickson, author of 67 hugely popular Hank the Cowdog books, lives in the Texas Panhandle on a 9-squaremile ranch 7 miles from his nearest neighbor and 19 miles from the second closest. Here’s what a week last October with him and his wife of 46 years, Kris, was like.

PHOTOS BY MARVIN OLASKY

O

n Monday we saw an intense contrast between Erickson’s ruggedly beautiful ranch—“a lot of wildlife, water, native trees, a lot of solitude”—and life in a ­commercial world with little solitude.

We walked over to one tree that was “a little bitty guy” when Erickson bought the ranch in 1990 with a 30-year mortgage. He paid off the mortgage in 12 years, and the tree is now 75 feet high. Erickson spoke of his love for autumn and his excitement when the first “blue norther” arrives: That’s Texan for a fast-moving cold front that comes with a dark blue-black sky and a temperature drop of 20-30 degrees in a few minutes.

Winter, though, “is not as much fun as it used to be. Kris and I have to think about getting stuck, with nobody to pull us out. Walking in snow gets a little harder with age. Never thought about that when I was a young buck. Now I have to be pretty cautious.” Panhandle temperatures vary from 100 degrees Fahrenheit on some summer days to below zero during winter weeks, with 8-10 inches of snow that severe winds can blow into huge drifts.

That day Erickson was also thinking about the weather in Cannes, France. His son Mark, a lawyer, was at Cannes MiniCOM in France, a trade show where sellers and ­buyers from around the world make deals to produce films and

video series. Hank the Cowdog has the numbers (9 million books sold) and awards recognition (Lamplighter, Audie, Oppenheimer, and Wrangler) to make producers drool.

Hank books are popular even in China, where a Hank the Cowdog stage play pleases audiences, and in Iran. But the news from Cannes was bad: Flooding had led to cancellation of many of Mark’s appointments.

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 41

Meanwhile, we saw more of the ranch: six horses (three white, three other colors), three bulls, 50 cows, lots of calves popped out last spring—and all grass-fed. We learned some Erickson background: Grew up in the Panhandle and graduated from the University of Texas in 1966. Studied for two years at Harvard Divinity School. Began publishing short stories while working full time as a cowboy, farmhand, and ranch manager in Texas and Oklahoma. Worked on the range with dogs like Hank.

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n Tuesday, not knowing whether the Cannes MiniCOM gambit would be productive, Erickson was uneasy. It wasn’t like when he was snowbound for nine days without electricity or propane gas: Then he had a firewood supply and his family did fine. Here he was dependent on others, and it brought back memories of the “desperate times” that he mentions in our interview on page 44: “I was trying to get advice from editors and agents in New York. … I was very serious about writing. I thought this was something I was supposed to do. I wasn’t sure I could survive with defeat.”

By 1982 Erickson was at rope’s end: Two children and another on the way, 8 inches of snow on the ground, snowed under by rejection slips. With $2,000 in borrowed money he started his own publishing company—named Maverick Books, appropriately—and debuted Hank the Cowdog in The Cattleman, a magazine for adults. Readers howled with happiness, and Erickson included two Hank stories in The Devil in Texas, a collection of short stories that was Maverick’s first publication. Living in the small Panhandle town of Perryton, Erickson sold copies at cattle auctions, rodeos, saddle shops, sometimes grocery and drug stores. Soon he was out of his financial hole.

Erickson learned something important in the process: “People in small towns don’t have exalted views of what they’re doing.” His new role model was “a tamale salesman who makes tamales and pushes his cart around. If they don’t taste good or make anybody sick he’s out of business.”

He gave up his king-of-the-literary-world ambitions and became popular by writing about a dog that thought himself to be king of the world.

Still, he doesn’t feel he’s “bulletproof or has it made. …

All it takes to wipe me out is to have the IRS come in and say I didn’t read a certain publication and I am in arrears.” He grimaced: “I do not lie. When I turn in expenses, they’re real expenses. I try to do everything to conform to the tax code, but it’s … so complicated that they make us all criminals.”

W

ednesday brought a drive 40 miles north to Perryton to see the Maverick Books warehouse.

Since Erickson is 73, I offered up small talk: “Do you think about death?” He responded: “I think about it often. I’m in favor of it. If we didn’t face death, we’d all be useless. Makes us more efficient in the use of our time and appreciative of the time we have.” Then came a harder ­question: life after death? Erickson did not miss a beat: “I consider it a probability. I’m very comfortable with it, and going to a better place.”

42 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

1̀ 2̀

We talked about books: Erickson reads widely and concludes, “This world is a pretty good place under normal conditions, but anyone who’s read Russian history knows what a bad place it can be.” We talked about Iran’s history: “Just ­numbing what the Mongols did to Persia … a pyramid of skulls 75 feet high. I’m glad I was spared living in those times and places. Makes me not want to mess up the American experience.”

Erickson’s warehouse is blue-carpeted square feet of pallet after pallet of Hank books and audiotapes, along with bubble packaging and foam peanut dispensers that come down through the ceiling. Shelves hold Hank posters, T-shirts, Hank stuffed animals, and Drover puppets. A map of the world shows where Hank is popular. The illustrator of all the books, Gerald Holmes, drew us some Hanks: “I had no idea of what kind of dog to draw—Hank just turned out [like] that, and I’m glad it wasn’t a specific breed. He still sometimes has three toes on one foot and four on the other.”

Later, the Ericksons headed to choir practice at their high-ceilinged church for an upcoming performance of Handel’s Messiah. Erickson likes height in churches: “The architecture causes our minds to soar. We think about things we don’t have to think about if we go to Disneyland: Why do we all have to die? What does it mean to be part of a community? Am I at liberty to be a liar and a cheat?”

(1) The ranch. (2) Erickson at work. (3) The musical Ericksons.

T

hursday was a day to visit “Hank’s house.” In 2000 Erickson, riding the range, spotted charred remains of a Plains Indian pit house in the cutback of a dry arroyo. Archaeologists he brought in eventually found

pieces of pottery, a Washita arrowhead, tools, fragments of corn and plums. Hank’s house came into being about 700 years ago, and it helped its inhabitants survive Panhandle winters: They dug pits, made frames of wood logs and branches, and used the dirt dug out of the pit to make roofs.

We also visited the office, 200 yards from his home, where Erickson writes from 5 to 9:30 every morning: “It takes maybe 100 hours of solitude to produce 10 pages of a Hank book. I have to spend a lot of time alone.” Sometimes a dog keeps him company: “Animals contribute to whatever it is that makes me a writer. Animals give us a connection to the earth: They live in it, their paws walk in the dirt every day.” My wife and I lived during our ranch week in the Erickson guest house a mile away from their home, so we enjoyed Daisy the golden retriever and Dixie the blue heeler walking us home every night, which made the ­coyotes keep their distance.

What are other essentials? “I wouldn’t be where I am without my wife. She was in the trenches with me every step of the way.” An economics lesson lurks in that history: “Businesses fail because marriages fail. If you don’t take care of your marriage, if you go out on a book tour and you mess around in a restaurant or hotel and ruin your marriage, you ruin your business. It’s all related. You have to protect the sanctity of the place that produces your artistic vision, and for me that involves having harmonious relationships with my wife, my children, and the people in my community.”

The news from Cannes MiniCOM was not harmonious.

Potential deal-makers thought the animated Hank sample was old-fashioned and not edgy enough: “In other words, exactly what we wanted,” Erickson said. So, back to the drawing board, literally and figuratively: “It’s tough, trying to figure out how to get quality entertainment to people who need it.”

O

n Friday Erickson and I played three games of chess—he’s good—and we talked about how he doesn’t ride anymore. One cautionary note came 10 years ago when his horse lost her footing while heading downhill toward a creek. She cartwheeled over and slammed Erickson’s right side into the ground. His ribs hurt badly and got worse as time went on, which left him with a quandary: Two days later he was supposed to do a Hank reading and singing in Abilene, a six-hour drive away, for 3̀

families with severely handicapped children. Most lived in wheelchairs, some were blind, some could not speak.

Erickson almost punched in the number of the woman in charge to tell her he couldn’t make it—but then he reckoned his problem was insignificant compared to what those Abilene families had to live with every day. So he went and found smiling children and parents who “carry their grief well, but you know those mothers have cried themselves to sleep many times.” He put on his 13-pound banjo: It pressed on his ribs, which “hurt like crazy. I groaned and barked, and it was the worst musical program I ever did, and they didn’t care at all. They clapped and they sang. It was really a sweet occasion.”

Later, Erickson drove home and “was hurting pretty bad when I got back. I hadn’t gone to the doctor but thought maybe I should. … The doctor looked me over and said, ‘I’m not going to X-ray you because you don’t have anything shattered, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re bruised, cracked, or broken. You’ll be better in six weeks. Until then you’ll hurt.” That turned out to be right.

Erickson kept riding, but two years ago hurt his knee mounting a horse and needed surgery: “It’s embarrassing for me to reach a point where it’s hard to get in and out of the saddle, but it’s also an indication that the body doesn’t remain the same. If you stay too long in the saddle, you can get yourself hurt.” He wants to continue doing Hank programs, so he hasn’t ridden a horse since 2014 and doesn’t plan to again: “One part of wisdom is knowing when you’ve had enough.”

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ostscript: A month after our visit, Erickson stood in front of students at City School, a Christian K-8 in Austin. The children had read Hank books and showed their delight when Erickson began his program by singing “Chickens,” one of Hank’s meditations as he tries to justify fulfilling desires he knows are wrong: “Chickens. All I see are chickens. Just exactly what a sinner doesn’t need: So frustrating to see roasted birds parading. … On the other hand, there’s a kind of peace of mind that I’m digging. It’s the calm that soothes the conscience after eating. Digestion forms a link between what we do and think, ’cause nourishment is part of mental health.”

Erickson sang other songs, read segments of a new Hank book, and autographed copies. His humorous teaching was profound: The children recognized the battle within Hank and within themselves, for even the young have some understanding of what Paul writes in Chapter 7 of Romans: “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

The next day Erickson spoke and sang at a public middle school in Austin, but most of the kids were unfamiliar with Hank. The reception was not as enthusiastic, but it was a homecoming of sorts for Erickson: Nearly a half-century ago he lived half a mile away during a yearlong Harvardsponsored attempt to improve racial relations. He remembered little houses, big fields, and neighbors who kept goats and chickens. Now the area is built up: “Nothing is the way it was.” A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 43

Q&A WITH JOHN R. ERICKSON

Storyteller essentials To tell a good tale, you need to do more than just write by Marvin Olasky

L

ong before selling millions of copies of Hank the Cowdog books, author John R. Erickson collected hundreds of rejection slips. Here are some of his thoughts about writing.

You say young authors often spend time in a store full of costumes, trying on Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dickens, Twain, Faulkner, or other disguises. How did you find your authentic voice? Trial and error. I grew up in the Texas

Panhandle. We simply didn’t know that writers could come from such a place. We never read anything by Texas authors, and I didn’t meet an author until I was a student at the University of Texas. So it was natural for me to suppose that if you wanted to be a writer you go to New York and start imitating their voice.

You aspired to Eastern literary affectation rather than traditional cowboy storytelling? Six years of college taught

me to ignore my instincts, but a part of me yearned for joy and laughter—not much of that during the 1960s in university environments because everybody was depressed over something. War, race riots … we went to depressing movies, usually in black and white and often made in France or Sweden. There was a notion that if you weren’t depressed you weren’t very smart.

For 15 years you tried to write that way. And wasn’t able to do it. When I returned to the Panhandle, I was working around people who knew nothing of that tradition.

They told stories that were usually funny. I thought to myself, “What a nice way to tell a story,” so I started imitating their storytelling. I had always wanted The Paris Review or Atlantic Monthly to discover me, but American Cowboy and Livestock Weekly did. They published my funny stories about working around livestock and doing battle with the weather. That beat sending depressing novels off to New York publishers and being turned down.

You wrote, “The presence of moral order permits us to seek justice. A well-crafted story should leave the reader satisfied that the internal accounting is balanced and that justice has been done. The character should get what they deserve.” That’s different from the worldview of novels New York Review of Books critics like to praise. After ­trying to be part of that crowd, what in your thinking or worldview enabled you to make that turn? That was the

worldview I had growing up. That’s what I came back to after living in the cities where I had no compass. Probably a lot of it is unconscious Christianity. When we walk out of church after the Maundy Thursday service, we blow out all of the candles. We leave in darkness. In the secular world the story stops there. Where I grew up in Middle America, we were unconsciously infused with the story of Easter morning. That has a profound effect on how you view art.

S.J. DAHLSTROM

By 1982 you had collected at least 1,000 rejection slips.

What did you do with them? I pasted them on the wall of

my office, which was the bedroom in the house we were ­living in. I filled that whole wall. That gave me reason to say, “I’m going to make another wall for my rejection slips and then you’ll really be sorry.” I had two walls and probably started on the third and couldn’t stand it anymore. I tore them down and threw them into the trash. I’m sorry I didn’t save them.

 molasky@wng.org  @MarvinOlasky

Was it helpful to be rejected so much? That’s the kind of question old men can ask and speculate about. It sure wasn’t fun at the time. It was like being in a dogfight every day or getting bucked off a horse every morning. It was painful, and several times I didn’t think I could stand any more of it; but somehow I did. I had a young man’s thick head and a good strong wife to encourage me.

Some kids in college who want to be writers scrutinize their own navels and write memoirs. How can they become writers rooted in something beyond themselves, not just their own angst? Being a mother or father is great

preparation for being a writer because you see creation happening in front of your eyes and realize that you are a part of it but you’re not all of it. Having children is a great creator of humility. I get a lot of ideas and inspiration during church services. We sing in the choir, so we’re in front facing the congregation. It’s impossible for me to forget that I’m part of this community and that people in that sanctuary are reading my books and are affected by them one way or another. They’re people right in front of me, not abstract people 10,000 miles away. That makes it hard to think our art should satisfy our own lusts and desires and get the poison out of our system at the risk of poisoning other people.

Say a Christian graduates from college with a decent theological understanding and a desire to write novels, but not despairing ones: What career advice would you give? It was important for me to do something besides

write—because if all you know to do is write, and all you ever do is write, then what do you have to write about? I used to go to writing conventions where I would meet professionals who wrote Westerns. They told me they wrote 12 hours a day and did nothing but write. I knew from their works that they didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing every day: working with horses as a ranch cowboy.

They were writing about horses but without experience of horses? Yeah, and maybe reading a book or two on

horses, checking it out of the library. I also knew their mothers were probably ashamed of their work. They were not writing about the West, but about their own fantasies concerning what might have been going on in a fanciful place called the West.

Fantasies are popular these days. Some people are inclined to write fantasy because they don’t know anything else to write about. If you’ve never held a sick child at 2 o’clock in the morning, if you’ve never sweated over making a mortgage payment at the end of the month, or wondered how you were going to spread the family budget out to buy enough rice and beans to make it through the month, there’s an awful lot about the human experience on this earth that you don’t know. It might be important for somebody who wants to write about the human experience to know a little bit about it.

Which is better, a “Home of Hank the Cowdog” sign upon entering Perryton, Texas, or a glowing review in The New York Review of Books? I’m proud of the little

sign outside the Perryton city limits. I’ve always wished for a bone tossed my way by The New York Review of Books, but it never came and I stopped caring about it. If it ever ­happened, I’d be stunned. A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 45

F E AT U R E S

FALSE

46 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

Many corporations that denounce bathroom protections and religious liberty laws cash in on millions in state subsidies.

Is losing their business really such a loss for states?

PROFITS

JAMES STEIDL/SHUTTERSTOCK & KRIEG BARRIE

by Jamie Dean in Charlotte, N.C.

hen the North Carolina legislature passed a law designed in part to protect the right of private businesses to maintain a policy of sexsegregated bathrooms, the corporate backlash was apoplectic.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman axed plans on April 5 to open a new operations center in Charlotte, saying the law discriminated against transgender and gay residents. Deutsche Bank froze plans to add 250 jobs to its technology subsidiary in Cary, N.C. And executives with Lionsgate—producer of The Hunger Games franchise— said they wouldn’t film a new television series in North Carolina. Executives called the state law “deplorable and ­discriminatory,” and warned, “We will be hard pressed to continue our relationship with North Carolina if this regressive law stays on the books.”

The unmentioned reality: It’s unclear how long Lionsgate planned to continue the relationship anyway, since the state had rejected the film company’s application for tax incentives to film the series, called Crushed, in Charlotte. The government in British Columbia looks poised to offer such a honey pot, and the industry magazine Variety reported, “The decision to shoot Crushed in Vancouver is driven by the likely financial incentives.”

Meanwhile, Lionsgate’s relationship with North Carolina isn’t completely over.

The company said it would finish film-

ing a reboot of Dirty Dancing in the state, noting production already had begun.

Another possible motivation: In February, the state’s Department of Commerce awarded Lionsgate a $4 ­million grant to film the project in North Carolina.

Lionsgate isn’t alone. Many of the corporations lambasting North Carolina and other states for passing laws regarding bathroom protections or religious freedom accept millions of dollars from the states’ coffers.

That means companies lose little when they know other states offer similar deals, but it also leaves some economists wondering: Despite the hysteria, how much do states really have to lose?

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he controversy over North Carolina’s HB2 legislation— also known as “the bathroom bill”—erupted in March, but it began two years ago in the city of Charlotte.

That’s when a coalition of gay rights groups began pushing a city law aimed at changing Charlotte’s nondiscrimination policy. The ordinance also included a mandate: Businesses open to the public must allow patrons to use the bathroom corresponding to their perceived gender identity.

The ordinance’s proponents said they wanted to protect transgender ­citizens. For example, they said, a man identifying as a woman should be able to use the women’s restroom, even if it

makes other customers uncomfortable.

The ordinance was contentious, and the majority-Democratic City Council rejected it last spring after an attempt to pass an ordinance without the bathroom provision failed. But in November, Charlotte’s newly elected Democratic Mayor Jennifer Roberts pushed the ordinance again. On Feb. 26, the City Council passed it.

The revised Charlotte ordinance mandated businesses serving the public allow patrons to use the bathroom of the gender of their choice. It included locker rooms of gyms and other public facilities with changing areas.

The North Carolina legislature balked.

On March 23, the Republican majority passed the HB2 law. In government buildings and schools, people must use the restroom corresponding with their biological sex.

For private businesses, the law doesn’t prohibit a business owner from allowing transgender customers to use either bathroom. But it does say the law can’t compel a private business owner to make such a policy. (On April 19, Target said it welcomed transgender customers and employees to use the restroom or fitting room “that corresponds with their gender identity.” See p. 6.)

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory called HB2 a commonsense law designed to protect public safety and privacy. Gay advocacy groups called the bathroom ­provision and other components of the bill discriminatory and bigoted.

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48 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

other local ­businesses—perhaps from companies with no government incentives at all.

Plus, the incentives divert resources away from essential services, like schools, roads, and police, even as some governments face budget shortfalls.

Lawmakers argue the incentives pay for themselves, as the companies bring jobs and generate revenue. But evidence that state governments recoup those millions is scant, according to some economists.

Michael Mazerov of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told Boise State Public Radio an “overwhelming amount of research” suggests the economic activity “never generates enough activity for a credit to pay for itself.”

Some states have recognized subsidies for film ­companies often don’t pay off. North Carolina started curtailing its film incentives two years ago. Other states have also scaled back, and Iowa axed its program in 2009 after an audit found widespread abuse.

Still, the allure is strong. In Georgia, another state that doles out tax incentives for the film industry, Disney and its subsidiary movie studio Marvel threatened to boycott the state if Gov. Nathan Deal signed a religious liberty bill in March.

Lawmakers already had substantially watered down the bill aimed at protecting Georgia business owners who don’t want to participate in gay weddings, but corporations still protested, and the Republican governor vetoed the bill in April.

When it comes to corporate incentives for companies like PayPal, Cordato says, he’d prefer states to lower tax rates for all businesses and create a fair playing field: “If the only reason they want to come here is to get our tax money, let them go collect welfare somewhere else.”

‘If the only reason they want to come here is to get our tax money, let them go collect welfare somewhere else.’

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ajor corporations don’t usually call their tax incentives welfare, but they do take millions of dollars from states each year.

—Roy Cordato

While PayPal is abandoning its North Carolina project before it begins, the state has awarded incentives to several other corporations protesting the HB2 law, including Deutsche Bank, Apple, and the North Carolina–based Lowe’s.

American Airlines—which operates its second-largest hub in Charlotte— condemned the law, but it takes a huge financial break by paying no jet fuel tax in North Carolina.

Deutsche Bank announced it wouldn’t add 250 jobs to its location in Cary, N.C., after the HB2 law. But North Carolina has awarded the company millions of dollars in tax incentives. In 2009, the state granted a potential $10.5 million in incentives when the company agreed to open a location in Cary. In 2013, it awarded the bank another $5.5 million.

Last year, the state offered the company $3.3 million to add another 250 jobs.

A Deutsche Bank spokesman wouldn’t comment on the company’s objections to the HB2 law or whether they would continue accepting incentives from the state they’re protesting.

The spokesman also wouldn’t ­comment on what some critics call

PINS: LAURA GREENE/THE ENTERPRISE VIA AP

Within days, groups on both sides marched in the capital city of Raleigh.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the governor’s mansion on a Saturday afternoon, and sang, “Let us pee”—to the tune of the Beatles song “Let It Be.” That same weekend, the corporate backlash began.

PayPal, an online payment service, had plans to come to Charlotte before the city passed its bathroom ordinance.

But when the North Carolina legislature passed HB2 in March, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman bolted.

Schulman said HB2 “violates the ­values and principles” of PayPal, and he halted plans to open an operations ­center in Charlotte with up to 400 jobs.

The CEO co-signed a letter with some 120 executives from other massive corporations, condemning HB2. The ­letter’s origin: the Human Rights Campaign—the largest gay advocacy group in the nation.

But as Schulman takes his new center elsewhere, he leaves something behind: nearly $2.9 million in tax incentives North Carolina and local governments had promised the company to locate here.

PayPal shopped for government incentives in at least two other states before choosing North Carolina, according to minutes from a Mecklenburg County commissioners’ meeting: Florida offered the company $1.2 million, and Arizona offered $4.4 million.

State governments often offer tax and other incentives to lure or keep large companies. Sometimes it’s a break on corporate taxes. Other times it’s a direct subsidy based on how much a company spends in a state or how many people it employs.

But the incentives rarely pay off for the state, according to Roy Cordato of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. Instead, he says, corporate incentives create an unfair playing field for other businesses, as multibillion-­ dollar corporations demand tax incentives smaller companies don’t get.

In North Carolina, where unemployment hovers at 5 percent, Cordato says the notion that companies like PayPal “create jobs” is a myth “unless you’re going to assume all these people were going to be unemployed, which is not the case.”

Instead, companies like PayPal often recruit qualified employees away from

RALEIGH: JASON E. MICZEK/AP IMAGES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN • JACKSON: ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP

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hypocrisy: The bank has condemned North Carolina but conducts business in a handful of Middle Eastern nations where homosexuality is punishable by death. Apple also operates in some of those same countries.

PayPal does business in such countries as well, and Schulman pulled the plug on the North Carolina project less than two weeks after visiting Cuba with President Barack Obama to explore expanding PayPal services into the ­communist nation with an abysmal human rights record.

Last year, the U.S. government fined PayPal $7.7 million after it reported it had violated U.S. sanctions by conducting transactions in Cuba, Sudan, and Iran.

PayPal and other corporations also haven’t said they plan to stop collecting revenue from North Carolina customers who use their products. One exception: An online pornography hub announced it would block users in North Carolina.

Mike Kulich of the porn site XHamster. com told The Huffington Post: “We will not stand by and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage.”

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lance at the list of companies for and against HB2, and a clear dynamic emerges: Large corporations oppose the bill, and a shorter list of small ­businesses support it.

This is no fluke: For years, groups like the Human Rights Campaign have pressured large companies to adopt progay policies. The organization issues an annual “equality index,” judging corporations’ LGBT friendliness, including  jdean@wng.org  @deanworldmag

(1) Mark Phillips, CEO of Phillips Collection furnishings, holds a handful of buttons protesting HB2 in High Point, N.C. (2) Chad Griffin (center), president of Human Rights Campaign, delivers a box of petitions calling for the repeal of HB2 to the office of Gov. Pat McCrory in Raleigh, N.C. (3) A Human Rights Campaign banner flies outside the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Miss.

whether companies offer health benefits for services related to transgender employees changing their bodies.

In early March, a bill similar to HB2 reached the governor’s desk in South Dakota. The bill would have protected sex-specific bathroom use in public schools, but also required schools to provide single-occupancy facilities for transgender students.

Despite the accommodation, HRC warned, “History will not treat kindly those who support this discriminatory measure.” Republican South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed the bill.

It’s part of HRC’s stated agenda: They condone companies offering a singlestall bathroom while a transgender employee is “transitioning,” but then insist the company allow the employee to use the restroom of his or her perceived gender.

In Aurora, Ill., managers of a Hobby Lobby store asked an employee not to use the women’s restroom after he said he transitioned to a female. Meggan Sommerville, a 17-year employee of the company, complained in 2011, and the store built a single-stall bathroom.

Sommerville still objected, and filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights. A judge found the

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store discriminated against the employee, but the legal proceedings are ongoing. Meanwhile, Sommerville told Newsweek that quitting the job wasn’t a desirable option: “I like what I do.”

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t’s unclear how corporate protests and musician boycotts will affect states like North Carolina and Mississippi—which also faces ­corporate backlash after passing a ­religious liberty bill in March.

Houston residents voted in favor of a policy similar to the North Carolina law last year, but the city seems to be thriving.

The NCAA held the Final Four in Houston, and Texas Monthly reported the city suffered no consequences from its bathroom bill: “nothing, nada, zilch.”

The backlash against North Carolina may last longer, particularly in an election year in a swing state with a governor up for reelection. And the Obama administration has said schools should allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, so the controversy will continue.

In an editorial in The Federalist, Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation says voters—including many Christians affected by these laws—must remain ­vigilant in a quickly moving landscape of state-by-state litigation.

He calls such religious freedom laws “the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage,” and notes in the case of Georgia: “If all of the major corporations are already in favor of gay marriage, then this religious freedom law poses no threat. It merely protects the rights of those who disagree.” A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 49

F E AT U R E S

The only way to see Allumette, at 20 minutes the longest virtual reality feature film ever made, was to travel down to a penthouse in Manhattan’s financial district. Penrose Studios—a San Francisco– based virtual reality (VR) film studio made up of alumni from Pixar, DreamWorks, and Oculus—had rented space there before the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. One rug in the middle of an open room with low-lying couches and wooden floors was where you stood to watch Penrose’s superb film, Allumette, a creative interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Little Match Girl.”

Don’t leave the rug and you’ll be fine, one of the film’s creators advised as he tightened a VR headset on me and then took up his menial job of making sure I didn’t tangle myself in cords during the movie— or whatever this experience was. The exquisitely ­animated film had the feel of a Pixar short, but the experience was different than any movie or game or even the 360-degree films you can watch on a smart-

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50 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

phone through a Google Cardboard viewer. In a VR film, you are immersed in the narrative with the help of a personal headset that provides sight and sound and senses your movements: In some movies the viewer is a character himself, in others an invisible bystander.

Eugene Chung, who wrote and directed Allumette, used to work at Pixar. Then in 2013 he tried out an early version of Oculus Rift, the long-anticipated, $599 VR headset that began shipping to consumers this April.

“I remember taking the headset off and I couldn’t even contain it,” Chung said. He thought, “This is going to change the world.”

Oculus hired Chung to head up its Story Studio, which has released short animated VR films. Not too long after Facebook bought Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion, Chung left to found Penrose. Chung believes that with the proper technology and artistry, VR films like his are the future of visual narrative and will leave

A virtual reality demonstration at a video game expo in Paris

A scene from Allumette; Eugene Chung (below) at the Allumette premiere at Tribeca

52 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

ALLUMETTE: PENROSE STUDIOS • CHUNG: PAUL ZIMMERMAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

traditional movies in the dust as movies left operas in the dust more than a century ago. Skeptics of VR aren’t so sure: Whether the medium becomes widely popular may depend on the quality of VR films, in terms of both storytelling and technical chops.

Chung’s team at Penrose put Allumette together in less than a year, assembling the tech infrastructure needed for VR animation at the same time as they were making the film.

As Allumette opens, you are standing in a quaint town with clouds surrounding you above and below. Large wooden ships hum past through the air. You see in front of you Allumette, a girl, alone at night and examining her glowing box of matchsticks. She strikes a match, flashing back to a scene with her mother on one of the flying ships. At different points in the story, you can physically lean forward and climb into the belly of the ship to see what is happening inside.

Sound mostly directs your vision, so you aren’t wandering aimlessly as you might in a video game. A puttering ship engine behind you makes you turn to see what’s coming, or a character coughing grabs your attention.

Time seems to alter inside the VR headset: The 20-minute movie didn’t feel like more than five or 10 minutes.

Unlike early virtual reality, this film doesn’t make you motion sick, nor does the immersive experience overwhelm you. It makes you feel as if you are watching a story unfold in a new way.

Allumette makes the hype around virtual reality films seem not so outlandish.

Since the general public has little access to virtual reality films, or to high-quality VR headsets, the demand at the special interactive day of the Tribeca

Film Festival for these VR productions was high. A line formed for Allumette, and Deep VR, a five-minute ­animated VR experience in which you swim underwater, had an eight-hour waitlist.

Penrose will release the first few minutes of Allumette for free on some of the new VR headsets coming out this year, but the studio isn’t sure about distributing the entire film yet.

“We’re basically pioneering every aspect of this whole thing,” said Chung.

Virtual reality as the next cinematic medium has many barriers—the distribution via expensive, clunky headsets; the technical developments required to create quality VR films; and funding, to name a few.

But believers in the technology think those are the same kinds of barriers other new media faced and overcame.

Penrose recently raised $8.5 million in seed funding.

Another new VR studio, Baobab, announced it raised $6 million in investment in December. Yet another studio, Jaunt, already has significant backing from companies like Disney.

Only this year are high-quality VR headsets becoming available to consumers. In addition to April’s release of the Oculus Rift, another major headset, HTC Vive ($799), also just started shipping to consumers. The Sony PlayStation VR ($499) is forthcoming. Tractica, a firm that researches the technology market, estimated to Vice that 15.9 million VR headsets will sell this year. The VR doubters think only video gamers will want to invest in expensive headsets, and that the medium lends itself more to participatory games than to film.

Christians might be concerned too about how this new technology will influence their brains and souls.

The pornography industry, which was first to VHS and streaming video, could end up exploiting virtual reality for its own purposes.

But so far the biggest porn companies haven’t invested much in this medium, perhaps waiting to see whether consumers invest in headsets, according to a report from the website Mashable, which tracks the digital world.

“Like any medium, [virtual reality] can be abused, and offer false promises of satisfaction or escape from this world,” said Pepperdine University film professor Craig Detweiler. “But it also has the potential to make us laugh and cry and feel closer to our neighbors.”

The Pearl filmmakers said they struggled with how to do cuts.

‘Like any medium, [virtual reality] can Feedback on the earlier versions of be abused, and offer false promises the film said it was too jumpy and of satisfaction or escape from this made people sick. The animators figured out a solution: For the first world, but it also has the potential six shots of the film, they placed six to make us laugh and cry and stable objects in the car, like a guifeel closer to our neighbors.’ tar, that stayed in the same place as shots changed. After six shots they —CRAIG DETWEILER could remove the objects because the audience was used to the framework by then. Putting the audience inside the car for the Detweiler thinks the broader issue in media, including VR, is entire film also stabilized the viewers. the tension between valuing real human interactions and the The team finished the film in December, but then spent the mediated interactions via machines. As machines become a following months ironing out technical issues so that it would ­bigger part of the world, “a kind of post-human future,” he said, play smoothly—an indication of how new the technology is. “people of faith can’t afford to ignore emerging formats and Even at the Tribeca interactive day, where several VR projects need to be actively engaged in both creating new stories and were playing in one big studio, the team was struggling with also being willing to push the pause button in their own lives.” interference from another system across the room that was making their video stutter and glitch.

Standing in the Tribeca interactive studio jammed with Pearl was well-done, and Allumette exceptional. But most people waiting to watch a VR film, Pearl, was the movie’s VR projects right now aren’t great, and filmmakers are conproducer, David Eisenmann. The room was at capacity, and cerned that bad content could doom the medium. Opeyemi more people were waiting outside. Eisenmann was a computer Olukemi, the director of interactive programs at Tribeca Film graphics supervisor at Pixar beginning in 1997 before moving to Institute, who also curated the VR films at the festival, said her Google Spotlight Stories to work on VR films. role is to keep out the bad stuff.

“To me, it feels like it did in the early days of Pixar,” “Ultimately it may fail, not because it didn’t have potential Eisenmann said of virtual reality films. He recalled the mix of but because people have hopped on the bandwagon and just engineers and artists at Pixar’s inception creating new technolcreated fluff,” Olukemi said. But she’s optimistic about the ogy as they made movies. “We didn’t know where it would go broader future of interactive storytelling. when we were making it.”

“People are really thrilled that this could be something as Patrick Osborne, an experienced animator at Disney, powerful as film.” A directed Pearl, and Google has enlisted Aardman Animations (the creator of Wallace and Gromit) and Pixar director/writer/ animator Jan Pinkava—behind the Oscar-winning Pixar short Geri’s Game—for other VR projects.

Pearl has more basic animation and much less movement than Allumette, but it’s a well-told story. The five-minute film Activist groups are turning to virtual reality as a way for follows a girl as she grows up, but the scenes take place entirely audiences to experience an issue in the first person, and inside a car as her father travels the country with his guitar in perhaps feel empathy as a result. Such projects at Tribeca depicted a confrontation with police, solitary tow. Wearing a VR headset, you the viewer can spin around in confinement, and a woman going to get an abortion. the car and even stand up to poke your head out of the sunroof Planned Parenthood funded the abortion project, to watch the daughter catch passing fireflies in a jar.

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360-DEGREE ACTIVISM

A scene from Pearl

 ebelz@wng.org  @emlybelz

titled Across the Line, which the group showed on smartphone viewers outside the U.S. Supreme Court the day of the Texas abortion case arguments this year.

The filmmakers used documentary footage of a pregnant woman going to an abortion center with her friend: The two drive past a large group of pro-life protesters with signs outside and roll down the window to ask a man where to park. The man turns out to be a sidewalk counselor and tries to encourage the woman to seek help at a pregnancy center down the road—he says she would be making a “dignified choice.” The friend retorts that the woman is making a dignified choice by having an abortion. Inside the abortion center, the woman is upset, and the abortionist comforts her and offers support.

This particular VR experience didn’t feel markedly immersive or different from a documentary. —E.B.

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 53

WESTERN CONSERVATIVE SUMMIT

You are OFFICIALLY invited!

Western Conservative Summit is the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C. It’s speakers, workshops, exhibits, networking and more—a great weekend for liberty!

Lila Rose

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Reserve your seats today: 877.798.5366 www.wcs16.com/liberty *Invited

Western Conservative Summit 2016 July 1-3, 2016 « Colorado Convention Center « Denver

NOTEBOOK Lifestyle / Technology / Sports / Religion

Lehigh Acres residents play basketball at Veterans Park in Lehigh Acres, Fla.

Lifestyle

A housing rebound

FORT MYERS FINDS STABILITY AFTER THE ZERO-DOWN DISASTER by Marvin Olasky Do you remember all the gloomy stories several years back about gas getting close to $4 a gallon? Compare that to the number of jubilant tales you saw early this year when gas was under $2 per gallon.

COREY PERRINE/GENESIS

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Real estate reporting has been similar. Many ­stories mourned the losses of homeowners during the 2007-2010 housing crash.

But for some people, the foreclosure crisis was the best thing that ever happened to them financially.

How many stories have you seen about people able to buy low and move into houses they could not have afforded earlier?

Fort Myers, Fla., was one of America’s hardesthit cities. Lehigh Acres was the hardest-hit part of the

Fort Myers metropolitan area, and in 2010 I drove up and down its ghost town streets. Many homeowners who had bought near the peak were way underwater.

Those living off retirement income and planning to stay in their houses could wait out the crash, but others lacked income for mortgage payments as unemployment in the area quadrupled to about 15 percent (see “Ghost streets,” Feb. 27, 2010).

The real unemployment number was even worse.

Many trim carpenters and May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 55

NOTEBOOK

Lifestyle

56 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

put their own money into a house often had more pride of ownership than those who had bought it with zero money down. Some houses that dropped to $50,000 are now back up to $180,000.

Last month I drove around Lehigh Acres with a homebuilder.

The area looks born again: Cars in driveways, tricycles on front porches, 98 percent occupancy.

Every block has its sadness: Many who lost their homes are now in apartments, and their experience has often been hard. Every block also has its happiness: Many who were in apartments are now in homes that suddenly became affordable.

What have we learned? Maybe some individuals have learned about the need to save. Maybe some builders have learned not to speculate. Maybe the government has learned not to pressure bankers to make bad loans for demographic reasons.

Maybe some bankers have seen there are worse things than declining a loan and watching the wouldbe customer go across the street to a competitor bank.

Or, given our human nature, maybe not. A

THE NEXT ‘DIGNITY’ TO BE AFFIRMED Question from a WORLD reader: “Now that transgender is virtually mainstream, what’s the next issue for the cultural left?”

Polygamy is clearly on the agenda. At a dinner a dozen years ago I sat across from a Princeton professor who favored same-sex marriage but was against threesomes. I had fun accusing him of being a “two-ist.” Now, two-ism will be the new homophobia.

Popular culture has already softened us up with the HBO show Big Love (2006-2011) and similar products. Now the legal cases are coming.

Also, cultural leftists (and maybe some classicists) will push for lowering the age of sexual consent to puberty, or lower: That was part of “the glory that was Greece,” so why shouldn’t America become the new Athens? Most people will push back on this issue. Look at reaction to the Penn State evil. Look at the Oscar victory of Spotlight, which lionized reporters for going after man/boy sex involving Roman Catholic priests. But those favoring the change may agree that pederasts in a position of authority over young persons should ­control themselves—and then they’ll work to legalize purportedly “consensual pederasty.”

The cultural left will also ask, “What’s wrong with incest?” The first stage will be repeal of laws forbidding sex between close relatives: Rhode Island appears to be the only state that has repealed its prohibition of incestuous sex, but France and several other countries allow incest between ­consenting adults, and we want to be more like Europe, n’est-ce pas?

The second stage will be legalization of incestuous marriage. When childbearing was the central task of marriage, it made sense for the state to forbid a brother and sister marrying, but now that Justice Anthony Kennedy has taught us that the crucial objective is an affirmation of dignity, anti-incest laws are vestigial, right? —M.O.

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drywall experts had their own small companies and didn’t show up as officially unemployed—they were just functionally destitute.

Building permit applications dropped 99 percent. The saving grace for some local workers was that Chinese drywall placed in some houses had a high sulfur ­content, so they could find jobs stripping houses down to bare walls. But others had to move.

The housing crisis ended not through government programs but through something fundamental: price. When a $250,000 home dropped to $50,000, a buyer showed up—and then another for the house next door, and others down the street. Lots of Lehigh Acres retirees with abandoned moved in. homes in 2009 They often (top) and paid cash. bustling with Those who activity in 2016

NOTEBOOK

Technology

Nutrition at checkout

A NEW APP INCENTIVIZES HEALTHY EATING by Michael Cochrane Poor diet can lead to poor health.

Vulnerable population groups, such as older Americans, suffer from malnutrition because much of the food they buy, though inexpensive, is lacking in essential nutrients.

A prize-winning app developed by a pair of students at the Massachu­­ setts Institute of Technol­ ogy’s Sloan School of Management could lead to healthier food choices— though perhaps at the expense of medical privacy.

SHOPPING: MEDIAPHOTOS/ISTOCK • EMIEW3: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • TRAP: DANIEL PINELO

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The app, called ValueMe, uses U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional databases to analyze a shopper’s food purchases at the checkout register for the ­vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and protein needed for a healthy diet.

“When they’re printing your receipt, [you] will receive a nutrition snapshot of everything that you purchased and it will analyze if there are components or nutrients that are missing in your diet,” said Malena

Gonzalez, a member of the ValueMe team, in an MIT press release. “This provides, at the point of sale, education for consumers on how healthy they’re eating.”

But the app comes with a significant privacy problem: The shopper at checkout must swipe a health insurance card, and nutritional information goes to the insurance provider, which in turn can provide instant discounts for healthier food purchases.

Discounts are good, but they’d be an expensive trade-off if insurance companies or government healthcare providers one day use grocery list data to determine premiums and benefits.

Judges at MIT’s IDEAS Global Challenge last month were nevertheless impressed with the ValueMe app: They awarded the app a $15,000 first-place prize and said it “could trigger a systematic change in the food industry.” The ValueMe team plans to put its prize money toward a pilot program with a ­grocery store in Philadelphia.

ROBOT ASSISTANCE

If you’ve ever been lost in a ­foreign airport, or not sure where to find an item in a large store, you know the feeling of relief when someone approaches you and asks, “Is there anything I can help you with?” In a few years, that “someone” may be a robot.

Hitachi just introduced a helper robot designed to ­identify and assist people in stores or public places who look as if they need help.

Named EMIEW3, the robot uses state-of-the-art voice and language processing technology that allows it to assist ­customers looking for help in four different languages, according to Tech Times.

EMIEW3 is able to answer questions and even complete a sale with the help of other sales-bots. The 33-pound robot can roll alongside its human customers at a brisk pace of just under 4 mph and can set itself upright if knocked over in the hustle of a crowded shopping aisle.

Following a planned launch in Japan in 2018, Hitachi says it will extend EMIEW3 services worldwide.

—M.C.

MOSQUITO TIRE TRAP The mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus like to lay their eggs in the stagnant water that collects in old, discarded tires. Armed with this knowledge, Canadian researchers have built an effective mosquito trap that is made from a tire and could help fight the spread of the disease.

The researchers fill the bottom tire section of the trap with water and a solution that attracts mosquitoes. The insects lay their eggs on a strip of paper placed on the solution.

Pheromones released by the female mosquitoes attract even more mosquitoes. Researchers then regularly check the paper for eggs, then burn it or sterilize it with alcohol.

In a 10-month test in Guatemala, the low-tech trap collected almost seven times as many eggs as other traps, according to Grand Challenges Canada, which funded the project. —M.C.

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May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 57

NOTEBOOK

Sports

Sabbath-keeping Scots CHRISTIAN TENNIS TEAM FORGOES A SUNDAY CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH by Andrew Branch The women’s tennis team at Covenant College caused a stir when it forfeited an April conference championship match on a Sabbath Sunday, but not among stakeholders themselves.

The players knew what was in store. “I actually met with [players] before they left to say, when you win and make the championship game, here’s what’s going to happen. … And here’s a reminder of why,”

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cross country athletes before Sunday races to run as their act of worship.

Sprinter Eric Liddell famously refused to run on the Sabbath at the 1924 Olympics.

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) operates Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga. Sabbath-keeping is part of an institutional culture that includes not having classes on Mondays after Easter and Thanksgiving—so

The Covenant College women’s tennis team

58 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

s­ tudents don’t have to travel on Sunday. The Scots entered the USA South Conference in 2013 as full NCAA Division III members. They also knowingly entered into existing schedules made years in advance.

“A lot of things tied to facilities and hotels … were already in place,” said USA South President Kandis Schram. Spring sports— tennis, baseball, softball, and golf—all travel to Rocky Mount, N.C., for one

TEBOW FOR CONGRESS?

Republican U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, 71, announced April 13 that he won’t seek reelection to Florida’s 4th district.

The Jacksonville-area district is Tim Tebow’s stomping ground—and some want the quarterback and commentator to run.

Just two weeks before Crenshaw’s announcement, Tebow, 28, told a Fox News reporter he wouldn’t rule out politics.

“If there’s a chance you can make a difference someday in something, then that would be intriguing,” he said.

The rumor mill fired up immediately. A day after Crenshaw’s announcement, millennial news site Red Alert Politics endorsed Tebow, citing his Fox comments. The Washington Examiner added to the grist, reporting that GOP strategists are reaching out to Tebow, even quietly assembling a ready-made campaign for him. The primary is on Aug. 30.

—A.B.

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COVENANT COLLEGE WOMEN’S TENNIS TEAM: JACK LEWIS • TEBOW: MIKE MOORE/GETTY IMAGES FOR ESPN

athletics director Kyle Taylor told me.

And conversations with Covenant and the conference in which it competes revealed a relationship based on mutual respect.

Christians at all levels of organized sports treat the Sabbath in diverse ways.

Christian athletes in the National Football League and Major League Baseball play almost every Sunday.

In Lansing, Mich., homeschool coach and pastor Kevin Shoemaker tells his

big tournament weekend, this year April 15-17. “Prior to Covenant coming in, [title games were] played on a Sunday to keep kids in class,” Schram told me.

The NCAA allows schools to request accommodations for national tournaments, but conferences aren’t bound to that.

Covenant players knew exactly what would happen before they forfeited to Methodist University. “It’s not really a conviction if you’re going to make exceptions,” Taylor said.

While Covenant continues to lobby for future changes to spring championship dates, neither side holds hard feelings. Women’s tennis head coach John Hirte won Coach of the Year honors, finishing 15-6. And despite the forfeit, Aly Hall was the tournament MVP. On April 22, the conference awarded Covenant its third straight league-wide Sportsmanship Trophy.

And once championship dates come open again for discussion, Schram said, Covenant should be part of the conversation. “Nobody wants to put them in that situation,” she said. “It’s just something that has to play out.”

NOTEBOOK

Religion

Deluge of support

CHRISTIANS LOVING THEIR NEIGHBOR HELPED A BUSINESS RECOVER FROM A DEVASTATING FLOOD by Deena C. Bouknight

in Forest Acres, S.C.

Last October a flood here turned festive settings with bright orange pumpkins into apocalyptic scenes featuring thick mud and sewage. Six feet of floodwater invaded homes, playgrounds, and businesses, including Joseph McDougall’s Forest Lake Gardens center in this Columbia suburb on Oct. 4.

McDougall’s landlord, First Citizens Bank, ordered him to close: A formal letter said reopening would not be “practical.” But more than 1,500 local residents (many devastated themselves) signed a petition asking the bank to allow McDougall to remain. Many backed up those words with deeds. Middle- and high-schoolers from First Presbyterian Church ­shoveled out heavy mud and debris.

They and others prayed with, hugged, and assisted McDougall.

Some of them knew McDougall’s story. At age 30 he was a hard-living, homeless high-school dropout. He drifted, but the words of a Scorpions song, “Find your place in the eye of the storm,” prompted him to return to Columbia, the place of his birth. He slept at his brother’s house while he tried various paths. He then entered the garden center business, beginning with just a few plants: “I didn’t know an annual from a perennial.”

That was 14 years ago. McDougall learned from growers the idiosyncrasies of plant life. Forest Lake Gardens became a go-to place for area residents who began to rely on him for growing and planting advice. McDougall gradually added local produce, mulch,

DEENA C. BOUKNIGHT

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McDougall

straw, and compost, and began selling pots and statuary. But last year, even before the flood’s mud, the plot thickened: Although plants had beautified the previously vacant space, First Citizens wanted to clear the property and convert it to green space.

Then the flood came. The next day, McDougall trudged through muck to survey a wasteland, but community volunteers and church members gave him no time to despair. A scene worthy of It’s a Wonderful Life emerged.

Residents invested—not just as consumers but as helpers and missionaries.

Within a week and a half, after seeing mud piled high enough to require Bobcat removal, McDougall was able to reopen with a few plants.

The response by Christian neighbors had an effect on McDougall: “It’s been the actions of people that have shown me so much.” Love and support helped him maintain a positive attitude and glean something beautiful from the wreckage: Students at his son’s school used shards of broken pottery to make mosaics. Money from the sale of the mosaics went to other flood victims.

Nevertheless, enthusiastic cleanup efforts and gradual business recovery did not end pressure from First Citizens Bank, which told McDougall to move out “by the end of October,” then “by Christmas,” and then (after a record year selling Christmas trees) “by January.” But just when McDougall thought he might lose the battle, the bank notified him in March that he could purchase the site and own it outright. The bank offered the property, valued at $300,000, for $25,000.

Why? A spokesperson for First Citizens said bank officials decided selling the property to McDougall was the right thing to do. Residents are thrilled. Ann Belding, one of the many who helped McDougall post-flood, says she has seen him and others realize that life can crumble in a moment, but there is “One who, alone, can give us the security we long for.”

McDougall, initially stunned, says he is humbled, grateful, and blessed.

He believes God used the flood to change him: “When the rains came down and the flood came up, people responded. … The righteous revealed secrets of the Scriptures.” A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 59

VOICE S

Mailbag

‘Just as I am’

Some articles lately have been decidedly biased and anti-Trump; I cannot recall seeing WORLD do a better job helping readers interpret the news with a Christian worldview. Anyone with a biblical worldview can easily see that Donald Trump is exactly the opposite of everything Jesus taught and did.

APRIL 2

—JOSHUA BURBA / Nashville, Tenn.

I thought I was a “true evangelical,” but according to your article I’m ­supporting the wrong candidate, so I must not be. Why don’t you folks try setting aside your piety and self-­ righteousness and try some analysis of the issues?

Trump. I believe he has the best chance of winning and putting on the brakes.

—KAREN LASKOWSKY on wng.org

I voted for Cruz because he is intelligent, principled, conservative, liberty-minded, and constitutionally faithful—and he doesn’t own a single strip club. As for choosing between Trump and Clinton, I could not hold my nose tightly enough. It would be like deciding whether to drink battery acid or swim in it.

—CHARLES HAY / Cottage Grove, Ore.

You have done a wonderful job of showing what Trump is without being offensive about it.

—LOIS HUISMAN / Grand Rapids, Mich.

Some people want to label Trump as “dangerous.” I’ve got a news flash for them: This country needs a few ­dangerous men.

—JANICE POWELL on Facebook

‘All the way to Cleveland’

APRIL 2 Why does Gov. John Kasich, who has chosen to take the high road and is in my opinion the most qualified, get the least press?

—BILL BUCHALTER / Middletown, N.Y.

Trump doesn’t have to be a Christian to be a good president, but character counts. The country is in the sewer; can’t we Republicans find a better ­candidate than Trump?

—ED BOLTON / Wolfeboro, N.H.

Kasich is a good man with extensive experience, but he is a mushy moderate of the likes of John McCain and Mitt Romney. If it does go to a contested convention, those remaining will bludgeon each other to such bloody pulps that none of them will be viable. If so, I am praying that a commonsense guy like Paul Ryan will rise to the rescue.

—AUSTIN ABERCROMBIE on wng.org

One candidate has a record of supporting the Constitution and advocating for it even in the face of opposition: Ted Cruz. He will get my vote, even if I have to write it in.

—JENNIFER MURRAY on wng.org

Now that the party and donors are backing Cruz, at some point they will require their pound of flesh. None of the candidates are ideal, but the political establishment does not own

—WAYNE NADER / Auburn, Calif.

‘Conservatives vs. Trump’

Read more Mailbag letters and comments at wng.org

APRIL 2 Rep. Marsha Blackburn said she looks “forward to having the opportunity to explain to him. ...” Good luck

with that. Trump does the explaining; everyone else does the listening.

—VAL AUTHIER on wng.org

I’m weary of the writers and readers of this magazine railing against Trump. God uses flawed people to accomplish His divine purposes.

Maybe God isn’t finished with Trump yet, and maybe he will rise to the occasion if God gives him the opportunity.

—LAURA THOMAS / College Grove, Tenn.

‘Where they stand’

APRIL 2 Excellent roundup of the c­ andidates’ positions on religious liberty. I appreciate the acknowledgment that Trump’s call for registration of Muslims sets a dangerous precedent.

—MITCHELL EBBOTT on wng.org

‘Back to Walmart’

APRIL 2 This column illustrates a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

—GARRIT HEADLEY / Cabot, Ark.

‘Modeled and muddled’

APRIL 2 The biggest April Fool is t­ hinking we can win the war on our own, but the Bible, thankfully, is full of strategies to take new ground from the enemy. Hearts get broken and games are lost; but there’s another game up ahead, and we

May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 61

VOICE S

Mailbag

know that ultimately we’ll be hoisting the trophy.

—BILL DEESE on wng.org

This column is a thoughtful acknowledgment of our limits as we try to ­navigate life, especially the note on Peter. His pattern—a presumption of his own faithfulness, shattered quickly by reality, followed by Jesus’ patience and forgiveness—is the saga of a heart struggling yet contrite and loving God. —SAM REID / Issaquah, Wash.

‘The Saddam factor’

Thank you for the excellent ­column. Various people are trying to rewrite the history of the Iraq War, saying we had no reason to enter Iraq, it had no WMDs, etc. What bothers me about all this is the dishonesty of so many people in American public life.

APRIL 2

—PETE MALONE / St. Charles, Ill.

The article does not prove that Saddam Hussein had enough WMDs to justify invasion, and removing Saddam helped create a Shiite ruling

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class that was a major factor in the formation of ISIS. The justification was an error and an embarrassment.

—EDWARD WHEALTON / Norfolk, Va.

LETTERS and COMMENTS Email: mailbag@wng.org Mail: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998 Website: wng.org Facebook: facebook.com/WORLD.magazine Twitter: @WORLD_mag Please include full name and address. Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.

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VOICE S

Andrée Seu Peterson

Beyond the walls AN UNSEEN BATTLE RAGES BEHIND WORLD EVENTS—IN NEHEMIAH’S TIME AND OURS What believers know that unbelievers don’t is that there is an unseen spiritual battle behind all activity under heaven. On July 30, 1588, a shift of wind forced the ships of the Spanish Armada northward and changed the tide of war to England’s favor. The Sabeans’ raid of Job’s herds was more than a case of wanton sheep-stealing by Yemen’s rapacious ancestors. Daniel’s book draws back the curtain on demonic armies opposing God’s purposes in specific localities on earth (10:10-21).

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah concern the rebuilding of the Temple and the toppled walls of Jerusalem, respectively, by returnees from Persian exile in the 5th century B.C. But it was God’s project, not man’s, so we should not be surprised that all the forces of hell arrayed themselves against it. What follows is the CliffsNotes version. Note the twists and turns, the poisoned arrows from left field—and the strangely familiar resonance to our present American political season.

When the Temple foundation is laid, hell’s opening salvo is discouragement among the old men who remember nostalgically the surpassing glory of Solomon’s Temple (Ezra 3:11-12). NonIsraelite neighbors pretending to be friends offer to help, but it’s a trap (4:1-3). Unsuccessful with feigned encouragement, they turn to discouragement (4:4); they also hire counselors against the Jews (4:5). Next they pen a letter of accusation to the Persian king, full of lies and flattery (4:616), to persuade Artaxerxes that Jews make bad citizens (4:12) and do not pay taxes (4:13). With these ploys, evil men manage to stymie work on the Temple (4:21-24).

A few hardy Israelites take up the trowel and sword again, and resistance predictably resumes too. A legal challenge to the Jews by their adversaries backfires when the former present their case and a new king, Darius, checks the records and agrees with them (Ezra 5). The

GUSTAVE DORE/AKG-IMAGES/NEWSCOM

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 aseupeterson@wng.org

It was God’s project, not man’s, so we should not be surprised that all the forces of hell arrayed themselves against it.

The Rebuilding of the Temple

by Gustave Doré

Temple is finally completed (6:14). There is a dedication ceremony amid much celebration, and it seems like all’s well that ends well, when suddenly it is discovered that there has been marital unfaithfulness in the Israelite camp (Ezra 10). The problem is swiftly and courageously dealt with, with significant prayer and fasting, and so ends the book of Ezra.

But we are not out of the woods yet. With the new project of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem comes a resurgence of opposition set on fire by hell. The new villains are led by locals named Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite (good villain names). Not taking Nehemiah’s work crew particularly seriously at first, they content themselves to stand by the building site filing their nails while tossing off light mockery: “Yes, what they are ­building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!” (Nehemiah 4:3).

When the work proceeds apace and it isn’t funny anymore, laughter turns to threats (4:7). As in the days of Ezra’s oversight, the response is more prayer and hard work (4:9). The next problem is physical burnout and more demoralization at the daunting dimensions of the job (4:10).

Nehemiah delivers a rousing pep talk, with reminders of the greatness of God and of the mission (4:14).

Internal corruption, of all things, is the next speed bump. An economic crisis has resulted in the mortgaging of property for food, and a system of borrowers and lenders and ­usurious interest rates. Who knew? And angry governor Nehemiah rebukes the guilty who, to their credit, cease their exploitation (5:1-19).

The Sanballat gang tries to reinvent themselves as good guys (6:1-3), and when Nehemiah sees right through it, revert to intimidation. The wall is at last completed, but crafty enemies have been busy working another angle, cozying up to the more gullible types behind Nehemiah’s back (6:17-19). There is a season of national repentance and rededication, followed by the anticlimactic discovery of scattered pockets of moral compromise (Chapters 9-13). The book ends strangely inconclusively.

If this present American presidential ­campaign has been the most unpredictable and crazy season you have ever seen—lies, libel, slander, dirty tricks, curveballs, improbable twists—you must consider that we are not ­dealing with flesh and blood but with rulers and authorities in unseen places. May the sons of light gird their loins for the fight. A May 14, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 63

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Marvin Olasky

Tea in Denali

A FANCIFUL WALK ALONG THE SAVAGE RIVER

64 WORLD Magazine • May 14, 2016

‘Darwin, good fellow,’ Hodge replied, ‘faith in your theory blinds you to evidence of intelligent design right before your eyes.’

—Marvin and Susan wrote this story. Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology helped both of them learn more about Christ. In 1874 Hodge wrote What Is Darwinism? It is free for downloading from several internet sites.

 molasky@wng.org  @MarvinOlasky

KRIEG BARRIE

Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss is a great pro-life children’s book. Yellow & Pink by William Steig is a great pro-creation children’s book. We need more.

When my wife, Susan, and I traveled to Denali National Park in Alaska, we walked along the evocatively named Savage River. The park as such did not exist when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, but we imagined a fantasy adventure there anyway.

You’ll have to imagine all the drawings that could accompany our story, which follows.

In 1867 two elderly men visited Alaska.

They met caribou, grizzly bears, and trappers who wore big fur hats.

One of the men, Charles Darwin, was a famous scientist. The other, Charles Hodge, was a Princeton professor who wrote books about God. They wore bowler hats and carried valises with umbrellas sticking out.

The two Charlies hiked on a trail along the Savage River. As they walked, they talked about Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“Dr. Hodge,” Darwin began, “my theory explains everything. It even explains the knobby legs and huge feet of that moose over yonder. They help it wade through deep snow.”

“My dear Darwin,” Hodge responded, “you are absolutely right. God created the moose so he could survive the winter.”

“You are wrong,” Darwin stated. “Once, all living things were in the water. Then creatures developed lungs and slithered ashore. Many years later their descendants developed legs.”

The two Charlies crossed a rivulet over a series of flat stones perfectly placed for hikers.

“Darwin, good fellow,” Hodge replied, “faith in your theory blinds you to evidence of intelligent design right before your eyes. See how these rocks are set just this way so our feet do not get wet?”

Darwin chuckled and puffed on his pipe: “There you go again, Hodge. The scientific mind sees how rocks tumbled down this steep

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slope and landed here, the force of their fall driving them into the ground. Our dry walk is mere coincidence.”

They walked on silently until Hodge glanced ahead and exclaimed, “Is that a bridge? How convenient!” Darwin peered through his thick glasses and mused, “It must be some sort of natural formation over the river.”

Hodge reached the bridge: “My dear Darwin, it’s crafted of wood. Look at the smooth planks.

Someone clearly designed and built it.”

“Absurd,” Darwin replied. “Those logs must have been swept down the river and dashed against the boulders. I admit it seems unlikely, but natural forces must have turned the logs into boards and lodged them. Wind and rain over the ages smoothed them.”

“Ah,” Hodge said, “but what about the nails?”

“You grasp at straws,” Darwin replied. “The force of the river also drove those bits of metal into the wood. But all this thinking makes me thirsty.” He took out his pocket watch and said, “It’s tea time. Let’s sit down on that bench.”

Darwin opened his valise and pulled out a china teapot plus two teacups.

Hodge examined the bench: “Look, my ­comfortable Darwin. It’s made of half a log. Its legs are also logs, and very smooth. You can’t deny this was made by a clever carpenter. And if this was designed, then the whole trail was.”

Darwin turned pale. Smoke from his pipe wreathed his face. He stared at the rushing water. He then turned to Hodge with a pitying expression and said, “The overall process is obvious. A huge stone drove an enormous log down the river. It slammed up against that rock and split in two. The logs on which the plank sits rolled down the hill and wedged themselves in the soil. Then a windstorm carried the cloven log and set it on the other logs.”

It was Hodge’s turn to chuckle: “That’s a creative explanation, but where’s the other half of the big log?” They walked 200 yards farther and found a bench identical to the first. Darwin, with a big grin, pointed to it and said, “There’s the other half. My theory is now proved.”

The sun was now low in the sky. Darwin and Hodge reached the end of the trail in silence.

Behind them stood a sign neither noticed: “Denali National Park. Savage River Walking Loop. 1.8 miles. U.S. National Park Service.” A

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