WORLD Magazine May 17, 2014 Vol. 29 No. 10

immigrants in the shadows | christians on film

May 17, 2014

Believing IN IRAQ

Risk-taking and resilience define a church on the edge of extinction

We had you at ‘oikonomia’, didn’t we.

Our seven-part film series, FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD, examines God’s surprisingly wonderful “economy of all things” — from LOVE to WONDER to EXILE. And it’s done in a way that’s totally irresistible. Just like that word ‘oikonomia’.

sEe ThE tRaIleR At L eTteRsToTHe ExIleS .cOm/ Gift © 2014 Acton Institute

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Contents M a y 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 / VO L U M E 2 9 , N U M B ER 1 0

cov e r s to ry

34 The edge of extinction

The numbers say Christians may soon be no more in the Middle East, but the beleaguered churches in Baghdad are fighting risk with resilience f e at u r es

42 Life in the shadows

A surge in deportations is splitting apart the families of many illegal immigrants

46 Putin’s playbook

Dividing and conquering the church is part of a strategy to make gains in Ukraine

dispatch es

5 News 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes

50 Water resistance

The government has diverted precious water from Central California farms, and farmers are fighting back

54 Sudden impact

Films that deal fairly with Christians are getting a respectful audience at major film festivals ON THE COVER: Iraqi Christians attend Christmas Mass at the Syrian Catholic Church in baghdad; photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/Maxppp/ ZUMAPRESS/newscom

54

revi ews

23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music

23 42

notebook

59 Lifestyle 61 Technology 62 Science 63 Houses of God 64 Sports 65 Religion voices

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

59 visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more!

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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 o ­ ffices. P ­ rinted in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. © 2014 WORLD News Group. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to world, PO Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998.

4/30/14 10:50 AM

Invest Wisely.

“The earth is the L’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.” —Psalm :

 Mindy Belz   Timothy Lamer   Jamie Dean   Janie B. Cheaney, Susan Olasky, Andrée Seu Peterson, John Piper, Edward E. Plowman, Cal Thomas, Lynn Vincent  Emily Belz, J.C. Derrick, Daniel James Devine, Sophia Lee, Angela Lu, Edward Lee Pitts

Discover Christ’s gift of Glory that brings unity to His Body, authority to His Bride, & testimony of His Love in the earth

 Megan Basham, Anthony Bradley, Andrew Branch, Tim Challies, John Dawson, Amy Henry, Mary Jackson, Thomas S. Kidd, Michael Leaser, Jill Nelson, Arsenio Orteza, Tiffany Owens, Stephanie Perrault, Emily Whitten   Les Sillars   June McGraw

  Warren Cole Smith   Larry Huff   Debra Meissner    wng.org   Mickey McLean   Leigh Jones   Lynde Langdon, Angela Lu, Dan Perkins   Whitney Williams     worldji.com  Marvin Olasky

Julia Lawson Ad - Third.indd 1 10 JOEL.indd 2

 Krieg Barrie    Arla J. Eicher     Dawn Wilson

Thousands of native missionaries in poorer countries effectively take the gospel to unreached people groups in areas that are extremely difficult for American missionaries to reach.

  Al Saiz, Angela Scalli, Alan Wood

4 They speak the local languages

 ..

4 They are part of the culture

4 They never need a visa, airline tickets, or furloughs

 

4 They win souls and plant churches

 Jim Chisolm

Native missionaries serve the Lord at a fraction of what it costs to send an American missionary overseas.

 ..

Help provide for a missionary with $50 per month.

434-977-5650

 Joel Belz

@juliaeileen

  Rachel Beatty

Christian Aid Mission P. O. Box 9037 Charlottesville, VA 22906



Written by Julia Eileen Lawson of the seventh-successive generation in her family lines to serve the Lord and the Body of Christ, this book is richly interwoven with Scriptures and thoughtfully interspersed with quotes from her forefathers, leaders in the Baptist and Pentecostal denominations, including John Leadley Dagg, John Roach Straton, Harvey McAlister and others.

   Robert L. Patete

  Kristin Chapman, Mary Ruth Murdoch

   Kevin Martin

now available on



Send Him.   David K. Freeland

    worldoncampus.com  Leigh Jones

www.christianaid.org

   worldandeverything.com   Nickolas S. Eicher   Joseph Slife ’    gwnews.com  Howard Brinkman    David Strassner (chairman), Mariam Bell, Kevin Cusack, Peter Lillback, Howard Miller, William Newton, Russell B. Pulliam, David Skeel, Nelson Somerville, Ladeine Thompson, Raymon Thompson, John Weiss, John White   To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, accurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.

Contact us: .. / wng.org      ,    ,  ,        memberservices@wng.org  wng.org/account (current members) or members.wng.org (to become a member)

JEFFREY BEALL/FLICKR

Bringing about True Unity in the Body of Christ

    Marvin Olasky

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2/12/14 5:31 PM 4/29/14 2:54 PM

Joel Belz

A little common sense It’s sorely lacking in the growing debate about transgender restrooms

>>

JEFFREY BEALL/FLICKR

I  , some  years later, the confrontation with our local building inspector.

We were finishing some extensive renovation of WORLD’s office space, and were pretty desperate for our certificate of occupancy. But our new restrooms, whose fixtures and grab bars met an array of handicap requirements, still fell short of the city code. “Your signage,” the inspector told us, “needs to include a Braille notice.” I was glad the inspector didn’t hear the wry comment of one of our staff: “And I suppose next they’ll be demanding a scratch-’n’-sniff version as well!”

If that’s the limit on bathroom humor here at WORLD, it’s also time to note that there is nothing at all funny about the growing debate over so-called gender sensitive restrooms in public places across the country. Want to know how to bring a great nation to its knees? Want to know how to humiliate the United States of America? Take ever so seriously, then, this supposedly lofty discussion about whether we owe it to the “transgendered” folk among us (or others who are still just gender-confused) to spend vast sums so they can go relieve themselves without discomfort or embarrassment.

Don’t kid yourself. If you’ve done any remodeling around your house recently that involves even a little bit of plumbing, you know how quickly the costs mount. So get your mental calculator going, and take a guess how much Columbia University in New York will be spending this year to carry out this front-page announcement a few weeks ago in the Spectator, the school’s student newspaper: “The fourth floor of Lerner Hall, the seventh and eighth floors of McBain, and the th through th floors of John Jay will see the addition of new single-use, gender inclusive bathrooms this summer—a change that organizers say is a significant step towards making trans students feel more comfortable at Columbia.” The Spectator’s story didn’t include any cost estimates.

But it’s only the beginning. The Spectator also noted, “Future renovations to residence halls will also feature single-use, gender neutral bathrooms.”

And anyone who supposes that the new construction will finally resolve such burning issues might well follow up on the official public response of GendeRevolution’s executive board: “While the addition of gender-inclusive bathrooms this summer is an improvement,” they threatened, “there is a lot more to be done.”

Email: jbelz@wng.org

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Pity the people who are reduced to such a debate.

Both those who are insisting on such “rights,” and the university officials who dignify such demands by investing even five minutes in such a discussion, should go hide themselves. It’s not the exposure of certain body parts or functions that’s so embarrassing.

It’s the nakedness instead of some supposedly smart people’s minds.

All of which might not matter so much—or merit such extensive mention in this space—if such malarkey were limited by geography or the calendar. But the movement is already spreading from one jurisdiction to another. Well before the Columbia shenanigans, California’s state legislature had passed a bill requiring all public K- schools to let “transgender” students choose which restrooms they want to use and which athletic dressing rooms they prefer.

And who can look into the years just ahead—or even the months of —and deny with confidence that what only yesterday seemed unthinkable will be commonly accepted by tomorrow? Who among us, for example, would ever have predicted, even five years ago, that same-sex marriage would have become so extensively and so quickly accepted in our society?

So-called unisex bathrooms, in and of themselves, are no big deal. Most of us grew up with them in our own homes. When I was a kid, we had no running water, and my father regularly took my brothers and me to the waist-deep creek in the woods behind our house for our Saturday night baths. Later, we helped Dad dig the pit for a two-hole outhouse, which our mixed gender family (plus many guests) learned to use in an orderly, discreet manner.

That worked because we all understood God’s creation order, and responded to it with a little common sense. One could wish for a bit of the same at Columbia University, at other prestigious educational posts, in the halls of state where our nation’s laws are formed—and in the society that right now takes way too seriously all such exalted institutions. A

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4/30/14 10:33 AM

CREDIT

bju.edu/why For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit go.bju.edu/rates. (16104) 11/13

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4/25/14 5:40 PM

Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes

APRIL 29: Kevin Barnes searches the remains of his home on Clayton Avenue in Tupelo, Miss. A dangerous storm system that spawned a chain of deadly tornadoes over three days flattened homes and businesses, forced frightened residents in more than half a dozen states to take cover, and left tens of thousands in the dark.

THOMAS GRANING/AP

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M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D

ďœľ

4/30/14 11:05 AM

Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, A p r i l  

Death toll rises

The death toll continued to climb after a ferry carrying  passengers capsized off South Korea’s southern coast. Aboard the ship were more than  high-school students taking a class trip. Rescuers plucked  survivors from the water, but nearly  remained missing, and  were confirmed dead. With an investigation into what caused the accident underway, authorities arrested crew members—including the captain—for leaving the ship before evacuating all passengers, and the government stepped in to take the blame: Prime Minister Chung Hong-won resigned on April .

Adoption oversight Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that will forbid parents from finding new homes for their unwanted adopted children without court permission. The first-inthe-nation measure, sparked by a Reuters news service investigation into the “rehoming” of adopted children, also prohibits people from advertising their children for adoption. “With virtually no oversight, children could literally be traded from home to home,” said Republican Rep. Joel Kleefisch, who sponsored the legislation. “Hopefully citizens of the country will follow our lead.”

Colorado, Florida, and Ohio have introduced similar measures.

 

Temporary reprieve Christian radio host James Dobson won a temporary injunction that exempts his ministry, Family Talk, from the Obamacare requirement to include the “morning-after” pill and other abortifacient contraception in its health insurance. Dobson filed suit in December, saying the healthcare mandate to provide contraception violates the religious beliefs of his Colorado Springs–based ministry, which he launched in  after leaving Focus on the Family.



CREDIT

Died Gene Estess, who left Wall Street to work with New York City’s homeless, died on April  after a six-month battle with lung cancer. Estess, , left his job after encountering a homeless, mentally ill woman at Grand Central Terminal in . He gave her  and later found help for her at the Jericho Project, an outreach to the homeless, addicted, or mentally ill. Estess went on to lead the Jericho Project for  years, starting with a salary of , in . He said he found the fulfillment he lacked on Wall Street.

FERRY: PARK YOUNG-CHUL/DONGA DAILY VIA GETTY IMAGES • WALKER: DINESH RAMDE/AP • DOBSON: DENIS POROY/AP • ESTESS: JACK MANNING/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

We d n e s d a y, A p r i l  

W O R L D • M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4

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4/30/14 10:05 AM

AVALANCHE: BUDDHABIR RAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • KEYSTONE: GARY CAMERON/REUTERS/LANDOV • POPE: L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AP • CHRISTIE: MEL EVANS/AP

Cruel hoax Worldwide condemnation was swift after reports emerged from eastern Ukraine that masked men had distributed leaflets demanding Jews register and pay a fine or leave the area.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk vowed to find and punish the individuals behind the incident.

The pamphlets bore the name of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian separatist Denis Pushilin, but Pushilin says neither he nor his supporters had anything to do with them.

Observers say the pamphlets were likely aimed at provocation amid growing tensions in the region.

Nepalese rescue team members rescue an avalanche survivor.

AVALANCHE: BUDDHABIR RAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • KEYSTONE: GARY CAMERON/REUTERS/LANDOV • POPE: L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AP • CHRISTIE: MEL EVANS/AP

FERRY: PARK YOUNG-CHUL/DONGA DAILY VIA GETTY IMAGES • WALKER: DINESH RAMDE/AP • DOBSON: DENIS POROY/AP • ESTESS: JACK MANNING/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, A p r i l   -  

Easter suffering

F r i d a y, A p r i l  

Killer avalanche Sixteen Nepalese guides died after an avalanche swept down a climbing route on Mount Everest—the deadliest avalanche in history on the world’s highest peak. The Sherpa guides were setting up a route, fixing ropes, and taking gear up the mountain for other climbers when the avalanche hit. The incident has thrown future climbs into question after Sherpa guides said they are abandoning the climbing season in honor of those who died. They have also demanded the government provide higher compensation and a relief fund for their dangerous work.

Voting present In what analysts are calling a classic campaign-year move, the Obama administration announced it is delaying, yet again, a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. Punting the issue may protect vulnerable Democrats in oil-states where voters support the pipeline, but it may put pressure on those who have declined to take a position—and will lessen chances that rising gas prices will halt.

As Christians around the world observed Easter, a cease-fire in the Ukraine was marred by a gunfight that left three persons dead at a checkpoint. In Syria, continuing unrest prevented some Christians from taking part in annual religious practices. Although the atmosphere in Vatican City was upbeat as , tourists flocked to St. Peter’s Basilica for Easter mass, Pope Francis drew attention to suffering elsewhere in the world as he prayed for peace in Ukraine and Syria, and for an end to continuing terrorist attacks in Nigeria.

Stowaway surprise A -year-old boy survived a fivehour trip from California to Hawaii inside an airplane’s wheel well. The stowaway had run away from home, scaled a -foot fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport under the cover of darkness, and remained undetected as he crossed the airport ramp. He was unconscious for most of the flight, enduring below-freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen.

While his journey is called miraculous, it highlighted concerns about security at airports nationwide.

Named The National Father’s Day/Mother’s Day Council named New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie a  Father of the

CREDIT

Year. Christie has four children aged  to  whom he often talks about in public. A potential presidential candidate, Christie was easily reelected to a second term last fall, but has been mired in controversy since then over an election-season bridge closing. He’s not the first Father of the Year recipient to win mid-scandal: Past honorees include former Democratic Sen. John Edwards () and former president Bill Clinton ().

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad

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4/30/14 10:05 AM

Dispatches > News Tu e s d a y, A p r i l  

Affirmative ruling The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, deciding - that voters had a right in  to prohibit state universities from using race as a factor in acceptance decisions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s -page dissent said the court’s decision trampled the rights of minorities, even though Michigan voters adopted the law in a democratic process.

Virus fears M o n d a y, A p r i l  

Boston strong

Healthcare workers are watching an ebola outbreak in Guinea and Liberia.

The World Health Organization said  persons have died so far. It’s the first time the infectious virus, which kills up to  percent of those infected, has appeared in western Africa.

Nigerian nightmare

A week after officials first reported that Islamic terrorists kidnapped  girls from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in northeast Nigeria, parents appealed to the state governor, saying some  girls—between  and  years of age— Four girls who escaped were actually missing. About  girls have managed to escape from their captors, whom authorities believe to be Boko Haram militants. Desperate parents organized their own search party that led them to a forested base camp, but without military backup they were unable to confront their daughters’ heavily armed captors.

Exclusive club Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols hit his th career home run during a game against the Washington Nationals, becoming only the th player in major league baseball history to achieve that distinction. He is also the first player to hit his th and th homers in the same game.

Expecting Chelsea Clinton,, the only daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced on April  that she and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky,, are expecting their first child. Chelsea Clinton, , is a special correspondent for NBC News and the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. In  she married Mezvinsky, a hedge fund manager who is worth  million. The couple does not yet know if they are having a boy or a girl. 

MARATHON: ELISE AMENDOLA/AP • NIGERIA: HARUNA UMAR/AP • PUJOLS: PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES • CLINTON: AMANDA SCHWAB/STARPIX/AP

A year after two bomb explosions crippled the Boston Marathon and turned it into a scene of death and mayhem, record crowds refreshed spirits while increased security eased fears during the th race. An estimated  million spectators were on hand to support nearly , runners, including victims from last year’s attack.

Former U.S. Olympian Meb Keflezighi, who turns  in May, became the first U.S. man since  to win the Boston Marathon, finishing with a time of  hours,  minutes,  seconds. Keflezighi, a professing Christian who shared his story in the  book Run to Overcome, wrote on his running bib the names of the four individuals who died last year: “I did it for Boston.”

W O R L D • M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4

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4/30/14 10:07 AM

MARATHON: ELISE AMENDOLA/AP • NIGERIA: HARUNA UMAR/AP • PUJOLS: PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES • CLINTON: AMANDA SCHWAB/STARPIX/AP

THERE’S A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT PLANNED PARENTHOOD SAYS, AND WHAT THEY DO. They receive hundreds of millions of our tax dollars in funding, but they’re alleged to have filed more than 500,000 false, fraudulent, or ineligible Medicaid claims — charges that carry fines of more than 5.5 billion dollars. Isn’t it time to investigate the plan at

Planned Parenthood?

Get the facts for yourself.

Learn more at www.InvestigateTheirPlan.org

A message from Alliance Defending Freedom

10 NEWS 1.indd 9

4/29/14 9:14 AM

Dispatches > News T h u r s d a y, A p r i l  

Spy ships

We d n e s d a y, A p r i l  

Up in arms Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law a sweeping bill that expands where licensed gun owners can carry firearms, including into bars, libraries, schools, churches, and some government buildings that lack security checkpoints. According to the legislation, which goes into effect July , schools and churches retain the right to determine whether firearms are allowed on their property. Dubbed the “guns everywhere bill,” its passage sparked immediate criticism from gun-control advocates but was regarded by the National Rifle Association as a “historic victory for the Second Amendment.”

Prisoner pardons The Justice Department announced plans to carry out widespread pardons during President Obama’s final years in office. Prisoners with clean prison records who are not a public threat and who were sentenced under “out-of-date laws” would be eligible to apply for clemency. The program is aimed at prisoners sentenced for crack cocaine offenses. In  Congress amended the law mandating tougher sentences for crack cocaine use. Attorney General Eric Holder has led a push to curtail the use of mandatory sentencing to punish drug offenders.

Gunned down A security guard opened fire and killed pediatrician Jerry Umanos, physician John Gabel, and Gabel’s father, Gary, as they walked within a hospital compound run by Christian NGO Cure International in Kabul, Afghanistan.

(Gary Gabel was in Kabul to visit his son.) Umanos had divided his time between Afghanistan and Chicago’s Lawndale Christian Health Center for the past seven years. “He always had a desire to be the hands and feet of Christ,” Umanos’ wife, Jan Schuitema, said during a press statement. “He had a love and commitment that he expressed for the Afghan people because of that love for Christ.”

Signed After inking a self-described atheist to produce Noah—which —which proved highly controversial among its target audience—Paramount, in conjunction with MGM, announced Mark Burnett and Roma Downey will produce a remake of the  epic Ben-Hur. Burnett and Downey produced the  miniseries The Bible, which drew more than  million viewers, shattered home sales records, and was turned into the  feature-length film Son of God. The new Ben-Hur is slated for  release.



DEAL: BRANT SANDERLIN/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION/AP • HOLDER: KRIS CONNOR/GETTY IMAGES • SHIP: ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • BURNETT AND DOWNEY: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES

The Pentagon revealed that a Russian intelligence-gathering ship has been operating off the East Coast since March. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Tom Crosson said the Russian ships Viktor Leonov (below, in Havana, Cuba) and Nikolay Chiker were spotted in waters near Cuba: “We respect the freedom of all nations, as reflected in international law, to operate military vessels beyond the territorial seas of other nations.” Officials believe the ships may have been spying on military facilities, including the nuclear missile submarine base at Kings Bay, Ga.

W O R L D • M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4

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4/30/14 10:13 AM

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10 NEWS 2.indd 11

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4/24/14 6:07 PM

Pro-Russian activists march to storm an administration building in Luhansk, Ukraine.

F r i d a y, A p r i l  

Plane intentions

Pentagon officials called on Russia to “de-escalate” after Russian military planes entered Ukrainian airspace several times during a -hour period. Tension in the region continued to mount as armed pro-Moscow separatists seized a bus carrying international mediators. The news came a day after Russia, responding to the deaths of five pro-Russian militants, initiated new drills near the Ukrainian border.

Murder in Milford A -year-old male student allegedly stabbed to death Maren Sanchez, , in the stairwell of Jonathan Law High School in Milford, Conn.

Early reports said the attacker and Sanchez may have had a dispute about the junior prom scheduled that evening. The stunned school community postponed the dance, and instead students gathered for a candlelight vigil, during which several peers wore their prom attire in Sanchez’s memory.

Shelter seeker?

While President Obama visited South Korea, North Korean authorities announced they had detained a U.S. tourist after he allegedly demanded asylum when arriving in the country on April . North Korea’s KCNA news agency reported that Miller Matthew Todd, , tore up his tourist visa and shouted that he had come “to the DPRK after choosing it as a shelter.”

Wild weather Multiple-day storms swept through the Plains, Midwest, and South, splintering houses, shredding cars, and killing at least  persons across six states. In Arkansas, authorities said a half-mile-wide tornado stayed on the ground for at least  miles, plowing through an RV park, sections of Interstate , and a  million intermediate school scheduled to open in the fall.

Boiling over A racist rant attributed to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling sparked a firestorm that grew over the weekend as basketball fans threatened to boycott and players staged a protest. The NBA banned Sterling from the league— likely forcing him to sell the team—and fined him . million. In the audio recording, Sterling tells his girlfriend he does not want her bringing AfricanAmericans to Clipper games or posting pictures with minorities on her Instagram account.

UKRAINE: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/AP • TORNADO: TOM STANFORD/THE TENNESSEAN/AP • OBAMA: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • SANCHEZ: THE SANCHEZ FAMLY/AP • STERLING: MARK J. TERRILL/AP • COOPER: PAUL SAKUMA/AP

S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, A p r i l   -  

Evolved Attorney Charles Cooper says he is evolving. The popular euphemism for flip-flopping on gay marriage now applies to the man who last year stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and defended Proposition , the successful  California ballot initiative defining marriage exclusively as one man and one woman. Cooper is now helping his daughter plan a June wedding to another woman in Massachusetts. Cooper’s comments are in a book released April  by journalist Jo Becker.



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4/30/14 10:58 AM

TOYOTA: REED SAXON/AP • DUCKLING: CHRIS PFUHL/AP • D’SOUZA: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS/LANDOV • SMITH: HANDOUT • STAR WARS: DENIS POROY/AP • INDY 500: CHRIS GRAYTHEN/GETTY • MARRERO: FRANKLIN REYES/AP

Dispatches > News

UKRAINE: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/AP • TORNADO: TOM STANFORD/THE TENNESSEAN/AP • OBAMA: CAROLYN KASTER/AP • SANCHEZ: THE SANCHEZ FAMLY/AP • STERLING: MARK J. TERRILL/AP • COOPER: PAUL SAKUMA/AP

TOYOTA: REED SAXON/AP • DUCKLING: CHRIS PFUHL/AP • D’SOUZA: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS/LANDOV • SMITH: HANDOUT • STAR WARS: DENIS POROY/AP • INDY 500: CHRIS GRAYTHEN/GETTY • MARRERO: FRANKLIN REYES/AP

May 11 The city of Boston celebrates Mother’s Day in its own inimitable fashion. The Harvard Marching Band will lead this year’s Duckling Day Parade—an homage not only to mothers but the  classic children’s book Make Way for Ducklings. The traditional event features family entertainment, duckling costumes, and face painting.

LOOKING AHEAD M o n d a y, A p r i l  

Heading east Toyota says it plans to relocate its U.S. headquarters from Torrance, Calif., to Plano, Texas. The move, expected in late  or early  when new, environmentally friendly headquarters are complete, places the Japanese automaker closer to its Midwest assembly plants. But analysts say the decision is also strategic: Texas’ pro-business atmosphere continues to appeal to companies disillusioned with California’s high tax rates and regulatory climate. With elections looming in the fall—and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown up for reelection— Republican candidates are seizing on the news to point blame at the state’s Democratic congressional leadership.

   .

May 20 Conservative

May 20 Attorney Brian Smith,

commentator Dinesh D’Souza will stand trial beginning today on charges that he broke federal campaign finance law. Prosecutors allege that D’Souza used straw donors to funnel , into the campaign of Wendy Long, a Republican who failed to unseat U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in .

D’Souza has denied the charges.

with backing from conservative groups like FreedomWorks and Club for Growth, is trying to defeat eightterm incumbent Rep. Mike Simpson in the Republican primary for Idaho’s nd Congressional District. The primary election today will be an early test of conservative strength against establishment Republicans in .

May 25

Crowds will cheer, engines will roar, and drivers will go round and round—but will anyone not there watch? For the second time in its televised history, ratings for the Indy  dipped below . in , settling in at .. That mark was above its all-time low in , but the race has lost its luster even compared to  when the famous race pulled in a . share.

For more movie reviews and breaking news on Ukraine, the Middle East, and congressional primaries, go to wng.org. Plus, follow commentary from Marvin Olasky, Mindy Belz, Janie Cheaney, Andrée Seu Peterson, and others.

May 25

Geeks around the world will celebrate things like Star Wars, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and other phenomena as the movement to set aside a day for geeks expands from small celebrations in Spain in .

Organizers chose May  because it coincides with the original theatrical release date for Star Wars.

Died In , former Cuban pitcher Conrado “Connie” Marrero took the title of oldest living ex-Major League Baseball player. He gave up the claim on April , when he died in Havana just two days shy of his rd birthday. Despite standing only  feet,  inches tall, Marrero broke into the big leagues in  at the age of  and made the American League All-Star team in —the oldest first-time all-star at the time.

He pitched five seasons for the Washington Senators and threw complete games in  of his  starts.

Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com

10 NEWS 3.indd 13

M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D



4/30/14 10:41 AM

Dispatches > News THE LIE BEGINS: President Obama and Hillary Clinton on Sept. , , prepare to deliver a statement about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi the night before.

Benghazi bombshells Administration cover-up of what happened in Libyan attack actually extends to cover-up of support for al-Qaeda militants in  revolution BY J.C. DERRICK in Washington

>>



W O R L D • M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4

10 NEWS p14.indd 14

the administration had at the time, but emails show Rice was aware of the nature of the attack on the day it happened.

The new information contradicts the sworn testimony of Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA, who edited the talking points and insisted the White House only made three stylistic changes.

Judicial Watch’s disclosure came one week after the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi announced another startling discovery: The unrest that led to the  attack could have been avoided.

According to retired Navy Adm. Chuck Kubic, the United States turned down an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful end to the  Libyan revolution.

Kubic, who was in the country on private business when the bombing began, acted as an information conduit between the U.S. military and Libyan intermediaries who requested a -hour cease-fire to negotiate Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s abdication. The United States wasn’t interested—even though Qaddafi only had two demands: assurance that Libya wouldn’t fall into the hands of

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

A W, D.C.– watchdog group released explosive declassified emails showing the White House played an integral role in crafting false talking points in the aftermath of the  terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya—attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Oct. ,  (about two weeks before President Barack Obama’s reelection), sued the Department of State in June , and finally obtained the documents last month. Administration emails reveal officials attempting to “reinforce” Obama and “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

Ben Rhodes, then–White House deputy strategic communications adviser, instructed then–UN Ambassador Susan Rice to portray Obama as “steady and statesmanlike” when she appeared on several Sunday talk shows five days after the attack. She has maintained her talking points were the best information

al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and legal protection for himself and his inner circle.

“Here we have a leader who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and he wasn’t willing to spend  hours to give peace a chance,” Kubic told me.

The commission established a direct line from the Transitional National Council, the lead rebel group supported by the United States, to known alQaeda militants, including Ahmed Abu Khattala, who led the Benghazi attack and is under a sealed Justice Department indictment. According to the report, the U.S. facilitated a  billion weapons deal from Qatar to the Transitional National Council, opening a Mediterranean naval blockade to allow in the shipment.

Commission member Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, told me it’s impossible to know if some of those weapons were used in the Benghazi attack, but the decision to let them in the country had to come from the highest levels of government, including the White House, the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the State Department—which “was obviously involved because Christopher Stevens was working with the rebels.”

Lopez said the United States effectively switched sides in the war on terror when it teamed with al-Qaeda to topple a sovereign ruler who was working to suppress al-Qaeda. The net result has been “utter chaos” in Libya, including the spread of surface-to-air missiles and other dangerous weapons when Qaddafi fell.

The commission, comprised of retired military and intelligence officers, has filed  FOIA requests to get more information from the State Department, CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said given the damaging nature of the documents his organization obtained, “it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose.” A

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad

4/30/14 10:35 AM

The Story Of The World’s Most Controversial Nation.

Israel Indivisible examines the many political twists and turns that make Israel the world’s most controversial nation. From Abram and the Promise to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the film examines the Biblical, archeological, historical and legal evidence for the ancient and modern country of Israel.

At the center of all of this is a group of people who are agreeably the world’s most persecuted. The story of the many is tied together in the story of the one and that one is Israel.

Order your copy today at PJTN.org and share it with your family and friends.

PJTN’s mission is to educate Christians to stand with their Jewish brethren and defend the State of Israel against the rise of the “new” anti-Semitism.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

10 NEWS p14.indd 15

4/30/14 10:35 AM

Dispatches > Quotables

‘The sports group was pretty much eliminated as Al Jazeera America executives realized few viewers were coming to the network for scores and highlights.’

The LOS ANGELES TIMES explaining why the propagandistic news network is cutting dozens of staffers only eight months after its startup.

‘Kerry’s remark was openly antiSemitic.’

CAROLINE GLICK of The Jerusalem Post on Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state with second-class citizens.”

According to Glick: “There is no Israeli politician that will ever be in a leadership position that harbors any such bigoted intention towards the Palestinians. On the other hand, there is no Palestinian leader or faction that does not demand the ethnic cleansing of Jews from every inch of any territory that will come under Palestinian control.”



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10 QUOTABLES.indd 16

‘This is a story that needs to be told.

No one wants to talk about it, because the details are too damaging to certain political agendas.’

Actor NICK SEARCY, who portrays U.S. Marshal Art Mullen on the FX television show Justified, in a YouTube video in support of a crowdfunding campaign for the movie Gosnell about abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Actor Kevin Sorbo also made a video for the campaign.

‘If I only had 12 years left to live, I’d want to spend them in Congress again— because those were the longest 12 years of my life.’

Indiana Gov. and former U.S. Rep. MIKE PENCE in a speech at the National Rifle Association convention.

KERRY: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP • CRAVIOTTO: HANDOUT • AL JAZEERA: BEBETO MATTHEWS/AP • SEARCY: MATT SAYLES/INVISION FOR THE TELEVISION ACADEMY/AP • PENCE: JOHN GRESS/GETTY IMAGES

DANIEL CRAVIOTTO, a California orthopedic surgeon and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, saying he now spends two hours a day on government-mandated electronic recordkeeping and cannot give the highly specialized care he was trained for due to regulatory mandates. “No other profession,” he said, “would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces.”

Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more

4/30/14 10:23 AM

CREDIT

‘So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?’

CREDIT

CREDIT

10 QUOTABLES.indd 17

4/29/14 3:44 PM

Dispatches > Quick Takes  

 

Call it giving you more bang for your buck. A rental car agency at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Alaska accidentally rented out a car on April  that was being used by airport police in a training exercise for bomb sniffing dogs. The problem: The car still had explosives in it. What followed was an hours-long frantic search for the bomb-laden vehicle by authorities whose worries were not allayed by junior officers’ claims that only a small amount of explosives were inside the lost car. According to Chief Jesse Davis, officers located the rental car customer before he had driven very far.

  Since the Iron Curtain fell in , it hasn’t been difficult to cross the Czech-German border. But someone forgot to tell the deer. A Czech study of the local deer population found that red deer still will not cross the border—which once had three parallel electrical fences and was patrolled by armed guards. None of the red deer would have been alive during the Cold War, but researchers say the deer follow in the footsteps of their elders, who would have avoided the fences. “Fawns follow mothers for the first year of their life and learn from them where to go,” biologist Pavel Sustr told the Associated Press. The researchers tracked the deer by using GPS-equipped collars.



EAGLE: DOUG FINGER/THE GAINESVILLE SUN/LANDOV • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • GOLD: SIR GANGA RAM HOSPITAL • DEER: CTK/AP

Operating on a man complaining of stomach pain, doctors in India discovered he was a gold mine. The -year-old Indian man, unidentified by authorities, sought help from doctors at a hospital in Delhi on April , saying he had accidentally swallowed a plastic bottle cap. Subsequent X-rays left doctors questioning exactly what the man had ingested.

The picture became clearer when, during surgery, physicians fished out  bars of gold from the man’s stomach, each weighing more than an ounce. Doctors turned over the evidence to anti-smuggling investigators.

 

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4/29/14 4:38 PM

LEIGHTON: SWNS GROUP • DESK: LYCS ARCHITECTURE • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • MONTOYA: NBC-DFW • PLAYSTATION 4: KYODO/AP • HARNDEN: YOUTUBE/THE NEWS & OBSERVER

The rubberneckers can’t be blamed for taking a long look. The cause of the th Street traffic jam in Gainesville, Fla., on April  was a bald eagle that decided to take a -minute pit stop in the middle of the road. Formerly endangered, bald eagles are still protected by the Lacey Act that makes it illegal to take or possess them. According to a witness, the bird had been locked in a fight with a pair of crows when it got clipped by a passing vehicle. From there, the eagle stood in the street attentive—but halting traffic—for a quarter hour.

As soon as animal control arrived on the scene to take the bird into custody, the bald eagle flew away.

 

EAGLE: DOUG FINGER/THE GAINESVILLE SUN/LANDOV • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • GOLD: SIR GANGA RAM HOSPITAL • DEER: CTK/AP

LEIGHTON: SWNS GROUP • DESK: LYCS ARCHITECTURE • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • MONTOYA: NBC-DFW • PLAYSTATION 4: KYODO/AP • HARNDEN: YOUTUBE/THE NEWS & OBSERVER

On one end of the phone was heavy breathing. On the other end was a confused emergency services operator. A United Kingdom emergency operator received the confusing call on April . After a short while, he dispatched police to the Bucks County residence, where they found not an emergency but rather a Belgian Malinois dog panting with the phone in his mouth. Police were able to confirm with owner Mary Amos-Cole that her dog Leighton had indeed accidentally phoned police by munching down on buttons while he was attempting to play keep-away with his owner. “It was obviously Leighton panting as he was running around with the phone in his mouth,” owner Amos-Cole said. “He just wants you to chase him, and that’s what I did for a bit.”

’ 

 

For months, -year-old Hector Montoya of the Dallas area had been saving his meager allowance to purchase a PlayStation , Sony’s newest gaming system. But then, Montoya found a better investment. After hearing about a mother and her -year-old child killed in a house fire, Hector decided there was a better use of his . So with the help of the Grand Prairie, Texas, Fire Department, Hector purchased about  smoke detectors and had them installed on April  in homes around his neighborhood that didn’t have one. “Saving a life,” Hector told CBS News, “is more important.”

At least one entry in the Milan Design Week furniture show in early April proved to be the cat’s meow. With a focus on catitecture— pieces of furniture designed for simultaneous human and feline use—Chinese designer Ruan Hao unveiled a desk that should leave both species satisfied. The desk’s flat top affords a human an ideal work surface, while the nooks, crannies, and tunnels below the desk’s surface promise to keep your cat occupied and off your laptop.

  More than students and teachers were hanging around one Kyrgyzstan school this year.

According to reports, up to  snakes have taken up residence in a small high school serving  students near Osh in the country’s western portion. The snakes began appearing at the school in early spring, and an attempt by locals to drive the cold-blooded animals from the building were unsuccessful.

The problem forced administrators to close down the building.

   A Pittsboro, N.C., man has whistled his way into the record book. But not in the pleasant, whistle-while-you-work way. Instead, Walker Harnden has made his way into the Guinness World Records by whistling out an ear-splitting highest ever note whistled. In front of two music professionals at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where Harnden is a student, the -year-old managed to whistle a B—one note below a high C. Harnden’s whistle knocks off previous whistling record setter Jennifer Davies of Canada who set her mark in .

Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com

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4/29/14 4:38 PM

Janie B. Cheaney

The debate is never over Attempts to shut down dissent miss the essence of America

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“T       .

The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”

I hate it when he does that. But the president isn’t the only one to bluff his way through a controversial issue and then, at a key point in the struggle, declare victory—as if all arguments have been fully aired, all sides duly heard, and a reasonable conclusion reached. Nothing of the sort has

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happened, but pronouncing the debate “over” has been a favored tactic at least since , when the argument about legal abortion was supposedly settled by seven men in black robes. As Clarke Forsythe showed in his painstakingly researched book Abuse of Discretion, the Roe v. Wade case was decided on the basis of incomplete evidence and false reasoning.

Thus the title; “abuse of discretion” means “a failure to take into proper consideration the facts and law relating to a particular matter.”

Roe v. Wade was supposed to settle the matter of legal abortion but, largely because of the way it was settled, the debate never ended. Today, advocates of climate change or same-sex marriage insist there can be no more argument—the science is settled, the people have spoken, the results are in. Now shut up.

The president’s post-Obamacare-sign-up remarks in the Rose Garden last month echoed the strategy he has used all along. () Use big numbers ( million uninsured before the passage of the law, . million Americans signed up after). () Substitute hopeful predictions for statistical results, and repeat for emphasis (“this law has made our health care system

a lot better—a lot better”). () Cite anecdotal evidence from individuals and extrapolate over the entire population (“this law is doing what it’s supposed to do … helping people coast to coast”). () Reduce the opposition to cartoonish villainy (“Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance?

Why are they so mad about the idea of folks having health insurance?”). () And finally, finish them off with a warning (“History is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security”).

As confirmation hearings for the new HHS secretary approach, Sen. Mitch McConnell remarked that he would like to see “a candid conversation about Obamacare’s shortcomings.” Whatever he says, McConnell is savvy enough to know the candidconversation bus left the station long ago, if it ever arrived. What Obama means by “debate” is this: We disagreed; I called you an unfeeling monster and you called me an imperialist bully, but the forces I marshalled proved superior to yours. To some modern Democrats, that’s democracy.

But not so fast. Obama’s Rose Garden speech was called a victory lap, but the Affordable Care Act is a Pandora’s box—no, Pandora’s swamp—of legal, financial, and medical tangles that will take decades to ooze out.

The debate has just begun, and discouraging as that may seem, it’s a good thing.

Talking heads on the left don’t understand why Americans can’t just get with the program. A few years ago, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman daydreamed in print about the United States becoming “China for a day,” so all the latest progressive ideas could be imposed with no messy democratic process.

Or why can’t we be like Europe? wonders TV gadfly Bill Maher. Europeans are so much more efficient; they don’t waste time with endless palaver.

The efficiency experts could use a history lesson.

The nation that began with shouting and guns has— with one notable exception—developed a talent for settling disputes without guns, though always with shouting. Violent argument in pursuit of reasonable law is what we’re all about. But as dead set as we are on our own opinions, we must make room for listening and responding to what the other side actually says. “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs :). In this country, debate is seldom over. If and when that day comes, what will really be over is the United States. A

Email: jcheaney@wng.org

4/28/14 4:38 PM

krieg barrie

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TriStar Pictures

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

Chaos comedy TriStar Pictures

MOVIE: Moms’ Night Out mines humor out of its message

by Megan Basham

Email: mbasham@wng.org

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No doubt, before Moms’ Night Out releases to theaters on Mother’s Day weekend, reviews in most mainstream outlets will use the term “Christian movie.” By that, I suppose they’ll mean that the film was made by and concerns characters who happen to be Christians. But while the label will work to sell the movie to certain audiences, it could also advertise some false impressions to those who associate “Christian movie” with treacly dramas full of

moralizing dialogue and unrelatably upright characters. That’s too bad because while there’s plenty of heart in Moms’ Night Out (rated PG), what there’s far more of is something rarely (maybe never?) seen in films marketed as Christian—laughs.

The original mommy blogger Erma Bombeck once said that a thin line separates laughter and pain. As the first scene opens on Allyson (Sarah Drew) sitting at her computer confessing to the online world her struggle to respond lovingly when her three small children demolish her kitchen in order to “surprise” her with breakfast, many moms will chuckle and wince simultaneously. Their reaction will likely grow into guffaws and

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Reviews > Movies & TV

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Adkins, they manage to mine some humor out of their message as well.

The most impressive thing about the Erwins’ sophomore effort, however, is that the churchgoing believers that populate their film feel like real people with relatable shortcomings as opposed to stock sinner/ saint characters. There are few moms who won’t sympathize with Allyson’s penchant for perfectionism or her fear that she’s failing

on life’s major fronts.

Likewise, as Sondra, Heaton helps us get in the head of a pastor’s wife who’s tired of feeling like a role model to hundreds of women yet a genuine friend to none.

This isn’t to suggest that every element in Moms’ Night Out works. The best scenes come during the first hour, and at a certain point the zaniness gets wearisome, pushing past the bounds of believability. But these are shortcomings common to

the genre, and plenty of major studio movies like Tina Fey’s Date Night and the R-rated The Hangover suffered from the same malady. What Moms’ Night Out proves, even more than October Baby, is that the Erwins are Christian filmmakers who can compete with mainstream Hollywood in turning out a polished, engaging film.

Moms’ Night Out isn’t funny for a Christian movie, it’s just funny. A

Though she’s long been known as one of the few out and proud Christians in Hollywood, Emmy Award–winning actress Patricia Heaton says she didn’t partner with filmmakers Andrew and Jon Erwin on Moms’ Night Out because they’re fellow believers. She did it because they had a good, funny story to tell.

“I think [Christians] do ourselves a big disservice when we focus on making ‘Christian movies’ because we automatically alienate a huge portion of our possible audience,” explains Heaton who both produced and co-stars in the film. “What we need to do is focus on really good, human stories, well-told.”

Heaton says she considers Moms’ Night Out a family comedy that happens to be about characters that go to the same church, and she hopes it proves that the subject matter for faith-based films can be much wider and more varied than audiences have seen so far.

“A lot of material that’s been faith-based has been very restrictive creatively because [the filmmakers] tiptoe around anything that might possibly offend,” she says. “I think there’s a few very vocal voices that won’t allow anything in a movie they consider offensive.” This, she argues, results in productions that “fail to reflect the realities of people’s lives.”

However, as the star of hit sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond Middle, Heaton says she’s learned firsthand that comedy offers and The Middle a unique opportunity to circumvent the objections of those who prefer their Christian characters to be sinless. “The beauty of comedy is, because everything’s done with a sense of humor, you can explore things a little bit more and be more human and have characters who show their flaws and humanity and have it be funny and entertaining for everybody. I think that’s what Moms’ Night Out has done. For the first time it portrays Christians as real people with flaws and failings and also a sense of humor.”

Heaton says that as she and her husband, David Hunt, have branched out into producing movies and television shows, they’ve avoided looking for explicit messages of any sort and instead focus on finding good material, trusting that their faith will shine naturally through their work. “Because every movie is a faith-based movie,” says Heaton, “it just depends on what the filmmakers are putting their faith in.” —M.B.

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COLUMBIA PICTURES/MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT

‘GOOD, HUMAN STORIES’

FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES

groans of recognition as the perpetually late Allyson screeches into the church parking lot, mascara smeared from applying in the car, screaming at her disheveled kids to hurry up, and wondering how all the other perfectly coiffed moms with their perfectly pressed kids do it.

Allyson’s feelings of unrest and inadequacy require some deep, intensive soul searching, but lacking the time for that, her husband, Sean (Sean Astin), agrees to a shorterterm solution. He and the other dads in their social circle will watch the kids so Allyson and her friends, including their pastor’s wife (Patricia Heaton) can put on high heels and enjoy a girl’s night out. From there, in the grand tradition of one-crazy-night movies, chaos ensues, leading the ladies everywhere from a tattoo parlor to a jail cell.

Back in , when the Erwin brothers released their first film, the drama October Baby, I praised them for remaining focused on telling their story well rather than trying to advance an agenda.

As a comedy, Moms’ Night Out draws on a lot of different directing skills, yet the Erwins once again stay centered on the characters and their experiences. They include biblical themes, but in a way that enhances the narrative naturally. Given that the movie’s sole moment of spiritual advice comes from the mouth of a grizzled biker played by country singer Trace

MOVIE

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

by Emily Belz

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment

>>

Before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 started rolling at the premiere in New York, the film critic sitting next to me said, “I liked the first [Amazing Spider-Man], but I kept thinking, ‘What’s the point?’” The Amazing Spider-Man series is a reboot of the Spider-Man series that hit theaters in 2002-2007. This new iteration–which tracks the comic books more closely than the previous series–can seem like an exercise in futility, but a couple key elements save the day.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (rated PG-13 for intense violence and general scariness) is well-told, thanks to director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer), and its cast makes it winsome. First, we get the privilege of seeing all too briefly Paul Giamatti play a growling, tattooed villain, a ­far cry from his John Adams typecast.

Before Jamie Foxx turns into the CGI monster Electro, he is wonderful as the forgotten engineer and SpiderMan fanatic Max Dillon. Others also shine: Sally Field as Aunt May, Dane DeHaan as Spider-Man’s friend Harry Osborn, and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s girlfriend.

Andrew Garfield’s wry, cheerful Spider-Man/Peter Parker is much more charismatic than Tobey Maguire’s from the 2002 series—Maguire’s Spider-Man always seemed a little bewildered to me. Garfield’s superhero persona comes out even in the way he falls on the bed at the end of the day—for the role he studied physical comics like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Because superhero movies are now a genre, or perhaps a brand, we get a lot of the tropes we’ve seen before: a huge corporation developing secret military projects waiting to be misused, supervillains destroying parts of New York, a hero conflicted about bringing the woman he loves into his violent world. But film critics like the man next to me are maybe the only ones tired of the onslaught of comic book–based movies: Box office

receipts show audiences still love them. Fans of the comic books will already know the plot development coming in this movie, making it less of a crowd-pleaser than others, but the plot will nonetheless push audiences to the subsequent films in the series.

No, we’re not close to being done with Spider-Man: The studio is planning two more Spider-Man movies, and then two spinoffs focused on the

Box Office Top 10

For the weekend of March 28-30­ according to Box Office Mojo

cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), ­violent (V), and foul-language (L) ­content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com

S V L 1̀ 2̀ 3̀ 4̀ 5̀ 6̀ 7̀ 8̀ 9̀

10 `

See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies

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The Other Woman PG-13......5 4 5 Captain America: The Winter Soldier* PG-13............ 1 6 3 Heaven Is for Real* PG..........2 3 1 Rio 2 g........................................... 1 3 1 Brick Mansions PG-13............3 6 5 Transcendence PG-13............4 6 2 The Quiet Ones PG-13............5 6 6 Bears g.......................................... 1 2 0 Divergent PG-13........................2 6 3 A Haunted House 2 r............8 8 10

*Reviewed by world

villains–the Sinister Six and Venom– with release dates slotted through 2018. Other studios have more Avengers, X-Men, and Batman in the wings. Why do audiences keep coming back? Stone, in an interview, said it might be partly because the movies come out in the summer, and “it’s hot and you want to go into a theater and have a removed experience.” But she went deeper: “Mythology is a big part of it too. We’ve always loved stories about things that are bigger than us, that are metaphors for these experiences that we have as human beings.”

Her word choice of “mythology” was interesting: C.S. Lewis often wrote about humans’ draw to mythology.

“The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened,” he wrote in a 1931 letter.

“The pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’.”

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Reviews > Books

Down Berlin’s mean streets

Three stellar authors take readers of spy and detective novels back to Hitler’s Germany

BY MARVIN OLASKY

>>

R C best defined heroism in a detective story (and by extension a Western or a spy story) when he wrote, “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.”

Chandler—like Elmore Leonard who died last August, like Andrew Klavan and George Pelecanos who write tough-minded novels based in America, and like Alex Dryden, William Ryan, and Martin Cruz Smith who do the same with Russia as their stage— knew that without mean streets a hero is common and incomplete. Streets didn’t get any meaner than those of Hitler’s Germany from  to , and spy or detective novels don’t get

any tougher than those set at that time (and usually in that place) by three stellar authors: America’s Alan Furst, and Britain’s David Downing and Philip Kerr.

The three are different. The Furst of Mission to Paris, Dark Star, Blood of Victory, The Foreign Correspondent, The Spies of Warsaw, and Spies of the Balkans has a variety of central characters in his books, some more interesting than others, but he is always superb at creating an atmosphere that makes readers feel they’re standing in misty Casablanca by a club named Rick’s, waiting for exit visas to Portugal.

At the center of the Kerr novels I’ve read—Berlin Noir, The One from the Other, If the Dead Rise Not, Field Gray, Prague Fatale, A Man Without Breath— is German detective Bernie Gunther who makes compromises to survive and is not above prurient interests, but

will still risk his life to rescue Jewish damsels and others in distress.

Prospective readers should be warned, though: Gunther’s mean streets include sex and bad language, and none of these books gild vice-filled reality.

My favorite character is David Downing’s protagonist, British journalist John Russell, who has a half-German son and a youthful Marxist past, so spymasters in London, Berlin, and Moscow all want to lure or force him into their service. Russell can be tempted: When Russians put a beautiful woman in his Moscow hotel bed, “[h]e stood there stupidly for what was probably only a couple of seconds, caught between bodily desire and every other conscious impulse.”

Then comes the man of honor’s resolution: “‘No,’ he said, turning his eyes in search of her clothes, and finding them neatly folded on the chair. He picked them up and passed them to her. ‘Thank you, but no.’ Her smile turned into a shrug. Two minutes later she was gone. Russell gazed out at the empty square, reliving the movement of her body in his mind’s eye. ‘You would have hated yourself in the morning,’ he muttered to himself.”

If such a passage bothers you, do not read Furst, Kerr, or Downing, whose John Russell books all have the names of Berlin train stations such as Zoo, Stettin, Potsdam, and Lehrter. But if you can take such a passage as one educating readers in what it means to bend without breaking, and if you are willing to put up with violence and occasional uncouthness, you may want to pick up one of those books—and you may find it hard to stop at just one.

From  to  The Netherlands had as prime minister a Christian theologian and journalist—and James JORDIDELGADO/ISTOCK

Bratt’s Abraham Kuyper (Eerdman’s, ) gives us a detailed, scholarly look at the man of many talents who emphasized “sphere sovereignty” as an alternative to authoritarian government centralization. For a look at what underlies Middle Eastern authoritarianism, see Patrick Sookhdeo’s Understanding Islamic Theology (Isaac Publishing, ). For an exciting novelistic look into a possible American authoritarian future, see Kaleidocide (Thomas Dunne, ) by Dave Swavely, interviewed in our July  issue last year. —M.O.



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Email: molasky@wng.org

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SLATTERY & GRESH: HANDOUT

Against the authoritarians

NOTABLE BOOKS

SPOTLIGHT

Four recent novels from Christian publishers > reviewed by  

The Auschwitz Escape Joel C. Rosenberg Jewish teenager Jacob Weisz’s parents are in denial about Hitler’s murderous plans, and even the death of his sister during Kristallnacht can’t shake them into reality. His Uncle Avi, however, has connections to the Jewish underground resistance, and Jacob soon joins him in his work. When Jacob eventually ends up in Auschwitz, his underground connections pay off as he joins other men seeking to escape and warn the world—especially Hungarian Jews slated to arrive soon—about the death camp.

Based on the real-life escapes of four men from the camp in , Rosenberg’s story is filled with action and enriched by Jacob’s journey of faith—but it minimizes Jesus.

A Table By the Window: A Novel of Family Secrets and Heirloom Recipes Hillary Manton Lodge Food critic and former restaurateur Juliette is surrounded by a boisterous extended Italian family, as well as supportive co-workers at her newspaper job in Portland. Yet as the story opens, she feels deeply alone. A single woman in her s who is grappling with the loss of her beloved grandmother, Jules hungers for a deeper connection—and tries an online dating service. That decision, along with her brother’s invitation to start a new restaurant, eventually forces her to choose: fulfill her lifelong dream of owning a restaurant, or marry a man she loves.

Heirloom recipes, a sweet romance, and a mystery from her grandmother’s past add spice along the way.

Unspoken Dee Henderson When rare coin dealer Bryce Bishop closes his Chicago shop one night, a woman approaches him and offers hundreds of rare coins below cost. After luring him in with this “chum,” Charlotte offers him one of the largest caches of rare coins in history.

Though she and Bryce quickly develop a strong emotional connection, her difficult past—including a kidnapping she refuses to talk about—keeps him at a distance. The romance here is largely fantasy, with Bryce going well beyond what is advisable (or probable) in his bid to win Charlotte, but welldeveloped characters, thoughtful apologetics, and an unfolding mystery related to her captors add interest.

JORDIDELGADO/ISTOCK

SLATTERY & GRESH: HANDOUT

The Shepherd’s Song: A Story of Second Chances Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers With ambulance sirens blaring overhead, Kate struggles to remember how she got the searing pain in her side. An EMT explains she’s been in a car accident, and suddenly Kate realizes her decision to return to the cleaners to retrieve a copy of Psalm  from her son’s jacket has led her to this moment. She pleads with God to make her life count, and in answer to that prayer, her handwritten copy of Psalm —the Shepherd song—soon gains a life of its own.

Authors Duffey and Myers trace the impact of the psalm, line by line, as it makes its way through  lives around the world. The book’s structure at times feels forced, but its truths are rich.

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

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This February the Fifty Shades trilogy by E.L. James hit a milestone:  million copies sold worldwide.

In contrast to secular and Christian counselors who claim erotica may be beneficial for frustrated singles and ho-hum marriages, authors Juli Slattery and Dannah Gresh clearly detail a woman’s God-created longings, as well as how series like Fifty Shades pervert and distort these longings, leaving a trail of carnage behind. In Pulling Back the Shades: Erotica, Intimacy, and the Longings of a Woman’s Heart (Moody, ), they argue that the answer isn’t to demonize desire but to celebrate sexuality in its proper context— imperfect, relationship-based, sanctifying marriage. And when that isn’t possible, we should turn to God, the “Living Water” who can “satisfy every thirst.”

Caution: This isn’t a book for young readers, as it describes sexual activity in detail. But with a film version of Fifty Shades of Grey scheduled to hit theaters in early , Pulling Back the Shades is only likely to grow in importance. —E.W.

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4/24/14 6:12 PM

Reviews > Q&A

Book buyer beware Former Christian publishing insider shares the realities of fluff, platforms, ghostwriting, and back-cover blurbs

By Marvin Olasky

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in education or publishing in one way or another.

By running bookstores, what did you learn about what people read and what they don’t? It’s sometimes depressing. We sold some books that were fluffy so we could carry the books we really wanted to.

Over the past 25 years some of the major Christian publishers—Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, for example—became part of big, non-Christian operations. A lot of these grand, old publishing houses published really good, solid Christian books—no fluff—but the

­ usiness drove the compab nies to produce more and more lightweight things, and gifts became big. Then they became part of for-profit companies: Management is responsible to the stockholders, so the b ­ ottom line has got to drive them.

What are some of the other dangers facing the Christian publishing industry now? The great masses and many megachurch pastors are not as ­discerning as they need to be, so I’m worried that people will drift because they’re reading the pabulum that’s served up.

If something sells a lot, the

Christian public tends to go and read it.

Do publishers have less interest than they used to in publishing a good manuscript if the author doesn’t have a “platform” to promote it? Absolutely. Every publisher looks for platforms, a means for authors to sell the books themselves. One of the first things I would ask of a big-time author or pastor: “How many books will your ministry purchase?”

Has book publishing (and Christian publishing specifically) become ­celebrity-driven? Celebrity publishing is not a “Christian

Robin Rayne Nelson/genises

Marvin Padgett ran Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri bookstore in Switzerland in 1982 and 1983, then owned and managed the Logos Bookstore in Nashville from 1983 to 1996. From 1997 to 2005 he was editorial vice president at Crossway Books and then filled a similar ­position at P&R until his retirement in 2012.

How long have you been married to your wife, Jean, and how long to the Christian publishing industry? Almost 47 years to Jean, and almost all of my life since the first grade has been

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are being, in a sense, deceived by thinking “so and so” wrote all these books. I like it much better when the cover says, “with John Jones.”

Editorial help is fi ne when disclosed? A lot of books wouldn’t be written if there weren’t ghostwriters. Some people are just awfully busy: Do they need to sit down in front of a word processor and write every word, or is it sufficient for them to sit down with a tape recorder and let someone else take it? I’d say as long as they retain control over it, it’s OK. I don’t really like it, but it’s OK. We don’t expect politicians, CEOs, and athletes to write their own books ... But they have something to say, and it’s important to hear what they have to say.

What they’ve experienced may be important and helpful.

I don’t like the deception when someone actually claims to have sat down and written the book but hadn’t done that.

So even if the person whose name is on the book and the writer have an agreement and they’re satisfied with that, that is not satisfactory for the third person in this whole equation: the reader. That’s what I think.

What about pastors?

Most are articulate, so

‘What bothers me is that people in the Christian bookstore are being, in a sense, deceived by thinking “so and so” wrote all these books.’

ROBIN RAYNE NELSON/GENISES

publishing” problem. It’s a publishing problem in general and beyond that, a cultural problem.

We worship celebrities. That boils over into the general book publishing market.

Let’s talk about ghostwriting. One ghost told me, “I received , to ghostwrite this manuscript.

Th at was the deal: I didn’t ask for any credit and wasn’t given any, but that’s fi ne with me, because I have the ,.” Any problem with that? It depends. You can contract for anything that’s not illegal, immoral, or fattening.

What bothers me is that people in the Christian bookstore

Email: molasky@wng.org

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when they use ghostwriters do we feel deceived in a way we don’t feel with politicians, CEOs, or athletes?

Peter Drucker said the three hardest jobs in the United States were being the president of the United States, the CEO of a large corporation, and the senior pastor of a megachurch. I don’t have any problem with some of the bigname Christian megachurch pastors having someone help them write their books, as long as they control what’s being said.

John MacArthur is an example of a pastor who keeps control. He is a delightful man and a very careful preacher. All the books he writes are taken from his sermons. A sermon is one form of art (if you will) and a book is another form of art.

They’re different media, and very few people like to read books that appear to be collections of sermons. So, a staff transcribes MacArthur’s sermons, edits them, makes them into a smooth-running book, and presents them back to him. He never loses control.

Francis Schaeffer also spoke and had transcribers, right? Almost every word he uttered was taped and transcribed. Then Schaeffer would go over it and turn it into what he wanted: He retained minute control over his manuscripts to where it was sometimes a little frustrating to work with him, because he insisted on saying things in his own quirky way. What makes Schaeffer powerful is the passion and the content.

So, it’s legitimate to take a pastor’s ideas and move them into a different medium, without really adding new thoughts ... That

was true of Martyn LloydJones: I think his daughters did that for him, converting what he said. He preached on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening, and I think also on Saturday evening.

I understand that John Piper writes his own books.

What you see in John Piper is what you get: He is one of the most straightforward, completely honest people I’ve ever been around. He writes his books himself. He was an English major at Wheaton and it shows: His books come in and rarely need any corrections. John would take a “writing leave” in the summer. His church would let him go off and spend some time alone, and he would just sit there and write like a machine. His books are his books.

Should readers take back-cover endorsements seriously? I’m not going to tell you who this is, but one author we published wanted his book endorsed by a famous member of his congregation. The famous member of his congregation contacted me and said, “This is how much I will charge for endorsing the book.” Because we really, really wanted to publish the book, and we respected the author and the person, we said, “OK.” The pastor himself wrote the endorsement for his own book and sent it to the endorser, leaving a blank in the middle with a note, “You can add your personal comments here.” The endorser sent it to me and said, “I don’t think I need to add anything. This is good enough as it is.”

A ghostwritten endorsement for a ghostwritten book? That was a pretty disappointing episode. A

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4/25/14 2:57 PM

Reviews > Music

Soul-deep shadows MELANIE PENN’s dreamlike second album never loses sight of hope BY ARSENIO ORTEZA

Then two Muslim-hijacked airplanes hit the twin towers.

“I was living below th Street in Manhattan,” she remembers, “and my roommate woke me up. She said, ‘A plane hit the World Trade Center! You’ve gotta wake up!’ We stood on the roof of my apartment building and watched the World Trade Center fall. And I thought, ‘I have to get my life together.’”

For Penn, that meant going to pastor Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church to be precise.

“October  I would say is when I became a Christian. It took four or five Sundays. But I was one of many New Yorkers who went to church after /.”

Nowadays, Penn helps to lead worship at Redeemer and works for its churchplanting sister ministry, Redeemer City to City. “The penny dropped for me spiritually at Redeemer,” she says. “It was there that I really understood who Jesus was.”

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glistens, echoes, and casts soul-deep shadows in all the right places.

Right places have played a large part in Penn’s life. A cradle Anglican who sang her first public notes at a Christmas Eve service (“‘Once in Royal David’s City,’” she recalls), she left her native Virginia for the Big Apple upon graduating from college with a literature degree in  with dreams of taking Broadway by storm.

“I spent a good eight to nine years in the musical theater scene,” she says.

“I did a couple of Broadway national tours. I was climbing up the ladder, doing regional theater. I played Sandy in Grease many times.”

But when what she calls the “urge to make records” took over, she abandoned the footlights and “committed to writing songs.”

One reason that she’d procrastinated is that she hadn’t always had anything special to say.

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“I  think of it,” says Melanie Penn from her apartment in Brooklyn, “send up a prayer for me. It has felt like walking in cement to get this thing out.”

“This thing” is Hope Tonight, the self-described “-something” singer-songwriter’s soon-to-be-released sophomore album. And although “get[ting] it out” may have felt burdensome, listening to it does not.

Penn’s pleasantly airy pop soprano rides hooks rendered dreamlike by the twin wings of acoustic instrumentation and tasteful electronic touches. And the lyrics, while introspective, never lose sight of hope. “Is it our duty to keep singing?” she sings in “Turnaround,” “whether funeral sighs or hymns, / whether lullabies or battle cries—until the spring? / I think it is.”

Like Penn’s  debut, Wake Up Love, Hope Tonight was produced by Ben Shive (Andrew Peterson, Bebo Norman). Not surprisingly, the album

   or eternally resonant underlies Lights Out (Cabin ), the latest album by Ingrid Michaelson. But it deftly mixes the business of coming of age with the pleasures of gently hooky pop and in so doing makes an enjoyable and insightful secular counterpart to Penn’s Hope Tonight.

Like Penn, Michaelson is a New York–based singer-songwriter with roots in the stage. Unlike Penn, Michaelson focuses more on the here and now. But both have a place in a well-balanced musical diet. And, in defiance of the contemporary-femalepopster norm, Michaelson stays within the parameters of good taste.

An exception is her video to “Girls Chase Boys.” A spoof of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video, it replaces Palmer’s fashion models with homoerotic male dancers and ends up more nauseating than clever.

The video, however, does not come with the album. And the song itself should prove irresistible to anyone who has ever called a romantic relationship quits. A

Email: aorteza@wng.org

4/30/14 11:41 AM

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NOTABLE CDs

SPOTLIGHT

New or recent pop-rock albums > reviewed by  

Shadow Weaver The Choir “I’m not trying to sell you / what you won’t receive,” sings Derri Daugherty. “I don’t need to tell you / what I do or I don’t believe.” True enough.

As CCM’s most artful band for nearly  years, The Choir has more than earned an Apostles’ Creed badge. What its members continue to seek is a musical incarnation of the intersection between faith and doubt that does aural justice to both. They get nearest this time with “Dancing with a Serpent.” They finish a close second with everything else.

Holy Ghost Marc Ford Best known for his lead guitar role in The Black Crowes, Ford might strike some as an unlikely candidate for the creator of the most reflective Christian-conversion roots album of the year so far (admittedly, a narrow category). But with the help of the British band Phantom Limb, that album is just what Ford has created. If the subtlety of his lyrics risks leaving some listeners in the dark, the gorgeously layered background vocals don’t. Here’s hoping that a Father and a Son are in the pipeline.

Supermodel Foster the People There’s nothing as immediately grabbing as “Pumped Up Kicks,” but “Coming of Age” comes close. And, all things considered, this album beats Torches.. Throwing commercial caution to the wind, Mark Foster writes, sings, and— with Paul Epworth’s help—produces his heart out to exhilarating effect. “I’m afraid to face God and say I was a coward,” he sings at the outset, and plenty of other examination-of-conscience-worthy lines follow. Would they resonate if not set to an epic-scale sonic eclecticism?

Maybe not. But they are.

Thanks to a special arrangement with Cracker Barrel, Michael W. Smith’s Hymns has made Billboard ’s Top . And it’s not bad.

Neither, however, is it greater than the sum of its musically conservative parts. Fortunately for the veteran CCM superstar’s many fans, it’s not his only new album.

Sovereign (Sparrow) is being pigeonholed as a “worship album,” and to the extent that each of its dozen songs directly addresses God from a humble and grateful point of view, it is.

But to the extent that “worship album” has come to connote lowestcommon-denominator musicality and insipid lyrics, Sovereign defies the stereotype. Smith’s years of Bible study and of continuously raising the standard of his verbal expression have enabled him to weave Scripture into confessional verse with no sign of emotional manipulativeness or aesthetic strain. And the handful of young collaborators that he enlisted to help “push” him have guaranteed that the melodies, instrumentation, and production go with the flow.

Brotherhood The Holmes Brothers

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The longer these three septuagenarians stick with their soul-gospel-blues mix, the less generic it seems. Never have they sounded as much like a Three Dog Night for the roots crowd than they do on “Stayed at the Party,” which is nothing if not a long-overdue sequel to “Mama Told Me (Not To Come).” Another similarity is that these guys can do small wonders with the right material: Popsy Dixon’s falsetto on Ted Hawkins’ “I Gave Up All I Had” is the essence of vulnerability betrayed.

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

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4/30/14 11:41 AM

Mindy Belz

A rebuilder of cities

Laborers like Jerry Umanos are doing the unsung work of a generation

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N  that it took two kinds of workers to rebuild a city, especially in the face of armed opposition: the ones with the weapons, and the ones with the hammers and shovels.

The Israelite prophet’s enemies jeered, “Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” But in spite of enemies, Nehemiah returned to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem—

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SIGN: SHAH MARAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • UMANOS: MINDY BELZ

where “half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail” (Nehemiah :).

Where Afghanistan is concerned, politicians, journalists, and most Americans focus on the workers with the weapons. The builders have blunter instruments and have to work steady, day by day, their toil often hard to quantify, and for a journalist difficult to comprehend, less glamorous perhaps. It’s not the work of a presidential election cycle; it’s the work of a generation.

During a trip to Afghanistan in  I did military embeds over part of several days then tried to spend the rest of those days at Cure International Hospital in Kabul.

With the military I had to provide my blood type, and an officer inked it on the helmet I had to wear. We rode in up-armored vehicles loaded with bomb jammers that zeroed out my cell phone, a “truck commander” in the front passenger seat with a weapon at the ready, and a memorized description of particular cars to watch for.

At the hospital I showed up with a pen and notepad and a scarf over my head, often by taxi from the U.S. base. I had to win permission to keep my camera, but otherwise the guards seemed friendly, if armed. Inside were the builders, and pediatrician Jerry Umanos was one.

The hospital was clean and sunny, but had its grim wards. The day I arrived to walk rounds with Jerry two

WAR TORN: Cure hospital on the day of the shooting (left photo); Umanos (left) talks with colleagues at the hospital in .

newborns had died in the last several hours, and a -year-old boy weighing  pounds had arrived from Jalalabad, clearly dying, Jerry suspected of tuberculosis.

For nearly a decade Jerry and other builders battled diseases and ailments that in his native Chicago were treatable, trying to lift the health of a war-torn nation. On April  his labors ended when an Afghan police guard assigned to the hospital shot the -yearold physician to death, along with another American colleague and friend, John Gabel, , and Gabel’s visiting father, Gary. John Gabel’s wife, Teresa, was wounded in the attack.

All were from the Chicago area. Jerry for years divided his time between the Kabul hospital and a clinic in Chicago—a ,mile commute. When the Lawndale Christian Health Center in the mid-’s opened in a former Cadillac showroom, Jerry Umanos was one of the first doctors it hired. Starting salary: ,.

Nearly  percent of the patients at Lawndale have incomes below the poverty level. Similarly, Jerry was drawn to Afghanistan because it was the world’s most dangerous place to be born. The Cure hospital specializes in maternal health and pediatrics, and Jerry did two important things in his time there: He helped Afghans to dream they could reduce their infant mortality rate. And he trained hundreds of Afghan doctors, midwives, and other health specialists in ways to improve care.

Jerry was a builder writing one of Afghanistan’s (many) good news stories, the ones you don’t hear.

When the Taliban ruled, the country had less than  medical facilities serving  percent of the population.

Now there are over , and they reach  percent of Afghans. The infant mortality rate, still one of the highest in the world, is falling.

But the builders need protection as they work, and after the billions invested in training Afghan army and police (I saw both), the United States should have zero tolerance for the kind of insider attacks that killed Jerry and seem to be on the rise.

Even in the church, we should find more ways to esteem and promote the work of builders like Jerry who set aside top salaries and safety nets to work in the world’s hardest places. As in Nehemiah’s day, “The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another.” A

For more on the attack that killed Jerry Umanos in Afghanistan visit wng.org

4/30/14 11:34 AM

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4/24/14 6:08 PM

The edge of The numbers say Christians may soon be no more in the Middle East, but the beleaguered churches in Baghdad are fighting risk with resilience

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BY MINDY BELZ IN BAGHDAD     // 

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xtinction

Iraqi Christians attend an Easter worship service at St. Joseph Cathedral in Baghdad, April .

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Sunday morning dawns bright, glaring bright, at St. George’s Church in

Baghdad. In April daytime temperatures regularly climb to  degrees, but mornings and evenings are on the cool side, the air breezy and soft. Outside the church a rose garden is in full bloom—red, coral, yellow, white, and pink blossoms massed in border shrubs. Along one side of the garden is nothing but hedge, a thick, high wall of green giving a little shade and relief in the late afternoon. You have to stand close to see that the hedge is hiding a blast wall—concrete about  inches thick and  feet high runs the perimeter of the church property.

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along a main thoroughfare in central Baghdad’s Karada district killed a man who had attended the church, along with three others.

“We are all in such a desperate situation and all we have is our Lord and each other,” said Canon Andrew White, the British clergyman at St. George’s who improbably has come to be known as “the vicar of Baghdad.”

White, who turns 

this year, towers over the Iraqis he serves at  feet  inches and in size  shoes—yet he approaches his parishioners like a teddy bear. Children especially, but women and men also, get hugs as he greets each at the church doorway.

The mutual affection is surprising, considering that White does not speak Arabic. Communication happens through a translator, apart from what few greetings he manages in Arabic, plus prayers White can recite along with the congregation in Aramaic (not only the language of Jesus Christ but also the language of the Assyrians who made up Iraq’s earliest Christian community). With enthusiasm White tells the congregation the first Sunday in April, after several weeks of traveling overseas, “You are my people, in my beloved Iraq, and I am so glad to be back with you.”

Given the risks outside St. George’s blast walls, what’s surprising also is to see Iraqis arriving at the church by busloads for a Sunday afternoon worship service.

Sunday in Baghdad is a workday, and most churches hold services at  p.m. The congregants stream in from neighborhoods nearby and across the Tigris River. Men talk on the sidewalk leading into the sanctuary, while women gather in knots of conversation in the rose garden, some in dark head coverings, Muslims who’ve come to collect a food ration but will hear what’s being taught at St. George’s along the way.

White spent time in Iraq before the war as director of the International Centre for Reconciliation based at Coventry Cathedral in England. From that post he supervised the reopening of St. George’s, which Saddam Hussein had closed when he invaded Kuwait in .

White worked with local Iraqi lay leaders and Col. Frank Wismer, a U.S. Army Reserve chaplain (and Episcopal priest) then serving in Baghdad. They cleaned up the looted and decrepit St. George’s and started

MINDY BELZ

The front steps of St. George’s used to open onto a two-lane street with steady but subdued traffic in an area of government buildings. Anyone was welcome to enjoy the garden. That all changed when suicide bombers and insurgent fighters began targeting St. George’s and other churches in Baghdad shortly after the  U.S.-led invasion.

In  five members of the church leadership disappeared—all presumed killed returning by car across the desert from a pastors’ meeting in Amman, Jordan.

Bombings and rocket launches by terrorists multiplied— in , , and notably in , when a bomb detonated near the church killed , injured hundreds more, and damaged every building on the property.

To survive, St. George’s today sits surrounded by the concrete blast walls, and two checkpoints manned by a swarm of Iraqi soldiers have to be navigated before arriving at a fortified gate that can only be opened from the inside.

When U.S. troops made their final withdrawal from Iraq in , many Americans thought the war had ended. But for most Iraqis, the terror that began with the U.S. arrival in  has never stopped. Civilian deaths, in fact, currently are running at their highest level since the height of the U.S.-led war. The UN reported , casualties from insurgent-led attacks in , the highest death toll since . Sadly, the  toll is keeping pace, with over , deaths reported in the first three months of the year.

The run-up to Iraq’s first national election following the U.S. withdrawal, scheduled for April , coincided with new aggression from foreign fighters spilling from neighboring Syria. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the new brand of al-Qaeda in Iraq, took over the city of Fallujah in January, and by April was making gains against Iraqi forces in Ramadi, just  miles from Baghdad. Overall, disgruntled Sunni militants are determined to undermine the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Christians continue to be targets. Three bombs on Christmas Day  targeted Christian neighborhoods and a church in Baghdad, killing  and wounding .

This year a car bomb near St. George’s in February killed two close associates of the church, shopkeepers who helped with supplies. Also that month, a car bombing

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‘You are my people, in my beloved Iraq, and I am so glad to be back with you.’

—Canon Andrew White

MINDY BELZ

MUTUAL AFFECTION: White with kindergarteners (above); Sunday worship at St. George’s.

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services there in . When I visited at that time, congregants filled plastic chairs over a bare floor as sound ricocheted off the tall byzantine walls. Today congregants fill wooden pews—made by a carpenter who used to work for Saddam—and both altar and baptistery have been restored.

When the church’s Iraqi lay leadership disappeared, White took up what for most people would be a full-time role as the church’s rector, leaving behind for most weeks of the year his wife of now  years and  teenage sons.

When he does travel back to England and elsewhere, the church has an Anglican-ordained Iraqi curate, Faiz Jerjees.

White also serves as president of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, a U.K.-based relief group (with offices also in the United States) that helps to fund the work at St. George’s, which includes a

cane on visits to church families or to see other clergy in Baghdad, and often sits while giving sermons. Ironically, he says the best treatment he’s received has been in Iraq, where he is able to undergo treatment using his own stem cells that’s not yet approved in England or the United States.

Little about the disease holds him back: In Baghdad it takes four cell phones to keep him going—two for calls inside Iraq, an international phone for daily calls to his wife and mother, and a Truphone for any others. When I ask White how he manages jet lag, he says flatly: “I don’t do jet lag. Wherever I am I live in the hours the day holds.”

White arrived in the States to accept in May the  Wilberforce Award given by the Virginia-based Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He had never

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heard of the award when he first learned he was its recipient, but it brings much of his life’s work full circle.

Before Coventry, White served in Clapham, where Wilberforce and others formed their community that ultimately provoked England to abolish the slave trade.

“Wilberforce used to live on the street where the church is, and I used to walk past his house every day,” said White. “The table we used to serve from is where the Clapham group met.”

White is keenly aware of the losses in

Iraq that make such awards possible. At its peak after St. George’s reopened, over  people attended Sunday worship services, often spilling into the garden. The Sunday I attended in April, the church had about 

SHAWN BALDWIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

medical clinic, library, kindergarten, and a food distribution program that serves  families twice a month.

The foundation also supports other Christian ministries in Baghdad, as well as reconciliation work among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish clergy across the region.

The Baghdad vicar maintains the roles of pastor, teacher, relief director, reconciler, worldwide speaker, and fundraiser—all while managing a -year battle with multiple sclerosis. When his Anglican overseers in England learned he had MS, they wanted to sideline him: “The Church of England doctors said I was not well enough to be a clergyman in the Church of England—so I went to Baghdad.”

Over time MS has slowed White’s speech and made it hard to stand very long without assistance. White uses a

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CENTER: KHALID MOHAMMED/AP • RIGHT: NIKOS PILOS/ZUMA PRESS

‘It’s only a matter of time,  years, and no Ch

worshippers. Most of the attrition is from Iraqi Christians moving overseas or to the north, where Kurdish regions are safer. But White says that about , in his congregation have died in violence during the last five years.

Everyone in the church has his or her own sorrow.

Najat Yacoub showed me photos of her son, bleeding from fatal neck and facial wounds, shortly after he was gunned down in the street outside their home in .

TROUBLE: St. George’s Church Insurgents kidnapped after a bombing in 2004; a Dawlat Abouna’s sispoliceman searches a man outside Our Lady of Flowers ter—twice—and each Church on Easter Sunday, 2014; time the family paid a child checks the street before ransom to free her. leaving the Assyrian Orthodox And a young man who church (from left to right).

In  Christians made up  percent

of the population in the Middle East. Today they form less than  percent of the region’s population. Iraq had an estimated . million Christians before , and by White’s and others’ estimates has possibly as few as , Christians now (Operation World in  estimated the Christian population at ,).

Militant Islam arrived long before the U.S.-led war, but there’s no question that the ouster of Saddam Hussein—and the inability of the United States, its coalition partners, or any elected Iraqi government since that time to blunt the reach of jihadi-driven terrorists here— has been a major turning point hastening the rate of Christianity’s decline across the region, from Syria and Lebanon to Iraq and Egypt. Experts contemplate that, barring some reversal, Christianity may not survive

no Christians will remain in the whole region.’

SHAWN BALDWIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

CENTER: KHALID MOHAMMED/AP • RIGHT: NIKOS PILOS/ZUMA PRESS

—Avak Asadourian

works as a driver for the church (not named for security reasons) watched as his friends died in Baghdad’s streets, then himself received threats while working for a British military contractor. He escaped north in the trunk of his uncle’s car one night, and stayed out of Baghdad four years.

Where death and danger haven’t taken a toll, separation has. St. George’s has children abandoned by parents who fled the country. And aging parents whose children have all emigrated to Canada or the United States. In a country where tight-knit families are a given—in fact, most parents live with their grown children—the rupture is traumatic. That’s especially true in the Christian community, where numbers are dropping fast.

beyond midcentury in the region of its birth.

“It’s only a matter of time,  years, and no Christians will remain in the whole region,” Avak Asadourian, the archbishop of the Armenian Church in Iraq, told me. Asadourian has been primate over the Armenian Church here since , when it numbered about ,. At the start of the Iraq war the numbers had fallen to ,, and now they are less than ,.

“I used to say to parishioners, ‘don’t leave,’ but I can’t say that any more,” said Asadourian. “It would be on my conscience if something happened to them.”

Other churches experience losses too. The Christian Missionary Alliance Church, the largest evangelical congregation, opened in Baghdad just after the 

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invasion and grew to over , members. But as insurgency took hold of the community, members fled Baghdad, several pastors were kidnapped, and the church itself was bombed in . At one point pastor Ghassan Thomas was assisting , families who sought shelter in churches to escape threats left under their doors and regular bombings and shootings. Thomas sent his own young children to school with pajamas in their backpacks because—he told me then—“we never know if it will be safe enough for them to return home.”

Thomas himself received threats and left for Turkey, planting a church for Iraqi refugees there before emigrating to Australia last year. Today the CMA church has about  in attendance, according to its current pastor, Joseph Francis. A women’s meeting I attended Saturday evening was warm, but sparsely attended. The CMA church, too, sits behind blast walls now, but inside the congregation has built a coffee shop, classrooms, and a courtyard with date palms for outdoor gatherings.

Many Iraqis told me that anyone with the means to leave wants to emigrate. But at every church I met Christians determined to stay. “I want to stay all my life,” said Mudafar Yousif, an assistant pastor at the CMA church. “I love my country, and I covenant with the Lord to serve Iraq. I love Baghdad, and I am sure if He wants me here He will keep me safe.”

Yousif was forced out of Iraq under Saddam’s rule but

returned from Jordan in . He and his wife have raised two girls, one now in her third year of universitylevel pharmacy training and another in th grade, living in mostly Muslim neighborhoods throughout the war. He is sober about the dangers they face—his older daughter narrowly missed a bomb explosion while waiting to go to school—but also sober about the reality of leaving home. “We hear that people are suffering [in the West] too. The life is very different for us there. And a doctor must work as a gas station attendant.”

At St. George’s on Sunday evening the

air turns soft again and women serve sandwiches and sodas from a large cardboard box on a lawn that’s still abuzz with talk and children’s horseplay long after dark.

Outside the blast walls the Muslim call to prayer goes up, melodious but enveloping all other sound.

It’s a metaphor for the life of Iraqi Christians, especially facing another round of elections that will once again reinforce how marginalized they are in the political process. “Did we ever need democracy here?” asks Canon White. “No, democracy is dangerous. What we have is various groups holding power who hate each other.”

When White first moved to Baghdad he lived in a trailer not far from the church in the U.S.-protected Green Zone. “In the old days I used to walk down here in the evening. Now, you cannot walk the streets.” A

Common cause Iraq’s Jewish remnant finds refuge among Baghdad’s Christians

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The British opened St. George’s in  as a memorial to the British dead of the Mesopotamia campaign of World War I. Iraq by then had become an independent state, but remained heavily dependent on the British and would be reoccupied by them during World War II. In that period came a form of emancipation for Iraq’s Christians and Jews, who for the first time since Ottoman rule, which began in the s, became full citizens alongside Muslims. The British abolished their dhimmi status, and King Faisal I, the country’s ruler from  to , declared: “There is no meaning in the words Jews, Muslims and Christians in the terminology of patriotism, there is simply a country called Iraq and all are Iraqis.”

Each Sunday St. George’s filled with Anglican believers from the Commonwealth stationed in Iraq. Christians comprised nearly one-fifth of the city population. At the same time, Jews made up one-third of Baghdad’s population (about ,). Iraq’s first minister of finance was Jewish, and Hebrew was listed as one of the country’s official languages. But winds of dark change were blowing— chiefly, rising Arab nationalism and toxic Nazi sympathies.

With the end of World War II and the creation of a modern Jewish state in Israel, Iraq’s Jewish community, once the largest and most prosperous ethnic group in Iraq, was targeted for extinction. Jews were forced out—or crushed, their business and property confiscated, and many killed.

By  only  Jews lived in Baghdad and the city’s remaining synagogue was shuttered. Ten years later in Baghdad there are six Jews. They live scattered throughout the city and are discreet about their identity. Baghdad’s Christian residents take the decline of the Jews to heart, as they’ve watched their own numbers halved since the start of the  war. St. George’s Church supports the remaining Jews, and Canon Andrew White makes regular visits with them. —M.B.

Email: mbelz@wng.org

4/30/14 9:05 AM

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S

-- A knew something wasn’t right as soon as she and her mother, Maria, walked out of their home on the morning of Dec. , . They slipped into the car and noted the presence of two strange vehicles parked on their quiet street. A few minutes later, Ashley noted another strange vehicle parked on the curb at her Sacramento-area high school as she told her mom goodbye.

That was the last time Ashley saw her mother in the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in an unmarked car followed Maria, then , down the street and arrested her on unknown charges. Agents bound Maria’s hands, feet, and waist in chains for processing, and when she asked for a lawyer, an agent said, “You don’t need a lawyer.

You need to go back to Mexico.” Within hours, she was en route to Tijuana on a bus with three other women and dozens of men, who harassed her during the overnight trip. She had no coat or blanket to protect against the cold night air—made worse since the bus windows stayed down for the trek south.

Maria also wasn’t allowed off the bus or allowed toilet paper when her menstrual cycle started.

Maria’s story is one of millions. Former President George W. Bush presided over a record . million deportations in eight years, and President Barack Obama will eclipse that mark this year—his fifth in office. The Obama administration insists it is focused on deporting criminals, but many immigrants, including Maria, had no prior run-ins with the law

when they were forced to leave and many have ANGEL: spouses and children who are U.S. citizens. The “We made result is too many single-parent homes producthe decision ing at-risk young adults. They may be more because of the kids.” likely to engage in criminal activity, become pregnant outside of marriage, and become locked in a cycle of government dependency.

“They’re not picking up mom and dad and three kids and putting them in a van and graciously escorting them back to their country of origin—that’s not what’s happening,” said Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “Families are being separated. It’s wrong.”

Maria and her husband Angel (WORLD agreed not to use their real names) came to the United States as newlyweds on a travel visa in  and decided to stay. Life was hard: Angel’s first job packing concrete required him to walk two hours each way to work a shift from  a.m. to  a.m. The couple had two children, both U.S. citizens, and became active in an evangelical church after converting from Catholicism.

Angel and Maria applied for and received work permits in  and renewed them annually for nine years, paying more than , each time for legal help and application fees. But in October , when they had steady jobs and owned two houses, everything changed: They received an unexpected letter ordering them to voluntarily vacate the United States within  days or face deportation. Angel said he and Maria discussed the situation and decided they couldn’t take Alex, then , and Ashley, then , away from the only country they had ever known. “We made the decision because of the kids,” he told me. “It’s their future I’m worried about.”

When Alex turned  in October , he petitioned for his parents’ residency. The family isn’t sure whether that’s what

LIFE IN THE A SURGE IN DEPORTATIONS IS SPLITTING APART THE FAMILIES OF MANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

BY J.C. DERRICK PHOTOS BY GARY FONG/GENESIS 

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drew attention to them, but Maria was deported six weeks later. Angel is still in the United States and hasn’t seen his wife since she left to take their daughter to school in .

V

    the current immigration system, which too often contradicts itself, keeps out those it should let in, lets in those it should keep out, and punishes those who follow the rules. But in lieu of a political miracle, comprehensive immigration reform will not happen this year, and maybe not until after the  election, causing immigrant advocates to turn their attention to record-setting deportation numbers. President Obama in March ordered Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to conduct a review of the administration’s deportation policy. The results are expected in the coming weeks.

Samuel Rodriguez said he’s personally pleaded with Obama to slow deportations—most of which he’s convinced target “good, hard-working, God-fearing individuals”—and the president maintains he can’t undermine the rule of law.

Yet the recent outcry may give him political cover to take executive action. After discussing immigration during an April visit to the Oval Office, Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, believes Obama may think he can take action on his own, Moore told me, but most people “would prefer the president work with Republicans to fix the system.”

In June , less than five months before his reelection, Obama signed an executive order granting amnesty to illegal immigrants who were unlawfully brought to the United States as children. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows young adults who meet certain criteria to pay  to apply for consideration, and if approved, they receive a renewable, two-year work permit.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved , DACA applications in fiscal year , including Cynthia Huerta, a -year-old college student who works at a Houston law firm. Despite working full time, Huerta—whose parents brought her to the United States legally at age  and overstayed their visas—already has  hours of college credit en route to an industrial psychology degree. She works Saturdays to get in her  hours and keep up with school.

Huerta said DACA has been hugely helpful, but it only partly removes uncertainty: Her driver’s license and work permit expire on Dec. , and a lapse in legal status would render her DACA ineligible—even if her application is submitted months before the deadline. USCIS will not release the renewal form until late May. “There’s people like me with no criminal background who have been waiting for over a year” for a first approval, Huerta said. “That’s what scares me about the coming renewal.”

Such uncertainty is why Republicans almost universally opposed Obama’s executive action and the House last year voted to defund DACA, even though members of both parties largely agree that immigrants brought here as children should not be deported. Republicans cite a distrust of Obama as the

MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES IN THREE CATEGORIES, 1955-1995

ration reform 1986 immig

sed; quota impo Hemispheric ed at in rm te gram Bracero Pro 500,000

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Homeland Security ()

400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

Y TEMPORAR TS N A R IG IMM

1955

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1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

KRIEG BARRIE

LEGAL R IG IMM ANTS

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slapped him with a -year bar and later a -year bar from entering the United States Murillo says he didn’t deserve.

Murillo has traveled to the border to meet her husband a handful of times, but not since . “My -year-old has seen his father once,” she said. “Best case scenario he comes back in .”

Critics say the bars have been counterproductive.

Recent analysis shows eliminating them would provide a way to legal status for about one-third of the approximately  million people illegally in the country, who currently have no other recourse.

Sarah Monty, an immigration attorney in Houston, called the law harsh: “Is a primary breadwinner going to wait  years? No, he’s going to come back in,” she said.

“They thought this was going to stop illegal immigration, and all it did is line the pockets of the human smugglers and document makers.”

Monty compares the situation to Prohibition, which made criminals out of otherwise honest people—only this is being reunited with family, not having a drink. Reform advocates say lawmakers should alter the U.S. immigration system to encourage lawful entry—as it once did.

In the s President Dwight Eisenhower expanded the Bracero visa program to allow seasonal workers into the country. Illegal immigration plummeted (even as border patrol agents dipped below ,), but under pressure from labor unions, and despite strong objections from Mexico, Congress voted to eliminate the program in .

Between  and , illegal immigrants from Latin America went from near zero to . million, accounting for more than  percent of the current undocumented population, according to Princeton professors Douglas Massey and Karen Pren. They wrote in  that illegal immigration rose “not because there was a sudden surge in Mexican migration, but because the temporary labor program had been terminated and the number of permanent resident visas had been capped, leaving no legal way to accommodate the long-established flows.”

Regardless of why they’re here, David Crosby, pastor of First Baptist Church in New Orleans, said what matters is that they are treated fairly while in the United States. He told me immigrants played a big role in rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and yet his church routinely sees them become victims of theft, assault, rape, murder, and other crimes—with no legal or medical recourse. “They cannot and will not access medical care and police protection. Because it’s unsafe for them, it’s unsafe for all of us.”

For Angel, Alex, and Ashley, life without their wife and mother continues. After Maria was taken, Ashley began having frequent panic attacks and withdrew from her high school. She has since returned and is considering several state universities that have accepted her for the fall term. She said losing her mom has allowed her to learn a lot, including how to cook and be a housewife—and how to forgive.

“I don’t blame ICE—I know they’re just doing their jobs,” Ashley said. “It’s very hard to not have your mom, but I’ve learned forgiveness through all that’s happened. … Our faith in God is very strong.” A LEARNED A LOT: Ashley and Alex with Angel.

primary reason they won’t move forward on immigration reform, but another legislative problem lurks: The Senate could take any immigration bill the GOP-controlled House approves and attach the immigration overhaul it passed last year. “We’re more than happy as Republicans to dig in and solve problems, but don’t force us into a corner to get amnesty,” said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., who has a high Hispanic population in his district.

Pearce told me if Senate Democrats would agree to work on a piece-by-piece basis, the two parties have plenty of common ground. He recently partnered with Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, to introduce the American Families United Act, which would exempt, on a case-by-case basis, immediate family members of U.S. citizens who are barred from lawful re-entry. (Per a  law, six to  months of unlawful presence triggers a three-year bar, more than  months triggers a -year bar, and breaking either one triggers a -year bar.)

KRIEG BARRIE

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’     , but Cathy Murillo is holding out hope that it will become law. She’s raising four children (two from a prior marriage) by herself in Arnold, Mo., after her husband voluntarily returned to Mexico in  to correct his visa. They thought the process would take a year at most. Instead, U.S. officials Email: jderrick@wng.org

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      

PUTIN’S PLAYBOOK        

BY JILL NELSON

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Despite some bad press in recent months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has no shortage of fans. Thanks to an endless stream of propaganda and countless Kremlinsponsored photo shoots (often bare-chested), the leader’s image has been transformed over the years from a cold Soviet KGB officer into a sporty and masculine head of state worthy of leading Russia into a new era.

Look closely at photos of the Russian leader and you’ll find another symbolic reason for his popularity: He often wears a chain with a gold cross and claims to have been secretly baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) by his mother when he was a child. More than the leader whose rise to power in 2000 brought about an era of economic gains and regional clout, Putin is heralded as the protector of Christendom.

While the West declares sanctions against Moscow for its destabilizing activities in Ukraine, Putin defenders are applauding his moves: His approval rating among Russians rose to  percent following the annexation of Crimea. Many buy the claim their leader is simply trying to protect ethnic Russians from the ever-encroaching depravity of the West.

Pravda columnist Xavier Lerma wrote: “In the East there is someone that causes the western liberal’s maniacal laughter to stop. Vladimir Putin. He has real world power, which causes the liberal media to fearfully ignore or warp his image.

Like a good Christian King he leads a nation to Christ.”

Last summer, the Russian leader made a pilgrimage to Kiev to commemorate the ,th anniversary of the region’s

Protector of Christendom? Putin meets with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Moscow (left) and lights candles at a Christmas service in the Trinity St. George Monastery in Sochi (above).

conversion to Christianity, and on Easter, he received a personal blessing from the Patriarch Kirill, the head of the ROC. In the West, some conservative Christians share high regard for Putin, citing U.S. support for gay marriage and

MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/RIA-NOVOSTI, PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AP

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abortion at a time when Russia—under Putin’s leadership and the blessing of the ROC—has passed laws ostensibly designed to bolster the traditional family.

But Christians in Ukraine and Russia are issuing a strong warning against blindly following a leader whose track record includes more than a decade of eroding democratic freedoms and whose definition of Christianity includes but one church: the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarch, a church that became a puppet of Soviet leaders during the Cold War. When Maidan protests in Kiev began last November, Andre Barkov remembers that some of the initial resistance was from Christians. Barkov, managing director of a micro-loan company, spoke with a woman representing the Union of Evangelical Baptists—the largest evangelical denomination in Ukraine and Russia—who explained that she was against the European Union because it is the “one world government” from the book of Revelation in the Bible. Barkov encountered also a British man, a senior partner at Oliver Wyman, a prominent consulting firm, who claimed to be extremely conservative and openly supportive of Putin as the only hope for the West in his support for traditional values and stands against the American and European liberal and homosexual agenda.

Barkov—who says he was “terribly surprised” when his Russian staff voiced support for the Russian leader—explains that the majority of Ukrainian churches supported Maidan from day one, and the Union of Evangelical Baptists eventually joined the rest of the churches after the government’s response to peaceful protesters turned deadly in January. The Russian Orthodox Church, however, kept its distance.

Now Ukraine has moved onto bigger problems and the church divide is growing, particularly between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches.

Moscow denied the arrival of Russian troops on Feb.  in Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula, and Ukrainians began calling the soldiers “little green men.” Russia has since annexed the region and now “little green men” have been sighted stirring up unrest in eastern Ukraine.

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Blind trust: Putin supporters rally near the Kremlin.

Russian identification with the ROC may be on the rise but only 2 percent of the population regularly attends church.

John Bernbaum, who has worked in Russia since 1990, says that despite the rebirth of the ROC, Russia remains even more

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Jonathan Alpeyrie

Everyday Saints—a book by the head of the Sretensky Monastery who has reportedly served as a spiritual advisor to Putin— has amplified the re-Christianization of Russia. The book has sold more than 1 million hard copies, and Russians voted it the most popular book in Russia in 2012.

Putin—who could run for another six-year term as president in 2018—proclaimed in a recent keynote speech that the West has moved away from its Christian roots, carving out a “path to degradation.”

Protestant Christians in Russia respond, “Putin? Christian?

I would say he knows that a country needs a big idea in order to be united. So did Prince Vladimir in 988, who forcefully made people get dunked in the Dnipro waters in Kiev,” said Andre Furmanov, a pastor in Vyborg, Russia. “Putin is really pushing ‘Christian’ religion—a set of rules and regulations to achieve something more important, not Christian faith as a personal relationship with God—to get more power and more support from those who are either ‘illusioned’ or have no time to stop and think.”

Furmanov said some members of his church were initially swept away by Russian propaganda, but church members were able to guide them to a more balanced view.

Ivan Sekretarev/AP

How do Christian supporters of Putin justify the takeover of government buildings in the sovereign territory of another country? (Putin has since admitted the true identity of the “little green men” in Crimea but still denies the existence of Russian operatives in eastern Ukraine).

Larry Jacobs, Managing Director of the World Congress of Families (WCF), said his U.S.-based nonprofit planned a September pro-family summit in Moscow. But the group ­suspended planning for the event last month for logistical reasons related to sanctions. Focus on the Family, an original sponsor, already had backed out of the event in March, citing “the recent political events,” and other organizations also dropped out early on, including Concerned Women for American and Alliance for Defending Freedom.

Don Feder, WCF communications director, made his proPutin sympathies clear in an article published in American Thinker in March: “But don’t I care about a possible Russian annexation of the Crimea and eastern Ukraine (with its Russian-oriented, Orthodox population), conservatives who are still fighting the Cold War ask me? Not really.” Feder cites Putin’s sponsoring a bill passed in Russia last summer criminalizing homosexual propaganda targeting youth, ­bolstering Moscow’s image among some circles as the ­protector of the traditional family.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the number of Russians who ­identify themselves as Orthodox has risen to between 70 and 80 percent, and there are now close to 30,000 churches across the country. The incredible popularity of

IVAN SEKRETAREV/AP

JONATHAN ALPEYRIE

secular than Europe: “Most of those people who say they’re Orthodox don’t believe in God.” Anatoli, a Russian Christian from St. Petersburg who asked that I not use his real name due to security concerns, said few churches in Russia speak out against the government because they know they will be shut down. He teaches his kids about democracy and history in the privacy of their home but cautions them against participating in controversial topics about “democracy, freedom, human rights or USSR history” at school.

Some journalists have attempted to confront the rolling back of post-Soviet freedoms and have paid the price with their lives. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Russia as the fourth deadliest nation for the press, following Iraq, the Philippines, and Algeria. Fifty-four people have been killed in journalism-related deaths in Russia since , including outspoken human rights activist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya in .

Those who voice dissent risk being labeled spies, and a new law that would redefine “cults” is being considered by Russia’s State Duma and could put Protestant Christians at further risk, Anatoli said.

Those are the trends Kostya Farkovets worries about when he sees signs of Russian influence in his hometown of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine, where even some of his Christian friends have bought the Kremlin line.

“Russians are our brothers and Obama is not,” read one slogan. “That’s the sort of mentality that’s been hammered in

by Russian propaganda and it’s hard to beat,” Farkovets explained to me. “Who are your brothers—the Canadians who live next door to you or the Chinese although they turn the wheels of your economy in a certain way?”

ACCORDING TO RECENT POLLS, only  percent of residents in nearby Donetsk, a city of  million, want to be part of Russia, but the group is well organized. Pro-Russian separatists and Kremlin-backed special forces remained firmly in control of more than a dozen cities in Ukraine in late April, and Ukrainian television stations in several towns have been replaced with stations from the Russian Federation.

NATO estimates at least , Russian troops are massed near Ukraine’s border, and Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned on April  that Moscow is trying to occupy his country and start a third world war. After the unraveling of mid-April talks in Geneva, Washington threatened new sanctions against Russia for its refusal “to take a single concrete step in the right direction,” according to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Fear is rising that Russia could use the deaths of proRussian separatists during renewed Ukrainian anti-terrorist operations aimed at freeing the East as a pretext for invasion prior to Ukraine’s national elections scheduled for May .

But Christians in Ukraine have not lost hope. Sergey Kukushkin says he has witnessed newfound unity among eastern Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants in his southern town of Kherson. However, the Russian Orthodox Church will not participate in events where other churches are present— such as the Maidan protests or interdenominational gatherings— because they claim to be the only true church.

Email: jnelson@wng.org

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But even in the ROC there are small signs of reform, say observers. Metropolitan Hilarion—the head of external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church—is “under a lot of heat from the conservative wing of the church” because he talks to evangelicals, says Bernbaum.

Hilarion meets every few months with a men’s Bible study launched three years ago by Bernbaum’s ministry, the RussianAmerican Institute, that  business executives attend.

IN VOLATILE EASTERN UKRAINE, Sergey Kosyak, a pastor in Donetsk, said the prayer tent in his city commemorated its th day of prayer on April  by holding communion, and he sees these difficult times as an opportunity for God to work in the lives of the people.

“It was very unusual because different denominations have different theological views and order for Holy Communion, but after  days of standing together in prayer, dealing with threats, bad weather, and fear, we have learned to cherish each other,” Kosyak wrote on Facebook (his English is limited, but a friend translates the online updates).

Kosyak told me he lives each day trusting God, and when he takes written prayers to pro-Russian separatists, he prays he won’t be beaten. So far he has escaped numerous dangerous situations unharmed. At a separatist checkpoint in Donetsk on April  he escaped the usual questioning heading into the former regional administration building: “I had learned that one of the separatist commanders was a former youth director of one of the major Kosyak churches of our brotherhood.”

The two men greeted each other happily and Kosyak asked his old friend to consider God and return home. “I hope he heard me,” said Kosyak. Outside he encountered people passing out Christian literature to the separatists and praying prayers of repentance.

Opportunities to show forgiveness and mercy may be the salve that heals the massive divisions plaguing both Ukraine and Russia, and the stories abound.

When pro-Russian separatists tore down the Ukrainian flag from the Donetsk prayer tent on April , a group of men tracked them down and beat them up. Two Christian leaders led the bruised and battered separatists back to the prayer tent, patched up their bloodied faces, and gave them copies of the New Testament.

“There are people on both sides of the fence who need God,” Kosyak wrote. “The church stands as an unbroken outpost, calling on the whole city to prayerfully humble ourselves before God.” A M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D

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The government has diverted precious water from Central California farms, and farmers are fighting back

by A ng e l a Lu

p h o t o s b y m at t p u r c i e l

Water resistan W

50

hen Adam Icardo,

a third-generation Central California farmer, steps outside his farm’s office in Mettler, Calif., he’s hit with an ugly sight: a swatch of baked dirt and weeds where neat rows of leafy canary tomato plants should be growing.

“The effect of the drought on this area is devastating; you don’t realize what a problem it is until it hits your front door,” said Icardo as he gazed off over his 1,000-acre farm. “It’s hard to see part of your field with no production. … It’s emotional.”

This year marks the first time Icardo has had to fallow–or leave unplanted–20 percent of his family farm because of a lack of water. For Icardo, it means no tomatoes, as thirsty almond trees get dibs on the scarce water supply. For his farm workers, six-day workweeks are cut to five. Icardo said this time of year pick-up trucks filled with seasonal workers typi-

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ance cally bump down gravel roads from farm to farm looking for work. This year, the newly paved road lies empty.

With its mild climate and close proximity to water-rich Northern California, the Central Valley has become the “breadbasket of the world,” producing between  to  percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, and nearly all of its almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. Yet after three consecutive years of drought topped with stifling water policies, an estimated , acres—about  percent of the state’s farmland—will lie fallow this year, drying up jobs, kicking up

food prices, and angering farmers who blame the problem on environmentalists.

Drivers commuting along California’s Interstate  pass strawberry fields as well as parched, tumbleweed-filled expanses, and signs farmers erected to explain the latter.

“Congress created dust bowl,” reads one. “Food grows where water flows.” “No Water = No Jobs.” While water has always been an issue for the valley—some regions only receive  inches of rainfall each year—the frustration stems from the fact that environmental regulations protecting the -inch delta smelt and restoring a lost tribe of salmon are barring farmers from the water they’ve paid for.

Since , farmers have received less and less of their water allocation from state and federal water projects. This year, many Central Valley farmers will get zero percent of their federal allocation and a measly  percent from the state water project. Wildlife refugees, on the other hand, will receive  percent of their usual supply.

“This is an angering problem: It didn’t rain, but we know there’s water out there,” Icardo said. To save the delta smelt, regulators flush water in the San Joaquin River Delta out to the ocean rather than to the farms. Icardo bristled at the thought: “It’s still true that fish take priority over families and people’s lives.”

Part of the problem is the disconnect between the state’s urban areas and the agriculture-heavy Central California that provides their food. Democrats dominate in Sacramento, backed by environmentalists who see farmers as destroyers of the land’s natural habitat. To combat that perception is Andy Vidak, a cherry farmer who won a state Senate seat last summer. He spent his spring recess working on his Hanford cherry farm, more comfortable working in the dirt with his cowboy hat and blue jeans than schmoozing in the legislature.

A native of the Central Valley, Vidak has THIRSTY had his hand in all aspects of the agriculture LAND: Water industry: He’s participated on meat judging shortage leads to contentious teams, harvested all over the Western United decisions.

States, worked at a cold storage company, and finally bought his own farm. During the first serious drought in , Vidak remembers watching in shock as his friends waited in a food line only to receive a can of carrots from China.

“That just broke my heart,” Vidak said. “Here we are in the breadbasket of the world, and we got farm workers standing in the food lines because we have no jobs for them because we have no water because of radical environmentalists.”

Frustrated, he decided to run for Congress in  against Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Costa, and despite a  percent Democratic advantage in his district, only narrowly lost in a recount. Assuming that he’d done his civic duty, Vidak returned to his farm work.

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But when state Sen. Michael Rubio resigned last summer, people started bugging Vidak to run. Realizing the need for a farmer’s voice in Sacramento, Vidak threw his name in the ring promising to fight for water rights. In an upset, Vidak became the district’s first Republican representative in  years. California Republican strategists were shocked that a cherry farmer had won in a majority-Democratic district that was  percent Hispanic. In response, Vidak said “common sense has no party line.”

Yet in Sacramento, that common sense is hard to find.

Environmentalists complain of the damage dams and irriga-

tion systems have done to the ecosystem of the San Joaquin River, and in  won a lawsuit to restore water to a -mile dry stretch of river to boost a Chinook salmon population that hasn’t been around since the dam was created in the s. In , a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report found the delta smelt was threatened by pumping into the water systems, and has since allowed more than  million gallons of water to flow out to the ocean. California growers sued, and while a lower court called the biological opinion “arbitrary and capricious,” the th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with environmentalists in a decision announced in March.

“The power base in Sacramento, the liberal elites, believe we shouldn’t even be here,” Vidak said. “They are so far removed from where their food comes from. … It comes from a store, water comes from the tap.”

Unemployment in the four counties Vidak represents ranges from  to  percent. Not just farm workers, but truck drivers, agriculture equipment businesses, packaging companies, and grocery stockers are losing jobs. And the problem spreads further than the farming communities in the valley: The state of California could lose as much as  billion of the



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. billion agriculture industry this year, according to the California Farm Water Coalition. While the effects of the drought on food prices are yet unknown, a recent Arizona State University study predicted food prices could increase as much as  percent for a head of lettuce and  percent for tomatoes.

Vidak is working to put a water bond on the November ballot to create more water storage, ensure farming communities get clean drinking water, and protect the delta water supply. But even if it passes, it could take five to seven years before farmers see the effects. And Greg Wegis, a fifth generation farmer in Bakersfield, needs that water now.

To keep his almond, pistachio, and pomegranate crops growing on his ,-acre family farm, Wegis will spend . million this year to drill three new wells on his land. Farmers are so desperate to find groundwater that drilling rigs often have a six month to one year wait list. Other farmers spend a fortune buying water from districts with senior water rights or growers with extra water—Icardo said that while rates used to be around  or  per acre-foot (the amount of water needed to flood an acre with a foot of water), it now costs , per acre-foot: “Water has become gold.”

The water from wells has its own issues. Groundwater is higher in sodium and boron, requiring treatment, and is at times unusable. As farmers lean more heavily on underground aquifers, the water is being depleted faster than it’s being replenished. Vidak, Wegis, and Icardo all mentioned the looming battle over state-regulated groundwater.

VIDAK: Currently the groundwater is managed “… the liberal locally, but in April, a Southern California elites believe state senator introduced a water conservawe shouldn’t tion bill that would allow the state water even be here.” board to step in when local agencies don’t stop over-pumping.

Wegis is frustrated by how environmentalists portray farmers as water hogs or chemical abusers. In actuality, California’s long-time water problems have forced farmers to invent new ways to conserve as much water as possible. For instance, rather than flooding a field with water, farmers use drip irrigation by running the water through a pipe poked with holes so that water, along with needed pesticides, is directed only at the plant’s roots.

As the drought worsens, Wegis is expanding the family business beyond farming to include agriculture service companies. He hopes to pass on the farm to the next generation, including his - and -year-old daughters. But at this point, he’s not sure what will be left: “We’re afraid land values may be affected by not having water to farm with. … I’m extremely concerned about the future when water is an issue.” A

Email: alu@wng.org

4/30/14 11:44 AM

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4/29/14 11:37 AM

Sudden impa Films that deal fairly with Christians are getting a respectful audience at major film festivals

54 

CREDIT

Director Jesse Moss filming his documentary The Overnighters

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credit

by Emily Belz in New York

pact

CREDIT

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The credits rolled at a screening and an audience at a Chelsea theater erupted in extended applause for a middle-aged, theologically conservative Lutheran as he walked to the front, his son in tow.

Jay Reinke is the central character in an award-winning documentary The Overnighters that had its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film shows Reinke serving as the pastor of a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in one of North Dakota’s fracking boom towns that have been inundated with male laborers. The population has expanded so quickly that housing is expensive or impossible to find; RV camps pop up everywhere, and workers sleep in their cars.

Williston, the North Dakota town at the center of the film, bans RVs and tries to prevent the men, some former convicts and drug addicts, from parking anywhere overnight. Despite the town’s hostility, Reinke’s church decided to open its doors and let men looking for work sleep in the church and its parking lot. Over two years, until the city shut down the church’s program, the church hosted, prayed with, and preached to 1,000 overnighters. They work on resumés together and share job contacts and discuss family problems. It’s a fantastically complex film that treats its Christian subjects fairly and compassionately.

The Tribeca Film Festival, though only 12 years old, is growing into one of the major festivals along with Sundance, Toronto, and South By Southwest. The festival circuit has grown more and more influential as independent films draw wider audi-

ences and more dollars. The Overnighters wasn’t the only film at Tribeca with a religious main character, a small indication of a shifting attitude among the film elite. The Overnighters won an award at Sundance and already has a distributor, Drafthouse Films, which is scheduling a theatrical release in November.

Gaining access to major festivals is hard enough; a theatrical release is the stuff of filmmakers’ dreams. Drafthouse plans to adopt a new distribution strategy so the film screens beyond art house theaters. If a community has enough people who want to see the film, Drafthouse will help them book a showing in their town.

At a coffee shop in Chelsea between screenings of his film, I asked Jesse Moss, director of The Overnighters, if he thought he faced any barriers to getting a film into festivals with a devout Christian as the main character. First of all, he said directors who want to get into festivals just need to make good films, regardless of religious content.

But he’s noticed “a real appetite” for films about issues of faith.

Craig Detweiler, a film professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., has noticed the same thing over the decade he has taken a group of his students to Sundance, along with film students from other Christian colleges on the West Coast. Detweiler has seen more openness to religion at festivals, which he attributes to a postmodern

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a flawed hero. True generosity has a cost. “You and I are a lot more alike that we are different,” Reinke tells a drug addict staying in the church in the film. “I’m broken, we’re broken.”

Those in churches and nonprofits will find the film painful to watch, because the story is familiar in the pitfalls of well-intentioned ministry and the personal failings of leaders. Moss produced an honest, messy story that comes from spending  months watching an overstretched church and an overstretched pastor.

The film festival audiences didn’t all react warmly. In a brief discussion with Moss and Reinke after the screening of The Overnighters, one woman stood up and told Reinke that his faith was “silly,” and that he was “antiSemitic” for pushing “your version of Christianity.” She concluded, “The pastor was promoting a Nazi environment.” Audience members began to boo and shout at her, but Moss immediately stepped in to defend Reinke: “What I saw in that church was America.

Next question.”

Another woman stood up a few minutes later. “I just want to dispute what the other lady said,” she began. “I thought I was going to see something about a pastor and religion and I was leery. Or about fracking and I was going to be [ticked] off. But I loved the film. Thank you.”

Audience members swarmed Reinke after, and he unobtrusively shared his faith. As they praised his service, he talked about Lutheran liturgy, where you recite, “Lord, your Word is true, I have sinned,” at the opening of services. It’s not, Lord, here are the good things I’ve done this week, he told a knot of Manhattanites around him.

SCREEN TIME: Reinke and Moss attend The Overnighters premiere at the  Sundance Film Festival.

JEROD HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES FOR SUNDANCE

,   in San Francisco, does not consider himself religious and had not intended to make a film centered on a church and a pastor when he went out to make a documentary on the fracking boom. “I think if you had asked me three years ago, could I ever imagine making a film about a Lutheran pastor in a church, I’d say no,” he said. As Moss spent more time in Williston, he realized that the pastor should be the center of the story, a “prism,” he says, through which to see the economic struggle of the men drawn to the boom town. The film has echoes of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—the —the struggle of the lower class seeking opportunity in an unknown place, where few people have compassion for their plight. One overnighter who finally gets a construction job, leaves the church, and rents a ramshackle room finds out that his wife at home has left him for another man. As he packs his bags to go try to win her back, he mourns that he came out to provide for his family, and it will perhaps cost him his family.

The thousands still flocking to North Dakota are part of an “ageold American journey” to the frontier in search of opportunity, said Moss. “We know from the gold rush of , all those guys that went out there to mine for gold really found very little. They found, maybe, something else,” he said. “So I wanted to follow

people, including Jay, to see whether this boom brought redemption and opportunity and promise that they were seeking or whether it was fool’s gold–whether the reality of leaving your home and family behind and thinking you can go out and start a new life and save yourself or save your family, whether that’s an illusion. And I don’t think it is, but the reality of surviving in Williston is much, much harder than people realize.”

Reinke was “at the pinch point of these tremendous forces,” Moss said.

The film presents Reinke as a hero, but

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THE OVERNIGHTERS: DRAFTHOUSE FILMS • MISCONCEPTION: PARTICIPANT MEDIA • YU: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES

society where everyone has a camera and a seat at the table. “In an earlier era film festivals might have been comfortable presenting one-sided attacks on religion,” Detweiler said. “I think we’re just seeing the first wave of what has been building over  years. … Independent film at its best is about crossing borders and lifting alternative voices.”

JEROD HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES FOR SUNDANCE

THE OVERNIGHTERS: DRAFTHOUSE FILMS • MISCONCEPTION: PARTICIPANT MEDIA • YU: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES

O

  documentary filmmakers may not make many films about devout Christians is that they sometimes struggle to find willing subjects. Another major documentary at Tribeca, Misconception, had an evangelical Christian as one of three main characters. The film by Oscarwinning director Jessica Yu is about population trends and follows three story lines: a Chinese bachelor frustrated in his search for a wife under the one-child policy; an evangelical Christian and pro-life advocate at the UN; and a Ugandan journalist who writes about abandoned children.

In producing Misconception, Yu wanted to highlight religious advocates at the UN and met with the coalition of pro-life groups there. They all refused to participate in the film, except for Denise Mountenay, who is winningly earnest in her faith but said enough cringeworthy comments that she was probably not the best representative of the group. (When Mountenay is meeting with the delegate from Bangladesh about abortion, she gives him a model of a baby at  weeks in brown plastic and says: “It’s your color!”) The audience laughed at Mountenay through the film, though she was sitting in the audience. Still, she gamely went to the front for questions after and said she loved the film.

“There’s some mistrust [from Christians] and I understand that,” said Yu in an interview. “But I think that’s what leads to the lack of communication. We did want to tell the story from a perspective you don’t see a lot at film festivals.”

Moss in filming The Overnighters put considerable effort into building relationships in the church; he went by himself instead of with a crew, to be more approachable. For six months of the filming, he slept in the church with all the men, but members of the church still felt that he shouldn’t be intruding.

“It would have been nice if they had been a little more forthcoming, but I don’t think they’re painted in a reductive way. I think they’re really dignified in their voice, because they deserve to be,” Moss said. “I would love to show this in churches, in seminaries across America, if they would have me.” A

Email: ebelz@wng.org

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TELLING THE STORY: Reinke in a scene from The Overnighters; a scene from Misconception; Yu (from top to bottom).

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WHY TRINITY?

6 GREAT REASONS

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OUR FAITH IS EVERYTHING

4

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Trinity’s graduation rate is 6% higher than the national average. It is 8% higher than 4-year public institutions. It is 36% higher than 4-year for-profit institutions.

Our 11:1 student to faculty ratio ensures that students receive support and attention. Professors will mentor you as they help you reach your goal of graduating.

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Trinity professors live out their Christian faith and integrate faith into the curriculum. 100% of Trinity courses are taught by professors— not Teaching Assistants.

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One factor that contributes to the employment success of our graduates is that 100% of our students receive an internship or field experience before they graduate from Trinity.

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4/25/14 5:45 PM

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

Beyond nachos >>

The push for authentic cultural dishes has opened the door to a new breed of MexicanAmerican food

SOPHIA LEE

BY SOPHIA LEE

A D L T, , a thirdgeneration Mexican-American born and raised in Los Angeles, fondly remembers scampering back home from school every afternoon to the spice-woven aromas of braising chicharrones simmering in a heavy pot on the stove. The crispy pork rinds, stewed until soft and slurpy and soaked in savory juices and vegetables, filled his little stomach.

De La Torre, with his son Armando Jr. working beside him, serves the same childhood dish to his customers at two (soon three) L.A. sites of Guisados, a family-run taqueria that serves stews and braises (Guisados literally means “stewed”) over HOMESTYLE: thick, freshGuisados slapped tortillas. customers (left) Guisados is one of and one of their the many hometacos (top).

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad

10 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 59

style Mexican restaurants sprouting up across the United States that serve what many call “authentic” food.

That’s a change. Mexican-American food has for decades conjured images of cheeseladen nachos, and purist foodies have disdained it; but burritos, quesadillas, and chimichangas are gradually shedding the “Mexican” part of their identity and becoming simply “American”—another tasty addition to the ever-churning melting pot.

Food writer Bill Esparza says restaurants like Guisados are the “poster child of the new breed of Mexican-American food.” Dishes such as the inky mole poblano (a rich sauce ground from dried chiles, fruits, nuts, and chocolate) and tongue-burning cochinita pibil (Yucatan slow-roasted pork) now retain recognizable flavors and traditions. Meanwhile, Mexican fusion is still gaining steam, which worries some chefs and food writers: In this age of foodies and celebrity chefs, hunger for authenticity clashes with a thrill for the exotic and innovative.

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Notebook > Lifestyle

of Mexican Food, has tucked into the Mexican hybrids such as cumininfused chili con carne from Texas, green-chile-laden enchiladas with blue corn tortillas from New Mexico, gooey carne asada fries from San Diego, and bloated Mission-style burritos from San Francisco. “Just because they’re different doesn’t make them any less Mexican,” Pilcher said, using the packaged crunchy taco shell as an example.

Some call it “the McDonald-ization of the tortilla,” but Mexican immigrants invented the golden taco shells to adjust to their new surroundings and clientele.

Still, Guisados’ De La Torre continues to emphasize simple, homestyle braises.

His favorite memories circle around

such dishes: helping his mother pick stones out of beans; watching her turn those humble legumes into a thick, soul-warming stew; and chopping up grilled meats for tacos during big family outdoor feasts.

When he first started out, his unfamiliar dishes confused customers.

“Carne asada, carne asada, carne asada,” chanted De La Torre: Customers just asked for a standard grilled meat dish. Now, even the gringos request spicier and spicier dishes—so he created the fiery chiles torreados, a five-chile blend that roasts mouths, stings fingers, and expands the melting pot.

SPREADING: A Kogi food truck near the campus of UCLA.

Applying Knox



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KOGI: MATT SAYLES/AP • KNOX: DUNCAN1890/ISTOCK

Simonetta Carr has written seven books in her series of Christian Biographies for Young Readers.

Researching and writing books about Christian leaders as varied as Anselm, Lady Jane Grey, and John Calvin have affected Carr’s spiritual walk, she says, citing as an example the hope she gained from Athanasius’ letters with their “amazing hope for heaven and the resurrection.”

Carr needed that hope as she tried to help one of her eight children, a young adult who struggled with symptoms of schizophrenia that worsened in March . She was working on a biography of John Knox, the th-century reformer whom she found to be “very humble, very real.” Knox’s letters about his troubles, which strongly emphasized salvation by grace through faith, became all the more important to her as her troubled son had unwanted thoughts and told Carr he couldn’t understand what was going on in his own mind.

Knox’s theology helped Carr see that her son’s mental illness didn’t define his relationship to God: “Many times [Knox] was discouraged … but also very, very persuaded of salvation by grace through faith alone. Which was very comforting to me.”

As Knox dealt with various trials—a brush with death as a prisoner, the loss of his wife, and challenges to Christian orthodoxy—he kept his eyes on God and trusted His promise to sustain His people.

Four months ago Carr’s troubled -year-old died. In her new biography, Carr paraphrases Knox’s emphasis on going “directly to God in prayer, running to him as a wild deer runs to the river in the burning heat of the day.” Carr heeds that advice as she seeks reassurance that she will see her son again: “Like Knox was saying, the only refuge, the only hope you have is in the Word and God’s promises.” —Emily Whitten

Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more

4/25/14 10:45 AM

PHONE: PETER DAZELEY/PHOTOGRAPHER’S CHOICE/GETTY IMAGES • RAILGUN: U.S. NAVY/AP (TOP); JOHN F. WILLIAMS/U.S. NAVY/AP (BOTTOM)

For example, Baja Med chefs in Baja California, just across the border from San Diego, serve fish tacos fried Japanese tempura-style and drizzled with olive oil. Chef John Sedlar of Rivera, a fine-dining Latino restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, doesn’t like watching young Mexican chefs showing off fancy molecular gastronomy and fusion techniques instead of presenting iconic dishes from their regions: “Mexican chefs have become so internationalized that they are sanitizing Mexico out of their food.”

The trend is spreading as other nations adopt versions of Mexican cuisine—usually the Americanized kind—and put their own touches on it.

To Esparza, Mexican food is “one of the hottest rising cuisines worldwide,” though it might not always be recognizable once it mixes with foreign palates.

For example, Roy Choi’s Kogi food truck’s slapping Korean grilled meats onto corn tortillas has sent waves across states and overseas. It’s even circled back to Korea, where people devour kimchee sautéed with carnitas, slathered over fries with bubbling cheese, and topped by pickled jalapenos.

Food historian Jeffrey Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History

Notebook > Technology

Over the landline Telecom companies plan to eradicate the old-fashioned phone line

BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE

>>

PHONE: PETER DAZELEY/PHOTOGRAPHER’S CHOICE/GETTY IMAGES • RAILGUN: U.S. NAVY/AP (TOP); JOHN F. WILLIAMS/U.S. NAVY/AP (BOTTOM)

KOGI: MATT SAYLES/AP • KNOX: DUNCAN1890/ISTOCK

R  C H, A., and Delray Beach, Fla., may be among the first to bid farewell to traditional landline phone service. If federal regulators approve, AT&T, America’s largest phone company, will use the two towns as testing grounds for the future of telephone technology. New customers in both towns would be unable to sign up for a traditional telephone line, and instead would have to use internet-based or wireless phone connections.

The experiment is part of a slow, industry-led transition to nextgeneration voice service. After decades of connecting distant friends and relatives over small copper wires and circuit-switched networks, plain old telephone service (the industry calls it “POTS”) appears to be going the way of the dinosaurs. AT&T wants to retire its circuitswitched networks by .

Many people have already ditched their landline phones in a practical effort to cut home utility bills. About two out of five U.S. households rely exclusively on cell phones. Many others are using landline phones that channel their voices over the internet, in the form of data “packets,” rather than through a traditional, direct phone line.

In some cases, people don’t even realize they’ve made the switch: It generally occurs when telecommunications providers (including cable companies) bundle phone and broadband internet service plans.

Daniel Lyons, who teaches at Boston College Law School and specializes in telecommunications law, says the traditional telephone service architecture is less efficient than newer technology, and will inevitably disappear. Instead, telecom companies have begun cramming several types of data on a single physical line. For example, traditional copper phone wires these days may carry both internet-based voice service and DSL internet. A single coaxial cable may provide TV channels, internet, and telephone.

In some locations, companies are installing fiber optic cables, or encouraging customers to go completely wireless.

“A lot of consumers aren’t even going to notice the transition,” says Lyons. But there are already kinks: Traditional phone lines work even when electric lines are down, and they work well with  service. The next-gen networks could have trouble with both issues.

In addition, federal regulators have a giant puzzle in their hands.

They’ve long required phone providers to interconnect calls without interruption, and to make phone service available even to rural customers. Those rules, among others, may not directly apply to internet-based calls, so now regulators have to determine how to apply old laws to new networks, something Lyons said could be like “trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.”

And then there’s always the matter of keeping customers happy. The Federal Communications Commission says it will be listening for complaints from Americans—such as those in Carbon Hill and Delray—who liked their plain old telephone service better.

Email: ddevine@wng.org

10 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 61

   The U.S. Navy plans to deploy a weapon in  that will fire projectiles at seven times the speed of sound, and over  miles into the air. The weapon, an electromagnetic railgun, can launch nonexplosive, -pound projectiles with the force of  megajoules—equal in energy to a boxcar

traveling  mph.

The projectiles are cheaper than conventional missiles, and safer to handle. Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder said the railgun “will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’” —D.J.D.

M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D



4/25/14 5:47 PM

Notebook > Science

Real or fake fiction?

>>

that King submitted it to research teams to have its age tested. She published the results this year in an April edition of Harvard Theological Review. Using carbon dating and spectroscopy techniques, the teams concluded the papyrus is indeed centuries old, and that the soot-based ink shows no signs of being recently forged. They placed the papyrus between the sixth and ninth centuries—several centuries later than King first concluded.

The test results don’t definitively rule out the possibility of forgery (someone could have carefully written on an old scrap of papyrus). King and

   Just in time for the Hollywood thriller, a group of physics students from the University of Leicester in England decided to prove whether Noah’s ark could have carried all those animals without sinking. Based on the Bible’s description of the ark as  cubits long,  wide, and  tall, the students calculated it could have carried about , tons. That’s equivalent to . million sheep, which represent the average size of the world’s animals. They wrote in the Journal of Physics Special Topics, a peer-reviewed student journal, that since other researchers have calculated only , or fewer animals needed to be aboard the ark, “we believe the ark to be of sufficient buoyancy.” —D.J.D.

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others believe the artifact is genuine.

She doesn’t take it as evidence the historical Jesus was actually married, but believes it points to a debate among early Christians over celibacy and the role of women.

Many remain unconvinced. Leo Depuydt, a Brown University Egyptologist who wrote an accompanyQUESTIONS ing critique of the ABOUND: fragment in Harvard Papyrus Theological Review, fragment (above) said he was “ and King. percent certain” the fragment was “a forgery, and not a very good one at that.” Depuydt said the Coptic text contained “grammatical blunders” an ancient author wouldn’t have made.

“There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind personally that … the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’ is a patchwork of words and phrases from the published and well-known Coptic Gospel of Thomas.”

Michael Kruger, an expert on New Testament texts at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., agrees with the forgery conclusion. But even if it’s genuine, it doesn’t tell us anything about the historical Jesus, he told me: “The fragment is a late production. …

It’s well after the time of Jesus, and well after the time of the apostles.”

Another possibility, said Kruger, is that “wife” in the text is supposed to be a metaphorical reference to the church, not Jesus’ actual wife. (King herself concedes that possibility.) “There is no historical evidence anywhere in early Christianity that Jesus was married,” Kruger said.

PAPYRUS: KAREN L. KING/HARVARD UNIVERSITY/AP • KING: ROSE LINCOLN/PAPYRUS/AP • NOAH: PARAMOUNT PICTURES

N   rekindled debate last month over the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” a pretentiously named shred of papyrus first announced in . At that time, Harvard Divinity School historian Karen King said the fragment dated from the second century and was the only example of ancient writing in which Jesus claimed to be married: In part, the .-by--inch fragment reads, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’” and “… she will be able to be my disciple.”

Enough people questioned the authenticity of the Coptic fragment, which belongs to an anonymous owner,

Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com

4/28/14 4:42 PM

GARY COSBY JR./THE DECATUR DAILY/AP

Dating tests fail to resolve dispute over papyrus alleging Jesus had a wife BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE

Notebook > Houses of God

Gary Cosby Jr./The Decatur Daily/ap

papyrus: Karen L. King/Harvard University/ap • King: Rose Lincoln/papyrus/ap • noah: Paramount Pictures

Worshippers join together for a sunrise Easter service on April 20 at the

No Fences Cowboy Church, a nondenominational church in Falkville, Ala.

M a y 1 7 , 2 0 1 4 • W OR L D

10 SCIENCE and HOG.indd 63

63

4/29/14 9:44 AM

Notebook > Sports

Competing with a smile

“It’s nothing compared to Jesus Christ and his prize.”

Their faith vignettes sounded deep and genuine.

But athletes commonly state their faith from the mountaintop or, as with Marvin Two months later, Team USA women and Schleper, before starting say Jesus is better by far than gold the Olympic climb. The smiles or silver By Andrew Branch turned to blank stares after Team USA lost the gold medal game against Canada—a game it led Defenders Anne Schleper and 2-0 with 3½ minutes remaining. While Gigi Marvin are the Bible study the Olympic official was putting the leaders for the U.S. women’s silver medals around their Olympic hockey team. necks, where were those Before February’s Winter priorities—really?

Olympics in Sochi, Russia, “Oh, Jesus is by far they shared their faith ­better! There’s no quesmanifestos with the tion there,” Schleper told ministry Athletes in me. “Hands down, Jesus Action.

Christ,” Marvin said.

Schleper writes “A01” Having losses, failures, on her stick for games, she Schleper and sorrows are part of life, said, because she’s playing they said. She didn’t have a for an “Audience of One.” Her smile on her face when sport isn’t first in her life.

Team USA lost, “and that’s Rather, she seeks to glorify a period of grief,” Marvin God through it. Marvin is said. “Does that mean as much on Team Jesus that your faith is Christ as she is Team ­shattered? No. … It USA, she said. She can’t ­simply means that you but enjoy to compete and feel the ­emotions that “have a huge smile” Marvin Christ has blessed us with.” because of what God has done Several believers on the team for her. “If we win a gold medal, it’s support each other with the acronym going to fade,” Marvin said at the time.

Former U.S. homeschooler Sage Kotsenburg became the first gold medal winner in slopestyle snowboarding in February’s Winter Olympics.

But one doctor says Kotsenburg should be the last. Lars Engebretsen, the International Olympic Committee official who monitors injuries, told the Associated Press the event’s still-unnamed injury rate is “too high” for an Olympic sport.

Sochi was the debut for the X-games-like event

The first and the last?

64

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10 SPORTS and RELIGION.indd 64

in which competitors do tricks on mountainside obstacles. The IOC has stressed Engebretsen’s views are personal. —A.B.

Schleper: Doug Pensinger/Getty Image • Marvin: Harry How/Getty Images • hockey game: Petr David Josek/ap • Kotsenburg: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

DEFEAT: SIC for “Strength in Schleper (15) Christ.” And being reacts after the on a team, Marvin women’s gold told me, proves medal ice hockey game.

Ecclesiastes 4:10— “Pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up.” Processing the defeat two months later means growing to appreciate the entire journey Team USA had together, both in the Olympics and their greater spiritual lives. “So afterward, can I say, you know: ‘Jesus, you satisfy more than a gold medal could ever satisfy—or a silver medal could ever satisfy?’” Schleper said.

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad

Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad 4/30/14 10:44 AM

HINN: Juan Soliz/Pacific Coast News/newscom • VIDEO: YOUTUBE/the blaze

>>

Notebook > Religion

Strange bedfellows

Liberty University alliance with controversial Benny Hinn and Mormon Glenn Beck raises questions BY DAVE SWAVELY

>>

HINN: JUAN SOLIZ/PACIFIC COAST NEWS/NEWSCOM • VIDEO: YOUTUBE/THE BLAZE

SCHLEPER: DOUG PENSINGER/GETTY IMAGE • MARVIN: HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES • HOCKEY GAME: PETR DAVID JOSEK/AP • KOTSENBURG: CAMERON SPENCER/GETTY IMAGES

L   A stirred controversy with seemingly endorsed appearances by Mormon talk show host Glenn Beck and the world’s most famous “faith healer” Benny Hinn.

The main page at BennyHinn.org featured a video showing Hinn holding up a framed Liberty University diploma and asking, “How would you like your name to be on a diploma that says Liberty University?”

Appearing on the video with Hinn and long-time Liberty donor Dan Reber is Ron Godwin, Liberty University’s senior vice president for academic affairs. The text announced that Hinn and the Liberty University Institute of Biblical Studies in

Lynchburg, Va., were forming “a powerful, worldwide ministry connection.” Reber’s company markets the Institute.

Liberty alumni quickly complained about the apparent alliance with Hinn, the subject of widespread criticism from evangelicals: Challies.com on April  called him “a dangerous deceiver, a fraud and charlatan who enriches himself at the expense of countless others.” Liberty quickly posted on the school website a series of clarifications about licensing and usage issues, and had its lawyers issue a “cease and desist” request to Hinn’s ministry.

Soon the video, taken down, resided only on YouTube, and Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. issued a statement saying Godwin would no longer be involved in special projects, and would “focus solely on Liberty’s academic programs in his role as Provost.”

Other statements on Liberty’s site empha-

sized that “Liberty is not partnering with Benny Hinn.”

But school administrators stirred the waters again with the April  appearance of Beck, a Mormon, who spoke of the “atoning work of Christ” in his life but also laced his convocation appearance with Mormon theology—at one point declaring that “nobody in the Grand Council” chose to come to earth from heaven in order to be an accountant or make T-shirts for a living.

Beck also announced a , donation from his charity, Mercury One, to Liberty.

Alumni and other critics have noted that Liberty’s response to the Hinn video fiasco and others was merely to clarify the legal problems with it, and not to distance the university from Hinn’s theology. But David Corry, general counsel and spokesman for Liberty, told me that Liberty “has attempted to focus on the legal issues GIVE ME LIBERTY: and not engage pubHinn; Beck speaking at Liberty (left). licly on all the other issues that could be debated amongst Christians, as those type disputes tend to be self-destructive.”

Two bloggers, James Duncan and Liberty grad Matthew Grant McDaniel, posted quotations from cult leader Sun Myung Moon that seem to paint Godwin as a disciple of his in the early ’s, when Godwin worked for Moon’s newspaper, The Washington Times. But Godwin told me he only worked at the Times and with “hundreds of other professionals at the paper. … I was never a member of Moon’s church, nor was I ever a spokesperson for Moon himself. Moon often made claims about various nonchurch employees at the paper that were totally false.” A —Dave Swavely is a Pennsylvania pastor and novelist

M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D

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

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4/25/14 5:50 PM

Mailbag ‘Set adrift’

April  Church leaders and congregants who observe immorality and do nothing, hoping their “star” leader isn’t really as tarnished as they suspect, only encourage a bad situation to get worse. Those who write letters of sympathy and thanks to a person who has cheated on his wife and family for almost a decade are foolish.

—B.L. W, Oregon, Wis. Jamie Dean’s comment—personal sin doesn’t necessarily “invalidate” the ideals of systems that encourage protecting women and children—was refreshing. Doug Phillips’ sin confirmed his teachings with Vision Forum. He did exactly what he plainly warned against, and he suffered those exact consequences.

—M E. O, Denver, Pa.

I was stunned to hear of Phillips. We are thankful that you expose the sin of prominent leaders to help us be more discerning, and to point us back to Jesus. As a practical step, my husband and I burned our set of Vision Forum CDs on biblical fatherhood. We want nothing to do with those who preach one thing and live another.

—R J, Harrisville, Mich.

I’m very disappointed with this story.

I’m weighing the costs of your excellent journalistic techniques against the harm you did to the body of Christ. Was it worth it?

—R D, London, Ohio

I grew up under Vision Forum teachings and see among my friends the damage that Vision Forum has caused.

Send photos and letters to: mailbag@wng.org

10 MAILBAG.indd 67

I won’t be shedding any tears over Phillips’ demise, and I hope that it is a wake-up call for those still ensnared in the legalism and hypocrisy he created.

—D K, Denton, Texas

‘Cults of celebrity’ April  I appreciated your informative article, and the insights regarding what we can learn by the failures of so many Christian leaders. As a homeschooler, I know many families who have esteemed Phillips and Bill Gothard as all but above reproach. I agree that this is a “human problem,” but I think that leaders within the biblical patriarchy movement are particularly vulnerable.

—H S, Travelers Rest, S.C.

Our leaders are a reflection of us. It is our nature to put confidence in the flesh, both our own and that of our leaders. We want to believe that by following the right man, with the right plan, that we will then be righteous too. But that place belongs to Christ alone.

—J V, Costa Mesa, Calif.

‘The second great embarrassment’ April  I do not rejoice in the shame that such cases bring on the name of

Christ and am sad for their effects, but I am so thankful that you are committed to bringing these cases to our attention.

Through your ministry, may fallen leaders repent, current leaders heed the warnings, and people come alongside their leaders to fight these sins together.

—E L, Louisville, Ky.

I was stunned by the assertion that Elevation’s document is “biblically odd” because it says, “We serve a lead pastor who goes first.” The meaning is that as leader he will be the first to do hard things. Many in the American church take a “don’t I get a vote?” attitude, but God’s Word exhorts us to “obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls.”

—J S, Grafton, Wis.

I have long thought that having the “lead pastor” determine the vision and direction of a church by himself is dangerous and stems from two main factors: a lack of humility on the pastor’s part and biblical illiteracy in the congregation. May God grant us a humble zeal to submit to His Word and to one another.

—T MC, Chula Vista, Calif.

‘Talking around the problem’ April  Andrée Seu Peterson captures the problem of dialogue with gay groups: Christians are not being asked to “listen” and so offer compassion and understanding but, through emotional personal stories, to reconsider the Bible’s fundamental moral laws involving

M AY 1 7, 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D



4/25/14 10:52 AM

Mailbag

MBA CEDARVILLE UNIVERSIT Y

online

Equipping Christian Leaders

AHUACHAPAN, EL SALVADOR submitted by Barbara Huff

parenting, gender, and sexuality. Activists claim, “Who are you to say homosexuality is sinful when you are a gossip or a glutton?”

But we’re not trying to have those behaviors redefined as part of our God-given, created design.

—L A N, Encino, Calif.

START BY SUMMER 2014, AND YOUR

FIRST CLASS IS FREE! ce d a r v i l l e. e d u / m b a o n l i n e

More trigger words to add to “conversation” and “dialogue” are “reframing the debate” and “reimagining” Scripture. My father frequently cautioned me to let Scripture speak for itself.

—J S, Taylorville, Ill.

—B V, Algona, Iowa

‘A father’s grief’ April  The primary problem with Brownson’s view of Scripture is the assertion that Moses and Paul were expressing their own ideas when condemning homosexual practice.

The Spirit of God inspired them to write the very thoughts of our Creator. Brownson has unwittingly discounted the whole of Scripture in the way he “reframes” its parts.

—C S, Mt. Juliet, Tenn.

I greatly appreciate your journalistic integrity and biblical worldview, but it’s frustrating to read so much news about the gay agenda. WORLD has nothing to apologize for, as your reporting is great. I think I’m becoming more Amish every day as I wean myself of this culture that celebrates sin.

—M G, Tallahassee, Fla.

‘Out on a limb’ April  It was wonderful to hear Janie B. Cheaney stand up for the

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necessity of God’s Word. As someone once said, no matter what, the Bible will still have all the answers.

‘Defending design’ April  Kudos to Georgia Purdom and to biology professor Paul Madtes, who is proof that not all Nazarenes have fallen for the notion that putting the word “theistic” before “evolution” somehow gives the lie validity.

This issue is all about the authority of Scripture.

—N L, Katy, Texas

Dispatches April  Thank you for your articles

4/29/14 2:53 PM

on The Episcopal Church. I have used them to counter some Facebook posts by a friend from high school who works for the denomination and is married to his partner. I pray I was able to do so with the love of Christ.

—M N, San Antonio, Texas

‘Fake compassion’ April  Our dependence on and unrealistic expectations of government have crippled this nation. So many of our federal social programs should be the church’s or a community’s responsibility. We rely on people we can’t trust for something they can’t deliver and then wonder why we’re disappointed and unsympathetic to those in need.

—K K, Marysville, Wash.

‘Permanent marker’ March  Not mentioned in the article on tattoos are the health risks. Tattoos and body piercings carry the risk of transmission of HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and many other bacteria and viruses if the equipment is not properly sterilized. That is why anyone who has had a body piercing or a tattoo may not donate blood for a year.

New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work!

—C B, Gladewater, Texas

H

ere is a 60-Day Bible Study workbook for those who desire to break their bondage to overeating. God is glorified as you learn to feast upon Scripture and find a deeper fellowship with Jesus Christ. Ideal for individual study or small groups. Leader’s Guide available.

‘God’s Not Dead’ March  Seeing the movie and then coming home to read WORLD’s tepid review was very disappointing. Yes, it’s a bit cheesy in places but the message is rock solid. WORLD should wholeheartedly support it because it just might challenge someone who thinks there is no God to think otherwise.

—T L, Georgetown, Texas

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LETTERS & PHOTOS

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Email: mailbag@wng.org Write: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box , Asheville, NC - Please include full name and address.

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4/29/14 2:59 PM

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WORLD News Group introduces important resources for families.

In just a few short months, WORLDkids, WORLDteen & God’s Big WORLD will bring you and your kids an exciting and safe digital experience, along with new enhancements to our print versions, using proven learning techniques that stir their imagination and strengthen their faith.

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4/25/14 1:30:35 PM 4/28/14 4:48 PM

Maryland State Archives

Parents have always embraced the best learning techniques to stimulate the minds of their children. In the digital age, sights, sounds and words can now be combined in never-before-seen ways to create a rich learning environment for your kids.

Andrée Seu Peterson

Something about the name It’s not mere preaching that provokes anger, it’s preaching in the name of Jesus

>>

MARYLAND STATE ARCHIVES

T     about the name of Jesus.

In the first century of our Lord—or the “Common Era,” as we are now supposed to call it—Stephen was doing okay with a tough crowd for  verses, but hit a wall when he mentioned “the Righteous One”: “They were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. … [T]hey cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him” (Acts :-).

Teeth gnashing; screeching; pressing palms to one’s ears like vampires before a wooden cross; accosting and stoning. A little inordinate, no?

Peter would have been tolerated had he been more generic in his preaching, but mention of Yeshua (Jesus) drove the buttoned-up clerical class insane. The apostle liked peace as much as the next Jew, but could not comply: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge” (Acts :).

After a slap on the wrist, he was back on the streets with the same unadulterated message. The heat arrived too: “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name” (Acts :). But it was not negotiable. “They left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day … they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus” (verses -).

Fast forward two thousand years, and commissioners of Carroll County, Md., were doing fine until a few irate citizens noticed Robin Bartlett Frazier using “the name” in her premeeting prayers. They got the American Humanists Association to help them sue. Federal Judge William Quarles served an injunction—not forbidding prayer altogether, mind you, just forbidding “the name.”

Ms. Frazier, not unlike Peter, explained to those in attendance the day after the March  ruling: “There was an injunction … that came down that said, oh, we could pray, but we just can’t use certain words,

Email: aseupeterson@wng.org

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like ‘Jesus,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Savior.’ … I think that’s an infringement on my First Amendment rights of free speech.” Also like Peter, she added: “I am willing to go to jail over it.”

The insanity and teeth-grinding not appeased by the silencing of commissioners, plaintiffs sought contempt of court charges after county resident Bruce Holstein during public comment time invoked the name of Jesus. Frazier, for her part, desiring to show that the Founding Fathers were not averse to “the name,” read a prayer found in a chest of George Washington’s papers in the s that contained the prosecutable phrase “Jesus Christ.”

Then began the dispute over authorship of Frazier’s quoted prayer (it being embarrassing for even liberals to criticize the man who led Continental troops to victory across the icy Delaware). The Smithsonian Institute, as well as William Ferraro, associate editor of Washington’s papers at the University of Virginia, say the handwriting is not Washington’s.

For another opinion, I contacted Peter Lillback, author of George Washington’s Sacred Fire, and he said Frazier’s chosen selection is from a book of prayers called Daily Sacrifice that was found among the president’s possessions: “They have been widely attributed to him, and just as widely rejected by opponents of a believing GW.” However, continued Lillback, “there are over  prayers written by GW in his known writings. Each of these, from a sentence to several sentences in length, have been catalogued in GWSF. … [A] far better argument is to use the Daily Morning Prayer of the Book of Common Prayer, that GW probably prayed hundreds if not thousands of times throughout his life. … [T]hese prayers are just as deeply Christian as the one being unnecessarily debated!”

Here is an excerpt from the orations that would have been often on Washington’s lips: “We praise thee, O God: We acknowledge thee to be the Lord. … The Father: of an infinite Majesty; Thine honourable, true: and only Son; Also the Holy Ghost: the Comforter. Thou art the King of Glory: O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father” (from “The Order for Morning Prayer” of the Book of Common Prayer).

If the commissioners of Carroll County are found guilty of inciting with the name, I believe we shall find them to be in good company. A

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4/25/14 1:47 PM

Marvin Olasky

Pornography’s pervasion Not dandy eye candy, porn is fast and forlorn

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on it—and the press ridiculed its serious conclusions.

The U.S. Supreme Court also failed to take pornography seriously enough to change the almost-anything-goes attitude it had pioneered during the s.

Now, as the group Enough Is Enough reports, porn makes up more than one-third of the internet industry and earns its purveyors more than , per second.

Porn sites get more visitors each month than Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon combined. Most teens view pornography online, and one survey of - to -yearolds found nearly one out of four young men and one out of  young women admitting they tried to kick the habit but could not. Many young men expect dates and wives to perform as do actresses in the , porn films shot each year.

Need other dire stats? Witherspoon Institute conference research (proceedings published as The Social Costs of Pornography) showed that twothirds of -to--year-old men visit porn sites regularly. (My hunch is that many of them go to church less often in part because they marry less often, and they marry less often in part because they access pornography more often.) Many men find it harder to relate to real women. Most divorces involve one partner compulsively using pornography.

Does this evidence mean legislators should act? Here’s the problem: A push to restrict pornography can play into the hands of those who hate Christian truth-telling. Now that influential atheists and secularists hope to restrict evangelistic efforts, our legal protection is the First Amendment proclamation of freedom for religion, speech, and the press—but since pornographers also rely on that amendment (as mistakenly interpreted), limits on it will rain on the innocent as well as the guilty.

A hard truth: Christians are a minority in America, and minorities should oppose increases in majoritarian power. A hard question: If we now should be quiescent on one issue to lessen the likelihood of a spillover to another, what hope do we have for constructive change? Not much, except what Christians have learned throughout the ages: Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He changes hearts and viewing patterns. A

KRIEG BARRIE

T   Congress passed protective measures regarding pornography. On May , , President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Child Protection Act, which was supposed to protect persons younger than  from exploitation by pornographers. (Other measures were designed to keep those under  from accessing pornography.) Two months later President Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, designed to keep persons below age  from purchasing alcoholic beverages.

Now, visualize this scene: Herbie, , walks into his local tavern and asks for a vodka martini—shaken, not stirred. Tex the barkeep asks, “Are you at least  years old?” Herbie says, “Sure.” Tex serves him. As he sips, Herbie pulls out his iPhone and watches a pornographic scene. I suspect most of you know what’s wrong with that picture: In all  states Herbie would not get his martini. Tex or anyone else would card him, demanding a driver’s license or other official proof that Herbie is at least . But the porn? No one would interfere.

The poet Ogden Nash () wrote, “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” Today, I’d add another line with a different rhyme scheme: “Porn’s even faster but it leaves you forlorn.” I won’t go into detail here, but relatively few porn sites electronically card users. Some require use of a credit card to access much of their content, but even they are like bars at which persons of any age can get drunk.

And yet, pornography is a huge problem not only among adults but among children and teenagers as well. If you’re sending your very well-mannered children to college and the dorm Wi-Fi has no filtering mechanism, they are likely to be exposed early and often to hard-core porn—and some become addicted.

Even if it does have a filter, your son and perhaps your daughter will probably see porn at some point.

Why the difference between alcohol and pornography, both products that sideswipe many teens? Thirty years ago President Reagan at the signing ceremony said he would appoint a commission to investigate pornography, and he did. Attorney General Ed Meese headed it up, citizens including James Dobson served

Email: molasky@wng.org

4/25/14 11:44 AM

Krieg barrie

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