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Contents , / ,
36 Heartbreak Hill
When explosions hit the Boston Marathon, people at the scene and Boston residents swung into action
40 Weather maker
Margaret Thatcher: -
44 Schools of thought A German homeschooling family’s fight for asylum in the United States will say a lot about the U.S. government’s official attitude toward the growing practice
50 Shoe leather service Conservative GOP Rep. Steve Pearce wins in a majority Hispanic district not by changing his views but by building relationships
40
54 Cynthia’s choice
7 News 16 Human Race 18 Quotables 20 Quick Takes
Meet one of the first women ever to undo her medical abortion—and the doctor who made it possible
25
58 How to decide to move
To go or not to go? That was the question—but deciding wasn’t scientific : / ; :
44
.: BOSTON: DAN LAMPARIELLO/REUTERS/LANDOV
From April through April Andrée Seu Peterson reported from the Gosnell abortion trial in Philadelphia and also wrote about looking at old photos, seeing Jesus, and reading chapter of Jeremiah …
Marvin Olasky provided taxtime jokes and wrote about mutating politicians, the hearts of atheists, disability insurance, Christians on the U. of Louisville basketball team, and Charlie Daniels.
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25 Movies & TV 28 Books 30 Q&A 32 Music
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63 Lifestyle 66 Technology 68 Science 69 Houses of God 70 Money 72 Religion
Mindy Belz wrote her thrice-weekly Globe Trot about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Margaret Thatcher, Venezuela, and attacks on Coptic Christians in Cairo … Janie Cheaney wrote about gay marriage, putting food stamps on a diet, and not allowing boys to be boys …
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4 Joel Belz 22 Janie B. Cheaney 34 Mindy Belz 75 Mailbag 79 Andrée Seu Peterson 80 Marvin Olasky
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Online and on campus. It’s online+ At Southern Seminary, we know that various circumstances prevent students from relocating to Louisville, Ky., to train for ministry. We also recognize that a fully online program simply cannot replace the on-campus experience. The solution is Online Plus, Southern’s new opportunity that combines
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Joel Belz
Line drills
Playing by the airline security rules is an unending surrender
>>
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It is a colossally costly war. It would be bad enough if we had to account only for the out-of-pocket costs: There are the capital construction costs of the armor-plated steel, concrete, and glass structures that have made fortresses of our airports. There are the long conveyors for trays and the whiz-bang X-ray machines to examine our most inward parts. And there are the salaries of the tens of thousands of stern TSA foot soldiers, and their attendant bureaucracy. No one seems to know for sure—but even the beginning estimates are that all these costs add a minimum of percent to every airline ticket purchased, and that such costs are with us as far as we can see into the future. Far more stultifying, though, than all those outlays are the costs of wasted human energy. It’s easy to forget that it’s been only for the last decade that we’ve been required to show up at least a full hour earlier than flight time—and that a typical passenger can count on spending most of that hour standing somewhere in line. Virtually every aspect of loading a plane (and often unloading it as well) has security ramifications; each one adds to a passenger’s waiting time. The result is that my trip from Buffalo to Boston almost certainly took at least half an hour longer now than the same flight took a generation ago. It didn’t take a whiz-bang X-ray machine to figure out what was rankling the folks I talked to at the Buffalo airport. “It used to be fun to fly somewhere,” Buffalo resident Irma Fouts told me. “It’s nothing but tedious now.” I’m not pretending I have a recommendation for Mr. Obama about how to fix this problem. I’m just saying that a solution that puts people in long lines, with lots of time to get upset about it all, is no solution at all. Something I just learned in Buffalo is that one of the worst things you can do to folks, when you’re asking them to do something really uncomfortable, is to give them time to think about it. A
KRIEG BARRIE
T , I ended up a couple of weeks ago with a three-hour layover in the airport at Buffalo, N.Y. It’s OK, I thought. If the clientele at a typical Walmart can respond thoughtfully to a few man-in-thestreet questions (veteran WORLD readers are used to such occasional profiles in this space), then certainly these sophisticated patrons of air travel might have a little wisdom to share. Besides, we were all just standing in line, shuffling our way—shoeless and beltless—through the security process. Nobody could go anywhere. So, I thought I’d ask in the most inoffensive, evenhanded fashion possible: “Excuse me, sir. Do you have a moment for me to quiz you about a couple of public policy issues?” To my surprise, in perhaps two dozen such approaches, almost no one turned the other way. These folks were ready to talk, ready to comment, ready with their opinions. “If you were President Obama,” I asked, “and this afternoon you could take care of just one big problem our country faces, what would that problem be?” One or two folks mentioned North Korea and Iran and the nuclear threat. One or two brought up the national debt and the budget deficit. One spoke of global warming. No one mentioned education, immigration, the disintegration of the American family, or homosexual marriage. Easily trumping any and all of those concerns, in the minds of these people, was this one. Waving their arms in every direction, these folks were focused on just one big concern: What might President Obama do to resolve the horrendous waste, delay, and frustration brought on by airport security? The folks at the Buffalo airport, I think, are on to something. Not to minimize any of the other issues— but if our nation can’t do any better at policing the identities of who gets on our airplanes day after day, then we’re in pretty bad shape. In this particular war, we have virtually run up the white flag of surrender, conceding that as far as we can see into the future, we will play the game in the manner dictated by our enemy.
Email: jbelz@worldmag.com
4/17/13 8:42 AM
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Dispatches News > Human Race > Quotables > Quick Takes
GRUESOME BUSINESS: Women’s Medical Society, where Gosnell did his work.
CLINIC: MATT ROURKE/AP • GOSNELL: YONG KIM/PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS/AP
Horror in the court The gruesome trial of Kermit Gosnell sheds new light on the dark business of killing babies BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
>>
T . Beheadings. A flopping arm. Human remains dumped in cat food containers or shoved into a freezer. The ghastly descriptions were routine testimony as the capital murder trial of Kermit Gosnell—the -year-old Philadelphia abortionist accused of delivering live babies and killing them—unfurled through the first weeks of April. Former staff at the Women’s Medical Society testified against their onetime boss, painting a picture of an abortionist who straddled the law and gave little thought to the lives of his patients or their offspring. Stephen Massof, who prescribed drugs at Gosnell’s abortion center without a license, told the courtroom how he and Gosnell “snipped” the spinal cords of newly delivered babies with surgical scissors to ensure they were dead: “We call it a transection, but it’s literally a beheading.”
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Massof said he saw about babies born alive and killed this way. On busy days, he “felt like a fireman in hell. I couldn’t put out all the fires. … I would run around with scissors.” Another employee, Ashley Baldwin, a teenager when she worked for Gosnell, saw babies with “their chest going up and down real fast.” Baldwin was in the clinic when Karnamaya Mongar, a -year-old immigrant who had come for an abortion, was given a lethal overdose of painkiller medication. Baldwin plugged in Gosnell’s defibrillator to save her, but it was broken. Witnesses and prosecutors say Gosnell ran a filthy clinic with untrained workers, paid employees under the table, performed abortions after weeks gestation (the legal limit in Pennsylvania), stored baby parts in jars, and kept a padlock on an emergency exit. Gosnell faces the death penalty if convicted of killing seven infants born alive in his West
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Dispatches > News
—See p. , and WORLD’s continuing coverage at worldmag.com/topic/gosnell_trial
the Netherlands plans to abdicate the throne on April and hand the crown to her eldest son, Willem-Alexander,, Prince of Orange. The -year-old Willem-Alexander will be the first Dutch king since Willem III died in , ushering in years of Dutch queens.
LOOKING AHEAD Religious freedom report The annual
report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is due by April . The result could be blistering for governments in the Middle East. In recent weeks, the commission has focused on Egypt’s halting transition, criticizing the government’s liberal use of blasphemy laws to target Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
NRA conference The
National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings and Exhibits kicks off May in Houston. The conference comes at a time when the NRA is both fielding record new memberships, and also coming under strong scrutiny. With gun control legislation wending its way through Congress, the annual firearms expo and gun owners rally could generate a media firestorm.
Kentucky Derby With fine Sunday
hats and mint juleps, Kentucky Derby Day arrives again for horse racing fans on May . This year’s Derby could be the cherry-on-top for Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino. The Cardinals won the men’s NCAA tournament in April, and the coach owns a percent stake in Goldencents, a top Derby contender.
Arms fair
Perhaps the most explosive of all gun shows, the International Defense Industry Fair will kick off its four-day show on May in Istanbul, Turkey. And with civil war in Syria and the possibility of conflict with Kurdish minorities, governments from across the Middle East and Eurasia could drive up demand for state-of-the-art weapons systems.
NETHERLANDS: ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/GETTYIMAGES • COPTIC: AMR NABIL/AP • NRA: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES • DERBY: DAVID J. PHILLIP/AP • FAIR: SEONGJOON CHO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Philadelphia “House of Horrors.” He pleaded not guilty to the murder charges, claiming the infants were delivered dead, their movements “involuntary.” Although some local and pro-life media (including WORLD) provided firsthand updates of the trial, national secular media largely ignored it, despite the shattering details. A Twitter “Tweetfest” organized in the trial’s fourth week by pro-life groups sparked over , tweets in hours. “If Kermit Gosnell had been doing this to puppies, it would have the nation in upheaval,” tweeted Steve Noble, a Christian talk show host in Raleigh, N.C. Then liberal Fox News commentator Kirsten Powers wrote a column calling the media silence “a disgrace,” and Republican lawmakers drew attention to the news blackout on the House floor. By the end of the week, The Washington Post had pledged to assign someone to the trial. “In retrospect, we should have sent a reporter sooner,” admitted editor Martin Baron. (Earlier, Post reporter Sarah Kliff dismissed the story as “local crime.”) The following Monday, everyone seemed to be talking about Gosnell. Networks including CBS and MSNBC covered the story, and reporters converged on the courtroom—news outlets including Fox, The New York Times, and Reuters. Editors from mainstream news organizations denied pro-abortion bias influenced their lack of coverage. Baron from the Post claimed he was unaware of the trial until readers started emailing him: “We never decide what to cover for ideological reasons, no matter what critics might claim.” But Megan McArdle, a self-described “pro-choice” correspondent for The Daily Beast, was more candid. Journalists like her probably hesitate to report stories that show the ugliest aspects of abortion, she wrote: “The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by ‘our side.’” The Gosnell trial could stretch through May. Prosecutors have spent three years building their case, after FBI agents raided Gosnell’s office in February to investigate his distribution of painkillers. A
New Dutch king Queen Beatrix of
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PRE-ORDER SPECIAL: When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, known today as the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life, a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals
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Dispatches > News
election countdown showdown
What’s a few zeroes?
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Abortion for the very young This summer preteen girls may be able to purchase the morning-after pill at their local pharmacy without a parent or prescription, thanks to a federal judge in New York. On April 5, U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman struck down an Obama administration rule banning over-the-counter sales of Plan B One-Step, a potential abortifacient, to women under 17. Judge Korman said the rule was “politically motivated” and “scientifically unjustified.” However, some health experts insist young girls taking Plan B need a doctor’s oversight: The drug can alter the menstrual cycle, cause heavy bleeding, and is associated with an elevated rate of ectopic pregnancies. President Obama has until May 5 to appeal the judge’s ruling, but has little to gain politically for doing so.
Pakistan: Muhammed Muheisen/ap • budget: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images • Plan B: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The April release of President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget claimed $580 billion in new taxes. Subsequent analysis revealed that figure was off—by nearly half. The proposed $1.1 trillion in new revenue would be used for expansive new federal programs—including a $40 billion “Fix It First” infrastructure initiative, $10 billion for a new national infrastructure bank, and $66 billion for a Preschool for All program (to join the 45 early educational and childcare federal programs already in existence). These “targeted investments,” Obama said, will “prime our economy.” The budget puts more money in federal coffers from individuals and nonprofits by restricting the deductions allowed for charitable contributions and capping the amount earners can store in certain tax-sheltered investments like a Roth IRA. The charitable giving cap could lead to a $5.6 billion decline in annual giving. The White House recommends the investment restrictions because some Americans have more savings than “needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement.” Both changes reduce the ability of families to be less dependent on government. Obama is also asking Congress for a $30 million increase in federal funding for Title X programs—a key source for Planned Parenthood’s government dollars. And he removes federal funding from abstinence-based sexual risk avoidance (SRA) education, diverting those dollars toward sex-ed programs emphasizing contraception. The president’s budget does propose saving $130 billion over the next decade by tweaking the way the government calculates the annual cost-of–living adjustment for Social Security. Democrats pledge to block this step even though it could slow the growth of entitlement spending. With both political parties finding something to dislike, Obama’s budget, delivered more than two months late, may have a hard time improving upon the 99-0 Senate defeat suffered by last year’s budget plan.
In the countdown to Pakistan’s May 11 parliamentary elections, Pervez Musharraf—the country’s former military ruler—faced daunting challenges: treason charges that could carry the death penalty, Taliban death threats, and a Pakistani public unenthusiastic about his return. None of that stopped Musharraf, who returned to Pakistan in March after four years of self-imposed exile. But on April 16 an appellate panel of election judges barred Musharraf from running for a parliamentary seat. The former leader, who seized power in a 1999 military coup but resigned in 2008, still faces a hearing on treason charges and may appeal the election ruling. If parliamentary elections proceed as scheduled, the country would mark its first democratic transition of power since 1947.
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4/17/13 9:27 AM
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Tears Water the Seeds of Hope is the inspiring true story of a Midwest husband and wife that become disenchanted with the relentless pursuit of the “American Dream” and embark on a journey that spans six countries and redefines their hearts and lives. The story begins in a small town in America’s heartland and weaves its way through South and Central America as the couple gathers an army of supporters, and eventually establishes a non-profit organization to save the lives of children in the end stages of starvation in eastern Guatemala. The narrative is filled with action-packed adventure and heart-warming victories as the characters face incredible odds and seemingly hopeless situations, while hundreds of volunteers join mission teams to offer help and hope through the programs of the ministry. Readers of all ages will enjoy the roller coaster ride of emotions—from laughter, to tears, to sheer joy—as they realize that it is possible for ordinary people to make a difference, one life at a time.
Chapter 2 Excerpt The Price of a Boy’s Eyesight On our first day on the Santa Elena Peninsula, we settled into Manglaralto, a small oceanfront fishing town where we would be based as we spent the next few days visiting villages being considered for water systems. Frank took us to a local hospital to illustrate the contrast between the health care in rural Central America and that of the urban United States. We were appalled. The floors of the few small dingy rooms were caked with dried blood, and the striking lack of medical equipment and supplies called into question what, if any, medical care could be provided in the facility. A lone nurse passed from patient to patient, but there were no doctors present. We happened upon a nine-year-old boy whose eye socket was swollen to the size of a tennis ball with infection. His mother sat helplessly by his side in a state of despair, having been told that her son needed an antibiotic costing nearly a month’s worth of her husband’s wages, which she did not have. Without the medication, the infection would most likely spread to the other eye, and the boy could be left without sight in either eye. Tears welled in my eyes as my thoughts turned to our own daughters and how easily we would have been able to solve this problem for them. I thought of the life-threatening illnesses common in this country and how often parents must watch their children suffer and die for lack of resources to purchase medications that would have saved their lives. They loved their children as much as I loved mine, and it occurred to me that I had done nothing to earn my lot in life. My life of privilege was a result of the geographic location of my birth and the opportunities that my country had afforded me. I had always been aware that thousands of children around the world died each
day due to unsafe drinking water, starvation, and preventable disease. But now the problem was becoming real and personal to me in ways I could no longer ignore. Apathy, preoccupation with “the good life,” and the responsibilities of home would never again be sufficient as an excuse to live as if the suffering in the world was not my problem. The medication the boy needed was available in a neighboring town, and we asked the nurse to determine the cost and send word to us at Manglaralto’s small rundown ocean front hotel where we would be waiting at a table outside. The sun was setting over the sea as a few tattered fishing boats returned to shore, their captains unloading meager rewards for a long day’s work. The sound of rhythmic waves lapped upon the shore while wild dogs searched the beach for food. They, like the fisherman, survived from day to day on the outcome of their quest for sustenance. Eventually we noticed the boy’s mother slowly approaching us, her downcast eyes expressing no hope or expectation of the miracle she needed. In her hand she held a scrap of paper on which was written the cost of the medication needed to save her son’s eyesight. She handed it to me without making eye contact. Twenty-five dollars was the insurmountable sum of money that would save her son from a lifetime of blindness. I stood up, reached into my waist pack, pulled out $25, and handed it to her unceremoniously. She burst into tears. Randy was next, followed by the members of the hotel staff that had been standing on the front steps of the hotel observing. As all within earshot watched in tears, the boy’s mother gushed expressions of appreciation in Spanish, most of which we could not understand. Her repeated phrase, “Que Dios les recompense,” were the only words I could decipher, which meant “May God repay you.” After several minutes exuding heartfelt expressions of gratitude, she hurried off to purchase the medication. We were amazed to find ourselves overcome with emotion over such a miniscule contribution given at so little sacrifice. The $25 would have been spent without hesitation on a few scones and lattes back home, but here it
meant the difference between vision and blindness for a child. We roamed the dusty roads of the small village long into the evening, visiting with families in broken Spanish and laughing until we cried as we used charades to offer small gifts as tokens of our friendship. We were having “fun” in the deepest sense we could remember, and although we did not realize it, the wheels of change were turning within us. When weariness finally caught up with us, we returned to our tiny hotel room, joyfully exhausted, to collapse and try to sleep. As we approached the dwelling, however, we realized that our rest would be postponed a bit longer. The dark silhouette of a thin man on a bike in front of the hotel caught us by surprise. When we were within earshot, softly spoken words of gratitude poured forth from the visitor, at which point the communication barrier became a serious problem. I vowed that my top priority upon returning home would be to become fluent in Spanish. The man was the father of the boy who had received the benefits of our paltry $25 donation. He had ridden his bike into town from his mountain village eight miles away, after ten hours of work, to personally thank us for our generosity. His family had been praying for a miracle for his son, and he considered us to be the answer to their many prayers. Tears streamed from his eyes as we again heard the phrase, “Que Dios les recompensa.” I wished I had been able to communicate to the man that God had paid us in advance. He had blessed our lives immensely, and we were there to express our gratitude to Him and to be a sign of His love for this family.
CREDIT CREDIT
..."I couldn’t get enough of this book. I simply didn’t want to stop reading it. I was completely drawn in from start to finish...Kim Tews did not sugar coat anything nor did she hold anything back. I found their story to be riveting and convicting. Tears Water the Seeds of Hope provoked, inspired and challenged me all at the same time. I highly recommend this book" Pilar Arsenec- National Book Critics Circle
Available at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com
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Dispatches > News
Egypt ‘is collapsing’
Gay marriage momentum
Renowned surgeon Ben Carson withdrew April from speaking at Johns Hopkins University commencement ceremonies in May after students circulated a petition to have him removed for speaking out against gay marriage. “My presence is likely to distract from the true celebratory nature of the day,” Carson, , wrote in an email to Paul Rothman, dean of the Johns Hopkins medical school. “Commencement is about the students and their successes, and it is not about me.” Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, has made frequent media appearances after speaking at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast in February. He has been outspoken in his support for traditional marriage but apologized for “poorly chosen words” in an interview with Fox News: He said neither gays, pedophiles, nor those who believe in bestiality are allowed to change the definition of marriage. Carson, author of three best-selling books and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, announced at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month that he is stepping down from his position at Johns Hopkins later this year. Some observers speculate he may run for public office.
In France, this year’s mass demonstrations against homosexual marriage weren’t enough to stop the country’s slouch toward gay rights. On April the French Senate approved a contentious gay marriage bill, ensuring its passage to law as soon as Parliament reviews final amendments in coming weeks. The legislation will allow gay couples to marry and adopt children, although opinions on those issues are evenly split in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation. “You’re disrupting the civil code,” a senator opposing the bill told fellow lawmakers. The French vote came one day after lawmakers in Uruguay approved their own gay marriage bill, which Uruguayan president José Mujica was expected to sign. Together, France and Uruguay bring to the number of countries giving nationwide recognition to homosexual marriages.
EGYPT: AMR NABIL/AP • CARSON: CHRIS KLEPONIS/GETTY IMAGES • MARRIAGE: REMY GABALDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
As spring harvest begins across Egypt, fuel-strapped farmers face a perplexing question: Will they be able to reap what they’ve sown? For some, the answer may be no: A worsening diesel fuel shortage threatens to curb supplies to bring in harvests. Egypt imports about percent of its wheat, but even that reserve is in danger, as the fragile government runs out of money to GRIEF OUTPOURED: import wheat and fuel it has subsidized for decades. Egyptian Transportation and food costs are rising for a population strugChristians at gling with poverty: The price of chicken has doubled and the price a funeral at of rice has risen percent since last year. Meanwhile, drivers in the Saint Mark Coptic Cairo sometimes wait hours to purchase diesel fuel, and violence cathedral has erupted at gas stations in the last month. in Cairo. Negotiations continue for a loan from the International Monetary Fund, but Egyptian officials have resisted certain conditions—like cutting unsustainable subsidies—and fear backlash from beleaguered citizens. But backlash is growing across Egypt, including among Christians. When a mob attacked a crowd of funeral-goers at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo on April , the Coptic pope delivered an unprecedented criticism of President Mohamed Morsi for failing to protect Christians. “This is a society that is collapsing,” Pope Tawadros II said during a television interview. “Society is collapsing every day.”
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Dispatches > News
Not in the same jungle John McCandlish Phillips: 1927-2013 By Emily belz in new york
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on a train from Boston to Baltimore, he sensed God telling him to get off the train in New York City, so he did. He picked up a newspaper and noticed an ad for a copyboy position at The New York Times. Again he prayed and felt he should apply for the job, which he did with success. His sparkling writing soon grabbed editors’ attention, and he became a full-time metro reporter. Phillips, who never married, rarely left New York City, even on vacations. “I am not awed by the city—so much of it is like plain pieces of Buffalo or Pawtucket stretched out to excess—nor am I in dazzled love with it, but I hold it in a certain respect and affection, and I find it a fabulous subject,” Phillips wrote later. Talese called him “the Ted Williams of the young reporters.” Phillips was never secretive about his faith in the newsroom: He kept a Bible on his desk and abstained from the established newsroom practices at the time of drinking and gambling. But
CREDIT Annie Levy
John McCandlish Phillips, who died April 9 in New York at age 85, was a New York Times reporter who won the respect of world-renowned authors like Gay Talese and served as a mentor to generations of Christian journalists. In two decades at the Times, Phillips became a chronicler of the city’s forgotten people: He wrote articles about a high school principal skilled at ragtime piano and a young man who won a bricklaying contest. At the Port Authority bus terminal near Times Square, he discovered a group of elderly people who came to the terminal’s waiting room every day to sit and talk for hours. “Some are waiting for buses,” he wrote. “Others are waiting for death.” Phillips, a towering string bean, became a Christian through a Baptist church shortly after his high school graduation. He never went to college, instead joining the Army. In 1952, a few weeks from getting out of the Army and
straight reporting characterized his articles, not sermonizing. After 21 years at the Times, Phillips quit to focus on the small Pentecostal church he helped found in Manhattan, New Testament Missionary Fellowship. At the time the evangelical community in New York was tiny, but it has multiplied in the decades since. “What everyone in this city needs, with scarcely anyone knowing of it, is the one salvation that God has provided in His son, Jesus Christ,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2009, explaining his decision to quit. Phillips continued to mentor many prominent Christian journalists, including David Cho of The Washington Post and Russell Pulliam (a WORLD board member) of the Indianapolis Star. Pulliam was a police beat reporter for the Associated Press in New York in the 1970s and recalled a question on his mind at the time: “What does the Bible have to do with the police beat?” “I didn’t even know how to say, ‘How do we bring a Christian worldview to our work?’” Pulliam said. “[Phillips] could go write a story and he would bring biblical principles to bear in it, and in such a subtle way. And The New York Times editors would love it. His Christian faith was so much who he was.” For six years in the 2000s, until his health deteriorated, Phillips taught courses on journalism basics at the World Journalism Institute, part of World News Group. I was a student in his class in 2006, where he used as curriculum the famous magazine piece “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” by his former colleague Talese. Ever the metro reporter, Phillips sent students on assignments into the city, telling one class to watch city buses and figure out why they didn’t show up at the posted times. His journalistic ethics class was very basic: Don’t lie. His advice for finding good sources: Pray. “Phillips is not interested in winning a Pulitzer Prize,” Talese said in a 1997 profile in The New Yorker. “He wants to redeem people. Talk about marching to a different drummer! Phillips is not even in the same jungle.” A
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4/15/13 9:21 AM
Kapaun celebrates Mass in Korea less than a month before being captured
DIED Nobel Prize winner Robert Edwards, , known as the “father of in vitro fertilization” (IVF) died April after a lengthy illness. Edwards, a University of Cambridge professor, worked with the late gynecologist Patrick Steptoe to help a woman give birth using IVF in —the world’s first “test tube baby.” The technique has enabled millions of births but remains controversial.
AWARDED President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a Korean War Army chaplain who tended to wounded soldiers in the midst of intense enemy fire and handto-hand combat. Emil Kapaun, a Catholic priest, was when he died in as a prisoner of war. Obama awarded him the military’s highest honor at an April ceremony at the White House, which was attended by some of Kapaun’s family and former prisoners of war.
DISCHARGED A South African hospital discharged former President Nelson Mandela, , on April after a bout with pneumonia. Mandela, who spent years in prison for opposing apartheid, was hospitalized for days so doctors could drain fluid from his lungs. Mandela made his last public appearance at the World Cup but remains a beloved national figure in South Africa.
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dating back to the s. The couple produced books on abortion and human sexuality and co-founded Cincinnati Right to Life.
DIED George Beverly Shea, , a Grammy Award–winning singer and long-time associate of Billy Graham, died on April . As a soloist for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Shea for over years sang prior to Graham’s preaching at Crusades. Shea also recorded more than albums and was a member of the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Religious Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
SWORN IN Uhuru Kenyatta, , became the youngest president in Kenya’s history when he was peacefully sworn in on April . Kenyatta, the son of former Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, last month narrowly won a contested
election that was decided by Kenya’s Supreme Court. Raila Odinga, the losing candidate, publicly accepted the court’s decision and avoided the bloody chaos that followed his presidential loss.
APPOINTED Richard Land will replace Robert Westra as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., effective July . Land spent almost years as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and is scheduled to retire in October. Land, who served five terms with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, will manage the seminary and teach classes starting in the summer term.
DIED Barbara Willke, a long-time champion of the pro-life cause, died April at age . Willke and her husband, Dr. John C. Willke—a past president of National Right to Life—were pioneers of the pro-life movement
KAPAUN: COL. RAYMOND A. SKEEHAN VIA THE WICHITA EAGLE • MEDAL: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • MANDELA: ELMOND JIYANE/GCIS/AP • SHEA: DAVID BUCHANL/PICTUREGROUP/AP • EDWARDS: PRESS ASSOCIATION VIA AP • KENYATTA: BEN CURTIS/AP • LAND: HANDOUT
Dispatches > Human Race
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Dispatches > Quotables
‘Twice, in D.C., I’ve caused a friend to literally leave a conversation and freeze me out for a day or so because I suggested that the Stupak Amendment and the Hyde Amendment made sense.’ Slate columnist DAVID WEIGEL on the pro-abortion view of most national news reporters and their reluctance to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell.
‘Make more familyfriendly films and fewer R-rated titles.’ JOHN FITHIAN, CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, to a movie industry convention on April . Fithian noted that PG-rated movies collectively made almost as much money as R movies in , despite there being three times more R movies than PG movies. “Americans,” he said, “have stated their choice.”
‘I was raised in that generation of women can have it all, and I don’t think you can. I think some things fall off the table.’ Actress, director, and businesswoman DREW BARRYMORE on cutting back on parts of her career after having daughter Olive, now months old, with husband Will Kopelman.
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4/17/13 10:09 AM
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NBA superstar KOBE BRYANT, in a Facebook posting, after suffering an Achilles tendon tear that will sideline him for at least months. Bryant later said he would return for next season.
Former President GEORGE W. BUSH on the surprised reaction to news that he’s taken up painting. His first pieces, published along with an interview by the Dallas Morning News, are signed “.”
BRYANT: JEFF GROSS/GETTY IMAGES • BUSH: JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES • WEIGEL: MATT ROTH • FITHIAN: JONATHAN LEIBSON/GETTY IMAGES • BARRYMORE: NCP/STAR MAX/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES
‘The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage. ... Maybe I should break out the rocking chair and reminisce on the career that was. Maybe this is how my book ends. Maybe Father Time has defeated me.’
‘Of course, some people are surprised I can even read.’
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4/16/13 3:50 PM
It would have taken Bismark Mensah , hours to earn at Walmart what he found in a white envelope last October. Mensah, a Walmart employee in Federal Way, Wash., making . per hour, was helping a woman load groceries into her car. As she drove off, he noticed she had dropped an envelope. It contained , in cash. The woman, Leona Wisdom, had earmarked that cash for a home down payment. Menseh, who immigrated to the United States last year from Ghana, flagged the woman down to return the money. Wisdom offered Mensah a reward—and even a date with her single daughter—but the -year-old man refused. Instead, Mensah was named the retail chain’s “Integrity in Action Award” winner for and in March was promoted to a full-time position at the store.
Thieves who pilfered a trailer from the German town of Bad Hersfeld will likely have sticky fingers—and no shortage of things to put on toast. That’s because the thieves made off with . tons of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread during an April raid. Authorities estimated the stolen spread to be worth more than ,. German press accounts report that the Nutella heist took place in the same parking lot where thieves stole a truckload of energy drinks earlier this year.
After living in the woods of Maine for years, Christopher Knight has rejoined society— albeit reluctantly. The -year-old man, known locally now as the North Pond Hermit, had lived undetected in the wilderness outside of Rome, Maine, since . The mysterious man had subsisted on supplies pilfered from nearby homes and businesses during more than , robberies. Authorities finally apprehended Knight on April when he tripped a surveillance system set up by the local game warden. Knight tripped the system as he tried to steal food from a nearby camp for disabled children. “He used us like his local Walmart,” said Pine Tree Camp facilities manager Harvey Chesley. Authorities caught Knight as he was exiting the camp’s walk-in freezer with a backpack full of food.
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Knight’s camp
MENSAH: ELLEN M. BANNER/THE SEATTLE TIMES • WASP NEST: EFE • NUTELLA: HANDOUT • KNIGHT: KENNEBEC COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE/AP • KNIGHT’S CAMP: MAINE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY/AP
A home in the Canary Islands that had been abandoned by humans was occupied by others. Millions of others. Authorities in the town of San Sebastián de La Gomera say they found a wasp nest measuring feet, inches long in an abandoned home. Inside live millions of wasps. Police in early April were reportedly trying to find the owners of the property.
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4/16/13 3:58 PM
SHEEP: SIPA/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • LAMBORGHINI: AHMED JADALLAH/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • BIG FOOT CROSSING: LYNN JAMES/PHOTONICA/GETTY IMAGES • OLYMPIA BEER: HANDOUT • FITZGERALD: BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/LANDOV
Dispatches > Quick Takes
MENSAH: ELLEN M. BANNER/THE SEATTLE TIMES • WASP NEST: EFE • NUTELLA: HANDOUT • KNIGHT: KENNEBEC COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE/AP • KNIGHT’S CAMP: MAINE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY/AP
SHEEP: SIPA/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • LAMBORGHINI: AHMED JADALLAH/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • BIG FOOT CROSSING: LYNN JAMES/PHOTONICA/GETTY IMAGES • OLYMPIA BEER: HANDOUT • FITZGERALD: BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/LANDOV
A Washington family is recovering from the burglary of their home on April , but it’s the ignominy of being rejected by their own dog that’s the hardest part. Members of the East Wenatchee, Wash., family returned home to discover a burglar prowling about their kitchen. Police say that suspect Jason L. McDaniel was feeding pudding to Buddy the family dog when the residents confronted him. After being asked to leave, McDaniel walked casually out the front door, police say, but not before calling for the dog to follow him. According to the police report, the black lab-pitbull mix followed McDaniel out the door and has not been seen since.
Officials in Paris have a new plan for environmentally sound grounds keeping: sheep. Authorities purchased a small flock of sheep and let them loose on the grounds of the Paris Archives in April to munch excess grass. Once finished with those grounds, the four sheep will be moved to the lawns surrounding other Parisian municipal buildings. “It might sound funny, but animal lawnmowers are ecological as no gasoline is required, and cost half the price of a machine,” said Marcel Collet, Paris farm director. “And they’re so cute.”
A Lamborghini Aventador shown off at a shopping mall in Dubai in April comes with a special set of lights—flashing lights on top of the car. That’s because the , automobile is the latest patrol car for Dubai police. While some have called the car a publicity vehicle for the wealth-obsessed city in the United Arab Emirates, others point out that the car may be useful to police. Young men from Dubai reportedly drive over miles per hour at night on desert highways. The Lamborghini Aventador can reach miles per hour and go from zero to in . seconds.
As parking fines go, Jennifer Fitzgerald of Chicago may hold a record. The city says Fitzgerald owes over , for leaving her car parked at O’Hare International Airport for three years. Fitzgerald, who says the car is worth about , insists her ex-boyfriend abandoned the car in the parking lot. A judge on April dismissed her lawsuit against the city and her boyfriend over the tickets, urging the parties to reach a settlement.
It’s put up or shut up time for Bigfoot theorists. Olympia Beer has staked a million reward for capturing the mythical hominid of the Pacific Northwest. The beer company promises to pay , annually for years to any Bigfoot tracker who can either capture a specimen or provide irrefutable evidence of an existing Sasquatch from onwards. No reward will be given for proving the existence of Yeti, the Sasquatch’s Himalayan cousin.
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4/16/13 3:59 PM
Janie B. Cheaney
The rest of the story
The church faces another crisis, and another opportunity to rise to the occasion
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G : just scales, righteous deeds, His creation, a cheerful giver. And another thing God must love is a good story. Picture this: The saga of the much-anticipated Messiah has apparently ended with an awkward anticlimax, its protagonist dying a humiliating death and sealed away in a garden tomb. Life in Jerusalem goes on as usual. Rumors are flying: tales of the dead man appearing here and there in city and countryside. But anyone who’s dry behind the ears knows that rumors always fly. Humans seem to need that dash of mystery and thrill to leaven their dull lives—give it a few years, and they’ll be running after some new sensation. But suddenly thousands of people are shouting in the street and rushing toward the temple where an impromptu rally is going on—or is it a riot? Crowds are the rule at Pentecost, but this is no ordinary crowd; indeed, no ordinary day. The air itself seems to pulse, as though panting with excitement. The noise of the multitude gradually ceases as one man runs to the top of the portico steps and turns around to face them. He’s dressed like a peasant, but seems too large for his burly body; so alive, so radiant he could be wrapped in flames, like that legendary bush that burned without burning up. He holds up his hand and opens his mouth to speak … And the world is forever changed. The book of Acts is the most exciting story ever written—even more perhaps than the gospel, with its
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KRIEG BARRIE
dazzling climax. For the resurrection is only the end of the first act, the fulfillment of one promise and the reiteration of another: “You will receive power from on high and you will be my witnesses. …” In other words, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. At the beginning of Acts, the disciples are huddled in an upper room— encouraged, but not emboldened. The memory of their risen Lord warms their hearts but hasn’t changed their lives—yet. Then come that mighty rushing wind, that revival meeting, that explosion of the reborn family of God, and the rest … is history? There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then: high points and low points, differing opinions over whether the church was an overall positive force in human development. Now we huddle figuratively in an upper room and wonder if any kind of force remains. Here’s another story, by Flannery O’Connor: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The main character is a silly old woman setting off on vacation with her son and his family, squandering their goodwill—and the reader’s—while on the road. Halfway through they stumble upon the Misfit, a fugitive murderer, and his band of fellow sociopaths. The woman lapses into hysterics as they shoot her family, one by one. The gun finally points at her. Then, in a signature O’Connor moment of truth, she recognizes the Misfit in metaphorical terms and reaches out to touch his shoulder, murmuring, “Why, you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” He immediately shoots her three times through the chest. But soon after he observes, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” Literature is open to interpretation, but to me O’Connor’s old lady looks like the church as the world sees her: silly, irrelevant, and hypocritical. But she comes into her own when there’s a gun to her head. From the Emperor Domitian ordering another round of persecution to the Third Reich hounding Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his allies, crisis brings clarity, and clarity speaks truth. For all its thrills and chills, the book of Acts doesn’t end in a ringing climax but rather leaves us hanging with Paul in Rome. An oversight? Of course not. Luke is passing the story on to subsequent characters, all the way down to us. The rest is not history; the rest is now. A
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4/15/13 3:30 PM
Building a Pro-Family Conservative Majority J U N E 1 3 - 1 5 H WA S H I N G T O N , D . C .
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4/15/13 9:22 AM
Saturday, april 20, 11:30 a.m.
BJu.edu/visit
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Come and experience Bob Jones University for yourself! Meet students and faculty, tour the campus, get answers to your questions, and find out if BJU is right for you.
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4/11/13 12:40 PM
Reviews
GRANT HALVERSON/USA NETWORK
Movies TV > Books > QA > Music
Reality dreams >> TELEVISION: USA Network’s first reality show isn’t realistic, but it may keep people watching BY J.C. DERRICK
T viewers can usually rely on in reality TV shows is how little they resemble reality. The Moment, top-rated USA Network’s first foray into the reality TV phenomenon, doesn’t do much to change that stereotype: Nine people get two weeks with a professional to go through what amounts to boot camp in the field of their dreams—ranging from photography to NASCAR driving. If the contestants succeed, they get a job offer.
That’s not a reality most Americans enjoy, but it’s also part of the intended draw: Who wouldn’t want a second chance at their dream job? Watching someone else strive for their dreams, however, is not as exciting as reaching for your own. The show comes up short on drama as contestants compete with themselves instead of other people, but it helps to have a potential Hall of Fame footMOMENT IN THE SUN: Kyle Shields gets his ball player hosting chance to pursue his the program. dream job of being a Former NFL professional race car quarterback Kurt driver on The Moment.
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4/17/13 12:01 PM
Reviews > Movies & TV
Box Office Top 10 For the weekend of April 12-14 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
Warner, 41, hosts The Moment— an obvious hat-tip to Warner’s own story of second chances. Warner signed with the St. Louis Rams in 1998 after spending four years out of the NFL—a period in which he found himself stocking grocery shelves— and a year later he earned his first of two league MVP awards en route to an improbable Super Bowl victory. Warner, who retired in 2010, told me his story gave him the perfect background to walk with contestants through two weeks of intense training, which inevitably included peaks and valleys. He said he was able to explain “what the possibilities getting a shot: Aspiring sports photographer Tracie Marcum (left) with Sports Illustrated photographer Lou Jones (right) and Warner.
are for them if they continue to push forS V L ward,” and he’s often 1̀ 42* PG-13.......................................3 4 4 seen giving pep talks 2̀ Scary Movie 5 PG-13............... 7 7 5 using scenarios from 3̀ The Croods* PG......................... 1 3 1 4̀ G.I. Joe: Retaliation* PG-13....4 7 5 his football journey. 5̀ Evil Dead r..................................5 10 8 Each episode 6̀ Jurassic Park 3D PG-13..........2 6 4 begins with Warner 7̀ Olympus Has Fallen r...........2 8 8 surprising contestants 8̀ Oz the Great with their new career and Powerful* PG....................2 4 2 opportunity (think Ty 9̀ Tyler Perry’s Pennington on Temptation* PG-13...................6 5 4 Extreme Makeover: 10 The Place ` Beyond the Pines r................5 6 10 Home Edition). The following two weeks *Reviewed by world are condensed into an hour-long production, but viewers are still brought to ground level with illustrations of what it takes to succeed at the top of a profession. The professional trainers don’t mince words when telling trainees how they need to improve (think Simon Cowell on American Idol). The Moment may fall short on action, but suspense isn’t completely absent: Not all contestants earn the job, and not all contestants take the position offered to them. Warner said the point of the show is to reignite the passion for life that most people have lost, and to “get them moving” in the direction of their dreams again. The Moment contains very little objectionable material and maintains a positive tone throughout, which Warner said was important to him. Despite being unrealistic for most people, it might be inspiring enough to get them to keep watching.
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top: Colleen Hayes/USA Network • bottom: Scott McDermott/USA Network
Kurt Warner’s new reality TV show, The Moment, may only give nine people a chance at their dreams, but he’s using it as a springboard to reach “millions of people across the country.” How does he plan to impact so many? Through a ministry called “Make the Moment.” The ministry is designed to help churches tap into their internal resources and match needs with those who are equipped to meet those needs. Warner, an outspoken Christian, said for himself that may mean coaching a young person with dreams of playing in the NFL, but for dentists in one church it meant donating dental work to former drug addicts whose poor teeth kept them from landing jobs. “That’s really the premise— to make this more of a grass-roots approach,” Warner told me. “There’s a lot of people out there who are in great positions to help other people, they just don’t know how.” The ministry has launched a website (makethemoment.org) where it explains the program and gives churches the ability to register for a chance to win a visit from Warner. The site also shows the success of one California church, Cathedral of Faith in San Jose, which is helping between 500 and 1,000 people per week with various needs such as food and clothing. Warner said his passion for helping others stems from his favorite Bible verse, Matthew 6:33 (“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you”). “Once football was over, my life wasn’t over,” he said. “I knew there was more that God wanted me to accomplish.”
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4/17/13 12:06 PM
The Angels’ Share: Sixteen Films • Oblivion: Universal Pictures
Moment maker
MOVIE
The Angels’ Share by Stephanie Perrault
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Award-winning movies don’t always live up to their billing. Such is the case with British filmmaker Ken Loach’s lastest offering, The Angels’ Share—winner of awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Billed as a comedic tale of misplaced talent and unlikely redemption, the movie focuses on the life of young Glasgow miscreant Robbie (Paul Brannigan), whose violent temper and drug habits landed him in prison. The movie begins in court, where Robbie’s lawyer argues that thanks to his girlfriend and the impending
MOVIE
Oblivion by Emily Whitten
top: Colleen Hayes/USA Network • bottom: Scott McDermott/USA Network
The Angels’ Share: Sixteen Films • Oblivion: Universal Pictures
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birth of his child, Robbie is a changed man, despite the fact that he just thrashed a gang of thugs. The judge extends grace and gives him 300 hours of community service instead of another prison sentence. That’s how he meets Big Harry (John Henshaw), the kindly officer overseeing Robbie’s community service. Harry is a Scotch whiskey aficionado and shares this passion with Robbie, who, for the first time in his life, takes an interest in something. He studies the art and craft of whiskey distilling and discovers that a rare cask is about to be sold at auction for over a million pounds. He decides to steal a couple of bottles with the help of three other petty criminals, also down on their luck and not particularly bright. Sounds OK so far, right? It probably would be if it were a silent movie, but screenwriter Paul Laverty’s heavy overuse of profanity and obscenities makes the film unconsumable. It doesn’t help that the Scottish accents of the characters are so heavy that subtitles are required; viewers not only hear a deluge of profanity, they read it too. There is supposed to be an element of humor woven throughout, but the witless jokes lack the intelligence of great heist movies like Oceans’ Eleven or The Sting. Although the film is not rated by the MPAA, it has a “15” rating in Britain, the rough equivalent of an “R” rating. Despite what the critics are saying, this is one movie not to see.
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Life on post-apocalyptic Earth is a mixed bag for Jack Harper (Tom Cruise). By day, he’s a fighter pilot/ mechanic designated with protecting a fleet of drones constantly attacked by “Scavs”—aliens left on Earth after their war ruined the planet. By night, though, Jack lives like James Bond in a sky-bubble in the stratosphere—a kind of floating apartment with uber-modern glass architecture—along with his picture-perfect partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), who provides candlelit dinners that always end in a come hither look. (And yes, this glass house reveals several instances of nudity and sex, though they’re not graphic, and the film is rated PG-13.) As Victoria tells their crew leader each night, they make “an effective team.” The trouble is, Jack has memories. Fleeting memories of life before the aliens, as well as dreams of a dark-haired woman (Olga Kurylenko). When that woman appears at a crash site he’s investigating, Jack risks his life to save her, and together they begin to piece together who he is—and what it will take to save Earth from an enemy he knows all too well. (Not to worry, the leader of the resistance played by Morgan Freeman will explain it to you when the time comes.) Director Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy) is here joined with the producers of Planet of the Apes to create a movie breathtaking in its scope. Filmed partially on the surface of a volcano in Iceland and buoyed by a haunting soundtrack, it occasionally approaches the sublime. Unfortunately, the storyline struggles to maintain its momentum, and several prominent instances of profanity mar the movie for families. Hence, it’s doubtful Oblivion will get as much interest as The Matrix in Christian circles. But considering Jack’s search for authenticity, along with poetry about the “temples of his gods” and one character’s outright claim to be God, the movie still offers plenty of fodder for discussion. Add to that eye-candy connecting it to sci-fi classics like Star Wars, War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and WALL-E, the creators of Oblivion prove that they, too, make a mostly “effective team.”
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Reviews > Books
Worth a slow read What Happened to Sophie Wilder stands out from the crowd of literary novels BY MARVIN OLASKY
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I ’ many literary novels, which I often find precious rather than valuable, but Christopher Beha’s What Happened to Sophie Wilder (Tin House Books, ) is the extraordinary exception. Two young writers in New York are the main characters, and here’s how Beha describes the born-again experience one has: “It is in the nature of what happened next that it can’t be conveyed in words. The few times Sophie tried to explain it later, even to herself, she fell back on cliché: something came over her; she walked out changed.” Then, beyond clichés: “It got closest to it to say that she was, for a time, occupied. After all her reading in the week leading up to that day, she thought of that occupying force as the Holy Spirit. But mostly she knew that it was something outside of herself, something real, not an idea or a conceit or a metaphor. Once it passed on, she knew that her very outline had been reshaped by it. … Everything later followed from that.”
Everything important in the novel follows from that. When Manhattan has a blackout and stars are visible Sophie “imagined that the whole world was lit up like a city, so that no one ever saw the stars. It’s going to happen eventually. What will people make of us then, and all our talk about the heavens? Songs about constellations. Stargazing poetry.” The other character, thoroughly secular Tom, says, “They’ll get the convenience of cities, the survival of mankind. That will be worth the disappearance.” Sophie replies, “How will they know it was worth it, if they’ve never seen the stars? How could they measure their loss beneath an empty sky?” Tom “didn’t know how to answer this.” Of course not, because they’re talking about stars but Sophie is also talking about God, and how those blinded by modern light don’t know what they’re missing. On my treadmill I read fast most books, but this one I had to read slowly, and after finishing it all reread parts.
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HANDOUT
Michael Horton’s Pilgrim Theology (Zondervan, ) is an excellent theology text that comes with a study guide. Paul Cantor’s The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture undermines the argument of some that study of the classics produces deep thoughts that study of film and television cannot: The worth of many humanities and social science classes depends on the professor, not the subject, and U. of Virginia professor Cantor skillfully shows how (among many other things) Have Gun Will Travel and Star Trek prepared Americans for liberal regimes. Seventy years ago—May , —the German Afrika Korps surrendered to Allied troops in North Africa, who took more than , prisoners. In World War Two: A Short History (Basic) Norman Stone brilliantly tells the story of that campaign and many others in a fast-moving pages: If you want to know the main thrusts of that war in one sitting, this is the book. J.I. Packer’s Puritan Portraits (Christian Focus, ) is also worth a slow read: It includes nine introductions to classic pastors such as Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, John Owen, and John Bunyan. Christian’s Quest by Jacqueline Busch and Melvin Patterson is a fast read, “an urban adaptation” of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Moody, ). I’m not sure if Packer, a very distinguished Brit, would approve of the first sentence—‘Hey! Yo, Chris! Wait up!’ Christian cringed at the sound of Hopeful’s voice”—but I enjoyed it. In a book industry where truth in advertising is rare, Betsy McCaughey’s Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving the New Health Care Law (Regnery, ) is exactly what its title proclaims, a -page dissection of the ,-page healthcare law. Demons of Poverty by Ted Boers and Tim Stoner (Micah Enterprises, ) is an excellent title for this case study of a project in Haiti that went awry. Alvin Schmidt’s The American Muhammad: Joseph Smith, Founder of Mormonism (Concordia, ) draws the parallels between the two founders. —M.O.
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
4/11/13 12:42 PM
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Short takes
NOTABLE BOOKS Recent crime novels > reviewed by
A Cold and Lonely Place Sara Henry Reporter Troy Chance is taking pictures on a frozen lake near Lake Placid, N.Y., when she discovers a body in the ice. It turns out to be her roommate’s boyfriend. Some people think the roommate killed him. When her reporting doesn’t mention that, they smell cover-up. Then the victim’s sister arrives in town to discover the truth about his death. Henry tells the story from the reporter’s perspective, tracing her steps as she researches the victim’s life, uncovers secrets that brought him to upstate New York, and turns those discoveries into newspaper articles. The frozen landscape is a fitting setting for a story about family estrangement.
Broken Harbor Tana French Irish police investigate the brutal stabbing deaths of a husband and two children, as the wife clings to life. The crime takes place in a remote housing development full of cheap tract houses in various stages of completion. Murder squad detective Michael Kennedy and his detectives search the shoddily built house for clues to the slayings and the troubled lives of the victims. Meanwhile Kennedy’s personal life begins to crumble as his mentally ill sister breaks down and his personal code of conduct fails. French writes about people pressed on all sides by economic and psychological pressures. It’s a gritty police procedural and novel of psychological suspense with strong and sometimes obscene language.
HANDOUT
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A Killing in the Hills Julia Keller Bell Elkins could have escaped from Acker’s Gap, W.Va., a small town on the way down. Instead she came back with a law degree and teenage daughter. She’s a tough-on-crime district attorney, waging war on drug dealers selling Oxycontin and meth. Then her daughter witnesses the shooting in a local restaurant of three old men. Keller captures the details of family and small-town life, showing the corrosive effect of big-city crime in hamlets not equipped to deal with it. Some characters use bad language and do bad things, and others courageously fight to maintain their community when many are ready to quit. The Geneva Trap Stella Rimington Stella Rimington, former director general of Britain’s intelligence agency, MI, pens spy thrillers featuring female MI agent Liz Carlyle. In this seventh in a series, a Russian intelligence agent approaches Liz with news that a mole has penetrated a top-secret British-American drone project. She has to convince the skeptical Americans and Brits, and then track down the mole. Meanwhile, through family connections, Liz learns about an anarchist commune in southern France that threatens to become violent. Rimington’s characters come from different social classes and countries, and she depicts well the tensions that arise even among allies. Solving the case requires cloak-and-dagger, quiet interrogation, and computer wizardry— all accomplished without an R-rated vocabulary.
See all our reviews at worldmag.com/books
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SPOTLIGHT The novel Congo Dawn by Jeanette Windle (Tyndale, ) features a plucky protagonist who finds herself deep in a dangerous situation she barely understands. Former Marine Robin Duncan, deployed in Afghanistan until a serious injury sent her home, now works as a translator for a private security firm, going wherever remunerative contracts take her. When her firm offers big money to help restore order near a valuable mine in Congo, Duncan willingly goes. There she meets a medical missionary—a man she once loved—who tries to convince her that strife over the mine is more complicated than she understands. Windle turns detailed reporting, gospel understanding, and a suspenseful plot into a story that will keep you turning pages and thinking more deeply about God’s love and human suffering.
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4/11/13 12:41 PM
Reviews > Q&A
Negative action
Little-discussed evidence, says lawyer and journalist Stuart Taylor Jr., shows that racial preferences in admissions are hurting college-bound minority students By Marvin Olasky
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Admit It, that he co-authored with Richard Sander. Your emphasis on hurting those purportedly helped reminds me of how welfare reform made progress in the 1990s: People understood that welfare hurt those it was supposed to help. Your analogy is a good one. Perfectly good students jump by racial preferences into colleges and universities for which they just aren’t qualified or well- prepared. It’s taking a kid who’s got a B average at a mediocre high school and 1000 on the SATs, and putting
him into a university where most people have A averages from better high schools and 1400 SATs. What typically happens? They arrive at college. They’ve been told, “You’re great. You’re going to do fine here.” Kids with science interest who want to do pre-med would do fine at a college where their classmates were on a par with them but because of race they’ve been singled out and put into colleges where their colleagues are way ahead of them. Then what happens? There’s a huge attrition of
black students and Hispanics who want to be scientists, engineers, doctors—who would succeed if they were at colleges for which they were well-qualified. Instead, they bail out and major in Sociology or African-American Studies because they can’t pass the courses they wanted to take. This takes a huge toll on their intellectual self-confidence and their long-term career patterns. This is doing grave harm to a lot of black kids— harm that is life-long. Tell us about some of your Mismatch findings. We do not think there’s any
Greg Kahn/Genesis
Stuart Taylor Jr. combines journalistic excellence and legal knowledge. He graduated from Harvard Law School, was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, and is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow and National Journal columnist. With the Supreme Court poised to deliver an important decision on racial preferences, I asked about the findings of an important new book, Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help and Why Universities Won’t
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Greg Kahn/Genesis
genetic component to this, but blacks who entered elite schools with aspirations in science, technology, engineering, or math—STEM majors—were about half as likely as whites in the same position to finish college with STEM degrees. At the University of California, after an initiative in 1996 banned racial preferences, the number of blacks and Hispanics at Berkeley and UCLA, the elite campuses, went down dramatically. Those students went to Cal Riverside or Cal Irvine: Their graduation and science persistence rates went up.
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
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Fewer than half of entering black law students ever pass the bar exam; they’re left deep in debt, with no career, after pouring several years of their lives into this. Why haven’t we heard more about the performance gap? The media ignore the academic performance, the problems that the supposed beneficiaries have in college. I hope the Supreme Court will impose total transparency. How big a gap is there between the SAT scores of your white and black freshmen? How big a gap is there between the grade point averages of various categories of freshmen? How do people do in college? What about your statistics on science retention? What about graduation rates? Because whenever those statistics are available—and the universities try very hard to suppress them—they are shocking. Here’s a counter- argument: If colleges provided better support services for struggling students, many more would be able to succeed. There’s something to that argument. Some students could do well at the colleges for which they’re not initially well-qualified with the right combination of remedial services and hard work. But would it make sense to have every selective college with almost a separate remedial program populated almost
entirely by black and Hispanic students, as opposed to them going to colleges where they don’t need a remedial program? Another counter- argument: The elimination of racial preferences would lead to more inequality. Racial preferences are making us more unequal, incomewise, not less. How does it help with inequality to take the child of a black doctor who immigrated from Great Britain, and elevate him ahead of the child of a white or Asian cab driver who’s been here for generations? But that’s how it works, and the media don’t want you to know it. Many college presidents say increased racial diversity gives students a better educational environment. That’s become the prevalent argument because the Supreme Court, for reasons of its own, has made that the only argument it will accept. If you could have a proportionate racial mix at all the colleges, and it just happened, sure. But when you have basically a twotiered, color-coded educational hierarchy in every college in the country because of this system, you don’t get the same amount of racial friendships, racial mixing, racial interactions, as you would if it happened more naturally, because students are going to different classes—by the end of the freshman year, there are hardly any black kids in the science classes. Still, a third counterargument: On the campus as a whole, wouldn’t a ban on racial preferences lead to less diversity? If racial preferences were banned tomorrow and everybody complied, there would not be
one iota less diversity in American universities collectively than there is now. There would be some redistribution—less diversity at Harvard and other top schools, more diversity at the ones farther down, with all of the black students doing better at every level. The argument for diversity, on closer examination, becomes an argument that you’re going to have more blacks in leadership positions if we have more of them at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etcetera. Getting jobs at elite law firms they otherwise would not get? They will get jobs at elite law firms—but the same partners who said, “We gotta have more black faces here,” will say if a memo is not what they expect it to be, “I don’t want him working on my case!” You end up with a lot of careers ending unhappily fairly early at these big law firms, and a lot of understandably embittered black people. They have been told, “You’re going to do fine at this college, this law school, this firm,” but nobody’s ever told them, “You’re not wellprepared for this. You’d be better off somewhere else.” A fourth counter- argument: Seeing more people from their race in colleges inspires some m iddle-school and highschool students. John McWhorter, a black critic of affirmative action, wrote in his book, Losing the Race, “I knew from at least the age of ten that there was something called affirmative action. It meant that I would not have to work as hard or do as well as my white classmates in order to get into a good college. That had an effect on me.” That has an effect on a lot of kids. A
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Reviews > Music
People and places
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A , the Ghanaborn singer-songwriter Hiram Ring is hardly the “tallest man on earth,” but he’s a fan of the music of Kristian Mattson, the Swedish performer who goes by that pseudonym. “It’s really gripping in a lot of ways,” Ring told WORLD, “and his songwriting is amazing. So that’s a lot of the direction that I wanted to go with this album.” The album to which Ring refers is Home, his second full-length release and the followup to his recording, Breathe Deep. An immediately arresting collection, Home’s original acoustic folk songs explore, from an intimately human perspective, the abundant hope to be found in Christ. Home’s simplicity belies the richness of experience behind its making. The son of Wycliffe Bible translators, Ring has been soaking up international
you go for less than a month, you don’t really get to know the area, the people, or the language.” Areas, people, and language infuse Ring’s music. One of Home’s most vivid songs, for instance, is “Virginia,” a celebration of the Blue Ridge A passion for regions Mountains couched in dark, and languages infuses romantic metaphors worthy of the music of medieval balladeers and set to an acoustically jazzy guitar riff HIRAM RING that reflects Ring’s interest in BY ARSENIO ORTEZA American folk tunes. As for language, one need search no further than Ring’s YouTube video “Hiram Plays a Norwegian Song.” “I learned experiences of one kind or another for enough Norwegian to communicate years. with people, and then, with a friend, I And although he attended university took verses of Scripture and put them in New York state (Houghton College) and has spent much of the last to music.” And when it comes to decade based in Lancaster, Pa., he considered Ghana home for people, none looms larger his first years (during which than Ring’s Savior, specifihe learned to play the guitar on cally in Home’s Gethsemanea diet of Simon & Garfunkel, blues song “My Lord.” “I’ve the Beatles, and his older always been really fascinated brothers’ s Contemporary by the whole Passion Christian Music favorites). sequence, the fact that Jesus was suffering but He didn’t just seek Currently, he’s dividing his time His own safety or His own relief. He between Australia and Singapore while realized that there was a greater purpose completing what he’s calling a “degree in His suffering.” in language documentation and “My main purpose in releasing description” based on his first-hand music,” says Ring, “is to help others studies of the northeast-Indian language connect with who God is—and with the Pnar. story that God wants to make of every“I usually like to go somewhere for one’s life.” at least a month,” he says. “I find that if
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The main purpose of Stephan Micus—the -year-old experimental musician best known for performing and recording on obscure, ethnically authentic instruments collected from around the world—is in some ways profoundly different from Hiram Ring. He dedicates his latest album, Panagia (ECM), to the world’s “female energy” and intends it to balance the “overemphasized … male aspect” of the “three monotheistic religions.” By basing Panagia on ancient Greek petitions to the Virgin Mary (panagia is an Eastern Orthodox Marian title meaning “all holy”), Micus may have inadvertently tilted the scales in favor of male energy after all. From the wedding feast at Cana onward, Mary’s message was nothing if not “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.” As for the intense reverence with which Micus sings (in Greek) such prayers as “I Praise You, Sacred Mother” and “I Praise You, Cloud of Light,” it’s nothing if not monastic. —A.O.
Email: aorteza@worldmag.com
4/16/13 1:54 PM
SNEAKPEAK
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NOTABLE CDs
New or recent jazz releases > reviewed by
Cinema Beyrouth Toufic Farroukh Option One: Think of Toufic Farroukh as the Ennio Morricone of Lebanese film. Like Morricone, whose music stands (and often stands quite tall) apart from the films for which it has been composed, Farroukh’s needs no visual analogue to work its wonders. Option Two: Think of Farroukh as a Middle Eastern Duke Ellington, skillfully interweaving multicultural musical traditions into something that may as well be called “jazz” because it’s close enough for it and obviously nothing else. That it’s executed primarily with trumpet, trombone, sousaphone, and tuba helps.
Magic Beans Benny Green Disregard the album-cover hairstyle (a perm?): Benny Green is the real deal. Heretofore known mainly to jazz insiders for his piano work with Betty Carter, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Ray Brown, and Oscar Peterson, Green’s first album of all-original compositions ricochets with the history of not only his firsthand apprenticeships but of Thelonius Monk and other first-generation “hard bop” pianists. That’s “hard” as in “crisp,” by the way, which goes for the bass and drums as well.
Without a Net Wayne Shorter Quartet Compare the version of “Orbits” that Shorter composed (and played tenor sax on) for Miles Davis’ Miles Smiles with the one that leads off this live album (recorded mostly on the Shorter Quartet’s tour). Less a remake than an extension, it begins with the pianist Danilo Pérez stoking the latter’s concluding embers until Shorter (on alto sax this time) and combo inflame it to the full. Only then might you be ready for the riches the Quartet discovers in Fred Astaire’s “Flying Down to Rio.”
SPOTLIGHT When Capitol released Best of Bond … James Bond: Years— Tracks last October, the definitive statement on Hollywood’s most iconic spy-thriller music seemed to have been made. Besides including every famous Bond song, it also included them in their original versions, thus making strange but euphonious bedfellows of the likes of Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Carly Simon, Tina Turner, Scott Walker, and Sheena Easton. Judging from Bonded: A Salute to the Music of Bond, James Bond however, neither the gospel-voiced jazz vocalist Jaimee Paul nor her longtime-CCM-identified co-producer Michael Omartian got the memo about the Bond canon’s closing, a canon to which they add interesting twists. While Paul merely holds her own on the female-identified classics, the changes she brings to songs minted by men (Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill,” Matt Munro’s “From Russia with Love”) augur that they’ll live another day.
PHOTOS: HANDOU
SNEAKPEAK
The Master: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Jonny Greenwood The Master, the film that inspired this Radiohead member’s latest solo music, got up the noses of Scientologists last year, thus making Greenwood’s soundtrack worth checking out if only for sociological reasons. Is it jazz? The inclusion of such Big Band Era favorites as “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” (Ella Fitzgerald), “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” (Madisen Beaty), “No Other Love” (Jo Stafford), and “Changing Partners” (Helen Forrest) suggests as much. What unites them, though, is orchestral soundtrack wizardry. Is it enjoyable? Was L. Ron Hubbard nuts?
See all our reviews at worldmag.com/music
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Mindy Belz
Spending habits
A bold Obama plan to reform food aid runs into predictable special interests
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LYNNE SLADKY/AP
A Haitian woman carries a bag T President Barack of rice donated by USAID Obama delivered to Capitol Hill April contained the line of food aid groups, since the value of U.S. predictable mix of the latest government commodities donated to these NGOs is almost always spending programs masquerading as “investments” higher than expenses for projects they pay for. and the latest “revenue enhancers” to make the other Consider too that U.S. wheat, corn, soybean, and guy pay for them. rice producers already receive Farm Bill subsidies— Lost in much of the analysis was a startling bit of subsidies that increase as the size of production and cost-cutting: The president proposes to end food aid acreage goes up. While other Americans have seen overseas as we know it with a program the drops in income, average household farm income in administration claims would save money and feed the United States rose . percent in , to ,. million more needy people each year. Taken together it’s easy to see why free-market Finally! But not so easy, budget cutting. The plan analysts have long called the Farm Bill food programs would end a -year program called Food for Peace, “the largest corporate welfare program in America.” where the U.S. government buys food from U.S. So it’s no surprise that an otherwise unlikely coalition farmers and ships it to food-deprived locales overseas, of about farm lobbyists, shippers, and charities, using U.S.-based international NGOs to funnel it to including a handful of faith-based NGOs, have banded those in need. The United States spends . billion a together to oppose changing the system. What’s year on food aid and is the only major donor country disappointing: Congress, including some budgetthat sends all its own food to hunger hot spots. With minded Republicans, will probably listen to them. the new plan the government would instead buy food Dave Evans, the U.S. president of Food for the in countries closer to need—saving on transportation, Hungry, makes a compelling case for keeping Food for aiding local farmers and haulers, and getting food to Peace while acknowledging that “reform is needed.” where it’s needed faster. For example, when the UN The United States is the most dependable grain supissues a famine warning for Sudan or northern plier in the world, he maintains, and food aid should Somalia, the United States would respond by buying promote U.S. interests abroad. grain first from farmers in Kenya rather than Kansas. That was the intent of Presidents Eisenhower and It’s not a perfect fix but is a needed new direction Kennedy when the program started. But that was for a calcified government program. But it’s running before global markets made new efficiencies possible, into resistance from a coalition of U.S. agribusinesses, and under a Cold War calculus different from freight companies, and Christian aid groups—nonmultilateral threats we face today. governmental organizations (NGOs) like World Vision Evans says he and others in the coalition don’t and Food for the Hungry. One reason for the resistance: want to see any reductions in spending on food aid— In a practice called “food monetization,” NGOs also overseas or to U.S. agribusiness or related interests. get grain from the government for free, but they are Evans is so good at explaining how the current Food allowed to sell it The NGOs then use grain proceeds to for Peace system supports American businesses and finance local development projects. U.S. interests he could moonlight for the Chamber of You don’t need an MBA to see the problems. Selling Commerce. That makes it hard to remember who’s imported U.S. grain, especially in the poorest settings, being hurt: U.S. taxpayers and the people we are distorts local market values and undermines local trying to help. It’s hard to imagine Congress going production. It’s a subsidy for U.S. farmers since along with the president, given the special interests— Washington buys the “surplus” grain to ship overseas, and it’s a cautionary tale for launching new and and for U.S. freight companies, since they by law must expansive federal programs. A ship the food. And it’s an artificial boost to the bottom
Email: mbelz@worldmag.com
4/17/13 11:46 AM
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heartbreak hill when explosions hit the boston marathon, people at the scene and boston residents swung into action by jamie dean photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe/AP
or many runners, the most grueling stretch of the Boston Marathon comes around the 20th mile: Most call it “Heartbreak Hill.” But it was the final stretch of the 26-mile race that brought searing heartbreak for the entire city on April 15: A pair of bombs exploded at two locations near a finish line full of racers and bystanders, and left a trail of glass, blood, and body parts in the middle of downtown Boston. By the next day, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called the attack “a cruel act of terror,” as FBI agents and Boston police worked to identify suspects and motives. Meanwhile, the explosions had killed at least three victims, and wounded more than 140. At least 17 remained in critical condition. Many had lost arms or legs. Doctors said they would perform many more surgeries in coming days. Alasdair Conn, chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, said he had never seen “this CARNAGE: amount of carnage in People react the civilian populaas a second explosion goes tion” during his 25 off near the years at the facility: finish line of “This is what we the Boston expect in war.” Marathon.
For some medics, the bombs’ devastation was the kind of carnage they’d already seen in war. Jim Asaiante, an emergency room nurse in Boston, was working in a medical tent for runners suffering from minor injuries when the bombs exploded. The Iraq War veteran braced himself. “I heard the first IED [improvised explosive device], and I know there’s never one,” he told CNN. “The bad guys always set up two or three.” Asaiante spent two hours tending to the severely wounded, including a man with calves and feet blown off, and blood pumping from his knees. “It was mayhem,” he said. Asaiante was one example of a common thread at Boston’s massacre: A number of witnesses already had endured violence-related trauma. That experience now extends to thousands of Boston’s citizens and visitors, and brings challenges for churches, aid groups, and others who want to help those suffering in a nation increasingly familiar with trauma. At the crime scene, past experiences with violence varied: One woman told reporters she had been in New York’s financial district on the morning of 9/11. A group of six racers from Newtown, Conn., were running in memory of the 26 victims in December’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
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Race officials had observed 26 seconds of silence at the beginning of the marathon to honor the 20 children and six adults killed at the school. None of the Newtown group was injured, but Ed Lucas told his hometown newspaper his wife had been standing at the bombing location when he finished the race earlier in the day: “She missed it by an hour.” For Boston residents Carlos and Melida Arredondo, witnessing the explosions and carnage firsthand brought horrific associations: Their 20-year-old son died in a sniper attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2004. Six years later, their younger son succumbed to grief over his brother’s death and hung himself at age 24. The couple had been at the finish line on race day, waiting for a group of participants from the National Guard. The racers were part of Run for the Fallen Marine, a group that honors Marines killed since 9/11. Like others onsite, Carlos Arredondo didn’t let personal fear (or past tragedy)
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TOP TWO PHOTOS: Ken McGagh/MetroWest Daily News/AP • BOTTOM LEFT: CHARLES KRUPA/AP • RICHARD: FAMILY HANDOUT
“THIS IS WHAT WE EXPECT IN WAR”: Injured people and debris lie on the sidewalk at the blast site (above and left); medical workers attend the wounded near the finish line (bottom left); 8-year-old Martin Richard.
drive him away from the scene. Instead, he jumped the fence and rushed toward victims with bleeding wounds and torn limbs. Indeed, some of the most stirring images of the day showed police rushing toward the explosions to help the injured, and runners in shorts and sneakers holding makeshift tourniquets on the bleeding wounds of strangers. By the end of the day, thousands of Boston residents had joined an online spreadsheet offering rooms in private homes to anyone stranded at the race and unable to return to hotels. Entries included names, phone numbers, and email addresses, and information like “Guest bedroom + extra bathroom. Please don’t hesitate.” Meanwhile, a handful of aid groups also worked to offer relief. Within 24 hours, the Salvation Army had supplied more than 2,000 meals, snacks, and beverages to survivors, families, and first responders. The group also sent chaplains to local hospitals to help families coping with injuries or loss.
Email: jdean@worldmag.com
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Major Ivan Rock—the group’s general secretary for Massachusetts—said he spent the first evening talking with survivors in the Family Assistance Center downtown. He conducted similar work in New York after 9/11. “Many folks were simply in shock,” he said in an interview from Boston. “They just needed someone to listen to them.” Churches across the city planned prayer vigils and joint worship services. Stephen Um, pastor of CityLife
Presbyterian Church, urged his congregation to be good citizens and good neighbors, and to “pray and adopt a heart posture of love and service for our city.” In a phone interview, Um said the congregation would also explore ways to help victims. The church’s deacons were already working to raise funds for the family of Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy who died in the attack. (Several of the church’s families live in the Richards’ neighborhood.) A family friend said Martin was watching runners cross the finish line when he was killed by the blast. The boy’s mother sustained brain injuries, and his 6-year-old sister reportedly lost a leg. In a statement, his father, Bill Richard, said: “I ask that you continue to pray for my family as we remember Martin.” The family—which attends St. Ann’s Catholic Church—also released a photo of Martin on the church steps. The image shows a smiling boy wearing a white suit and white tie, and holding a felt banner bearing his name and a series of images: a cross, a heart, a dove, and the Greek letters Alpha and Omega—the symbols Christ used to describe Himself as “the beginning and the end.” A
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Weather maker When 23-year-old Margaret Roberts applied for a job as a research chemist in 1948, the
interviewer rejected her outright. “This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously selfopinionated,” wrote a personnel department employee at Imperial Chemical Industries. For friends and foes, those traits came to symbolize the public career of the woman who
joined the Conservative Party and stood as the youngest candidate ever for Parliament in 1950. She married businessman Denis Thatcher in 1951 and—after a steady rise through Tory ranks— became the first woman to serve as England’s prime minister in 1979. In a century of renowned British heads of government, Thatcher served continuously the longest, surviving voluble detractors and IRA assassins to win three terms as prime minister and usher in an era of Conservative dominance that lasted until Tony Blair’s election in 1997. “They say that cometh the hour, cometh the man. Well in 1979 came the hour, and came The Lady,” said Prime Minister David Cameron after her April 8 death at age 87. “She made the political weather. She made history. And let this be her epitaph: that she made Britain great again.” Abroad she joined U.S. President Ronald Reagan in a tough stand against the Soviet Union, including a highly unpopular move by NATO to deploy nuclear-armed cruise missiles in Europe. The buildup and subsequent arms talks with Soviet leaders led to the downfall and breakup of the Soviet Union. At home she took a hard line against militants fighting British control of Northern Ireland. She pushed a domestic agenda that rescued Britain from its postwar, Socialist-leaning malaise with a strike-prone, lagging industrial labor force.
by Mindy Belz
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1984: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher poses inside Number 10 Downing Street in London. Express/Getty Images
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hatcher began and remained “the thrifty Methodist grocer’s daughter of Grantham,” said Mark Tooley, president of the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy. Her father was a lay pastor who took in Jewish refugees from Nazism in the 1930s, and she grew up a frequent church attender. She called Methodism “the most marvelous evangelical faith” in a 1978 interview with the Catholic Herald. She loved C.S. Lewis, converted to Anglicanism upon marriage, and even as a political leader spoke often in churches and religious gatherings. The Bible, she said in a 1988 speech to the Church of Scotland, offers a “view of the universe, a proper attitude to work, and principles to shape economic and social life.” She said Scripture taught hard work, creating wealth, and using wealth not selfishly but to glorify God. At a time of rapidly rising secularism, she insisted that Christianity “is a fundamental part of our national heritage” and championed what she called “the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ.’” But the courage of her convictions had a political price tag. By 1990, her approval rating in Britain long lagging at 40 percent, Conservative Party members, worried over 1992 elections, forced her resignation. Thatcher had been defeated without ever losing a national election.
top row (l-r): Manchester Daily Express/SSPL/Getty Images; ap; Express/Getty Images • bottom row: press association/ap
Along with cutting government spending, she slashed income tax rates while increasing a tax on purchases (the value added tax, or VAT). Then she set about turning over to the private sector utilities and other industries long nationalized: British Telecom, British Airways, and others all sold. She broke the power of entrenched and corrupt labor unions, prompting a violent miner’s strike in 1984 that ended in defeat for mineworkers and closure of nearly 100 coal mines (the rest were later privatized). Her stern policies led to violence and mass protests. When even her own party threatened revolt in 1981, she told them, “The lady’s not for turning.” The results proved unassailable: Britain’s GDP grew by over 23 percent from 1979 to 1990 and manufacturing output increased by 7.5 percent during Thatcher’s time in office. Even with the closures and without the unions, more miners kept their jobs under Thatcher than in the 1960s and 1970s. As U.S. diplomat Ronald Spiers cabled Washington from the London embassy, “hers is the genuine voice of a beleaguered bourgeoisie, anxious about its eroding economic power and determined to arrest society’s seemingly inexorable trend towards collectivism.” Even before she took office, he described Thatcher in the 1975 cable as a “forceful” politician who “espouses middle class values of thrift, hard work, and law and order.”
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9 With Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010
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It all could have ended more abruptly. In October 1984 as Thatcher worked into the morning hours on a speech to Conservative Party leaders gathered in the English Channel resort town of Brighton, a powerful explosion ripped through the hotel where she was staying. Thatcher’s fifth-floor suite “seemed to lift and then subside,” said an aide, as windows in the sitting room where she worked blew out and walls caved. Thatcher escaped out a back door of the badly damaged hotel to be driven away in a speeding police car. The bomb blast, planted by the IRA and intended for the prime minister, had taken a toll: five killed, including two longtime party leaders, and 34 injured. But Thatcher insisted the conference continue and gave her speech as scheduled the next day—“defiant but icily composed,” according to one reporter. It set a tone for Western leaders confronting similar threats in decades to come—even those planning her funeral only days after the Boston Marathon bombing: “The fact that we are now here, shocked but determined to continue, is a sign not only that this attack has failed but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.” That grit and raw patriotism seemed to overwhelm staunch opponents in the days following Thatcher’s death. Labour Party adversary Tony Blair called Thatcher “a towering figure.” British editor Allister Heath, while critical of many of her policies, wrote: “If only one of her disciples had
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been in power in the 2000s, we wouldn’t be in anything like the mess we are in today.” Once blasted as “Thatcher the milk-snatcher” for cutting universal free school milk, and lampooned by comedians, Thatcher in death drew outsized attention bordering on downright admiration. The Daily Telegraph carried a look at “how Thatcher inspired the fashion world,” noting that she described her always-present handbag as “the only safe place in Downing Street.” As Thatcher’s funeral procession began through London on April 17, crowds six deep greeted the gun carriage bearing her coffin. They applauded, cheered, and whistled, some throwing flowers and most drowning out anti-Thatcher demonstrators. Inside St. Paul’s Cathedral, Queen Elizabeth (attending her first funeral for a former prime minister since Winston Churchill’s in 1965) drew top billing among a throng of heads of state and other dignitaries. Bishop of London Richard Chartres in his homily quoted Thatcher: “Christianity offers no easy solutions to political and economic issues. It teaches us that we cannot achieve a compassionate society simply by passing new laws and appointing more staff to administer them.” That was the heart of the British leader, who championed a firm moral order, limited government, individual freedom, and the will to pursue each. A
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The German government harasses and persecutes that country’s few homeschoolers. A German homeschooling family’s fight for asylum in the United States will say a lot about the U.S. government’s official attitude toward the growing practice by JAMIE DEAN in Morristown, Tenn.
SEEKING SANCTUARY: Daniel, Joshua, Christian, Lydia, Uwe, Damaris, Hannelore, and Sarah Romeike (from left).
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rom a distance, the small community of Morristown, Tenn., might remind outsiders of a small hamlet in the German countryside: Quaint houses sit tucked into verdant hillsides, and handfuls of churches dot the landscape. One noticeable difference: Churches in Morristown often fill up on Sunday mornings. It’s a stark contrast with a city like Berlin, where the area is full of historic church buildings, but as few as 3 percent of the city’s population regularly attends services. (Indeed, officials in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Berlin announced they would cut the number of churches in their region by 70 percent over the next seven years.)
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It also highlights an important moment for the United States: The Romeike case carries significant implications for whether the Obama administration deems homeschooling a fundamental human right. For now, the Romeikes are preparing for their upcoming hearing, but they fill most days with homeschooling, gardening, teaching piano lessons, and participating in a local church. The couple acknowledges their case doesn’t look like the kind of persecution that sends refugees fleeing war-torn countries or escaping prison cells in totalitarian regimes. But they insist their plight is dire. “Jail wouldn’t be the worst persecution for me,” says Mr. Romeike. “I think having your children taken away would be about the worst thing that could happen to you.”
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Straubing: Armin Weigel/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
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early seven years ago, German police did show up at the Romeikes’ home to take their children to a public school. The incident came six weeks after the couple began home schooling their three school-age children. German law doesn’t specifically forbid homeschooling, but it does mandate that children attend school. Homeschools don’t qualify as state-approved schools. German officials have said they oppose homeschooling because they want to prevent “parallel societies” from developing. Most European countries allow some form of homeschooling, though Sweden and Spain have restrictive laws. Jonas Himmelstrand, president of the Swedish Association for Home Education, fled to Finland with his family earlier last year, citing government harassment and fines for homeschooling. In a separate case in 2009, Swedish officials took custody of Domenic Johansson from his homeschooling family. The boy remains in a foster home. In Germany, most children attend public schools, though the number of private schools has grown in recent decades. Still, even Christian schools for German citizens remain under German oversight, and many use the same curriculum as p ublic schools.
Romeikes: matt rose
For decades, Germany’s Catholic Church and its official Protestant denomination have lost congregants by the thousands, and the situation is even more tenuous for evangelicals: As little as 1 to 2 percent of the German population identifies as evangelical. It’s a challenging landscape for the tiny percentage of German evangelicals living in a heavily secularized society wary of evangelical Christians. For some, the spiritually dry climate is stifling. One example includes Christian parents who want to homeschool their children in a country that requires children to attend state-approved schools. Homeschools don’t qualify. That dynamic led Uwe and Hannelore Romeike to flee Germany with their five children in 2008. (They’ve since had another daughter and expect a baby in June.) The Christian couple faced increasing fines and the threat of losing custody of their children after they decided to homeschool in 2006. The family settled here in Morristown, Tenn., where they knew another German family. They soon applied for asylum, arguing that they couldn’t return to Germany because they feared persecution for their religious-based determination to homeschool. An immigration judge granted the family’s asylum request in 2010, marking the first time a family has won asylum based on homeschooling. But the Obama administration appealed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the Romeikes’ asylum win. The case is set to continue on April 23 in another hearing at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio. The Romeikes—represented by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association—plan to challenge the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) argument that the family’s case doesn’t constitute persecution by the German government. (The court likely won’t render a decision for at least several weeks.) If they lose, the Romeikes could face deportation. If they win, their case could establish a precedent for other foreign homeschool families to seek asylum in the United States, if their home governments don’t allow homeschooling. Meanwhile, the family’s saga highlights the challenges confronting evangelical Christians in Germany—both homeschooling families and those who send their children to public schools.
daughter battled anxiety and fell behind in classwork when she needed extra help. As the couple examined the curriculum, they objected to certain aspects, including early sex education, pro-homosexual teaching, and literature they say encouraged witchcraft. (In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights rejected complaints by a group of Christian parents in Germany who asked to exempt their young children from sex education. German school officials said attendance in the classes was mandatory.) When a local family suggested homeschooling to the Romeikes, the couple decided it would serve their children better than public schools. Mr. Romeike said that persuasion grew into a Christian conviction to educate his children at home. “God gave us children, and we are responsible for them,” he says in his living room in Tennessee. “We want to do everything we can so they get a good foundation for their lives.” German authorities weren’t sympathetic. Police arrived to escort the two older children to school in 2006, and Mrs. Romeike retrieved them at lunchtime. The children never returned, and courts began levying fines that eventually grew to more than $9,000. The Romeikes worried authorities could take custody of their children. It wasn’t an unfounded fear. In 2007, German authorities took custody of Melissa Busekros, a 15-year-old girl from a homeschooling family in Bavaria. Authorities placed the girl in a psychiatric facility, and then in foster care. When she
Romeikes: matt rose
Straubing: Armin Weigel/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
verboten? Joshua, Lydia, Sarah, and Damaris (from left); a student outside a public school in Straubing, Germany.
That presents a dilemma for some Christian families, specially if they object to parts of the German curriculum e like sex education and evolution. Many Christian families tolerate aspects of German schooling they find disagreeable, and work to teach their children a Christian worldview when they’re not in school. Other Germans—including some non-Christians—want to teach their children at home. The Virginia-based HSLDA estimates about 400 German families homeschool. It’s difficult to find precise numbers, since most families try to avoid attention. Some hide the practice from their neighbors, fearing they’ll report them to authorities. For the Romeikes, homeschooling wasn’t their original plan. The couple sent their first two children to public school for three years, but weren’t satisfied with the results: Their oldest son endured bullying and became withdrawn. Their
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ack in Germany, some homeschool families battle different verdicts. In some areas, local authorities level fines against homeschoolers, but don’t pursue more stringent action. In other regions, families face serious legal action. For example, the Dudeks—a homeschooling family with eight children—have faced major court hearings every year since 2006. Authorities have levied fines, and sentenced both parents to three months in jail. The Dudeks have avoided jail time by continuing to appeal their case through the German courts. In a phone interview from his family’s home in Hessia, Jürgen Dudek says he believes homeschooling suits his children best. He also says his Christian beliefs compel him to teach his children at home. “Our children belong to God, and He has entrusted us with those children,” says Dudek. “So we believe we have responsibilities for our children that we can’t delegate.” Dudek—and the Romeikes—say they’re not suggesting all Christian parents must homeschool, and they acknowledge different Christians come to different conclusions about education. Indeed, both families say many German Christians don’t understand their desire to teach their children at home. Tension also exists among homeschool families in Germany, including some non-Christian families who don’t have religious reasons for home education, but believe it’s the best method for HOME SWEET their children. HOME: Jürgen (Some of these Dudeck teaching families are known his son Daniel.
as “un-schoolers” who place less emphasis on traditional learning methods.) When HSLDA held a homeschool conference in Berlin last fall, some homeschoolers objected, saying the publicity brought unwanted attention to their families. Ultimately, most German Christians send their children to public school. Sebastian Heck—pastor of the Free EvangelicalReformed Church in Heidelberg—says he supports the freedom for parents to teach their children at home, but doesn’t mind sending his three young children to public schools. Heck—who grew up attending schools and university in Germany before attending Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia—says the makeup of public schools varies across Germany. He acknowledges objectionable parts of the German curriculum mean Christian parents have to do more at home to help their children cultivate a Christian perspective. He also notes most German parents are significantly involved in their children’s schooling, even if they’re not Christian. Heck says Germany’s secular mindset makes many Germans wary of organized religion, and especially evangelicals. Public figures lump evangelicals into the same category as radical Islamists, he says: “In the public media, the term ‘fundamentalist’ now covers the bomb-throwing Muslim fundamentalist and the evangelical fundamentalist.” It’s a perception that leads to an unfair suspicion of homeschooling evangelicals, he says: “General thinking is that homeschooling equals brainwashing, and brainwashing violates the rights of the child.” Ken Matlack—director of European missions for Mission to the World (MTW)—says all MTW missionaries in Germany send their children to public schools. And though he’s in favor of freedom to homeschool, he says it’s a tough battle in a German culture that places a heavy emphasis on the society and community. The German constitution says raising children is “the natural right of parents and a duty primarily incumbent upon them.” It adds: “The State shall watch over them in the performance of this duty.”
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uwe: matt rose • Drautz: PAUL BUCK/EPA/Newscom
turned 16—and legally could decide where to live—the girl returned to her family. She later said police told her she had been brainwashed by her evangelical parents. As pressure mounted, the Romeikes contemplated leaving Germany. Mr. Romeike says he investigated moving to Austria (a German-speaking country), but didn’t find suitable job prospects. England was too expensive. (Private schools in Germany were also expensive, and many used the public-school curriculum.) Eventually, Mr. Romeike spoke with Mike Donnelly, an attorney with the HSLDA who follows homeschool cases in Germany. Donnelly told the family if they came to the United States, the HSLDA would support their application for asylum. In 2008, Mr. Romeike, a music teacher, sold the piano his mother had given him as a gift before her death, closed up the house he had remodeled with his father-in-law to serve as a custom music studio and residence, and bought plane tickets for his family to travel to the United States. The Romeikes arrived with 90-day tourist visas, but quickly applied for asylum, hoping to make the United States their permanent home. Five years later, they’re still waiting for a final verdict.
JENS MEYER/AP
UWE: MATT ROSE • DRAUTZ: PAUL BUCK/EPA/NEWSCOM
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’ the Romeikes don’t want when it comes to homeschooling. The German Constitutional Court ruled in that German officials have a right to oppose homeschooling: “The general public has a justified interest in counteracting the development of religiously or philosophically motivated parallel societies.” That’s an argument that’s typically been used to staunch the influence of radical Muslims in Germany. U.S. immigration judge Lawrence Burman found the logic violates the Romeikes’ religious liberty, and called it “utterly repellant to everything we believe in as Americans.” American law allows the government to grant asylum if a person is “unwilling or unable to return to his or her home country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” That definition can be broad. For example, the U.S. government considers homosexuals who face persecution in their home countries as part of a particular social group, and sometimes extends asylum. Judge Burman found the Romeikes not only face religious persecution, but are also part of a particular social group that faces persecution in Germany. He granted asylum in . But the Obama administration appealed Burman’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, arguing that the German law doesn’t violate the family’s religious freedom because it applies to everyone in Germany, not just Christians. The board agreed and overturned the judge’s ruling. The Romeikes say though the law does apply to all Germans, the German government has used it to target religious homeschoolers. For example, Wolfgang Drautz, consul general of Germany, echoed
Email: jdean@worldmag.com
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the country’s constitutional court, saying when it comes to homeschooling, the government has “a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different worldviews, and integrating minorities into the population as a whole.” The Romeikes also reject the DOJ’s argument that since not all Christians homeschool, the family doesn’t face Christian persecution. HSLDA attorneys say that argument rejects the notion of individual religious liberty. Eric Rassbach of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty agrees. Rassbach co-wrote a Becket Fund amicus brief in favor of the Romeikes. He says the German law not only contradicts an American sense of religious liberty, “I don’t think it fits with the overall idea of AS FOR ME AND MY human rights.” HOUSE: Uwe Romeike Even the United Nations has in front of a family urged Germany to allow portrait; Wolfgang Drautz (below). homeschooling in the past, and the group’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Michael Farris of HSLDA says the Obama administration is arguing that homeschooling is not a fundamental human right. Rassbach from Becket Fund agrees that’s “a necessary implication” of the government’s argument against the Romeikes. Rassbach doesn’t worry the case could adversely affect homeschoolers in the United States. He notes the government’s position in a single case won’t change current laws, particularly since most homeschool regulations exist on a state level. But he also says the case could reveal a bias against religious liberty that is troubling. “It doesn’t translate into an immediate threat,” says Rassbach. “But it’s not good that they take this position.”
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M, the Romeikes stay busy with homeschooling and work. Mr. Romeike teaches music lessons to about students. He recently built a deck and remodeled the garage into an extra bedroom with his -year-old son, Daniel. The father and son also work with their local church to complete home improvement projects for needy families in the area. Mrs. Romeike directs the younger children in their school lessons and encourages their interest in art projects. They’re thankful for their home, and they try not to worry about the future. “God has led us until now, and He will do the same in the future,” says Mrs. Romeike. “So whatever comes, we take out of His hands and follow Him.” A
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Conservative GOP Rep. Steve Pearce wins in a majority Hispanic district not by changing his views but by building relationships
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by Edward Lee Pitts
p h o t o b y T o m W i l l i a m s / R o l l C a l l /G e t t y I m a g e s
wo weeks after being sworn in for his first term in Congress, Republican Steve Pearce held a public meeting in Las Cruces, N.M., in 2003. Mike Tellez expected to hear the usual political jargon from the district’s newest representative. When Pearce asked for questions, Tellez, who led a faith-based nonprofit, raised his hand. “We’ve got problems getting food donations to the south valley of the county,” said Tellez about an impoverished stretch of Dona Ana County in southern New Mexico that’s more than 80 percent Hispanic. “Kids do not have enough to eat and families are literally starving.” Tellez explained that federal agents seeking illegal immigrants in the area had arrested fathers, leaving behind families: “What are you planning to do about it? Or are you all going to just let these people sit out there like they don’t exist?” Tellez does not remember Pearce’s immediate answer, but he won’t forget what Pearce did after the meeting. One of Pearce’s staffers grabbed Tellez before he could leave. The congressman wanted to talk to him. That was the first time Tellez could recall that happening in years of going to town halls. Pearce had one request: Show me.
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That day Tellez drove Pearce around the south valley and explained how the nearest food bank would not give food to illegal immigrants due to bureaucratic red tape. Pearce set up a call between Tellez and a senior official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Days later the food bank opened its doors to Tellez. There has been a lot of institutional hand-wringing within the Republican Party since Mitt Romney won only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in last year’s presidential election. The Republican National Committee released a 98-page autopsy on the defeat that said it is “imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities.” The RNC hired a national political director for Hispanics and made an initial investment of $10 million toward Hispanic outreach. But Republicans could save money if they just watch Pearce engage with the Hispanics in his southern New Mexico district. The 65-year-old former Air Force pilot is a conservative serving a district where 52 percent of the population is Hispanic and where Democrats and independents outnumber Republicans 2 to 1. Despite those demographics, Pearce has won five congressional terms. The sole Republican in New Mexico’s congressional
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delegation, Pearce won with 42 percent of the Hispanic vote last November—besting Romney’s totals by 15 percentage points. Pearce’s strategy is simple. “Basically what it is, is old-fashioned shoe leather,” said Santiago Soto, a Las Cruces businessman. “He doesn’t sit in his office making phone calls.” Each year Pearce travels more than 90,000 miles throughout his sprawling district near the Mexican border where the Buffalo Soldiers once patrolled during the Indian wars. Pearce will call Soto and tell him he’s coming into Las Cruces in a few days. Soto then takes him to local Hispanic businesses and neighborhoods in the state’s second-largest city, which is 65 percent Hispanic. “Most of the people he visits are Democrats,” said Soto. “But when they go vote they don’t look to see if Pearce is a Republican. They pull the lever for him because they say, ‘This man I remember. He helped us.’” Soto has taken Pearce to funerals for Hispanic soldiers who died in Iraq and to food banks where Pearce helped unload trucks. In 2008, Pearce ran for the U.S. Senate instead of seeking reelection to the House. He lost the statewide race. Out of office for two years, Pearce continued to work with the immigrants in his old district. In 2010, Pearce retook his seat, beating the Democratic incumbent by 10 percentage points. “We show up
engaging: Pearce (center) and set aside the things we know we talks with Evy will never agree on, and we get after the Gallegos at Luna Community College things that we can,” Pearce said. “These in Santa Rosa, N.M. jobs should be out among the people.” Pearce cautions against any quick fix for the Republican Party that falls short of long-term relational investments with communities that Pearce says hold many of conservatism’s key values. When Pearce visits Hispanic communities, he is reminded how many cherish faith, family, and personal responsibility. Hispanics throughout his district have bought homes and transformed blighted neighborhoods—cleaning up the trash and the crime. Tellez thought he would never hear from Pearce again after he helped open the doors to the food bank. But Pearce called again asking what he could do to help. Tellez thought he’d throw out his biggest wish list: a dream center where organizations trying to help the poor could be housed together. That center opened its doors in 2005 with the congressman providing his own donation. But Pearce did not just throw money at the problem. He started volunteering at the center. Pearce would come to the center unannounced. Tellez would find the congressman on his
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knees measuring children’s feet before selecting the right fit among the center’s piles of donated shoes. Pearce talked to the children about school, never announcing his status as a congressman. “And these people were not voters,” Tellez said. “They are immigrants who don’t have two cents to rub together and are not here legally. He treated people who don’t even know English like they are the most important people on Earth.”
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with the poor Hispanics in his district because he grew up as poor as they are. His father worked in the New Mexico oil fields as a roustabout, spending decades toiling in maintenance and earning few promotions. The family of six children first owned a home with no indoor plumbing. At , Pearce began working on the small family farm where they grew vegetables to sell at a roadside stand. When Pearce owned a small oilfield services company as an adult, he was more comfortable walking through the muck of a job site than sitting behind his desk. It’s a philosophy that is rooted in his Christian faith. “Jesus was out there talking to people,” Pearce said. “I think we have gotten away from real representation when we start running based on our ads on radio and television. There is something fundamentally flawed with that.” A Southern Baptist who was baptized at age , Pearce’s faith grew through Bible studies and prayer groups he attended while serving as a pilot during the Vietnam War. In an -month combat tour in the early s, Pearce logged in hours of flying missions in Southeast Asia, sometimes landing with bullet holes in his C- transport plane. Applying his faith today, Pearce helped start the Congressional Prayer Caucus on Capitol Hill and helped form a Hispanic youth group in Anthony, N.M. The youth group conducts trash pickup days, and Pearce is planning a financial literacy class: “What I want the kids to see is that help comes not in the form of dollars from Washington but from their desire to make the community better.” Soto said Pearce has never tried to change his conservative views to get the Hispanic vote: “He’s the same man he’s always been.” Pearce talks about respecting the law when he explains to Hispanics why he doesn’t support giving broad amnesty to those in the country illegally. They should not be
given an advantage over the people who stayed home and followed the law, he argues. Pearce believes the border should be secured and the legal immigration process streamlined before lawmakers consider the status of immigrants already in the country illegally. Most of the illegal immigrants Pearce talks to admit they would have waited to come here legally if they could have received an answer to their formal request within a year. “I love the infusion of new ideas and new energy that comes from people coming here hungry for their chance at success,” he said. “As Christians we should embrace immigration, but I also think PEARCE: there should be a process.” A man of Pearce said Republicans the people. are “sadly mistaken” if they hope rushing to pass a complex, comprehensive immigration law will lead to more Hispanic support. “If we give up our fundamental values it is going to be a major catastrophe,” he said. “We will lose our core supporters, and we won’t win anybody either. We should be more about understanding who these people are that we represent by seeing them on their turf.” Mitt Romney’s reluctance to visit more Hispanic communities was a main failure of his campaign, according to Pearce. “I think he could have bumped up his performance by points,” Pearce said. Since opposing the reelection of John Boehner as House speaker, Pearce has been excluded from the internal debates of establishment Republicans. But individual members of Congress have asked Pearce to hold seminars for their offices about the secret behind his success with Hispanics. He tells them it should be less about what Washington wants to accomplish and more about helping others. “They say, ‘Well, it sounds like we just need to get out among the people.’ And I say, ‘That’s basically it.’ It’s pretty easy stuff.” Last year Tellez, whose parents cast their first ever Republican votes when they supported Pearce, talked to some Hispanics about Republicans running for local office. “We are not voting for them because they are Republicans,” somebody in the group said. “What about Congressman Pearce?” Tellez responded. “He is not Republican,” someone in the group replied. “He is one of us.” A
Email: lpitts@worldmag.com
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Maria Prean Maria was 60 years old when she decided to start a new life. She moved from Austria to Uganda, a country with more than two million orphans. Seeing the great need, she began caring for these children and building schools and orphanages. Despite great challenges, her strong faith and conviction helped her to change the lives of thousands of young Ugandans. This is an encouraging and very personal film about a woman who dreamed the impossible, then trusted God to do everything necessary to see it become reality. Some segments in German with English subtitles. Documentary, 55 minutes. DVD – #501480D, $19.99
top: Mark Wilson/Roswell Daily Record/ap • middle & bottom: handout
Our People: The Story of William and Catherine Booth This is the story of how one couple took God’s love to the poor. Walking the poverty-stricken streets of Whitechapel late one night in the summer of 1865, William Booth observed neglected children, drunken women, unemployed men, and prostitutes plying their trade. That night he decided, "These will be our people." What followed makes an enthralling story of spiritual passion, courage, and faith leading to the birth of The Salvation Army. This DVD features historians and storytellers, voice artists, period music, rare archival footage, and more. Documentary, 74 minutes. DVD – #501342D, $19.99
Journey into the Unknown Hanneke was working as a child psychologist at the courthouse in Amsterdam when she was convinced that she heard God's voice to give up her job, leave everything behind, and move to Mongolia. It was the start of a long journey with seemingly no end. Mongolia is one of the coldest countries in the world. The majority of men are alcoholics, causing violent behavior and disrupting family life. Hanneke now lives in Mongolia, giving of herself to those who need it most. In this DVD we see her through moments of great triumph as well as heartbreaking failure. Documentary, 52 minutes. DVD – #501169D, $19.99
Beyond the Next Mountain At the close of the 19th century, the British branded the Hmar people of northeast India as “the worst headhunters.” It was a label well deserved at the time. But in 1910, a single copy of the Gospel of John came into this village and changed the course of history for the Hmar people. Through that single copy of John’s Gospel, Chawnga, the father of Rochunga Pudaite, was introduced to a revolutionary “new life in Christ.” Chawnga believed that Rochunga was God’s chosen instrument to bring the Scriptures to the entire Hmar tribe in their own language. Drama, 97 minutes. DVD – #4790D, $14.99
Dr. David Livingstone: Missionary Explorer to Africa In the early part of the nineteenth century, Africa was called the dark continent. One man’s passion for Christ would change that view. Dr. David Livingstone took the Gospel to Africa in word and deed. As a medical doctor he treated the sick, earning him the necessary trust and respect to teach the love of Christ. Then Livingstone turned his attention to exploration, seeing this work as much a spiritual calling as traditional missionary work. His commitment and eventual martyrdom helped bring an end to the slave trade and opened a continent to the Gospel. Documentary, 59 minutes. DVD – #501458D, $14.99
Candle in the Dark: William Carey William Carey sailed to India in 1793 with a reluctant wife and four children to bring the message of Jesus. There he encountered so much hardship, it is amazing he didn't abandon his mission and go home. But he stayed for over 40 years. One issue that tormented him was sati—the burning alive of widows when their husbands died. He would not rest until this practice was stopped. He oversaw more translations of the Bible than had been done in all previous Christian history combined. William Carey shows dramatically how a life dedicated to God can make a profound difference in the world. Drama, 97 minutes. DVD – #4782D, $14.99
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4/16/13 10:46 AM
Cynthia’s c Meet one of the first women ever to undo her medical abortion—and the doctor who made it possible
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by Da niel Ja me s Dev ine |
Nineteen years old and pregnant, Cynthia Galvan had an abortion pill in her mouth and turmoil in her soul. She was unmarried and felt unprepared for motherhood. A medical abortion was the solution. The day before Galvan had ingested the first drug in the RU-486 regimen, mifepristone, intended to detach the embryo from the uterus. Now she was taking a misoprostol pill, which would cause her body to expel the baby. ecision, Yet she doubted. Her mother was in tears over her d and a local pro-life doctor told Galvan over the phone he might be able to reverse the effects of the prior day’s pill. A call to Planned Parenthood’s staff suggested the opposite: The baby was already dead, they assured her—or if not, it would be born with major birth defects. They warned that unless she took the second drug to expel the pregnancy now, she could experience severe pain. Galvan spit the pill out, unsure who to believe. At the time, the doctor she had spoken to, George Delgado, was one of the only people in the world who could have helped her. Delgado is the medical director of Culture of Life Family Services, a Catholic family healthcare clinic and crisis pregnancy center in San Diego. One of the world’s few doctors with experience reversing a medical abortion, Delgado uses injections of the pregnancy hormone progesterone as an antidote to the mifepristone abortion drug. Today he’s building a network of pro-life doctors willing to perform this novel abortion reversal technique for women who second-guess their decision to take RU-486. When Delgado talked to Galvan over the phone, however, there was no network. Nor was there any established medical procedure for reversing an abortion pill, although some doctors had likely tried it. Delgado himself had never attempted the treatment, though he had been an advisor for a Texas patient who had asked for a reversal. It remained an experimental procedure, and he couldn’t guarantee success. Galvan—if she was willing to try it—would be a test case. If the treatment worked, it would have major implications for other women in her shoes. 54
p h o t o b y Wa l ly N e l l /g e n e s i s
Delgado learned about Galvan’s crisis from a local priest. (Galvan’s Catholic mother, distraught over the abortion, had gone to confession that morning and unloaded her conscience to the priest, who knew Delgado and called him.) The doctor called the young woman and invited her to get an immediate ultrasound at his clinic, just 20 minutes away. Galvan hesitated. Inside, she told herself the treatment wouldn’t work because her baby was already dead. “I felt like I didn’t have the option, because I had already taken the first pill,” she recalls. With her mother begging and her boyfriend prodding, she reluctantly agreed to meet Delgado and his wife at the clinic. There, Delgado used an ultrasound to see if the baby was still alive. As he later admitted to me, he wasn’t sure what he would find—it had been as many as 40 hours since Galvan had taken mifepristone. But what Galvan saw on the ultrasound screen was a flicker of light—the heartbeat of an 8-week-old baby in her womb. “I was just shocked and I couldn’t believe it. … I just expected the baby to not be alive.” Her boyfriend, Jyale Michel, saw it too, and his eyes glistened. Galvan told the doctor yes. That day Delgado’s wife gave Galvan her first shot—a 200 milligram dose of progesterone, the pregnancy hormone.
Progesterone is naturally produced in a oman’s body, and levels are especially high during w pregnancy to support the developing fetus. Delgado’s experience using progesterone grew out of his training in NaProTechnology (natural procreative technology), an approach to fertility treatment that conforms to Roman Catholic teaching. Promoted by the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, Neb., NaProTechnology uses progesterone replacement injections to increase fertility and reduce miscarriage. The progesterone injections became a regular routine for Galvan, along with ultrasounds to check the baby’s status. She drove to the clinic every other day for shots, and twice a week
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later on. Delgado’s theory was that by flooding Galvan’s body with progesterone, he could reverse any damage that might have occurred to her placenta. The abortion drug Galvan had ingested, mifepristone, works by blocking natural progesterone. “When you don’t have the progesterone effect, the placenta and the embryo dies, and you have a medical abortion,” Delgado explains. In essence, mifepristone starves the baby of nutrition and oxygen. The frequent injections were intended to overwhelm the abortion drug. If progesterone and mifepristone were soldiers in a battle, Delgado’s strategy was to win by superior numbers. Since the treatment had never been studied, his challenge was to figure out “how many soldiers I needed to recruit.” In the end, he did: He gave Galvan progesterone shots until about 30 weeks into her pregnancy, and on Feb. 24, 2011, Christian Jacob Michel was born. At 6 pounds, 3 ounces, Christian was slightly premature, but had no complications
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Christian’s story has a good ending, but many
others don’t. Nearly 200,000 pregnancies in the United States less than nine weeks along ended in medical abortions in 2008, the last year for which data is available. Few women realize the RU-486 process can be reversed once begun. Delgado hopes to change that. His clinic set up a website last September, AbortionPillReversal.com, with a hotline to give women information on the progesterone treatment and connect them to local doctors willing to give the shots. Debbie Bradel, the nurse at Delgado’s clinic who answers the hotline, said between September and March more than 70 calls had come in through the website. Most callers are in their 20s and are sorry they took the abortion pill. But many tell her they’re worried about birth defects if they try to stop the abortion. Bradel informs them birth defects are possible but seem to be rare. Medical research indicates mifepristone, if it fails to end a baby’s life, carries a very low birth defect risk afterward. If a caller wants to pursue abortion reversal, Bradel connects her with one of the four dozen doctors in her fast-growing network of physicians willing to give the progesterone shots. As of March Bradel had doctors in the network from 22 states, plus Nigeria and Australia. Of the women who had called and agreed to pursue abortion reversal, the doctors had saved at least 15 pregnancies. Bradel tries to follow up with all the hotline callers, but many don’t return her messages. “I just pray a lot. I can’t save the whole world.” The world seems interested, though. “We’ve even had a call from a woman in Poland,” says Delgado. Galvan is glad she’s among the saved ones. Even though Christian is “going through his terrible twos” right now, she can’t imagine life without him. Christian remembers names and is learning words in both Spanish and English. Galvan, now 22, and her boyfriend-turned-fiancé Michel (they plan to have a Catholic wedding this summer) have an apartment in San Diego, and both are going to school. “It’s hard. You’re a teenager. Your friends are doing all these things and going out,” Galvan says of being a mom at 19. But she believes the responsibility of a child motivated her and her fiancé to grow up quickly: While her friends went to parties and drank alcohol, she and Michel thought about finding good jobs and supporting a family. Having Christian so young “hasn’t ruined our lives,” she says. Galvan hopes other young women in crisis pregnancies will think of the joys their baby could one day bring: “It is a blessing … though you don’t see it at the moment.” A
Delgado: handout • family: Wally Nell/genesis
except for jaundice, a common condition in preemies. Contrary to Planned Parenthood’s dire warnings, the baby had no birth defects. “The doctor told me he was born in a praying position,” with “his hands together,” Galvan says. Last December, Delgado published the first case study and medical protocol for reversing the effects of the abortion pill in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. The protocol gives doctors the first guidelines for reversing medical abortions, recommending the dosage and frequency of progesterone shots. For the study, Delgado used information gleaned from Galvan’s treatment, along with patient data from five other NaProTechnology-trained doctors who also treated medical abortions with progesterone. Out of six patients (including Galvan), the doctors blocked four medical abortions, and the women went on to give birth to healthy, normal infants. In two cases, the babies miscarried. Delgado isn’t sure why, but it’s possible the babies were already dead when treatment winning strategy: Dr. Delgado (inset); Jyale, Christian, and Cynthia.
began: “The latest we’ve started with success has been 72 hours after taking mifepristone.” Delgado isn’t aware of any readily available drugs that could reverse an RU-486 abortion once the second pill in the regimen is taken, which starts contractions. That means a woman who decides to have her abortion reversed must make up her mind promptly. (Delgado believes progesterone treatment might also block Ella, the “week-after” abortifacient pill, if started quickly enough.)
Email: ddevine@worldmag.com
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15th in a series; for previous episodes, go to worldmag.com/olaskyseries
HOW TO DECIDE TO MOVE To go or not to go? That was the question— but deciding wasn’t scientific
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t’s been another six busy months since my last installment, but it took a commercial to jar me into starting another. The TV ad has a wife asking a husband how his day at work went, and his only comment is: Another day closer to retirement. Given the satisfaction that God-
ordained work can bring, what a depressing sense of defeat! Christians should feel that pain even more strongly, because the
Bible says nothing about retirement: God calls us to use the talents He gave us until He either superintends their decline into non productivity or summons us home. But some middle-aged and older readers have asked me: How do you decide to make a radical change in employment? Decisions made out of necessity are sometimes easy, but when we’re in a good situation, is leaving it a sign of sub-Christian discontent?
by Marvin
Olasky
I llu st rat ion by Kr ieg B ar r ie
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So here’s my story: In 2007, with our four sons all out and about, it was time to assess 24 years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, and to wonder whether to stay for an additional 24 or so, should God give me the strength. The material advantages of staying were manifold. Tenure at a big state or private university offers full-time pay for part-time, part-year work until death (or utter decrepitude) cometh. Six classroom hours per week. The joke is that a Texas legislator asked a professor how many hours he taught. Six, the prof said, to which the legislator replied: Should be eight hours a day, but I guess you have to spend some time preparing. The kindness of Texas taxpayers left me lots of time to edit and write for WORLD. Plus, as one of a handful of outspokenly Christian professors out of 2,000 on the UT campus, I had some classroom usefulness. In my journalism history courses, students would learn that America’s past contained more than racism, capitalist exploitation, and religious tyranny. In courses I taught on journalism and religion, students who didn’t know anything about Christianity could learn a little bit.
bridge for the Japanese in The Bridge on the River Kwai. He belatedly asked at the end, “What have I done?” Plus, the closing exclamation in that movie—“Madness! Madness!”—rang in my head. When I had come to UT in 1983, my colleagues were generally cynical liberal craftsman who offered plenty of entertainment. Over the years radical ideologues who understood deadly theories but not press deadlines became dominant. Some were particularly weird: A professor one floor down from me declared, On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I am male. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I am female.
T
his all led me to meditate about usefulness. My small notoriety as a conservative evangelical made graduate students hoping to be hired as professors steer clear, so my potential usefulness there was gone. I couldn’t be useful in the university generally: Once, at a faculty senate meeting, I had argued against having condom machines in freshman dorms, and seen venerable professors react like snickering teens. In March 2007, Jerry Falwell called with a surprise request: Come to Liberty University, start a journalism school, be its dean. Potential usefulness? Much. Susan and I flew to Lynchburg during UT’s spring break. We met with Falwell and various administrators, professors, and students, and even went around with a realtor. It ended up not feeling right. We considered it for a while, until one morning I called and said no, sadly. That very afternoon Stan Oakes, president of The King’s College, a small Christian liberal arts school in New York City, called. He asked if I’d come to Manhattan and explore becoming provost, the college’s academic vice president with authority over faculty and curriculum. I knew Oakes slightly and knew almost nothing about King’s, except that it had been on a pastoral campus north of New York City,
Where can I be most useful to the cause of Christ? The road to teaching that religion course is a lesson itself in campus craziness. In 1997 campus leftists had pushed for courses that required students to learn about non-Western cultures. They were victorious, only to realize they had been like a German Shepherd chasing a car: Once its teeth clamp down on a bumper, what then? It turned out that no one in my journalism department knew anything about non-Western cultures or wanted to take time to learn, so I could teach journalists-to-be about three non-Western religions— Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism—and also Judaism and Christianity. “Journalism and Religion” also showed the marginalization of Christianity in America. Only a handful of the several hundred journalism students in the course over the years had any knowledge of the Bible. The few who had taken Religious Studies courses—usually taught by those who see their calling as shaking the faith of evangelical kids—were often the worst off because they thought they knew something. So teaching students in a way that didn’t disparage Christianity was a positive, although the rules of a secular campus constrained me. Against that upside sagged a substantial downside. Students in my writing courses improved their prose, but since many espoused anti-biblical positions I started feeling like Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) building a great
Where will I be most challen think as becomes a followe
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slid toward theological liberalism and financial decrepitude, and shut down in 1994—only to reopen five years later in the Empire State Building, and then successfully battle New York state authorities who wanted to decertify it. I told Oakes my prime work commitment was to WORLD, and I’d only be interested if the goal was for King’s to be a strong evangelical college. He said he loved WORLD and had the same goal. Susan and I flew to New York, where
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the obstacles immediately became apparent. The director of admissions had just left. The remaining staff had floundered, leading to an entering class for 2007 of only 50. That worsened already severe financial problems: Running a college in mid-town Manhattan is much more expensive than doing one in Manhattan, Kan. Also, I had been used to working with and relying on a WORLD board of directors with strong theological commitments, and I didn’t know how strong the King’s board was in that way. More: The academic and business sides of King’s were at war. Oakes had privately and publicly fought with the provost who had just resigned under pressure, after two years on the job. No previous chief academic officer had lasted more than two years, in part because the curriculum kept spinning like a wheel of misfortune. King’s in its first several years of reincarnation officially had 27 majors, even though most of them had no professors and many of them had no students. Oakes in 2004 wiped the slate clean and set up only two majors. Overall, this looked like another “mad mission,” to use the language of Austin singer-songwriter Patty Griffin. Susan and I had been on mad missions before, helping to start a crisis pregnancy center, church, anti-poverty program, and Christian school, but always with a professorial safety net paid for by the taxpayers of Texas. Austin friends said giving that up was crazy. Balanced against such good advice were the stories of Christmas and King’s, and some church history. Jesus had voluntarily left the most beautiful place imaginable, heaven, and entered a mucky world. King’s had moved from a beautiful campus to messy mid-town Manhattan. Early Christianity had radiated out from cities like Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus. Evangelicals in the 20th century had largely abandoned cities. Town-dwelling Christians from the 17th to the 19th centuries had dominated colleges and media. That influence had disappeared and was unlikely to return unless Christians returned to academic and media centers. The many King’s negatives—dissension, finances, a
K
ing’s was without a president, a provost, and an admissions director. It wasn’t far from closing its doors, leaving professors jobless and students up the East River without a paddle. Did I want to be useful, and trust God rather than government? How do you decide? I wrote down pluses and minuses on a piece of paper and concluded that the chance of success at King’s was at best one in three. That suggested a “No sir” response to King’s, but then I thought of the way God writes history and we build our own lives. God doesn’t make it easy for us. We need trampolines, not hammocks. Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress would have made little progress had he not had to overcome difficulties.
What will I love doing?
hallenged to live and llower of Christ? degree of difficulty like an Olympic dive with 3½ twists in the tuck position—were practical, low on the ladder of abstraction. The positives—footsteps of Jesus ideals, historical significance—were abstract, high on the ladder. That was certainly a warning signal, but while Susan and I were in New York a startlingly concrete development occurred: Stan Oakes suddenly headed to the hospital, where doctors found a cancerous brain tumor.
God gave me no word of knowledge to guide decisionmaking, except one I had learned years ago: Go to the Bible. I looked at biblical examples of people much older than me, such as Abraham and Moses, who disrupted their settled lives to serve God. I remembered how kind God had been in every instance in my own life when job decisions became matters of faith at ages 27 and 33—so why become fearful at 57? Before making a final decision, I consulted with some friends in Austin. They were unanimously against it and particularly cited the college’s financial shakiness. I talked with my grown sons: They were unanimously for it, emphasizing the adventure of living in Manhattan. Susan knew it was no fun to work among hostile colleagues at UT, and she was ready to move. We prayed. What advice do I have for well-established people considering a radical move? I’m no expert, but it seems to me that once movement without disrupting kids’ lives is possible, why not go for the challenge rather than play out the string? Yes, make a list and check it twice, distinguishing between naughty and nice, but don’t think another day closer to retirement. Don’t decide on the basis of status and money—but also don’t turn down jobs just because they yield such things. Much depends on motive. Here are three clarifying questions: First, where can I be most useful to the cause of Christ? Second, where will I be most challenged to live and think as becomes a follower of Christ? Third, what will I love doing? Once we know ourselves, chapter 3 of Proverbs tells us what to do: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your path.” At the end of the process, I threw away the sheet with its pluses and minuses. Singer/songwriter Patty Griffin: “It’s a mad mission / But I got the ambition / Mad, mad mission / Sign me up.” In June 2007, Susan and I moved from 3,400 square feet in Austin to 800 square feet of apartment space across the street from Macy’s in midtown Manhattan. The King’s College and me: true love. Of course, not every romance has a happy ending. A
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Notebook
Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Money > Religion
Broken beauty Christian sculptor aims to show the reality of pain and suffering—and hope BY SUSAN OLASKY
RENEE STREETT/DOMUS AUREA PHOTOGRAPHY
>>
“I ’ to ignore the pain.” Sitting in a suburban home north of Austin, Texas, her five children under age safely at the park with husband Andrew, sculptor Allison Streett talks about art. She carries to a low coffee table examples of her work: bronze sculptures, about to inches in size and pounds in weight. Mounted on wooden, lazy-susan bases, many portray mothers and children “because that’s where I am,” Streett says. In “Wartime Pieta,” a Sudanese mother cradles her dead son—a victim of the genocide. In “Be Warmed Be Fed,” a young Afghan girl leans into her mother, who bows her head in shame as she begs. Streett says, “I was thinking about collateral damage from the war. The women and children are the ones who suffer.” Both sculptures are part of the “Who is my Neighbor?” series. Streett graduated from Hillsdale College in , and her early work reflects the classical training she received there. Her work is still figurative, but “my idea about what is beautiful has changed a lot.” She isn’t interested in depicting “the ideal human figure” or the “neoplatonic, nostalgic” scenes typical of some Christian art. She’s not a fan of art that is “more of a
Email: solasky@worldmag.com
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Notebook > Lifestyle
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ONES WHO SUFFER: “Wartime Pieta” (left), “Be Warmed Be Fed” (right), and “Loss” (below).
The idea behind one of her most moving pieces, “Loss,” came from a friend’s miscarriage. The half life-size bronze shows a woman curled in grief. Streett is in the mockette stage of a
male version inspired by the question: “What would the difference be in the way men embody that grief?” Caring for five children and homeschooling the two oldest leaves Streett little time to work. One afternoon a week her seminary-teacher husband relieves her so she can. Other days she gets the kids occupied and sets the timer for minutes. Even that little bit of time keeps her going
mentally, making it easier to focus when she has a bigger chunk. Streett says, “I have a lot of ideas and feel an urgency to get them into permanent form. Not setting it aside completely is important for me.” Streett says her children draw all the time. Sometimes she keeps them busy with a piece of clay while she grabs minutes. Occasionally they pose for her. Her oldest daughter is also a critic: “‘There are happy things in the world, Mommy. You could make a happy sculpture once in a while.’” Street laughs: “I think she wanted a mermaid.” Why so many sad sculptures? Street says, “I’m trying to communicate a ‘broken beauty.’ … A lot of contemporary secular work is ugly, and hopeless, and grotesque. As a believer I want to show the truth about humanity and our condition—our relationships with each other and our relationships with God—to show that there’s real pain and real ugliness but there’s hope also because of the redemption of Jesus.” A
ALLISON STREETT
yearning for a past golden age. We’re not satisfied with the time we’re living in, and all the pain and suffering, so we’re just going to ignore it. I don’t find that satisfying as an artist or as a person.” Streett works in a small studio off her kitchen. Three windows facing the front yard provide good natural light. A door between studio and kitchen lets her shut out household noise. A tripod holds a work-in-progress—Jacob in the moment after his wrestle with God. Her process begins with a mockette—a -D clay sketch—in which Streett works out composition and pose. Then she creates an armature screwed to a piece of wood. It contains all her calculations for proportion. She builds a clay sculpture on top of that armature, using an oil-based clay that doesn’t harden. A fine art foundry does the actual bronze casting. Ideas come to Streett from everyday life, the Bible, and even missionary friends. Her “Encounters” series features biblical characters after encounters with God. The “Who Is My Neighbor?” series developed out of Streett’s desire “to call my fellow believers to an acknowledgement of all the people we have responsibility toward. … A lot of people who are suffering who need to see the love of Jesus in us.”
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9 LIFESTYLE.indd 65
4/15/13 9:53 AM
Notebook > Technology
Closed mikes Upcoming wireless signal sale has churches and others worried about losing sound
BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
>>
To reallocate airspace efficiently among emerging technologies, the FCC plans next year to auction off spectrum, in the expectation that many smaller TV stations will willingly sell off their slice of sky to telecom giants eager to pay millions of dollars for it. But the FCC wants to use every portion of airspace possible, and that may put wireless mikes in the squeeze. Already, the two channels dedicated to wireless mikes can only host about mikes apiece—or about a dozen using more expensive models. That’s enough for smaller churches, but not for some megachurches and large theaters, where even the stage crews communicate wirelessly. Now the FCC is considering auctioning off all or parts of the two microphone channels. If that happens, audio teams could have to operate some or all of their mikes on “white space”— portions of airspace available
Churches are still recuperating from , when the FCC last revised microphone airspace, forcing many churches to upgrade their equipment.
W O R L D • M AY 4, 20 1 3
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HEADSET: MARTIN BARRAUD/OJO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES • MICROPHONE: MATT JEACOCK/iSTOCK
C, , and the National Football League may compete for attendance on weekends, but they’re allies when it comes to wireless microphones. In a regulatory tussle with the Federal Communications Commission, the three groups have united in defense of the wireless mikes they use to relay sermons, songs, and calls from football coaches and referees. Some of the airspace, or “spectrum,” used to transmit mike signals is in danger of being pushed aside to make room for America’s ever-expanding network of cellphones and connected mobile devices. Presently, two slices of spectrum are reserved especially for wireless microphones and in-ear monitors. Other channels are reserved for broadcast television and radio stations, mobile phones, emergency communications systems, and a variety of wireless gadgets (like Wi-Fi routers and car lock remotes) intended to make our lives more convenient. The demand for spectrum has increased as telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon have expanded their mobile networks and rolled out new broadband technology.
for public use. The problem is manufacturers are slowly developing a new generation of devices that also operate in white space and could cause interference. These new devices include traffic cameras and utility “smart meters.” Soon, new mobile consumer electronics may also start using white space, further crowding the airwaves. “If I’m using a microphone in a church there might be a device a block or two away on top of a watertower that interferes with my microphone,” says Chris Lyons, a representative for Shure, a company that makes wireless equipment popular among secular and Christian musicians. When interference occurs, sound drops out, much like a spotty cellphone call. Shure, along with the NFL and theater groups, petitioned the FCC in January to reserve sufficient airspace for high-quality sound. Although Shure has a variety of mike technologies to deal with limited airspace, some are pricey: One system packs mikes into a single channel, but each mike can cost , or more. Churches are still recuperating from , when the FCC last revised microphone airspace, forcing many churches to upgrade their equipment. Todd Elliott, the technical arts director at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., told me the church spent , or more buying new equipment in . Willow Creek uses to wireless mikes and monitors on a typical Sunday throughout its main campus, which hosts a weekly attendance of about , in various adult and children’s programs. It’s already a juggling act to coordinate all the frequencies. Elliott is watching closely to see what the FCC does next. A
Email: ddevine@worldmag.com
4/15/13 4:21 PM
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9 TECHNOLOGY.indd 67
4/15/13 9:54 AM
Notebook > Science
Just warming up
A top global warming doomsayer leaves NASA to pursue activism BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
Patients who undergo gastric bypass weight loss surgery may need to thank gut bacteria, at least in part, for their shed pounds. Researchers concluded in Science Translational Medicine that one-fifth of the weight loss after gastric bypass seems to result from changes in the types of digestive bacteria inhabiting the intestines. By rearranging how food passes from the stomach to the intestines, the surgery alters the makeup of bacteria colonies, although it’s not yet clear how they affect weight. The findings could lead to surgery-free, bacteria-based weight loss treatments. —D.J.D.
Stinging decline
Honeybee deaths have reduced some U.S. beekeepers’ stocks by percent or more this year, and European and U.S. farmers are increasingly worried. A quarter of the American diet relies on honeybee pollination, but since , the mysterious illness known as colony collapse disorder has wiped out up to a third of hives annually. Although experts blame the deaths on a combination of pesticides, mites, viruses, bacteria, and stress, some beekeepers point to a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Several European nations have already banned the “neonics,” even though manufacturers defend them as safe, and a March study failed to link them to bee declines. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing their safety. Meanwhile, honeybee scarcity has driven up the cost of U.S. hives, and could in turn raise the price of crops honeybees pollinate, such as apples, almonds, and green beans. —D.J.D.
W O R L D • M AY 4, 20 1 3
9 SCIENCE & HOUSES OF GOD.indd 68
HANSEN: CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES • SCALE: PEPIFOTO/ISTOCK • BEES: GEOFF PATTON/THE REPORTER/AP
against the pipeline (most recently in February) and against mountaintop coal mining. Much of Hansen’s research in the s focused on Venus, but by the s he was writing papers with titles like “Climate trends due to increasing greenhouse gases.” “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” he told reporters in . In the years afterward, Hansen’s warnings of catastrophic climate change grew louder, his patience with skeptics thinner: In he complained the George W. Bush administration was trying to muzzle him, and in said oil executives should be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” Later he wrote that burning oil reserves and tar sands could cause Earth to become as hot and desolate as Venus, his old planetary interest. Even colleagues who share his views on warming think Hansen sometimes takes them a bit far. And that was before retirement.
Worldmag.com: Your online source for today’s news, Christian views
4/15/13 9:45 AM
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
>>
T- after he opened the climate-change debate by warning Congress that fossil fuel emissions would cause runaway global warming—and years after the Earth stopped warming substantially— controversial climatologist James Hansen has retired. The “grandfather of global warming” left his -year career at NASA in early April, but not to pursue solitude and silence: Hansen, , will use retirement to raise environmental alarm full-time. “As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he told The New York Times, explaining plans to participate in lawsuits against state and federal regulators who allegedly haven’t done enough to battle global warming. The retired scientist will join younger environmentalists in protesting projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from Canadian tar sands. He has already been arrested several times since during protests
Notebook > Houses of God
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images
Hansen: Christopher Furlong/getty images • scale: pepifoto/istock • bees: Geoff Patton/The Reporter/ap
An elderly man arrives to pray at Regina Mundi church in Soweto. The church sits near former South African president Nelson Mandela’s old residence and is known for its congregation’s involvement during the struggle against apartheid. Mandela, 94, went to the hospital with pneumonia and was treated for nearly two weeks before being discharged on April 6. It was his third hospitalization since December.
M ay 4 , 2 0 1 3 • W O R L D
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69
4/15/13 9:46 AM
Notebook > Money
Bubble buster
DAVID STOCKMAN is older and grayer, but his aggressive style and message on spending remain the same BY WARREN COLE SMITH
>>
W O R L D • M AY 4, 20 1 3
9 MONEY.indd 70
FOR THE RECORD: Stockman, ; Ronald Reagan with Treasury Secretary Regan (left) and Budget Director Stockman (right), .
single most dangerous man to occupy high office in U.S. history.” Stockman makes his case in a new book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, which is generating headlines despite the fact that Stockman has been out of high government office for nearly years. Because Stockman has been out of the public eye for so long—and because he made millions on Wall Street taking advantage of the same boom-and-bust cycles he now criticizes—critics have been quick to pounce. The Wharton School’s Jeremy Siegel said Stockman is saying “nothing new” and scoffs at the
STOCKMAN: BRYAN SMITH/ZUMAPRESS.COM/NEWSCOM • REAGAN: DENNIS COOK/AP
A of the first quarter, the major U.S. stock market indices were up about percent. The housing market, a prime suspect for those looking for the cause of the Great Recession, is improving dramatically. February construction spending was up . percent over the previous month, beating expectations and continuing an upward trend. As of the end of February, the housing market had consecutive months of monthover-month growth. But these numbers, according to David Stockman, just make it hard to see how broke we really are. Stockman was Ronald Reagan’s budget chief from to . During that time, the United States emerged from a Jimmy Carter–induced recession that was, at the time, the worst since the Great Depression. In fact, on the back of Stockman’s work, Reagan was able to win a landslide election in with the message that it is “morning in America.” Today, Stockman declares it to be “sundown in America.” He says the national debt of . trillion and rising is now greater than the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is unsustainable. He puts most of the blame at the feet of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and current chairman Ben Bernanke. He says the artificially low interest rates of Greenspan’s era—they fell from percent to percent in the space of about months in the early s—led to both the housing bubble and the crash in the financial services sector. The low cost of money has also made it too easy politically to continue to accumulate debt. “The Federal Reserve Bank has become a serial bubble machine,” Stockman said. “Ben Bernanke is the
idea of a crash. “We’re nowhere near a bubble,” he said. “People have been predicting a collapse of the U.S. economy for nearly a century, and it keeps not arriving.” Siegel, famously bullish about America’s prospects, believes the Dow will go to , by the end of the year, and that will be another good year. Other critics point out that when Stockman led Reagan’s economic team the federal debt nearly doubled, from about trillion to about . trillion. Stockman admits that cutting federal spending is easier said than done, especially in the current era, which he says is dominated by “crony capitalism.” But Stockman says that cuts in federal spending now, finally, have to be made. The national debt has tripled since . Stockman says this deficit spending is the only thing propping up current GDP growth of around to percent. “I don’t know if we would grow even or percent if we weren’t borrowing at the current level,” he said. “And that level is not sustainable.” Stockman dismisses the falling unemployment rate, which some analysts have called a sign of recovery, as a “short-term drop.” He said the jobs number that “really counts” is total employment, and that number—around million—“has gone nowhere for years.” Not surprisingly, liberal economists disagree with Stockman. Paul Krugman calls Stockman’s book “cranky old man stuff.” Jared Bernstein, formerly chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden, said Stockman is like a “crazy old man howling at the wind.” Of course, the fact that they are commenting at all is one sign that Stockman’s ideas still resonate. But Stockman is unbowed by the criticism. “I’m calling out Keynesian economics,” he said. “So naturally the high priests of Keynesianism react.” A
Email: wsmith@worldmag.com
4/16/13 1:28 PM
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Notebook > Religion
Spotlight on Liberty Liberal magazines take keen interest in evangelical university’s stance on homosexuality BY THOMAS KIDD
>>
I increasing numbers of American Christians have endorsed gay marriage, and evangelical institutions are coming under increasing pressure to affirm homosexual relationships. Two recent articles have spotlighted the way that one such institution, Liberty University, is addressing the politics of gay marriage, as well as its homosexual students. In “Being Gay at Jerry Falwell’s University,” former Liberty student Brandon Ambrosino, writing for The Atlantic, tells of the non-condemning response he received from Liberty faculty when he came out as gay. Most professors affirmed that they (and God) loved Ambrosino, and encouraged him to seek counseling. Ambrosino recalls that when he divulged his homosexuality to Karen Swallow Prior, an English professor at Liberty, she wept with him, assuring him “It’s going to be OK … You’re OK.”
Dr. Prior told me via email that she has been surprised that many reactions to Ambrosino’s article cast her “as either a hero or a villain,” and that she does not see why expressing love to a “struggling student” should be so controversial. She believes that her response “reflects the spirit of my colleagues at Liberty University as well as the school’s administration. Liberty University treats all sexual misconduct the same, without discriminating based on sexual orientation.” Kevin Roose, author of The Unlikely Disciple, an account of Roose’s time as a secret skeptic enrolled at Liberty, also argued in New York Magazine that Liberty has backed away from vocal opposition to gay marriage, especially as it has emphasized campus and online growth. Even though the school’s behavioral code still bans homosexual acts, along with any kind of sex outside of marriage, Roose says
that Liberty’s muted official response to recent Supreme Court arguments over gay marriage was telling. But Liberty’s chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., told Roose that the school is not going liberal on gay marriage or other social matters. Although the university takes no official positions on political issues, “most of our faculty, staff and students are very conservative politically and theologically. I do not see that changing at all,” Falwell said, noting that in the election, Mitt Romney won percent of the vote in Liberty’s voting precinct.
BLEACHERS VS. PEWS
W O R L D • M AY 4, 20 1 3
9 RELIGION.indd 72
ROOSE: STEW MILNE/AP • SOCCER: COLLEEN BUTLER/E+/GETTY IMAGES
A new study of declining North American churches reveals that the most common explanation for congregational malaise is the “secularization of Sunday,” or the way that other activities, especially childrens’ sports, have reduced attendance at religious services. Stephen McMullin of Acadia Divinity College (Nova Scotia) says that one pastor in his study lamented how many parents “will make sure Johnny goes to sports,” sacrificing church “for the sake of their son or their daughter’s sports program.” McMullin is not convinced that sports are actually a determining factor in these churches’ troubles, however. He observed that the same congregations often had internal problems, such as poor quality music, or making little attempt to welcome guests. Others say that Sunday sports are a challenge that vibrant congregations can negotiate. Kevin Dougherty, a sociology professor at Baylor University, told me that faith groups “that generate high commitment,” including evangelicals and Mormons, “are less prone to members choosing bleachers over pews on Sunday,” and that overall church attendance in America has not declined markedly in the past decade. James Wellman, a University of Washington religion professor, agrees that sports leagues are significant competitors for churches. “Coaches are less and less intimidated by religious norms and conventions and simply see Sunday as yet another day to schedule practices and games,” he says. But Wellman sees sports as only one threat of many to church attendance, as Americans lose respect for religious institutions generally. —T.K.
Email: tkidd@worldmag.com
4/15/13 9:40 AM
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Mailbag ‘The house that Ben built’
March Thank you for your thorough report on our nation’s economic condition. Ben Bernanke’s Keynesian economic policies at the Fed are hastening the nation’s financial demise. He will become known as the architect of the dollar and government debt bubbles some have predicted. I fear for my children and grandchildren, and for this great nation. —C B, Allentown, Pa.
and -somethings mistook for the new freedom and morality was instead sin and rebellion. It has produced a harvest of pain, bondage, and perversity. But I am thankful that we have a Savior who provided forgiveness. —P W, Independence, Kan.
“Printing money”—what a novel idea. To think I grew up with the old-fashioned idea that you had to work to “make” money. —D D. K, Buffalo, Minn.
‘Buying in bulk’ March Your sidebar on “quantitative easing” does a wonderful job of explaining how our government gets the money it “creates” into circulation, by buying mortgage-backed securities. So as an American taxpayer, I now own a stake in GM and many mortgages. These are assets? Knowing how the system works frightens me, but I appreciate the explanation. —R R, Brandon, Wis.
‘Lament for a bride’ March Christa Sutherland’s experience with her church is all too familiar. Too many people attend church out of tradition, not because they feel some compelling urge to worship God. —P W, Tallahassee, Fla.
I too am a pastor’s wife and serve on the praise team. Each week as I look out on the mixture of people, broken and beaten by the world—but still present, praise God!—I wonder about all those who are absent. Oh, what they are missing! —C S, Plainfield, Ill.
Send photos and letters to: mailbag@worldmag.com
9 MAILBAG.indd 75
I understand Sutherland’s lament, but I rejoice at the glimpse of glory in that body of Christ. It is so diverse with people from all over the world and varied incomes. How many of us worship in churches where everyone looks just like us?
I think the trend was set in the s when pornography began to gain “respectability.” Then no-fault divorce enabled those who desired to remove any hint of integrity in the marriage vows and allowed us to define marriage according to our wants.
—A B, Lexington, S.C.
—S L, Spokane, Wash.
‘A great delusion’
‘Journey of grace’
March I love Andrée Seu Peterson’s column, but she is mistaken that the New Testament era had no “gender identity issues.” Homosexuality was quite acceptable in Roman and Greek culture, and common enough that Paul discusses it explicitly in Romans . I share Peterson’s horror at where this rejection of absolutes is leading, but also her hope for renewed recognition of the value of natural law and common sense.
March The interview with Rosaria Butterfield brought me to tears. I am the self-righteous one who views homosexuals with disgust and wants to associate with cleaned-up, pictureperfect families. May God help me reach out in humility.
—S B, Midland, Texas
Here in Colorado we have just had a controversy over a -year-old boy whose parents let him dress and act like a girl, but his school denied him permission to use the girls’ bathroom. Our nation is slowly turning upside down. —D A, Arvada, Colo.
—L S, Los Alamos, N.M.
The way God spoke into Butterfield’s life greatly encouraged me, as my daughter is walking the same path. Her testimony is an important reminder that no hole is too deep for God. —S B, Campbell, Texas
The material in that interview was so rich, I felt as if I had just attended a seminar on evangelism in today’s culture. Thank you so much. —P G. K, Clarksboro, N.J.
Thank you for pointing out that many of our issues today have their roots in the “hippie” era. What we teenagers
‘Bound and released’ March Janie B. Cheaney’s column on
M AY 4, 20 1 3 • W O R L D
4/9/13 2:27 PM
Amy
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14 other awards: $
24,000
Any size publication: city or college newspapers, local or national magazines, news and views websites original reporting preferred Deadline for first half articles: July 15, 2013
NAZIPUR, BANGLADESH submitted by Judy Miller
forgiveness was disheartening. Christians should not just wait for the offending party to offer an acceptable apology. The two-way transaction she wants is vertical, between the Christian and the Lord. There is power in forgiveness. We cheat ourselves when we do not claim it. —B DZ, Getzville, N.Y.
If I have offended someone and attempt reconciliation yet he refuses to forgive, then I have left only regrets and a failure. Where do responsibility and forgiveness cross? At what point is it no longer my responsibility? When can I smile again? Determination and corrective actions may fail. I have hope only because of His grace. —J O, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Knowing that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” how can we insist on having an apology or admission of guilt before we deign to bestow our grace on a fellow sinner? Of course this isn’t easy—sometimes it feels downright impossible—but how can we aspire to anything less? —N M, Trenton, N.J.
For more information, go to worldmag.com/ amyawards
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‘Trying to forget Sandy’ March As a pastor ministering in Hurricane Sandy territory, I believe
that its effect on New Jersey has little resemblance to genuine suffering. Plenty of money is flowing from insurance and government. The event exposes our victimization mentality and aversion to old-fashioned work. —B.E. W, Laurence Harbor, N.J.
‘Conviction and controversy’ March Your excellent article on Dr. Koop left out one important fact: He was a committed creationist and wrote several fine books supporting this view. He once wrote, “I am of the firm conviction that until the scales are lifted from the eyes of those who oppose creation, no scientific evidence will be of value in proof.” —J B, Archbold, Ohio
‘12 worried men’ March I was thrilled to read Edward Lee Pitts’ account of the congressmen, especially Paul Broun’s testimony of first reading the gospel in a Gideon Bible. As a long-time Gideon, it is always great to read of the Lord’s miraculous power. —B B, Campbellsville, Ky.
‘Treadmill Swerve’ March Believers have no reason to be intimidated by so-called experts, even if they are Harvard professors. The author of The Swerve, who asserts
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that the world is “atoms and the void and nothing else,” is either dishonest or astonishingly ignorant of intellectual developments outside his narrow academic specialty. I’d guess the book’s rapturous reception has much more to do with academic in-group solidarity than the merits of the author’s argument for Epicureanism as a better flavor of atheism.
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‘Number crunched’ March Janie Cheaney was pretty tough on us nerdy types. Obviously, she’s making an important point that data does not guarantee objectivity, but I doubt that there is an important trend toward data. Data about firearm-related problems, for example, are so deeply imbedded in rhetoric that I need a pencil and notebook to assemble scraps of meaningful information gleaned from speeches.
With Kingdom Chronicles, children learn about the armor of God and how to be strong in the Lord! They’ll love the songs, games, and the daily skits.
AnswersVBS.com
—K R, Bullard, Texas
‘Ideal subscribers’ March The description of your “ideal subscriber” fit me almost to a “T.” I started reading WORLD regularly at age , when caring for my firstborn, and am now a stay-athome mother of four. I appreciate what you’re doing and enjoy the way you make even dull issues interesting. —A G, Hazelwood, Mo.
Correction The number of U.S. children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has risen percent in the past decade (Quotables, April , p. ).
LETTERS & PHOTOS Email: mailbag@worldmag.com Write: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box , Asheville, NC - Please include full name and address. Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.
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What we’ve discovered about real grace for teens.
R
eal grace in this world comes through real adults. Not Christians who imagine life in Christ with only smiles. Not Christians who are scared of teens who talk back. We are doing this one student at a time “in the shoes of the child” in a safe, yet challenging, place for teens to overcome hopelessness, disruptive behavior, and attachment difficulties. We parent children who need help through steady and joyful hands. At Cono, we teach them, too. Whether you need help for a child, or want to join us in this work.... Contact: www.cono.org/involved.html Dave Toerper, Admissions: 888-646-0038 x250 Thomas Jahl, Headmaster: thomas.jahl@cono.org Cono Christian School, Walker IA
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LIFE
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one life:
commemorating the 40th anniversary of roe v. wade As we commemorate the 40 years since Roe v. Wade, Family Research Council offers resources both to inform and inspire. We inform about the risks and dangers of abortion and inspire pro-life advocates to make a difference.
For more information and resources, visit frc.org/onelife
FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL
One_Life_World_PrintAd.indd 1 9 SEU PETERSON.indd 78
after Roe v. Wade
CREDIT
y Hello, m
40 years
... name is
Six women reflect on tragedy and hope.
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801 G STREET NW
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WASHINGTON, D.C. 20001
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WWW.FRC.ORG
3/11/13 3:56 PM 4/9/13 4:54 PM
Andrée Seu Peterson
Courtroom horror
The shocking part of the KERMIT GOSNELL trial isn’t only what’s illegal
>> PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT VIA PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
M what I do with myself these days, so I said I go downtown and watch a trial. Oh, that’s interesting, dear, she thought, and asked for details. Mom’s mind doesn’t work the same way it used to since her stroke three years ago, so the conversation went something like this: Well, a man named Kermit Gosnell is on trial for murder, I said. (It turns out she had heard of the case.) “How can anybody abort a little baby?” she said. Well, actually, Mom, he’s not on trial for abortion, he’s on trial for murder. Everybody’s OK with abortion; they’re just not OK with murder. As a matter of fact, Judge Jeffrey Minehart purged the jury of any self-declared pro-lifers before the trial began. My -year-old mother, not being as “with it” as she used to be, struggled to understand the arcane distinction between “abortion” (the killing of a baby) and “murder” (the killing of a baby). I patiently explained that the authorities didn’t like that Dr. Gosnell did what he did a minute after the baby was born, rather than a minute before. Then things started to get complicated. That’s because I ended up telling Mom about the prosecution’s star witness, Karen Feisullin, an ob-gyn who practices at Abington Memorial Hospital, where I birthed three of my four children. I re-emphasized to Mom that this was the prosecution’s girl, the one the D.A. called to show the defendant did wrong. On the witness stand Dr. Feisullin, after turning her nose up at Gosnell’s antiquated ultrasound machine, tutored the courtroom on how an abortion
Email: aseupeterson@worldmag.com
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is done properly: (A) Grab baby’s leg with forceps; (B) pull into birth canal (pieces may break off); (C) deliver body, except for head; (D) insert probe into back of skull; (E) suction out brain for easy passage. And there you have it, folks, a perfectly legal D&E, or Dilation and Evacuation. My mother still wasn’t catching on. So why is Dr. Feisullin the good guy and Gosnell the bad guy? Well, Mom, she’s a licensed ob-gyn, and most of her practice is delivering live babies to happy women in a gleaming, state-of-the-art hospital. Abortion is just a teeny part of her work: She does a scant two to four second-trimester abortions per week, and mostly for “fetal anomalies.” Besides, she’s kind of pretty. Furthermore, I told Mom, Dr. Feisullin is careful only to kill babies up to weeks and six days old. She would never take out a life one day older than that (though second-trimester fetal age assessment has an overand-under of two weeks). That would be against the Pennsylvania law, and she is an honorable doctor. So are they all, honorable doctors. (At one point, as defense attorney Jack McMahon walked back to his seat after an uncomfortable cross-examination of Feisullin over the gritty particulars of fetal dismemberment, she called out from the stand, “Are we going to talk about how they’re all over weeks?” McMahon reminded her that he was the one asking the questions.) There are other differences between Gosnell and Feisullin, I explained to someone now far too old to understand. In Gosnell’s clinic, when an abortion went wrong (that is to say, when the baby lived), he would do a fast scissor snip at the back of the neck— but when an abortion went wrong on Feisullin’s watch, she would give it “comfort care.” What’s comfort care? Mom naïvely probed. Well, it means she “keep(s) it warm” under a little blanket “until it passes.” So you mean in Gosnell’s operatory the baby is put out of its misery quickly, but in Feisullin’s he might flop around on a table for hours? (Actually, Mom didn’t ask that. That one’s my question.) I saved the ickiest for last: Gosnell put a few baby’s feet in specimen jars. They were marked and labeled for women who might want them later for DNA samples or identification of age, Gosnell told his staff. That’s disgusting. The proper disposal of fetuses, as everyone knows, is biohazard bags, an Insinkerator, an on-site crematorium, or sale to pharmaceutical or cosmetic companies. You know what, Mom? A pox on both their houses. A
M AY 4, 20 1 3 • W O R L D
4/15/13 9:32 AM
Marvin Olasky
Another Roe to hoe
A states-rights DOMA ruling should have implications beyond same-sex marriage
>>
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Today’s justices have a chance to do not only what’s right but what’s logical: If the Supreme Court affirms states rights on marriage, why not on abortion? Why not let today’s North Dakotans have their new law protecting an unborn child from abortion once his or her heartbeat is detectable? (That can be as early as the sixth week of pregnancy, when doctors use a transvaginal ultrasound.) Why not uphold the Arkansas legislature’s decision in March to establish protection for unborn children at weeks, when an abdominal ultrasound can detect their heartbeats? Second, some weary young evangelicals said about Act One, in the words of -year-old M.J. Daniels, “I. Do. Not. Care. … The debate over SSM is a divisive political issue that is tearing this country apart culturally and politically, while distracting from … issues like entitlement spending, border security, national defense, over-regulation, reckless monetary policy.” That may be true, although if our biblical foundation crumbles the house erected on it will not stand. Still, RedState.com editor Erick Erickson had a good rejoinder to Daniels’ central point: “You will be required to care. Gay rights advocates on the steady march toward and past gay marriage will make you care.” If the gay juggernaut continues to roll, churches and individuals will face discrimination and hate speech charges for not embracing SSM: “Evil peddles tolerance until it is dominant, then seeks to silence good. That’s why Christians fight on this issue. It is not to force themselves on others, but to protect themselves from others being forced on them.” Third, the potential Court emphasis on restricting centralized power could lead to the empowerment of others, and that leads me to the winner of our contest (WORLD, Jan. , March ) to rename “compassionate conservatism.” Kelly Cogan suggested “Effective Empowerment” and noted the existence of many ineffective programs: “We want programs to accomplish the goals they were intended to accomplish. … We want people to move from being entitled to empowered. … The name itself provides a way of measuring success. If people are not effectively empowered to move away from enslaving entitlements, those programs should cease to exist.” If you want to read more about this and see a lot of good but not-winning suggestions, go to worldmag. com. I post there on most days, as does Andrée Seu Peterson, and others, and our news coverage is distinctive, so please check us out. A
KRIEG BARRIE
W of this year’s biggest judicial drama. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on same-sex marriage (SSM) in late March—Act One—and will rule by the end of June. Before the actors in their black robes come back on stage, I’d like to drink some orange juice and chatter about three items. First, instant reviews of Act One said the Supremes are on a states-rights kick: They don’t want Washington to impose a national uniformity in defining marriage by upholding the Defense of Marriage Act. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for example, spoke of “a real risk” of running into “conflict with what has always been the essence of state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody.” So be it. Too bad the high court didn’t have its nine heads screwed on straight four decades ago, when it nationalized abortion law to the extreme. Too bad Kennedy himself earned the nickname “flipper” two decades ago when he was the crucial fifth vote in the Court’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey upholding of Roe v. Wade. But the logic of a states-rights position on gay marriage also suggests an overturn of Roe v. Wade—if the justices have the courage to accept bad reviews from The New York Times and its acolytes. That’s a big if. The justices’ predecessors in lacked both courage and respect for democracy. Despite clever tactics and overwhelming press sentiment, pro-abortion forces by the end of had won in only four states the virtually unrestricted abortion that Roe v. Wade would soon mandate for the nation. A Gallup Poll that year showed two-thirds of all Americans opposing elective abortion. In a referendum that year, percent of Michigan voters said no to legalizing abortion on demand through the first five months. In North Dakota, percent of voters turned down a similar referendum.
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
4/9/13 2:37 PM
At Worldview Academy we don’t teach ARROGANCE. We challenge students to think with DISCERNMENT and to weigh EVERY IDEA against the TRUTH. We train students to ENGAGE with all kinds of people and ask the questions that bring LIGHT to life. We help students understand the worldviews that CAPTURE MINDS and CHANGE THE WORLD. Worldview students are CONFIDENT in faith BOLD in their actions SERVANT hearted and they LAUGH often.
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