Testing backlash // Children’s Books of the Year
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DEFIANCE IN CHINA, HUNDREDS OF PARENTS CREATE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS WITHOUT PERMISSION. CAN THEY WITHSTAND THE FIRE?
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“This is a serious study Bible for serious students, and it belongs in every Christian’s library.” — Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
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SEPT0515 / VOLUME 30 / NUMBER 18
Off the grid COVER STORY
38 27
The Chinese Christian school movement doesn’t officially exist, and parents make great sacrifices to join it— but it’s growing quickly
F E AT UR E S
44 Testing the limits
The College Board’s standardized—and heavily politicized—exams have uncommon influence on curriculum in even Christian schools, but alternatives may be coming
44 50
THE ANTI-TESTERS Parents and teachers revolt against standardized exams
50 Children’s Books of the Year
These delightful books implicitly support a Christian understanding of how the world works, plus 13 runners-up and honorable mentions, columns on storytelling, classics for preschoolers, and trends in young adult books
ON THE COVER Illustration by Krieg Barrie
DEPARTMENTS
8 Joel Belz 11 DISPATCHES News Human Race Quotables Quick Takes
24 Janie B. Cheaney 27 CULTURE Movies & TV Books Q&A Music
63 NOTEBOOK Lifestyle Technology Science Sports Money
71 Mailbag 75 Andrée Seu Peterson 76 Marvin Olasky
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Because we are Christians, we don’t compromise our teaching integrity. I want to train future teachers, doctors, athletic trainers and physical therapists to know the content area as well as anyone else in the world, and also to show Christ’s love through their work. chrystal ho pao professor of biology
Trinity College faculty are gifted men and women who demonstrate great care for the academic success of their students as they provide the tools and resources needed to excel. They are committed to mentoring students academically, spiritually, and personally. At Trinity, students grow and mature in their academic disciplines, learning what it means to be a scholar and a professional.
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Joel Belz
A hot issue
I’ve been overwhelmed with reader responses to my last request, and I have another one
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Send me a note or an email suggesting the WORLD report that you would be most anxious to read.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Get t y Images
When people ask me, as they do fairly often, what my highest goals might be for WORLD magazine, I’ve come more and more in the last few years to respond in terms of journalistic accomplishment. Yes, I’d like to see a circulation of 500,000. Yes, I’d love it if we had an endowment of $25 million. But what I’d like even more is for WORLD and its staff to produce a really, really big story. Like what? Like nailing the facts about global warming. Not just someone’s well-argued opinion, but a piece so well researched and so well reported that all parties would agree that the debate is over. Or this: An article so diligently explored and so conclusively reported that within minutes of its publication, everyone would know for certain that Donald Trump’s candidacy for the presidency was over. I’m fairly confident, of course, that if WORLD became the widely quoted source for either of those accounts, or some other hot issue, we might also be well on the way to a record circulation and a steadier financial base than we’ve ever had. So help me out. Send me a note or an email suggesting the WORLD report that you would be most anxious to read—the account that might most surprise and most intrigue folks around the world. Please keep your suggestion brief! ————— It’s confession time. I’m all too aware that it’s been only three months since I invited you to write me about another subject. In WORLD’s May 18 issue, I asked you in my regular column to imagine that you were managing a bakery. In come a couple of fellows who want you to bake and decorate a cake for their wedding. Keeping in mind the tone with which Jesus carried on his conversations, what thoughtful question
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can you direct to these would-be customers that might stimulate a friendly discussion? No sarcasm, I suggested. No put-downs or smartaleck insults. Since then, I reported back to you on your initial response. Never before, on any topic, had I received more than about 100 reader responses. On this topic, however, over the first month, more than 200 of you took a crack at my assignment. This was clearly a hot issue. And now, three months after I first mentioned the matter, your responses have topped 650. I am overwhelmed. I suggested in that Trump initial report that your responses had been pretty confusing. Now I am reporting that such confusion has continued in the hundreds of later responses. You are, as they say, “all over the map.” Most puzzling to me is the dominance, in these 650 communications, of a certain defensive spirit. I sense more worry and concern about the loss of our own rights than I do about our typical inability to reach out and communicate effectively with folks whose lifestyle is radically different from ours. On all these matters, I wish I could find an appropriate time and setting to converse humbly and helpfully with you WORLD readers. Each of you deserves a personal response—and maybe especially the several dozen of you who sent three-, four-, and five-page essays! So far, I’ve corresponded with fewer than two dozen of you, and I’m admittedly uncertain how to move thoughtfully through more than 1,000 pages of your thoughts that I’ve scanned but not yet studied carefully. ————— All this is part of what adds a special dimension to WORLD’s kind of journalism. We call you members, not mere subscribers, for a reason. You are involved, heart and soul, in what we’re doing here. You are partners of a special kind— even when I’m slow, and maybe worse than that, in answering your mail. I’ll appreciate your patience, and especially so if you’ll take a few minutes to respond to my bold request at the start of this page! A
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DISPATCHES NEWS / HUMAN RACE / QUOTABLES / QUICK TAKES
AUG. 14
FBI INVESTIGATES CLINTON
CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP
Under FBI scrutiny over her use of private, unsecured email while secretary of state, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton agreed to hand over a personal email server to the law enforcement agency. The FBI is investigating whether Clinton’s use of unsecured emails exposed sensitive information to foreign governments like China or Russia. Separately, the intelligence agencies’ inspector general reported that he found “top secret” information in two emails among a random sampling of the unsecured emails Clinton had already turned over to the State Department. Breaking with State Department policy, Clinton used personal email addresses for off icial business, potentially allowing her to avoid public records requests. She also said she deleted 31,000 personal emails. The FBI may be able to recover from the server some of the deleted emails, according to The New York Times, which broke the story of the investigation.
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NEWS Aug. 12
EPA Spill An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleanup crew investigating a leak provoked an environmental disaster when the crew breached a debris dam inside an abandoned Colorado mine. The dam released 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into the pristine Animas River, and the sludge flowed on into the San Juan River going into New Mexico. Authorities were still investigating the effects of the heavy metal contamination on drinking water, fish, and recreation.
Aug. 3
TOP: Jerry McBride/The Durango Herald via AP • BOT TOM: Nabil al-Jurani/AP
The Kurdish region of Iraq quit sending oil to the Iraqi government after a pricing disagreement, instead selling its vast crude oil resources on its own. The sales violated a 2014 agreement with the government in Baghdad, but the Kurds argue they are footing most of the expenses for fighting the Islamic State and receiving little financial support from Baghdad. The deal’s breakdown is a sign of fraying relations between the independent-minded Kurds and the Iraqi government.
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Justin Falls/Daily News-Record/ap
Kurds take a stand
Christian crossroads debate,” said Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. Piper said he and several other presidents agreed they would withdraw at the end of August if the CCCU failed to act. Hoogstra expressed her belief in marriage as between a man and a woman and said the deliberative process is not a theological poll. She defended it as necessary “to see how EMU and Goshen’s policy change fits within the mission and purpose of the CCCU.” According to member presidents, the CCCU board is not asking for input
The CCCU is the only association advocating for Christian higher education, but not all Christian schools are members: Some institutions don’t meet the council’s liberal arts criteria, and others, such as Grove City College and Patrick Henry College, have chosen not to become members for their own reasons. As the controversy passed the one-month mark, some presidents began discussing the formation of a new organization. Meanwhile, David Dockery, a former Union president and CCCU board chair, began privately circulating among presidents a statement of belief and pledge to pray for the ongoing process. “The board is carefully considering many important issues that will have short term and longer term impact related to the CCCU,” Dockery, now the president of Trinity International University, told me in an email. “We will
as much as it is asking them to support moving EMU and Goshen from full members to affiliates— schools that pay no membership dues and have no voting privileges. That action may satisfy many CCCU members, but some presidents said they would immediately withdraw.
continue to pray for God’s wisdom and guidance for our friends who have been given this important stewardship.” Oliver, in his withdrawal letter, noted EMU officially began re-evaluating its hiring policy in 2013 and the council has since had numerous opportunities to clarify its position and expectations of member institutions: “I am grieved that the board of the CCCU was not ready to deal with this issue.” A
HIGHER ED COALITION BEGINS TO FRAGMENT OVER GAY MARRIAGE by J.C. Derrick
The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) could be set to lose several of its 122 members. The reason: what critics are calling the CCCU’s lack of commitment to biblical marriage. One university has already left. Officials at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., sent shock waves through Christian higher education when they announced the school’s withdrawal from the CCCU in early August. Union, the oldest Southern Baptist university in the country, left the CCCU less than a month after two member schools, Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) and Goshen College, changed their hiring policies to include persons in same-sex marriages—then expressed their intent to remain in the CCCU. “Marriage is at the heart of the gospel,” Union president Samuel Oliver wrote in a letter to CCCU president Shirley Hoogstra and board chair Charles Pollard, the president of John Brown University. “To be identified with an organization that fails to address [marriage-related] issues with a unanimous voice weakens our argument for a fundamental principle.” Oliver’s letter came after the CCCU board declined Union’s request to convene a special member meeting to vote on the matter. Union wasn’t the only school to request a group meeting, but the CCCU board instead began a lengthy process of contacting each member president individually. As of mid-August the board was only about halfway through that process, and several member presidents told me they were unhappy with the delay. “The CCCU’s bewildering desire for a drawn-out ‘conversation’ has led everyone (including me) to conclude they think the church’s engagement in illicit sexual behavior is open for
TOP: JERRY MCBRIDE/THE DURANGO HERALD VIA AP • BOT TOM: NABIL AL-JURANI/AP
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Eastern Mennonite University president Loren Swartzendruber speaking on campus in Harrisonburg, Va.
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Around the globe
MORE NEWS OF THE WORLD IS ON OUR WEBSITE: WNG.ORG NORTH KOREA New satellite images showed North Korea has expanded its ability to process uranium ore into yellowcake, according to U.S. arms control expert Jeff rey Lewis. Scientists could develop yellowcake into nuclear weapons or into fuel for nuclear reactors.
UKRAINE Dutch investigators say they found possible Russian missile parts at the site where Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crashed last year, killing all 298 persons aboard. Several Western nations have argued that Russianbacked rebels shot down the plane.
SYRIA ISIS kidnapped dozens of Christians as it captured the Syrian town of Qaryatain, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Some of the abducted Christians—men, women, and children—were on an ISIS “wanted” list.
CHINA An industrial explosion at a chemical storage warehouse in Tianjin killed at least 114 and left dozens missing. Executives of the company that owned the warehouse were arrested, and Chinese President Xi Jinping called for better workplace safety.
CHINA China’s central bank devalued the yuan by 4.4 percent, framing the decision as a move toward a more market-reflective currency. But economists said the devaluation was a desperate move to counter China’s slowing economy and boost exports.
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UKRAINE: DMITRY LOVETSK Y/AP • CHINA: NG HAN GUAN/AP
IRAQ A truck bomb killed 67 persons at a busy market in Baghdad, the largest toll from a suicide bombing in Iraq’s capital city in years. ISIS claimed responsibility for the blast.
THAILAND A blast in the tourist-heavy center of Bangkok killed 22 and wounded 120. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the country has had smaller bombings in the unrest since military leaders took control of the government last year.
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11:43 AM
NETFLIX: PAUL SAKUMA/AP • STAR WARS: HANDOUT • COLLEGE GAMEDAY: HANDOUT • COLBERT: FREDERICK M. BROWN/GET T Y IMAGES • IPHONE 6: PETER KNEFFEL/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES
UNITED STATES Anonymous U.S. off icials blamed Russia for hacking into the unclassified email system of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top brass at the Pentagon. The cyberattack comes on the heels of a breach at the Off ice of Personnel Management, reportedly at the hands of the Chinese government.
Looking ahead SEPT. 2
Online streaming video company Netflix will expand to its first Asian market today when the company opens for business in Japan. The company hopes a successful launch in Japan will create a beachhead to mainland Asia. Other streaming entertainment providers such as Hulu have been operating in Japan for some time.
UKRAINE: DMITRY LOVETSK Y/AP • CHINA: NG HAN GUAN/AP
NETFLIX: PAUL SAKUMA/AP • STAR WARS: HANDOUT • COLLEGE GAMEDAY: HANDOUT • COLBERT: FREDERICK M. BROWN/GET T Y IMAGES • IPHONE 6: PETER KNEFFEL/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES
SEPT. 5
The college football season begins in earnest today with the first full slate of Saturday games of the 2015 season. ESPN’s College GameDay will travel to Fort Worth to feature the neutral-site contest between Alabama and Wisconsin from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
SEPT. 4
When the clock strikes midnight to begin Sept. 4, Toys R Us stores across the country will fling open their doors to customers thirsting for the latest releases of Star Wars–themed games and toys. The final months of 2015 should be good ones for Star Wars fans with a new video game release in November and the release of the newest motion picture in December.
SEPT. 8
After ending his satirical Comedy Central newscast The Colbert Report earlier this year, Stephen Colbert finally returns to television tonight when he takes over the Late Show previously hosted by David Letterman. Colbert’s Comedy Central persona will not make the jump to CBS, however; the comic promises to be himself on the newest incarnation of the Late Show.
VISIT WNG.ORG/ COMPASSION TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE FINALIST TODAY
WORLD’s annual Hope Award goes to a deserving organization that demonstrates the power of effective compassion to those in need, and now it’s time for you to help decide the 2015 winner. Simply go to wng.org/ compassion to read about each of the five and cast your vote. The winner will receive $25,000 for the advancement of its ministry, so your ballot will make a huge difference.
Cast your vote at wng.org/compassion
SEPT. 9
While technology reporters scramble to predict what new gadget Apple plans to debut at its September event, one thing is for certain: Consumers will be paying attention. Buzzfeed claims the event will occur on Sept. 9. At last year’s September event, Apple debuted the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. This year, the smart money is on an incremental update of the iPhone 6 to a 6s version.
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What’s the Answer to America’s Moral Decline?
How Will We Lead the Rising Generation Through These Times? Simply, it is the transforming Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the greatest weapon in the battle a heart turned toward Jesus Christ, following Him on the Highway of Holiness. Come and hear of the majestic beauty of Jesus Christ and His Holiness, “without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). Please join us in October to consider the subject that affects every part of our lives - “The Highway of Holiness” (Isaiah 35:8). Everything in our lives is connected to holiness. This is why our desire at this conference is to bring holiness to the front and center of our attention in order to both clarify the doctrine, and to spur us on to holiness. There is nothing that will bring greater blessing to our churches, families and our young people.
SP E A K E R S I NC LU DE :
Paul Washer - Joel Beeke - Scott Brown - Kevin Swanson - Malamoulo Chindongo - Jeff Pollard - Mark Liddle - Carlton McLoed - Richard Harding Marcus Serven - John Snyder - Clarence Simmons - Craig Houston - Dan Horn - Jason Dohm - Paul Thompson - Kris Baines
OCTOBER 29 - 31, 2015 - ASHEVILLE, NC - VISIT WWW.NCFIC.ORG/HOLINESS T H E NAT IONA L C E N T E R F OR FA M I LY- I N T E G R AT E D C H U RC H E S
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HUMAN RACE
KILLED Mexican activist Miguel Angel Jimenez Blanco was
The Colorado Court of Appeals on Aug. 13 upheld earlier rulings against Christian baker Jack Phillips, ruling that he had violated Colorado law by refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding event. A judge in December 2013 had ordered Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, to “cease and desist from discriminating” after refusing to make the cake in 2012. The state Civil Rights Commission later ordered Phillips to change company policies and retrain staff, which the appeals court also upheld. Phillips’ attorneys said they were considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
DIAGNOSED Former President Jimmy Carter announced on Aug. 12 he has metastatic cancer. Carter, 90, said surgeons discovered the cancer during his recent liver surgery. Since leaving office in 1980, the Georgia Democrat has traveled extensively on diplomatic and humanitarian missions. The former president is set to undergo treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Carter’s father, brother, and two sisters all died of pancreatic cancer.
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SENTENCED A jury in Centennial, Colo., on Aug. 7 sentenced James Holmes to life in prison without the possibility of parole (instead of death)
PHILLIPS: MAT THEW STAVER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX • JIMENEZ: EDUARDO CASTELL ANOS/AP • CARTER: ELISE AMENDOL A/AP • HOLMES: COLORADO JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT/AP
UPHELD
parties in Mexico’s violent Guerrero state for 43 missing students who had been abducted by police believed to be working with drug gangs. The searches have yielded the body of only one of the students but uncovered the remains of 129 other bodies. An associate of Jimenez told the Los Angeles Times that a car had been following Jimenez in the days leading up to the murder.
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9:24 AM
GIFFORD: ASSOCIATED PRESS • RUOT & REITH: AMERICAN CENTER FOR L AW AND JUSTICE • BRIT TON: BET TMANN/CORBIS/AP
shot to death in his car on Nov. 8 in his hometown of Xaltianguis. Jimenez, 45, had helped organize search
By the numbers for the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting. Holmes, 27, killed 12 and wounded dozens at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.
0
The number of new polio cases detected in Africa in the year preceding Aug. 11, 2015, a first on the continent according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
$250 million
Officials in Sudan released two South Sudanese pastors on Aug. 6, following a judge’s order. Sudanese authorities detained Yat Michael
violations for forbidding an abortion. (Abortion is illegal in the Catholic nation, except in life-threatening conditions.) The baby girl’s name is Milagros— Spanish for “miracles.”
Ruot and Peter Yein Reith
GIFFORD: ASSOCIATED PRESS • RUOT & REITH: AMERICAN CENTER FOR L AW AND JUSTICE • BRIT TON: BET TMANN/CORBIS/AP
PHILLIPS: MAT THEW STAVER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX • JIMENEZ: EDUARDO CASTELL ANOS/AP • CARTER: ELISE AMENDOL A/AP • HOLMES: COLORADO JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT/AP
RELEASED
DIED Former NFL star and longtime Monday Night Football sportscaster Frank Gifford died Aug. 9. He was 84. Gifford, a Hall of Famer who played running back, defensive back, wide receiver, and special teams positions, helped the New York Giants win an NFL championship in 1956. He went on to announce 588 consecutive NFL games on ABC. His widow, Kathie Lee Gifford, co-hosts NBC’s Today.
last winter, charging them with more than half a dozen crimes against the state. The judge convicted them on lesser charges and sentenced them to time served, though authorities prevented the pastors from leaving the country to return home. “I am feeling free because I was in jail for many months,” Ruot told Christian Solidarity Worldwide. “I have become like I’m born again.”
Nan Britton, who died in 1991, wasn’t lying when she controversially claimed in a 1927 memoir that former President Warren Harding fathered her daughter. DNA tests by Ancestry.com confirmed that the son of Britton’s daughter, James Blaesing,
An 11-year-old rape victim in Paraguay gave birth by C-section to a baby girl on Aug. 14. Mother and daughter are reportedly healthy. The girl’s alleged attacker, her stepfather, remains in jail. The case gained international attention after groups like Amnesty International accused Paraguayan officials of human rights
$412,390 The hotel bill for President Obama and his entourage in Ethiopia from July 26 through July 28, according to The Weekly Standard. The president and his team also had $7,540 in cell phone expenses during the Ethiopia trip.
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The percentage of registered voters, according to a Monmouth University survey, who support a criminal investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal (see p. 11).
BORN
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The amount of taxpayer money Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker agreed to provide to help the Milwaukee Bucks build a new arena. Walker is seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2016.
Nan (left) and Elizabeth Ann
65, is related to two of Harding’s relatives. Harding, believed to be childless, died in office in 1923. Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, Harding’s daughter with Britton, died in 2005. SEPTEMBER 5, 2015
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DISPATCHES
QUOTABLES
‘How conflicted many abortion doctors are about the work that they do.’
‘This is possibly the most heartless, lacking of substance, presentation I have ever seen about a serious topic.’ U.S. Sen. BOB CORKER, R-Tenn., on the 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report from the State Department. Senators from both parties said the report was “politicized” and ignored serious human rights abuses in such countries as Malaysia and Cuba.
‘From Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, there is a blood trail into the bedroom of Marilyn Pharis.’ Santa Maria, Calif., Police Chief RALPH MARTIN blaming federal and state policies on immigration for the murder of 64-year-old Marilyn Pharis of Santa Maria, allegedly killed by illegal immigrant Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez.
‘If this in fact was on a private server, you and I would get fired and possibly jailed. This could be a felony.’ Former CIA off icer BOB BAER on the classified information reportedly on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server.
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‘It seems geared toward limiting debate and facilitating a coronation.’ BILL HYERS, a senior strategist to Democratic presidential candidate
Martin O’Malley, on the small number of debates approved by the Democratic National Committee for the 2016 campaign—a number that critics say benefi ts frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
CORKER: WIN MCNAMEE/GET T Y IMAGES • MARTIN: DON BARTLET TI/LOS ANGELES TIMES/GET T Y IMAGES • BAER: JEFF HUTCHENS/GET T Y IMAGES • O’MALLEY: ROSS D. FRANKLIN/AP
DAVID DALEIDEN of the Center for Medical Progress on one of the things he found most surprising during his undercover video work exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts. He said Planned Parenthood’s Deborah Nucatola “would choke up while talking about the specifics of the procedure. She’d wipe her eyes, but then move on and try to act like nothing had happened. She was not the only abortion doctor we met like that.”
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9:57 AM
corker: Win McNamee/Get t y Images • martin: Don Bartlet ti/Los Angeles Times/Get t y Images • Baer: Jeff Hutchens/Get t y Images • O’Malley: Ross D. Franklin/ap
8/19/15 9:50 AM
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QUICK TAKES
Dry idea
He had the venue, the decorations, and the staff. One thing businessman Grady Elliot lacked when he opened a new bar in Auckland on July 3 was alcohol. Billed as the first dry bar in New Zealand, Elliot hoped to attract customers who didn’t want to go home after the alcohol bars closed at 4:30 a.m. and were willing to pay $15 at the door and buy energy drinks. Elliot had to shutter his business in early August. The reason: The few customers he had usually only ordered water. After locking the doors at TAP, Elliot told local press he had applied for a liquor license.
Months before Halloween, one park in Rowlett, Texas, already looks the part. Residents of the Dallas suburb complained in August of a 100-yard stretch of trees covered in cobwebs at Lakeside Park. Upon closer inspection, park off icials discovered the webs were indeed real—the product of a rare colony of Tetragnatha guatemalensis spiders. According to spider experts, the spiders infesting the Texas park only build communal webs this far north when conditions are right. Entomologist Mike Merchant says residents should be happy the massive but spooky web is there: It’s putting a dent in the city’s population of midges.
Seaweed surprise
Vacationers looking for a holiday near the sea may want to cross Orcombe Point in Southwest England off their list. A massive hole that has developed on the beach has begun erupting, spewing stinky seaweed and snails. East Devon District Council off icials say they don’t know what caused the unusual 6-footwide by 10-feet-deep geyser to form. The mystery geyser— formed most recently in early August—has appeared on the beach three times since the beginning of July and each time been filled in by the tide. Even more worrisome: Off icials say the geyser is dangerously close to a sewer main that may become compromised and contribute to the next gusher.
Prescription: proscription
Mayor Davide Zicchinella of Sellia, Italy, is tired of village residents getting sick. So he outlawed it. Mayor Zicchinella issued an Aug. 5 directive on the city council website advising citizens that illness in the tiny town of 500 is now “banned.” According to the memo, the mayor is concerned about the health of his constituents and doesn’t want the village to “die of depopulation.” Zicchinella is not only the local mayor; he’s also a trained physician.
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Sellia
SPIDER WEB: LM OTERO/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • ENGL AND:EXMOUTH COAST GUARD • SELLIA: FRANZ MARC FREI/LOOK-FOTO/GET T Y IMAGES • ZICCHINELL A: HANDOUT
Sticky situation
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9:05 AM
WAH CHAN’S HOME: SAM COSTANZA/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS • GOAT: MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA/NEWSCOM • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • BEST & CHOCO: MARC McCORMACK/NEWSPIX • PL AYHOUSE: RUSS PULLEY/THE LEE’S SUMMIT JOURNAL
DISPATCHES
SPIDER WEB: LM OTERO/AP • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • ENGL AND:EXMOUTH COAST GUARD • SELLIA: FRANZ MARC FREI/LOOK-FOTO/GET T Y IMAGES • ZICCHINELL A: HANDOUT
WAH CHAN’S HOME: SAM COSTANZA/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS • GOAT: MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA/NEWSCOM • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • BEST & CHOCO: MARC McCORMACK/NEWSPIX • PL AYHOUSE: RUSS PULLEY/THE LEE’S SUMMIT JOURNAL
Getting their goats
Faced with massive overgrowth and a limited budget, the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., turned to a solution that can chew through high weeds as well as red tape: goats. More than 30 goats from Prosperity Acres in Sunderland, Md., arrived at the historic capital cemetery in August to clear through the tangled mess of poison ivy and other weeds threatening to take over the resting ground. Cemetery off icials invited the public to visit the animals during daylight hours, with cemetery president Paul Williams telling NPR the arrangement was a win-winwin. “We get our land cleared, we get it fertilized, and the goats attract thousands of people. A lot of families with kids are coming into the cemetery and often seeing a goat for the first time.”
House call
After concocting an elaborate ploy allegedly to steal Queens homeowner Wah Chan’s home out from under him, three bizarre bandits will likely find residence in New York’s big house. According to police, Brandon Sestoso, Chas Sestoso, and Jesse Kusinow broke into the Chan home in Queens on April 29 and changed the locks before wife Anita Chan returned from work, claiming they were from the bank that held the Chinese couple’s mortgage. Police believe the trio was trying to convince the elderly immigrant family they were there to repossess the home. Refusing to sign a deed transfer presented to him via email by the alleged crooks, 73-yearold Wah Chan returned to the United States from China on May 16 with his own locksmith and broke back into his own home only to find the premises ransacked. That’s when the couple phoned police, who promptly arrested the trio. The suspects’ trial began Aug. 11, and each could face up to 15 years in prison.
Inside job
Ryan Payne of Missoula, Mont., may need a brush-up course on getaways after trapping himself in a car he was allegedly trying to steal. According to Missoula police, Payne, 31, broke into a vehicle Aug. 11 only to somehow lock himself inside the car’s trunk. Unable to free himself, Payne phoned police for help—and to turn himself in. After freeing the man, police charged Payne with multiple misdemeanors.
Choco’s journey
Hunting feral pigs on July 31 in the Queensland, Australia, Outback, Wayne Best’s dog Choco found himself in trouble. When he cornered a pig against a riverbank, a massive crocodile emerged from the river’s depths, chomped into Choco’s hindquarters, and dragged him below the surface. Choco managed to struggle free and rise to the surface, but the dog’s trouble had only begun. Best cleaned the dogs wounds, but was unable provide the sort of veterinary care Choco required. So the pair began a slow 62-mile walk to the nearest community. With some help from infrequent passersby, the man and his dog were able to shave a dozen miles off their trip. And finally on Aug. 4, Choco underwent surgery to mend his wounds and broken leg.
Purple haze
A conflict with a homeowners association over a purple swing playhouse has left one Lee’s Summit, Mo., family blue. Last year, off icials with the Raintree Lake Property Owners Association ordered Marla Stout to remove a purple playhouse erected at her home for her 5- and 8-year-old daughters because the association believed the color clashed with the environment and the association’s rulebook. In November, the association sent Stout a letter warning that the HOA would sue the family. Undaunted, Stout refused and rallied community support against her homeowners association. On Aug. 11, a rowdy group of 30 Stout supporters angrily berated the association’s board for pursuing the lawsuit. Equally undaunted, the board indicated it would move ahead with the lawsuit.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2015
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WORLD
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JANIE B. CHEANEY
An enhanced view of life
Let’s all find visible, practical ways to help poor children
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It’s not enough to shut down the avenues to abortion; where a family is created, a family should be nurtured.
Mat t Rourke/AP
Google “Planned Parenthood tipping point” and you’ll get over 100,000 references in no time. By now it’s a cliché: Could this be the beginning of the end of the shameful relationship between U.S. taxpayers and the nation’s leading abortion provider? And if that happens, might we expect the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) to dry up and go away? And dare we dream that Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all states at any time for any reason, be overturned? Nah, say the cynics. PPFA is a tough, cagey old bird who’s dodged many a bullet. The string of brutal undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) tarnishes its image, but it can afford the best lawyers and PR people; it will survive. As for overturning Roe v. Wade, dream on. The thing is, people like having sex, and will keep having sex, and getting careless, and ending up with unwanted products of conception. When the interests of an abstract human and a walking, breathing human in a jam collide, guess who loses? They have a point, but abortion on demand has sat uneasily on the national conscience for going on 43 years, and that conscience grows more uneasy, not less. Polls have been trending against our overly generous abortion laws, and the CMP videos (which, strictly speaking, target Planned Parenthood’s traffic in fetal organs, not abortion per se) may stretch the gap wider. But defunding PPFA is only one small piece of the whole. The battle against abortion is really a war on the whole idea of elimination-for-convenience that has rightly been called the “death culture.” It’s much more than closing clinics; it’s promoting an enlarged and enhanced view of life. After the latest PPFA scandal broke, a quote from Sister Joan Chittister was making the
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rounds on Facebook: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed.” Of course this is misleading and unfair: Crisis pregnancy centers provide practical help and spiritual support long after the babies are born. Protesters outside abortion clinics offer their homes and resources to desperate mothers-to-be. Hopeful adoptive parents far outnumber available infants—if women could only be persuaded to carry their babies to term, chances are the little ones would find homes in which to be fed and educated. But Sister Joan is right that sometimes the pro-life side of the argument appears to elevate the baby over the mother. It’s not enough to shut down the avenues to abortion; where a family is created, a family should be nurtured. The question is how. Sister Joan explains why she thinks pro-lifers aren’t as interested in post-born children: “Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life, that’s pro-birth.” That’s also very haphazard thinking if she believes, first, that pro-lifers are opposed to all tax money going to the needy and, second, that tax money will meet all their needs. A few months ago I met a man outside a church building where dinner for the homeless was being served. He was waiting for his girlfriend, who was inside with their baby having dinner—purposely going without, he wanted me to know, so she would have enough. He saw it as his manly responsibility to see that she got their baby fed, dressed, and to the welfare office on time. He never mentioned marriage, or work, though he appeared able-bodied. His child was being fed, educated, and housed—to be like him. But he’s pro-life, at least regarding his own, and that’s a place to start. It was easier to truly help the poor before the public safety net stretched so wide, hunger being a keen incentive. Even so, every faithful church should consider how it can promote life in visible, practical ways (WORLD’s Hope Award nominees always inspire). As the abortion culture stumbles, it’s time to press life’s advantage even harder. A
jcheaney@wng.org @jbcheaney
8/14/15 1:50 PM
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8/17/15 9:52 AM
Accounting Economics Finance Health Care Management International Business Management Information Systems Marketing Professional Sales
Leading in business
PAUL SCHIRALDI/COURTESY OF HBO
The Paul R. Carter College of Business Administration at Harding University is dedicated to preparing Christian business professionals for lives of service. Students learn from faculty who have years of business insights in addition to their classroom expertise. Students develop the skills needed to make them highly sought after assets upon graduating. The college’s Center for Professional Excellence secures student internships and aids in all aspects of job placement. At Harding, you can gain the knowledge and experience you need to be the next generation’s leaders in business.
Faith, Learning and Living Harding.edu | 800-477-4407 Searcy, Arkansas
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CULTURE MOVIES & TV / BOOKS / Q& A / MUSIC
TELEVISION
Housing and home PAUL SCHIRALDI/COURTESY OF HBO
SHOW ME A HERO USES RACE AND LOCAL POLITICS TO TELL A MASTERFUL STORY OF HUMAN NATURE by Sophia Lee You’d expect a miniseries about housing regulation and council meetings to be a bore, but leave it to politics, human nature, and HBO to spin a golden dramatic narrative out of the most humdrum
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issues. The six-part HBO movie Show Me a Hero, based on a same-title 1999 nonfiction book by former New York Times reporter Lisa Belkin, premiered Aug. 16 and was scheduled to continue in two-episode chunks
slee@wng.org @SophiaLeeHyan
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the following Sundays. If you’re interested in race, local politics, and masterful storytelling about human nature and redemption— Oscar Isaac (center) as Yonkers mayor Nick Wasicsko
albeit with occasional swearing—this is a series worth watching, particularly because it’s so timely. A political and social storm is brewing in Yonkers, N.Y., and fresh-elected Mayor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac, always a treat) is flailing in the heart of it. It’s the late 1980s, the ripening of a long movement for racial desegregation, and a federal court has ordered Yonkers to build 200 units of affordable housing in the predominantly middle-class Italian-
SEPTEMBER 5, 2015
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MOVIES & TV grinning first-grader thrilled MOVIE to become class president, giddy with naïve thoughts about public service and popularity. His doctrines on leadership, integrity, and In the film War Room , morality evolve later on as many viewers will he fumbles through his first recognize their own term, but the brutality of family’s struggles. While local politics leaves him no modern culture promotes room for growing pains. a slew of strategies to It’s a very good thing that retreat from marital strife, Show Me a Hero was written War Room portrays a Godby David Simon, best known centered way to fight the for the drama series The Wire, battle for healthy families. Tony (T.C. Stallings) and which also deals with comElizabeth (Priscilla Shirer) plex, weighty issues of race have achieved the and class. Under Simon’s American dream, but they skillful restraint, characters are living a nightmare. talk and act like real, believTony’s questionable busiable human beings. There ness practices threaten are none of those Aaron his position as a top pharSorkin–blustering monomaceutical rep, and adullogues, no manipulative ponterous temptations draw tifications, no noble-minded him away from his wife and heroes—just regular people daughter (Alena Pitts). reacting ordinarily to a manElizabeth, a successful real made disaster. In one scene, estate agent, is frustrated by her husband’s inattena couple watching the teletiveness and suspicious vised council meeting with whenever he’s on the road. alarm and racist remarks She takes on a naturally transition into a client, Clara (Karen discussion over whether the Abercrombie), a fiery, chicken is too tough. Christian widow. But it’s But then, Show Me a Hero really Clara who takes on is not just a portrait of the Elizabeth, and becomes political landscape in the 1980s. It’s a delineation of what happens BOX OFFICE TOP 10 when law and policy FOR THE WEEKEND OF AUGUST 14-16 try to force humanaccording to Box Off ice Mojo ity—messy and ugly CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent and capable also of (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 doing good—into an scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com idealistic ink-andS V L paper plan. It peels off 1̀ Straight Outta Compton* R . 8 6 10 the socioeconomic 2̀ Mission: Impossible— and physical layers of Rogue Nation* PG-13....................... 3 6 4 “housing” and gets 3̀ The Man From U.N.C.L.E.* PG-13................................... 4 6 3 deep into the core of 4̀ Fantastic Four* PG-13.................. 1 6 4 “home”: comfort, 5̀ The Gift (2015) R ................................ 5 5 6 belonging, dreams, 6̀ Ant-Man* PG-13..................................... 1 5 4 and identity. It’s a 7̀ Vacation* R ............................................... 7 6 9 wonderfully and tragi8̀ Minions* PG ............................................... 2 4 2 cally human story. A
War Room
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9̀ Ricki and the Flash* PG-13 .... 4 3 4
10 Trainwreck* R ........................................ 7 `
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the Christian mentor she needs. Recognizing Elizabeth’s spiritual distress, Clara shows Elizabeth her “war room”— a closet with 40 years of handwritten prayers taped to the walls. Clara doesn’t want Elizabeth to “step on the land mines I did,” so she talks Elizabeth into weekly one-on-ones. Clara helps Elizabeth understand her family’s sporadic church attendance and prayer habits are as distasteful to God as the lukewarm coffee Clara once deliberately serves her. She teaches Elizabeth to respect and pray for her husband, and let God fight her battles. Elizabeth empties her shoe closet, establishing her own war room. War Room (rated PG for thematic elements) radiates the same exuberance Clara portrays, but it occasionally goes overboard. A couple of preachy monologues feel forced, and the film needlessly showcases Stallings’ impressive athletic prowess. (He lifts weights, dunks basketballs, performs standing backflips, and jumps Double Dutch ropes.) Still, there is much to enjoy in War Room , including the acting. Abercrombie and Shirer are especially good in their roles. And the film’s message is certainly timely: If we surrender our families to God in prayer, we can say with Elizabeth, “This house is under new management.” —by BOB BROWN
PROVIDENT FILMS, LLC
American part of town. When Yonkers residents resist, the disgusted federal judge threatens to fine the city $100 the first day and double every day after—which means Yonkers will face bankruptcy in three weeks. The white constituents won’t hear it. They’re not racist, they insist. They’re just worried about their property values, and the drugs and crime that “those people” will drag into their neighborhood. Barely 28 years old, Wasicsko wins the campaign against a six-term incumbent by riding on his vote to appeal the court-ordered housing decision, when the former mayor didn’t. Suddenly, voters who once ignored him swarm over to shake his hand, and reporters throng to him for soundbites against the housing desegregation plan. Wasicsko wins by 1,500 votes. He has not yet graced the mayor’s seat when the court denies the city’s appeal. His initial exuberance is rattled, but with youthful optimism he wonders, “They can’t blame me for that, can they?” Oh yes, they can. Every council meeting becomes a mob show with angry white people hurling insults and threats at Wasicsko for betraying their trust. From rising star of the Democratic Party, Wasicsko now has to hire bodyguards and carry around a gun and a bottle of Maalox. His political career seems ruined before it even really started. As the title implies, there is no hero in Show Me a Hero—even protagonist Wasicsko, who’s so fresh he’s yet to develop his principles, is no hero. He’s like a toothy-
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*Reviewed by WORLD
8/19/15 9:14 AM
TIES THAT BIND: PENDER PRODUCTIONS • U.N.C.L .E.: WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.
CULTURE
TELEVISION
provident films, llc
ties that bind: Pender Productions • U.N.C.L .E.: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Ties That Bind R Though it’s an entertaining enough way to spend an hour, there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about the new police/family drama Ties That Bind from upstart cable network UP. It stars veteran television actress Kelli Williams ( The Practice , Ally McBeal, and Army Wives) as Allison McLean, a mom and cop who’s torn between the two roles when her personal integrity forces her to put her brother in jail and then take in his teenage children. The show has been lightly marketed to Christians as an alternative to the gritty arms race taking over television, and in that respect, it lives up to its hype. Amid storylines with strong dramatic potential, there’s little blood, no language or sex, and a family that prays (if in somewhat “God is good, God is great” vernacular) before meals. And with the exception of a couple of overwrought scenes, the show is much better acted than typical “faith-based” programming. Luke Perry, whose haggard visage will come as a shock to anyone who grew up sighing over Dylan McKay, turns in
an especially impressive performance as Allison’s prodigal brother. What the pilot is missing is a sense of the daily experience of being a follower of Christ. Nearly 20 percent of the population attends a Christian church on any given weekend. Yet with the possible exception of the Catholic Reagans on CBS’ Blue Bloods , there is virtually no serious representation of this way of life on television. The market is wide open for a series that authentically depicts conversations and contexts that will ring familiar to the tens of millions of viewers striving (and often failing) to pick up their personal crosses. Such a show would even warrant a little grittiness now and then, I should think. There’s plenty of room for such exploration in Ties That Bind ’s setup. Digging deeper into its ostensibly Christian characters’ motivations, fears, and hopes to capture the realities of living their faith would make it a better drama, and would make it stand out from the vast and ever-growing television pack.
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
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—by MEGAN BASHAM
Cavill (left) and Hammer
MOVIE
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. R In the 1960s, while James Bond was regularly taking over the box office, Bond writer Ian Fleming suggested “Napoleon Solo” as the name of another womanizing, besuited spy working for an international government organization called U.N.C.L.E. After premiering on NBC in 1964, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. went on to rival CBS’ Mission: Impossible in popularity; but eventually, as TV was overrun with spies, it became almost a satire of its own genre. Guy Ritchie’s reboot (which he directed and co-wrote) jumps straight to the satire—which seems appropriate, considering its release during a glut of action movies, including yet another Mission: Impossible sequel. But Ritchie manages to apply a light touch without falling into the ridiculous in a movie that is still more comedy than action movie. Like the show, the movie is less about plot and more about the two (yes, two) men who end up working for U.N.C.L.E.
Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) are reluctant Cold War espionage partners in aiding— or using—Gaby (Alicia Vikander) to find her father, a nuclear scientist. If the dynamic between the three main characters didn’t work, the movie wouldn’t work either, because the fight scenes are visual gags and the plot is plainly ridiculous. But the banter is quick, the men are handsome, the woman beautiful (and smarter than the average Bond girl), and, much as in his 2009 Sherlock Holmes remake, Ritchie’s tonguein-cheek style reminds the audience not to take it too seriously. Despite the light tone, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is rated PG-13 for action violence, some suggestive content (such as sexual innuendo), and partial nudity. There is also torture played for comedy, and one man is fried in an electric chair in a scene that is only partly offscreen. —by ALICIA COHN
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CULTURE
BOOKS
Truth and exaggeration
The German V-1 and V-2 missiles were able to fly only a single oneway mission. They were painted.” HISTORY SERIES REQUIRES SOME And yet, parPARENTAL GUIDANCE ents should be by Marvin Olasky aware of the dubious conclusions Maybury sometimes draws: “The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki frightened Russians so much that their attempt to overthrow the A German Kremlin—which V-2 missile was their only shield against the U.S.—evaporated. … If someone said to Many homeschoolers use “Uncle me, in the final analysis the World Trade Eric” history books, and I can see Center was destroyed by Teddy Roosevelt why: Author Richard Maybury’s writing is and his cronies, I would have a hard time alive and full of fascinating specific detail. disagreeing.” For example, in World War II Maybury Maybury is also over-the-top in his notes that Germans’ “desire for perfecanti-British bias: “For eight centuries, tion crippled their ability to produce British were cut from the same mold as weapons in large numbers,” and he gives Hitler and Stalin. … The English did not this example: “Americans realized that wear the nifty uniforms that the Nazi SS the average plane flew only a few weeks did. … They just went out and killed or months before it was shot up, so it anyone who got in their way.” Hmm. The would not last long enough to corrode. British were ruthless at times, but they Painting cost a lot of money, time and also built institutions in the countries labor, so Americans stopped doing it. …
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Education SHORT STOPS
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emphasized Bible-reading and moral teaching in the schools they created. Todd Hartch’s The Prophet of Cuernavaca (Oxford, 2015) is a biography of renegade Catholic priest Ivan Illich: The left esteems him, but his anti-school ideas resonate well with the homeschool movement. Some schools hope to inspire creativity, so it’s useful to see why some inventors persevere. Gavin Weightman’s Eureka: How Invention Happens (Yale, 2015) has a strong chapter on the Wright brothers and other chapters on the invention of television, bar codes, personal computers, and mobile phones. Short Answers to Big Questions About God, the Bible & Christianity, by Clinton Arnold and Jeff Arnold (Baker, 2015) is a useful quick reference work for teachers. (J. Budziszewski’s Ask Me Anything books are also useful in that regard.) —M.O.
BET TMANN/CORBIS/AP
Kevin Carey’s The End of College (Riverhead, 2015) has good specific detail on how advances in information technology and soaring costs for college are shaking up the world of higher education—and will put many institutions out of business. Thomas Hagedorn’s Founding Zealots: How Evangelicals Created America’s First Public Schools, 1783-1865 (Christian History in America, 2013) debunks the myth that Horace Mann was the founder of American public schools: Hagedorn emphasizes the role of Midwestern evangelical Calvinist pastors and laymen who
they ruled, unlike other Europeans out for exploitation. Where British missionaries labored, education and health improved, and faith in Christ chased away evil spirits. In rightfully criticizing Stalin’s tyranny, Maybury sometimes downplays Hitler’s: “Compared to the Soviet Socialists, the German Nazis were amateurs. At the maximum extent of his reach, Hitler controlled about 4 percent of the world. … The Soviet Socialists had already conquered 16 percent.” A comparison of population and industrial capacity would produce opposite results, but in an evil-to-evil matchup, both leaders were the world’s worst mass murderers ever—until Mao Zedong challenged and probably broke their record. Still, Maybury in books such as Ancient Rome and World War I makes history come alive, and that’s no small feat. He accurately labels much of the world as “Chaostan.” In The Thousand Year War in the Mideast, he profoundly observes that our goal abroad should be “Liberty, not Democracy.” (He wrote that before the United States in Iraq pushed democracy on a country without the prerequisites for it.) Parents should read Uncle Eric books and help children distinguish between truth and exaggeration: We could label them PG, parental guidance needed.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2015
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Notable books
SEVEN SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS reviewed by Susan Olasky,
Sandy Barwick, Jonathan Boes, Onize Ohikere, and Kaylen Tanner During the past year, WORLD received more than 100 selfpublished books for possible review. This past May we had our 14 students at the 2015 World Journalism Institute each choose the books that most appealed to them—and from those to choose one to review. For the WJI students, that’s useful experience for future work in publishing or book reviewing. For the authors who sent their books, thank you. Although some of you will be disappointed not to find your book reviewed here, you have helped in the training of these budding journalists.
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IF I’M A CHRISTIAN, WHY AM I DEPRESSED?
Robert B. Somerville (Xulon Press) Somerville offers a holistic perspective on depression, combining experience with biblical objectivity. The book intersperses Somerville’s personal struggle with depression and the testimonies of others. It also considers the experience of biblical figures like Elijah, the prophet who longed to die in the wilderness, and historical figures like Spurgeon, the prince of preachers who often wept without cause.
DEBT-FREE LIVING IN A DEBT-FILLED WORLD Trevor BET TMANN/CORBIS/AP
and Michelle Thomas (Michelle Thomas)
The Thomases write about how a high-school
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
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teacher and stay-at-home mom/parttime employee can support a family of six on a modest income. The book off ers a treasury of biblically based, practical advice about getting and staying out of debt. It covers everything from reducing credit card balances, purchasing a car, building a house, homeschooling, couponing, and more. It would make a practical gift for recent college graduates or newly married couples.
KATIE, WILL AND THE GLOBAL DETECTIVES
GrandDad (Crocus Hill Books) What’s a grandfather to do when his granddaughter develops cancer and he can’t find any children’s books where the protagonist is confined to a wheelchair or bed? He starts telling his own stories. This book is a compilation of the stories about the girl, her brother, and a special friend called Robert P. Rabbit—as told by GrandDad.
A SMALL CUP OF LIGHT
Ben Palpant (benpalpant.com) Palpant addresses his search for meaning as he struggles with a serious illness. Palpant, a husband, father, and teacher, stubbornly breaks free of his self-reliance and learns to trust God in the midst of his crisis. Each chapter begins with a poem that connects to that chapter’s content. He off ers a hopeful message of God’s presence, even in the darkest times.
THE MASTER’S TREE Ian Bishop (Tate) Bishop tells a classic fairy tale about a sparrow and the great master who sends him on a mission to get a seed from a special tree, bring it back, and plant it in his lovely vegetable garden. The sparrow must overcome dangers, sacrifice his lovely vegetables as the tree eventually shades them out, and watch as things take an unexpected turn.
THE SIMPLIFIED GUIDE
OLYMPIA ON-TIME!
Hazelton, a lawyer, off ers a topical trip through Paul’s letters to the churches. It’s a straightforward compilation of the central issues the churches faced. In simple style, he crossreferences Paul’s main topics in a concordance covering everything from family relations to faith-vs.-works dynamics.
Olympia On-Time! is a character book the size of Mr. books. Each page has several frames in which cartoon-style characters tell a story focused on a character trait. Olympia never gets up on time, so she’s late to work, in a bad mood, and hurting her co-workers. The colorful pages are busy with cues pointing out rhyming words, shapes, colors, etc.
David Hazelton (Deep River Books)
Wade Gugino (GooGenius)
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Q&A
J. BUDZISZEWSKI
Generation disordered THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION HAS LEFT MANY COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH EMPTY LIVES, BUT THERE IS A LONGING FOR SOMETHING MORE by Marvin Olasky photo by KEVIN VANDIVIER/Genesis
Political philosopher J. Budziszewski has written numerous books including How to Stay Christian in College and On the Meaning of Sex. On May 30 we ran a Q-and-A concerning his own background and critique of Darwinism, but Budziszewski is also a keen observer of contemporary student life.
By material standards they are living an awesome life. But man does not live by bread alone. Philosophers
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speak of the “hedonistic paradox.” If you pursue truth and friendship for their own sakes, you will enjoy pleasure. If you pursue pleasure for itself, pleasure recedes and you are likely to find pain. Eventually you burn out. Among people who live hedonistic lives, the paradox didn’t used to kick in until much later. But so many of these young people have started in on hedonism so young, and thrown themselves into it so thoroughly, that the paradox kicks in very early. I suspect that this is much of the reason why they can’t suggest any positive element in happiness.
For 34 years now you’ve taught at The University of Texas at Austin, one of the best state universities. Has the skill level of entering students gotten better or worse? Worse and worse. I’m speaking even of bright
students with good equipment upstairs. Few of them have been taught properly to read for arguments. If I ask, “What did the author believe?” they can tell me. If I ask them to explain why he believes it, they’re caught by surprise. Rather than saying, “Oh I see, this sentence expresses a premise, but this one expresses a conclusion,” they see a sequence of disconnected assertions. How are student attention spans? Shorter and shorter. Watching YouTube and browsing the internet is no preparation for spending a couple of hours working through the argument of a text. You read this for 20 seconds, that for 20 seconds, then you click on a link and do something else. What are their lives like? More and more disordered. Anything goes, especially concerning sex, even among many young people who call themselves Christians. Twenty years ago, if I’d asked, “Are there any problems with the sexual revolution?” they would have said, “No, it’s fine.” Now they often answer, “No, it’s not working.” Are they happy? They say they are. One student wrote on a midsemester course survey, “I am living an awesome life.” But in the same class, when I asked, “What’s happiness?” I got strange answers. The first half-dozen answers were variations on “Nothing but the absence of pain.” It was quite difficult to get the students in that group to suggest any positive element in happiness. This tells me that the “awesome life” remark was probably not an honest expression of how that student was experiencing life, but a quietly desperate, “I’ve got to convince myself.”
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Are you able to get into a discussion of this sort in class? Sure. If you read the great books, you can’t
avoid questions like whether happiness and pleasure are the same thing, and how marital order and social order are related. I don’t have to bring them up. My students do. Of course the students won’t talk if they think you are calling them immoral. I humbly suggested to one class that my generation had invented the sexual revolution, but I thought theirs was paying the price. What happened? A young man said, “I know what you mean.” He said he longed—his word—to love and marry a woman and be faithful to her forever. My heart soared. But then he said, “but I don’t think it’s possible.” Because his own parents hadn’t been able to manage it—parents whom he obviously loved— he didn’t see how he could. Do your students read your good book, On the Meaning of Sex ? Some of them disA VIDEO OF THIS INTERVIEW IN ITS ENTIRETY CAN BE FOUND AT WNG.ORG AND IN THE IPAD EDITION OF THIS ISSUE
cover it. Occasionally they drop in to talk. Among grad students, for instance, a big question is when to get married.
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Is it typical for students to say, “We want to try out marriage so we’ll live together for a while.” Yes, but of
course it’s not practice for marriage, since it lacks commitment. It’s the shell of marriage. That statement makes some people angry, yet others tell me, “I’m so glad you explained that. I’ve always been told the old ideas were just arbitrary taboos.” There is a thirst to know the rational basis for traditional sexual norms. Interesting.
Do any of them say, “How come I’m not hearing this anywhere else?” The most poignant such instance
was a young man I knew who was trying to work through the guilt of his complicity in his girlfriend’s abortion. He became very angry. “The adults made this legal. They told us it was OK and that’s not true. Why didn’t anybody tell us that it isn’t?”
I understand pornography use is very high among guys, but I’m hearing that young women use it also. I suspect they don’t talk with you about that.
I came to realize how high it is not from my own students but from readers who have written to me—mostly young men trying to break free from the habit. What was your major takeaway? Publicly people may say shame is old-fashioned. Then they get caught up in pornography—and they’re ashamed.
‘Christian morality is a prerequisite for happiness.’ Yet they find it enormously difficult to break free. Porn is an addiction. So there is enormous wringing of hands among many Christians as to what’s happening to people in their 20s and moving away from church activities and we’re losing this whole generation. Do you think these people will come back? Some will come back,
and some who have never set foot in a church will come in. Often things have to get worse for a long time before they get better, but there are things we can do to help. Such as? You can’t stop someone from walking out. But you can teach him well enough that when he considers coming back, he’ll know what he’s returning to. We haven’t a chance of getting people to live a Christian way of life if they think it is just a collection of joy-killing rules. What we should explain is that Christian morality is a prerequisite for happiness, and that it makes us more free, not less—free to do what is good rather than being jerked around by desires. People need to have the vision of the good that temptation is pulling them away from. Temptation affects not only our actions but our theology. Teens need deeper instruction and
honest talk. Very few people fall away from God because the intellectual case against God convinces them. More often, a naive young Christian falls into some sort of sin, doesn’t want to repent, and starts looking for reasons to believe God doesn’t exist. It’s also easier to guard against temptation if you understand how it works and how to avoid it. A young man may intend to remain chaste, yet no one ever explained to him that if he spends a lot of time alone with girls in dark rooms, he’s unlikely to achieve what he’s aiming for. A
molasky@wng.org @MarvinOlasky
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MUSIC
Cover stories
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by her gender-unswitched, lesbianfriendly cover of Herman’s Hermits’ “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” (She probably intended something similar by her equally as-is cover of The Beatles’ “If I Fell,” but, according to the rules of formal grammar, the “her” at the end of the second and third verses precludes rainbow-friendly readings.) To McKay’s credit, My Weekly Reader works well enough as music— transcends its politics, one might say—to keep it from being divisive. Much of it is delightful, with unexpected juxtapositions providing attentionholding elements of surprise throughout. And her harmonica riff on The Cyrkle’s “Red Rubber Ball” points up melodic similarities to Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” that lend the former a soupçon of cool. The pleasures of Imbruglia’s Male are shallower. (Her airy, Susanna Hoffs–like voice is partly to blame.) But by tempering the more aggressively masculine qualities of her source material with instrumentation, time signatures, and tempi that have “feminine touch” written all over them, she emphasizes and demonstrates the complimentary nature of the sexes. Eschewing electronica and Auto-Tune, Imbruglia gets at the charms of Daft Punk’s “Instant Crush.” Replacing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ electric guitars with acoustic guitar and banjo, she bequeaths a feelin’-groovy lilt to “The Waiting.” Meeting her fellow Aussie Josh Pyke’s “The Summer” on its own folk-pop terms, she brings a deserving 7-year-old song out from down under and shows the rest of the world what it’s been missing. Less satisfying are the songs that were too in touch with their feminine sides to begin with. Damien Rice’s “Cannonball,” Iron & Wine’s “Naked As We Came”—what such material could really do with is a good toughening up. Or maybe being ignored altogether. A
MONICA SCHIPPER/FILMMAGIC
composer roster too, it could’ve been called Male as well. The similarities end ALBUMS BY NATALIE IMBRUGLIA AND there. There is, for NELLIE McKAY HAVE VERY DIFFERENT instance, a generation AGENDAS by Arsenio Orteza gap. All but one of McKay’s 13 selections come from the 1960s; Imbruglia’s dozen stretch from 1970 to 2013, with half bearing 21st-century copyrights. And although both women pay homage to bona fide hits, McKay’s obscurities (Alan Price, The Mothers of Invention, Moby Grape, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Country Joe and the Fish) are obscure indeed. A reasonable conclusion to draw from these differences is that Imbruglia is just singing songs she likes whereas McKay has something thematically significant in mind. What that something is emerges from between the lines because McKay is an artist and therefore resistant to the obvious. But she’s not opaque. McKay Her Moby Grape cover is “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” (replete with a few antiAt a time when pop-music supply euphemistic vulgarities and a exceeds demand, it’s probably whispered “I can’t breathe” à inevitable that performers will turn to la Black Lives Matter). Her covering and reinterpreting alreadyMothers of Invention cover is extant songs rather than simply adding the Great Society–mocking to their number. “Hungry Freaks, Daddy.” Her The Australian singer-songwriterAlan Price covers are the satiriactress Natalie Imbruglia and the cal “Poor People” and “Justice.” American singer-songwriter-actress A not unreasonable conclusion: She Nellie McKay pursue such a strategy on believes that the social injustices of the their latest albums. Imbruglia’s is called ’60s persist and still require radical soluMale (Sony Masterworks) because its tions (or at least radical Supreme Court material was written and originally decisions). performed by members of the opposite That McKay numbers anti-homosexual sex. McKay’s is called My Weekly Reader stigma among those injustices is suggested (429), but, as only men comprise its
aorteza@wng.org @ArsenioOrteza
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CULTURE
Notable CDs
NEW OR RECENT ALBUMS reviewed by Arsenio Orteza ANOTHER ONE Mac DeMarco DeMarco obviously has a sense of humor. The title and brevity of this follow-up to his critically acclaimed Salad Days not only highlight the necessity of staying visible in these what-have-youdone-for-me-lately times but also satirize that necessity. And he makes the most of his joke: Another One sounds like an EP recorded by John Lennon and George Harrison in chill-out mode. If he’d included some instrumentals from the Bandcamp-only Some Other Ones, he might’ve even sounded like The Beatles.
PAGEANT MATERIAL Kacey Musgraves In “Dime Store Cowgirl,” Musgraves walks back the more transgressive elements of Same Trailer Diff erent Park , blaming them on her having gotten “too big for [her] britches” and assuring her fan base that you can’t take the country out of the girl. Elsewhere, she’s up to her former tricks, eventually concluding that she’s just a live-and-let-live libertarian. She wants, in other words, to have her biscuits and eat them too. Until she figures out how, she’ll settle for matching witty lyrics to even wittier hooks.
THE WEST AFRICAN BLUES PROJECT Modou Touré & Ramon Goose
MONICA SCHIPPER/FILMMAGIC
GRAHAM HARRIES/REX SHUT TERSTOCK/NEWSCOM
The only overtly blues song is “Lolambe,” which does as much for John Lee Hooker’s legacy as ZZ Top’s “La Grange” and maybe more. The rest is World Music pure and simple, except that even at its purest it’s seldom that simple, not when the warrior song “Kayre” makes fighting sound like fun. Ramon Goose is a British guitarist enamored of the bottleneck, Modou Touré a multilingual Senegalese singer, guitarist, and percussionist. They make beautiful music together. The purest and simplest proof: “We Walk in the Sahara.”
SPOTLIGHT Because Pete Townshend took his Who rock operas seriously, and because he was young enough when he composed them to keep his pretensions from morphing into delusions of grandeur, both Tommy and Quadrophenia have aged rather well. The latest proof is that they’ve just been redone in non-rock versions, neither of which embarrasses itself. Pete Townshend’s Classic Quadrophenia (Deutsche Grammophon) features London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the operatic tenor of Alfie Boe (with cameos by Phil Daniels and Billy Idol). Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry (Compass) features Springfield, Mo.’s Hillbenders. Each recording does justice to, and even subtly enriches, Townshend’s melodies, and the plots (or concepts) don’t sound any more confused (Quadrophenia) or silly ( Tommy, about a traumatized male Helen Keller with a Messianic complex) than they ever have. But something is lacking, namely, what put the “rock” in the operas in the first place: the mad drummer Keith Moon, dead nearly 37 years, and more missed now than ever.
TRUANCY: THE VERY BEST OF PETE TOWNSHEND Pete Townshend What mainly distinguishes this compilation from Townshend’s 1996 best-of, with which it shares six cuts, is the word “very” in the title. What keeps Townshend from using the term “greatest hits” is that only two of these songs made the Top 40. What kept the others off the charts is their never having been released as singles or their lack of hooks. What the three Ronnie Lane duets prove is that Townshend is a born collaborator. What makes Townshend think that the two new tracks belong? Hubris.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
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WISDOM CHILD’S LIFE
Be A Voice of In Your
Our children are exposed to tens of thousands of media messages a week, influencing the way they think and act, competing for their allegiance. God’s Big WORLD, WORLDkids, and WORLDteen are safe and fun tools that provide them healthy pathways to ask, learn, and grow—pointing them to the kind of life God intends. The new school year is approaching quickly, so act now to give your kids the full benefit of God’s Big WORLD, WORLDkids, and WORLDteen. No one can stop the barrage of messages, but we can be the strongest voice in the room.
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A Christian school in China
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Off the
grıd The Chinese Christian school movement doesn’t officially exist, and parents make great sacrifices to join it— but it’s growing quickly by June Cheng in China
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n a residential area on the outskirts of a large city, children in navy blazers and khaki skirts push open a bright yellow wrought iron gate. Inside sits a Christian school with classrooms displaying alphabet letters, caterpillar crafts, bean bag chairs, and Bible verses. Some kindergarten and elementary-age students squeal while grabbing their pint-sized red-and-white choir robes from student lockers for Monday morning chapel. ‡ Not an unusual sight in the United States, right? But it’s an amazing sight in China, where 300-500 Christian schools, most newly formed, officially do not exist. As these children practice speaking English with American teachers, read Chinese books in their well-stocked libraries, and learn traditional Chinese tea etiquette, in the government’s eyes it’s as though they never stepped inside a classroom. The wooden jungle gym, the tire swings dangling from rafters, the father who leads a house church on Sundays and clips bamboo trees in the courtyard, the classrooms with colorful verses in Chinese characters (“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”) are all suspect because the school is unlicensed and church-run. Unless rules change, its graduates will not be allowed take the gaokao, China’s nationwide college entrance exam. While such a future is unthinkable for most Chinese parents who value degrees and university prestige, the demand is growing—often faster than the supply of qualified, sustainable schools—for schools like this one that teach education based in biblical truth. For a country with more than 68 million Christians, a few hundred Christian
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schools with fewer than 60 students each is barely a drop in the Yangtze River. Yet unlike the missionary-started Christian schools in China’s past, this time local Chinese are understanding the need for Christian education and seeking to provide it for the next generation. As in any new movement, mistakes and trials abound, compounded by the constant fear that officials will crack down. To combat the problems, educators and pastors are training teachers, writing curricula, and setting up an independent accreditation agency. Courageous parents, more concerned about their children entering the kingdom of heaven than entering topranked Peking University or Tsinghua University, are plunging headfirst into this countercultural move.
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asmine Zhu, a petite and softspoken mother of a 6-year-old (I’ve changed Zhu’s name and others so as not to help persecutionminded officials), is one of those parents. She spent her formative years in the atheistic public school system, where teachers call belief in God a mere superstition. When Zhu first heard the gospel, the idea of a living, all-powerful God was difficult to grasp: It contradicted everything she had ever learned. As she grew in her faith, married, and became a mother, she wanted to raise her daughter to love God and knew that sending her to public school could sabotage that. When Zhu’s daughter was 2, a woman from her church in Eastern China attended a Christian teacher’s training and excitedly returned to tell a group of Christian parents what she had learned. Those six or seven couples became the school’s original “board of directors.” With one trained teacher and another mother, they started an unofficial kindergarten class for their 3-year-olds. (That’s when Chinese children go to kindergarten, which includes what Americans call preschool. Since kindergarten is not part of China’s nine years of compulsory education, starting a private kindergarten is easier than opening an elementary or middle school.) Zhu, a public school teacher herself, quit her job to teach at her daughter’s school two years later. At first, she wasn’t sure what Christian education entailed, but she learned on the job as she attended training courses and prayed: “God’s grace exceeded what I asked for.” The starkest difference she saw between Christian and public schools was the relationship between teachers and students. Public school teachers worked to control the kids outwardly—often through shame and fear—without caring for their internal problems. She saw Christian teachers loving students, and for the first time since becoming a teacher she began examining how teachers could change lives and not just shovel information. Her school has faced difficulties throughout its four-year existence. It has changed locations every year due to visits from officials, expensive rent, and safety issues. This fall it will move to a larger Photos by June Cheng
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Students play and sing at a Christian school near a large city in China.
space on the outskirts of town that will give children room to run around, but the new building is too far for some of the parents to make the trek. As a result, money is tight as the school only has 19 students enrolled and 11 instructors teaching kindergarten and first, second, and seventh grades. “Maybe we are doing this imperfectly and there are still areas that need to mature,” Zhu noted. “But this is better than knowing we could start our own school, yet still sending our kids to public schools because of the world’s standards.” The choice is a permanent one: Parents who send their kids to Christian kindergartens can still enter the public school system, but if they pull their kids out of the system after first grade, the students can never get back in, save for connections with high-level education officials.
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n the 1800s Western missionaries found evangelism hard going and tried to reach the Chinese by building hospitals and schools. By one count, China had 6,000 Christian schools by 1925; but when Communists gained power in 1949, they expelled missionaries and shuttered Christian schools unless they secularized. Some schools moved to Taiwan, and others completely shut down. John Liu, a Christian education leader in contemporary China, says dependence on Westerners contributed to the failure of the schools. Sitting in a McDonald’s, Liu used plastic coffee lids to show how missionary schools rarely developed deep roots in Chinese soil: Once the foreigners were gone—Liu brushed the caps aside—so was the Christian school system. Now, though, foreigners train teachers and provide resources, but at most schools local Chinese Christians do the heavy lifting.
Foreign Christian high schools and colleges play a part by providing further education for Chinese students after they graduate. Liu’s interest in Christian education began as he thought about teaching his firstborn son about Christ. He originally planned to start his own school, but his background in marketing thrust him into the role of organizing the first national Christian education conference in 2006. Only 30 people attended then, but now hundreds do. By connecting pastors and educators of different denominations, groups are creating indigenous curricula and educational standards. Other schools are blends. Jerry Wolfe, a lanky American with a goatee, started a bilingual school that differs from others in that foreign and local students learn together. That’s a sensitive issue in the authorities’ eyes, but parents hope children will learn both Chinese and September 5, 2015 WORLD
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Western ways and blend the best. In four years, the school has grown from 13 to 122 students meeting at two locations, with students from six different continents. The school melds a classical Christian curriculum with local curriculum in areas such as math and Chinese language. Over lunch, Wolfe’s elementary-age daughters excitedly sang about Africa’s geography and recited chapter two of Luke’s Gospel in Chinese. Wolfe wants every part of the school to meet government qualifications, even if it never gets the green light, so the school’s two buildings meet all the space requirements to open a school, and school leaders have all necessary degrees: “If we’re successful, it wouldn’t be measured by the current group of students but by the school as an institution. Is it
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Jerry Wolfe’s school blends Chinese and Western ways in a classical Christian curriculum.
leaving the church as academics and the cares of the world stifle their faith. Liu’s primary goal is to do all he can so the passion and growth of Christianity in China doesn’t end in one generation.
still a blessing to the city 50 years from now? And are the kids who’ve come out of it really living a life that glorifies God?” Liu, who says “public school is used by the devil to lead kids to hell,” also thinks long-term. Already parents are seeing second-generation Christians
nyone who has started a Christian school in America knows it’s tough: Square and cube that difficulty to get a sense of what Chinese parents face. They often lack business sense, struggle to find teachers who are academically and spiritually qualified, and have difficulties contextualizing U.S. Christian curricula. Two of the schools mentioned above struggle with financial pressures that could lead to their closure in the next few years, which would force parents to homeschool, find other Christian schools, or—if finances allow—send children overseas. Those two schools are not unusual. At a recent training session for 15 principals in northern China, a finance teacher asked them to create five-year budgets for their schools: The result was a sea of red. Seated in neat rows in a largely bare-walled classroom located above a deserted strip mall, the principals hailed from all over China, yet pinpointed similar needs: more teacher training and help to keep up with rapid growth.
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Bethany’s story:
Often when word gets out about a new Christian school, parents rush to secure a spot for their children—so small, inexperienced schools have the pleasure but also distress to see enrollment doubling every year. Schools started by house churches get financial support from Sunday offering baskets, but those started by parents mainly depend on tuition, which typically ranges from $2,500 to $5,500. This means the schools typically cater to wealthier families, although demand exists in rural areas as well. At the training session a woman with a face darkened from working in the fields spoke of starting a church school that had low tuition—$320 per year—and couldn’t pay enough to keep its teachers. She tried raising tuition to $400 a year, but the parents (mainly farmers) balked: Four teachers left, leaving only two teachers for 60 students. Many of these schools only go up to middle school, so parents and students still must figure out what to do for four years after graduation. So far, most Christian school grads have gone overseas to U.S. Christian colleges, yet the high cost makes it an unrealistic option for many. Christians have started a few colleges in the country, including a three-year program to train future Christian teachers. Graduates can also attend technical schools, house church seminaries, or directly enter the workforce. Even though students at Christian schools are unable to take the college entrance exam, some schools are making sure their students are academically prepared for the test, should the law ever change. Yet even with the uncertainties and setbacks, the educators I spoke to believe local, small Christian schools are here to stay. One principal noted that even if government officials quashed the schools, they’d keep popping back up: “Christian education will grow the same way the house church grew, which is to say the house church grew without a center. They just rent a building and start it, and when they fill it, they rent another one.” A
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TESTING
The College Board’s standardized—and heavily politicized— exams have uncommon influence on curriculum in even Christian schools, but alternatives may be coming BY WARREN COLE SMITH
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DESKS: ZNAIL ZCHAP/ISTOCK • COLEMAN: ERIC GAY/AP
THE LIMITS
DESKS: ZNAIL ZCHAP/ISTOCK • COLEMAN: ERIC GAY/AP
teacher who also grades AP exams explained that she did not WHO WAS MORE IMPORTANT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF have to teach from a recommended textbook, “but if we don’t America: (a) Benjamin Franklin or (b) Harvey Milk? use one of the recommended texts, our students are at a If you chose printer and statesman Benjamin Franklin, who disadvantage.” helped draft the Declaration of Independence and now has The teacher—WORLD granted her anonymity because his face on $100 bills, you are right. But if you want to do well otherwise she could lose her AP exam-grading job—said on the new Advanced Placement (AP) examination in American recommended textbooks often have problems. For example, history, you’d better know about homosexual activist Harvey A History of Western Society devotes less space to John Calvin Milk, too. or Martin Luther than to homosexuality and acceptance of The College Board, the massive nonprofit organization sexual orientation, which it responsible for the Advanced regards as a mark of civilization’s Placement Exam as well as the progress. Feminist Simone de SAT and PSAT tests, is in a multiBeauvoir’s critique of marriage— year process of revising the 37 AP she called marriage “unjust” and tests. So far it has been a rocky “undesirable”—gets a full two road, with conservative and pages, about as much as the book Christian educators saying the devotes to the World War II Pacific College Board is creating a theater. The book briefly mentions left-leaning national curriculum Pope John Paul II once and for all children—whether they are Alexander Solzhenitsyn twice. public, private, or homeschooled. The AP teacher/grader noted “The College Board is turning that experienced teachers can itself into a national school overcome omissions and some board,” said Stanley Kurtz, a bias by bringing additional matesenior fellow at the Ethics and College Board President David Coleman rial and perspectives into the Public Policy Center. “The curclassroom, but “in AP courses rent controversy is not just about you barely have enough time to cover what you need to.” That the U.S. history exam, as important as that is. It’s about who is means adding material means not covering what’s likely to in charge of teaching our children.” be on the test itself, and that “will almost certainly put your To understand fully what Kurtz means, another kind of students at a disadvantage at test time.” history lesson is in order: the history of the College Board itself. In 1899 several elite educational institutions—three college prep schools and 12 leading colleges—formed the College THE PROBLEMS WITH AP TESTS BECAME PROMINENT WHEN Entrance Examination Board, or CEEB, still the formal name the College Board revised the U.S. history exam in 2014. of the organization. The organization planned to “adopt and Stanley Kurtz was among many conservative critics who said publish a statement of the ground which should be covered the College Board “politicized” U.S. history, “demoted” the [in history and 10 other fields] and a plan of examination founders, and downplayed American exceptionalism. In June suitable as a test for admission to college.” the National Association of Scholars (NAS) posted an open The College Board first administered the SAT, then called letter to the College Board signed by dozens of historians, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, in 1926. The Advanced including professors at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Princeton. Placement program began in 1955. Both programs were The letter said the 2014 framework represented “a grave new geared toward top students headed for the top schools, but risk” to the study of America’s past. as Pell grants and the G.I. Bill made college accessible to the The credibility of the critics, and the specificity of their middle class, the number of high-school students taking the criticism, got the attention of the College Board. On July 31, SAT and AP tests exploded. the College Board retreated from the 2014 framework and Today, more than 2,600 colleges—including most issued a new document that it said was “clearer and more Christian colleges—offer credit to students who perform well balanced.” Conservative critics agreed—to a point. NAS on the AP exams. More than 2 million students took at least President Peter Wood said, “It’s definitely better than 2014,” one AP exam in 2013. The College Board’s revenue now tops and he appreciated the College Board “taking the position $800 million per year, and its president in 2013, Gaston that it has something to learn from its critics.” But, he added, Caperton, made more than $1.8 million in salary and other the revisions are “still deeply hostile to American ideals compensation. (The annual salary of the new president, including the importance of religion in our national life.” David Coleman, is $690,000.) Stanley Kurtz, unconvinced, said “the only real solution “The College Board is a de facto monopoly,” said Kurtz. “It to this problem is more choice. It is not safe nor proper for sets the agenda, and schools have little choice but to comply.” the College Board to be in complete control of this process.” Part of its agenda-setting is through “frameworks” that give Kurtz noted that the new president of the College Board, teachers guidance on what to teach so their students will do David Coleman, was the chief architect of the Obama well on the AP exam. These frameworks listed recommended Administration’s Common Core curriculum, and said textbooks and topics the teachers should cover. One AP
wsmith@wng.org @WarrenColeSmith
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Coleman’s move from the Gates Foundation–funded Student Achievement Partners to the presidency of the College Board is “an opportunity for him to get control of the rest of the high-school curriculum in this country.”
Vector ARC has an uphill fight, but discontent has grown since last August, when the Republican National Committee passed a resolution condemning the AP History standards as “radically revisionist.” Common Core likely will be an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, and that will shine more light on David Coleman, Common Core’s architect and the College Board’s president. Stanley Kurtz says the battle “is just beginning.” A
Public isn’t free
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Washington, D.C., wants two of its police officers to cough up more than $224,000 in back tuition and penalties for sending their three children to high-demand public schools in the district while allegedly living in Maryland. School districts regularly hire enrollment fraud investigators, who pursue tips from parents and school staff. Sometimes these investigators follow kids home, and
2̀ (1) An Advanced Placement (AP) Physics class. (2) Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. (3) ESA beneficiary Jordan Visser, who attends Sierra Academy. (4) Holland Hines, who uses an ESA to pay for private schooling and tutoring for her son Elias.
even go inside to see if bedrooms and other personal items indicate the children really live within their assigned enrollment zone, said Fred Lewis, a D.C. Public Schools spokesman. Not only do people who live outside a district not pay property taxes for its schools, their children take seats residents may want. The D.C. City Council asked the schools to crack down on enrollment fraud when parents began complaining about difficulties getting their children into sought-after
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VISSER, HINES: GOLDWATER INSTITUTE • SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS: JOSEPH ROMEO
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THE CALL FOR COMPETITION—“MORE CHOICE”—IN THE education marketplace is finding receptive ears, but barriers to entry are daunting. The only real competition to the SAT is the ACT: Introduced in 1959, only in the 1980s did it make serious inroads into SAT’s hegemony. Since 2011, though, more students take the ACT each year than the SAT. The ACT does better in the Midwest and the South, while the SAT is still stronger on the East and West coasts. ACT, Inc., has so far steered clear of competing with the AP test. Any newcomer into the market would have to contend with long-standing political and financial relationships both the SAT and the ACT organizations have with the nation’s education establishment: For example, former Secretary of Education Richard Riley sits on the ACT’s board. Cozy relationships have gained the College Board $40 million in federal subsidies. Since most educational funding comes at the state and local levels, it’s likely subsidies there are even greater. College coziness with the existing tests is one more barrier to entry, but some colleges—especially Christian ones— seem fed up with standardized tests. The selective George Washington University said in late July it would no longer require applicants to submit test scores. The entrepreneurial homeschool community—now about 2 million strong in the United States—has devised some AP, SAT, and ACT work-arounds. College Plus, a division of the for-profit company Lumerit, allows homeschoolers to take college courses online. The credits they accumulate transfer readily to about a dozen accredited partner Christian colleges. About 10,000 students have earned from a few up to 90 credit hours through College Plus since 2004. One organization, Vector ARC, is preparing to test the first real alternative to the SAT and ACT to come along in a half-century. The organization is offering free of charge its test to about 2,500 students who have already taken either the SAT or the ACT: The goal will be to create norms that allow colleges to compare the Vector ARC scores to the more familiar tests. Tennessee’s Bryan College will be one of the beta sites.
Moving for choice
VISSER, HINES: GOLDWATER INSTITUTE • SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS: JOSEPH ROMEO
AP CL ASS: CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP • KURTZ: FOX NEWS • BANNEKER: HANDOUT
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Holland Hines’ family moved from Michigan to Arizona after spending three years wrestling with the state legislature, insurance companies, and school system attempting to get her son, Elias, schooling that improved his autism. “There’s nothing worse than watching your child suff er and not being able to do anything about it,” the mother of two said. Before they moved, her family contracted more than $70,000 in debt to pay for therapy they could not get local schools to provide. Now, at age 10, Elias uses an education savings account (ESA) to help pay for diff erent classes at two private schools, a tutor, a music therapist, a piano instructor, and gymnastics class. ESAs are a brand-new kind of school choice that put state education funds into an audited account parents can tap to pay for not just school tuition but also curriculum, tutors, individual classes, testing, and education-related transportation. Nevada recently enacted the nation’s first ESA open to all public-school students. Others target special-needs children: Arizona’s program began in 2011, Florida followed in 2014, then Mississippi and Tennessee in 2015. In Nevada, each nondisabled child enrolled will receive approximately $5,100 each year once the program opens in 2016. The amount states send to special-needs children in these programs varies by the severity of each child’s disabilities. In Arizona, parents must have the state Department of Education preapprove instructors they want to hire using their ESA, which requires a pile of paperwork, Hines said. Arranging Elias’ various instructors and therapists and driving 4̀ him to classes also occupies a great deal of Hines’ time, but the change it has brought to him and the whole family has made that complication worth it, she said. “When I wake up and realize every day that the ESAs are still here … it’s like Christmas morning,” she said. “I can really get up and design my child’s education. I can hire people that want to work with my child, and I’m getting help. It’s not half as much work as spinning your wheels in another state and fighting the insurance system, the legislature, the Medicaid process, and the school system.” —Joy Pullmann
preschool, athletics, and academic programs, Lewis said. Not every public school offers these, and D.C. schools are otherwise less attractive than most: Half of D.C. fourthgraders cannot read, compared to a third of fourth-graders nationwide. Parents with children on waiting lists grow suspicious when they see other parents pick up children in cars bearing out-of-state license plates. While U.S. schools can prosecute citizens for enrollment fraud, they can’t prosecute noncitizens. A 1982 Supreme
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Court ruling requires public schools to educate illegal immigrants. The Pew Research Center estimates 4,065 undocumented children live in Washington, D.C. Taxpayers pay approximately $29,000 per year for each child enrolled in D.C. Public Schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. —Joy Pullmann Two highly rated DC schools: Benjamin Banneker Academic High School (left) and School Without Walls High School (right).
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THE ANTI-TESTERS
Some parents and teachers revolt against standardized exams BY DANIEL JAMES DEVINE WHEN SEVERAL HUNDRED thousand children answered multiplechoice questions on statewide math and English tests at Maryland’s public schools this spring, Conor and Molly McNulty were not among them. At their mother’s behest, the brother and sister— elementary students in Catonsville, Md.—have sat out standardized tests
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since kindergarten, sometimes reading a book or playing computer games during testing hours. While his friends took fourth-grade tests last school year, Conor, 10, instead joined an upper-grade class for a science project. “We made a boat out of recyclables,” he said. When classmates ask 8-year-old Molly why she skips tests, she responds, “It’s really complicated.” The McNultys are part of the “optout” movement, a wave of families refusing to participate in annual standardized testing. Some states have seen so many parents refuse high-stakes tests for their children that the U.S. Department of Education has threatened repercussions, perhaps by withholding federal education funding. In Washington state at least 28,000 students skipped tests, and thousands more did so in Oregon, New Jersey, and Colorado. The movement surged this spring in New York, where over 200,000
students boycotted tests—about one out of every five eligible students. Why the testing truancy? To borrow Molly’s explanation, it’s complicated. Parents and teachers give multiple reasons for opposing high-stakes tests, ranging from opposition to Common Core to concern about kids getting stressed out. Conor and Molly’s mom, Morna McDermott McNulty, is a former teacher, an education professor at Towson University, and a volunteer organizer for United Opt Out. She says corporate profits influence standardized tests and don’t give a reliable assessment of the most important educational factors. Boycotting the tests, she said, forces schools to “look more deeply at those factors that do matter: Their schoolwork. The teacher’s assessment of their work. Any portfolio work that they’ve done.” McNulty noted that the new standardized tests many states have adopted align with Common Core, the controversial national education standards she called “confusing and poorly written.” In western New York, social studies teacher Chris Cerrone noticed a few years ago that kids coming into his middle-school class had less and less knowledge of history. He said elementary schools now spend more time preparing for English and math tests and push aside history and science. Now Cerrone’s own two kids (in fifth
and seventh grades) skip assessment tests, and Cerrone has helped organize Buffalo-area grassroots opposition to statewide testing that he says has become “too important” and is “driving instruction.” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo inadvertently boosted the opt-out movement in his state when, with the help of legislators, he tied 50 percent of teacher evaluation scores to classroom test results. Many unionized teachers oppose that and have refused tests for their children—in the process quadrupling the New York opt-out rate. Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank, empathizes with parents who worry teachers pressured to teach math and English will neglect other subjects—but he said boycotting standardized tests is a “very dangerous way to make your voice heard. … If enough parents opt out, we no longer have a good way of measuring school performance based on outcomes.” Petrilli sees testing as an essential accountability tool that has helped create demand for charter schools and vouchers. The federal Department of Education could cut off funding from schools that don’t boost their testing rates. The big question then: Would parents accept testing or intensify the pressure? A
A school bus in Rotterdam, N.Y., passes a sign encouraging students to opt out of standardized testing (above); students protest at Mayfield High School in New Mexico (right).
ddevine@wng.org @DanJamDevine
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John Frame Renowned Theologian Renowned Theologian
protest: Robin Zielinski/L as Cruces Sun-News/ap • bus: Mike Groll/ap
John Frame insightfully examines apologetics in terms of proof, defense, and off enseFrame and clarifi es the relationships of reason,inproofs, evidences to faith, John insightfully examines apologetics terms and of proof, defense, biblical and the lordshipproofs, of Christ. and offense and clarifi es theauthority, relationships of reason, and evidences to faith, biblical authority, and the lordship of Christ.
This is an extensively redeveloped and expanded version of Frame’s previous work, Apologetics to the Glory of God. This is an extensively redeveloped and expanded version of Frame’s previous work, Apologetics to the Glory of God. 1 (800) 631–0094 www.prpbooks.com www.prpbooks.com
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1 (800) 631–0094
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Children’s
Books of the Year These delightful books implicitly support a Christian understanding of how the world works B Y S U S A N O L A S K Y, M E G A N S A B E N , A N D J A N I E B . C H E A N E Y p h oto s b y G a ry Fo n g/G e n e s i s
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he next 11 pages form WORLD’s second annual children’s book section. Last year we had one Children’s Book of the Year, Andrew Peterson’s The Warden and the Wolf King. This year we have two. Our 2015 Picture Book of the Year is Mr. Squirrel and the Moon by Sebastian Meschenmoser (NorthSouth). Our Children’s Novel of the Year is The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf ). We also show in this section 13 runners-up and honorable mentions, and include columns on storytelling, classics for preschoolers, and trends in young adult books. The members of our Picture Book committee not only read many books
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but tested them on parents, adults, interns, and children. Our essential understanding: Good picture books have a unity of text and illustration. They delight and encourage parents and children to spend time together reading. The best books do that and correspond to a Christian worldview—and that’s why Mr. Squirrel and the Moon is a winner.
Mr. Squirrel is an expressive little fellow with a lively imagination. He wakes one morning to find something large, yellow, and round on his branch. (Alert readers will realize it’s a wheel of cheese that has fallen off a farmer’s wagon.) But Mr. Squirrel thinks it’s the moon—and that he’s going to get in trouble—so he imagines the worst:
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imprisonment with a needleworking cellmate. Mr. Squirrel responds to his crisis as humans often do: by running around in a panic and trying to solve it without under standing the truth of the matter, the big picture, and Who is really in charge. Funny illustrations document each disas ter as a hedgehog, a billy goat, and many mice become involved, and Mr. Squirrel imagines all of them ending up in prison. From the endpapers that show the farmer and the cheese, to the increasingly crowded prison cell (with its tiny toilets), the pencil illustrations with minimal color perfectly complement the simple text. Throughout, Meschenmoser’s book, translated from the original German, is a treat.
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ur Novel of the Year selection committee looked for books with excellent writing, absorbing sto ries, and strong, identifiable characters. A novel did not have to be explicitly Christian, but had to be consistent with a Christian understanding of how the world works. The Penderwicks in Spring features steady Rosalind, dreamy Jane, ram bunctious Skye, and shy little Batty (Elizabeth). They first appeared in 2005, when The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy won the National Book Award for juvenile fiction. Though the contemporary setting made occasional references to working moms and computers, the retro feel of the text and design charmed readers. The Penderwicks in Spring is the fourth book in the series. Rosalind is away at college and Skye and Jane navigate high school and boyfriends, with their mild-mannered father despairing at times. Batty is now 10, still shy but growing in confidence as a big sister to 6-year-old Ben and 2-year-old Lydia. As the story opens, Batty is mourning the family dog, Hound, for whose death she feels partly responsible. But stumbling upon a secret related to an even greater loss sends her into isolation and depression. The small-town Massachusetts set ting for the series will of course remind
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readers of Little Women. While growing up in Philadelphia, Jeanne Birdsall steeped herself in time-tested children’s authors like E. Nesbit and Mary Norton, but returned often to Alcott’s classic. The relationships between the March girls held a special appeal for her: “I only had one sister, and she didn’t like me very much,” she told The Kansas City Star last April. This book in the series shows how the sorrow of a child is as real as adult sorrow—just not as well-informed. Birdsall handles this with tact and sensi tivity, never allowing it to tip the mood into dark territory. Everyone in the family has his or her struggles, and because the older sisters are all teenagers, boys loom rather large in the subplots. Everyone, for example, can see the flaws in Rosalind’s new boyfriend except Rosalind, and their reactions are both humorous and enlightening.
Batty comes through her crisis, and the immense value of strong supportive families proves itself once again. Though the author never references church or faith, her picture of rift and reconciliation between siblings, parental wisdom, and the value of human life comports well with Christian principles. The distinctive combination of gentle storytelling, grace ful writing, and sympathetic characters makes all the Penderwick books worth reading, but this latest is especially rich. We plan to expand our children’s books coverage over the next year. Past coverage includes a “Nifty 50” list of classic 20th-century children’s books (July 1, 2000) and a “50 More Nifties” list of reader-recommended titles (Dec. 9, 2000). In 2006 we asked WORLD writers and a variety of discerning readers for their five favorite picture books and five favorite chapter books, and published that list on Dec. 2. A
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Runners-up/picture books by Pamel a Palmer, Megan Saben, and Susan Ol asky
If You Plant a Seed
Sidewalk Flowers
The Golden Plate
You Are (Not) Small
Kadir Nelson
JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith
Bernadette Watts
Anna Kang; illustrated by Christopher Weyant
Nelson tells this simple yet profound story in three sentences with vibrant, detailed, and expressive paintings. A wide-eyed rabbit and mouse labor together to grow a small garden—but at harvest time, as they take their first bite, five birds appear. The birds wait: Then selfishness produces anger on both sides, and a chaotic food fight ensues. Everyone loses. When the rabbit and the mouse have a change of heart and plant “a seed of kindness,” an unimaginably sweeter harvest of food and friendship results.
A little girl in a red jacket accompanies her distracted father through dull city streets, stopping to gather flowering weeds springing through sidewalk cracks. She pauses to share a bouquet with a dead bird, a sleeping homeless man, and her tired mother waiting at home. The first part of the book is primarily black and white with splashes of bright color denoting things the child observes. The color increases as she leaves behind her flower bouquets. Sidewalk Flowers is a reminder—through a child’s eyes—that kindness and ordinary things matter— especially in the sight of God.
As Isobel plays with her friend Elisabeth’s dollhouse, she covets then steals a tiny golden plate. But when she puts the plate in her own more simple dollhouse it doesn’t look as beautiful, and she can’t escape reminders of her theft. Even her toys cast woeful eyes at her. Sunflowers, table plates, and the sun seem to condemn her. Finally she confesses to her mother, who makes her return the plate. Soft, detailed illustrations accompany this narrative showing the struggle of a guilty conscience and the sweetness of repentance and reconciliation. Though a universal theme, it’s definitely in a girlish package.
Two hairy critters argue: “You are small.” “I am not small. You are big.” The argument escalates as more critters, both small and big, join in. Suddenly the feet of a giant hairy critter appear with a boom. Parachuting down from him come three tiny critters. This rambunctious story has only 25 words, making it perfect for young readers. Its simple illustrations are laugh-outloud funny for toddlers. And the topic is important for Christians who often overestimate our size relative to God, and both over- and underestimate it in relation to our fellow human beings.
Tea party picture books In Tea with Grandpa by Barney Saltzberg, a regular afternoon tea date with grandpa turns out to have a sweet, contemporary twist. In A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, crisp dialogue and expressive illustrations enliven a story about a mouse inviting himself to tea with a curmudgeonly bear. When Ida tricks Frances into buying her used, cheap plastic tea set instead of a real china one, their friendship is at stake in A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban. Three cuddly wolves barely escape attacks from a hostile pig but always rescue the tea pot, in The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. Finally, Tea Rex by Molly Idle reminds us that no tea party is complete without proper manners … and a dinosaur! —Betsy Farquhar
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Vital connection
We are wired to understand truth through stories by Mary Jackson
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Witch lures Edmond. But I love the grumbling that ensues when I fold the tip of the page and call us back to the day’s tasks. Of course, I hope in these endeavors my children gain a love for reading, learning, imagining, and believing. In the process, though, I’ve discovered my own love for stories needed rekindling. It’s good to get on my children’s level to retell how God used Joseph’s seemingly unjust suffering to save a nation, how He used David’s pebble to defeat a towering giant, or how He led Jonah to repentance in the belly of a whale. I forgot about Lord of the Rings’ Sam Gamgee. At key times I’ve needed to remember Scrooge’s pinched heart, the Little
Women sisters’ resourceful affection, the Wilder family’s blizzard-filled winter with little food or heat. I once devoured books as a girl. In the shelves lining the tall ceilings of our farmhouse hallway, I searched for heroes, villains, adventures, landscapes, and romance. Soon, I began creating my own characters, settings, and obstacles. This eventually led me to pursue writing. In my early 20s I learned the components of a journalistic story as a reporter in a fast-paced newsroom. On city streets, I looked for a story’s sights, smells, and sounds. I faced my fears of approaching strangers and getting lost in a big city. Subtly, though, under deadline pressure I sometimes viewed people and their stories as quotes, anecdotal leads, or another byline. I read too much news and analysis and too little of the Bible and other heroic tales. I often missed the vital connection between my own story, those I write, and God’s grandiose and unfolding narrative. C.S. Lewis said a story can revive the rich significance of what we know, often hidden in the “veil of familiarity”: “The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story … by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” The greatest story ever began with “In the beginning, God. …” Jesus, the Word made flesh, spoke of mysteries, paradoxes, and stumbling blocks in His parables—stories about a rich fool, a dishonest steward, two debtors, talents, fig trees, and laborers in the vineyard. I have needed these years away from busy newsrooms to hear, read, and tell great stories from the Bible and literature to my children—to see God’s grace anew. Rich and riddled characters revive my gratitude for the perseverance, creativity, courageous suffering, and sacrificial love I can find in everyday life and people. My story and others’ stories are significant because God wants to show a part of His redemptive work and nature through them. A
krieg barrie
ne of my children’s favorite things to do is to listen to their grandpa read. On rainy nights or seaside vacations, we have sat by the crackling wood stove captivated by his commanding Gandalf, his hissing Gollum, his witty and Southern-drawled Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I can hardly replicate Grandpa’s storytelling. Still, for years now I have read aloud to my three children while they eat sandwiches and slurp smoothies or as the afternoon sun beams onto our living room couch. Minutes fly by as great tales transport us. It’s cruel to stop reading in the middle of an Alamo standoff, a Sherwood Forest ambush, or as the White
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Honorable mention/picture books by Susan Ol asky, Betsy Farquhar, and Megan Saben
My Grandfather’s Coat Jim Aylesworth; illustrated by Barbara McClintock
A captivating retelling of the Yiddish folktale features a tailor who makes a coat. Years pass and the coat wears out. He turns it into a jacket. Then a vest. Then a tie, until there’s nothing left but the story. Exuberant illustrations document the passing years as the characters age, fashion and technology change, and new generations are born. It’s a story about change and continuity, and the love that binds a family together through the generations. The rhythmic and repetitive text makes the book a delightful read-aloud.
Bunny’s First Spring
Beautiful Moon
Yard Sale
Sally Lloyd-Jones; illustrated by David McPhail
Tonya Bolden
Eve Bunting
A full moon shines through a boy’s bedroom window as he remembers that he forgot to say his prayers. He prays for people with no homes. An illustration of a woman trying to stay warm on a park bench follows. The next illustration shows a man on a train, oblivious to the moon because he’s thinking about his soldier daughter in a war zone. The boy prays for the end of war. This beautifully illustrated book provides snapshots of the world’s needs and shows an earnest boy doing the one thing a young child can do: pray.
A family has a yard sale because it is moving into a small apartment. The young daughter doesn’t really understand until people root through their stuff. “You can’t take this,” she yells to a man who wants to buy her bike. Bunting conveys the pathos of the situation from a child’s viewpoint. Simple ink and watercolor illustrations complement the text. They show the mom and dad, and the mom, dad, and daughter hugging and holding hands, while neighbors and strangers carry off their belongings. That affirms the book’s message that familial love— not stuff—is what lasts.
A little bunny explores his world through changing seasons, sharing his exuberant observations with his affectionate parents. As winter arrives, he mourns what appears to be a dying world. Bunny hides in his burrow with his parents and sleeps. In springtime he awakes and discovers resurrection in nature. Lloyd-Jones weaves themes of new life throughout this story, which closes with a quote from Martin Luther: “God has written the promise of new life not just in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” McPhail’s soft-toned illustrations complement the story as the seasons change and the colors ebb and flow.
Reflecting reality
krieg barrie
Children’s book publishing has been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy publishing picture. Parents worldwide continue to buy physical picture books. That could be a response to research showing that e-books don’t measure up: Children get distracted by the bells and whistles, retain less of what they read, and are less likely to benefit from parental snuggles when reading on a tablet. English-speaking Christian parents have much to be thankful for. Many publishers keep in print old favorites. And many new books appear each year that implicitly affirm a Christian worldview of creation (it’s marvelous!), of creatures (they’re silly, selfish, and noble), and redemption (second chances are possible and hope is reasonable). It’s rare for these themes to be explicit, but the discerning parent can find them in many wonderful books, like those we’ve recognized. The best picture books delight us because they reflect honestly the way things are, and offer hope for the way things could be—and Jesus promises they will be. —S.O.
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Classics for preschoolers
Abridged versions allow very young children to enjoy Bunyan, Lewis, and other great authors by Russ Pulliam
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our deeply sinful nature. We don’t live happily ever after beyond conversion to Christ. We suffer. We get attacked. We face peer pressure and scorn. We endure spiritual warfare. Bunyan offers a healthy alternative to stories that feel good but might not prepare children for real life. The Bunyan Press in England has a 63-page version with good illustrations on each page, available through the Gospel Standard Trust Publications. Great Commission Publications offers a 111-page version with fewer illustrations but a nice map at the start, to follow Bunyan’s route through the Slough of Despond, the Wicket Gate, the Hill Difficulty, and Vanity Fair.
Dangerous Journey, by the late BBC producer Oliver Hunkin (Eerdmans, 1985), offers the vivid full-page illustrations so helpful for preschoolers: I read one text and keep some others at hand for the illustrations. Barbour Publishing several years ago came out with an edition of Pilgrim’s Progress (along with Ben Hur and Robinson Crusoe) that has black-andwhite cartoon illustrations on every other page—but the illustrations aren’t top notch like the ones in Dangerous Journey. Next on my list is C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia stories. The best version I have found, The World of Narnia Collection, is illustrated by Deborah Maze and comes from HarperCollins (1997). Our 5-year-old granddaughter has fallen in love with The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald’s (1824-1905) story for children. Eerdmans published a good British children’s version in 1987, abridged by the BBC’s Hunkin. C.S. Lewis often paid tribute to MacDonald’s stories for his inspiration. Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper is available in a 48-page young children’s version (Troll Associates, 1990), with illustrations on most pages. In some ways the Prince is like Christ as King, getting down in the muck of human life. In real life he is King Edward VI of England, who reigned only a few years as a young man but strongly advanced the cause of reform. Twain’s fun story is great for children who learn about 16thcentury England while enjoying Twain’s gift for telling a story. Two more: Carolyn Nystrom took Robert Munger’s classic lordship plea, My Heart—Christ’s Home, and translated it into a preschool children’s version in 2010 (IVP). Sandy Creek in 2010 published a few Stuart Little stories in a preschool version. As a read-aloud grandparent, I long for more of these classics translated for the preschool years. I am puzzled over why more publishers have not undertaken this task. Who might publish an excellent version of Robinson Crusoe for preschoolers, with the necessary illustrations? With the right illustrations, a story can be as great for a 3-year-old as it is for a 63-year-old. A
david freel and
f so much learning happens in the early years of life (ages 1 through 5), then it must be a good time to hear great classic stories. A great story, with good illustrations, will hold the attention of a preschooler for 30 minutes or even longer. Some creative publishers offer abridged versions of great books like Pilgrim’s Progress. That’s the one I’ve selected as the top story to keep reading to my own grandchildren, in multiple versions. John Bunyan was a great storyteller, and he offers a strong and balanced approach to the Christian life. Coming to Christ will include some agonizing over
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Runners-up/suitable for ages 9-13 by Janie B. Che ane y
Absolutely Truly: A Pumpkin Falls Mystery Heather Vogel Frederick
When Truly Lovejoy’s family moves from Austin, Texas, to tiny Pumpkin Falls, N.H.—in January, no less—she faces more than a weather adjustment. Her father is mourning the loss of his arm in Iraq and the derailment of his career plans. Her mother is going back to school, leaving Truly and her four siblings to pitch in and help run the bookstore that has been in the family for generations. But a note found in a rare, autographed edition of Charlotte’s Web propels Truly into a mystery that will make her life more interesting as it brings her family and community together.
The Green Ember
Tiger Boy
Walking Home
S.D. Smith
Mitali Perkins
Eric Walters
Pickett and his older sister Heather enjoy a peaceful life with their family in a quiet burrow in Nick Hollow— even though their father appears to be hiding from a painful past. When a ferocious band of wolves invades their home and apparently kills their parents and little brother, the young rabbits learn that they are heirs to a glorious heritage and a present task that will test their loyalty, resilience, and courage to the breaking point. This is the first in a series of Christian fantasy novels that promises thrills, heartbreak, and triumph as Heather and Pickett mature.
Though he lives in India’s Sunderman Islands, 11-yearold Neel is similar to boys everywhere when it comes to homework. His fisherman father dreams of the boy winning a scholarship to school on the mainland, but Neel doesn’t see the point of study if it cuts into his playtime. News that a tiger cub has escaped the nearby wildlife preserve, and risks being captured and sold, propels Neel into an adventure that will test his resolve and courage. This absorbing story for younger readers will expand their understanding of other cultures as it underscores the importance of using their gifts.
Thirteen-year-old Muchoki’s life changed forever the day a hostile tribe destroyed his village and killed his father. Weeks later, his mother succumbs to tuberculosis and the boy must decide whether to stay in the refugee camp or take his little sister on a long walk to relatives in south Kenya. Though a bit slowpaced at first, the action picks up as Muchoki shoulders responsibility far beyond his years, encounters unexpected kindness, and learns the value of forgiveness as he ponders God’s providence. The story is based on true events, and the author shares an abundance of video, audio, and photographic resources on the Walking Home website.
Honorable mentions
david freel and
In All the Answers, by Kate Messner, Ava discovers that a pencil hastily grabbed from the kitchen drawer seems to “know” the answers to her test questions—and some of her social and philosophical questions, also. Arcady’s Goal, by Eugene Yelchin, introduces young readers to Stalinist Russia through the eyes of a 10-year-old soccer prodigy who seeks to ride his talent out of the orphanage. The Cottage in the Woods, by Katherine Coville, retells the story of The Three Bears as a Charlotte Bronte–style romance, with the participation of other fairy-tale characters. El Deafo is a funny and touching graphic memoir of author Cece Bell’s experience of growing up deaf. M.M. Vaughan’s Six launches a brother and sister on a dangerous quest to find their kidnapped father, using a device that allows them to communicate telepathically. —J.B.C.
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A good book is a good book Diversity in publishing is good—as long as it doesn’t drive us apart by Janie B. Cheaney
Adult Books for Young Readers “Young Reader” editions—adaptations of bestsellers originally written for adults— are a developing trend in children’s publishing, with some outstanding examples published within the last 12 months. Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (Young Adult Adaptation) simplifies the language and screens out some of the more lurid details of Louis Zamperini’s WWII experience in a Japanese POW camp, but leaves the inspirational story intact. It makes a great choice for reluctant readers. The YR edition of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind tells of young William Kamkwamba’s efforts to bring dependable electrical power to his Malawi village by building a windmill with junkyard parts. Parents may want to block numerous instances of “by God” (though Kamkwamba thanks God for his success), but it’s an absorbing tale for boys in particular. Even better, a YR edition of Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place features illustrations, shorter chapters, and condensed material that take nothing away from the impact of the story. —J.B.C.
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graders and teens. “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” tells how the author’s early reading experience while growing up in Harlem
failed to affirm him as a person. He stopped reading altogether in his early 20s, and only returned to it via James Baldwin: “By humanizing the people who were like me, Baldwin’s [stories] also humanized me.” Myers was correct about the scarcity of children’s books for and about minorities. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of WisconsinMadison reported that, of the approximately 5,000 children’s books published in 2013, only 68 were by black authors, 90 by Asians, 48 by Latinos, and 18 by Native Americans. Whites are also overrepresented in the publishing industry as a whole—by over 90 percent. Armed with stats like these, Ellen Oh and her friends launched #WeNeedDiverseBooks (WNDB), a grassroots campaign that caught fire in the hashtag world. WNDB describes itself “as committed to the ideal that embracing diversity will lead to acceptance, empathy, and ultimately equality.” Its effect was immediate; BookCon coordinators broke up the scheduled allwhite, all-male panel and organized a diversity panel, which spoke to a packed house. Over the next 13 months, WNDB raised $320,000 through an online fundraising site, established a Diversity Festival and a book award, published recommended book lists, produced classroom materials, and recruited countless authors, booksellers, and readers to tweet photos of themselves holding signs with their personal reasons for needing diverse books. For example:
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ookCon is a splashy, youth- oriented media event that premiered in May 2014 as an extension of Book Expo America. Teen author Ellen Oh was looking forward to the first BookCon with anticipation; but while browsing the conference schedule, she noticed a panel on youth publishing composed of four top-selling authors: James Patterson, John Green, Rick Riordan, and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). Truly a star-studded lineup—but why were all the speakers white, straight, men? After talking it over with other authors and friends, Oh’s disgruntlement became a group project. For inspiration they passed around an opinion piece from the March 5 New York Times Book Review by Walter Dean Myers, author of over 100 books for middle-
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• Because no little kid ever said, “I want a box of 64 white crayons!” • Because there are more than 1.2 million teens in America with disabilities. Where are their stories? • Because LBGT people don’t look good wearing invisibility cloaks! • Because I grew up thinking brown men couldn’t be anything more than a sidekick. WNDB may even have influenced this year’s Youth Media awards given by the American Library Association. Observers couldn’t help noticing that, of the three Newbery winners, two are verse novels about black characters and the other is a graphic novel about a hearing-impaired girl. (WORLD favorably reviewed all three books. The Crossover, which celebrates a strong, sports-loving, AfricanAmerican family, was a runner-up for WORLD’s first Children’s Book of the Year.) We Need Diverse Books exists to help minority children understand they’re not alone, and to help everyone else respect minorities. Understanding and respect should be goals of all good literature. Diversity for its own sake can derail those very aims—for example, when a combative tone makes white dominance in publishing seem like a supremacist plot. In a panel of science-fiction writers at this year’s BookCon, Daniel José Older reflected on the history of sci-fi as “a very colonial, racist, political endeavor.” In another panel, YA author Soman Chainani spoke of taking a course in college “that equated pornography with Disney movies”—part of his inspiration to write a series of novels that exploded the old “white” notions of good and evil. Also, much of what flies under the banner of “diversity” dwells on grievance rather than progress. Walter Dean Myers himself deplored movies and literature that portrayed blacks as victims. In another article, he wrote about black history “as folklore about slavery, and then a fast-forward to the civil rights movement. Then I’m told that black children, and boys in particular, don’t read. Small wonder.” Finally, “diversity” stretched too far loses its integrity. According to the
WNDB mission statement, the term encompasses “LBGTQIA, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.” “Disability” can mean physical, sensory, cognitive, intellectual, and developmental challenges, plus chronic and mental illness, including addiction. The list conflates identities, conditions, and practices, reducing them to mere “differences” and implying that almost any difference (i.e., deviation from traditional Christian morality) is good in itself. The goal of mutual respect and
understanding falls behind the rush to celebrate the latest alternative experience. A good book is a good book, no matter the color or condition of the characters, but Christian readers already have good reason to broaden their tastes. They are commissioned to go into all the world— not to make white Christians, but to make disciples of many nations for one Savior. WNDB may make a permanent mark on the publishing industry and expand readership among minorities— but will it bring readers together or drive them further apart? A
YA grows up
Young Adult novels aren’t only for young adults anymore By Megan Basham
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adeleine L’Engle once said she wrote young adult fiction because “you have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” If the 1963 Newbery winner were alive today, she might be surprised to know that these days mostly grown-ups read novels ostensibly written for 12- to 17-year-olds. Over the past 10 years, juvenile fiction sales have exploded—from 23 percent of the book market in 2004 to 37 percent Sepetys
today—and drawn nearly equal with adult sales. While some might hope this surge results from a newfound love of reading among high schoolers, it’s adults, not teens, who are driving it. According to Nielsen Books’ 2014 survey, 65 percent of Young Adult (YA) book buyers are between 18 and 44 years old—and most of those are between 30 and 44. Many within the publishing industry debate whether YA is even a useful designation anymore. For example, several of Ruta Sepetys’ foreign publishers categorized her first book, Between Shades of Gray (not to be confused with Fifty Shades of Grey), as an adult title, but she told me she debuted as a YA writer not to join a trend—she felt from the beginning her story of a Lithuanian girl sent to a concentration camp in WWII should be targeted toward September 5, 2015 WORLD
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teens: “Adolescence has a raw complexity of heart and mind. The paradigm of a teenager in exile is very different than that of an adult.” Sepetys says the defining element of a juvenile narrative can be subtle but often comes down to point of view. Her book and a similarly themed adult novel like Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See are mostly different because hers is written in first person while Doerr’s is in third: Readers of her book are “in the head of a 15-year-old girl, experiencing the story through her eyes, rather than watching from afar.” But why are stories told by teenage characters suddenly drawing so many adults? Some cultural critics claim that portends nothing good for American literacy: One prominent naysayer, Slate contributor Ruth Graham, caused an industry-wide stir several months ago when she wrote that adults who read YA should be embarrassed by their choice in literature because YA books are fundamentally unrealistic and uncritical by nature. Though most of the responses in major outlets slammed Graham, renowned New York Times film reviewer A.O. Scott came to her defense, tweeting that the rise in YA fiction is the result of a “cultural devaluation of maturity.” Moriah McStay, author of Everything That Makes You, a speculative novel that follows the two possible lives of a highschool girl who both suffers and avoids a disfiguring accident, wonders what kind of YA Graham and Scott have been reading: “There are plenty of adult novels that are unrealistic or gratuitous. Why
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you don’t have a lot of time to describe the rolling meadow or the scent of jasmine. Not that there’s no room for that, but as a whole there’s little patience for lyrical self- gratification or dangling plot threads.” She points out that if some celebrated books, like Catcher in the Rye or Little Women, were published today, they would most likely be YA. Courtney Stevens, a former youth minister whose debut, Faking Normal, concerns a teen struggling to overcome rape, thinks the popularity of YA among some adults and the disregard of it among others could be simply a factor of differing life experience: “I compare it to high-school reunions, and how they represent a way of looking back that we don’t do for other periods in our lives. They’re a way of processing how we become who we are. Comingof-age stories will always be important because there’s nothing like falling in love for the first time or making your first big mistakes where the consequences may be severe. Maybe for the Slate writer, that period of time wasn’t defining for her, but for many other people it is.” It’s difficult to find demographic data for specific titles, but every author and editor I interviewed, including an editor at a Christian publisher, dismissed the idea that the rise in adult readership might push YA content into darker or more complex directions. Sourcebooks editor Aubrey Poole believes the primary factor driving the YA trend is a loss of stigma: “Adult readers are finally seeing that these ‘books for teens’ were already challenging and complex. … The added attention and revenue mean editors get to acquire more YA projects across the board, which means more outstanding novels, which leads to more attention and sales. It’s a feedback loop.” A
‘In YA you don’t have a lot of time to describe the rolling meadow or the scent of jasmine … there’s little patience for lyrical selfgratification or dangling plot threads.’ —McStay go after Sarah Dessen and not Nicholas Sparks? Because Dessen doesn’t have sex in her books?” McStay says she was initially drawn to YA as a reader because its constraints often make for tighter storytelling: “In YA
The fault in our classrooms
handout
Young adult fiction’s pre-eminent author today is John Green, whose novel-turnedmovie The Fault in Our Stars has earned over $300 million since its debut last summer. While concerned parents may be aware his fiction and movies often glorify teenage rebellion, they may not realize Green’s influence in the classroom. Green and his brother Hank are the creators of Crash Course videos, which introduce academic topics like literature, history, and human anatomy to teens. Sadly, Green’s ironic, liberal perspective is itself a “crash course” in a worldview that promotes evolution, feminism, and same-sex marriage. In January, PBS began offering the videos on its LearningMedia website, promoting them as “awe-inspiring” classroom resources. Green now has more than 3 million YouTube subscribers, and his “rock star” status means many more s tudents will swallow his philosophy whole. —Emily Whitten
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NOTEBOOK LIFESTYLE / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE / SPORTS / MONEY
LIFESTYLE
Service centers
How libraries accept a new role: Homes for the homeless by Emily Scheie The main San Fran cisco Public Library is near the Tenderloin neigh borhood, which Frommer’s EasyGuide to San Francisco calls “a patch of poverty and blight where you should keep your wits about you.” It attracts many homeless
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persons, so at the end of 2008 the library hired social worker Leah Esguerra. On a typical day, Esguerra walks through the building, engaging with people who might need her services. She helps connect patrons to housing and
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other resources and trains staff about homelessness and mental health issues. She also supervises Health and Safety Associates, often formerly homeless per sons, who direct patrons to showers, laundry, shel ters, clothing, and food. Urban libraries are pop ular spots for homeless Frank Bunnell, who is homeless, sleeps on the steps of the San Francisco Public Library before going inside to read.
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Nurse Daniel Lopez takes the blood pressure of homeless man Jim Truitt at the Pima County Public Library.
ago. But getting to know the homeless who come to the downtown library has enriched her life: “We’re all the same. We’re all people. We all think the same things are funny. We all think the same things are sad.” Last summer the downtown library remodeled its third floor, freeing up space where people from Metro Social Services and the Mental Health Cooperative now meet with patrons during the week. The library calendar lists mental health counseling and sessions on finding jobs and housing in addition to more traditional library activities. Coleman says social workers are doing the work they’d already be doing: “We’re just providing space where that can happen, really bringing the services to a lot of the folks who are already here and need the help.” Coleman, who also heads up the library’s advisory committee on homelessness, said the mere act of offering services has built good will between homeless patrons and library staff. “We trust each other more,” Coleman said. “There are fewer behavioral issues.” The Nashville Public Library recently updated its mission: “Inspire
reading, advance learning, and connect our community.” Coleman believes a lot of people come to the library for the third purpose: community. “There is still a human desire to be in community, even as we’re somewhat more isolated by technology,” she said. As public libraries become more like community centers or meeting spaces, they continue to be open to everyone. “I’ve known people walking through my doors that are millionaires if not multimillionaires,” said the Public Library Association’s Larry Neal. But he said his library in suburban Detroit also serves people who save money from bottle deposits to pay for using the copy machine. Keeping an environment where everyone feels safe and comfortable can be challenging, Neal said, especially in areas with high levels of homelessness. So it’s important to set rules and apply them to everyone— whether a homeless person sleeping or a student dozing while studying: “A teenager using profanity at a computer is no less disturbing or disruptive than a person who pulls off his boots and, you know, knocks you over with the smell. So it’s just another aspect of a thing that we deal with every day.” A —Emily Scheie is a World Journalism Institute graduate
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people to hang out during the day. But their open door policies can irritate other patrons who wonder, in the words of Larry Neal, president of the Public Library Association and director of a library system in suburban Detroit, whether the library is “just another shelter?” Some libraries are responding creatively to the issue. Public health nurse Daniel Lopez wears a stethoscope around his neck as he roams around the main branch of the Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Ariz. Amber Mathewson, deputy director of strategic initiatives at the library, says Lopez will “walk up to people, ask them how they’re doing. If they engage in conversation, then sometimes he’ll ask if they would like their blood pressure checked.” Lopez is the lead library nurse, and about 15 other nurses now spend time in other Pima County libraries. The library hired its first public health nurse in 2012 in response to concerns that patrons with “traumatic crisis episodes and behavioral health concerns” created “an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for patrons and staff.” Mathewson said the library staff would sometimes “have to call 911 just because people were out of control in behavior.” Now library staff can call Lopez to check on patrons who appear drunk or disoriented or don’t seem to be breathing. He hands out hygiene products, socks, hats, and donated clothing. He helps people get health insurance and leads information sessions for staff. Sometimes he helps people find jobs. Mathewson told of a man Lopez met who had sores on his feet. Lopez gave him socks and referred him to a clinic, but he also told him about the library’s job help program. When the man wrote a resumé and secured an interview, Lopez helped him find clothes and a free haircut. Mathewson said the man got the job as a department store manager. In Nashville, reference librarian Liz Coleman said she was “freaked out” about the homeless population when she interviewed for her job 15 years
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NOTEBOOK
TECHNOLOGY
NOTEBOOK
Flight plans
Amazon and Facebook want to shape the future of drone technology by Michael Cochrane Here’s a sure sign of the mainstreaming of a new technology: when two of the world’s largest and most influential tech companies announce in the same month their plans to make that technology an integral part of their business models. Last month, both Amazon and Facebook made major announcements about their drone technology programs that could shape the future of commercial uncrewed aerial systems (UAS). While Amazon wants to bring order and control to the chaotic world of low-altitude drones in advance of its planned drone package delivery system, Facebook is testing high-altitude drones for delivering internet access to remote users. At NASA’s annual UAS Traffic Management Convention in July, Amazon laid out a vision for an air traffic control system for drones that allows for a zone—between 200 and 400 feet—reserved for high-speed commercial drones such as those being developed by Amazon’s Prime Air program. The plan would restrict hobbyists flying radio-controlled drones to airspace below 200 feet, with the exception of special open flying fields “fenced off” from
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commercial air traffic. Altitudes between 400 and 500 feet would become a no-fly zone for drones. Anything above 500 feet is already against FAA regulations for hobbyist drones. With the addition of more small UAS, the number of unmanned aircraft filling the sky at any given time is likely to be greater than the number of manned aircraft, requiring more sophisticated air traffic control technologies. In Amazon’s vision, a command and control network similar to the current FAA Air Traffic Control System would collect data on each drone’s position and share it with every other drone in the network. Drones would also communicate directly with each other, according to tech website The Verge, similar to what is emerging with autonomous automobiles. “Everyone can have access to the airspace,” Gur Kimchi, head of Amazon’s Prime Air program, told The Amazon The Verge. “It Prime Drone doesn’t matter if (above); you’re a hobbyist Facebook’s or a corporation. If Aquila aircraft
you’ve got the right equipment, you can fly.” The FAA has given NASA the lead in developing this new air traffic control system, and NASA has been partnering with the private sector in this endeavor. Amazon is hoping to help establish a basic regulatory framework and a set of common technical standards acceptable to manufacturers. “Everybody who flies in the same complex airspace need to speak the same language,” said Kimchi. While Amazon concentrates on a low altitude drone “superhighway,” Facebook is planning on using superhigh-altitude drones to deliver internet access to remote regions of the world. “I’m excited to announce we’ve completed construction of our first full scale aircraft, Aquila, as part of our Internet.org effort,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook posted on July 30. “Aquila is a solar powered unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time.” Facebook’s Connectivity Lab envisions a constellation of aircraft similar to Aquila flying at altitudes between 60,000 and 90,000 feet and using lasers to communicate with each other and radio signals to communicate with ground stations. Zuckerberg’s goal is to provide high-quality internet access to the 10 percent of the planet without it: “To affordably connect everyone, we need to build completely new technologies.” A S e p t e m b e r 5 , 2 0 1 5 W ORL D
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SCIENCE
Supplemental diet
RESEARCH SUGGESTS MEN STRUGGLE WITH EATING DISORDERS, TOO by Julie Borg
Psychology in Los Angeles believe the issue has become a bit more gender-inclusive. A significant number of men who use over-thecounter supplements to improve performance or
chological factors to attain a level of physical or masculine ‘perfection’ are prone to use these supplements and drugs in a manner that is excessive and which was demonstrated in this study to be
a variant of disordered eating,” said researcher Richard Achiro at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention. The researchers surveyed 195 men who use over-the-counter performance or appearance-enhancing drugs such as whey protein, creatine, or L-carnitine. Twenty-two percent of the men admitted they replace regular meals with supplements and 3 percent said they were hospitalized for associated kidney or liver problems. Achiro said manufacturers elicit young men’s underlying insecurities about appearance and masculinity and then market the supplements as the perfect solution.
Genetic changes Researchers have developed a “gene drive” technology that may eliminate insect-borne diseases like malaria, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Lyme disease, as well as eradicate crop pests and invasive species such as rats. But some experts worry the technology that produces “supercharged” genetic modifications could, in the wrong hands, become a threat to human health and environmental safety. “Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed … for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,” Tel Aviv University geneticist David Gurwitz told The Independent. The gene drives allow a genetically modified gene to jump from one chromosome to another within an individual so eventually all of the individual’s sperm or eggs carry the modified trait. The modified genes then could spread as rapidly as a viral infection within a population in the wild, said Kevin Esvelt, a gene drive expert at Harvard Medical School’s Wyss Institute. The researchers wrote safety rules to prevent laboratory escapes of genetically modified organisms, and a group of senior geneticists want international safeguards. —J.B.
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healing hands Six years ago doctors amputated 2-year-old Zion Harvey’s hands and feet to treat a serious infection. Now Harvey looks forward to a day when he can throw a football and swing on monkey bars. Harvey has new hands, thanks to the first bilateral hand transplant doctors have performed on a child. During the complex, 10-hour procedure, a team of surgeons from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine, and Shriners Hospitals for Children attached the forearms and hands of a donor to Harvey’s arms. After the doctors connected the bones with steel plates and screws, they attached the blood vessels. Once blood was flowing into the hands, the surgeons individually connected each muscle and tendon before they reattached the nerves. Harvey will take immunosuppressant medications for the rest of his life to prevent his body from rejecting his new hands. Surgeon Scott Levin told CNN similar procedures could help others: “I hope he’s the first of literally hundreds or thousands of patients that are going to be aff orded this surgery.” —J.B.
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CREDIT
enhance appearance develop symptoms common to eating disorders, according to the researchers. “Body-conscious men who are driven by psy-
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Medical experts consider eating disorders predominantly the domain of women. But researchers at Alliant International University’s School of Professional
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A league of his own
WIDE RECEIVER RYAN BROYLES ISN’T DROPPING THE BALL WHEN IT COMES TO MONEY MANAGEMENT by Andrew Branch
Ryan Broyles, 27, lives a simple, middle-class life. He’s been married for nearly three years, with a newborn son. The couple just bought a house in Texas, living on a roughly $60,000 annual budget. Broyles, though, is a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions entering the final year of a $3.68 million rookie contract. Broyles made sports talk buzz during training camp after ESPN profiled his keen awareness of pro athletes’ financial woes—and his determination to avoid them. Roughly one in six NFL players files for bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement, the National Bureau of Economic Research reported this April, using bankruptcy
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BROYLES: PAUL SANCYA/AP • NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSIT Y HELMET: A ARON M. SPRECHER/AP
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court records. Broyles heard about the anecdotes and statistics, even saw mismanagement. The NFL’s advice at its rookie camp was simple: Live a normal life for a few months, keep track of the costs, then make conscious decisions to save. Despite losing a third of their income to taxes, the Broyles family likely will put away more than $2 million of his rookie contract—more with the NFL’s matching 401K. But there’s more to the story. Broyles and his wife, Mary Beth, are evangelical Christians, more deeply committed since summer 2011. Broyles’ visit to destitute yet joyful Christians in Haiti left him saying, “I want that,” along with his
then-future wife, who saw the change in him. From memorizing Scripture to more disciplined exercise, people in all spheres of his life welcomed the change. “It’s like night and day,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said that fall of Broyles’ thensenior year. OU had given Broyles a second chance as a headstrong freshman after his arrest trying to steal gas. Now entering his fourth year in the NFL, he is still different. Financially, the uncertainty of a football career matters little, because his growing family doesn’t need a new contract to stay afloat. He can just have fun, he told ESPN. Many pro athletes worldwide go broke—
NOTEBOOK
including famous ones such as Terrell Owens, Latrell Sprewell, Scottie Pippen, Warren Sapp, Mike Tyson, Diego Maradona, and Allen Iverson—and for many reasons, from high-risk investments to extreme naïveté. “I studied as much as I could,” Broyles said of his investments. “Talked to people wealthier than me, smarter than me.” Broyles isn’t alone in planning for life after football, and worldview often plays at least some part in that wisdom. Former St. Louis Ram Jason Brown left football to farm food to donate because the NFL high life was starving his marriage (“Farm team,” Jan. 24, 2015). New Orleans tight end Benjamin Watson, who wants to be home with his wife and five children, considers using his finance degree to “help players formulate budgets and … [be] fiscally responsible” (“More than sound bites,” July 25, 2015). Broyles himself has no guarantee of a career after this year. He’s played 21 games in three years due to injury, jeopardizing a roster spot even now. Despite that, “I have complete faith,” he told a radio host in 2013, “and I’ve surrendered my life to Him.”
Unorganized sports The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Aug. 17 ruled that Northwestern University football players can’t unionize, annulling a 2014 decision by an NLRB regional director. Many big-sport athletes object to the way the NCAA system generates billions of dollars, while they receive only scholarships for essentially full-time work. The unanimous board ruled that a union would create diff erent rules for diff erent schools, causing a deeper divide than current financial disparities bring. —A.B.
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MONEY Taxi drivers protest ride-sharing companies in Sacramento, Calif.
Will Uber go under?
A lawsuit may harm one company, but the ridesharing concept isn’t going away by David Skeel
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you get a message saying how long the driver will take to get to you, what type of car the driver has, and how much the ride will cost. The Uber fee is automatically charged to your credit card. It’s fast, convenient, and—best of all— Uber doesn’t require a tip. Uber’s critics accuse the company of cheating. Since Uber treats its drivers as independent contractors, it doesn’t have to pay for their benefits. And Uber drivers originally weren’t covered by Uber car insurance except when they were driving a customer. More recently, critics have focused on the modest earnings of many Uber drivers. Seizing on this theme, Hillary Clinton claims that Uber’s cost-cutting is making income inequality worse by depressing the wages of men and women who drive for a living. The complaints aren’t all misguided. An Uber driver who gives dozens of
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If you own a smartphone, you probably know that Uber, like its competitor Lyft, is a ride-hailing company that has upended the taxi industry. Consumers love Uber; interest groups don’t: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently threatened to crack down on Uber, and the French taxi industry protested Uber by shutting down Paris with a massive strike. Uber now faces multiple lawsuits in the United States. Anyone who’s called a taxi that didn’t show up, looked in vain for a cab after an evening out, or suspects that the driver is deliberately driving in circles, can appreciate what’s at stake. Uber solves all of these problems (for those with smartphones). You simply install the Uber app on your phone, and when you need a ride, you click on the app and type in the location you want to go to. An Uber driver in your vicinity responds to your request, and
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rides-for-hire each week needs different insurance than the rest of us; the city or state isn’t wrong to require this. But the other criticisms sound like the sour grapes of a business that has been outmaneuvered by a more nimble, serviceoriented competitor. And Hillary Clinton’s income inequality objection seems to be wrong. As a recent Forbes article pointed out, a study co-authored by one of Clinton’s own advisors (Princeton economist Alan Krueger) found that Uber drivers earn more than $19 per hour, as compared to $12.90 per hour for traditional cabbies. But resistance to Uber runs deep. The most serious threat is a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California by three Uber drivers who claim they really were employees and therefore Uber should have reimbursed them for business expenses. The key issue is whether the judge will agree to certify the case as a class action, which would add 159,006 additional parties and millions of dollars of damages to the case. Current Supreme Court case law only allows a judge to certify a class if the experience of all of the plaintiffs is substantially the same. Uber has 17 different types of contracts with its drivers, and the drivers differ in other ways as well; but the judge in the Uber case seemed to hint in a recent hearing that he would side with the plaintiffs. If he does, the cost to Uber of settling the case or losing a jury trial would be enormous. Uber is no longer a little company with a great idea. With a market value of $51 billion, it could probably survive a very large judgment. But even if it didn’t, the old taxi industry is on its way out. Now that consumers have seen the alternative to traditional taxis, Uberstyle ride-hailing is quite clearly the path of the future. The only question is whether courts and local governments will saddle the ride-hailing companies with unnecessary costs, raising the price of the future for all of us. A
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WORLD’s annual Hope Award for Effective Compassion goes to a deserving organization that demonstrates the power of effective compassion through Christ-centered help to those in need, and now it’s time for you to help decide the 2015 winner. Simply go to wng.org/ compassion to read about each of the five nominees and cast your vote.
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MAILBAG SEND LETTERS AND PHOTOS TO MAILBAG@WNG.ORG
J U LY 2 5
‘Out of the ashes’
, Articles like this on the plight of Nigerian Christians are one of the main reasons I subscribe to WORLD for my nine grandchildren. I want them to know what is going on with their Christian brothers and sisters around the world and be motivated to prayer and action. NITA HICKAM / BIDDEFORD, MAINE
, No doubt the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage threatens our constitutional liberties, but is that our main claim? We must warn the nation of the divine consequences that follow the institutionalization of perversion. MONTY LEDFORD / ABERDEEN, IDAHO
, I cannot thank you enough for this column, for godly hope and inspiration in our fallen world. WILL ESTRADA / LEESBURG, VA.
g The silence of our government
leaders on the Boko Haram atrocities is defining. THOMAS LEEP ON WNG.ORG
‘Developing the Daniel Option’ g The most important issue of every
God, and we should be good stewards of it. However, we evangelicals have started trusting in elections and politics, rather than God. We look for heroes when God wants to be our salvation.
presidential election is federal court judges, a president’s most enduring legacy. Politics may be downstream from culture, but culture degrades before our very eyes when judges are complicit in its erosion.
TIM L AITINEN / ARLINGTON, TEXAS
‘Faith of Our Fathers’ , My emotions boiled over as I read
your unfavorable review of Faith of Our Fathers and its actors. It bothers me that so many movies with objectionable elements get great reviews with a short disclaimer while so many clean movies receive bad reviews. CLIFTON CAUTHORNE / POUND, VA.
Branson, Mo. submitted by The Cofer Family
I thought this movie had a good message and good acting, but it was
CHARLES BURGE ON WNG.ORG
g I am preaching through Habakkuk and plan to encourage our folk to engage in the Daniel Option. Praise Jesus that we are not heading to the compounds (or ghettos) yet. GREG BURTNET T ON WNG.ORG
g The Daniel Option is appealing and appropriate for strong believers; but if I had young ones, I would choose the Benedict Option for the sake of their education. KATHERINE POWERS ON WNG.ORG
, Americans are blessed with a powerful cultural tool: the vote. It is a gift from , Mail/email g Website
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MAILBAG only on a few hundred screens nationwide and had little publicity. The problem for Christian movies is that nobody hears about them, unlike Hollywood blockbusters. TIMOTEO J. SCHNEIDER ON FACEBOOK
‘Not for dabblers’
Memorization used to be the primary teaching method for children. Some scoff at it, but information has to be deposited in the mind before it will reach the heart. ANNE WHITE ON FACEBOOK
Dispatches , The Obergefell gay-marriage ruling
overturned a judicious Sixth Circuit decision that stated, “If a federal court denies the people suffrage over an issue long thought to be within their power, they deserve an explanation.” Alas, the majority’s best explanation is that “new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations” as a result of “new insights and societal understandings.” Welcome to the new normal of jurisprudence unmoored from God’s absolute truth! CHARLES D. EDEN, ATL ANTA, GA.
g Wonderful column. I started out
struggling to memorize even a verse or two, but kept at it and my ability to memorize has increased tremendously. EILEEN FINN ON WNG.ORG
‘Past and present’ , Taking the Confederate flag down
from the South Carolina Capitol building isn’t sanitizing history but acknowledging it. The Civil War ended 150 years ago and the South lost. Let it hang in museums and history teachers’ classrooms but not from the Capitol building. BRENDA PHILLIPS / MADISON, WIS.
‘Through the window’ , The same Pacific Garden Mission
through which God saved Billy Sunday is still operating in Chicago today. It pre sents the gospel to and houses nearly a thousand homeless persons each night. FRED NEUBERT / JACKSONVILLE, N.C.
‘Churches and guns’ , I appreciated your short article on churches and guns. Gun-free churches, like the one in Charleston, are basically killing zones for those wanting to commit mass murder.
PAUL PERRONE / SPRINGFIELD, VA.
g I see little problem with removing
the Confederate flag as an official symbol, but we should not demand perfect people to put on our money and monuments. We must be prudent, affirm the good threads in people’s lives and the flow of history, and condemn the bad, knowing that we all need the mercy of Christ.
‘House of Morgan’ , Thank you for sharing the story of
Ed Morgan and the Bowery Mission. My wife and I, having been introduced to the ministry, are so glad to know authentic New Yorkers who demonstrate love for Christ and their neighbors in word and deed.
DANIEL MCPHEARSON ON WNG.ORG
‘Blurry lines’
I always thought the phrase “onto-
logical malleability” was just cool and artsy; now we see how pernicious an idea it is. Thinking clearly and righteously is a virtue, not an option. MARK PICHA J ON FACEBOOK
‘Background check’
Thanks for sharing what neat expe-
riences can be found in what we think are unlikely places. ELIZABETH J. KUSTERER ON FACEBOOK
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GREG WINCHESTER / MILTON, GA.
‘More than sound bites’ g After your article on Benjamin
Watson, I may have to start watching the New Orleans Saints. All of us sin, but Christian athletes carry an extra burden of accountability. Watson sounds like a great example. JOELLYN CL ARK ON WNG.ORG
J u ly 11
‘Blindsided’ g This is a really good and important
story. I am thankful for your reporting
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and analysis of City Church’s positions on homosexuality. WILLIAM H. SMITH ON WNG.ORG
‘Archimedes was right’ , Regarding Nevada’s new educa-
tion savings account program, the strings for accountability that come with the funds most likely will over time become ropes. It remains to be seen whether this program will improve public schools, but I hope churches support those homeschoolers who choose not to take the money. BARBARA DRAGON / GARDNERVILLE, NEV.
JUNE 27
‘Our exile in Babylon’ , Janie B. Cheaney’s column was an encouraging reminder that “this world is not our home” and that God has placed us here for a time and called us to “build houses and plant gardens” and do His work.
BECCA PEDERSEN / HOUSTON, TEXAS
g Cheaney’s encouragement to volunteer with community organizations and not just Christian causes was really moving for me. Soon, for the first time, I will volunteer for a local nonprofit that helps the environment as well as puts on great community events. PETER JAMES MARKAVAGE ON WNG.ORG
‘Old and alone’ , Involuntary childlessness can
wound deeply, and WORLD correctly focused on childlessness by choice. We know many boomer couples whose lifestyle left no room for babies, and the numbers are multiplying in the younger generation of Americans. ELAINE NEUMEYER / SEAGROVE BEACH, FLA.
LETTERS & PHOTOS , Email: mailbag@wng.org , Mail: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998 Website: wng.org g Facebook: facebook.com/ WORLD.magazine Twitter: @WORLD_mag
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Andrée seu peterson
Unstable elements How Persons and institutions create explosive situations for themselves There are positions in life that are naturally unstable; they will have to go one way or the other because they can’t remain the way they are for long. Nitroglycerine, in the natural world, is an extremely explosive liquid because it is highly unstable and the slightest jolt will make it detonate. The oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms that compose the molecule are arranged in an uneasy relationship and will tend, with very little provocation, to reconfigure into new, stable bonds—but not before making a big bang. It is the same in the Christian world. The sadly commonplace catastrophes that suddenly manifest from time to time—the flaming dissolution of a denomination, the apostasy of a leader, the revelation of a famous pastor’s marital infidelity— are certainly preceded by an unsustainable compound of unstable elements that finally come apart. History is littered with examples: In the early 1600s preacher John Cotton emphasized grace more than most preachers in Boston. That’s not bad. But then an admiring woman in his congregation, Anne Hutchinson, started meetings in her house to discuss his sermons, and the mother of 15 leaned even further to the side of grace, to the point of neglecting sanctification and the importance of obedience. She ended up on charges of antinomianism, the teaching that we can ignore God’s law. In 1662 a new phenomenon called the “halfway covenant” arose in New England. It came about because the preaching so emphasized sensational conversion experiences that people in the pews were afraid to come forward to be baptized unless they had had one. Folks grew old without receiving the rite or even calling themselves Christians, preferring the safer title “Seeker.” Alarmed pastors decided to confer partial church membership on the children of “Seekers” or non-professing Christians, calling it a halfway covenant.
krieg barrie
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aseupeterson@wng.org
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Like sand mixing with iron, an edifice that blends elements of Bible truth with worldliness will not adhere but come apart.
Harvard was founded in 1636 to train pastors. Look at it today. This did not happen overnight and it did not happen automatically. Pure and unadulterated religion devolved first into eloquent pious lip service and finally into the rejection of God outright, but it occurred because the Word of God was not vigorously defended in a thousand little contests with the Enlightenment, as men becoming ashamed of the gospel preferred the praise of men and intellectual respectability. What is the common denominator of these unrelated catastrophes? Heresies never spring up full-blown. There are intermediate stages where everything still seems OK, where evolving belief still looks reasonably orthodox. But something is lost and is not noticed. I asked my former history professor, Dr. D. Clair Davis, how these slippages occur. He replied that they happen whenever there is “any [teaching] that leaves something important out or seriously neglected.” What are the teachings of Scripture being left out in our day? A Christian college hires a “celibate lesbian” as spiritual caregiver for students and thinks it will be fine. But where has Scripture ever talked about a celibate lesbian? No such creature. Victorious ex-lesbians it knows, and people under demonic delusion and bondage it knows, but where is the chapter and verse for the new hybrid of Christian homosexuals? The young woman ended up resigning a semester in, admitting that she was supportive of gays after all (see “Human Race,” Aug. 8). Nitroglycerin explodes; it is its nature. A firebrand preacher goes off to San Francisco to save Sodom for Christ and ends up falling in line behind it. What was “left out” (Dr. Davis’ maxim) along the way, that such an unspeakable thing should happen? How did sermons that started out preaching God’s Word end up light on Bible and heavy on Bartlett’s Famous Quotations? Who can carry fire in his lap and not be burned (Proverbs 6:27)? The signposts all say suffering lies ahead. The Apostle Paul made a career of circuit preaching, seeing to it that new converts were well-rooted and established in the faith (Romans 1:11; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 2:7). God warns, “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all” (Isaiah 7:9). Like sand mixing with iron, an edifice that blends elements of Bible truth with worldliness will not adhere but come apart. As in the church so in the heart. “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Psalm 119:9). A S e p t e m b e r 5 , 2 0 1 5 WORLD
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MARVIN OLASKY
E = R WCG 3
A good education equation needs elements that are often left out
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Please do take Christian education seriously: No other work is more important.
david freel and
E = MC2 is a simple equation compared to the mystery of what goes into good education. But I’ll take a shot at proposing an education equation. (1) Start with the three Rs, reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic. (2) Move quickly to the opening line of a great John Newton hymn repopularized by Jars of Clay: “Let us love and sing and wonder.” If children don’t develop a sense of wonder about this astounding, God-created world, they’ll miss a lifetime of excitement. Music, art, history, science, foreign languages, and more should all make school wonder-full. Our new testing regime doesn’t leave much time for wonder, and educators pay attention to the W only if they answer accurately a basic question: Who are my students? Are they animals with above-average intelligence (compared to horses and caterpillars, but maybe not dolphins)? Are they low-grade computers with below-average memory and above-average weight (compared to a MacBook Air)? Or are they human beings created in the image of a God of wonder? (3) Add a C for specifically Christian education, for only in Christ do all things hold together. If students don’t understand that God created us, they are likely to become practical atheists. If they don’t understand that God gives history meaning, they are likely to become nihilists. Schools cannot give kids faith in Christ—only God can—but they can help students recognize their need, yearn for meaning, and not be content with wasting their lives. If teachers want to be educators rather than prison wardens, it’s vital for them to think Christianly about their students. If they see students as bucking broncos, they’ll think the job of schools is to break them. If they see students as fleshly computers, they’ll want to perform an information dump. But if they understand that students are God’s children and have souls that
never die, they’ll understand that just teaching to the test fails the biggest tests. (4) The G is for the four-letter word that more than any other determines educational and occupational success: grit. University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth developed a “grit scale” and found that undergraduates with determination were more likely to obtain high grades than those with higher SAT scores but less grit. The grittiest West Point students she tracked did better in cadet training than those who scored higher on traditional aptitude tests. Part of grit involves fighting the desire for immediate gratification, an impulse measurable at age 4 via the marshmallow test, which starts with a small child in a room with a marshmallow and an adult. The adult tells the child he’s leaving the room to run a short errand. During that time the child is free to eat the marshmallow—but if he waits until the adult comes back, he can then eat not only that marshmallow but a second one as well. Children’s ability to wait for gratification varies enormously. When Stanford psychology professor Walter Mischel, inventor of the test, looked in on those 4-year-olds a decade later, he found the impatient eaters had “lower SAT scores, higher body mass indexes, problems with drugs and trouble paying attention. … The seconds of time preschool children were willing to delay for a preferred outcome predicted their cognitive and social competence and coping as adolescents.” Another study showed self-discipline to be twice as important as IQ in predicting grades of eighth-grade students. One large study, which traced about 1,000 New Zealanders from childhood through age 32, similarly found that those with less childhood impulse-control were more likely to be alcoholics or drug abusers, overweight or unhealthy—and were more than three times as likely to have been convicted of a crime. So, schools along with teaching the three Rs, W, and C need to do all they can to develop G for grit. So, that’s my formula: R3WCG, three Rs times Wonder times Christian understanding times Grit. We need all of those elements: A Christian school that has chapel yet doesn’t encourage wonder and grit among its students is wasting money and lives. But don’t take school formulas too seriously: Kids are individuals and flexibility is important. Please do take Christian education seriously: No other work is more important. May God bless all those who make large sacrifices to bless other parents and children. A
molasky@wng.org @MarvinOlasky
8/18/15 2:01 PM
david freel and
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