WORLD Magazine Sept. 20, 2014 Vol. 29 No. 19

SeptEM B ER 20, 20 14

the one and the many Ferguson riots following the killing of Michael Brown subside, but what about thousands of other slain African-Americans?

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8/28/14 4:48 PM

Contents  ,  /  ,  

     

34 Houses divided

A history of police violence brings police killing in Ferguson to national attention, even as black-on-black murders in far greater numbers remain local stories.

Can evangelicals of all races find a way forward?      

40 Barely fighting Irish

Did Notre Dame, one of the only major Catholic universities to sue over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate (and so far lose), derail its own case?

46 Missing children

With dashed hopes and dreams, infertile couples embark on an often misunderstood journey

 

5 News 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes

Loving the infertile: What churches can do

50 Driving Miss Tracy

Hope Award South region winner changes lives one ride at a time   :    -   

 

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28

40

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  —.—    

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23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music 

57 Lifestyle 59 Technology 60 Science 61 Houses of God 62 Sports 63 Money 64 Education 

3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 67 Mailbag 71 Andrée Seu Peterson 72 Marvin Olasky WORLD (ISSN -X) (USPS -) is published biweekly ( issues) for . per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail)  All Souls Crescent, Asheville, NC ; () -. Periodical postage paid at Asheville, NC, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. ©  WORLD News Group. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD, PO Box , Asheville, NC -.

9/3/14 12:04 PM

“The earth is the L’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.” —Psalm :     Marvin Olasky  Mindy Belz   Timothy Lamer   Jamie Dean   Janie B. Cheaney, Susan Olasky, Andrée Seu Peterson, John Piper, Edward E. Plowman, Cal Thomas, Lynn Vincent  Emily Belz, J.C. Derrick, Daniel James Devine, Sophia Lee, Angela Lu  Megan Basham, Julie Borg, Anthony Bradley, Andrew Branch, Tim Challies, Michael Cochrane, Kiley Crossland, John Dawson, Amy Henry, Mary Jackson, Michael Leaser, Jill Nelson, Arsenio Orteza, Stephanie Perrault, Emily Whitten   Les Sillars

   David K. Freeland    Robert L. Patete   Rachel Beatty  Krieg Barrie    Arla J. Eicher     Dawn Wilson   Arla Eicher, Al Saiz, Alan Wood  ..    Jim Chisolm  ..

  June McGraw   Kristin Chapman, Mary Ruth Murdoch

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    worldji.com  Marvin Olasky   Edward Lee Pitts    David Strassner (chairman), Mariam Bell, Kevin Cusack, Peter Lillback, Howard Miller, William Newton, Russell B. Pulliam, David Skeel, Ladeine Thompson, Raymon Thompson, John Weiss, John White   To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, accurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.

Contact us: .. / wng.org      ,    ,  ,        memberservices@wng.org  wng.org/account (current members) or members.wng.org (to become a member)  .. (within the United States) or .. (outside the United States) Monday-Friday (except holidays),  a.m.- p.m. ET CREDIT

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9/1/14 11:04 AM

Joel Belz

True and necessary

The questions we ask when we decide what to report at WORLD

>>

KRIEG BARRIE

I’     since I’ve been asked to defend WORLD magazine against the charge that we’re nothing more than a rumor mill.

Folks who trust WORLD as a news source know better than that. The men and women who report the stories WORLD brings you are news professionals. We check and then double-check the reliability of what we tell you. When there’s doubt or ambiguity about a story, we tell you so.

All that has to do with the “truth test.” Our pledge at WORLD is that we’ll never report something to you as truthful until we are certain of its basis in fact.

But there’s another test WORLD stories have to pass before you get to see or hear them. We’re also obliged to ask: “Even if we know it’s true, is this story significant and important?” And especially when we’re dealing with reports that cast a cloud over individuals or organizations, we find all sorts of disagreement—even among our readers, and sometimes within our staff—as to the propriety of including such stories in our coverage. “It may be true,” our critics ask fairly often. “But is it necessary?”

In the  years since WORLD’s  founding, we’ve had to ask that question again and again. But especially in the last year, as ministries and ministry leaders from Maryland to Texas and from Washington to Florida have stumbled and tumbled, we’ve found ourselves repeatedly confronted not just with the “Is it true?” question, but especially with the “Is it something we’re obliged to report?” issue.

So let me repeat here what we’ve said in this space before. When ministries and ministry leaders appeal regularly to the Christian public for their support and maintenance, then that same Christian public has every right to hear details about what those leaders either are—or aren’t—doing to earn that support. “He who lives by the sword,” Jesus said, “also dies by the sword.” Those who use mass media to raise their millions of dollars of support should hardly be surprised if those same mass media become the means by which their foibles and failures become known to the public.

Here are some of the “dashboard indicators” we at WORLD will be tending to watch to suggest whether the Christian public ought to know more about any particular issue, story, or event: Have financial safeguards been ignored or set aside? When an annual financial audit used to be

Email: jbelz@wng.org

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part of the picture but is no longer available, or is available only in the sketchiest of formats, there’s frequently legitimate cause for concern. “Follow the money” is a worthy maxim not only with secular organizations, but too often as well with Christians who have lost their way.

Have normal channels of accountability been breached? Have important people been replaced— and maybe repeatedly? Worse yet, perhaps, have important people left without being replaced? Has a once-stable board undergone faster-than-usual change? Have reports you used to depend on disappeared?

Where there has been the “appearance of evil,” has that appearance been adequately and appropriately dealt with? Or is there more a sense of simply covering it over? In my experience, this is the trickiest of these several indicators—but maybe also the most important. “To whom much is given, much is required”— and that is especially true of Christian leaders. When

word comes, and is verified, that someone has shrugged off the advice of friends and advisers and colleagues, and continues, against their counsel, in any pattern of behavior—financial, moral, or managerial—then such indifference is for us a reportable matter. The behavior itself is relatively beside the point. Moral slow-footedness becomes the central issue.

Room for disagreement as applied to specific issues? Yes, indeed. But at least you’ll know, the next time WORLD carries a story that makes you squirm a bit and ask if this was really necessary, that we’re not acting in a cavalier, sensationalist, and arbitrary fashion. A

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD



9/3/14 10:36 AM

We had to find a

CREDIT

better healthcare option!

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4/28/14 11:39:51 AM 9/1/14 10:55 AM

Dispatches News > Quotables > Quick Takes

AUG. 28: Iraqi Christian IDPs line up for food in the parking lot of a school camp in northern Iraq.

Baptist Global Response, an international Christian relief and development organization, contributes food and other relief items to this camp. With school starting in a matter of weeks, the camp’s some  Christian residents are worried they will be forced out onto the streets.

JOSEPH ROSE/GENESIS

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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

9/3/14 12:23 PM

Dispatches > News F r i d a y, A u g .  

McDonnell testifies Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, testified at his corruption trial, arguing that he and his wife Maureen McDonnell were so distant that he couldn’t conspire with her. McDonnell said his campaign and time in public office put “a strain on the marriage.” The McDonnells face  counts of corruption related to their relationship with Virginia businessman Johnnie Williams, who lavished gifts on them. The defense has argued that the relationship wasn’t corrupt but rather Maureen McDonnell turned to Williams for attention after feeling neglect from her husband. The prosecution has argued the McDonnells were close and financially struggling, and that the governor and his wife sought Williams’ help and in return raised his company’s profile in their official capacities.

Rescue attempt revealed After the story first leaked to The Washington Post, the Pentagon acknowledged that the United States conducted a failed special forces operation earlier this summer to rescue American journalist James Foley, whom Islamic State fighters publicly beheaded in August.

Released hostages who had been imprisoned alongside Foley had provided intelligence about his location, but the Islamic forces apparently moved Foley before the raid. One of the U.S. troops involved was injured in the raid near Raqqah, Syria, and officials said the militants suffered a number of casualties.

At the beginning of September the Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff.

 

Abortion command Health insurance companies in California must cover the cost of abortions, state insurance officials ruled. “All health plans must treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally,’’ California’s Department of Managed Health Care director Michelle Rouillard wrote in a letter to companies announcing the decision, which was a response to two Catholic universities that did not cover elective abortion. The insurers for the school told the San Jose Mercury News they intend to comply with the new ruling. Catholic groups protested, and the Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation wrote the officials that the decision was a violation of federal law.

MCDONNELL: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • FOLEY: NICOLE TUNG/FREEJAMESFOLEY.ORG/AP • ROUILLARD: HANDOUT • BRANTLY: JESSICA MCGOWAN/GETTY IMAGES

We d n e s d a y, A u g .  

Released The American doctor and missionary who contracted Ebola left Emory University Hospital’s isolation unit healthy and returned to their families. Dr. Kent Brantly, , contracted the virus in July while working for Samaritan’s Purse in a Liberian hospital where the deadly disease is rampant, as did Nancy Writebol, , an American missionary with SIM. Both received an experimental drug treatment for the virus, and doctors from Emory assured the public that the two aid workers posed no health risk to others.

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WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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9/3/14 12:17 PM

NAPA: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES • CURTIS: CHARLES KRUPA/AP • LIBYA: MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • PITT, JOLIE: CARL COURT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Revisions revised Responding to a Supreme Court rebuke, the Obama administration announced its promised revisions to the manytimes revised regulations for nonprofits objecting to the contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. Under the new regulations, an objecting nonprofit can inform the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in writing that it objects to the mandate. It can then be absolved from arranging coverage, but the nonprofit must include the name and contact information for its insurer.

HHS would then order the nonprofit’s insurer to provide the objectionable drugs to employees at no cost to the nonprofit. If the nonprofit is self-insured, HHS would order the group’s third-party administrator to provide the drugs.

NAPA: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES • CURTIS: CHARLES KRUPA/AP • LIBYA: MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • PITT, JOLIE: CARL COURT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

MCDONNELL: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • FOLEY: NICOLE TUNG/FREEJAMESFOLEY.ORG/AP • ROUILLARD: HANDOUT • BRANTLY: JESSICA MCGOWAN/GETTY IMAGES

S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, A u g .   -  

Napa shakes

A . earthquake devastated California wine country on Sunday, causing damage and injuries but no fatalities. Wineries in Napa Valley were already suffering from a terrible drought when the earthquake hit, damaging harvesting equipment and busting barrels of pricey wine. Roads and buildings in the area were also damaged. The earthquake was the strongest in the region in  years.

Driscoll steps down

Mars Hill Church lead pastor Mark Driscoll announced to his Seattle congregation Sunday that he will step down for at least six weeks after months of scandals concerning sales of his book, opaque church governance, and his leadership practices. The church planting network Driscoll founded, Acts , recently removed him and his church from the network. “I want to say to our Mars Hill family—past and present, I’m very sorry,” he told his church. “I’m sorry for the times I have been angry, short, or insensitive. I’m sorry for anything I’ve done to distract from our mission by inviting criticism, controversy or negative media attention.”

Driscoll now faces formal charges at his church from  former pastors who accused him of abusive and intimidating behavior.

American released The Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Nusra Front, released American journalist Peter Theo Curtis after imprisoning him for almost two years. Qatar, which often serves as a broker of hostage talks, helped negotiate his release.

U.S. officials said neither the United States nor Qatar paid a ransom for Curtis, consistent with U.S. law, but did not reveal what al-Qaeda may have received in return for the journalist’s release.

Flames and smoke billowing from an oil depot where a huge blaze started following clashes around Tripoli airport, July .

M o n d a y, A u g .  

Libya attacked After Islamists claimed control of Libya’s capital Tripoli, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates conducted secret airstrikes targeting the militants, according to The New York Times. The United States did not name Egypt or the UAE but condemned the strikes, issuing a joint statement with European allies saying that “outside interference in Libya exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya’s democratic transition.” Many of the Islamist militias are made up of the rebels who, with the support of American and European air power, toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Married Brad Pitt, , and Angelina Jolie, , finally tied the knot on Aug.  in southern France. The star couple have been together for almost a decade and have six children together—three adopted and three biological. The children, ranging in age from  to , all took part in the small, private ceremony attended by family and friends at the couple’s sprawling French property. A California judge issued the marriage license and conducted the ceremony.

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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9/3/14 12:18 PM

Dispatches > News We d n e s d a y, A u g .  

Tu e s d a y, A u g .  

Rotherham report

One more try

Moving north

After a -day war, Israel and Hamas reached a longterm ceasefire deal whose terms changed almost nothing between the parties and pushed big questions to a future summit in Cairo.

Hamas has repeatedly violated previous ceasefires.

During the conflict, , Palestinians died, while Israel suffered  deaths.

Burger King announced an  billion agreement to buy Canadian breakfast chain Tim Hortons, with plans to expand the chain internationally.

The quintessentially American fast food chain also announced plans to move its headquarters to Canada, which has a lower corporate tax rate.

Climate two-step President Barack Obama is working on an international climate change deal that would not technically be a treaty, allowing him to bypass Congress, according to a New York Times report. To be legally binding a treaty requires ratification from twothirds of the U.S. Congress. The deal would not technically be a treaty because it would build on existing treaties and exact pledges from countries. Developing countries are likely to strongly object to the deal, which the administration hopes will be signed at a UN summit next year.

ROTHERHAM: BBC.COM • NIGERIA SCHOOLS: SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP • STADNYK: GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS/NEWSCOM

A bombshell independent report detailed how authorities in Rotherham looked the other way for  years as gangs of Pakistani Muslims in the English city systematically raped, beat, or trafficked at least , English girls, some as young as . Police and local government officials knew about many of the cases and didn’t act to stop the abuse, the report says, because they were worried about being accused of racism or anti-Muslim sentiment. The report covers the years  to . A Home Office researcher who gathered information about the cases in  and brought them to the attention of authorities was reportedly assigned to a two-day diversity training course. She said her data were then stolen. Roger Stone, leader of the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council since , resigned on Aug. . Public pressure built for other government and police officials to resign.

Died The world’s tallest man (unofficially) died on Aug.  from a brain hemorrhage at age . Leonid Stadnyk, a Ukrainian farmer, stood  feet,  inches tall, but did not want to be famous and refused to allow Guinness World Records officials to measure him. “To me, my height is a curse, a punishment from God, not something to celebrate,” he had said. “All my life I have dreamed of being just like everyone else.” Sultan Kosen of Turkey is officially the world’s tallest man, measuring  feet,  inches in .



WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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Stadnyk with his mother

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UKRAINE: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • RICE: PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP • LIBERTY RIDGE FARM: HANDOUT • BRITAIN: HANDOUT • LANDRIEU: EVAN VUCCI/AP

Ebola measures Nigeria announced that schools wouldn’t open until October due to concerns about the spreading Ebola virus. The school year was supposed to start Sept. , but the government wanted school staff members to train in how to recognize early symptoms of the virus. Six people have died of Ebola in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and more than , have died in neighboring West African countries.

The outbreak has devastated burgeoning economies in West Africa.

F r i d a y, A u g .  

ROTHERHAM: BBC.COM • NIGERIA SCHOOLS: SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP • STADNYK: GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS/NEWSCOM

UKRAINE: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • RICE: PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP • LIBERTY RIDGE FARM: HANDOUT • BRITAIN: HANDOUT • LANDRIEU: EVAN VUCCI/AP

Plowed under

T h u r s d a y, A u g .  

Russia invades

Russia openly invaded Ukraine, sending troops and military equipment across the border after months of semi-veiled incursions and support for rebels in the country.

President Barack Obama held a press conference but didn’t use the word “invade.”

“Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” the president said, adding that economic sanctions would work to isolate Russia. “We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem,” he said, a position that lines up with that of most European leaders. Obama was scheduled to attend a NATO summit on Sept.  in Wales where members would discuss Ukraine’s request for membership, and thus protection, with the alliance.

A Christian couple in upstate New York will no longer rent out their farm for weddings after an administrative judge fined them , for refusing to host a lesbian wedding, which the couple said was against their beliefs.

The couple, Robert and Cynthia Gifford, live at Liberty Ridge Farm, which they rent out for about a dozen weddings a year.

The judge said because the Giffords regularly rent out their farm, the farm counted as a public accommodation and therefore the couple had violated New York’s anti-discrimination statute.

The Giffords, who had offered to host the wedding reception for the lesbian couple, will still rent the farm for wedding receptions.

Penalties up Following an uproar about a minimal penalty for Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, the NFL announced increased penalties for players who commit domestic violence. Rice allegedly knocked his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, unconscious in a hotel elevator, and a video leaked of what appears to be Rice Rice with Palmer dragging her out of the elevator.

The NFL suspended him for two games. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote owners that now a first time offense will result in a six game suspension, and a second will result in at least a year. “I didn’t get it right,” Goodell wrote. “Simply put, we have to do better.”

Raised threat level

In response to the Islamic State’s surge in Iraq and Syria, Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe,” the second-highest level. British officials believe several hundred British nationals have traveled to fight for the Islamic State, abbreviated alternately as ISIS or ISIL. British officials believe the man who beheaded American journalist James Foley was a Briton working for ISIS.

Filed Sen. Mary Landrieu,, D-La., was already facing a tough reelection battle, and now she’s in a legal battle. A former Landrieu challenger filed a lawsuit on Aug. , arguing the three-term senator doesn’t live in the state she represents. “By all measurable and legal standards, her actual domicile is her . million residence on Capitol Hill, the only home she owns,” Republican state Rep. Paul Hollis said in the complaint. Landrieu is registered to vote using her parents’ address in New Orleans, where she says she lives when not in Washington, D.C. Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more

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8/27/14 10:23 PM

DAILY DISCIPLESHIP WHEREVER YOU ARE Dr. R.C. Sproul’s daily broadcast celebrates twenty years by offering even more to its listeners. Visit the new RenewingYourMind.org today for: Handpicked related study materials Convenient, one-click listening Access to past episodes Daily special offers Mobile access and easy sharing Even with its freshly curated discipleship resources and new technology, the mission of Renewing Your Mind remains the same: to provide trustworthy teaching to students of God’s Word every day.

Tune in to RefNet by downloading the app or by visiting RefNet.fm.

Download the daily podcasts through iTunes.

Visit RenewingYourMind.org to listen online or find a radio station near you.

RenewingYourMind.org

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8/7/14 9:24 AM 8/27/14 10:23 PM

M o n d a y, S e p t . 

Chaos in Pakistan

Safety last

A federal judge blocked a Texas law regulating abortion centers, saying the law placed an undue burden on women’s access to abortions. The law, which was set to go into effect on Sept. , required abortion centers to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center. Abortion advocates said the law would result in the closure of many of the remaining centers in the state, after an earlier law forced half of the state’s  centers to close. The Texas attorney general planned to appeal the ruling. The proliferation of state regulations on abortion is an issue likely to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court soon. A federal judge in Louisiana also over the weekend temporarily blocked enforcement of a state law that would require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

China chooses Despite a promise to allow Hong Kong a free vote for its chief executive by , China’s National People’s Congress ruled that it would essentially handpick candidates for the long-anticipated vote. Communist leaders say they will only pick candidates who “love the country and love Hong Kong.”

Massive pro-democracy protests broke out in the former British colony after the decision.

Detainees speak Three Americans detained in North Korea, two on charges related to Christian evangelizing, had brief, supervised conversations with an Associated Press reporter and asked the U.S. government to send a delegate to negotiate their freedom. Reporters spoke with Jeffrey Fowle, Matthew Miller, and Kenneth Bae. Fowle and Miller are awaiting trial on unspecified charges that they violated their status as tourists. Bae, a missionary who has been held since , is serving a -year sentence to hard labor and said his health is deteriorating. Fowle is suspected of leaving a Bible at a night club.

cybersecurity director on child pornography charges. Timothy DeFoggi, , was arrested in April  after joining the since-closed PedoBook website, which has already had other users convicted. According to the Department of Justice, DeFoggi not only accessed and solicited child pornography but expressed interest in the violent rape and murder of children. He will face sentencing in November.



CREDIT

Convicted A federal jury in Nebraska on Aug.  convicted the former acting Health and Human Services

ABORTION: TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/NEWSCOM • HONG KONG: LAM YIK FEI/GETTY IMAGES • PAKISTAN: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • DEFOGGI: OMAHA POLICE DEPARTMENT

S a t u r d a y & S u n d a y, A u g .   -  

Violence escalated in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad as a struggle for control of the country among the military, the government, and opposition protesters continued.

Three protesters died and more than  were injured in the recent clashes that followed weeks of protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Opposition politicians say Sharif’s election last year was rigged, though international observers considered it fair. The military in a statement denied rumors it was backing the opposition and insisted it is “apolitical.”

The struggle between Pakistan’s military leaders and politicians is long-standing: Gen. Pervez Musharraf led a successful coup against Sharif in , and was charged with treason earlier this year.

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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AIR FRANCE: DENIS CHARLET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • CENTRAL PERK: NBC • POROSHENKO: MYKOLA LAZARENKO/AP • SCOTLAND: ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • GHANI: JIM BOURG/AP • WEYMOUTH: CHRISTOPHER MICHEL

Dispatches > News

ABORTION: TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/NEWSCOM • HONG KONG: LAM YIK FEI/GETTY IMAGES • PAKISTAN: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • DEFOGGI: OMAHA POLICE DEPARTMENT

AIR FRANCE: DENIS CHARLET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • CENTRAL PERK: NBC • POROSHENKO: MYKOLA LAZARENKO/AP • SCOTLAND: ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • GHANI: JIM BOURG/AP • WEYMOUTH: CHRISTOPHER MICHEL

Sept. 15 Don’t count on flying

in France during mid-September.

Airline pilots for Air France said they would commence a seven-day strike Sept.  unless the company listens to their complaints about a proposed reorganization of the airline. In August, French ground crew workers conducted a one-day strike for better working conditions and salary increases.

Ghani

Abdullah Tu e s d a y, S e p t . 

Afghan intrigue

Longtime Afghan President Hamid Karzai was scheduled to leave office on Sept. , but conflict over the newly elected leadership put Afghanistan in an edgy stalemate. Ashraf Ghani won the vote for president, but the runner up, Abdullah Abdullah, has alleged mass election fraud. The United States tried to broker a power sharing deal in which Abdullah would serve as chief executive under Ghani, but Abdullah rejected the deal and demanded a deeper investigation into the election.

Karzai has said he will not leave office until the question of his successor is resolved. Both Ghani and Abdullah support signing a security agreement with the United States to allow U.S. troops in the country after , which Karzai has refused to sign.

LOOKING AHEAD Sept. 17 Beginning today, fans of the television show Friends will be able to sip coffee in the coffee shop that Joey, Chandler, Ross, Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel made famous. Warner Brothers will open a pop-up version of the fictional “Central Perk” in Manhattan to celebrate the th anniversary of the premiere of Friends. The themed coffee shop will stay open until Oct. .

Sept. 18 Scottish

voters head to the polls today to decide whether Scotland should remain a part of the United Kingdom. In the final weeks before the vote, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron admitted he was “nervous” as public opinion polls showed a close race with dwindling support among those supporting union.

Sept. 18 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

will travel to Washington, D.C., today to engage American President Barack Obama in talks regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Russia’s invasion into the eastern portions of Ukraine—following the annexation of Crimea—have left the West concerned about a looming conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

   . Find up-to-date news on the fighting in Ukraine, Pakistan, and Iraq, and keep up with the latest commentary from Marvin Olasky, Mindy Belz, Andrée Seu Peterson, Janie Cheaney, Cal Thomas, and others.

Sept. 21

A satanic group in Oklahoma City today will stage a “black mass” at a city-owned auditorium. The event’s occult rituals—including an attempted exorcism of the Holy Spirit—have angered Oklahoma City Catholics and other Christians. But despite local press coverage, interest in participating in the event has been scant.

As of the beginning of September, organizers had sold only  tickets.

CREDIT

Resigned Exactly one year after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post, the paper announced the resignation of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, a member of the Graham family that has captained the paper for  years. Bezos replaced her with Fred Ryan, who was one of the founders of Politico. The switch signals a change in strategies—Politico was one of the early financially successful experiments in online journalism—and perhaps ideology.

Ryan was a top aide to President Ronald Reagan. The paper saw steep drops in revenue and circulation under Weymouth.

Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD



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Dispatches > News

Another problem for Hillary New revelations raise questions about U.S. response to Nigeria’s Boko Haram

with the FBI, but it declined to provide information, citing an ongoing investigation. And that’s where American lawyer Vernice Guthrie, 37, comes in.

The Obama administration has ­concealed for more than three years the presence of any Americans in the building, but two of Guthrie’s close associates told me she was there when the bomb went off. I called Guthrie in Nigeria to get more details about the attack that could have left her a victim.

She acknowledged that she has worked in that country for the past four years, but she hung up the phone when I asked about the bombing.

Zenn, author of the 2012 book Northern Nigeria’s Boko Haram: The Prize in al-Qaeda’s Africa Strategy, says “If Hillary Clinton runs for president, people will consider this, to a lower degree, an issue similar to Benghazi.

It’s something for which her team will likely have to offer an explanation.” A —with reporting by Kristin Chapman and Amy Derrick

clinton: Bob Daemmrich/Corbis/ap • nigeria: Sunday Alamba/ap

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Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno State. Jacob Zenn, a Jamestown Foundation expert on the terrorist group, says Boko Haram may within months have in northern Nigeria “control similar to what the Islamic State has achieved in Iraq and Syria.”

In May 2013 WORLD filed with the U.S. Department of State a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but that department has not provided any information. WORLD also filed a FOIA request

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JOSEP LAGO/AFP/Getty Images

>>

Who is Vernice Guthrie, and where was she at 11 a.m. West Africa Time on Friday, Aug. 26, 2011?

On that day, terrorist group Boko Haram carried out a suicide bombing at the main UN building in Abuja, Nigeria, killing 24 persons and injuring more than 100. Since then Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and other lawmakers have three times during hearings asked State Department officials whether Americans were in that building. Three times those officials have hedged.

The question is an important one because in 2011 Boko Haram was carrying out almost-daily attacks in Nigeria’s north, but then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resisted calls to designate the TERROR: group a foreign terrorA Nigerian soldier stands ist organization. The guard at the FBI, the CIA, and the bombed UN Department of Justice building in pleaded for that desig2011 (below); Clinton (right). nation, which would have made it harder for Boko Haram to gain funding and traction, but Clinton’s State Department said the organization did not pose a threat to Americans.

Now, Boko Haram’s rise has led to the deaths of thousands of Nigerians, the destruction of hundreds of churches, and the kidnapping this year of 300 schoolgirls and many others. Boko Haram last month imitated Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL) by declaring a caliphate, and early this month moved into positions around

By J.C. Derrick

FUTURE mosque?: La Monumental in Barcelona.

History forgotten

Anti-Semitism is growing in Spain. Will rhetoric turn to violence?

By Jill Nelson in Barcelona, Spain

clinton: Bob Daemmrich/Corbis/ap • nigeria: Sunday Alamba/ap

JOSEP LAGO/AFP/Getty Images

>>

If you can navigate through the maze of cobblestone streets in Barcelona’s old Jewish Quarter and find the Hobbit-sized door marking an entrance, you can visit what some say is Europe’s oldest remaining synagogue. Barcelona boasts a rich Jewish history but also one marked with suffering that led to the deaths and expulsion of thousands of Jews.

Some fear history could repeat itself. The war in Gaza has added momentum to a creeping tide of ­anti-Semitism across parts of Europe, including Spain. Well-known Spanish writer Antonio Gala in late June condemned Israel for the war in Gaza and attempted to justify the Jewish expulsion from Spain in the 15th century.

“It’s not strange that they have been so frequently expelled,” he wrote in El Mundo, adding that they “were not meant to coexist with others.”

When the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team beat Real Madrid in May, a fury of racist Twitter comments followed, including “Jews to the oven” and “now I understand Hitler and his hatred for

the Jews.” Jewish communities in Spain recorded more than 18,000 such posts related to the game and filed a legal complaint with the state.

Thomas Morgenstern, director of Barcelona’s Atid Progresista Synagogue, said recent demonstrations against the Gaza offensive have evolved from ­anti-Israeli to anti-Jewish. Opposition to Israel’s actions are nothing new, but analysts and Jewish leaders across Europe say the sentiments and violence are much deeper and darker this time around. “It’s like we’re going backwards,” Morgenstern said.

Many of the demonstrators in Spain are ethnic Spaniards, but growing Muslim influence in the region is undoubtedly part of the problem.

According to the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern, Spain’s Catalonia region “has the largest concentration of ­radical Islamists in Europe” and is a “main center for Salafi-Jihadism on the continent.” Catalonia—which boasts the bustling city of Barcelona and greater economic output than the rest of the country—has scheduled a referendum vote on independence for Nov.

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9, and—oddly—that may be feeding into the antiJewish demonstrations.

The reason: The Middle East country of Qatar is promising that 100,000 ­eligible Muslim voters will vote for independence if Catalonia allows it to purchase La Monumental— an old b ­ ullfighting ring—and transform it into what would be the third-largest mosque in the world. According to the proposed plan, the minarets of the mega-mosque would rise above the historic Sagrada Familia, the city’s landmark church. Some Catalan nationalists are all for the partnership and are winning points with Qatar by criticizing Israel.

Morgenstern does not believe city planners will approve the deal with Qatar, and while he’s concerned about anti-Semitic trends in his country, he says the situation in France is far worse. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators have attacked nine synagogues in Paris since the onset of the Gaza offensive, leading to a new wave of immigration to Israel.

Some Jewish residents in Spain are maintaining a low profile. “I tell people not to talk too much in Hebrew here in Spain,” a 37-year-old Jewish woman from Barcelona who requested anonymity told me. Two tourists recently told her that their Palestinian taxi driver kicked them out of his taxi for speaking Hebrew.

Only 40,000 of Spain’s 46 million residents are Jewish, making it one of Europe’s smallest Jewish communities, but the country ranks third (behind Greece and France) for antiSemitism, according to a May survey by the Anti-Defamation League. If these trends continue, Spain could follow France where rhetoric has turned to violence. A

S e p t e m b e r 2 0 , 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D

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Dispatches > Quotables ‘My hands are numb and tingling, and it’s difficult sleeping at night, and I was working in the field every day.’

KENNETH BAE BAE, , one of three Americans detained in North Korea, on his condition. Bae suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney stones. Bae and detainees Matthew Todd Miller and Jeffrey Edward Fowle spoke with a reporter on Sept.  (see p. ).

THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD, in an editorial criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy.

‘Women’s concerns are not seen as relevant here.’

Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN in a private conversation with Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Union’s Commission, who recounted the conversation to an Italian newspaper.



‘Americans are being recruited in a litany of ways. Social media is a big way.’

FBI investigator KYLE LOVEN on ISIS successfully recruiting at least  American Muslims to fight in Syria. A second American Muslim, Abdirahmaan Muhumed, , has been reported killed in the fighting. He reportedly once worked for Delta Global Services and had security clearance at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

‘Today is the darkest day of the history of Hong Kong’s democratic development.’

CREDIT

‘If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.’

Lesbian feminist activist SHEILA JEFFREYS on policies that allow transgender men to use women’s bathrooms. Jeffreys pointed out that men wearing women’s clothes have sexually harassed women in bathrooms: “The entry of male-bodied transgenders into women’s facilities or the elimination of women’s facilities in favour of ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms is likely to endanger women’s safety.”

PUTIN: SASHA MORDOVETS/GETTY IMAGES • BAE: WONG MAYE-E/AP • YIU-TING: JEROME FAVRE/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

‘It’s time Mr. Obama started emphasizing what the United States can do instead of what it cannot.’

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist BENNY TAI YIU-TING (right) on updated rules that require candidates for the  election for chief executive of Hong Kong to acquire approval from a committee filled with Beijing loyalists (see p. ). Pro-democracy lawmakers say China is breaking its promise of a democratic vote in the  election.

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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CREDIT

CREDIT

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Dispatches > Quick Takes

Too soon? British diplomats based in the United States were left asking that question on Aug.  after the United Kingdom’s American embassy tweeted out a joke picture on Twitter on the th anniversary of the British burning of the White House during the War of . The tweeted picture featured a White House themed cake adorned with ignited sparklers.

The caption read, “Commemorating the th anniversary of the burning of the White House. Only with sparklers this time!” More than , retweets later, when it became clear that many Americans found the British embassy’s joke about the destruction of a national icon to be off-putting, officials at the embassy tweeted an apology to their official feed.

 

    It’s an unwritten rule. Some people have no business doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: The very young, the very old, and fugitives. A -yearold Omaha, Neb., man gave local police the lead they needed when he posted a video of himself participating in the wildly popular charity meme on social media. Jesean Morris posted a video of himself pouring ice water over his head on his Facebook account. But another Facebook user, who knew Morris had an outstanding warrant for violating his parole, saw the video and was able to identify the location of Morris’ safe house from the background. One phone call later to the police, officers were able to stake out the building and put handcuffs on Morris on Aug. .



Fresh out of jail, a New Mexico man got himself in trouble trying to freshen up.

Police say -year-old Rudy Chavez broke into an elderly Albuquerque man’s home in the early morning hours of Aug.  and demanded a shower. According to a police report, Chavez showered and shaved—all while holding -year-old Glen Miller at gunpoint. Miller told police the burglar said he had just been released from prison and needed to tidy up before hunting for a job. Police say Chavez cleaned up, then helped himself to a set of Miller’s clothes, his television, and his car before fleeing. Authorities say Chavez did leave something at Miller’s home: his fingerprints on the razor. Those fingerprints allowed police to arrest Chavez and charge him with several felonies.

EMBASSY CAKE: TWITTER • DUCK: NICK UT/AP • ICE: JAG_CZ/ISTOCK • MORRIS: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE

Dockworkers in Los Angeles were left scratching their heads on Aug.  as the world’s largest inflatable bathtub toy dropped anchor at the Port of Los Angeles.

The -foot-tall giant inflatable rubber duck that sailed into Los Angeles is the brainchild of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The artist took the oversized yellow oddity to California for the commencement of the Tall Ships Festival LA. The inflatable sculpture, named Rubber Duck, is one of several such installations that Hofman has placed on display around the world. The Los Angeles showing is just the third appearance of the gag in the United States, having previously been on display in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Norfolk, Va.

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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ROSES: GRESEI/ISTOCK • BEES: CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES • BOMB: ARNE DEDERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • KNEE DEFENDER: HANDOUT • GOLDMAN: MEL EVANS/AP

 

  A Queens, N.Y., woman has discovered that where there are a few honeybees, there are likely to be thousands more. For weeks, Frieda Turkmenilli has seen bees in her apartment, especially near her bedroom ceiling. “I didn’t really pay that much attention. I just let them fly around,” she told CBS New York. But after her bee-allergic neighbors complained, Turkmenilli arranged in August for beekeepers to take care of what she thought was a small problem. Instead, the beekeepers found a hive containing  honeycombs and some , bees. Rather than destroy the insects, the beekeepers arranged transportation for the honeycombs and bees to an upstate New York farm.

 

EMBASSY CAKE: TWITTER • DUCK: NICK UT/AP • ICE: JAG_CZ/ISTOCK • MORRIS: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE

ROSES: GRESEI/ISTOCK • BEES: CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES • BOMB: ARNE DEDERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • KNEE DEFENDER: HANDOUT • GOLDMAN: MEL EVANS/AP

  An -year-old British widow was horrified after an official letter she received in July showed that her pension company considered her deceased. The woman, who lives in Lincolnshire, U.K., but has only been identified to the press as Mrs. Fulton, opened the letter and read a condolence note addressed to the executor of her estate from an employee at Standard Life, the administrator of her pension.

Most concerning, the letter made it clear Standard Life intended to stop her pension payments. “You can imagine how shocked I was to receive the letter,” Fulton told The Telegraph. “Fortunately I still have my wits about me.” The elderly woman was quickly able to dispel the news of her death with a phone call to Standard Life, which hastened to send her a pension payment, an  cash gift, and a bouquet of apology flowers.

Nearly  years following the conclusion of World War II, Allied bombs are still exploding in Germany. Or, at least one is. Emergency crews working near Offenbach in central Germany detonated an unexploded British bomb on Aug.  after a local construction crew discovered the ordnance embedded along the edge of the Autobahn . Unable to diffuse the ,-pound bomb, the ordnance crew had to shut down the busy German highway. The explosion left a -foot-wide crater in the Autobahn, closing that portion of the highway indefinitely.

-  To recline, or not to recline? For a pair of passengers on a Newark, N.J., to Denver flight, a disagreement over the ethics of seat reclining got so heated that the flight crew of their United Airlines flight chose to divert the flight into Chicago to kick them both off. According to officials with the Chicago Police and the Transportation Safety Administration, the dispute began when a male passenger in United’s Economy Plus section affixed a “Knee Defender” device to the seat in front of him to prevent it from reclining while he was using his laptop. The woman in the seat ahead arranged for a flight attendant to ask the man to remove the Knee Defender. When the man refused, the woman abruptly stood and flung a cup of water at him.

That’s when the flight crew decided to land in Chicago to remove the passengers. Chicago police made no arrests, but the FAA may impose a civil fine up to , for either passenger.

  According to Bureau of Labor Statistics research, most employed Americans have been working their job less than five years. Herman “Hy” Goldman has worked for Capitol Lighting of East Hanover, N.J., a bit longer. Outside of a brief stint of active duty service in World War II, Goldman has worked for the company since .

“What am I going to do, sit around and grow old?” Goldman mused to the Hanover Eagle. In his  years with the company, Goldman, who celebrated his st birthday with co-workers on Aug. , has seen advancement. He began his career stocking shelves and cleaning up. Today, Goldman, who still drives himself to work in his  Ford Contour, repairs broken light fixtures four days a week. “All I know is I keep going,” he said. “I get up, and I keep going.”

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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9/2/14 2:14 PM

Janie B. Cheaney

Worthy lives

Doubting life’s goodness is a rejection of reality

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WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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believe there comes a point at which it’s not worth living. This is easy to understand in an end-of-life situation: “a tough subject,” as Joseph Curl says, fully understood only by those in charge of an elderly dependent who’s losing his or her mind. Far more disturbing is the marketing of despair among the healthy middle-aged and the young.

To take one small example, this year’s Carnegie Prize, an annual award for children’s literature selected by a library organization in the UK, went to The Bunker Diary, by Kevin Brooks. The announcement met with controversy because the novel is about a -yearold street kid kidnapped by a psycho and kept in an underground prison with no hope of escape. “Children don’t need happy endings,” the author blithely says, and he doesn’t give them one. The chairperson of the judging committee defends its choice with boilerplate verbiage about “exploring difficult issues within the safe confines of a fictional world.”

“Difficult life issues” means endless war, persistent poverty, abuse of the innocent, fleeting success, social-media bullying, and other evils. Love, beauty, and friendship seem illusory in such a context, but this is where modern culture gets it all backward. As Augustine said, evil is negation; love and beauty are the realities.

Turns out, children do need happy endings. So do grown-ups.

Can we decide whether our lives, or someone else’s, are worth living? It’s not a decision we’re authorized to make—in fact, we know life is good because God is good.

Objectively, there can be no doubt: the satisfaction of relationships, the pleasure of sensation, the joy of imagination, the beauty of the earth. No one experiences all the good all the time, but the world pulses with God’s goodness. The paradox is that when we clutch life too tightly we may not see its worth. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew :). What your life means to you is secondary; the real issue is what it means to Christ. A

AMITE/ISTOCK

J C, former White House correspondent for The Washington Times, discovered a startling fact during a sojourn in Florida while caring for his aged mother: Everyone he met, in the nursing home, the hospital, the real estate office— everyone—had a relative with dementia. This might be more characteristic of Florida than the nation at large, but watching his own mother’s descent into mental helplessness sharpened his perceptions. “We’re not prepared to let our parents go, or even force them to go, but then dementia happens. Only then do you realize that you’d really prefer that your mother or grandfather simply pass away … simply said, you yearn for them to die.”

Would it be so wrong, then, to ease your afflicted mother gently into the next world? He knows it’s controversial to say and agonizing to think about, but as medical science extends the life of the body, we see more attention focused on the quality of the mind. Assisted suicide is probably quietly practiced on a wide scale already; expect it to occupy the main stage in a decade or so.

When life becomes an unbearable burden, who can blame the bearer?

These thoughts reach out and shake us. Most of us will not experience a violent death, but everyone with an aged parent cringes at a future of unseeing eyes staring from a familiar face. Two hundred years ago, life was lamentably short for most.

Now it’s regrettably long for some.

But does it ever cease to be good?

Apparently it did for Robin Williams, and for the increasing number of Americans, largely middle-aged men, for whom suicide seems the best option. Every case is unique, and no one can guess the combination of factors that lead a man to kill himself. All we know is that for a certain individual at a certain time, life was not good.

How odd that, in an age of ease and comfort and endless diversion, we find ourselves increasingly doubting life’s goodness. Most Americans seem to

Email: jcheaney@wng.org

8/27/14 10:17 PM

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9/1/14 9:36 AM

E x p E r i E n c E M i c h a E l ca r d ’ s B i B l i ca l i M ag i n at i o n For years, Michael Card’s music has imaginatively explored the narrative power of the Word of God. Now with the final book and CD of the Biblical Imagination Series, Michael Card shows how John stands alongside the other Gospel writers to fill out the picture of Jesus’ divine identity. Enter into Scripture with words and music, discovering the biblical text for yourself and recapturing your imagination with the beauty and power of Christ. Learn more at ivpress.com/bis.

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ivpress.com · 800-843-9487

lov ing can BE a tr icky t hing “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s the second greatest commandment, but it’s easier said than done. Offering fresh insight to our impulse to help, Ted Rivera identifies thirty-three ways we can engage the world with Christian compassion so we do more good than harm. We love our neighbors because CREDIT

God first loved us—and because God loves our neighbors more than we do.

An InterVarsity Press Paperback and eBook.

World Reforming Mercy #10584 1 19 MOVIES and TV.indd 22

8/12/14 11:28:17 AM 8/28/14 4:45 PM

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

Jeong Park/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The new normal MOVIE: Love Is Strange signals a debased cultural shift in which homosexuality is utterly ordinary

by Sophia Lee

Alfred Molina (left) as George and John Lithgow as Ben

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Love Is Strange, a movie about an aging gay couple in Manhattan, is not a “gay movie.” The two protagonists are gay, but the film portrays them as an ordinary, loving, dedicated couple who endure brief separation and homelessness when the breadwinner loses his job. At least, that’s how the director, actors, and critics are describing the new film, and why they’re bristling that the MPAA rated it R. The indie film, directed by Ira Sachs and released in select theaters, was made to be a quiet, classic love story, but with a few f-bombs and non-classic smooches. That such a film would receive the same rating as Hannibal and The Wolf of Wall Street has some critics crying “homophobia.” But cast

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19 MOVIES and TV.indd 23

members themselves have avoided using that loaded word, implying only that it’s silly and arcane for the motion picture association ­oligarchs to squirm over gay love when much of society has accepted it.

In short, Love Is Strange tries to be a “post–gay movie”—one in which this particular sinful lifestyle is unremarkable—and that makes it all the more significant and troubling, as fewer moviemakers even pay attention to the devastating difference between man’s self-justifying morals and God’s unchanging righteousness.

The plot: Semi-retired artist Ben (John Lithgow) and Catholic school music teacher George (Alfred Molina) have been together for 39 years. Then they officially marry and

S e p t e mb e r 2 0 , 2 0 1 4 • W ORL D

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Reviews > Movies & TV more flawed or moral than straight individuals. The urgency to beat viewers over the head with antidiscrimination, pro-gay themes has abated. Like Ben and George, gay characters are now sympathetic, endearing—and ordinary.

Hollywood and mainstream society have been leapfrogging each other in pushing and reflecting a cultural shift toward acceptance of homosexuality, and they’re getting more skillful and subtle about it.

Love Is Strange is a reminder that almost all human beings, as creations of God, share a common grace in recognizing and desiring what is good and beautiful. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness but we can still be moved by displays of kindness, gentleness, charity, friendship, love, and all the wonderful talents of music and art. But we must also weep for our generation that is so willfully and unwittingly deceived, and a future in which a movie like Love Is Strange will no longer be rated R. A

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  

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     - according to Box Office Mojo

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

S V L 1̀ 2̀ 3̀ 4̀ 5̀ 6̀ 7̀ 8̀ 9̀

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

In the Footsteps of St. Paul

BOX OFFICE TOP 10

10 `

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DOCUMENTARY

Guardians of the Galaxy* PG-13 .................... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles () PG-13 .........  If I Stay PG-13 ............................. As Above/So Below R......... Let’s Be Cops R........................ The November Man R .......... When the Game Stands Tall* PG.........................  The Giver* PG-13 ...................... Hundred-Foot Journey* PG ..  The Expendables  PG-13....

*Reviewed by WORLD

      

    

   

   

T’  quintessentially British about the BBC documentary In the Footsteps of St. Paul, recently released to DVD. Hosted by actor David Suchet (best known to mystery-lovers as Hercule Poirot), the two-part series tends toward a chipper, well-mannered tone. While acknowledging hotly contested controversies surrounding the apostle, the film shunts them away with a quick question or two and a polite, Well, there you are, cheerio!

For example, Suchet deals with arguably the most contentious issue contemporary society has with Paul’s writings— his directives that women are not to serve as pastors or preachers—by speaking to a single authority. After she puts forward the view that Paul was simply making allowances for the male-dominated culture of his time, Suchet thanks her warmly and moves on without challenging her assertions. Likewise, the film accepts as fact the supposition that Paul believed Christ would return in his lifetime.

But while Suchet may not exhibit the investigatory powers of his iconic Agatha Christie character, he makes an amiable guide as we follow Paul’s journeys, sometimes seeing the remains of the actual roads the apostle traveled.

These parts of the film may inspire Christian viewers to consider anew the man who wrote most of the books of the New Testament.

One particularly poignant moment comes when Suchet points out that while Paul’s beliefs and life purpose changed immeasurably after his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, his essential personality did not. Saul of Tarsus was an intense, passionate, deeply driven man. Paul the slave of Christ remained all this, yet became much more.

There is something wonderfully comforting in the fact that God saved the soul of the man but then worked through his existing personality, molding and harnessing it for His own means. It brings to mind C.S. Lewis’ observation that no real personalities exist apart from God who frees us from bondage to sin to be our truest selves. In the Footsteps of St. Paul demonstrates how this truth operated in the life of Saul of Tarsus and, by extension, all Christ’s followers.

FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL: HANDOUT • IDENTICAL: KATHERINE BOMBOY THORNTON • VERTIGO: HANDOUT

George’s school, which can no longer ignore his sexual orientation, fires him.

After delivering the news, the principal asks if he can pray for George so he won’t question his faith. George pauses, then declines politely: “Thank you very much, Father. I still believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but at this point I’d like to pray on my own.”

It’s with such passive resoluteness that George and Ben face the next few months. They lose their apartment, and in New York City’s brutal real estate climate they have to separate and crash with friends and family. A lonely Ben tosses on a bunk bed below his nephew’s teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan), who increasingly resents the intrusion and appears to battle his own confusion about sexuality. Meanwhile, George spends sleepless nights on the couch of two longtime friends who are coupled gay cops (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez), his bedtime invaded by frequent party guests and Game of Thrones marathons.

Most notable in Love Is Strange is what’s missing: It has no polemics, no rage against homophobic injustice, no poking about for controversy. The subtle but sinful message here is, So what if it’s homosexual love?

We’re all humans with real emotions, real experiences and responses. We all recognize true love.

Over the last decade, with hits such as TV sitcom Will & Grace and epic drama Brokeback Mountain, LGBT characters have become normalized, no

See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies

9/3/14 8:45 AM

MOVIE

The Identical   

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FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL: HANDOUT • IDENTICAL: KATHERINE BOMBOY THORNTON • VERTIGO: HANDOUT

G    to The Identical feels a little like kicking a puppy. The PG movie is inoffensive in its intentions to be a lighthearted frolic that honors faith and family while celebrating the beginnings of good ol’ American rock ’n’ roll—so I feel like an Elvis-hating Scrooge for saying it fails on nearly every count.

Here’s the thing, though—Elvis’ music and movies were fun. This movie that supposes Elvis (or a performer named Drexel Hemsley who looks and sounds very much like him) had an identical twin who grew up as a preacher’s son is not.

Most of its failings come from simple mechanics. From real-life Elvis tribute artist Blake Rayne who plays the twin brothers, to Ray Liotta who apparently buys into the stereotype that all evangelical ministers deliver their messages by pounding pulpits and shouting, the acting is communitytheater caliber at best. More harmful to the film’s nostalgic goals is that its original songs, meant to evoke the best of s and s pop, not only sound generic—they don’t jibe with the eras they’re placed in.

The Identical’s biggest problem, however, is that it substitutes clichéd conflict between corny stock characters like a money-grubbing talent agent and a rooted-in-hisways minister for real narrative development.

The idea that someone with Elvis-level talent may struggle with resentment that he’s wasting his gifts in the local church choir is an intriguing one. The notion that he has a twin who reaches superstardom using the same abilities is even more so. What kind of envy or spiritual growth might result from such an unlikely scenario? The Identical doesn’t seem interested in even the most obvious questions its premise poses, instead expecting a visual trip down memory lane to Graceland to suffice for a real story. Audiences aren’t likely to be won over by the poorly executed impersonation.

Blake Rayne as Drexel Hemsley

DVD

Vertigo   

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O  , Sight & Sound magazine from the British Film Institute polls an international group of film professionals and ranks the greatest films of all time.

For five straight decades (-), Citizen Kane (a  drama starring Orson Welles) occupied the highest spot.

But in the  poll, Alfred Hitchcock’s  film, Vertigo, supplanted Kane as the Sight & Sound pick for the greatest film.

Recently released on Blu-ray after undergoing an extensive digital restoration, Vertigo tells the story of a police detective from San Francisco, John Ferguson (James Stewart), who is forced into early retirement because of severe acrophobia (fear of heights). An old college friend asks him to trail his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), a young woman on the verge of a mental breakdown.

It is difficult to determine what part of Vertigo’s allure is most crucial to its critical acclaim. The cinematography is outstanding, offering an array of San Francisco sights and sounds. Bernard Herrmann’s score is eerily beautiful; the horns and strings create a quiet sense of dread before swelling into madness. The costumes and colors are vibrant, purposefully chosen to parallel themes throughout the film. As a forerunner to movies like The Sixth Sense, the plot includes a twist so surprising one can never watch the film the same way again, a turn that immediately suffuses Stewart’s and Novak’s performances with layers of complexity.

Meanwhile, the story touches on several big ideas: the loss of dignity from unemployment, the craftiness of the human heart in devising murderous schemes, the frailty of the human psyche, the exploitation of women, and the toll that forbidden love takes on a person. Vertigo is a deeply psychological film that ends with a tortured cry for justice amid a palpable sense of romantic longing and loss.

Viewers today may find the first hour to be too slow and plodding, but Vertigo is the kind of film that rewards patience and careful attention.

—Trevin Wax is managing editor of The Gospel Project

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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9/3/14 8:44 AM

Reviews > Books

Book bag

The best of a big stack of self-published books

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Every day WORLD receives ­copies of new self-published or print-on-demand (POD) books.

We collect the books and when we have a big stack, we start reading.

This year students helped in going through more than 100 books to find the most interesting and well written.

As in year’s past, the best books grew out of personal expertise and experience.

Jan Martinez runs a ministry in Spokane, Wash., where women in poverty find work and healing producing a line of gourmet food mixes for sale. In Christ Kitchen: Loving Women Out of Poverty (Deep River, 2013), she describes her own journey from sexual abuse into Christian service, using imagined vignettes about the Samaritan woman (John 4) to frame the kitchen’s work. Martinez tells how to create similar ministries that reveal Jesus to captive women.

British missionary Rob Baker traveled throughout Togo and Benin as an ethnomusicologist seeking to create worship music using African rhythms.

In Adventures in Music and Culture (Ambassador International, 2012), he gives vivid descriptions of cultural hiccups and linguistic lingos. Jeffery Deal’s The Mark (Rivendeal House, 2013) is a coming-of-age novel drawn from Deal’s experiences as a medical doctor and anthropologist among the Dinka in war-wracked South Sudan.

Two of our books deal with aspects of adoption. In Are We There Yet? The Ultimate Road Trip: Adopting and Raising 22 Kids!, Hector and Sue Badeau (Carpenter’s Son, 2013) offer an intriguing look at a task that few would take on. Their funny and ­heartbreakingly honest account describes daily life and details rough patches. Rick Morton’s KnowOrphans: Mobilizing the Church for Global

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Orphanology (New Hope, 2014) combines his experience in adopting three Ukrainian children with practical advice for adoptive parents and churches. His book is a useful tool for churches wanting to support worldwide orphans in a variety of ways.

Marriage and family life inspire many books. In Good Grief (Himes, 2012), retired missionary and theology professor David A. Dean gives a moving account of the year following the death of his wife Dottie. The book includes memories of their marriage and Dean’s honest exploration of his grief— and the comfort he finds in Christ. In Not Just a Mom: The Extraordinary Worth of Motherhood and Homemaking (Carpenter’s Son, 2013), mother-ofeight Lisa Anderson draws from the Bible and personal experience to describe the richness and responsibility of motherhood and offer ways to remain fulfilled while preventing burnout. The book includes discussion ­questions at the end of each chapter.

Flora and fauna inspire other books. After tending her flower garden for many years, Dena Baker wrote What’s in a Name? What I Learned About God From Flowers (Tate, 2013).

She encourages readers to slow down, take a deep breath, and look with new eyes at God’s grace in creation. Donna Smith raises sheep and, in Like Sheep (Kindle e-book), describes the drama of being a shepherd. Her delightful and profound anecdotes suggest how Jesus, our Shepherd, cares for us.

Steven Garofalo’s Right for You, But Not for Me (TriedStone, 2013) is an easyto-read book on moral relativism with many examples drawn from American culture. Professor and apologist Norm Geisler wrote the forward. A —Intern Rachel Aldrich and World Journalism Institute students contributed to these reviews

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8/27/14 10:32 PM

sturti/istock

By Susan Olasky

NOTABLE BOOKS

Four nonfiction books on new beginnings > reviewed by  

Let’s All Be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have Annie F. Downs Using Nashville coffeehouses to help set her tone, Downs here percolates with humorous, self-deprecating, and well-crafted stories from her friends’ lives and her own to remind readers that living out one’s faith often means taking uncomfortable risks. From her painful move to Nashville, to her mission work in Scotland (countries with Starbucks need missionaries too!), to her first faltering steps toward becoming a writer, Downs shows women of all ages—but especially teens and new adults—that getting out of your comfort zone can be exhilarating and draw you closer to God. One caution: She does occasionally speak of God believing in our dreams, but overall she is clear that it’s God—not ourselves—we should trust.

Warrior in Pink: A Story of Cancer, Community, and the God Who Comforts Vivian Mabuni “We went through fire and through water ... into a place of abundance.” The morning Vivian Mabuni first learned she might have breast cancer, God impressed on her heart this verse from Psalm . The fire and water that would follow—painful treatments, sleepless nights, family hardship—often brought her to the end of herself. But with comparisons to her running life, Mabuni shows how those difficulties pressed her further into God’s heart as well as that of her family and her friends. Christians just beginning this journey or facing other life-threatening illnesses will likely find her simple yet profound faith in God’s promises a model of perseverance.

If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life Alister McGrath McGrath, who recently wrote a biography of C.S. Lewis, says this book grew out of a request by his students at the University of London to learn not just about Lewis, but from him. Describing each chapter as a lunch date, McGrath explores Lewis’ ideas about friendship, apologetics, suffering, and much more with quotes, summaries, and stories from Lewis’ personal life. For young readers as well as older ones who want to become more familiar with Lewis and his thought, McGrath’s presentation is a lively, intriguing introduction to one of the th century’s greatest Christian thinkers and writers.

SPOTLIGHT Three books are useful as beginner books but also beneficial for even the most battle-hardened parents.

Answering Your Kids’ Toughest Questions by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson provides gospeloriented answers to questions about sin, death, sexuality, and other difficult topics. In I Need Some Help Here!

Kathi Lipp refreshingly advises prayer as the best resource for parents who feel powerless and overwhelmed. The book isn’t heavy on practical solutions, but it does aim to help parents deal with their own emotions. Kara Durbin’s Parenting with Scripture is a compendium of Scripture verses on subjects like pride, complaining, giving, and forgiving: It’s handy for parents who want their children to be not just good, but godly. —E.W.

STURTI/ISTOCK

Forever Mom: What to Expect When You’re Adopting Mary Ostyn Forever Mom is a personal look at how adoption affects a mother’s life. Using her own experience of adopting six children as a basis, Ostyn addresses adoption’s effect on marriage and her relationships with her children. Though she touches on issues like finances and adoption agencies, this is not a reference book or step-by-step guide through the adoptive process. Instead, Ostyn focuses on family relationships—especially methods moms can use to strengthen bonds with adopted children once they are home. Not everyone will agree with her parenting advice, which puts a heavy emphasis on building attachment between parents and children, but many adoptive families will appreciate her seasoned perspective.

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

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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8/27/14 10:33 PM

Reviews > Q&A

Pain and gain

Experience, including tragic experience, has made Rick Warren a different man and a different pastor By Warren Smith

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same man I was six months before that time. During that time as I wrote in my journal, sometimes I would write something and think, “That would help somebody else.” I’d post it to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I discovered everybody’s touched. There are 60 million people in America who have dealt with some form of mental illness. Everybody knows somebody. I really think this is the last taboo. I can give a testimony as a grieving father. I am an authority on that. I’m certainly not an authority on mental illness.

We’re in a startup phase. Ten years ago God called Kay to be a spokesperson for HIV/AIDS. We knew nothing about AIDS, literally nothing, and we had to start going to conferences, reading books, and coming up to speed. We’ve been doing that. We’re just putting our feet into the water.

I’ve heard that you put your feet into the water of prison ministry a while back. Ten years ago, after The Purpose Driven Life came out and we were suggesting “40 Days of Purpose,” one Christian inmate asked, “Could I do this in my prison?” I said, “Of course,” and from doing the 40 days he started a church in that maximumsecurity prison.

And you went to preach there. I had two hours to speak to the entire prison. There were 4,000, maybe 5,000 people

out on the yard. Nobody was paying attention except a couple hundred people right up front. I was standing on the ground with no stage, just a microphone, but the microphone could be heard through the entire yard. I pulled out a $50 bill, held it up, and said, “How many of you would like this $50 bill?” Five thousand hands went up. I had everybody’s attention. Then I crumpled it in my hands, tore it a bit, and said, “How many of you would still like this $50 bill?” Five thousand hands went up.

What came next? I spat on the $50 bill, threw it on the ground, stomped it into the dirt, held it up, and said, “How many of you would like it now?”

Five thousand hands went up. Then I said, “Now, for many of you, this is what your father did to you. You’ve been mistreated. You are abused.

You are misused. You were told you wouldn’t amount to anything. You’ve done a lot of dumb things too. You sinned.

You’ve done some crimes, and you’re paying for them. You’ve been beaten. You’ve been torn.

You’ve been dirty, but you have not lost one cent of your value to God.” You had their attention.

That day, I think 79 guys gave their lives to Christ. I baptized all of them on the yard that

day. We brought out a big laundry bin, filled it with water in front of the entire prison.

The church in that prison grew to 500. Later, authorities decided the prison should be smaller, and many prisoners went elsewhere. We commissioned them as missionaries to start churches in those other prisons.

A lot of people have heard about your battle against the temptation to overeat. About two years ago I was doing baptisms and we had a huge membership class:

Greg Schneider/Genesis

Rick Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Life, which has sold 30 million copies. He has also faced controversy and heartbreak, most notably the suicide of his son Matthew, who had a long history of mental i­ llness.

Warren pastors Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., which has a Sunday attendance of more than 20,000 persons, and I interviewed him there.

Matthew committed ­suicide at Eastertime last year. You and your wife Kay went into seclusion for a season, but beginning with an interview on CNN you started talking very openly about Matthew. Obviously, I want my son back. But if you’re going to go through pain, you may as well use it for good. Corinthians says, “God allows us to go through pain and comforts us so we can comfort others with the ­comfort we’ve been given.”

Kay and I have known from Matthew’s birth that at some point we would be spokespeople for mental illness. You can’t have a child who was mentally ill his entire life and not know that God wants you to use that pain for good. When Matthew died, it was news around the world. I took four months off after Matthew’s death and spent literally hours a day with God alone. I didn’t do interviews during that time.

How did that experience change you? I’m not the

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Greg Schneider/Genesis

I baptized 867 people myself.

Along about number 500, a thought went through my mind. It wasn’t a very spiritual thought. It was, “We’re all fat.”

The second thought was, “I’m fat, too. I’m a terrible example of this. How can I expect people to get in shape if I’m not in shape?” The following week, I said in front of the whole church, “I need to repent. The Bible says God created my body. Jesus died for my body.

The Holy Spirit lives in my body. He’s going to resurrect my body. I’m supposed to take

Email: molasky@wng.org

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care of my body, and I haven’t.

I’ve only gained two or three pounds a year, but I’ve been your pastor for 30 years. I need to lose 90 pounds. Does anybody else want to join me?” Fifteen thousand signed up by the end of the week.

You wrote a bestseller about the weight you and they lost. Do you worry that you’ll relapse? That would be a public failure. Last year was the worst year of my life.

My back went out so I had to go into the hospital and couldn’t exercise for several

months. At Easter my son took his life. I went through grief, didn’t sleep well for the next six months, and gained back 35 pounds of the 65 I had lost. But I knew what to do because the doctors had taught me, and I lost those 35 pounds again. It’s not like you lose weight and the rest of your life you’re fine. For the rest of my life, I will struggle.

I use my own weakness to try to encourage others.

How do you disagree with people without becoming disagreeable? At heart I’m an evangelist. I spend time

with people I completely disagree with. Some say if I disagree with you I must be afraid of you or hate you. That’s false. There’s a difference between approval and acceptance. Jesus accepts me without approving of everything I do, so I try to accept other people without approving of everything they do.

What do you do with your spare time? I play with my grandkids. They gave me Legos for my birthday, and I told them, “You gave me a gift that I get to do with you. I love that.” A

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Reviews > Music

CHRIS SMITHER has grown old, but his music never does

BY ARSENIO ORTEZA

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WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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Sounds), a two-disc set in which he revisits  of his most enduring original compositions with the occasional help of like-minded collaborators such as his daughter Robin, the roots-rock combo Rusty Belle, members of Morphine, and Loudon Wainwright III. Most of them, however, he approaches solo, as if too much help would deprive his songs of their powerfully lonesome conviction.

What makes Still on the Levee more than an anniversary gimmick is the same quality that makes it impossible to see Smither in concert too many times. He invests so much of himself in each performance that it’s not only like hearing the songs for the first time but also like hearing him hear them for the first time. Also, Smither has woven a conceptual thread through the collection by concluding each disc with a version of “Leave the Light On,” as

 ’  : Link of Chain: A Songwriters Tribute to Chris Smither (Signature Sounds), in which  Smither admirers entertainingly adduce the tuneful and archetypical nature of his ruminations.

Although nine of the songs are Still on the Levee duplicates, redundancy never sets in.

There’s the quality of the performances for one thing. Jorma Kaukonen’s “Leave the Light On,” Dave Alvin’s “Link of Chain,” Josh Ritter’s “Rosalie,” Paul Cebar’s “No Love Today,” Loudon Wainwright III’s “A Place in Line,” Peter Case’s “Caveman,” Tim O’Brien’s “Origin of Species” (a good-humored attempt at fitting the square peg of biblical literalism into the round hole of Darwinian skepticism)—even listeners encountering them for the first time in these versions will recognize them as the artfully honest attempts to come to grips with age-old conundrums that they are.

But it’s the women—Mary Gauthier, Eilen Jewell, Patty Larkin, Heather Maloney, Aoife O’Donovan with Stephanie Coleman—who establish Smither’s capacity to speak for humankind as a whole and to suggest that it can bear at least a little more reality than T.S. Eliot believed. And then there’s the live version of Bonnie Raitt singing “Love Me like a Man,” the studio version of which first brought Smither to the attention of the masses  years ago.

“This is a Chris Smither song,” she says by way of introduction, “one of my favorite artists who’s still touring, and you’ll love him if you haven’t seen him.”

That’s putting it mildly. A

JEFF FASANO

C S is an American treasure. Not counting the dozen career-interrupting years from Nixon to Reagan that he spent drunk, he has been writing, covering, recording, and performing folk and blues songs with a clarity, warmth, and depth that makes most other troubadours seem either sloppy or lazy by comparison.

At the core of Smither’s sound are his nimbly picked acoustic guitar, his stomping foot, and his splintery, experience-soaked baritone voice. At his emotional core is world-weary drollery balanced against a stoicism that stares not so much into the abyss as at mystic shores that at their closest seem a leap of faith away. Universalized sympathy seeps through his music’s every crack, providing eloquent succor to anyone stuck between existential hard places and rocks.

Smither turns  this November. To mark the occasion, he has recorded Still on the Levee (Mighty Albert/Signature

A

Email: aorteza@wng.org

9/2/14 2:24 PM

HANDOUT

Races he’s run

moving a song about hoping to get old before one dies as has ever been written.

“These races that we’ve run,” he sings, “were not for glory, / no moral to this story, / we run for peace of mind.”

He’s wrong about the moral and maybe the glory, but he’s right about the peace. Never has half empty sounded so half full.

NOTABLE CDs

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

Bringing Back the Trash!

Deke Dickerson and the Trashmen This intermittently instrumental effort by the ’s band responsible for “Surfin’ Bird” and its biggest guitar-slinging fan might be a silly surf-rock anachronism, but that’s not all it is, not with “I’m a Trashman” adding sanitation-engineer-appreciating couplets (“Without me, baby, this city would stop. / Well, I’m more important than the mayor or the cop”) to rock ’n’ roll’s store of colloquial wisdom.

And although “Real Wild Child” has been covered hotter, the same can’t be said of the Everly Brothers or George Jones songs.

Wish It Had Sara Beth Go Those hoping for the likes of “Ooh, We Need Jesus” or “Lord Deliver Me” from Go’s last album (when she was going by the surname Geoghegan) will be disappointed. The sole reference to her churchgoing ways is in the past tense. But those hoping for gently sung lyrics dissecting disintegrating romance(s), if only to know that they’re not alone, will reap rewards, especially if they’re suckers for deft baroque-pop touches. Go gets knocked down, but she gets up again. You’re never gonna keep her down.

The Man Upstairs Robyn Hitchcock Yes, Hitchcock’s a leftist. Most pop musicians are, even—especially?—ones whose audiences are as cult sized as his. But on this unplugged, diaphanously luminous attempt to create what he has only halfjokingly referred to as a contemporary Judy Collins album, he checks his politics at the door. What comes through is his love for unerringly cherry-picked covers and his ability to link them with originals that are almost as good. The Psychedelic Furs have never sounded so sweet, the Doors so charmingly beside the point.

JEFF FASANO

HANDOUT

I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss Sinéad O’Connor Maybe it’s that the line about always having to be the lioness recalls her debut. Or maybe it’s that nearly every song—from the raucous to the primally screaming to the Princely—recalls her chronic inability not to want what she cannot have. Whatever. The movingly conflicted music that O’Connor makes out of wearing her multiply broken heart on her sleeve as proudly as she wears that Jesus tattoo on her sternum remains something special. Too bad none of the deluxe-edition extras is a Miley Cyrus cover.

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

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SPOTLIGHT “Bob Dylan’s son-in-law,” “up-andcoming singer-songwriter,” and “rock’s most observant Jew” once summarized Peter Himmelman well enough if not well. Then the music industry underwent seismic paradigmatic shifts, and Himmelman diversified. Between composing TV soundtracks and teaching corporate work forces to write songs, his recording career almost vanished. If not for a successful Kickstarter campaign, his latest album, The Boat That Carries Us (Himmasongs) might never have sailed.

That it did was good news both for Himmelman’s fans (it’s his most musically engaging in awhile) and for fans of articulate, faith-based songs of hope in general (doubtbedeviled though that hope is).

Then Hamas attacked Israel, Israel retaliated, and Himmelman wrote, recorded, and posted a video for a song called “Maximum Restraint,” an unabashedly politically incorrect defense of Israel. It sucked the air out of The Boat That Carries Us’ room. Here’s hoping that, once (if?) the dust settles, the album gets its air back. —A.O.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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Mindy Belz

A harvest of neglect

The Lord promises the devourer will not destroy the fruits of our soil

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I I     without writing an annual thought about my garden, some readers will ask. I could sum it up this way: This year I ignored it. Mostly.

But there’s a better answer, and here’s what really happened. Every gardener knows that a summer harvest begins the autumn before. Last fall an illness in my family had me preoccupied (“Failure to thrive,” Sept. , ). Tomato vines molded and covered the soil, bug-eaten greens turned brown and died, then leaves fell to cover all. With winter came frost, then snow, then sub-zero temperatures. The ground heaved without a proper mulching and slept on.

With spring came travel then two graduations in my family and all the “lasts” that go with them. I had an afternoon to clear the debris of two seasons. I discovered my hasty clipping of a treasured eucalyptus in winter (for bouquets at a family wedding) had killed it. But way down under dried leaves some bitter arugula sprouts greeted me, plus a sprig of artichoke, new growth from a long-dead plant.

Spring planting? I missed it (see events, above). May and June brought an unseasonable drought. I had another afternoon to plant some late seeds but the ground wouldn’t give.

A pickaxe couldn’t turn such hard pack. That’s when I realized—for the first time in a decade or more—there would be no garden this year.

In a gesture of surrender after a pathetic July shower, I pushed into the ground a few also pathetic seedlings, leftovers on a hardware store sale rack: one cucumber, two tomato, and two green pepper plants.

Then here’s what the garden did: It gave back anyway.

Fifteen artichokes spiked from the once-tiny sprig, which grew to a monster bush. Fifteen! Straggly tomato and pepper plants are giving a steady supply, mocking my low expectations. Swiss chard flushed out in late summer, a complete surprise, in an otherwise empty bed.

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Everywhere I started noticing a bountiful harvest from my neglect. Dahlias and last year’s marigolds came back, cleome and spires of tall verbena bloomed profusely where I’ve never planted them. Morning glories, that dread weed, are giving a welcome show of white and purple.

Put me to the test, says the Lord, and see “if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil. … Then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight” (Malachi :-).

The world is full up with destruction, and my bent is to see it without bothering to dig for the tiny sprigs of green beneath, or wait for the due season of harvest. Are there spouts of hope today in Liberia, Iraq, Ukraine, and Ferguson, Mo.? Absolutely. But they may not be the ones you or I planted, or expect, so we might ignore them unless we look harder.

“For God judged it better,” wrote Augustine, “to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” Felix culpa, or happy fault, he called it. In this business of reporting unhappy faults—disasters, drought, war, crime, and epidemic—journalists miss out, too busy looking at the next calamity to see a bounty coming right behind.

Fruit of the A month ago the press gave garden dire accounts of the Mississippi River in one of its most severe barge stoppages in memory. Floodwaters had deposited silt enough to halt barge traffic: At one point,  million in commodities sat stranded in St. Paul. Cement and road salt needed across the South might not make it before winter. Two-thirds of all U.S. grain shipped on the waterway to New Orleans might not arrive either.

You can read the dire accounts online. But you will have a harder time finding out how the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard battled the clock to open temporary pilot channels that let the barges through in August—a miracle of ingenuity and effort the rest of us enjoy as undeserved bounty. That is, if we have eyes to see it. A

Email: mbelz@wng.org

9/2/14 2:29 PM

JOIN CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLSON CENTER FOR THE

October 9 10, 2014 STEVE GREEN | JENNIFER MARSHALL Hobby Lobby

The Heritage Foundation

RUSSELL MOORE | JOHN STONESTREET Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview

more!

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A history of police violence brings police killing in Ferguson to national attention, even as black-on-black murders in far greater numbers remain local stories.

Can evangelicals of all races find a way forward?

by Jamie Dean

Police officers move in to arrest protesters as they push and clear crowds out of the West Florissant Avenue area in Ferguson, Mo., early Wednesday, Aug. 20 Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/ap

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for Bibb’s funeral. Mourners filed by a tiny white casket, where the toddler lay in a pretty white dress next to a soft teddy bear with a pink bow. “I was with my baby when she died,” Bibb’s mother said. “I tried to save her, but I just couldn’t keep her alive.”

It’s a tale of two sorrows, and it’s a story familiar in cities across the United States: Homicides end thousands of AfricanAmerican lives each year. For black men ages -, murder is the number one cause of death.

While Brown’s death brought international attention after riots and looting erupted in Ferguson over his shooting by white police officer Darren Wilson, dozens of other black deaths slip beneath the national radar every week.

Indeed, at least  African-Americans died by white police gunfire each year from  to , according to a

Americans, including by many in positions of authority. The national reaction to Ferguson showed a racial divide: More than  percent of African-Americans said Michael Brown’s death raised racial issues that merit discussion, while  percent of white Americans said the incident was getting more attention than it deserved.

Perhaps there’s room to discuss both. As many Americans—including black and white Christians—rightly grapple with the racial undercurrent and broader implications of Michael Brown’s death, there’s also an opportunity for those concerned about the sanctity of all lives to lament the other homicides cutting down thousands of African-American men, women, and children made in the image of God. Many in the black community have called for more of this focus both in their own circles and beyond. When national

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BROWN: ROBERT COHEN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES • BIBB: HANDOUT

USA Today analysis of the most recent FBI data on justifiable homicide by law enforcement. (Police killed at least  persons each year during the same period.) Accurate numbers are likely higher, since law enforcement officials self-report the statistics to the FBI, and not all police departments participate. No national database exists for easily classifying such information.

Meanwhile, the number of black assailants who kill black victims is even higher. In , more than , AfricanAmericans died by homicide. FBI data shows the vast majority were black men who died at the hands of other black men.

While most white homicide victims die at the hands of white assailants, the FBI reports a disproportionate number of black homicide victims and offenders. Black homicides make up nearly  percent of murders, while African-Americans represent  percent of the population.

Some say raising that statistic takes away from a focus on Ferguson’s racial inequities and on Michael Brown’s homicide by a white police officer. They say shootings by police carry unique import because of the power officers wield. They speak of an American history riddled by white abuse of African-

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FERGUSON: J.B. FORBES/ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH/AP

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   -- Michael Brown died from gunshot wounds inflicted by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., -year-old Knijah Bibb was playing in a bedroom at her cousin’s home in Landover, Md. For the little girl who loved pink bows and Disney World, the Sunday afternoon in a Washington, D.C., suburb would be her last.

Police say an argument about clothing erupted at the Maryland home on Aug. . Officials say Davon Wallace, , left the home and returned with a gun.

They say he fired several shots into the house, but his intended target wasn’t there. Instead, a bullet struck Bibb through her heart. She died later that day.

The following weeks brought anguished funerals in both Missouri and Maryland. Thousands of family, friends, and activists gathered at Michael Brown’s funeral on a hot August morning near Ferguson. Brown’s father sat across from his son’s graveside casket in a sweat-soaked dress shirt, openly weeping.

Nearly  miles away, a smaller group of family and friends assembled in a Baptist church in Washington, D.C.,

media attention fixed on the Florida shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin by Hispanic George Zimmerman in 2012, President Barack Obama lamented the teen’s tragic demise: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

During the previous weekend, 41 persons, mostly AfricanAmericans, were shot in the president’s hometown of Chicago.

One victim was a 6-year-old girl. T. Willard Fair of the Urban League of Greater Miami Inc., told The Daily Caller: “The ­outrage should be about us killing each other, about black-on-black crime. … Would you think to have 41 people shot [in Chicago] between Friday morning and Monday morning would be much more newsworthy and deserve more outrage?”

In Michael Brown’s case, cries went out for the arrest of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot him. By early September, local officials—and the U.S. Department of Justice—said ­investigations were ongoing into the details of the shooting.

A St. Louis prosecutor estimated he would finish presenting evidence to a grand jury by mid-October.

At Brown’s funeral, his great-uncle, the Rev. Charles Ewing, underscored the fundamental human tragedy of any homicide in any context. “There is a cry being made from the

believed others might be hiding him. Bibb’s mother pleaded with the gunman to surrender.

Just two weeks before, another 3-year-old girl died in a drive-by shooting less than 40 miles away. A bullet struck and killed McKenzie Elliott outside her home in Baltimore, Md., on Aug. 1.

At Elliott’s funeral, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie RawlingsBlake (an African-American woman), stood before the girl’s pink coffin and told the crowd: “As a mother, just the anger almost overwhelms me that this beautiful family has to be here with this beautiful child we are about to put into the ground. … She is in that box because of our community. … We have to do better for our city.”

In the months leading up to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, a string of gun-related homicides wrought havoc on black citizens in nearby St. Louis. On a rare warm evening in an otherwise frigid winter, three shootings killed three men within a few minutes on Jan. 26. The victims were black males ages 16-22.

In April, Jeresha Gatlin, a 20-year-old aspiring medical assistant, died on her way to church when an unknown

Brown: Robert Cohen-Pool/Getty Images • bibb: handout

Ferguson: J.B. Forbes/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/ap

sorrowS: Michael Brown Sr. wipes the top of the vault during the funeral for his son Michael Brown at St. Peter's Cemetery on Aug. 25 in St. Louis, Mo.; Knijah Bibb; a line of police wait for demonstrators at Canfield Avenue after they had walked down West Florissant in Ferguson on Wednesday, Aug. 13 (from left to right).

ground,” Ewing told mourners. “Not just for Michael Brown but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for the black-on-black crime.”

c

ries went up at the funeral of Knijah Bibb before her family committed her small body to the ground in August. Mourners wiped tears, and loved ones remembered a happy 3-year-old already picking up Spanish in her bilingual preschool class. Friends lamented the violence that took Bibb’s life, and one speaker vowed the toddler’s death wouldn’t be in vain: “Because it’s time to make a change.”

Sadly, it wasn’t clear how change would happen. Police were still looking for Bibb’s suspected killer and said they

­ unman opened fire in a St. Louis neighborhood. Two other g passengers sustained gunshot wounds. Gatlin’s 9-month-old daughter survived the attack with a cut.

By early May, one north St. Louis neighborhood had endured eight homicides since the beginning of the year.

Demetrius Griffin, 20, died when an angry neighbor opened fire after an argument. Authorities say Richard Watson, 43, shot Griffin in the head, neck, jaw, thumb, and arm.

And one month before Brown’s death, police say Antonio Muldrew shot convenience store worker Abdulrauf Kadir multiple times in the head and chest during a robbery. Kadir, 32, was an Ethiopian refugee who had sought safety in the United States. He was working to bring his wife and two children to St. Louis. As of mid-July, Kadir’s family remained in a refugee camp in Kenya. Their prospects were unclear.

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recognizing: many other black men, he also Participants pray at a endured living under a general ceremony remembering suspicion of police because of the victims of black-on-black color of his skin. violence in Cleveland's East Side in 2013.

Higgins—whose grandfather went to night school and became an engineer—pursued college and seminary, then became an Army chaplain and dean of students at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis.

He’s grateful for his family and opportunities, but remains aware of the challenges for the black community. “So when this thing in Ferguson hit, all the raw emotions of being black in America just found me,” he says. “I try hard for them not to find me, but they just do.”

When Higgins explains the reaction of residents—and ­outsiders—to Brown’s death in Ferguson, he says some of the looters were “just criminals,” but many of the demonstrators were expressing frustration already bubbling beneath the ­surface: “It was almost like, ‘Can you hear me now?’”

He also thinks many black residents feared the police would quickly clear the officer who shot Brown, even if the

JOHN KUNTZ/The Plain Dealer /Landov

b

ack in St. Louis and other U.S. cities, some churches and Christian leaders are grappling with the racial tension boiling over since Brown’s death and the ensuing riots in Ferguson.

Like many other cities, St. Louis is no stranger to racial tension. Indeed, American laws enforced a long history of abuses like slavery, segregation, and other forms of racial subjugation for over a century. Blood-boiling accounts of law enforcement allowing or facilitating the ­horrendous practice of lynching left a horrible scar on the African-American community.

If such realities seem like distant history for many Americans who never encountered them, memories remain

fresh for others. Mike Higgins, the African-American pastor of South City Church (PCA) in St. Louis, remembers the first time he saw a “hanging tree.”

Higgins, 58, grew up in north St. Louis but remembers summer trips to Alabama with his grandparents. The couple had moved from Alabama to St. Louis in the 1930s during the “Great Migration,” when many blacks moved to northern ­cities in search of work.

During car rides across west Alabama to visit family, Higgins’ grandparents pointed out trees where they had seen black men hang. His grandmother remembers seeing a body hanging during a picnic. The trips made an impression on Higgins.

So did growing up in north St. Louis. Higgins says he endured a robbery and pistol-whipping at age 18, but like

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courtesy of Covenant Theological Seminary

If such homicides don’t always garner national attention, they do sometimes raise local ire. Marches and rallies this year in cities from Charleston, S.C., to Montgomery, Ala., to Chicago, have focused on the problem of black-on-black violence.

Less than three weeks after Brown’s death in Ferguson, the Community Empowerment Association in Pittsburgh sponsored a conversation on the “Culture of Violence in the Black Community.” CEO Rashad Byrdsong told the group, “We are responsible for our issues and we need to recognize them and commit to our part in identifying a fix.”

Beyond discussing the problems, identifying a fix has been difficult. After national outrage over the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, news analyst Juan Williams asked about broader issues in a Wall Street Journal column: “Where is the march against the drug dealers who prey on young black people?

Where is the march against bad schools, with their 50 percent dropout rate for black teenaged boys? Those failed schools are ­certainly guilty of creating the shameful 40 percent unemployment rate for black teens.”

In other cities, some local churches in high-crime areas have tried to address the deeper, spiritual roots of widespread problems, including fatherlessness and feelings of hopelessness in communities with decades of woes.

Last year J.B. Watkins, pastor of St. Roch Community Church in the 8th Ward of New Orleans, told WORLD he had buried three young people killed by violence in five years. Watkins said he focuses on building relationships and extending hope for lasting change in the transforming power of the gospel of Christ.

That’s easy to say, but the pastor emphasized that this kind of ministry is a lifelong commitment in difficult conditions, and involves helping the many law-abiding citizens in otherwise crime-ridden areas.

“I’ve told my church that we may have to see ourselves as Moses instead of Joshua,” said Watkins. “I wanted to walk into the Promised Land yesterday, but there’s a real sense in which we may be just tilling the soil and setting the groundwork for the next generation. … We may be the early settlers.”

shooting was unjustified, and that justice might not be served.

The sight of police in riot gear likely stoked those fears.

Tensions already existed between the predominantly black Ferguson residents and the predominantly white Ferguson police. The Missouri attorney general’s office concluded last year that the town’s police were twice as likely to arrest a black resident during a traffic stop as a white resident. Earlier this year, St. Louis County initiated a study of complaints over racial profiling by county police. Meanwhile, a slate of other black men killed by police officers in recent weeks in cities across the United States has brought more angst—and even despair—in some communities.

While tensions raged in Ferguson, they also simmered within churches and evangelical communities. Higgins ­pastors a multiethnic church (about 85 percent white and 15

‘So when this tHing in Ferguson hit, all THe rAw Emotions of being black in America just found me.

I try hard for them noT to find me, but they jusT do.’

JOHN KUNTZ/The Plain Dealer /Landov

courtesy of Covenant Theological Seminary

—Mike Higgins

percent African-American and other minorities) and says it’s been challenging to work through the range of reactions in the congregation—from anger to apathy.

He grows frustrated at times and admits it would be easier to pastor in a predominantly black context where he wouldn’t have to explain how he felt. “I call it Jackie Robinson syndrome,” he says about serving as a kind of black expert in Christian circles. “Sometimes I just want to play baseball, not represent the whole race.”

Still, he says, pastoring a church with a large white population—and a white co-pastor—has given him an opportunity to display Christian unity across dividing lines. In a recent sermon, he acknowledged the complexity of the situation, but offered a clarifying principle for white Christians and black Christians: “Let’s all walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

Nearly 500 hundred miles south in Jackson, Miss., Jemar Tisby is working through similar issues. The president of the Reformed African American Network (and an intern at the multiethnic Redeemer Church in Jackson) says the range of reactions to Ferguson shows “the gap in experiences between whites and blacks in the United States.”

Email: jdean@wng.org

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Like Higgins and many other black men, Tisby, 34, says he’s fallen under the suspicion of police because of the color of his skin. “I’ve never been arrested or charged with a crime,” he wrote. “But in many ways I constantly feel like a suspect.”

(For example, Tisby recalls an episode in high school when he stopped at a convenience store with a black male friend and his white girlfriend at the time. He says a police officer asked the girl if she was in the car voluntarily.)

Tisby is careful to say all citizens should respect authority, but says such suspicions have a cumulative effect on the African-American psyche. He says the Ferguson situation raises questions and frustrations for blacks about justice across a range of other issues as well.

If that’s difficult for some white evangelicals to understand, Tisby has a simple plea: Try to empathize. “Many are hurting, and there’s something to it,” he says. “And we may not understand, but we can come along and listen and be empathetic, which communicates, if not understanding—then solidarity.”

Some pastors—both black and white—suggest that could begin with simply initiating a conversation with someone of a different race.

Meanwhile, Joshua Waulk is encouraging empathy as well. Waulk is a Christian counselor at Baylight Counseling (and an associate pastor at Lakeview Baptist Church) in Florida, and he served as a police officer in St. Petersburg for nearly 17 years.

After the Brown shooting and subsequent riots, Waulk wrote a blog post asking readers to consider the difficulties police officers face. He knows them well: In 1996, after a white police officer shot and killed a black teenager, Waulk’s assignment was to help quell days of rioting in St. Petersburg.

Waulk says officers train for many possibilities when it appears a crowd could begin rioting and follow protocols to keep order: “In that moment, police officers must take action that looks really dramatic on the nighttime news.” In St. Petersburg, rioters shot a police officer in the leg and shot at the sheriff’s helicopter with an AK-47. He says many officers were ill ­prepared for the level of rioting that ensued.

Still, as a pastor, Waulk (a Cuban-American) says he’s also sensitive to the racial wounds that exist in America, and says the Ferguson situation has reminded him “there is still work to be done between my African-American brother and me.”

That’s work for every Christian, he says, since the reality of sin transcends race and culture, and the gospel of Christ is meant for members of all nations: “I think it should be the desire of every pastor and every Christ-follower, that we would live and move and breathe in our community and society in such a way that the effect of human sin is diminished.”

Being realistic about our own sins—and not just the sins of others—can help each person pursue empathy and humility: “We don’t need to craft narratives of each other or the world that are completely optimistic or completely pessimistic," says Tisby. "The gospel of Jesus Christ allows us to keep it real about Mike Brown, Ferguson, and ourselves.” A

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Barely fight

The Hesburgh Library with the Word of Life mural at the University of Notre Dame

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ghting Irish Did Notre Dame, one of the only major Catholic universities to sue over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate (and so far lose), derail its own case?

BY emily belz

p h o t o b y D a r r o n C u m m i n g s /a p

The UniversitY OF NOTRE DAME was the only religious university of the dozens that challenged the Obama administration’s contraceptive and abortifacient mandate to fail to win a preliminary injunction. Questions about Notre Dame’s defeat include whether its legal failure indicated an identity crisis: Is it primarily a Catholic university, or a university striving toward the secular glory of an Ivy League institution?

Outspoken alumni are critical of the school’s perceived mishandling of the case, and the missed opportunity— with 12,000 students and substantial resources—to be the first organization not to comply with the mandate.

Protestants mostly do not share the strict view of ­contraceptives Catholics have forbidding their use (while both agree certain drugs mandated for coverage act as abortifacients). Yet 22 Protestant colleges and universities filed lawsuits against the contraceptive mandate, while only 10 Catholic schools did so.

Notre Dame lost its plea for an injunction at both the district and circuit level. When the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel wrote its opinion against the university, it excoriated Notre Dame’s legal counsel and the school’s handling of the lawsuit. Many at Notre Dame think the fault lies with a string of prejudiced judges and yes, indecisive school leadership, rather than mediocre legal counsel. “I believe that the carping from some quarters [about Jones Day, Notre Dame’s counsel] is unjustified,” said Rick Garnett, a professor at the Notre Dame Law School.

The case started badly. Notre Dame filed a lawsuit against the mandate in May 2012, which a district judge dismissed on the grounds that the case wasn’t ripe: The federal government was working out a new nonprofit exemption. That took over a year, and in July 2013 the

Obama administration released its “accommodation” for objecting nonprofits.

Most nonprofit litigants laughed off the accommodation as a meaningless gesture and refiled their lawsuits.

Notre Dame’s local Catholic diocese refiled its lawsuit at the beginning of September that year, but Notre Dame did nothing for months. The school’s third party administrator began informing faculty it would be covering contraceptive benefits through the setup outlined in the federal accommodation. In December 2013 the school, in a seeming about-face, refiled its suit, calling the accommodation unacceptable—only three weeks before the new insurance plan would have to cover the objectionable drugs.

No one seems sure what happened between July and December. At a November annual meeting, U.S. bishops issued a statement against the accommodation, while an alumni group dedicated to preserving Notre Dame’s Catholic mission also pressed the administration to refile.

Asked about the delay by the federal district judge handling Notre Dame’s motion, Notre Dame’s counsel Matt Kairis referenced the bishops’ meeting, and said, “There was a great deal of theological analysis going on between July and November.”

The judge was frustrated with the last-minute motion and rejected it. “I’ve got 300 cases on my docket,” Judge Philip Simon told Kairis. The school immediately appealed to the 7th Circuit, which declined the motion on Dec. 30.

With no legal relief by Jan. 1, Notre Dame signed the form required by the federal accommodation, indicating its objection to contraceptive coverage and authorizing its third party administrator to provide the coverage to its employees. Then the school appealed to the 7th Circuit again, based on a U.S. Supreme Court order

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the university decides whether to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which it has to do by October. Once again its strategy is unclear. The legal experts I interviewed all were bewildered that Notre Dame hadn’t already filed for an emergency injunction from the high court, as it granted an injunction to Wheaton College in July.

Kairis declined to comment for this article, consistent with his law firm Jones Day’s practice in these cases. Jones Day handles most of the mandate cases for Catholic litigants. Notre Dame’s spokesman Paul Browne said its lawyers were reviewing the new regulations, but stated, “Notre Dame’s position has been and remains that the government shouldn’t entangle the university in matters contrary to conscience.” That statement was the only response to my questions about the leadership’s perceived indecisiveness.

“Where I stand, there’s no difference between [the Notre Dame] leadership and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,” said Carter Snead, a professor at the Notre Dame Law School. Snead has stayed in close ­contact with school administrators over the course of the lawsuit. He wouldn’t go into specifics about what their discussions have been but doesn’t question their commitment. “The suggestion from some camps that the university is half-hearted—I don’t see that at all.”

At the 7th Circuit hearing Judge David Hamilton, who ultimately ruled against Notre Dame, said doubts about Notre Dame’s sincerity don’t matter from a legal standpoint. “One thing on the issue of sincerity,” he said. “There is a long tradition in our First Amendment jurisprudence of providing protection to people who are prodigal sons, who are not saints, who are not entirely consistent in their views.”

But Notre Dame’s sincerity does matter to Catholics worried about the school’s direction. “Notre Dame is right there at the midpoint, where religion forces and secular forces are in intense competition,” said William Dempsey, a Notre Dame alumni who has been critical of the school’s handling of the case. “But it’s more Catholic than any other Catholic university except Catholic University. … It’s taken on a lot of water but it’s not at the ­bottom yet.”

Dempsey heads Sycamore Trust, an alumni group seeking to keep the school faithful to its mission. The group reports on school activities to alumni and shares alumni concerns with the administration. Each year Sycamore gives $50,000 to Notre Dame, according to tax filings, but financial support isn’t its leverage. “They have a very big following,” said Ryan Madison, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame and associate director of the university’s Center for Ethics and Culture.

Sycamore watched the lawsuit developments closely, and urged the president to stick with the case. Dempsey, a lawyer who clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, knows constitutional law. He thinks the Jones Day lawyers have done a good job, but said he would have made the arguments somewhat differently.

“Notre Dame has not been consistent and resolute in the pursuit of this matter,” Dempsey said. “We were proud of Notre Dame at the start, very proud, because Notre Dame and Catholic University were the only major Catholic universities in the country to file lawsuits.” But the school waited too long to file appeals and in the meantime announced to employees that it was going to comply with the mandate, he said. With 12 ­governing board members, it would be “scarcely ­surprising” that there’d be division of opinion, said Dempsey. “But it’s too bad when that becomes evident, your internal struggles with it.”

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

granting an injunction to the Catholic charity Little Sisters of the Poor.

A February hearing before three 7th Circuit judges went badly. Judge Richard Posner clearly already had decided the case for himself and took the argument time to dress down Kairis. Compliance with the mandate seemed “so trivial,” Posner said, and he exploded when Kairis tried to explain the burden on Notre Dame’s religious freedom: “Would you stop babbling?” he said. “When you’re asked a question—I don’t know, you must have argued cases before.

When you’re asked a question, you’re not supposed to interrupt judges.” (In a 2010 blog post Posner wrote, “Why sex plays such a large role in Catholic doctrine is a deep puzzle.”)

Kairis, needled, tried to talk over the judge, fueling Posner’s frustration. He repeatedly yelled at Kairis, “Don’t interrupt me!” and threatened to end Kairis’ argument time. During the arguments, none of the three judges on the panel appeared to grasp how the religious accommodation worked.

Not surprisingly, the 7th Circuit ruled against Notre Dame, 2-1. The dissenter, Judge Joel Flaum, noted that every nonprofit had been granted an injunction except Notre Dame, but the court rejected Notre Dame’s appeal for a hearing before the full court.

‘it would have been courageous and befitting [Notre Dame’s] status as the leading Catholic institution in the country not to comply. … Then that would put the ball back in Obama’s court, whether he was going to exact tribute from them or not.’ ­

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin/ap

Scott Olson/Getty Images

—William Dempsey

Notre Dame is under the oversight of its founding religious order, Holy Cross.

Its president must be a priest of the order, and 12 fellows, half of whom are members of the Holy Cross, oversee the board of trustees. The school requires a majority, but not all, of its professors to be Catholic.

The bishop of the local diocese is ­supposed to have a relationship with the school, but that is largely undefined. When I asked the spokesman of the local diocese for an interview to discuss its relationship with the school and what role it played in the mandate case, he sent a one-line statement that the diocese supports Notre Dame’s case. The spokesman refused to answer

Catholic identity: Pro-life Notre Dame students hold an alternative commencement event to protest President Obama delivering the commencement address in 2009.

any other questions about the diocese’s relationship with the school. The bishop has the authority to deem an institution no longer Catholic, but that hardly ever happens.

Because Notre Dame was one of the only nonprofits not to receive an injunction, it was one of the only ones to have to make the decision about whether to comply with the mandate. Not complying meant potentially millions upon millions of dollars in fines. Many nonprofits in their legal ­filings talked about not violating their consciences, but haven’t faced the choice to pay the penalty for their position.

Conestoga Wood, the Mennonite-owned company whose case went to the Supreme Court with Hobby Lobby, also didn’t win an injunction and complied with the mandate under protest.

Dempsey and others dreamed that Notre Dame might be the first not to comply.

“The financial risks are very substantial but Notre Dame is a very wealthy institution,” said Dempsey. “It seems to me it would have been courageous and befitting their status as the leading Catholic institution in the country not to comply. …

Then that would put the ball back in Obama’s court, whether he was going to exact tribute from them or not.”

Michael Bradley, a recent graduate and son of Notre Dame law professor Gerry Bradley, agreed. Bradley has followed the case closely, and edited the Irish Rover, an independent ­student newspaper often critical of the administration’s ­decisions in regard to its Catholic mission. “If some smaller Christian institutions were to resist, not that many people would care,” he said. “There’s a great opportunity being squandered.”

On the South Bend, Ind., campus, most students are ­paying more attention to the administration’s $400 million development campaign around the football stadium called “Campus Crossroads,” Bradley said, and what that development means for Notre Dame’s identity.

But Notre Dame has a conservative student body, especially compared to its peer institutions. When Notre Dame student magazine Scholastic polled students for the 2012 elections, Mitt Romney won over Barack Obama by a point, while nationally, Obama won 18- to 30-year-olds by a wide margin. Notre Dame’s right-to-life group is the largest student group on campus. No one interviewed knew of any organized opposition to the lawsuit on campus, aside from individual professors and students.

The mandate came out when Erin Stoyell-Mulholland was a freshman. The law school organized a panel about the religious liberty issues surrounding the mandate, and the event was packed. As a junior she became head of the right-to-life group on campus and continued to follow the case. “People were getting sick of hearing about the mandate,” she said.

But the lengthy proceedings may succeed in helping more students understand what’s at stake. “I didn’t know much,” Stoyell-Mulholland said. “I think students are getting educated [on the mandate] … more educated than students on other campuses.” A

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With dashed hopes and dreams, infertile couples embark on an often misunderstood journey

by BETHANY E. STARIN                        

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F

   C, I stood in the shower—hot water pelting my back, blood running down my legs as I miscarried our first baby.

Choked by tears, I managed to croak out the only stable thing I could hold on to: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. His rod and His staff, they comfort me.”

I had spent the previous year undergoing blood tests, ultrasounds, and a pile of negative pregnancy tests. Then in December, blood work showed an early pregnancy, which turned into a miscarriage that same week. Before this experience, infertility had never crossed my mind, but the loss of our unborn child opened my eyes to a new world. In my pain, I found I wasn’t alone.

Eleven percent of women nationwide are infertile— unable to conceive or carry a baby to full term. One in four pregnancies ends in early miscarriage. For more than  percent of couples, it takes a year to conceive.

Despite the number of people it affects, infertility is a widely avoided topic. Even Christians who are adamantly pro-life often understate the grief attached to infertility and miscarriage. They treat these tiny human beings as if they never existed and unintentionally isolate suffering couples.

Lauren Casper, , teared up as she talked about her nine years of infertility, the two babies she miscarried, and the two children she and her husband have since adopted. Casper said even in her loving church, she has never found a kindred friend who similarly experienced infertility: “You have all these broken hearts and all these hurting people sitting in church pews and it is not being addressed. … Where are all these grieving mothers and fathers?”

Casper breaks that silence by blogging and speaking about her infertility. She describes one vivid memory when she was Christmas shopping with her husband and his cell phone rang. It was the fertility specialist calling with the results of four months of testing.

Definitive infertility on both sides, he said: “Some

people just can’t have children. Now you need to work on accepting that.”

At that time Casper had been married two years. She was . “I couldn’t accept it. … How could everything you have ever wanted be taken from you at the beginning?”

Grappling with a God who would ask her to surrender her lifelong dreams, Casper found herself weeping in a pew at Virginia Military Institute’s chapel, where her husband now serves as chaplain. “Am I going to trust God? That was the pivotal moment.”

Two years later Casper began researching Ethiopian adoption agencies. Their now -year-old son, Mareto, came home in February , followed a year and a half later by their now -year-old daughter, Arsema. Casper says motherhood didn’t remove her longing for a biological child. After Mareto came home, she was surprised the struggle was still painful: “Did that longing for pregnancy go away? No. But it got so much better.” She says she’s “thankful for the journey of infertility because I don’t know if otherwise I would have Mareto and Arsema. I cannot imagine life without them.”

In Oklahoma, three packets of carefully collected pictures, handwritten notes, and pregnancy tests are all Jessica Cockroft has to remember the three lives she carried but never got to meet: “I wrote their stories from start to finish and added any pictures I took while I was pregnant with them. I have those as memories.”

Cockroft, , and her husband Joshua, a Republican state representative, celebrated their third anniversary in January. She first became pregnant seven months after her wedding in January : “I had no thought of the possibility that we would lose the baby.”

In February , morning sickness and mood swings returned with the joyful discovery that she was again pregnant. But the baby died before doctors could detect a heartbeat. “That was the only time I can remember in my life that I was angry at God.” Cockroft said. “I knew that God heard me in my anger and He stayed with me.”

About a year later, Cockroft had a third positive pregnancy test. She recalled lying on the examination table on a beautiful morning in April , staring at that same screen that had revealed the passing of their other two babies. This time, the line on the monitor

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‘[I am] thankful for the journey of infertility because I don’t know if otherwise I would have Mareto and Arsema. I cannot imagine life without them.’

—Lauren Casper, shown here with Arsema

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Wynne Elder

screen jumped up and down. The Cockrofts walked out the door holding pictures of their 8-week-old baby, the sound of its heartbeat seared in their minds. At a follow-up appointment, the heartbeat was gone.

“People who have not experienced this loss think it should be easier because we hadn’t actually had the child yet,” Cockroft said. “It’s the same grieving process for a mother who has lost a child.”

Cockroft said her caring church family didn’t know how to respond to her repeated losses, and she couldn’t articulate her feelings. She withdrew, working through much of her pain privately and with a small circle of friends. As time went on, she realized that many people thought their lack of children indicated a lack of interest in having them: “People are not taking into consideration that perhaps we had trouble having kids.”

While women experience most directly the pain of miscarriage, men also suffer. It took Indiana pastor Nate Pyle, 34, and his wife Sarah about 15 months to get pregnant with their now 4-year-old son, Luke.

They’ve recently passed the two-year mark of hoping for a second child: “Every month is a month that you hope. Maybe this is the month where it will happen. …

The monthly cycle starts to crush any desire to hold out hope.”

After they lost a baby to an ectopic pregnancy in March 2013, Pyle got into a yelling match with God.

Loving the infertile “Mother’s Day is the hardest Sunday of the year. It is worse than Christmas,” said Lauren Casper, a 30-year-old blogger and speaker who lives in Lexington, Va. Casper talked about the stomach punches of sitting in church surrounded by people she loved who didn’t seem to understand the pain induced by her empty womb. Until they adopted their son in 2011 and daughter in 2012, she and her husband John had only two children in heaven to show for their years of infertility: “The people in my family and my circle of friends loved and wanted to support me, but it was really hard because they didn’t understand. ‘Oh, you are young and you have plenty of time,’ they would say.”

She recommends that churches: Address pain publicly: “During Mother’s Day and the time of prayer or honoring, they could address the women who aren’t moms but want to be.”

“You said that you formed us in our mother’s womb.

Why didn’t this child make it to the womb?” Pyle screamed into the woods. He sensed God replying: I am grieving that this world isn’t the way it is supposed to be either. Pyle said his grief changed. He experienced God as a personal God who brings comfort in suffering.

With so many couples struggling with infertility, Pyle wonders why Christians speak so little about it.

The silence, he says, “doesn’t create a great space to care for people.”

Like those other couples, I assumed having children would be easy. The pain of infertility and losing a child challenged me to grapple with what I was created to be.

Soon after my miscarriage, I spoke with a friend who pointed out the cultural lie we buy into—that we control our own fertility. This truth helped transfer my hope from a positive pregnancy test to trust in God. Three months later, I learned I was expecting again— and this time with twin boys! Yet, one twin is not developing properly and has less than a 50 percent chance of survival. In this new stage, I hurt in a deeper way but have found freedom in not pretending I’m in control.

There is One who controls my fertility, and I hold onto that in the midst of the rawness, the pain. A —Bethany Starin won the Amy Writing Award for the best Christian worldview article appearing in a secular publication in 2012

Don’t say, You’ll have more children: “There seems to be this idea that kids are replaceable. One of the ­bigger misconceptions is the idea that they can be replaced or the loss can be erased by the addition of a new life. It’s just not reality.”

Treat her to a feminine outing: After going through months of dehumanizing fertility tests or losing a baby, women often feel their femininity stripped away. Drop off a gift card so she can dress up and go out with her husband, or invite her for a girls’ night out.

Hope in God: Out of compassion, a relative assured Casper she’d get pregnant again, but she never did. Holding out false hope makes the monthly reminder of nonpregnancy even more crushing.

Casper says, “The hope is not in the eventual child. Hope is in God and His sovereignty. … The secret is Christ in me not me in a different set of circumstances. The circumstances may or may not change.”

Nate Pyle, lead pastor of Christ’s Community Church in Fishers, Ind., experienced years of infertility with his wife Sarah. He says churches need to learn

how to care for hurting couples, and suggests: Focus on family, not biological family: “There is this emphasis in the church on family—and absolutely family is important,” but not just biological family. “Christians do a great job with adoption, but I think sometimes it is seen as a secondary or a lesser option.”

Turn to Scripture: “The Bible has so many examples of couples who struggled with infertility.” Encourage those in pain with this truth. Turn them to the Bible and pray consistently for their faith and the desires of their heart.

Mark the baby’s life: Extend friendship to hurting mothers by marking this child’s life with a token—a meal, houseplant, or bouquet of flowers. A grieving mother will be comforted that you thought her child’s life significant enough to be remembered.

Help them grieve: Those who ­suffer the loss of a child would rather you ask how they are months after the miscarriage than feel you have forgotten.

These conversations will apply another layer of healing. —B.E.S. S e p t e m b e r 2 0 , 2 0 1 4 • W O R L D

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THE AWARD FOR EFFECTIVE COMPASSION

Driving

Miss Tracy

SOUTH REGION WINNER CHANGES LIVES ONE RIDE AT A TIME

by MARVIN OLASKY           c       /      

I

    of offering the Hope Award we’ve particularly looked for replicable projects: Simple but effective programs that folks without rocket science backgrounds or wheelbarrows of cash can create in their own neighborhoods.

Last year, our South Region winner was the Beltline Bike Shop in Atlanta, where kids learn to fix bikes, connect hard work with rewards, and interact with adults who are good role models. This year our South winner is Maury United Ministries (MUMs) of Maury County, Tenn., an hour’s drive south of Nashville, which focuses on one simple but crucial endeavor: giving rides to people without transportation, and in the process building relationships.

Executive director Randy Nichols, a now-retired mechanical designer, has run MUMs for  years: part time for seven, full time for the last . He now coordinates , trips per year, connecting  volunteers with car-less neighbors who need rides to work, job training, a doctor’s office, GED classes, or day care. The goal, Nichols says, is to “show the love of



CAR TALK: MUM volunteer driver Marilyn Fullmer, right, talks with Tracy Williams.

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Money box

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LARRY McCORMACK/GENESIS

AWARD day a month, a half day, and I would coordinate and Christ while providing for transportation needs—and FOR EFFECTIVE COMPASSION fill in. … At first we just gave six or seven rides a week. we cannot help but share the gospel message with Next thing you know people start hearing about it.” our passengers as the need arises.”

The ministry grew: “We let the churches know, the Nichols showed me around Maury County, threesocial service organizations know. Didn’t put up a big old fifths urban and two-fifths rural, with a population of , billboard because people would think we’re a taxi service. … humans, along with  cattle for every  acres of farmland.

We had drivers from all denominations, different churches.”

The county leads Tennessee in beef production and has had its Nichols looked for drivers with the “discernment to avoid facilitating the behavior that caused trouble in the first place— victim mentality, entitlement mentality. We wanted to position ourselves to mentor those genuinely seeking to know and serve God.” Given Maury County’s racial history, it’s not inconsequential that on the afternoon I visited the first pickup by one of Nichols’ most faithful drivers, Marilyn Fullmer, a white retired nurse, was of Tracy, an AfricanAmerican woman. Eight years ago Fullmer heard Nichols speak about MUMs at her church, Zion Presbyterian, and thought, “That’s something I could probably do.” She’s seen progress in some of the women she’s transported: Randy Nichols “I remember taking Tracy job hunting for week after week after week. … Then, instead of taking her job hunting, we’re taking her for a job.” share of racial animosity: In  Thurgood Marshall, who As she drove her blue Taurus, Fullmer reflected on the riders would later become the first black Supreme Court justice, she has driven: “The most satisfying experience was a young defended an African-American naval veteran involved in a couple that Randy counseled a lot. She was very bright. He fight that led to a Maury County race riot. was a whiz at the computer. They had some real messes to The MUMs idea grew out of Nichols’ Bible-reading and clean up. They began going to church, became believers, and self-appraisal: “I really believe where it says God gives some got married.” Others have not been diligent: “I might knock to be apostles and prophets, and equips others for works of on a door and not get an answer. If that service. … I’m not a great speaker and I’m happens more than a couple of times, not charismatic, so I looked for something Randy will say we just can’t give the I could do.” He recalls, “I started praying ride anymore.” and the Lord showed me if you want to just Fullmer says she has “friends who exist as a poor person, you can get housing MUMS TRANSPORTATION think I’m crazy for doing this, [but] I through government assistance, food MINISTRY haven’t found any real reason to be stamps, so you can exist. But if you want to 3  revenue: , afraid.” She doesn’t expect quick do better, if you start looking for work, 3  expenses: , changes, so she’s seldom disappointed: you’ll run into a transportation issue.”

3 Net assets at the end of : “I tell myself and my husband tells me Nichols then tackled the problem of , often: You can’t do it for them. … You recruiting volunteer drivers: “I asked for a 3 Executive director Randy Nichol’s salary and benefits: , 3 Staff:  full-time 3  budget: , 3 Website: mauryunited.org  W O R L D • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 1 4

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Larry McCormack/Genesis

can help. You can provide opportunity—but the Spirit of God has to do the work and they have to listen.” She’s learned a lot over the years: “Sometimes we get attached and decide to help with more than the ride. We have to be ­careful and go in with eyes open. It’s a fine line: You’re trying to help them because God doesn’t shut the door on us when we come back again.”

Nichols gave me details on demographics and procedures: Most rides are of single mothers or widows. More female than male rides. No opposite-sex driver/rider combos. Then he showed me his binder of monthly newspapers. Here’s one from 2009: “A single mom with three children informed me that her employer is increasing her work hours from 15 per week to 30 per week. The reason: She is a good worker and she shows up on time! She was ecstatic, and sends out a HUGE Thank You to all the MUMs drivers who get her to work.”

I read more: “One of our male passengers does community service work to help pay for his subsidized apartment. As we transport him to work, he has started asking about how to pray and what it means to follow Christ. … He will be asking more questions during future rides with our drivers. please pray for him.” A newsletter from 2010 listed results: “Jamie got to nurse certification training. Kelly got to the Career Center for job training—she and her minus-one-month-old son (she’s due Sept. 21st) thank you. Pat got home from work at LifeCare—she and the patients she cleans for thank you.

Katricia got to the hospital for burn treatment therapy (and back home).”

Items from 2011 newsletters: “Marilyn and her DownSyndrome child are going grocery shopping. Katricia is going to get her new glasses. Howard is going to dialysis. Pam has been unemployed until one month ago. As soon as she got a job, she called MUMs and we have been taking her to work and back five days a week. Soon she will have a down payment for her own car. Last month we gave over 600 rides like these, including rides to pharmacies, doctors, job interviews, college classes, probation, Columbia Pregnancy Center.”

Items from 2012: “Debbie has gone through training and has gotten a job at Kroger’s. She is now riding to work with friends, having outgrown her need for us! We always like to see that. Demeca is driving to work every day, taking her kids to school activities, and grocery-shopping IN HER OWN VAN. local automotive technology school has agreed to do all the repair work for MUMs with no charge for labor. Traci, Colleen, and Lisa have gone back to Project Learn and are all working on their GEDs. Through exposure to our wonderful volunteer drivers, we have seen many of our passengers drawing closer to our Lord Jesus. All our drives have been safe. This makes 156 months in a row. Thank you, Lord.”

Items from 2013: “A word from one of our former passengers, now a registered medical assistant: ‘I used MUMs to get back and forth to Columbia State. I didn’t have the means to pay for transportation and at the time I was pregnant and going through a really rough time. The drivers never judged me and were always willing to be an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, offer advice, and pray with and for me. If it weren’t for MUMs I wouldn’t have been able to further my education.

In Christ, Stephanie.” A

Fixer uppers New Orleans group deals with pluses and minuses of a post-Katrina boom

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he beauty of MUMs is that it could happen in any carcentric community. The beauty of the St. Roch Community Development Corporation is that it is so New Orleans. It has risen from Katrina disaster. It is responsible for brightly painted frame houses that CDC head Ben McLeish once could buy low and renovate with volunteer help. It has succeeded in selling or renting them to those who can anchor a poor neighborhood, but that success is making future success harder.

The strategy has been sound. The CDC bought one big orange house for $40,000, put more than $100,000 into it, and sold it to a teacher for $180,000. It bought a smaller one for $30,000, put in $55,000 of improvements, and sold it for $90,000. A once-waterlogged house is now wonderfully purple with red doors: It’s home to four young Christians who pay $210 each and build relationships with young men and adolescents in the sometimes-violent neighborhood.

A walk around the neighborhood shows other improvements. The CDC renovated an old corner store and a shotgun house and converted them into a sanctuary and parsonage for the St. Roch Community Church (PCA). It converted a storage garage and studio apartment into church program space and a

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AWARD everybody is black.” McLeish and others last year home for the St. Roch artist-in-residence, an annual FOR EFFECTIVE COMPASSION launched the Homer A. Plessy Community School, appointment. To make these upgrades long-time res“where the hallways reflect the sidewalks of our idents pitched in alongside young adults who came to neighborhoods.” It’s named after the loser in the U.S. New Orleans during the summers after Katrina hit, Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision () that and fell in love with the city. enshrined for a half-century the fairy tale of “separate but The good news now is that property values are soaring. equal” in race relations.

The bad news is also that property values are soaring. Nearby The school, McLeish says, emphasizes creativity and probSt. Claude Avenue is now the hippest avenue in America, lem-solving, and he hopes children will develop an entrepreaccording to The New York Times, with restaurants, night neurial mindset. By providing assistance to small businesses clubs, workout facilities, art galleries, and alternative healing and nonprofits he hopes to fan into flame the entrepreneurial centers. McLeish wants to see houses fixed, streets repaired, spirits of adults. He has other goals: “We’d like to own as and schools improved, but he wonders what will happen to many houses as we could.” He also hopes to buy larger proppoor residents priced out of where they grew up. erties that could becomes assisted living homes and medical McLeish hopes to unite aspirations with economic realities. centers.

He wants to increase the savvy of residents through a Faith Meanwhile, the St. Roch neighborhood continues to face and Finances programs (developed by the Chalmers Center of violence and drugs. At the end of July, gangs of kids armed Covenant College) that teaches about tracking savings and expenses so as to build productive assets. The CDC is opening a thrift store that will provide jobs for residents and generate funds to invest in small-business ventures such as window washing and lawn care.

But class and racial tensions are always present. The New Orleans city administration spent . million renovating the St. Roch Market, a beautiful, historic building, but a dispute now rages about whether the building should feature fancy shops selling wine and cheese, or shops affordable to longtime neighborhood residents. At one neighborhood meeting, DESEGREGATION: with bats beat up two men near the young hipsters voiced their outrage about police flashing blue Children at the neutral ground. McLeish last year lights and not letting them drink beer on boulevard median Homer A. Plessy mourned the death of Eric Green, a strips (in New Orleans parlance, “neutral ground”). Older Community School. -year-old African-American who had African-American men responded, “Are you joking me? Do become like a son to him: “My hunch you have any idea what we’ve experienced from police is that you knew Jesus and were known by Him, though the harassment in our lives?” brokenness of this world seemed to have you entrapped. … You Half a century after New Orleans school segregation ended, were on an intense search to make pain & brokenness go away McLeish says, one teacher has found “she can’t teach her kids but it seemed like nothing could medicate the deep wounds. about -year-old Ruby Bridges desegregating schools because We reassured you of our love for you and our deep concern it doesn’t mean anything. [See “Quiet heroism,” Jan. , that the path you were on would lead to your demise. Never .] There is no desegregation for many kids in New did I imagine so soon.” A —Marvin Olasky Orleans. They look around their [public school] classroom and

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

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Š 2014 BJU Press. All rights reserved.

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Steve Pettit’s Bible Study Walking in the Spirit: A Study Through Galatians 5 examines the often misunderstood subject of freedom in Christ. Explore what it looks like to live out Christian liberty, and discover the joy God desires for those who choose to walk with Him daily.

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8/28/14 4:32 PM

The Arabic letter “noon” is the mark that ISIS militants paint on Christian homes they plan to seize. It stands for Nisrani (in English, Nazarene i.e. Christian)

Christians in Iraq, Syria and across the Middle East are at risk. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

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pays for a hygiene kit buys a blanket provides a family food basket lasting 10 days

For information about ways to donate including credit cards, bill pay, bank transfers and recurring gifts please phone 703 288 1681 or 866 936 2525 or visit www.barnabasaid.org

To support these Christians, please also sign the petition online at www.barnabasaid.org/MEpetition.

9/1/14 10:17 AM

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As harrowing reports of destruction and terror continue to emerge from Iraq, the need of Christians who were forced to flee their homes becomes more and more urgent. These brothers and sisters have lost everything and feel there is no-one to help them.

Notebook

Lifestyle > Technology > Science > Houses of God > Sports > Money > Education

Eagle shot

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Bruce Weatherly’s Eagle Scout rank means more to him than prestige, resumé fodder, or a chance to get a college scholarship. For the 18-year-old, reaching Eagle was about honoring his father’s memory.

His outdoorsy, rock-climbing, woods-hiking, and kayaking father died in 2009. Bruce’s mother Lauri Weatherly wanted her sons still to

experience male leadership: “Boy scouting in general would be considered, in my eyes, their father.”

After the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) decided last year to accept openly gay scouts, scouting dissidents created Trail Life USA. With that decision came tension for families, particularly when sons were close to gaining the prestigious Eagle Scout rank, a symbol of ultimate achievement that

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Families of longtime Boy Scouts face tough decisions about whether to go or stay by Allie Hulcher scouts often list on college applications and use to win scholarships. Sixmonth-old Trail Life has to contend with that legacy: It offers an “achievement transfer” for boys, but BSA has trademarked the terms “scout” and the names of ranks. BSA has the Eagle Scout; Trail Life has the Freedom Award.

Bruce had written an essay opposing the admission of gay scouts, but he was

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Notebook > Lifestyle also two months away from completing his six-month-long Eagle Scout project when his BSA troop in John’s Creek, Ga., disbanded. He had to decide whether to move to another troop and complete his Eagle, or take his Christian principles with him to Trail Life. His mom thought leaving without achieving Eagle rank would be “like dropping out of the race when you see the finish line before you,” but she encouraged Bruce to pray and then make the painful choice. He decided to stay in.

What about others?

In June, at a Trail Life camp in western North Carolina, troop leaders from North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama sat around a wooden picnic table.

Nearly 100 boys attending the camp were on a hunt for one boy in hiding, in a game called “Saving Private Bryan.” Meanwhile, the leaders told me how many of their boys had “rushed” to get the Eagle during the transitional time after the BSA decision. (In 2013, the second-largest number of boys in BSA history became Eagle Scouts.)

Luke Van Cleave, Bruce’s former BSA scoutmaster and now Trail Life

Troop 317 leader, said seven of his former scouts moved to another BSA troop: Five of those boys were close to their Eagle, and two were their younger brothers. One Troop 317 boy, 16-yearold Eagle Scout John Jung, stayed in the Boy Scouts while joining Trail Life because of friends and the potential for further leadership roles in BSA. He said in Boy Scouts “they stack you up on merit badges till lunch.”

Without the “Eagle Scout” designation, Trail Life is emphasizing that its boys will have not sashes but “standards”—wooden staffs that serve as part walking stick, part saber, like what shepherds and bishops and even Moses carried. Trail Life co-founder John Stemberger said a standard is “a little more masculine than a cloth and a patch.” The Trail Life website states

HAPPY TRAIL: Jung, left, and Van Cleave of Troop 317 at a Trail Life Summer Adventure Camp.

the Freedom Award crest includes a “shield of faith,” a “sword of the spirit,” “trinity peaks,” a “mighty stag,” and “crossed keys,” all symbolic and referring to Bible passages.

An Eagle Scout himself, Stemberger said he’s still proud of his Eagle and will pass it on to his sons: “It’s not like I’m going to burn it or send it back or anything like that. Though I respect people who have done that.” Trail Life has to contend with BSA’s 104-year legacy and its iconic place in American culture, evident in Norman Rockwell’s scouting paintings. Stemberger says he has four of these prints hanging in his house: “When I walk by them I feel sad.

It’s like part of America died.” A

City kids

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top & bottom: handout photos

On a Saturday afternoon in August, when many families were buying supplies for the coming school year, more than 1,200 children filtered through a large tent at Julliard Park in Santa Rosa, Calif. Inside, a young woman in torn jeans was teaching 40 school-age kids easy lyrics to a gospel rap song. Other children were in small groups where instructors explained the gospel and handed out free copies of the Bible. Nearby, a Spanish-speaking pastor talked with parents shaded under a tree.

This was all part of an annual event, City Kids, that is now in its 10th year. It is a joint effort of the Redwood Gospel Mission and more than 40 local Protestant and Catholic congregations to reach disadvantaged youth with the gospel, and family fun, and the gift of a free backpack filled with school supplies. Alongside the large tent stood others offering games, haircuts, family portraits, used books, hot dogs, snow cones, and toothbrushes. Large murals with vibrant color created by various churches told of Jesus’ life from birth to resurrection.

For years, Redwood Gospel Mission had supplied backpacks to needy families while a handful of local churches had planned a separate back-to-school festival.

“We saw we needed each other,” said Adam Peacocke, pastor of City Life Fellowship. Redwood executive director Jeff Gillman said church involvement provided a missing link: “The real need for folks is not just to make a decision for Christ, but to connect with others who can help them grow.” —Mary Jackson

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Notebook > Technology

Phoning it in

TOEFL. The TOEFL, which is owned and run by the Educational Testing Service, is the current Tests via smartphone may soon model for standardized challenge traditional methods language testing and is given only at specific test

BY MICHAEL COCHRANE sites. It can cost between  and —potentially a lot of money to a foreign student wanting to apply to a U.S. university.

“Most of these tests are usually being taken in developing countries,” said Duolingo Chief Executive Luis von Ahn in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “And there,  can be up to a month’s salary.”

Duolingo’s Test Center app currently offers only an English Proficiency Exam but Duolingo plans to expand to other languages. The exam and certificate is free for now, but Duolingo I taking a standardized plans to charge  for it once it test such as the SAT on a smartbecomes more accepted by universiphone in the quiet of your living ties and companies. room instead of in a crowded The Test Center exam is largely based classroom on a Saturday morning with on Duolingo’s successful language a dull No.  pencil. We’re not there yet, learning app. There are four types of but technology is bringing us closer. questions: vocabulary, listening and This summer, Duolingo, the free transcription, sentence completion, language learning service, launched and a speaking test that uses your an app called Test Center—a digital smartphone’s built in microphone. language certification program. Test I’ve used Duolingo to keep up my Center lets users take a standardized German skills and the types of questest on their mobile device and potentions are very similar in structure— tially earn a certification for English almost like playing a game. language proficiency.

A user can complete Test Center Duolingo is trying to take on standardized exams such as the Test of exams in as little as  minutes—a English as a Foreign Language, or fraction of the time needed for tradi-

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tional standardized tests. The reason?

Computerized Adaptive Testing, or CAT. If you’ve done really well on previous questions, the app will adapt to this and give you harder ones. No two people taking the same adaptive tests will have the exact same set of questions.

Most standardized tests are taken in person at testing locations to prevent cheating. But Test Center uses the sensing features of the modern smartphone to prevent fraud. Your phone’s front-facing camera and microphone record video and audio of you taking the test the entire time. These recordings become part of the test data, which an independent proctoring company then reviews.

Colleges and employers will likely accept this new credential only if Duolingo can demonstrate that Test Center scores are as valid as the scores on the exam it’s trying to replace—in this case the TOEFL. Validation and reliability tests involving hundreds of test takers have thus far found a very high correlation between the two.

Duolingo is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to conduct ongoing assessments of Test Center’s effectiveness.

Since the July  launch, users have downloaded the Android app , times and completed and scored , tests. An iPhone version is in the works along with certification tests for Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Dutch by the end of the year.

If this summer’s successful launch of Test Center is any indication, language certification via smartphone may start a new trend in standardized testing— and create a real challenge to the No.  pencil. A

Shape shifter

It may look like a crushed package but it’s the latest innovation in parcel packaging. The new packaging design by Patrick Sung is a perforated cardboard sheet that can conform to the shape of any object, saving on wasteful filler. The triangular perforations allow the sheet to bend around even the oddest forms. —M.C.

Email: ddevine@wng.org

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9/3/14 10:45 AM

Notebook > Science

Waging war on Ebola

LIFE LINE: Icon Genetics is developing a vaccine for Ebola with the help of tobacco plants.

>>

R have developed a vaccine that is highly effective in preventing Ebola in monkeys that have been exposed to the disease. A Phase I clinical trial to test the drug’s safety in humans may begin as early as next month, with results expected in January. If the vaccine proves to be safe, healthcare workers in Africa could receive it in less than a year.

Researchers are accelerating the clinical development process because of the urgency to control the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of

the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told the New York Daily News. In the Phase I trials researchers will test the vaccine on healthy human volunteers to gain information on side effects and dosage recommendations. Unlike many other vaccines, this one does not contain any of the viruses that cause the disease, scientists at the Vaccine Research Center told CBS News.

Ebola was first recognized in , but the rarity of the disease made creating either a treatment, or a

preventive vaccine, a slow and difficult process. From the first documented case of Ebola until the present outbreak there were only , known occurrences. With so few cases there was little potential profit to motivate pharmaceutical companies to pursue treatment or prevention.

“There’s not a lot of interest from pharmaceutical companies,” Thomas Geisbert, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, told CBS News.

“There’s no incentive for the

private sector, so you have to rely on the government.”

The current vaccine is not the only one offering hope for prevention. Geisbert is working on research for at least four other potential vaccines. One of those could be given in a single dose, which would be of great benefit in poor countries where patient follow-up visits could be problematic.

But, Fauci cautioned, even an effective vaccine to prevent Ebola won’t be enough to stop an epidemic.

Treatments for people who have already contracted the disease must be available too.

 

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VACCINE: AXEL SCHMIDT/REUTERS/NEWSCOM • SKY: ANON_PICHIT/ISTOCK

Much to the surprise of the scientific community, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered an unexpected link between the natural activity of the sun and climate change. With the less-than-expected global warming of the past  years, the sun’s role in climate variability has become a matter of debate. This is the first time scientists have been able to reconstruct the sun’s activity at the end of the last ice age.

Scientists have documented direct observations of solar changes, such as number of sunspots, for only the past few hundred years, so researchers use evidence of trace elements in things like ice cores and tree rings to reconstruct models of past solar variability. The Lund University researchers analyzed ice cones in Greenland and cave formations in China to reconstruct the sun’s activity at the end of the last ice age. The research shows “that changes in solar activity are nothing new and that solar activity influences the climate, especially on a regional level,” said Raimund Muscheler, co-author of the study.

The research suggests that climate is not affected so much by the direct result of solar energy but by the indirect effect the sun has on atmospheric circulation. The researchers predict that reduced solar activity could lead to colder winters in Northern Europe while, at the same time, producing warmer winters, greater snowfall and more storms in Greenland. “The study also shows that the various solar processes need to be included in climate models in order to better predict future global and regional climate change,” said Muscheler. —J.B.

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9/1/14 4:02 PM

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Researchers speed up efforts to fight dreaded disease BY JULIE BORG

Notebook > Houses of God

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

vaccine: AXEL SCHMIDT/REUTERS/Newscom • sky: Anon_Pichit/istock

Iraqi Christians, having fled jihadists in Mosul, gather outside the Saint Joseph church in Irbil, in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on Aug. 20. The UNHCR said Kurdistan was hosting more than 600,000 refugees, including Christians and Yazidis who had faced ­“convert or die” threats from Islamic State militants.

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Notebook > Sports

Goal keeper

RYAN HOLLINGSHEAD put pro soccer on hold to pursue his dream of helping his brother plant a church

BY ANDREW BRANCH

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soccer team drafted him at No.  anyway, informing him they knew of his commitment and were willing to take the risk.

Dallas occasionally checked in as Ryan worked a day job in real estate and helped Scott at night. It was easy to get discouraged working -hour weeks on meetings that drew six people. Scott says his brother encouraged him when it was hard: “Ryan was always the one to kind of steer me back and be like, ‘No, Scott. The Lord is in this.’” Harvest Bible Chapel Sacramento officially launched in October, and a quickly meshing body relieved the burden on both of them.

Ryan signed with FC Dallas in December after a year with no practice. “Everything was slow,” he said. “My legs were … heavy.

My touch was off. My thought process—I never knew what I wanted to do with the ball.” He’s now earning playing time, including his first start Aug.  at San Jose in front of Scott and the family. “I’ve got a lot more room to grow,” he said. “That makes me happy.”

The source of maturity The Jackie Robinson West baseball team, made up entirely of African-Americans, did more than capture hearts. Its Little League World Series run brought Chicago’s violent, segregated South Side a U.S. title. The team lost the world title to South Korea, but thousands gathered in the streets to celebrate, even as different emotions played out  miles away in Ferguson, Mo. Pundits praised the triumph of inner-city kids who finally had something to do besides joining gangs. Few, though, mentioned that these young men also had dads so involved in team mentoring they miffed Little League officials for being on the field during a practice. —A.B.

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HOLLINGSHEAD: MATTHEW VISINSKY/ICON SMI CAM/NEWSCOM • MANZIEL: DAVID RICHARD/AP • JACKIE ROBINSON WEST: CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/AP

W R H spurned money and playing time in Major League Soccer (MLS) in  to plant a church with his brother, outsiders tried to convince him not to waste his opportunity.

Hollingshead took their advice. But for him, the church was that opportunity.

Hollingshead, , and his brother Scott, , both played varsity soccer at UCLA. Both developed a desire for church-related ministry in their hometown of Sacramento.

When Ryan Hollingshead learned that his brother would start planting a Harvest Bible Fellowship church at the end of Ryan’s  season at UCLA, he decided to forgo the MLS draft—and a top-five projection—and work with his brother instead. It was almost a “no-brainer,” he told me. He wanted to work alongside Scott when it was hardest, not after God had already established the church.

When MLS teams called him regarding the draft, Ryan told them he would probably never play. He spent draft day in Haiti at an orphanage with the woman who is now his wife. But the FC Dallas

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   ... NFL fans have grown used to ogling newly drafted quarterbacks like Joe Flacco and Robert Griffin III. This preseason was no different as “Johnny Football” Manziel’s preseason debut for Cleveland set a ratings record.

But when Week  officially began Sept. , the hype machine was out of juice.

Manziel had lost the starting job to a veteran—as did all the big-name first-year quarterbacks. Elsewhere, St. Louis cut openly gay defensive end Michael Sam Aug. . —A.B.

Notebook > Money

Dollar store wars

Merger may change the landscape of urban and suburban retailing

HOLLINGSHEAD: MATTHEW VISINSKY/ICON SMI CAM/NEWSCOM • MANZIEL: DAVID RICHARD/AP • JACKIE ROBINSON WEST: CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/AP

ADVERTISEMENT: MICHAEL NAGLE/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES • FAMILY DOLLAR: ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP • DOLLAR GENERAL: WOLF HOFFMANN: WOLF HOFFMANN • DOLLAR TREE: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

>>

Q What’s the difference between Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General?

Upwards of  billion currently rides on the distinction.

If you aren’t a regular customer, you might assume all three sell everything on their shelves for a dollar or less. But that’s only true of Dollar Tree, which features knick-knacks like the art supplies kids use in school. Family Dollar and Dollar General both have many items that cost more than a dollar.

Family Dollar caters to the urban and suburban poor, while Dollar Tree and Dollar General have slightly more upscale clienteles.

In late July, Family Dollar agreed to merge with Dollar Tree, with Dollar Tree agreeing to pay . billion, or . for each share of Family Dollar’s stock.

Almost as soon as proposed nuptials were announced (subject to the approval of both companies’ shareholders), Dollar General swooped in with a . per share offer for Family Dollar, saying it was “prepared to get this deal done as quickly as possible.”

Corporate mergers are often compared to weddings, as in a recent New Yorker cartoon showing a man wiping a tear from his eye and saying, “I always

cry at mergers.” But ordinary men and women are supposed to stop considering other suitors when they get engaged. When a corporation like Family Dollar agrees to be acquired by one suitor, corporate law principles often require it to consider any other offers as well.

There are very good reasons for this. The managers of a company are sometimes more interested in protecting their own jobs than in doing what’s best for their company. Chief Executive Howard Levine of Family Dollar, which has so far rejected the Dollar General bid, is more likely to retain a prominent position if Family Dollar merges with Dollar Tree. Dollar General, though, has , stores and is by far the most robust of the three companies.

Dollar General’s leadership status is precisely what Family Dollar hopes to use against it. To justify rejecting the Dollar General bid, Levine and Family Dollar insist the government would strike down a Dollar General–Family Dollar merger as an antitrust violation,

BY DAVID SKEEL

since the combined store would control the vast majority of the dollar store market. A Dollar Tree– Family Dollar merger, by contrast, would leave two major competitors in the dollar store business (Dollar Tree–Family Dollar would have , stores, to Dollar General’s ,).

This isn’t a crazy argument. Although the dollar stores increasingly compete with Walmart and Target, they operate in slightly different markets.

The dollar stores are smaller and often easier to get to for customers who live in inner cities or one stoplight rural towns.

(On a recent -mile drive through small towns in the Florida panhandle, I quite unscientifically confirmed this, counting five Dollar General stores, one Family Dollar, and two Dollar Trees, as compared to only two Walmarts.) If a merger between Family Dollar and Dollar General would reduce customers’ choices or invite higher prices, this would be a legitimate reason for the Obama administration’s antitrust regulators to intervene.

But government intervention always has costs. The problem here is that it could punish a successful company like Dollar General and prop up inefficient competitors.

Here’s hoping that Family Dollar is forced to pick the best of the offers. If it’s Dollar General, regulators should allow the deal to go through, since Walmart can be expected to open more small stores if the dollar store business stays lucrative. In a more perfect world, the Obama administration might even point to Dollar General’s success as an opportunity to confess that private equity sometimes works quite well. A —David Skeel is a University of Pennsylvania law professor

Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com

19 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 63

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD



9/3/14 12:21 PM

Notebook > Education

Blasting the past

 

New AP framework presents a relentlessly negative view of U.S. history

BY JOY PULLMANN

>>

and exploitation while totally ignoring the innovators, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who built our country,” Krieger said.

In response, Texas state school board member Ken Mercer plans to introduce a resolution rejecting the new curriculum and its exams, for which students often earn college credit.

The College Board, which runs AP classes and tests, said its revisions reflect what college students encounter in freshman history classes. That may be the problem, wrote Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, in an analysis of the changes: “American history as it is currently taught in many colleges and universities has been twisted … into a platform for political advocacy and for animus against traditional American values.”

Cut the clutter A new study suggests the typical brightly decorated walls of elementary classrooms distract students from learning.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University gave  kindergarteners a lesson in two different classrooms. One was studded with artwork and educational posters. The other was unadorned.

In the busy room, the children had a hard time concentrating, and scored worse on tests. The researchers say children might get used to busy walls and start tuning them out.

Or they might not. When she worked as a special-education teacher, “we often found that learning and behavior deteriorated in rooms with overzealous decorations,” said Cheryl Swope, author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child.

“Years later, when teaching my own special-needs son at home, I noticed he completed work more quickly and more accurately in his own study carrel.”

The findings don’t mean classrooms should be dull, researchers said. Swope agreed, suggesting that teachers post selected “visual displays that assist instruction, such as an alphabet chart when learning to read.” —J.P.



BULLET-PROOF BLANKETS: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES • VALLEY FORGE: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/NEWSCOM • CLASSROOM: RAY CHUA/AP

L K  the U.S. history classes advanced students take in , high schools were changing, but the Pennsylvanian was surprised to find how much. Advanced Placement teachers had previously received a five-page outline of topics to cover. The new “framework” was  pages.

Krieger started reading it and became worried. Despite the expansion, the framework omits key historical figures and battles, such as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Valley Forge, and D-Day. Because Krieger has instructed AP students for decades, he knew the omitted events and persons had previously appeared on exams.

There’s more. “The framework presents a relentlessly negative view of American history that emphasizes conflict, oppression,

Although school violence has dropped significantly since , parents and schools are snatching up bulletproof blankets, backpacks, and whiteboards, and a Delaware bill would require new schools to place “bullet resistant white boards in each classroom.”

Federal data currently does not include , the year of the widely publicized Newtown, Conn., school shooting. But it says  youngsters were killed at school in -, a number that steadily declined to  school deaths in -.

School violence of all types has also declined.

That hasn’t stopped some parents who buy everything from  Kevlar backpack inserts to , bulletproof blankets. After Newtown, where  children and six teachers died, one protective backpack maker saw sales multiply by , a company representative told The Washington Post. One thousand people ordered bullet resistant blankets the day they became available, their manufacturer said.

But U.S. childhood is safer than ever, noted Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mom who runs the blog Free-Range Kids: “When I was born, four times more kids died before kindergarten than do now. … What we have is a really distorted perspective that children in school are in danger of being killed by a madman.” —J.P.

WORLD • SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

19 EDUCATION.indd 64

9/3/14 9:17 AM

The World Needs More Good Samaritans Join Samaritan’s Purse in answering Christ’s call to help those who are hurting due to war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine. Learn how we work around the world to relieve suffering and share the hope of the Gospel at samaritanspurse.org

Franklin Graham, President P.O. Box 3000 | Boone, NC 28607 facebook.com/samaritanspurse twitter.com/samaritanspurse

BULLET-PROOF BLANKETS: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES • VALLEY FORGE: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/NEWSCOM • CLASSROOM: RAY CHUA/AP

Headlines from Ukraine:

Violence. Bloodshed. Fear.

Men, women, and children are asking, “What does the future hold?”

Ukraine: A Nation in Crisis!

Beyond the political crisis, it’s a spiritual crisis of huge proportion. Faithful Ukrainian churches—made up of Ukrainian and Russian Christians—are reaching out with Christ’s love to needy families and refugees from violencetorn regions. You can help through Slavic Gospel Association’s Crisis Evangelism Fund!

Your gifts will help crisis response teams from the churches reach these needy, heartbroken people in many ways. $15 can help provide a food pack with items such as flour, pasta,

19 EDUCATION.indd 65

Christian literature and other staples. Larger gifts will help reach out to refugees with aid and the Gospel, plus Bibles, Christian literature, and support for missionary pastors in the conflict zones.

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8/28/14 4:44 PM

Mailbag ‘System overload’

Aug.  I read this excellent article while ministering at a Christian deportation ministry in Reynosa, Mexico, that provides food, shelter, and hope. Pastor Hector, who was himself deported seven years ago, established the center with no government funds.

He does not feel that the deportees were treated poorly by America—they had broken the law—but their desperate need is all too real.

—K S, Zanesville, Ohio

“competition” with larger churches with better music, TV preachers, and video messages. The Mars Hill model troubles me for what it implies about spiritual gifts and how churches should function. Does the Spirit of God still work through small, struggling congregations and teachers less polished than the superstars? I think so.

—V B, Toppenish, Wash.

‘Bothersome babies’ Aug.  I totally agree about the “babies” coming to our doorstep. God tells us in Scripture to help orphans. We should not stand in front of the bus and yell, “Go back to where you came from!”

belongs at the feet of those who orchestrated it. Illegal immigrants should be sent back to their home countries and the border secured. There already is a legal path, and that is the only path that should be open.

—J MC, Waynesville, Ohio

—B L, Suffield, Conn.

I’m a big fan of Joel Belz, but I’m not pleased with this column. This explosion of illegal child immigrants is shameful for America, which won’t secure its borders, for the parents of these children, and for the countries from whence they come. In raising a hue and cry about the babies, Belz is helping Obama, the Democrats, and liberal Christians generate a crisis that will encourage biblically minded folks to support liberal immigration policy goals.

—S B, Columbus, Ohio

What a thoughtful wake-up call for all of us to do something about our continued failure to love, protect, and give hope to all of God’s little children.

—R G, Vicksburg, Mich.

‘Changing course?’

Aug.  Mars Hill Church made its pastors sign a non-compete clause?

God has a non-compete clause: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Perhaps Pastor Driscoll and the church are dangerously close to confusion on this issue. It reminds me of the “G” advice I heard given to Chinese pastors: “Don’t touch the girls, don’t touch the gold, and don’t touch the glory.”

—S M, Grand Blanc, Mich.

I love WORLD but am saddened by articles that portray Christian leaders negatively. God is doing good work through Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. Doesn’t any pastor trying to be faithful to God’s Word already face enough criticism?

—P H, Tucson, Ariz.

As the children of legal immigrants, we believe the blame for this horrible mess

Send photos and letters to: mailbag@wng.org

19 MAILBAG.indd 67

Our little church regularly suffers from

‘LA confidential’ Aug.  In Catholic doctrine, any information imparted in a confession is not the priest’s personal possession but God’s. Revealing it would be a betrayal and a theft from God. This ruling from a Louisiana court is no less offensive than the IRS’ recent demand that religious groups seeking tax-exempt status reveal the content of prayers offered at meetings.

—S L. E, Waynesville, N.C.

Why didn’t the Catholic girl who had been assaulted by a parishioner tell her parents an old guy was pursuing her? If priests begin reporting to others what they have heard in the confessional, even something as horrendous as abuse, then the seal of the confessional will lose all meaning.

—J M, Asheville, N.C.

Dave Swavely mischaracterized “most Protestant ministers” as people “who view the Bible as their only source of authority.” Protestants recognize other sources of authority, including reason and nature. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) elevates Scripture not as the only source of

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD



8/27/14 10:57 PM

Mailbag

MBA CEDARVILLE UNIVERSIT Y

online

Equipping Christian Leaders

IQUITOS, PERU submitted by David Berryman

authority but as the ultimate source of authority.

—N D. K, St. John, Ind.

‘Th rough the looking glass’

START BY SUMMER 2014, AND YOUR

FIRST CLASS IS FREE! cedar ville.edu/mbaonline

Aug.  Thank you for Mindy Belz’s piece describing the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. We don’t see this kind of journalism in the other media. Is that because such stories would reflect poorly upon current leadership and possible presidential candidates?

—J B, Bethel Park, Pa.

‘“Readiness” for what?’

Aug.  Common Core is supposed to develop critical thinking in fifthgrade students. Janie B. Cheaney concludes, “The program is huge, awkward, overly ambitious, and at odds with itself … expect a tangled mess.” Would that there were more “critical thinking” among adults, especially adults sent to Washington.

—A T, Atchison, Kan.

In criticizing Common Core, Cheaney distorts what educational experts mean by phrases like “st century” skills and “college and career readi-

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ness” and then pronounces judgment on the entire curriculum. Critical thinking is not incompatible with passion, and the curriculum prepares students for a brave new world where analysis and critical thought are scarce commodities.

—J S, Loveland, Colo.

‘Fear and fl ight’ Aug.  I’m following your coverage of Iraq’s profound humanitarian crisis with numb sadness. What else can be said but, “Lord, have mercy”?

—T L, Arlington, Texas

‘Hitting Hobby Lobby’ Aug.  It’s a sad day in our country when so many believe that people’s religious convictions should not apply in their work-a-day world.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw the issue for what it was and maintained religious freedom.

—P E. T, Vineland, N.J.

‘A life worth living’ July  This article was a poignant reminder that all of life is sacred, from the womb to eternity. The love

9/1/14 11:15 AM

Eating Disorders Hope for Hungering Souls

and faithfulness lived out by Janie Grelen was such a beautiful reflection of the enduring love our Savior Christ has for His church. od’s Word has much to Texas say about modern day problems, —A W,GArlington, and that includes the spectrum of eating disorders. Life-

‘Married to Darwin’

Hunger, whether physical, emotional or otherwise, is an act of God’s grace and love toward us. In our own strength, we are often unable to determine the best course of action. God allows us to experience emptiness and longing only to remind us that He has a better plan in mind; one that includes complete joy and pleasure as we glorify and worship Him. Dr. Mark E. Shaw is a Certified Biblical Counselor with the Association of Christian Biblical Counselors (ACBC, formerly NANC). He is a certified Master’s Level Addiction Professional (MLAP) with the Alabama Association of Drug and Alcohol Addiction. He is currently the Executive Director of Vision of Hope, a Christian residential treatment center in Lafayette, IN.

Bethany Spence grew up in Virginia and attended Word of Life Bible Institute. She has worked at Vision of Hope since July, 2012 and is planning to further her education in the field of dietetics.

Rachel Bailey, B.A. serves the Lord in her work at the Houston Eating Disorders Center. She currently lives with her family—including her poodle, Mollie—in Sugar Land, TX.

ISBN 13: 978-1-936141-22-7 ISBN 10: 1-936141-22-1

Bemidji, Minnesota 56601 www.focuspublishing.com

mark e. shaw with Rachel Bailey and Bethany Spence

July  I so appreciated Marvin Olasky’s unapologetic endorsement d of the authority of God’s Word over Darwin. While some claim that kids taught “Darwin was wrong will abandon Christianity,” the opposite is true. Didn’t liberal Protestant Christianity stem from accommodating Darwin? And now the mainline denominations that took this path are dead or dying. I was raised in this type of church and had no faith because I did not trust in the authority of Scripture when challenged by Darwinism. My parents stopped believing in the atoning work of Christ because they saw the Bible as inspirational myth, not the glorious story of God’s redeeming work in history.

eating disorders

threatening problems as a result of of disordered eating are at epidemic proportions today. Thankfully, there is real hope and practical help available through Jesus Christ— the only One who offers real solutions to hurting souls.

eating disorders Hope for Hungering Souls

Mark E. Shaw with

Rachel Bailey and Bethany Spence

Dr. Mark E. Shaw

(with Rachel Bailey and Bethany Spence)

God’s Word has much to say about modern day problems, and that includes the spectrum of eating disorders. The problem of disordered eating is at epidemic proportions today.

Thankfully, there is real hope and practical help available through Jesus Christ— the only One who offers real solutions to hurting souls.

Retail: $7.95

1-800-913-6287

www.focuspublishing.com

—L B, Medford, Ore.

Reading WORLD challenges and expands my worldview and more firmly establishes my understanding and love of Scripture. I often encourage others to discover WORLD for themselves. Thank you!

—R A, Vidalia, Ga.

Clarification Some countries refuse to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, but the United States and many others do: Kosovo is the th country of the Balkans (“Balkan drama,” Aug. , p. ).

LETTERS & PHOTOS

Good News for Your Car

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

Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.

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9/2/14 2:08 PM

could a

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9/1/14 9:33 AM

KRIEG BARRIE

be the key to new

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lizard

Andrée Seu Peterson

Lost and found In moments of sudden terror, we suddenly get very serious about God

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KRIEG BARRIE

P I is a middleweight of an airport, between Asheville and Atlanta in size but closer to the latter. So as I parked in the high-rise garage to pick up Natalie the missionary, I sensibly jotted my coordinates on the back of a torn-out car manual end page— “Garage A east X”—and pocketed it before making my way through the sameness of communist-gray cement pilings to the bridge to the concourse. A quirk about PHL, which shall have to be attended to in the near future, is that all , parking spots are sometimes taken. But I had mine and that’s what mattered, and I would just be a few minutes.

Natalie was without phone service, but she borrowed a phone and gave me directions. In the s scientists discovered that the maximum number of digits the average person can retain on the fly is seven: thus, the standard phone number. After that, one gets frazzled and the delicate mental edifice begins to crumble. Natalie was sending me on a trip involving an escalator, a long walk, and enough compass turns to put me near the tipping point of retention. So I once more proceeded wisely by noting the words above the door I had just exited— Garage B. More clever still, I memorized a prominent Marriott sign at the end of the hall.

Natalie was presiding over six -pound suitcases when I spotted her. One of us would push the cart of four, and the other would roll two bags. A kindly employee gave assurances about an elevator that would do the job, and we trundled away. But when we arrived at X, another car was there, not mine.

Quickly rifling through the possibilities (stolen car; multiple universe; all seven airport garages use the same alphabet and numerical system), and realizing it was insanity to continue the search together, I told Natalie to stay put while I explored alone. Neither of us mentioned out loud the new prospect of two losses rather than one.

I glanced at the crumpled car manual page and my heart sank: I had written conflicting garage information. Still I had the Marriott clue—but I had not considered the sheer size of the hotel, an establishment capable of several garage entry points. I checked the “X” row in Garage B, and there was no red Mazda with a keyed passenger side. I decided to try Garage C, though I knew that was stupid. I kept

Email: aseupeterson@wng.org

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passing a “Celestial Balldergarten” Rube Goldberg contraption, a dance video on the baggage claim wall, and a man in a suit at the bottom of the escalator holding a “Fitzpatrick” sign.

I finally phoned my husband for prayer and almost immediately found Natalie. I phoned him a second time and found the car. Which maybe should be the point of this essay. But I was also struck by the following: In moments of sudden terror—whether you are a school kid holding on for dear life to get home to the bathroom, or whether you are a grown woman with no sense of direction in a middle-sized international airport—you start to get very serious about God. Needing God intensely—or rather, becoming intensely aware of the need you always had but were dull to—drives out all equivocations about morality.

Were you formerly “unsure” about whether you are unkind to your husband? It’s pretty clear now, baby!

Did you waste all week in morbid obsession over some guy, single lady? “Five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters).

Did you tell the whole neighborhood you were born gay and could never change? At this moment you would gladly surrender anything if God will only rescue you.

All men are in crisis but not all men are aware of it. Fear of the Lord is true sanity. Acute awareness of one’s desperate condition is clarity. The Jews got it on the day Peter shook their complacency with truth about the danger they were in. Alarmed, they cried, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts :). And Peter said what God still says today: “Repent.” If you are lost, He wants to find you. A

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 • WORLD

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9/1/14 5:01 PM

Marvin Olasky

‘I will not settle’

The th anniversary of a Declaration of Intention by a determined immigrant

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O   , on Sept. , , Louis Olasky signed a Declaration of Intention “to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias.”

He also declared in writing, “I am not an anarchist; I am not a polygamist nor a believer in the practice of polygamy; and it is my intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America and to permanently reside therein SO HELP ME GOD.” Five years later, as soon as he legally could, Louis Olasky became an American citizen. He also bought a house in Malden, Mass., and  years later enjoyed walking his grandson, me, to a park down the street.

Grandfather, this column’s for you.

“Shine my boots, Jew Olyevsky.”

Russia, : The Czar’s army drafted Jews such as my grandfather for up to  years—although with rumors of upcoming war it seemed unlikely that any would survive that long.

Olyevsky at age  knew to keep his eyes lowered as he obeyed the lieutenant’s command.

Now he accepted the name Olyevsky—the man from the town of Olyevsk— even though his real name was Lepke ben Yehoshua. Now his face betrayed none of his thoughts. Sinful thoughts of murdering the lieutenant. Better thoughts of heading west to Germany—and America after that.

“Don’t be an idiot,” his bunkmate Mendel whispered that night. “Lepke ben Yehoshua, Lepke son of He-who-saves: No one will save you. They’ll chase you and shoot you down. Even if you escape the patrols, what then? How will you get to a German port? How will you get on a boat?”

“God will provide,” Lepke replied.

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“This god of yours!” Mendel exclaimed. “What has he ever done for us?”

Lepke, on the top bunk, stared at the cracked ceiling and pondered his chances. He tried to figure out how many versts it was to the border—each verst had  sazhen, each sazhen was the length of a very tall man.

The numbers he multiplied in his head were so huge that he became frightened. One step at a time, he told himself, that’s all it takes, one foot in front of the other.

But then he thought about all the obstacles. He would have no papers to explain what he was doing to the soldiers and bounty hunters on the lookout for deserters, especially runaway Jews. So many things to fear—but fear would paralyze him if he let it, the way it paralyzed Mendel and so many others.

Lepke prayed himself to sleep: “Praised are You, Adonai, ruler of the universe, who closes my eyelids in slumber. Let no disturbing thoughts upset me, no evil dreams nor troubling fantasies.”

The next morning he put together his sack: Bread, some buttons useful for trading, a spare pair of socks.

He’d leave his army musket—heavy, and a dead giveaway that he was a deserter—but would take his long knife: You never know. He also needed a map. The lieutenant had one.

That evening came the hated command: “Shine my boots, Jew Olyevsky.” He had just begun when a few drops of water came down from heaven. Keeping his eyes down, Lepke asked, “Sir, if it rains harder your boots will be muddy. Shouldn’t we do this in your quarters?” The lieutenant laughed: “You Jews hate being outside, don’t you? All right.”

Inside, the lieutenant chugged a bottle of vodka as Lepke spat on the boots and made them especially shiny. The lieutenant became sleepy. Then his eyes closed. Lepke picked up the map and ran. Mendel tried to dissuade him from leaving: “We both know this life is miserable, but it’s life. Why go to the grave?”

Lepke responded, “I refuse to think that way. I will not settle. I will always look for something better, or I will die trying.” Mendel hugged him: “You’re you and I’m me. You always do what you believe.”

Lepke did just that and managed to get across Poland and Germany. In Bremerhaven he hopped a boat to Liverpool and at age  came across the Atlantic in the steerage (lowest cost) section of an ocean liner, The Celtic. He arrived at Ellis Island in . Thank you, grandfather. Thank you, God. A

Email: molasky@wng.org

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