ZIMBABWE: The forgotten struggle
HP7: Magic & mayhem
D EC E M B E R 4, 201 0
Biblical callings special section featuring:
E Finding your vocation E When to push,
when to quit E Adoption as a calling E Profiles: , artist, scientist, politicians, philanthropist
mag.com / $5.95
Cover.indd 1
11/18/10 1:52 PM
LIGHT & HEAT: A PASSION FOR THE HOLINESS OF GOD
MAR 24-26
NATIONAL
C O N F E R E N C E
M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D
201 1
M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d R E N E W y o u r M I N D r e n e w Y O U R m i n d
ORLANDO, FL FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, John Piper, R.C. Sproul, R.C. Sproul Jr. LightAndHeatConference.info 800-435-4343
Ad Pages.indd 2 MRK_2280_AD_10_world_dec_4_national_nov1.indd 1
11/18/10 12:25 PM 11/2/10 10:16:09 AM
DECEMBER 4, 2010 / VOLUME 25 / NUMBER 24
CONTENTS sp e ci a l se c t ion
Biblical callings 42 Serving a higher purpose
We are greater than the sum of our material parts, and the reason to work goes beyond making the money to satisfy our appetites
44 Working for good
Should you remain in your current job? How well the product of your work serves others should be a crucial part of the answer
46 Called to a community
A Christian’s vocation involves more than a career
50 ‘The juices would start flowing’
Jack Shaw recognized his calling to business at a young age
52 Called to adopt
The Rosenows bring children with disabilities into their family
55 Honoring his father
Jack Templeton has a rare commitment to donor intent
58 The happy warrior
Hugh Ross was called to science as a child
60 Body of work
Ed Knippers says painting nudes is his calling
62 Carrying the right banner
Leading a big-city government is not an easy calling
64 The unified life
23
Monday through Saturday are days of service to God
F EAT UR ES
67 80
Voices 3 Joel Belz 20 Janie B. Cheaney 32 Mindy Belz 75 Mailbag 79 Andrée Seu 80 Marvin Olasky
ON THE COVER:
Illustration by Krieg Barrie Zimbabwe: Nat Belz; Harry Potter: Jaap Buitendijk/ Warner Bros.
34
Reviews 23 Movies & TV 26 Books 28 Q&A 30 Music notebook 67 Sports 69 Technology 70 Science 71 Houses of God
34 Out to dry
With hyperinflation and election violence a (recent) memory, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe strengthens his grip ahead of coming elections despite a stalled comeback
DISPATCHES 5 News 14 Human Race 16 Quotables 18 Quick Takes
v isi t wor l dm a g.com for br e a k ing ne w s, t o sign up f or week ly em a il updat es, a nd mor e world (ISSN 0888-157X) (USPS 763-010) is published biweekly (26 issues) for $49.95 per year by God’s World Publications, (no mail) 85 Tunnel Rd., Suite 12, Asheville, NC 28805; (828) 232-5260. 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. © 2010 God’s World Publications. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to world, P.O. Box 20002, Asheville, NC 28802-9998.
Contents.indd 1
11/18/10 5:19 PM
There’s still
health care for people of faith after health care “reform”
“The earth is the L’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.” — :
Editor in Chief Editor Managing Editor News Editor Senior Writers JANIE B. CHEANEY • SUSAN OLASKY JOHN PIPER • EDWARD E. PLOWMAN • ANDRÉE SEU CAL THOMAS • GENE EDWARD VEITH • LYNN VINCENT Reporters EMILY BELZ • ALISA HARRIS • EDWARD LEE PITTS Correspondents MEGAN BASHAM • MARK BERGIN ANTHONY BRADLEY • REBECCA CUSEY • DANIEL JAMES DEVINE JOHN DAWSON • AMY HENRY • MEGHAN KEANE • JILL NELSON DANIEL OLASKY • ARSENIO ORTEZA • MATTHEW P. RISTUCCIA SAM THIELMAN • ALISSA WILKINSON Mailbag Editor Executive Assistant JUNE McGRAW Editorial Assistants KRISTIN CHAPMAN • KATRINA GETTMAN
If you are a committed Christian and do not want to purchase mandatory health insurance that forces you to help pay for abortions and other unbiblical medical practices, you can put your faith into practice by sharing medical needs with fellow believers through Samaritan Ministries. The provisions below are on pages 327 and 328 of the 2,409-page health care “reform” bill, and they protect people of faith who join in sharing medical needs through health care sharing ministries. “…an organization, members of which share a common set of ethical or religious beliefs and share medical expenses among members in accordance with those beliefs…” Sec. 1501 (b) of HR 3590 at pg. 327, 328 Every month the more than 15,000* households of Samaritan Ministries share more than $3.5 million* in medical needs directly—one household to another. They also pray for one another and send notes of encouragement. The monthly share for a family of any size has never exceeded $320*, and is even less for singles, couples, and single-parent families. Also, there are reduced share amounts for members aged 25 and under, and 65 and over.
For more information call us toll-free 1-888-268-4377, or visit us online at: www.samaritanministries.org. Follow us on Twitter (@samaritanmin) and Facebook (SamaritanMinistries). * As of August 2010
Art Director . Associate Art Director . Illustrator KRIEG BARRIE Graphic Designer Brand Design Director MATT STEEL FOR METAGRAMME
Web Executive Editor c Web Assistant Editor
Invest Wisely.
Founder Publisher . CEO Associate Publisher
Send Him.
Customer Service Office .. Customer Service Manager
Advertising Office .. Director of Sales and Marketing Account Execs AL SAIZ • ANGELA SCALLI • ALAN WOOD
Thousands of native missionaries in poorer countries effectively take the gospel to unreached people groups
God’s World Publications () in areas that are extremely difficult American missionaries to reach. MARIAM BELL • BRYAN CHAPELL • KEVINforCUSACK 4 They speak the local languages WILLIAM JOSEPH • RICHARD KURTZ • VIRGINIA KURTZ 4 They are part the culture HOWARD MILLER • WILLIAM NEWTON • RUSSELL B. ofPULLIAM 4 They never need a visa, airline DAVID SKEEL • NELSON SOMERVILLE • LADEINE THOMPSON tickets, or furloughs RAYMON THOMPSON • JOHN WHITE 4 They win souls and plant
churches Native missionaries serve the Lord at a fraction of what it costs to send an American missionary overseas.
To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, accurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a perspec tive Help provide for a missionary committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. with $50 per month. is available on microfi lm from Bell & Howell Information and Learning, N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI . Indexing provided by the Christian Periodical Index. Christian Aid Mission P. O. Box 9037 Charlottesville, VA 22906 434-977-5650
www.christianaid.org
HOW TO REACH US .. / mag.com To subscribe, renew, change address, give a gift, order back issues, etc.: Email: customerservice@worldmag.com Online: mag.com Phone: .. within the U.S. or .. outside the U.S. Write: , P.O. Box , Asheville, - Reprints and permissions: Contact June McGraw at .. or mailbag@worldmag.com
Biblical faith applied to health care
occasionally rents subscriber names to carefully screened, like-minded organizations. If you would prefer not to receive these promotions, please call customer service and ask to be placed on our list.
www.samaritanministries.org
Ad Pages.indd 2
11/15/10 10:35 PM
Joel Belz
Deep or broad? The WORLD team can focus on addressing loyal readers or attracting new ones
evan h ugh es fo r wo rld
T
he fellow sitting next to me at a conference in Chicago turned out to be a WORLD subscriber. By and large, he said, he was an appreciative reader. But didn’t I agree with him, he suggested, that sometimes we were just a bit superficial in our treatment? Couldn’t we set our plow a little deeper in our pursuit of this thing we call a Christian worldview? That conversation was quite a contrast with the one I’d had 24 hours earlier on my flight to Chicago. The woman sitting next to me was a cordial middle-aged university professor, and in many ways very worldly-wise. She asked me what I did for a living, and I told her about our efforts to build a news organization from a Christian perspective. When that didn’t seem to register, I used the term “worldview.” I’m not sure she’d ever heard it. “You mean to be telling me,” she said in disbelief, “that you think there’s a religious aspect to everything?” There’s always been a little tension among those of us responsible for WORLD’s editorial package. Is that package, we ask ourselves and each other, for insiders or outsiders? When we focus on the insiders—or, as we put it sometimes, when we’re preaching to the choir—we’re very much addressing this thing we call a biblical worldview. We’re plumbing and honing and refining that worldview for people who already agree that such a perspective is important. They just want to understand it better, define it more accurately, and be able to apply it to their day-to-day lives more effectively. That was the man sitting next to me at the conference. When we’re focusing on the outsiders, though— like the woman on the plane—we’re dealing with folks who aren’t used to thinking in such terms. They tend to see “religion” as separate from all the rest of life. They’re startled when they see WORLD talking in its various columns as though there’s a proper spiritual dimension to economics and war and the visual arts and global warming and the latest novel or movie. So now I ask you, if you were on WORLD’s management team over the next year, where you would put your primary focus—going deeper for our Email: jbelz@worldmag.com
Joel.indd 3
loyal band of regular readers, or going broader to attract newcomers. How would you spend WORLD’s resources? The two assignments are not mutually exclusive; they feed on each other. The more we strengthen our journalistic performance and help our readers think things through from a vital Christian perspective, the more WORLD’s reputation and circulation will grow. And the more they grow, the more resources we’ll have to improve our editorial performance. WORLD publisher Nick Eicher outlined in our Nov. 20 issue some details of how we intend to expand our news-gathering team. If you missed that column, please go back and read it now. Then let me be bold here and ask you not just to make a theoretic choice in this matter. Would you instead pull out your checkbook and write out a check as a gift to WORLD magazine for $25, $100, $1,000—or even more. And with your check would you also indicate how much of it you think we should spend on going deeper and how much on going broader. I’ll report back to you in a future column what you collectively tell us—and we’ll use your own gift exactly as you indicate as your preference. Every gift to WORLD, or to our ministry to children through God’s World News, is fully deductible for tax purposes. You may use the envelope in this issue, or you may give electronically by going to the “WORLDmovers” button at the upper right corner of our worldmag.com website. And, as I have said in this space once each year for the last 15 years or so, I’d love to find a handful of you for whom this journalistic cause is so important that you’d like to explore giving $5,000 annually for the next three years. If that interests you, please call me (828-232-5415), email me at the address below, or write me at Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802. However you get in touch, be sure to say whether it’s the man at the conference or the woman on the plane who should be getting WORLD’s main attention in the months just ahead. A D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
3
11/18/10 4:01 PM
Sea of Galilee
When you read the Scriptures on the shores of the Sea of Galilee … When you walk in the footsteps of Jesus and his disciples … When you see the Bible come alive before your eyes … You’ll never be the same! Request your FREE Israel music DVD today!
Ad Pages.indd 4 IMOT-EV-G1_single-8x10.5 World Magazine .indd 1
www.yourfreeisraeldvd.com
11/15/10 10:36 PMPM 10/20/10 4:11
Dispatches NEWS HUMAN RACE QUOTABLES QUICK TAKES
Opening salvo NEWS: A controversial budget proposal begins a much-needed conversation about the deficit BY TIMOTHY LAMER
ALEX BR AN DON/AP
>>
TOUGH SELL: Bowles (left) and Simpson reveal their proposal on Capitol Hill.
O’ commission was supposed to be a test of the ’s seriousness about the deficit. “Next year, when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up,” said the president in January. “Because I’m calling their bluff.” But when the commission’s chairmen—former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles—floated a compromise trial proposal on Nov. , Democratic leaders were the ones who refused to step up and take it seriously. Simpson and Bowles proposed a mix of spending restraints and tax hikes, and they included plenty for both parties to dislike. Their plan would eliminate farm subsidies, cut defense and discretionary programs, and raise revenue by closing popular tax loopholes like the mortgage interest deduction and the child tax credit (while lowering rates) and raising the gasoline tax. Simpson and Bowles would also restrain the growth of Social Security by very slowly raising the retirement age, adjusting the cost of living index, and curbing benefits for wealthier retirees. They would raise the payroll tax on high-income Americans and raise premiums and co-pays for many Medicare recipients. “We don’t leave anyone out of the crosshairs,” said Simpson. While the White House didn’t comment on the proposal’s specifics, Republican leaders said the plan was flawed but a good starting point in budget discussions. Reps. Paul Ryan, DECEMBER 4, 2010
D-opener.indd 5
WORLD
11/18/10 5:53 PM
Dispatches > News
WORLD
D-opener.indd 6
LOOKING AHEAD Kennedy Center Honors Former Beatle Paul
McCartney and American country music legend Merle Haggard will headline the honorees for the rd Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievements in performing arts on Dec. . President Barack Obama will present the awards to McCartney and Haggard—along with Oprah Winfrey, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman.
Dawn Treader opens The third film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia, hits theaters on Dec. . Walden Media hopes the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, recaptures some of the mojo of its first Lewis adaptation, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The first Narnia film raked in nearly million while its sequel, Prince Caspian, only generated million.
World Cup announcement
The -member Executive Committee of will announce Dec. the hosts for the and World Cups. The United States has been angling for the international soccer tournament while England, Russia, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium have been jousting for the bid.
Peace Prize awarded Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo will officially receive his Nobel Peace Prize in a Dec. ceremony in Oslo presided over by King Harald V of Norway. But the Chinese dissident won’t be on hand to accept the prize, because he’s still in jail as a political prisoner of China’s regime. Since hearing of Liu Xiaobo’s award, Chinese officials have protested the prize loudly and often.
HAITI: EDUARDO M U NOZ/REUTERS/L AN DOV • SOCCER BALL: ASKHAM DESIGN/ISTOCK • HAGGARD: C .H I LBU N/J PEGFOTO.COM/PICTU REGROU P VIA AP I MAGES • LI U: KI N CH EU NG/AP
Jeb Hensarling, and Dave Camp, who lead House Republicans on budget issues, called it “a provocative proposal” and commended Bowles and Simpson for “advancing the debate.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, said the plan was “simply unacceptable.” At the heart of the debate is Social Security and Medicare, the two behemoth programs that threaten the government’s future solvency. Pelosi said the BowlesSimpson plan doesn’t “do what is right for our seniors,” but the central budgetary fact of the coming decades is that the baby boomers didn’t have enough children to sustain Social Security and Medicare as currently structured. The below-replacementlevel fertility rate of the boomers has left only three options: Curb the growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits, raise taxes dramatically, or pursue a combination of both. If the Bowles-Simpson compromise accomplished nothing else, it started a conversation on which of those paths to take. In the week following their trial balloon, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic member of the commission, mapped out the most liberal alternative. Her proposal would rely almost exclusively on large tax hikes on business and investment and cuts in defense. Two other members of the commission, Ryan and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, took a different approach, proposing to raise slowly the eligibility age for Medicare and turn it into a voucher program to buy private insurance for people who enter the program after . The commission is scheduled to release its final report on Dec. . If of the commission members sign off on the report’s recommendations, it will be sent to Congress for a vote. Given the partisan makeup of the commission—which includes six Democrats from Congress, six Republicans from Congress, and several members from outside government—a supermajority is unlikely. But stark budget realities are making some on Capitol Hill sound a bipartisan note, even if their leaders are not. “Listen, some of this stuff is not Democrat or Republican,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told . “Some of it’s just math.” A
Haitian election
Haitians may head to the polls on Nov. for presidential and legislative elections—their first since a Jan. earthquake and its aftershocks killed an estimated , Haitians and left about a million homeless. Despite Haiti’s electoral council’s move to ban more than a dozen political parties from the ballot— including that of former Haitian president JeanBertrand Aristide—the has endorsed the election.
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 5:55 PM
“I wanted a multidenominational school... but I also wanted it to be solidly biblical.” Brooke Easton, M.Div., ‘12
“I wanted to go to a multi-denominational school,” says second-year M.Div. student Brooke Easton. “Working at Teen Challenge in New York, with people from so many other churches, made me realize that I didn’t know much about other denominations. So I wanted that experience at seminary, but I also wanted it to be solidly biblical.”
Gordon-Conwell has campuses in South Hamilton and Boston, MA, Charlotte, NC and Jacksonville, FL
Brooke applied to Gordon-Conwell on the recommendation of her pastor, and found the biblical, multi-denominational school she was looking for.
Students represent more than 90
“It’s been amazing to hear my professors and peers talking about theology and the churches where we are involved. Through my coursework, I am able to know why I believe the specifics of what I believe, but also understand why other churches believe differently.
denominations and nearly 50 countries from around the world
“I’ve also been blown away by the pastoral heart that professors have. They want us to learn and have an academically rigorous program, but at the same time, the purpose is ultimately for the kingdom of God and for ministry to the local church. “I’ve actually cried in classes because I was so moved by what the professor was saying and how it applied to my life and ministry.”
Students at GordonConwell are able to access libraries and classes at
Find out more about Gordon-Conwell by calling 1.800.428.7329 or visit us at www.gordonconwell.edu
other theological schools in Boston, including Harvard Divinity School, Boston College, Boston University and Saint John’s Seminary.
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary ✦ BOSTON ✦ CHARLOTTE SOUTH HAMILTON | CHARLOTTE | BOSTON | JACKSONVILLE SOUTH HAMILTON
THINK Theologically | ENGAGE Globally | LIVE Biblically
Ad Pages.indd 7
11/15/10 10:36 PM
Dispatches > News
DON’T ASK
Honored
Graphic warnings In case smokers aren’t convinced that cigarettes carry serious health risks, the government has a new plan: Put a picture of a corpse with a toe tag on cigarette packaging that reads: “Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.” That’s one of warning labels the Food and Drug Administration () is proposing for cigarette packaging. The will choose nine of the labels next June and require cigarette makers to begin using the labels by October . The move comes a year after a new law gave the power to regulate tobacco products. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, said the labels would spur smokers to quit and discourage new smokers from beginning the habit. The graphic images include a man blowing smoke out of a hole in his throat and a corpse with his chest sewn shut, presumably after an autopsy. Several tobacco companies are protesting the labels in a federal court.
D-8.indd 8
WORLD
DON’T TELL Opponents of the military’s long-standing ban on homosexuals openly serving in the armed forces have jumped on a leak of a yearlong Pentagon study, not due until Dec. , which suggests that the risks of overturning the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy would be isolated and minimal. The report’s authors apparently will argue that objections to openly gay service members will abate as troops live and serve with them. But missing in that assessment is the threat to religious freedom if such a reversal occurs. Already the Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church in America, the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Rabbinical Alliance of America have issued warnings against ending the policy. Chaplains need the endorsement of their sponsoring denominations to serve, and, if those are withdrawn, the military will begin to process out those chaplains. Two days after the leak, the Supreme Court issued an order on Nov. that allowed the continued enforcement of while the Justice Department appeals a lower court ruling that found the policy unconstitutional.
GI U NTA: J. SCOTT APPLEWH ITE/AP • CIGARETTES: I LLUSTR ATION BY FDA VIA GETT Y I MAGES • MCC AI N: ADAM COUSK A/NOH8 C AM PAIGN/AP CREDIT
A -year-old Army staff sergeant on Nov. became the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since . President Obama awarded the nation’s highest medal of valor to Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, , of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In when Taliban fighters unleashed a barrage of - and rocketpropelled grenades from two sides at his unit, Giunta ran forward, entering enemy areas alone to return fire and single-handedly to rescue one wounded U.S. soldier who was being dragged away by the enemy. He killed one Taliban fighter and wounded another. Although his friend died, Giunta’s quick actions, according to Defense Department officials, helped his unit fight off the attack without suffering more casualties. “It is a great thing,” said Giunta, who was shot twice in the attack, of the award. “But it is a great thing that has come at a personal loss to myself and so many other families.”
Cindy McCain drew accolades and then scorn from homosexual activists after appearing in an ad against bullying gay teens. In a celebrity shot for the No H8 Campaign, McCain said, “Our political and religious leaders tell youth that they have no future. . . . They can’t serve our country openly.” She goes on, “Our government treats the community like second-class citizens.” Gay-rights campaigners praised McCain for standing against her husband, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is leading a filibuster against repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy— until Cindy McCain explained that she supports her husband’s stand on the repeal. Huh?
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 4:23 PM
YOU
still possess the abilities that
WERE
essential for learning your first language, abilities
BORN
READY of your brain’s amazing capacity to be naturally
for language learning.
Introducing NEW Version 4 INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE
LIVE COACHING
.
ONLINE GAMES, CHATS, AND ACTIVITIES
The Gift That SAVE UP TO $150 1 $40 OFF Speaks Volumes. Level Level 1, 2, & 3 $100 OFF Level 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5
$150 OFF
YOUR PRICE
$249 $579 $749
$209 $479 $599
SIX MONTH, NO-RISK, MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE*
OUR PROVEN SOLUTION. ENRICHED. Get the new Rosetta Stone. (877) 396-3054
RosettaStone.com/wms120
†Special Promotional Offer available from Nov. 23, 2010 to Jan. 04, 2011. ©2010 Rosetta Stone Ltd. All rights reserved. Offer applies to Rosetta Stone Version 4 TOTALe™ CD-ROM products purchased directly from Rosetta Stone; offer does not apply to any additional subscriptions or subscription renewals and cannot be combined with any other offer. Prices subject to change without notice. Certain product components require online access and are offered on a subscription basis for a specified term. †Special Promotional Offer period runs from November 23, 2010 to January 04, 2011; at other times, purchasers receive a 10% discount off the purchase price through March 31, 2011 while quantities last. *Six-Month No-Risk Money Back Guarantee is limited to product purchases made directly from Rosetta Stone and does not include return shipping. Guarantee does not apply to any online subscriptions purchased separately from the CD-ROM product or subscription renewal.
Ad Pages.indd 9
11/15/10 10:37 PM
Dispatches > News
Convicted After two and a half years of investigation, the House Ethics Committee convicted Rep. Charlie Rangel,, D-N.Y., on of counts of ethics violations, including leaving income and holdings unreported on his tax documents. The conviction won’t result in much penalty for the -year-old lawmaker, who already lost his chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. But House ethics hearings are rare—the last one was in .
Boehner day
TEST CASE
In a test for the Obama administration’s detainee policy, the first civilian trial for a Guantanamo detainee concluded Nov. 17 with the federal jury acquitting the defendant, Ahmed Ghailani, of all but one of 285 charges. Ghailani, a Tanzanian charged for his role in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, will serve a minimum of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property.
D-10.indd 10
WORLD
resolution is another way to subjugate non-Muslims
The first woman to be sentenced to die under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law said she was never asked or allowed to give a statement in her defense. Asia Noreen, and a mother of five, spoke to Compass Direct News at Sheikhupura District Jail, following the Nov. verdict. “How can an innocent person be accused, have a case in court . . . and then be given the death sentence, without even once taking into consideration what he or she has to say?” Asia (alternatively spelled Aaysa) Noreen was arrested on June , , and accused of blaspheming Muhammad and defaming Islam. She says the charges began over a dispute in her village about water running from her home, and that over the years villagers have harassed her about being a Christian. Controversial blasphemy laws could reap more protection if a resolution is passed. Proposed by Islamic nations that make up the (Organization of the Islamic Conference), the “defamation of religions” resolution is due to come before the General Assembly in December. Among supportPERSECUTED: Noreen’s ers of the resolution are U.S. allies Iraq, daughters with a photo Afghanistan, and Pakistan. of their mother. The resolution, introduced yearly since under the guise of protecting religious speech, would actually make it a crime to “defame” or “vilify” other religions—offering a blanket of protection over Islamic blasphemy and apostasy laws. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the latest rendition of the defamation resolution on Nov. in Washington: “Some people propose that to protect religious freedom, we must ban speech that is critical or offensive,” she said. “We do not agree. . . . Attempts to stifle them or drive them underground, even when it is in the name of and with the intention of protecting society, have the opposite effect.” The outcome of the vote will be nonbinding, and largely symbolic, but will embolden countries like Pakistan to keep blasphemy laws on the books. Lindsay Vessey, advocacy director for Open Doors USA, told me the Obama administration “has been consistently strong” in its opposition to the ban and is “lobbying members hard” to vote against it.
PAKISTAN I: ADREES L ATI F/REUTERS/L AN DOV • R ANGEL: BI LL CL ARK/ROLL C ALL/GETT Y I MAGES • GHAI L CREDIT AN I: AP
Newly empowered House Republicans unanimously voted for current Minority Leader John Boehner to be the next Speaker of the House on Nov. . Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., will serve as Majority Leader. Meanwhile current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi easily won the post of Minority Leader, beating out her Blue Dog challenger, Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who garnered votes to Pelosi’s . With half the Blue Dog Democrats not returning to the next Congress, Shuler’s backers included more liberal members, reflecting discontent within the Democratic caucus.
Free speech farce
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 6:01 PM
TASTE OF FREEDOM
HAITI: EM I LIO M ORENAT TI/AP • DO L AN : SETH WEN IG/AP • SU U K YI: AFP/GET T Y I MAGES
Pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi walked free on Nov. after seven years of house arrest by Myanmar’s ruling military regime. Suu Kyi, , greeted thousands of jubilant supporters and vowed to press for freedoms in a country notorious for oppression and humanrights abuses. The government of Myanmar—also known as Burma— has confined the Nobel Peace Prize winner for of the last years. But freedom brings challenges: The opposition leader must work with a slate of new opposition groups, including some willing to compromise with government officials. Suu Kyi’s release came days after Myanmar’s ruling party claimed victory in the country’s first elections in years. Human-rights groups criticized the results, saying the elections weren’t fair. Post-election violence could plague Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, including Christians. The military regime has long harassed and abused minorities to retain control of the country. A Human Rights Watch report last year said soldiers inflicted forced labor and persecution on Christians, particularly in the Chin state. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported a leaked government memo in with a telling title: “Program to Destroy the Christian religion in Burma.”
Who’s to blame? Violence erupted in Haiti, as cholera-stricken communities blamed workers for the waterborne disease that has killed more than , victims. Rumors swirled that a group of peacekeepers from Nepal brought the cholera strain to the island nation, but officials said the workers weren’t responsible for the outbreak. At least one protester died in violent clashes with peacekeepers. STRICKEN: A mourner at The epidemic that began in northern Haiti spread to Portthe burial of a -year-old au-Prince. By mid-November, the Ministry of Health said cholera victim on Nov. . cholera victims had died in the capital city, with another hospitalized. Officials reported more than , victims hospitalized nationwide. Aid workers expect the outbreak to grow worse in coming months, and they say as many as , Haitians may contract the disease. Meanwhile, officials said tension over the country’s Nov. presidential elections may have contributed to the riots in northern Haiti. “We are facing the consequences of a cholera epidemic and in two weeks the elections, so the population is scared,” said spokesman Vincenzo Pugliese. “It’s a volatile situation.”
Catholic leadership Breaking with tradition, U.S. Catholic bishops elected New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as their next president, choosing an assertive and more conservative leader over the frontrunner, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz. In a third and final round of voting on Nov. , Kicanas, who has been vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, lost to . It was the first time since the s that a sitting vice president was on the ballot and lost. Kicanas received criticism over handling of the molestation case involving a priest, now in jail, and more than a dozen boys.
OKLAHOMA BAN A federal judge has temporarily blocked Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment banning Shariah law. The amendment, passed with percent of the vote, forbids Oklahoma’s courts from looking to the “legal precepts of other nations or cultures,” specifically international law or Shariah, also known as Islamic law. Muneer Awad, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma, sued, claiming it turned the state constitution into an “enduring condemnation” of his faith. Joseph Thai, a professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law, said the amendment could also bar judges from citing the Ten Commandments as a form of international law. Charles Haynes, senior scholar with the First Amendment Center, said because of broad terms like “international law,” it’s difficult to determine what the amendment’s ripple effects might be. DECEMBER 4, 2010
D-11.indd 11
WORLD
11/18/10 5:43 PM
Dispatches > News
RENTAL AGREEMENT
Chalk up an early victory for Tea Party influence in Congress: Even though the new Congress won’t be seated until January, current Washington lawmakers are tipping their hat to the more conservative climate. On the first day of the lame duck session, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced his support of a ban on earmarks. This marks a policy reversal for the long-serving lawmaker who has made a career out of sending federal pork home to Kentucky. On the Senate floor Nov. , not long after the body had been gaveled into session, McConnell said: “There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.” McConnell made no apologies for the projects he has supported in his state but made clear that lawmakers may have listened to voter anger delivered on Nov. .
Cost of peace How generous is the next Congress? That could determine the course of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Nov. he would support a freeze on housing construction, a major source of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but it’s contingent on, among other things, President Barack Obama asking for, and Congress approving, the sale to Israel of next-generation Stealth fighters. If it goes through, Israel could halt all building in the West Bank and coordinate plans for East Jerusalem construction with the United States for a period of three months.
Disaster and delivery Grassroots groups launched heroic efforts to aid victims of an Oct. tsunami that devastated the remote Mentawai Islands of Indonesia. The -based Barnabas Fund said church groups on nearby West Sumatra loaded boats with supplies to make the treacherous, -mile sea crossing to the predominantly Christian islands. A .-magnitude earthquake triggered the tsunami, killing more than residents and leaving some , villagers homeless. Government aid arrived nearly a week after the tsunami struck, leaving early relief efforts to Christian groups and other aid agencies. Relief work was already taxed before the tsunami: The ongoing erupting volcano at Indonesia’s Mount Merapi has displaced nearly , evacuees from their homes.
D-12.indd 12
WORLD
MCCON N ELL: ALEX BR AN DON/AP • STEALTH FIGHTERS: LOCKH EED MARTI N • N ETANYAH U: J I M HOLL AN DER/AP • TSU NAM I: BAY ISMOYO/AFP/GETT Y ICREDIT MAGES
Message sent
The Islamic Saudi Academy near Washington, D.C., has gained a new oneyear lease from Fairfax County even while its academic accreditation is in question. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools () reported unsatisfactory results in five of seven core standards, and the private school has been a subject of controversy because its textbooks, which the Saudi government provides, in the past advocated killing nonMuslims and those who leave Islam. School valedictorian of the class of 1999, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush. plans to visit the school in spring 2011, when its concerns must be addressed for the school to continue to be accredited—and the county to continue pulling $2.6 million a year in rent for the property.
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 4:59 PM
SAVE
50%
[Our kids] LOVE them! Even my husband and I have learned things we didn’t know about creation! What an incredible series! —Stacey S.
A
dventure radio drama is back, and with an exciting creation message. Introducing Jonathan Park: The Voyage Beyond! Album #7 in the popular Jonathan Park radio drama, The Voyage Beyond takes Jonathan and the Creation Response Team on an incredible journey deep beneath the ocean waves and up to outer space as they discover the mysteries of God’s creation in this action-packed audio adventure. Featuring professional actors and fully-dramatized sound effects—just like the radio dramas of old— Jonathan Park combines adventure-filled stories with a biblical understanding of science, debunking evolutionism and giving families a deeper love for the wonders of God’s creation.
SPECIAL OFFER: SAVE 50% For a limited time, save 50% on the complete 7-album Jonathan Park Creation Audio Library when you visit www.visionforum.com/jpark7 and enter coupon code JPARK7 during checkout. Enjoy all seven exciting Jonathan Park albums for the special set price of just $87.50!
SAVE 50%
COUPON CODE: JPARK7 www.visionforum.com/jpark7 Each Jonathan Park album contains twelve 26-minute episodes on four CDs. Special offer ends December 15, 2010, and may only be redeemed online.
www.visionforum.com 4719 Blanco Rd. San Antonio, Texas 78212 1-866-440-0022 Ad Pages.indd 13
11/15/10 10:38 PM
Dispatches > Human Race Caught
China barred two of its prominent lawyers from attending an international law conference in London because officials said their departure posed a threat to national security. Mo Shaoping and He Weifang said they believe the detainment is a ploy to make sure the men do not attend December’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony where jailed humanrights activist Liu Xiaobo will become the first Chinese recipient of a Nobel prize. In recent weeks, the Chinese government has increased surveillance and detained other activists to prevent them from traveling to the Oslo ceremony. Liu, 54, is serving 11 years in prison for advocating for human rights and democratic reforms.
Six hundred University of Central Florida seniors had to retake a midterm exam after their professor, Richard Quinn, discovered a third of them had allegedly cheated by viewing copies of the test in advance. In a videotaped lecture, Quinn berated the class and offered the unnamed cheaters two options: Stay mum and risk expulsion or come clean and take an ethics course. “If they’re going to learn one thing coming out of university,” Quinn said, “they’re going to learn dignity and honor and the value of ethics and honesty.”
Expanding A month after a new Nebraska law took effect banning abortions past the 20th week of pregnancy, Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart announced he will expand his late-term abortion centers to Iowa, Indiana, and Maryland. “The laws are more favorable in these other jurisdictions, and we’re going to do the maximum the law allows,” Carhart told The Washington Post. Carhart also said he plans to challenge the Nebraska law.
14
Died
reinstated
Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot Benjamin Uskert (below) died Nov. 7 in a swimming accident at an Indonesian beach. Uskert, 30, was overcome by the current while attempting to rescue two teenagers who had been swept away from the shore. One of the teenagers also drowned.
Liberal MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann returned to work Nov. 9 after the cable news network gave him a two-show suspension for violating a company policy that bans journalists from making campaign contributions without receiving prior approval. Olbermann, who hosts Countdown and anchored MSNBC’s election night coverage, gave a total of $7,200 to three Democratic politicians.
DEPARTING Gentry Collins, political director of the Republican National Commit tee, resigned his post on Nov. 16, offering a scathing assessment of Michael Steele’s two years as GOP chairman. In a five-page letter informing Steele and the RNC’s executive committee of his resignation, Collins argued that the committee missed a
istoric opportunity to make h the 2010 election an even bigger victory for Republicans and was not in a financial position to impact the 2012 campaign. “The RNC,” wrote Collins, “allowed its major donor base to wither.”
Sought Authorities are hunting for a man they say created a phony veterans charity and bilked donors out of as much as $100 million before disappearing with the funds. Under the stolen identity of “Bobby Thompson,” the suspect reportedly used some of the money to make sizeable campaign contributions that gained him access to top Republican politicians. Officials have apprehended Thompson’s accomplice, Blanca Contreras, who has pleaded not guilty to charges related to her involvement with the fraudulent U.S. Navy Veterans Association. A
MO: PETER PARKS/AFP/Gett y I mages • uskert: Tripp Fly th e • olberman n: Virgi n ia Sh erwood/MSNBC/AP • COLLI NS: IOWA STATE UN IVERSIT CREDIT Y
Barred
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
HumanRace.indd 14
11/18/10 12:53 PM
Q.
Q.
Who are winning Muslims to Christ in Mindanao and planting churches among unreached tribes and nations on other islands of the Philippines?
Who provides financial support for indigenous evangelistic missions in the Philippines?
A.
Q. How is Christian Aid financed? A. Christian Aid is supported entirely by freewill gifts and offerings from Biblebelieving, missionary-minded Christians, churches and organizations. Q. Do indigenous missions in other countries also need our financial help? A. Christian Aid is in communication with more than 4000 indigenous missions, some based in almost every unevangelized country on earth. They have over 200,000 missionaries in need of support. All Christians who believe in Christ’s “Great Commission” are invited to join hands with Christian Aid in finding help for thousands of native missionaries who are now out on the fields of the world with no promise of regular financial support.
Ad Pages.indd 15
A.
Native missionaries trained and sent out by indigenous evangelistic ministries.
Since 1953 Christian Aid Mission has provided financial help for scores of indigenous missions working on Mindanao and other Philippine islands. Support is now being sent to 72 ministries that deploy over 1700 missionaries. For more than 50 years Christian Aid has been sending financial help to indigenous evangelistic ministries based in unevangelized countries. More than 750 ministries are now being assisted in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. They deploy over 80,000 native missionaries who are spreading the gospel of Christ among unreached people within more than 3000 different tribes and nations. Most are in countries where Americans are not allowed to go as missionaries.
Christian Aid . . . because we love the brethren.
Christian Aid Mission P. O. Box 9037 Charlottesville, VA 22906 434-977-5650 www.christianaid.org
When you contact Christian Aid, ask for a free copy of Dr. Bob Finley’s 285 page book, RefORMAtiOn in fOReiGn MiSSiOnS. 58:108W
11/15/10 10:38 PM
German Finance Minister WOLFGANG SCHAUBLE on U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s critique of Germany’s trade surplus.
“The old stigmas are the new realities. Now, people don’t have a problem saying, ‘I can’t afford it.’ It’s a sign of strength.” Retail consultant EMANUEL WEINTRAUB on the recent trend of middle-class Americans buying store brands, shopping at thrift stores, or using layaway instead of credit.
“Let me help you pack.” New Jersey Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE, at a town hall meeting, on comments by Parsippany Schools Superintendent Lee Seitz that he may leave New Jersey if the state enacts the governor’s proposed salary cap. The cap would hold Seitz’s salary at , per year.
WORLD
Quotables.indd 16
“An ill-conceived attempt at humor.” British politician GARETH COMPTON on a Twitter message he posted calling for the stoning of a newspaper columnist. Police arrested Compton.
“I consider myself liberal. . . . But this [welfare] program may be adding to the disintegration of the family.” D.C. Council member and former mayor MARION BARRY, calling for enforce– ment of Washington’s lifetime cap on welfare benefits.
“I can add and subtract pretty well. I don’t have the numbers to be able to win.” U.S. Rep. HEATH SHULER, D-N.C., on his longshot House minority leader race against Nancy Pelosi.
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 4:14 PM
CREDIT
“The United States lived on borrowed money for too long. . . . There are many reasons for America’s problems, but they don’t include German export surpluses.”
CHRISTIE: MEL EVANS/AP • SCHAUBLE: SIPA/AP • SHOP: MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR/GETTY IMAGES • COMPTON: INTERNET IMAGE • BARRY: ANDREW HARNIK/THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER/AP CREDIT • SHULER: BILL CLARK/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
Dispatches > Quotables
CREDIT
CHRISTIE: MEL EVANS/AP • SCHAUBLE: SIPA/AP • SHOP: MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR/GETTY IMAGES • COMPTON: INTERNET IMAGE • BARRY: ANDREW HARNIK/THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER/AP CREDIT • SHULER: BILL CLARK/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
11/18/10 4:15 PM
Quotables.indd 17
Dispatches > Quick Takes
Science of slurp Ever wonder why cats lap quietly and dogs slurp loudly? Maybe not, but an MIT biophysicist did, and his discovery landed in the latest issue of the journal Science. Cats, Dr. Roman Stocker found, have tongues that curl backwards, not forwards. As the tongue darts down toward the bowl, it touches the surface of the liquid rather than penetrating it, the fluid sticks to the tongue, and the cat drawing the tongue up very rapidly creates a liquid column. Dogs scoop their liquid by creating a ladle with their tongues. After capturing his own cat Cutta Cutta on slow-motion photography, Stocker concluded: “I would say cats know more about fluid mechanics than dogs.”
Coconut caution When the president of the United States comes visiting, you can never be too cautious. How cautious were officials in Mumbai? They cut down all coconuts from the coconut trees surrounding the city’s Ghandi museum ahead of President Obama’s early November visit. Every year people are injured or killed from being hit by falling coconuts. “We told the authorities to remove the dry coconuts from trees near the building,” a government spokesman told the BBC. “Why take a chance?”
18
Horse power A horse is a horse. But is it a weapon? Administrators at Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School in Hamilton, Mass., say it is. In late October, senior Dan DePaolis dressed as a knight and rode his family’s horse to school for the school’s spirit week. DePaolis’ father, Ron, said the horse was calm and that his son only walked the horse around school grounds for three minutes before an associate principal came out and suspended DePaolis on the spot. “They told my son it’s the equivalent of bringing in a loaded firearm to school,” the father told the Boston Globe. The 17-year-old student was suspended for one day and prescribed two hours of community service for his horsing around.
c at: Ri kki Van C am p/Th e Dai ly M essen ger/ap • Anti lia: zu ma/n ewsco m • Am ban i: R a jan ish K ak ade/AP • Depaolis: han dout • o bama CREDIT s: ap
How much house is too much? Three stories? Four? How about 27? That’s the number of floors in the new abode of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. Construction on the Indian business tycoon’s new residence began in 2007 and eventually cost between $500 million and $700 million to build. Though 27 stories, the tower is actually 568 feet tall, making it as tall as a normal 60-floor office tower. The residence tower, named Antilia, begins with a six-floor parking garage with enough space for 160 vehicles. Nine elevators and three helipads will deliver Ambani, his family, and guests to the more than 60,000 square feet of living space.
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
QuickTakes.indd 18
11/18/10 11:55 AM
bosto n : Ted Fitzger ald/bosto n h er ald • byerly: COU RTNEY PERRY/Dall a s N ews • paper ai rpl an e: Lester Hai n es • cli n e: Regi na H . Boon e/Detro it Free Press/ap CREDIT
He needs his space?
Days after Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s famous Rumble in the Jungle bout in , Walter Byerly started running. Today, more than , days later, the -year-old Byerly is still running, having run at least a mile every single day for the past years. Although Byerly’s pace has slowed to just minutes per mile, it just gives the octogenarian more time to pray for his friends (what he does to pass the time). Amazingly, the Dallas man’s streak is only good enough for th place in the United States for consecutive daily mile runs. According to the U.S. Streak Running Association, Mark Covert, a coach from Lancaster, Calif., holds the active national record having logged at least a mile a day since July . But Byerly is no slouch. At , he’s the oldest person on the organization’s streak list.
C AT: RI KKI VAN C AM P/TH E DAI LY M ESSEN GER/AP • ANTI LIA: ZU MA/N EWSCO M • AM BAN I: R A JAN ISH K AK ADE/AP • DePAOLIS: HAN DOUT • O BAMA CREDIT S: AP
BOSTO N : TED FITZGER ALD/BOSTO N H ER ALD • BYERLY: COU RTN EY PERRY/DALL AS N EWS • PAPER AI RPL AN E: LESTER HAI N ES • CLI N E: REGI NA H . BOON E/DETRO IT FREE PRESS/AP CREDIT
Finally after years, the Boston Public Library has its John Stuart Mill autobiography back. An anonymous man returned two books to the library by mail after having checked them out in . The package, containing a book by Henry David Thoreau and another by the th-century British political theorist, also contained a letter by the forgetful library user: “While going through the books in my library, I came across these two books that don’t belong to me, they belong to you. I must have taken them out when I was a college student in Boston and put them among my other books, and never realized that I failed to return them.” With a policy of a -cents-per-day fine for BETTER LATE: late books, the return could have Boston Public cost the man ,. However, an Library spokeswoman official with the library said they’ll Gina Perille drop the fine—they’re just happy to with the books have their books back. and the letter.
His name won’t be reported in the press, but a -year-old Australian woman will never forget him. Elyse Frankcom was swimming with dolphins off the coast of western Australia on Oct. when a shark, believed to be a Great White, attacked the young woman, biting her on her legs. That’s when an anonymous man jumped into action, grabbing the large shark by its tail. The bold move caused the surprised shark to let go of Frankcom, who then began to drown. The man then dove, brought her to the surface, and got her on board their boat. After six hours of surgery, Frankcom emerged in good spirits. The unidentified man refused to speak with journalists.
What does it take to build your own spaceship? Not much, it turns out. British space enthusiasts Steve Daniels, John Oates, and Lester Haines created a paper airplane, used a helium balloon to launch it miles into the atmosphere, and managed to capture images of the planet with a small camera on board. The balloon and the plane, which had a three-foot wingspan, took minutes to make the climb, and the trio used a system to track the plane’s progress. When the balloon burst, the plane glided back to the earth. “We decided to launch a paper plane because nobody has done that before,” Daniels told the Daily Mail. “It seems really silly but it was brilliant fun.”
Sometimes a president’s words can be prophetic—or, in the case of a note written by President Obama to a financially downtrodden woman, self-prophetic. On Jan. , an aide to the president brought in a letter written to him by Jennifer Cline of Monroe, Mich. In the letter, the -year-old explained to the president, “I lost my job, my health benefits and my self-worth in a matter of five days.” Obama replied to the letter by hand, writing, among other things, that “things will keep getting better.” Months later, they did. The woman recently sold the handwritten note to an autograph dealer for ,—money she spent to help her and her husband buy a new house. DECEMBER 4, 2010
QuickTakes.indd 19
WORLD
11/18/10 11:55 AM
Janie B. Cheaney
MISFIRING SPARK A focus on self-esteem and a mistaken view of female strength the Girl Activists
N
WORLD
Cheaney.indd 20
DECEMBER 4, 2010
ALI DOUGL A SS FO R WO RLD
, M C was a bouncy ’tweener pop star with an appealing layer of baby fat. Now she strikes sultry poses in bad music videos. When I was a kid, thongs were another name for flip-flops; now they peek out over the low waistbands of sixth-graders. Once, the Burger King was employed to sell Burger King; now (online, at least) it’s the Shower Babe. For years, Christians have allied with classical feminists regarding the use of women as sex objects—without much progress, it seems. Now a new generation of feminists, who like to call themselves Girl Activists, is giving it a try. Girl Activism has two meanings: first, that it reaches out to girls under , and second, that it’s composed of young women near the same age. Shelby Knox, sometimes billed as “the new Gloria Steinem,” is a leader in the movement. Now , Shelby vaulted to unexpected fame at the age of , when she organized a protest against abstinence-only education in Lubbock, Texas. A self-described “good Baptist girl” at the time, she became the subject of a documentary called The Education of Shelby Knox, featured at the Sundance Film Festival and shown on . Now a New Yorker, Shelby’s latest project is (Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge), taking aim at media exploitation of women and girls. Everybody knows that sex sells, but where do we draw the line, and how do we police that line? Shelby Knox and friends focus their efforts on two fronts. First, female self-image and how girls need better role models: “smart, funny, and strong” is the ideal formula. Actually though, novelists for the young-adult market have been serving up smart, funny, and strong heroines for some time, culminating in Katniss Everdeen of the popular Hunger Games trilogy (movie forthcoming). The other remedy is better networking among women, using social media as well as old-fashioned girl time to encourage and affirm each other. Sounds good. Except for the intrusion of reality. Role models only work if the role can be modeled. Fictional girl-superheroes are just that: fictional. When feminists speak
of female strength, they often (subconsciously) pattern it on male strength, which is aggressive, bold, and risk-taking. Female strength is not inferior, but it is different: persevering, relational, risk-managing. Feminists like to argue that these standards are cultural, but they are more likely inborn. A kick-butt role model like Katniss Everdeen is as unrealistic as Barbie, and may frustrate more than it inspires. When left alone, young ladies gravitate more naturally to romantic Bella Swan in the wildly popular Twilight series. As for bonding, haven’t women always bonded? We come together easily over family, food, and friendship; but the Girl Activists are more interested in coming together to fight exploitation. The problem is, if we focus too much on the battle outside, it may keep us from addressing the conflict within. At its most basic level, sex is the source of women’s power. Even little girls instinctively know this. The sin nature that perverts all good things has twisted our natural desire for intimacy and made it a tool for getting what we want. No matter that we are victims as well as manipulators; the root of the problem is not low self-esteem so much as that power-grabbing original sin. Finally, by focusing almost entirely on women, doesn’t have much to say about men. Early this month I attended a college production of Pride and Prejudice, taking me back to a social milieu far removed from the Burger King Shower Babe (or the Old Spice Guy, for that matter). The conventions of that era set standards for courtship that most of us would find suffocating—and yet Jane Austen–style romance has never been so popular. Might it be that applying rules to sex, and channeling it into marriage, is actually the best (though not perfect) way to healthy malefemale relationships? And that is trying to remedy a serious problem without really understanding it? A Email: jcheaney@worldmag.com
11/15/10 10:51 PM
In the landmark sophistication of New York City’s famed Empire State Building stands The King’s College; an elite, selective college committed to equipping young men and women to lead the great institutions of the world. Through a unique, biblically-based curriculum focused on politics, philosophy, economics and business management, students prepare for careers in government, commerce, law, media, education, civil society, the arts and the church – an education of faith and consequence in the heart of New York City. www.tkc.edu • 1.888.969.7200
Ad Pages.indd 21
11/15/10 10:39 PM
What the world needs now is...
You. The world can sometimes appear to be pretty empty. Perhaps it’s because the world desperately needs what only you have to offer. Perhaps the world simply needs an irreplaceable, indispensable you. The you who looks at the world and asks: why is it like this? What’s in me that can make it better – rather than just “what’s in it for me?” We’re Grove City College. We have a reputation as one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the country – and yet we’re one of the most affordable. Our graduates succeed not just in their careers, but at life. God gave you a mind for higher things. We’ll help you learn to use it well. And that is the first step to changing the world.
Grove City College • 100 Campus Drive • Grove City, PA 16127
724.458.2100 • www.gcc.edu/world
world_mag_worldview_8x10.5_fc.indd 1 Ad Pages.indd 22
11/4/10 1:53 PM 11/15/10 10:39 PM
Reviews MOVIES&TV BOOKS Q&A MUSIC MOVIES&
Far from Hogwarts MOVIE: Deathly Hallows presents a more adult Harry Potter, but a glaring departure from the novel
JA AP BU ITEN DIJ K/WARN ER BROS.
BY MEGAN BASHAM
>>
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second book in J.K. Rowling’s staggeringly successful fantasy series, the wise and gentle Professor Dumbledore counsels the young wizard that “it is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Unfortunately, while the penultimate film in the franchise follows the map Rowling laid out in print almost mile for mile, it robs Harry of the moral choice that demonstrates the heart of the story. In very few cases is there any value in comparing a book-based movie to its source material. Rare is the film that can come close to equaling a novel’s character depth and plot development, so the only fair thing is to approach a movie on its own terms. As pure bigscreen entertainment, it’s hard to argue against Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.
Email: mbasham@worldmag.com
MovieReviews.indd 23
We catch up with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) in an environment very different from that of the previous six films. There’s no more doubt over Harry’s destiny—he is indeed “the chosen one” if for no other reason than because his murdered mentor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) designated him so. His duty to destroy Voldemort’s horcruxes—six enchanted objects that contain bits of the Dark Lord’s soul and protect him from death—takes Harry far from the comforting walls of Hogwarts. Director David Yates deals with this change of tone skillfully. Though Harry and his friends occasionally delve back into the wizarding world, they spend most of their time wandering barren countrysides, rocky sea cliffs, and anonymous city streets. Visually, the effect is eerie and mournful. DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/18/10 12:08 PM
Reviews > Movies & TV
WORLD
MovieReviews.indd 24
DECEMBER 4, 2010
MOVIE
Unstoppable by Michael Leaser Many popular directors have a signature style. Tony Scott’s includes shaky cams, sharp cuts, shots that move in and out of focus, and a raw, grainy look. His latest film, Unstoppable, is no different, and Scott effectively uses this style to build a fast-paced, edgeof-your-seat thrill ride that will leave many viewers happy they jumped on board, though some may leave clutching their stomachs. Scott teams with star Denzel Washington for the fifth time and gets another exceptional performance from one of the few actors who can still command a million contract. Washington portrays -year veteran train engineer Frank who teams up with rookie Will (Chris Pine) for the first time on what starts out as just another day at the yard in Stanton, Pa. Some miles north, a slacker train engineer (Ethan Suplee) jumps off a slow-moving train to make a track switch ahead of him, but the train slips into a higher speed and barrels past the operator before he can make the switch. Thus begins an intense race against the clock to stop the speeding train and its highly flammable cargo before it reaches Stanton. Intermixed with the high-stakes train chase are some touching scenes where Will and Frank relate to each other the trying family circumstances each is experiencing, moments that ground these characters and earn them an even deeper emotional investment from the audience, offsetting somewhat the strong offensive language that earns this film a - rating. Rosario Dawson delivers a standout performance as train dispatcher Connie Hooper, who finds herself sparring with her politically minded superior Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn) over how to stop the train. Lew Temple also impresses with his offbeat, quirky interpretation of train welder Ned Oldham. Tony Scott can make his audience laugh, cry, bite their nails, and vomit, often in the same minute, so take some Dramamine, buckle up, keep your arms and hands inside the car at all times, and, oh yes, enjoy the ride! —Michael Leaser is editor of FilmGrace and an associate of The Clapham Group See all our movie reviews at mag.com/movies
11/18/10 12:08 PM
MORN I NG GLORY: PAR AM OU NT PIC TU RES • TH E KI NG’S SPEECH : SEE SAW FI LMS
>>
UNSTOPPABLE: 20th CENTU RY FOX • HARRY POTTER : JA AP BU ITEN DI J K/WARN ER B ROS.
consider this a spoiler warning. In the novel, Harry struggles mightily with his own obsession over the Deathly Hallows—three legendary items that grant their possessor power over death. They are the logical thing, he thinks, to defeat Lord Voldemort. Discovering that the Dark Lord is after one of them makes Harry even more urgent to track them down. But, as in many biblical tales, logic (or what appears logical) doesn’t trump obedience. As his closest friends remind him, Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry to find hallows and enhance his own strength. He told him to destroy horcruxes and thereby weaken the enemy. It takes a powerful example of self-sacrifice to pierce Harry’s conscience and set him back on the path his headmaster laid out for him. In the film, Harry never makes a choice HOLLOWS VICTORY: Yates directs Grint, Watson, between and Radcliffe on location during the filming. horcruxes and hallows, between submisentertained, Yates is, if anysion and self-will, because thing, a little too devoted to no choice is offered. The Rowling’s vision. While possibility of pursuing covering the first two-thirds something other than of the book, he hits nearly Dumbledore’s orders never every plot point as if ticking presents itself. off items on a grocery list. At So it seems fair to times they fly by too quickly contrast Yates’ version with and rob certain scenes of Rowling’s, because by their dramatic potential. robbing his hero of a choice That’s why it’s all the more Yates also robs his story of strange that he chooses to substance. Amusing and artdrop entirely the text’s ful as it is, his Harry Potter is driving moral narrative. a lot of magic and mayhem Is it a spoiler to discuss signifying nothing. A what isn’t in a film? If so, Deathly Hallows is emotionally more grown-up as well. It’s not only frightening elements like dementors, snake attacks, and murder that earn it a - rating, so too does a certain sensual dynamic. When a horcrux exacerbates the fears each of them already possesses, Ron imagines Harry and Hermione locked in a passionate embrace. The scene isn’t particularly explicit (though from the shoulders up, the pair don’t appear to be clothed), but for the first time a new and very adult reason for Ron’s jealousy of Harry is revealed. But while the humor, performances, and action will keep most viewers
MOVIE
Morning Glory by Rebecca Cusey
>>
BOX OFFICE TOP 10 . -,
CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a - scale, with high, from kids-in-mind.com
1̀ 2̀ 3̀ 4̀ 5̀ 6̀ 7̀ 8̀ 9̀ 10
`
S V L
Megamind* PG ........................ Unstoppable* PG-13 .............. Due Date R ................................. Skyline PG-13 ........................... Morning Glory* PG-13 .......... For Colored Girls R................ Red* PG-13................................... Paranormal Activity R... Saw D R ..................................... Jackass D R .............................
*Reviewed by
A sea change has swept through modern journalism, with websites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter crowding out old media. The screenwriters of Morning Glory (rated -) must have missed the roughly million articles on this topic as they wrote this charming but outdated examination of modern journalism, specifically the morning show variety. Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams), a producer fired from her job at a local station, pluckily picks herself up and lands the producer gig at a national morning show. Nobody else wants the job because the female anchor is a hysterical diva, the male anchor is a sexual harasser, and the ratings are in the tank. Armed only with a smile and can-do attitude, Becky cajoles and speechifies the troops into some semblance of morale, pausing only to fire the male anchor. To fill the empty slot, she turns to a news legend, former evening news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford). Although contractually obligated to fill the chair, he considers himself above fashion bits, cooking
MOVIE
by Sam Thielman MORN I NG GLORY: PAR AM OU NT PIC TU RES • TH E KI NG’S SPEECH : SEE SAW FI LMS
UNSTOPPABLE: 20th CENTU RY FOX • HARRY POTTER : JA AP BU ITEN DI J K/WARN ER B ROS.
The King’s Speech >>
I don’t believe you’ve met His Majesty George VI.” It’s a short joke, not even the funniest in what one has to reluctantly call a very funny movie about stuttering, but it perfectly encapsulates The King’s Speech, Tom Hooper’s warm, affecting British period drama. With Colin Firth as a stuttering King George and Geoffrey Rush as His Majesty’s speech teacher Lionel Logue to deliver its best lines, David Seidler’s script crackles with the force of two outsized personalities pitted against each other. Logue, the failed actor and second-class citizen (he’s Australian) is in one corner, and George, the reluctant king who has all of his father’s passion and strength but none of his oratorical skills, is in the other. Though George’s speech defect is heartrending to witness, it’s not
segments, the wacky weather guy, and morning shows in general. A mighty war of wills breaks out between Becky, who perpetually seems about to sing like Little Orphan Annie, and Pomeroy, who is just a green wig short of being Oscar the Grouch. McAdams builds a nice chemistry with Ford, but the film suffers from a disconnection to reality. The viewer might want Becky to succeed, depending on his tolerance for chipper perkiness, but doesn’t much care if the morning show does. The story exists in a world without Facebook and Twitter and only briefly mentions a website at all. It’s the journalism world of the ’s. The producers and writers missed a chance either to make the case for television news or to bid it a fond farewell. To ignore such an obvious elephant in the room seemed odd, even more so as the audience checked its Twitter feed as the credits rolled.
really what the movie is about. (The film is rated -, mostly because George has to swear to overcome his stutter.) Rather than make a sloppy movie about disability, Hooper has crafted a brisk and unsentimental picture about a man who has to take on painful, humiliating responsibilities when his country needs him most: the red dawn of the Second World War. With Neville Chamberlain on one side and George’s feckless brother Edward on the other, all the things that make George less “interesting” than his sibling—his faithfulness to his wife, his joy in fatherhood, his sense of duty—make him both the right man to take up the crown and the most reluctant one. Watching the prickly friendship that blossoms between George and Logue (who supports George but tells him bluntly when he’s wrong), we begin to understand how great leaders can be made, rather than born, and how aware of their own frailties they really must be in order to succeed. DECEMBER 4, 2010
MovieReviews.indd 25
WORLD
11/18/10 12:09 PM
Reviews > Books
Creation accounts Authors tackle the theology and science of origins
>>
WORLD
BooksSpread.indd 26
DECEMBER 4, 2010
yet the apostles (and Jesus!) trusted it, why should we trust them? David Livingstone’s Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins, ) shows that even before Darwin some thought that pre-Adam or nonAdam hominids roamed the earth: Belief in evolution depends more on faith (or faithlessness) than on questionable science. Jim Black’s The Death of Evolution (Zondervan, ) is a quick look at Darwinian myth. Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley’s The Bible, Rocks and Time () lays out the geological evidence for an old earth. The third edition of Phillip E. Johnson’s Darwin on Trial (, ) is the th anniversary edition of the book that started the Intelligent Design movement; it has a new introduction by Michael Behe. Johnson and John Mark Reynolds have a new short book, Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the New Atheism (, ), that thanks atheists Dawkins, Harris, and company for making belief in God an issue again for public debate. Gordon J. Glover’s Beyond the Firmament: Understanding Science and the Theology of Creation (Watertree, ) argues that “God must have
created life by the continuous operation of the laws of nature.” He offers some nifty metaphors, such as “If the universe were a giant game of pool with , balls, and the laws of physics were designed and operated by God alone, shouldn’t He be able to sink every ball on the break without changing the rules during the game?” Glover praises evolution and adds, “You can even put a ‘theistic’ qualifier in front of it if it makes you feel more spiritual.” That nails it. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down: “Theistic evolution” is a sweet term for evangelicals not wanting to wear a scarlet D, but it’s still evolution. Glover acknowledges that “the proposed evolutionary mechanisms can stretch the imagination. . . . If the evolutionists didn’t have such good poker faces, they would probably admit that these theories stretch their minds as well.” And if you want your mind stretched completely out of shape by string theories, multiple universes, and so forth, dive into ShingYung Yau’s The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions (Basic, ) or Marcelo Gleiser’s A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe (Free Press, ). I’m not recommending these, just noting the or more dimensions of reality. A
R A STAN/ISTOCK
E G: Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, edited by William Dembski and Michael Licona (Baker, ), has handy and brief essays that provide useful answers to questions about God’s existence, theodicy, creation and evolution, the reality of Christ and resurrection, biblical inerrancy and pseudo-gospels, and more. God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards (Discovery, ), includes a series of terrific essays by John West, Casey Luskin, David Klinghoffer, and others. Richards himself critiques Francis Collins’ complaint that Intelligent Design “portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan.” Richards replies, “Perhaps He desires a world that is more like a violin than a self-winding watch, an instrument he can play.” And what of those who complain about God’s providence? Klinghoffer writes, “ask God when you meet him.” Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution, by Deborah and Loren Haarsma (Faith Alive, Grand Rapids) summarizes various views but tilts away from classic Reformed understanding and ends up with theistic evolution. The authors ask, “How can our significance depend on whether we share a common ancestor with apes?” The parallel question should be, “How can our significance depend on whether the biblical account of Adam and Eve’s creation in Genesis is accurate?” Answer: If the Bible isn’t trustworthy,
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
11/17/10 4:09 PM
HAN DOUT
BY MARVIN OLASKY
NOTABLE BOOKS Four mysteries > reviewed by
The Case of the Missing Servant Tarquin Hall Vish Puri is a private detective in Delhi, India. He’s a master of disguises and wields his deductive powers in a way that rivals Sherlock Holmes. This is the first in what promises to be a delightful comic series set in modern day India with all its complexities of caste, corruption, rapid growth, and extremes of poverty and wealth. The Hindu Puri’s bread and butter cases are matrimonial ones, usually with parents checking out prospective mates for their children. In this episode Puri deals with a couple of those cases along with the main case—a prominent lawyer accused of raping and murdering a servant girl who has gone missing. Although slightly edgier than Alexander McCall Smith’s No. Ladies Detective Agency series, it is in the same vein. Murder on Lexington Avenue
Victoria Thompson Turn-of-the-century New York City is the setting for a series of “Gaslight” mysteries by Victoria Thompson. She’s not interested in describing in great detail the sounds and smells of the period. Instead she focuses on the relationship between an Irish police detective who is raising a deaf son alone after his wife died in childbirth, and a widowed midwife, daughter of a prominent man, who is raising an orphan. Here they collaborate to solve the murder of an unlikable businessman who has a deaf daughter who hates him, a wife who has had an affair, a business partner who isn’t honest, and several other suspects. Thompson makes the man’s eugenic beliefs and competing ideas about deaf education central to her plot.
A Corpse at St. Andrew’s Chapel Mel Starr The story takes place in , during a period of peace between England and France. When Lord Gilbert is away from his castle, his bailiff Hugh de Singleton must keep order. Master Hugh is also a surgeon, who studied under Tyndale at Oxford and pursued surgery in France. When he isn’t setting a broken bone or doing surgery on a wound, he has to solve the murder of the village Beadle, using very low-tech th-century investigative techniques. As he walks or rides a plodding old warhorse to nearby villages, he muses about human nature and the views of his Oxford mentor. Starr’s mysteries share with Alexander McCall Smith’s an interest in ordinary life and the evil that arises out of sins like greed and gluttony.
R A STAN/ISTOCK
HAN DOUT
City of Veils Zoe Ferraris This novel set in Saudi Arabia centers on two cases, the murder of a young Saudi woman and the disappearance of an American security man. The story’s several main characters—the American wife of the missing man, a secular Muslim detective, an observant Muslim desert guide, and a woman who works alongside men in the coroner’s office—reveal tensions within individuals as they navigate the demands of a rigid culture, and between people who either flaunt or respect the religious laws. Ferraris, who lived in Saudi Arabia, offers a fascinating and nuanced peek into a closed culture. She lifts the veil to show how rules intended to guard against sin actually arouse it. Some bad language. Email: solasky@worldmag.com; see all our reviews at mag.com/books
BooksSpread.indd 27
SPOTLIGHT I could have used a copy of Sandy Coughlin’s The Reluctant Entertainer (Bethany House, ) when I was first married. She explains how bad ideas about hospitality—I don’t know how to cook, I’m too busy, my house isn’t up to par—sap the joy out of it. She counters them with her Ten Commandments of Hospitality, a list that “keeps me grounded in what hospitality is all about, helps me push past fears, and basically gives me a pep talk that says, “I can do this!” The book is part howto and part why-to and contains more than family-tested recipes. Rachel Jankovic has five children under the age of , including a set of -year-old twins. Loving the Little Years (Canon Press, ) is a slender book of short essays that presents an honest and sometimes funny glimpse into her life and the wisdom she’s learned in the trenches.
DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/17/10 4:10 PM
Reviews > Q&A
Server system The strength of capitalism, says writer George Gilder, is that success depends on taking others into account By Marvin Olasky
>> 28
Q&A.indd 28
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
novelist Ayn Rand. Here are edited excerpts of our recent interview. Ayn Rand, in her last ublic speech in 1982, just p before she died, attacked you furiously. What got her goat? Altruism. She thought I was ascribing altruism to capitalism. Altruism in her theory is the foundation of socialism, and she thought capitalism is supported by egoism or by individual
f ulfillment above all. She was blinded in part by her atheism. If you read her books, her characters lead sacrificial lives in order to serve others in many instances. But her objectivist philosophy denies the existence of God, and she found my Christian orientation obnoxious. I said businesses succeed by serving others. Many on the left also equate capitalism with egoism, and for that reason hate
it. Capitalists do not get to f ollow their own dreams, whatever they may be. Academic intellectuals can propagate their ideas whether anyone wants to hear them or not. They can enforce their whims if they join the government—but capitalists cannot succeed without serving others. Profit registers the difference between the value of the output to the customers and the value to the producers. If the
e. pab lo kism icki/ap
George Gilder jumpstarted Ronald Reagan’s supply side revolution with Wealth and Poverty (1981), which put forward not only a practical but a moral argument for capitalism. Over the past two decades Gilder, born in 1939, has similarly pioneered discussions of new technology. His uniting of a Christian ethos with business success garnered a furious reaction from philosopher/
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
11/18/10 12:37 PM
e. pab lo kism icki/ap
capitalist just makes things that he wants, he’s unlikely to triumph. This is offensive to a secular society that believes there can be no ideal greater than personal pleasure and personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment is good, financial fulfillment is evil? A lot of people think that capitalism can sometimes be productive, but it also has a moral cost. Profit means that you succumbed to greed. But those who look out for No. 1 are often not investing. They’re buying gold or espousing theories of how to invest in a period of catastrophe or how to benefit from the coming great depression. These guys are really anti-entrepreneurial. Their vision does not lead to bold investment in the face of obstacles. It doesn’t lead to creative enterprise. It leads to a retreat from the marketplace. Capitalists have to operate in economies that are full of predatory governments and vicious people. They have to learn how to prevail over these obstacles—that is what entrepreneurs do. We need a different definition of investing . . . Investors succeed by giving. This is what the investment process is. You give before you get a return; you are not guaranteed a return. Your success is completely dependent on how other people respond to the product you offer. One of the great delusions of economics is that supply and demand are equally balanced sides of economic transactions. No: What matters in economics is supply. Supply creates its own demand. Demand is like gravity. It exists everywhere: People demand things. But they can only receive products if they offer productive services. Production, innovation, invention, enterprise, service: Those make possible economic growth and advancement.
Why does the left associate self-interest with capitalism rather than socialism? Selfinterest is an all-purpose agency. To say it drives capitalism: How does that distinguish capitalism from any other system? Self-interest certainly could be said to drive socialism as well, because what a greedy, self-interested person wants is guaranteed returns. He thinks he is entitled. He seeks guarantees from the government. What is more greedy than a public-service union controlling the government and getting 70 percent greater salaries and benefits than comparable private-sector workers because of their political clout? Entrepreneurs don’t have guarantees. They are willing to rise and fall on the basis of what other people think of their work. But entrepreneurs still have self-interest—didn’t Adam Smith write, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” It is true that you should take care of yourself. It is an important obligation of human life and of Christian life. Ultimately you are clearly dependent on God, but part of that dependence means taking care of yourself, well enough that you can be a worthy proponent and servant of the needs of others. Christians shouldn’t become a burden on the rest of society. I think Christians are not a burden: They are a source of the bounties that the rest of society enjoys. I’ve seen your connecting of profit and entropy, the term from thermodynamics that can be used more broadly as a measure of disorder, change, innovation . . . Creativity is what matters in economics. It is what makes economies grow. The interest rate is the predictable yield, but profit is the unexpected,
ariable yield from an investv ment. In other words, profit is entropy in economics. Paul Romer, the leading advocate of entrepreneurial economics, sees an entrepreneur as a reassembler of chemical elements, or a developer of new combinations of atoms. Other theorists describe the entrepreneur as an opportunity
“Creativity is what matters in economics. It is what makes economies grow.” scout. He is looking for opportunities in the material environment, or looking for demand configuration. Entrepreneurs increase entropy? Entrepreneurs create new things, and whether they succeed or not is dependent on the willingness of other producers to exchange their production for the output of the entrepreneurs. If they produce high-entropy creations, they get a big response. The customers are surprised by the new iPod or whatever it is and are willing to exchange the fruits of their own production for the production of the entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs can best increase productive entropy when they know what to expect from government policy? In my information theory terms, you need a lowentropy carrier—no surprises in the carrier—to bear highentropy information. The carrier is the rules, the rules of the road, the laws. If laws are multiplying and changing all the time, that stifles the kind of creative
activity that can overcome our U.S. debt predicament. We grow ourselves out of debt? If you have a positive, proenterprise government and a solid, predictable currency—a low-entropy carrier—the value of American assets will increase immensely and greatly reduce the burden of our current debts. The 1970s were just as bad as things are now, and change in policy completely turned it around. It can happen again today. The Tea Party people are the spearhead of that transformation. They’ve surprised some mainstream journalists . . . Entropy measures the degree of surprisal in a communication: How much is unexpected, surprising? If I give a speech and if everything I say you knew already, no information has been transmitted. It’s a zero entropy communication. Politicians seem so boring because they poll their audiences before they speak, and thus manage to achieve totally boring zero entropy communication: No surprise. How does your understanding of creativity lead you into the critique of Darwinian materialism that you’ve been doing? The essence of Darwinian thought is that at the beginning is matter, and everything else that happens derives from a random selection among random mutations in material systems. Darwinian theory is just another materialist theory. There are tons of them—Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism (based on the pleasure principle which is basically a materialist concept). All these theories have collapsed in the 21st century. Creation is a fact. The entire universe is oriented to produce creative human beings in the image of their Creator. His presence pervades it. All of the universe is perfectly designed, in some sense, to support human minds. A D ECEMBE R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
Q&A.indd 29
29
11/18/10 12:37 PM
Reviews > Music
Dangerous king
Album succeeds in updating Elvis to BY ARSENIO ORTEZA
>>
of their own headphones—or, better yet, their speaker-equipped living rooms. The jungle-fever drums that feature prominently in Viva ELVIS— The Album’s dozen tracks cry out for the finest woofers money can buy. There was, according to van Tourneau, “a lot of magic” involved. First, he and his assistant Hugo Bombadier had to separate Presley’s vocals from the original three-track masters in which they were embedded. Then they had to re-imbed them in the fresh sonic settings that van Tourneau, a -year-old, Montreal-based producer and one of Cirque du Soleil’s “bank of creators,” composed, performed on, recorded, and oversaw especially for the project. The results? A freshly lint-brushed (and re-soled) “Blue Suede Shoes,” a fully remodeled “Heartbreak Hotel,”
TIMELESS VOICE
Speaking of re-experiencing impacts, Verve/Hip-O Select’s new Louis Armstrong twodisc Hello, Louis! The Hit Years (-) will remind devotees of Satchmo, Elvis Presley’s only serious competition in the single-most-influential-American-musician sweepstakes, that besides practically inventing jazz, he also took the vocal interpretation of Broadway-era songs to heights and depths undreamt of in Rod “American Songbook” Stewart’s philosophy. Comprising three s that Armstrong recorded for Kapp, Mercury, and ABC Paramount Records, Hello, Louis! contains not only Armstrong’s inimitably charming, gravel-throated renditions of “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World” but also other performances of equally effervescent good cheer. Even his “We Have All the Time in the World,” recorded when he only had two years left, feels timeless. —A.O.
Music.indd 30
WORLD
DECEMBER 4, 2010
VIVA ELVIS: B RIAN JO N ES/L AS VEGAS N E WS BU RE AU/AP • ARMSTRO N G: AP
the United States Postal Service’s contest to determine which Elvis Presley— the ’s Elvis or the ’s Elvis—to immortalize on a stamp in , the denominational schisms within the Church of Elvis have grown to include Hollywood Elvis, ’-comeback Elvis, Vegas Elvis, and even Fat Elvis. But to Erich van Tourneau, the producer and arranger of Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas Viva ELVIS show, there is only one King of Rock ’n’ Roll. “I was mandated,” van Tourneau told me, “to recreate the ‘dangerous Elvis.’ For me that’s the way I look at him.” And now, thanks to the release of Viva ELVIS—The Album (/Legacy), Presley fans unable or unwilling to make the pilgrimage to Sin City can experience of van Tourneau’s “dangerous” recreations in the privacy
and a furiously rekindled “Burning Love.” Add to those the Brendan O’Brien–mixed “Suspicious Minds” (the album’s first single and a stunning example of what Presley might’ve sounded like backed by U), two Hollywood-Elvis reworkings that merit a reassessment of his long-disparaged soundtrack work (“King Creole,” “Bossa Nova Baby”), a “That’s All Right” that borrows from then supersedes Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life,” an exciting opening aural montage called “Opening,” and a cleverly deployed assortment of Presley’s spoken sound bites, and you have what’s unquestionably the best Elvis album of the st century so far and—seriously—maybe ever. “What people have to understand,” says van Tourneau, “is that even ‘Lust for Life’ is coming from that kind of Cab Calloway groove, you know? It’s coming from the ’s and the ’s, but it’s what kind of music Elvis listened to when he was young.” And what kind of music did van Tourneau listen to when he was young? “My parents were hardcore fans of Elvis Presley. Elvis’ music was always playing around the house or at my uncle’s place. I clearly remember the ’-comebackspecial was playing there in loop.” And according to van Tourneau, his father has had no objection to his son’s daring to bring Presley up to date. “He was totally approving of the idea of having Elvis back in but with a bigger sound, you know, one that could reflect the same impact he had in ’.”
See all our reviews at mag.com/music mag.com/music
11/16/10 10:42 AM
GUY LYO NS/GEN ESIS PH OTOS
THAT’S ALL RIGHT: Viva ELVIS the show (left) and the album.
NOTABLE CDs
SPOTLIGHT
Five new releases > reviewed by
Hard Knocks Joe Cocker From the tattered quality of his voice to the tattered quality of his life, Joe Cocker in his vintage period (say ’-’) evoked sympathy as much as he evoked pleasure; the former, in fact, was arguably inextricable from the latter. Since he’s gotten his life together, his albums have suffered from over-togetherness. Hard Knocks doesn’t. Together though he is, Cocker has selected songs that connect him to the years when every day was a struggle the outcome of which was uncertain. And he sings them the same way. Dreams Neil Diamond Fourteen guilty pleasures and/or golden oldies as arranged for small, acoustic ensemble and one -year-old baritone voice—all but one of which the possessor of the baritone voice didn’t write. And somehow it works. One reason is the material’s eclecticism (underexposed Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson balancing overexposed Beatles and Eagles). Another is the sense one gets that Diamond is singing these songs late at night to himself rather than during prime time to the adoring millions who’ve made him one of the top-grossing live acts of all time. Postcards from a Young Man
Vintage Vinos Keith Richards
GUY LYO NS/GEN ESIS PH OTOS
VIVA ELVIS: B RIAN JO N ES/L AS VEGAS N E WS BU RE AU/AP • ARMSTRO N G: AP
Manic Street Preachers One errs if he pays too much attention to the lyrics because, perfectly functional though they are, they aren’t the point. What is: big hooks, rocking beats, exhilarating harmonies, and a mastery of musical execution that would’ve made the Preachers a heavy-rotation radio staple back in the day when radio mattered. Still, as lyrics go, “We’ve all become our personal gods / We’ve all become so sad and lost” and “This life, it sucks your principles away / You have to fight against it every single day” aren’t bad.
So pitch-perfect are Paul Shanklin’s socio-political musical parodies that one might think God has permitted rock ’n’ roll to exist simply to provide grist for Shanklin’s mill. On his new album, Barack Hussein Obama’s Songs of the Revolution, the official satirist of Rush Limbaugh’s E.I.B. Network transforms Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” into Barack Obama’s “I Am Barack,” Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman” into Bill Clinton’s “She’s Always a Hillary,” and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” into “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘New York, New York,’” the hilarity of which derives as much from Shanklin’s voiceprint-worthy singing as it does his liberaltweaking lyrics. And as Limbaugh listeners know, Shanklin also delivers skits (like the recurring “Justice Brothers” routines featuring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton), and on this album—as on Shanklin’s others—they provide ideal songto-song segues. Not that the songs need the help. The highest high point: “Dancing Queen” by Abba transformed into “Banking Queen” by Barney Frank.
Released to coincide with the publication of Keith Richards’ autobiography, this collection from three solo albums released between and proves there was plenty more in the way of rough-hewn grooves and country-folk plaints where Richards’ solo turns for the Rolling Stones came from. Unfortunately, haphazard selection and sequencing still make Talk Is Cheap (from which half of these “vinos” were culled) the Richards album to get if you’re going to get just one. Email: aorteza@worldmag.com
Music.indd 31
DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/18/10 12:43 PM
Mindy Belz benches, congregants are gathered who survive by the work of their hands and on perhaps a dollar a day. There’s more common ground than you’d dream. First, they are surrounded by enemies and false teachers: Outside these walls in Budiriro are tent meetings strung out on the prosperity gospel and hillsides covered with Vapostori, a white-robed sect beckoning in the open air with primitive dance, charms, and promises of faith healing. Second, the poor face temptation same as the rich: Into Budiriro we followed a pickup loaded with “Natbrew,” a preferred Sunday pastime for many to hearing pastor Gardener Moyo teach on elders and deacons from 1 Timothy. And everyhen we think of the first Thanksgiving as where is the temptation to discouragement. a group of Puritans discovering a “desolate Moyo has worked hard to build this church, and wilderness,” as William Bradford described it, now the city wants to take away the lease, unless and out of it creating a horn of plenty, we tend he pays back taxes on it that he does not owe. to veer off in the wrong direction. Corporately But inside Moyo is bringing the Word, asking we head into Manifest Destiny territory, where questions, and getting good answers—in Shona, everything we Americans put our hand to is good then in English—and we are as hungry for it as and right. Individually, and speaking for myself, any African there. And as needy for fellowship. we get the idea that the food we put on our tables When Moyo finishes, he asks a man named the fourth Thursday of the month is a result of our (really) God Knows to pray for the guests. God own year’s hard work and honed skill. Knows thanks God that we are “neither Jew nor When we think of it as a cross-cultural experiGreek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all one ence, of the Puritans crossing a cultural divide in Christ Jesus,” and he prays that we—white and when they sailed across the Atlantic into a land that black, west and east of the Atlantic, Shona- and was completely other, we may come closer to what English-speaking—will grow together in Christ. actually happened. Bradford again: “They had now no friends to welcome The table we them nor inns to entertain or refresh their gather around weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much today, thanks to less towns to repair to, to seek for succor.” technology, transThe 101 passengers who sailed aboard the portation, and the Mayflower were thus reduced—from shopmovement of the keepers, teachers, and lawyers in England Holy Spirit, encirwhere they began as separatists from the cles the globe. May church; to silk weavers, carpenters, and we ask with our maids in Leyden, where they lived in exile for Zimbabwean 12 years; to a New World where they became brethren as we say farmers, loggers, and those “exercised in with our Puritan fishing.” And thus to a table in the autumn of forebears: “What 1621 came the 53 who remained—having surcould now sustain vived the rigors of this culture-clash and the them but the Spirit wrath of the English venture capitalists who of God and His received back an empty Mayflower—to enjoy GROWING TOGETHER: "God Knows" speaks in Sunday school. grace?” a feast not so much of their accomplishments And as Bradford as of God’s mercies overcoming their failures. said then, let’s reply: “May not and ought not the And so we glimpse both where we are and the divides that remain to be children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers crossed. This brings me to the road to Budiriro Baptist Church and the were Englishmen which came over this great culture clash that is an American in Africa. The road veers from city to ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; country and threads through Harare’s idled factories, teeming black setbut they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their tlements known as “high density areas,” and across hilly fields where voice and looked on their adversity. . . . Let them Zimbabweans gleaning for food any way they can are hoeing black ground therefore praise the Lord, because He is good: on a Sunday morning. and His mercies endure forever.” A In a hollow building with a bare concrete floor and rough wooden
This pilgrim life
In failed states and states of plenty, what saves and keeps us is the same
Mindy.indd 32
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
nat bel z
32
Email: mbelz@worldmag.com
11/18/10 4:26 PM
© Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Thinkstock.
Master the Fundamentals of Algebra I Algebra I is the most critical course students take in high school, and the ultimate gateway to success in higher education. But because algebra involves a new way of thinking, many students—and their parents—find it especially challenging. Algebra I, however, is designed and developed to teach students and parents the concepts and procedures of first-year algebra in an easy and accessible way. Award-winning Professor James A. Sellers takes the fear out of learning algebra by approaching concepts like quadratic equations, polynomials, sequences, and more in a friendly, reassuring spirit. His 36 lectures specifically address the biggest challenges for high school students in mastering Algebra I, and reveal a wealth of invaluable skills and tips for finally making sense of its complexities. ®
This course is one of The Great Courses , a noncredit recorded ® college lecture series from The Teaching Company . Awardwinning professors of a wide array of subjects in the sciences and the liberal arts have made more than 300 college-level courses that are available now on our website.
Order Today!
Offer expires Wednesday, February 2, 2011 Algebra I Course No. 1001 36 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)
DVDs
$254.95
+ $10 Shipping & Handling
NOW $79.95
Algebra I
Taught by Professor James A. Sellers, The Pennsylvania State University Lecture Titles 1. An Introduction to the Course 2. Order of Operations 3. Percents, Decimals, and Fractions 4. Variables and Algebraic Expressions 5. Operations and Expressions 6. Principles of Graphing in 2 Dimensions 7. Solving Linear Equations, Part 1 8. Solving Linear Equations, Part 2 9. Slope of a Line 10. Graphing Linear Equations, Part 1 11. Graphing Linear Equations, Part 2 12. Parallel and Perpendicular Lines 13. Solving Word Problems with Linear Equations 14. Linear Equations for Real-World Data 15. Systems of Linear Equations, Part 1 16. Systems of Linear Equations, Part 2 17. Linear Inequalities 18. An Introduction to Quadratic Polynomials 19. Factoring Trinomials 20. Quadratic Equations—Factoring
21. Quadratic Equations— The Quadratic Formula 22. Quadratic Equations— Completing the Square 23. Representations of Quadratic Functions 24. Quadratic Equations in the Real World 25. The Pythagorean Theorem 26. Polynomials of Higher Degree 27. Operations and Polynomials 28. Rational Expressions, Part 1 29. Rational Expressions, Part 2 30. Graphing Rational Functions, Part 1 31. Graphing Rational Functions, Part 2 32. Radical Expressions 33. Solving Radical Equations 34. Graphing Radical Functions 35. Sequences and Pattern Recognition, Part 1 36. Sequences and Pattern Recognition, Part 2
ACT NO
W!
1-800-832-2412
www.THEGREATCOURSES.com/6wm
Priority Code: 40013
Ad Pages.indd 33
11/15/10 10:40 PM
Zimbabwe.indd 34
11/18/10 4:52 PM
OUT TO DRY
With hyperinflation and election violence a (recent) memory, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe strengthens his grip ahead of coming elections despite a stalled comeback
T
by mindy belz in harare, zimbabwe P h oto b y T s va n g i r ay i M u k wa z h i /A P
homas Jefferson, we know you’re there somewhere. The third U.S. president is visible only as a smudge on most two-dollar bills in circulation here, a victim of mass overuse in Zimbabwe’s cash-only economy. Quaint as a $2 bill? Maybe in the United States, but here in sub-Saharan Africa $2 minted by the U.S. Treasury is sought after. “Don’t you have a two?” bemoaned Amelia, a flea-market vendor in Harare upset that I tried to pay for purchases with a new $5 bill. Two dollars will buy a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe—the highest price in southern Africa but less than just over 18 months ago. Then a loaf of bread went for 1 billion Zimbabwean dollars. That’s when government leaders, to cope with 18 months of stratospheric inflation that reached 90 sextillion percent (that’s 90 with 20 zeroes after it), declared their currency dead and adopted a “multi-currency” system—in which U.S. dollars, South African rands, or British pounds are formally accepted for all transactions. For now, it’s the almighty dollar that rules. What few are in circulation become so soiled, in fact, that they are regularly washed and hung on clotheslines alongside the day’s laundry. Outsiders assumed that the 2009 dollarization solved Zimbabwe’s economic problems while the formation of a unity government mended its political crisis. Both are far from true. And as the unity government’s two-year mandate DIRTY draws to an end and the country prepares for elections in 2011, many DOLLARS: Zimbabweans fear a return to the violence and hardship from which A Harare they have only just begun to recover. resident Gone may be the days when it took box loads of Zimbabwean dollars launders his money. to buy groceries. But along with overseas currency have come mostly overseas prices. Things like school fees, appliances, and real estate have in some cases gone up tenfold. Grocery stores are stocked—unlike during the height of the African nation’s 2008 crisis when shelves were bare for over a year—but the price for a box of cereal rivals what American shoppers pay. Zimbabweans are increasingly reliant on imports, which are expensive, and on government control of the money supply, which is tight. And jobs, unlike food items, have not come back: Zimbabwe has the highest unemployment rate of any ranked country in the world— at a reported 95 percent. D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
Zimbabwe.indd 35
35
11/18/10 4:52 PM
36
roadsides. Drivers rarely stop for traffic lights, especially at night, because they fear robbery or carjacking. Rolling up the windows and locking the doors isn’t a remedy: Even by daylight thugs are known to smash car windows using bricks, grab whatever’s inside the car, and run.
T
he city’s deterioration is especially tragic given that Harare (known as Salisbury in then-Rhodesia) was one of the loveliest cities in sub-Saharan Africa and that the country at its independence in 1965 managed a diversified economy with advanced infrastructure and finance. The protracted struggle from white minority to black majority government ended in 1980 when Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union—Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) took power. But suffering under his increasingly repressive rule reached a low point in 2007 with hyperinflation. Mugabe lost general elections in March 2008 to rival Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) but neither party won a majority, forcing a runoff. Scarce commodities and extreme violence led up to the runoff—with human-rights groups documenting over 350,000 election-related injuries, including rape and torture. At one point Tsvangirai himself was arrested, forcing him to drop out of the race. With the government imposing wage and price controls, workers—including doctors, teachers, bus drivers, and other city workers—went on strike and stores could no longer afford to stock goods. For more than a year, stores were empty, transportation halted, and even hospitals closed. By November 2008 prices were doubling on average every 24.7 hours (rivaled in economic history only by a similar period in 1946 Hungary).
H O M E: AP • josen i: nat b el z • M UGAB E: KELD NAVNTO F T/AFP/Get t y Images
Neither has liquidity returned. Want to buy a home in Harare? Be prepared to pay 15 percent interest on a mortgage, and to pay off the loan within two years. “We’re lucky to get 12-15 month money for commercial loans,” said a banker who asked not to be named because she feared the risk to her employer. “And no one can make a business start with that.” Local business startups and overseas investment are further hampered by controversial rules imposed by President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF regime, which came to power in 1980 and has ruled by force nearly ever since: The state insists on at least 51 percent indigenous ownership by black Africans of all businesses. That’s chased off foreign investors like Caterpillar and others who once operated mechanical, t extile, and agricultural factories outside Harare. For a country with abundant natural and industrial resources, and with an average literacy rate of over 90 percent, economic rebound is awaited but slow to come, particularly as foreign debt arrears mounts—to over $7 billion. The lesson of the hyperinflation crisis in 2007-2008 at all levels (and for other nations courting inflationary policies) was “if you have money, by all means spend it, and quickly.” At that time, recalled Itai Gurira, “The money that you got paid at the end of the month was not enough to pay for transportation for one week. Inflation was so bad that people’s salaries got to be not enough to pay bus fare for one day.” People lost the incentive to work and learned instead to barter their way through life or turn to “suspect ways of living,” he said. The corruption that for decades has typified Mugabe’s government now permeates the street: Illegal cabs and vendors make havoc as they haggle for business on Harare’s WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
Zimbabwe.indd 36
11/18/10 5:31 PM
In 2009 a regional coalition led by South Africa negotiated a unity government, with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister. The arrangement was momentous, considering that during one of Tsvangirai’s arrests Mugabe’s thugs beat him to the point of collapse and threw him out of a window. But instead of leading the country toward democracy, the configuration has saddled what was the opposition with joint responsibility for Mugabe’s policies.
REPRESSIVE RULE: A man cooks a meal outside his home in Harare (far left); Joseni (above) is overwhelmed by generosity; Mugabe (left) clings to power.
Memories of 2008’s daily hardships are fresh: “Buying bread was a chore everyone dreaded,” said Gurira. “You’d start queuing at 5 a.m. and five hours later you might have one loaf. Then you had to queue at the bank to get enough money to go back home.” Gurira, who lost his job during that time and is now studying to become a teacher, keeps at home a stack of 100 trillion dollar notes issued by the government during the crisis, he says to remind him of what could happen again. H O M E: AP • M UGAB E: KELD NAVNTO F T/AFP/Gett y I mages
F
ew Americans realize they have a vested interest in what happens next in this southern African nation. The U.S. government is Zimbabwe’s biggest donor—providing more than $1 billion in aid since 2002, including an additional 10 percent pledged for next year for development and treatment of HIV/AIDS. How much government-to-government aid reaches the street is hard to say, but churches and local charities continue to play a large role bridging the gap for Zimbabweans who live below the poverty line—by some estimates over 80 percent of the country’s 12 million people. Gurira has been working with the Social Concerns program at Central Baptist Church, a downtown Harare church with roots reaching back to the
British colonial era, when it was an all-white congregation. Now the congregation is mostly black. At the height of the food crisis in 2008 the church was feeding over 2,000 families a month; today its food program continues to feed 350 families on a monthly basis, in addition to also running a vocational training program for young women and helping to launch microfinance programs in the city. Many continue to come to the church for regular food distributions. On Saturdays Gurira and other young workers travel the city to deliver food parcels to those who can’t make it and to check on the living circumstances of others they help. On the Saturday that I made visits with them, our first stop was the home of Annie Joseni, whose brother-in-law had just died of AIDS. Joseni lives in a “high-density area” called Mufakose, helping to support her now-widowed sister and three children, along with her mother and a mentally disabled cousin. The only food evident in their two-room home when we arrived was a struggling plot of kale and okra in the front yard. The church provided cooking oil, maize, and other staples, and Joseni promptly slumped down on her slab floor to pray in thanksgiving. “I feel overwhelmed,” Gurira said of such outreach. “We are a little sandbag in the middle of a flooding river.” The Social Concerns group makes regular rounds to other high-density areas, where slum-like conditions prevail and ZANU PF youth gangs often predominate. One week after I made rounds with the church workers, police barred them from delivering food or visiting clients in Mbare, a restive area where housing once built as dormitories (to house black male workers) now is overcrowded with extended families living in dilapidated one-room dorms. Officers told the group they would need to apply for permission to visit Mbare, which would take three to five days and be valid for only one day. “The police did not seem to be convinced of our good intention despite evidence to the contrary,” reported Social Concerns head Tom Rakabopa.
M
any fear that such roadblocks signal a return to election-year harassment and intimidation. Instead of regarding the charity work as much-needed help, ZANU PF zealots often see it as a threat to the regime, or an instrument of the opposition. “There are always threats, and people go along out of fear,” said one Zimbabwean who asked not to be identified—out of fear. “Nobody would dispute the statement that in free and fair elections Morgan Tsvangirai would emerge as the clear winner. Our difficulty is getting free and fair elections,” said Eddie Cross, a member of Parliament and economic adviser to Tsvangirai. Cross, who is white, opposed the white rule of Ian Smith but joined the MDC in 1999 over the corruption and decline under the black rule of Mugabe. “Yes, we are part of the government now,” he said of the MDC, “but we don’t have any hard power. And the only real power to change our circumstances lies with regional leaders, like South Africa . . . but they are ambivalent.” One reason for that, Cross believes, is that regional leaders are themselves tied to their own revolutionary parties that led their countries out from colonial-era rule to black rule, and they are unwilling to turn against ZANU PF: “We have mixed feelings about democracy in this part of the world.” D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
Zimbabwe.indd 37
37
11/18/10 4:52 PM
38
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
Zimbabwe.indd 38
losing the land
Mugabe-led farm confiscations continue Gary and Jane Sharp have spent over 10 years trying to hold onto their 3,000-acre farm at Shamva in northeastern Zimbabwe, which they moved to with government permission in 1987, but in September—following a lengthy court battle and the seizure of their home that left their son trapped inside—they gave it up. Sharp had successfully diversified a traditional cotton, maize, and wheat operation to include tomatoes, citrus, and bananas, earning buy-in from Malaysian investors and gross crop revenue of $1.5 million a year. He employed 500 black workers. “But early on we were given an ultimatum, either give up half or lose all of it to the state,” he said. Commercial farming in Zimbabwe was majority white-owned until just over a decade ago, when President Robert Mugabe launched a policy of land confiscation to forcibly turn farm management from successful white owners to black, politically connected farmers who in most cases proved agriculturally illiterate. Zimbabwe’s farm population—including blacks employed in white-owned operations—a decade ago totaled 2 million. Today it is 350,000. Of nearly 5,000 white commercial farm operations, less than 600 remain. “CRIMINAL LAND REFORM”: “It’s almost impossible to hold a rational disMugabe’s 2009 election cussion about land in Africa,” said Eddie Cross, a poster hangs on the wall member of Parliament from MDC, the opposition near an orange field at party now in a unity government with Mugabe. “If Etheredge Farm in Chegutu. you are white and a farmer and you own land, then you are part of the colonial past, even if your family has been here for generations. You are naked in a snowstorm.” Cross (who is white) said land reform has been needed to allow blacks an agricultural stake, “but what’s emerged in Zimbabwe is criminal land reform.” Extensive media coverage of violent confrontations between white farmers and black ZANU PF units sent to chase them from their farms has recently subsided. But the violent confrontations have not. Sharp agreed to divide his farm because he had seen the protracted battles other farm owners endured with the government. But that didn’t stop armed Zanu PF youth gangs from harassing his workers, and at one point for three weeks surrounding the Sharp home with the couple’s 23-year-old son locked inside, able to get food only through neighbors. During that time the government besiegers also did extensive crop damage. The Sharps went to court and eventually won their case, but despite the ruling authorities tried to arrest Sharp earlier this year and eventually succeeded in forcing the case back to court. “We were carrying on believing we had the blessing of the authorities, but we had nothing,” he said. After another court proceeding attended by Mrs. Sharp in June to secure the family’s personal belongings, she was arrested upon leaving the court and held in the Shamva jail overnight. That was enough to convince the Sharps to give up the battle (leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and crops on the property) and begin looking for an alternative form of income. Continued confiscations ironically are uniting many blacks and whites in opposition to Mugabe as it becomes clear that black farm workers suffer, too, and commercial farming is on its heels. As Sharp said, “It’s destroyed our community.” —M.B.
ph i li m o n bu l awayo/reuters/l an dov
Earlier this month a coalition of church groups issued a strongly worded statement in light of increasing reports of intimidation by security forces, calling for an election delay. “The political environment remains highly volatile, uncertain, and tense,” the groups said, and “does not favor the holding of elections,” which Mugabe wants to take place next June. The joint statement by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Christian Alliance, and the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe warned that 2011 elections will lead to violence. It also said free and fair elections aren’t possible unless laws and institutions set up to favor Mugabe’s party are changed. “I believe the church is the strongest force in Zimbabwe next to ZANU PF,” one Harare pastor told me. And in recent years it has grown in its opposition to Mugabe, a shift not lost on the president. Mugabe not only has increased pressure on church ministries, the Catholic president also has distanced himself from traditional church activities in favor of a growing sect known as Vapostori, or apostolics. In July Mugabe made an unexpected appearance at a Vapostori gathering wearing a long white robe and carrying a long stick typical of the group. Vapostori congregate usually outdoors and sometimes for days at a time, dotting the hillsides with their starched-white head coverings. Some wear or carry crosses, but the group is syncretistic, blending tribal worship with Christian teaching along with charms and potions. “Some of the churches have very beautiful buildings but go against the Bible. Could that be God’s church?” Mugabe said, referencing the Anglican Church, which he said “condones marriages between men.” Mugabe and the Anglican Church have long tangled: In 2008 the church excommunicated Nolbert Kunonga, the former bishop of Harare and an ally of Mugabe, for trying to withdraw his diocese and seize church property. Mugabe in return gave Kunonga a farm confiscated from a white farmer (see sidebar). Recently, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Anglican bishops in Zimbabwe have been threatened with assassination. John Bell, senior pastor at Central Baptist, believes that despite the circumstances, the church continues to have an important role to play. “I am not hopeful in terms of the country. I think it is going to stay bad or get worse. But I am very hopeful about the church. If I didn’t think the church makes a difference, I wouldn’t still be here. And the church as people of God are doing well. This is what God does in bad times—He does good for His people.” A
11/18/10 4:54 PM
Profanity Filter for Your TV TVGuardian is back! And now in HD!
GIFT IDEAS S p e c ia l A d v e r tisi n g D i r e c t o r y
Ad Pages.indd 39
Connect TVGuardian to your TV and it automatically mutes out foul language. It’s that easy! Join millions of satisfied customers. Order now for Christmas! Readers of this magazine save $20 on all purchases—use the code WORLD
1-800-298-5618 www.TVGuardian.com
11/17/10 9:22 AM
GIFT IDEAS
NOW ON DVD
The 400-year struggle for the soul of the nation “…vivid reenactments…, riveting archival footage, and fascinating interviews with theologians and religious experts… the complex relationship between democracy and faith is a story line that never gets old.” — Elle Magazine
Available in stores now or buy online at shopPBS.org 6 HOURS ON 3 DISCS * $34.99 SRP * INCLUDES BONUS BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS
From the producers of
Artwork © 2010 PBS Distribution. All rights reserved. 1109070
Ad Pages.indd 40
11/15/10 10:41 PM
NEW
in the St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary Series from RC SPROUL
Readers will follow Sproul as he preaches through the book of Acts. The account of the gospel spreading to the Gentiles is the story of the roots of our faith. By God’s grace and the labor of Paul and the apostles, salvation has spread to all the nations. Balancing broad and narrow perspectives of each passage, Sproul explores important theological terms and themes, offers perspective from his own wisdom and experience, and engages in practical application. Delivered from a pastor’s heart for his congregation, readers will find Acts readable, applicable, appropriately paced, and thoroughly Bible-centered. Here is an opportunity to sit at the feet of an eminent theologian and teacher, encountering the Word of God.
ALSO AVAI LAB LE:
R. C. SPROUL serves as senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and is the founder and president of Ligonier Ministries. He has taught at numerous colleges and seminaries, has written over sixty books, and is featured daily on Renewing Your Mind, an international radio broadcast.
800-323-3890
Ad Pages.indd 41
www.crossway.org
800-435-4343
www.reformationtrust.com
11/15/10 10:42 PM
Serving a A person is greater than the sum of his material parts, and his reason to work goes beyond making the money to satisfy his appetites
hıgher p
by Marvin Olasky illustration by Krieg Barrie
S
P .” Randy Newman’s hit song, “Short People,” was controversial for a time, but should we extend the inquiry: Do any people have a reason to live? The biblical answer has always been yes. The world is God’s theater and our classroom. We slowly learn what it means to trust Him. We slowly learn to act in a way that displays His grace. But if we think there is no God, what reason to live do we have? Foundation officer Greg Forster, referring to the dominant economic theory of the past four score years, recently wrote, “The fundamental premise of Keynesianism is that the purpose of economic activity is to facilitate consumption. This basic commitment to consumption as the highest economic good is clearly connected to an anti-metaphysical, essentially materialistic anthropology. What is the good for man? To serve a higher purpose, or to gorge his appetites? Keynesianism assumes it’s the latter.” Materialistic anthropology suggests that affluent people have no reason to live, so they might as well entertain themselves with extensive consumption and travel. (Novelist Walker Percy referred to a penchant for “external rotations.”) Poor people also have no reason to live, so they might as well be on welfare. God gave Adam a reason to live: “God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it.” After the Fall, Adam had a similar calling, but it would be harder: “You shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” God gave Israel a reason to live: “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Jesus gave His disciples a reason to live: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Forster writes (at thepublicdiscourse.com), “The predominant economic model of behavior assumes that if you could draw the same paycheck without ever having
WORLD
Vocation_Intro.indd 42
to go to work at any job, you would always choose not to go.” But he notes what both common human experience and social science data tell us: “People want to work. It’s a presupposition of basic human dignity that we make a productive contribution to the common good.” So how do we work joyfully? To a large extent we need the right attitude of looking at the world as God’s theater and classroom. But we also need to be in the right place, where we can use whatever talents God has given us. The next article in this section asserts that the workplace should not be merely a place to evangelize or earn money to support pastors and missionaries: The work itself should be productive. The article after that provocatively asks us to distinguish between “calling” and professions: “A vocation is both greater and more intimate than a call to a career.” Then we move to practical applications. Since our Aug. special section on work and calling concentrated on people in business, this time we profile only one business leader and then look at unusually determined people in a variety of fields: a husband and wife adopting disabled children, a philanthropist subsuming his own judgment in order to honor the intent of his donor dad, a Christian artist painting nudes, and some unusual politicians. The section concludes with a review of a book, Days to the Work You Love, that might help some readers to find the right way to spend their working time. I’ll add a personal note here. I love what the adopting couple do. I don’t agree with some of the decisions of the philanthropist and the artist. But the stories of all these individuals remind me of a song I see as focused on vocation and calling, even though its author, Patty Griffin, may have had something else in mind: “Sometimes you find yourself flying low at night / Flying blind and looking for any sign of light. / You’re cold and scared, and all alone, you’d do anything just to make it home. / It’s a mad mission, under difficult conditions, / not everybody makes it to the loving cup. / It’s a mad mission but I got the ambition. / Mad, mad mission, sign me up.” A
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/17/10 4:31 PM
r purpose
Vocation_Intro.indd 43
11/17/10 4:31 PM
Working
for good
Should you remain in your current job? How well the product of your work serves others should be a crucial part of the answer
I
44
work—unless they were clerics—had no eternal importance, to every job embodying holiness, to widespread disillusionment, in which Christians are told our jobs are simultaneously holy and unimportant. Work, according to Bob Thune and Campus Crusade for Christ, “is an inherently spiritual thing.” Yet the nature of that work, many theologians seem to imply, is unimportant, because it is merely a vessel to contain one’s Christian light—for which, after all, any legal job will do. Maybe suspicion of the world is to blame for our inadequate theology of work. If things of the flesh are inherently suspect, it’s easier to conclude that a Christian’s only purpose is to win souls for Jesus. If everything in this world will pass away, what does the particular sort of work matter, so long as the Christian is faithful and persuades others to walk more closely with Christ? Ironically, a Gnostic approach to work induces materialistic behavior. If a Christian internalizes the message that virtually any job is a proper vocation, he might as well choose those that maximize the money-to-time ratio. The more money a Christian earns, after all, the more he can support his church, provide Christian schooling for his kids, and fund missionaries. The less time he spends working, the more hours he has to train up his children, be “one flesh” to his wife, and participate in an accountability group.
istock
t is strange, given how much time we spend on it, that the product of our labor gets so little attention from many modern ministries. Essays on work offered by Charles Stanley’s and Billy Graham’s ministries emphasize evangelism. Bob Deffinbaugh claims that Christians’ workplace goals are to be exemplars and evangelizers. Is God indifferent to what our work itself yields? Martin Luther, responding to the perception that only priests and monks did the Lord’s work, declared that a father washing diapers pleases God. Even the lowliest Christian laborer was, in Luther’s view, a Kingdom worker. But something funny happened on the way to the office park, as William Placher explains in Callings: “An idea that seemed liberating to many of Luther’s contemporaries has come to seem to some more like a burden.” How? Because today, many people feel their jobs are pointless. Is this really, they ask, how God wants me to spend 40 hours a week? Must we stay with unproductive work because God has supposedly made that labor our means to sanctification? Advice from Concordia University’s Center for Faith and Business is blunt; the last of its “Workplace Commandments” reads: “Be satisfied with what you have.” Is that always required of us? We have stumbled full circle, from when people believed their WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
Woodlief.indd 44
11/17/10 4:40 PM
Arch ive Photos/Get t y Images
by Tony Woodlief
ISTOCK
ARCH IVE PH OTOS/GET T Y I MAGES
P
in the likeness of a Creator God, however, are naturally creative beings. Someone restrained from exercising his God-given endowment as the child of a Creator is prone to deep malaise— the very condition that psychologists and writers like Walker Percy decades ago began to identify with a modernizing West. Malaise in turn leads to other sins, such as gluttony and lust. Why do so many employers have to take precautions against employees surfing the internet for porn? Perhaps because they fail to provide a compelling vision for how the junior accountant, or the payroll specialist, or the writer of press releases, actually creates enduring value. The thoughts about vocation of thcentury Puritan William Perkins are instructive. He argued that vocation depends not only on one’s talents, but on whether the work itself truly serves others. Thus he condemned “makers of finery” (for furthering vanity) and those who “gloss goods,” exact “immoderate fines,” and otherwise extract wrongful rents—views aligned with early Church teachings. Were he alive today, Perkins would criticize grocers who shine their vegetables and large organizations that make vendors wait months for payment. What would he think of credit card companies that subtly shift due dates in order to rack up late payment fees? Perkins elaborated not only a theology of working, but of quitting: A man should resign out of private necessity (it doesn’t pay what he needs, or doesn’t suit his talents and passions) or for the sake of the common good (when, in modern corporate parlance, genuine value is not being created). Perkins argued that the consequences of one’s labor are integral to one’s Christian responsibility. Perkins, and Luther, and other theologians who tacitly assumed that labor creates enduring value, teach us not to be satisfied with any position. Instead, the proper action of the Christian mired in a bureaucratic job without clear connection to a creative or redemptive purpose may well be to seek other employment and accept financial loss. This is not to say that the new standard ought to be: My happiness! Nor does it indicate that every good Christian should be a poet, or a carpenter, or whatever he most enjoys. Nor does it absolve parents of the responsibility to provide for their families, no matter what kind of workplace drudgery that entails. But neither does it neglect one’s happiness in an unchristian haze of Stoic pietism. As Frederick Buechner notes in his lovely essay, “The Calling of Voices,” our gladness is often not so very
different from the world’s need. This is what one should expect from a good, loving Creator God, that He would call us into joyful work for Him. Yes, the curse of the Fall indicates that work will be hard, but it does not indicate that work must be joyless. To think otherwise is to lose sight of the fundamental distinction between happiness and joy. None of this means that we are all entitled to work that is grand. A mother mending a hole in her child’s shirt participates in God’s redemptive work just as much as a surgeon removing a brain tumor. But it does indicate that not every legal job is fitting for servants of the Creator and Great Physician. Can we believe that God smiles on a worker dutifully canning beans? Absolutely. But what about makers of food additives that serve no end other than to further an addiction to sweetness? Or sellers of clearly inferior products? Or a Danielle Steel who produces immoral or amoral trash? A Christian cannot avoid responsibility for this fundamental question: Does my work create enduring value? Christian leaders before our modern age of fatty, bureaucratic organizations considered these two essential elements— faithful service and a work product that is genuinely valuable—to be synonymous. How can one faithfully do work, after all, that yields no value? Our modern theology of work has lost this critical understanding. We have separated the means (diligent employment) from the end (participation in God’s creative, redemptive order). The consequence is that we teach, in effect, that the only bar a Christian’s employment need pass before it is worthy of his Father is that it be legal and not overtly connected to sex. It’s no secret that many in the wealthy West are stricken by ennui, a particular blend of physical satiation and purposeless
[th-century Puritan William Perkins] argued that vocation depends not only on one’s talents, but on whether the work itself truly serves others. drift. Our bellies are full and our hearts are empty. It is a pity that the modern theology of work, by sanctioning the alienation of man from his labor and calling it holy, contributes to this phenomenon among Christians. We need to encourage every Christian to consider his labors, and to ask if all of them are pleasing to the Lord of creation. Alongside our essential responsibility to care for our families, we should try to remember our responsibility to use our talents in labor that is truly valuable. Our loving God has created us to do no less. A DECEMBER 4, 2010
Woodlief.indd 45
WORLD
11/17/10 4:41 PM
Called to a
community A Christian’s vocation involves more than a career
by Timothy Dalrymple illustration by Krieg Barrie
T
“” or “calling” is an application of the doctrine of providence: God not only preserves the cosmos and superintends the history of nations but is subtly at work in the most minute circumstances of each individual life. The doctrine’s biblical lineage is clear: Since God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies in splendor (Matthew :-), and since a sparrow cannot fall from the sky apart from the will of the Father (Matthew :), then surely God provides and cares even more for His children. If God has a plan to prosper us (Jeremiah :), and works all things to good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans :), then surely each believer is called to a role in the salvation of the world and the redemption of all things. The concept’s attractiveness is also clear. The doctrine of providence has the Creator God as a personal, intentional being, not a distant God but a God compassionately involved in the fates of persons and communities. Special providence fills the universe with subtle threads of purpose, and promises they will weave together beyond the sorrows of the world for the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God. Each person becomes the subject of God’s most intimate concern. The concept of vocation slakes our thirst for significance. Yet, the theology of vocation is complex. As an undergraduate, I belonged to a fellowship of faithful overachievers at Stanford University. We thought of vocation in the same way we thought of finding a spouse. Just as we sought “the one” partner God meant for us to marry, so we sought the one path God had prepared for us. This was the occasion for great anxiety. Students feared that if they diverged from God’s intended path, or never found it, then they would miss out on the blessing of becoming who they were created and called to be. We rarely challenged the equation of vocation and profession: We were to venture great things for God and reach the heights of our professions in order to acquire a broader influence for the sake of the kingdom. Yet I could not escape the feeling, when we joined together for fellowship and worship and service, that we were already living the life for which we were designed. We loved God and loved the world shoulder to shoulder.
WORLD
When our four years at Stanford were up, we scattered across the globe in pursuit of our vocations. The costs became clear over time. To use myself as an example, none of my five closest friends live in the same city as I do, and none of their closest friends live in the same cities they do. We have equated vocation with profession at the expense of family and fellowship. And many who believed they were called to particular professions find themselves, when their jobs are lost or unfulfilling, frustrated and disillusioned. I have spoken with many of these Stanford students. Some are still chasing significance or success. Others have given up the search and only want to pay the bills. Many regret the sacrifices they have made to the idol of their careers. One friend recently wrote, “I share my life with virtually no one, and if I don’t do something about it then I will die just having been someone’s employee.” The right-minded pursuit of professional excellence is important. But were we right to leave family and friends in the belief that our calling to particular careers trumped everything else? The conditions of modern living only exacerbate such problems. We are connected superficially to vastly more people than before, yet connected deeply to far fewer. When my father grew up on an Iowa farm in the s, he saw to people on a typical day. He knew them all. He knew their stories. They knew his. Today we see thousands of faces every day, yet
DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationVs.Profession.indd 46
11/17/10 11:12 PM
communities. They share homes, buildings, or neighborhoods. They try to form enduring relationships and a healing presence within a community. One well-known example is Shane Claiborne’s Potter Street community in Philadelphia. He explains, “In a hyper-mobile culture, we value stability. We value growing roots. Our neighborhood is fractured and infected with instability, so we grow gardens and renovate houses and build the kind of relationships where we know everyone’s names and god-parent their children.” He points to biblical examples of a community restoring ancient ruins: The call of God summons us to renew the world together. Jeff Barneson, a minister to Harvard graduate students and faculty for over years, has made his home into the center of a community that engages the university culture: “Whatever calling one has, it’s hard or impossible to do it by yourself. It’s more fun, more fruitful, and more sustainable in community.” Andy Crouch similarly argues in Culture Making that those who scatter to pursue greatness as individuals miss out on the opportunity to establish an enduring influence upon the culture with a community of people committed to creative redemption.
S
know hardly any of the souls behind them. Surrounded by a sea of company, we die of thirst for companionship. The most mobile and networked society in the history of the planet has its drawbacks. Duke University researchers have found that Americans in enjoyed an average of three deep relationships in which they shared “important matters.” By that number had fallen to two, and a quarter of respondents confessed they did not have a single confidant. In , single-person households composed roughly percent of all households. Today that number is nearing percent. Sociologists like Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah have shown how technology that decreases the distance between nations has increased the distance between neighbors. We know the news on the other side of the world, but not the neighbor on the other side of the fence. Some who feel starved for authentic human relationships are finding them in callings to community, to “small things,” and to particular places and moments. Let’s look at these three trends.
F
, are reinterpreting vocation today by emphasizing a call to follow Christ and redeem the world together: Vocation is less a profession than a purpose pursued through our careers but also through the common life we share. Thus in urban centers such as Boston, New York, and Chicago, many evangelicals live in intentional
, that in the economy of a providential God, the slightest acts of obedience can have dramatic consequences. God calls some to socially significant roles, and calls others to make each act significant by doing it for God. This is not an easy lesson to learn in contemporary American culture. Ever since teachers became the curators of children’s self-esteem, the younger generations have been raised with a finely nurtured sense of their own specialness and significance. A recent Barna study shows that percent of American teenagers believe they will definitely or probably, by the age of , have a job that is both “great-paying” and allows them to “make a difference.” Roughly half believe they will regularly serve the poor by , and over a quarter believe they will be famous. Christians in American culture struggle with a sort of vocational schizophrenia. We want to make a difference while making money, to be remembered for serving the forgotten. We want to give our cake to the poor and sell it too. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with striving both to do good and to do well, as long as we seek God’s kingdom first— but mixed motives are often hidden within the yearning for significance. I can see this in my own story. An elite gymnast as a teenager, I was certain that God had called me (although I would never have put it this way) to win enough Olympic glory to give lots to Him and keep some for myself. Even when my career crashed to an end before the Olympic Trials, it was easy to present a strong faith. I had broken my neck in a fall from the horizontal bar, yet this presented its own opportunity for greatness, as though I were playing the part of the faithful sufferer for my eventual biographers. Grasping at spiritual greatness in a critical, observed moment was easy because it appealed to my pride. The quiet heroism of small things, the constant surrender to God in unobserved decisions and unimportant matters, is far more difficult. Yet those who follow Christ are to do small things with great love and never care about winning the world’s applause. DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationVs.Profession.indd 47
WORLD
11/17/10 11:13 PM
TOGETHERNESS: Jeff Barneson meets with leaders of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at his home in Cambridge, Mass. (above); Shane Claiborne enjoys a meal in Philadelphia (left).
T
WORLD
BARN ESON : GR ANT M O RRIS/GEN ESIS PH OTO FO R WO RLD • CL AI BO RN E: HAN DOUT
, what John Stott observed long ago: There are general callings for all believers and specific callings for each, but our most essential vocation is to a person, not a profession—and following Christ is a possibility in every moment. Christ calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him “daily,” never “tomorrow.” During my seminary years I worked with a congregalive their calling as a community, then and there, in thousands tion within the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. My of everyday acts that the world would never see. By answering first sermon focused, for obvious reasons, on the biblical the call, they made their exile into the Promised Land. metaphor of exile, yet I soon discovered inmates who They found in the prison, as Thomas Merton found spoke as though they were living already in the at a Trappist abbey, “the four walls of my new Promised Land. Many had come to Christ Readers who freedom.” within the prison and had grown the conenjoyed Gene Edward In a culture that tells us to “go where the gregation there. They could not set their Veith’s article on calling in jobs are,” some evangelicals are reexaminhearts upon a future that was distant and ’s first special section on ing what it means to follow their calling. A might never come. They had to find their the subject (Aug. , ) can vocation is both greater and more intimate vocation in that place and that moment. go to www.acton.org/veith to hear than a call to a career. Paul is not As college students my friends and I a lecture on “Vocation: The Doctrine renowned for his tents, nor Luke for his regarded our vocation as something that of the Christian Life” that Veith skill as a physician, but God employed these would begin in earnest in later years—but gave last month at the annual skills to serve a greater purpose. Perhaps we the call of Christ is always now. It’s ironic meeting of the Evangelical that Christian inmates at a maximum too can rediscover our freedom as we answer Theological Society. security prison found it easier to live their the call to root ourselves in a community that labors together, here and now, in deeds great and calling than members of a college fellowship at small, to give witness to the love of God. A Stanford University years ago. Confined to a single location, hidden from the world, trapped in a kind of endless —Columnist and blogger Timothy Dalrymple manages the present, the brothers within those walls had no choice but to Evangelical Portal (evangelical.patheos.com) at Patheos.com DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationVs.Profession.indd 48
11/17/10 11:13 PM
Ad Pages.indd 49
11/15/10 10:42 PM
‘The juices
would start flowıng’
Real estate developer Jack Shaw recognized his calling to business at a young age by Joseph Slife in Greenville, S.C.
P
WORLD
SlifeVocation.indd 50
JOSEPH SLI FE
younger Shaw became a builder himself. “On the first house I I learned,” says South built, I made on the whole process,” he recalls. Carolina businessman Jack Shaw, thinking back over As the Greenville area attracted more businesses and jobs, more than years to his first entrepreneurial success. Shaw Resources, Inc. eventually shifted from its original When he was , he sold cleaning products door-to-door in home-building focus to real estate development—picking up the small town of Honea Path, S.C. “To tell the truth, a lot of clients such as Walmart, grocer Publix, and multiple fast-food times I would knock on doors and hope nobody would chains. The course of success wasn’t smooth. Some deals— answer,” he says. “But when they did, the juices would start including several with fellow believers—turned into disasters flowing—and I did pretty well.” because of his own failure to get details in writing, Shaw says: It’s only miles from Honea Path to Greenville, where the “Lack of documentation destroys more relationships -year-old Shaw—accompanied by his wife and twin sons—today oversees a successful comthan anything I know.” mercial and residential real-estate company. A providential investment more than The longer travel was theological: Shaw in years ago has helped Shaw Resources survive such setbacks. Shaw invested heavily college showed a clear talent for busiin a small South Carolina bank, hoping ness—he supported himself by buying to gain a majority position eventually. used cars from a wholesaler in New That didn’t happen, but in the York and selling them retail in bank merged with a much larger bank, Burlington, N.C.—but he wondered another merger followed, and Shaw whether a career in business was a became a major stockholder in one of worthy endeavor for a follower of the biggest banks in the Southeast. Jesus Christ. Both real estate prices and the value of Those misgivings were not-sobank stocks have declined recently, but subtly reinforced by the church culture he’s optimistic: “I see better times ahead.” in which he was raised: “The mentality Shaw has no plans to retire: Despite a was that if you’re going to be meaningful in bout with prostate cancer a decade ago, he your service to God, be in ministry, be a works at his business, works out three days a week, missionary—that’s the only way you could really SHAW: “What I and plays competitive golf. A long-time Sunday serve God.” Later, though, Shaw “heard something do is my ministry”: school teacher, Shaw set out a few years ago to put that changed my whole attitude—that there is no a Shaw Resources, some of his life lessons and theological reflections on difference between the sacred and the secular. What Inc. sign (above). paper. The result was Little by Little (CrossBooks, I do is my ministry.” ), a book that focuses on finding “success and significance” Shaw’s dad after World War II became a homebuilder and from a biblical point of view. He says, “I want to be remembered developer of subdivisions. “I got started in the real estate as person of purpose, and that purpose is fulfilling the calling business from the ground up,” Shaw chuckles. “Dad gave me a that God showed me could be mine in business.” A pick and a shovel and told me to dig footings.” Eventually, the DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 12:40 PM
This Christmas,
GIVE HOPE. Celebrate Jesus’s birth by sharing the Word through our Christmas Catalog
Choose from 23 life-changing gifts, including: •
Bibles for Soldiers far away from home this Christmas — in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world.
•
The light of the Gospel for children in China and Egypt.
•
Food and Bibles to provide physical and spiritual sustenance for needy American children.
•
Hope for At-Risk Teens needing spiritual guidance to stand strong for Christ.
This year give a gift that will really matter — forever. Each gift can be sent in honor of a friend or family member, and comes with a card you can send to let them know you’re honoring them while blessing others.
Spread the Word around the world.
Visit Catalog.AmericanBible.org
Ad Pages.indd GIFT CATALOG51 2010 - World Magazine Ad 102110.indd 1
11/15/10 10/21/10 10:42 3:01 PM
Called to The Rosenows serve God by bringing children with disabilities into their family
adopt
by Susan Olasky photograph by Allan Rosenow
I
f you think you have a lot on your plate, consider Scott and Kathy Rosenow. At 7:30 a.m. in their home outside Cincinnati, their 14 adopted children, all under the age of 15, begin to roll out of or be carried out of bunk beds, triple bunk beds, and cribs. Most dress themselves, make their beds, and start on chores: scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, sorting laundry. Three of the Rosenow’s four adult biological children still live at home. They help get some of the younger and less-abled kids up and going. The adopted children come from five countries—China, Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Romania—and have varying levels of disability. Three have spina bifida. Two have brain damage. One is blind. Some come from previous failed adoptions—but they’ve finally found a home. The Rosenows are what you might call “extreme” adopters. They view adoption as a calling, both for their family specifically and for the church in general. Scott Rosenow says not every Christian is called to adopt, although many are, but the church has a responsibility to provide care for orphans and other needy and helpless ones. To further that general mission, they began in 2000 The Shepherd’s Crook Ministries (TSC), an organization that
52
artners with adoption agencies to match special-needs p children with families willing and able to adopt. From humble beginnings as a website, TSC is now a 501(c)(3) charity with Scott Rosenow serving as its full-time director. It has found families for more than 200 children and sent medical teams and supplies to orphans in their own countries. “Each email we send that has an appeal for a family goes essentially viral in no time,” Scott says. “It’s really cool to see how God has brought all of these families, and even the various adoption agencies, to us over the years.” The winding path that led the Rosenows to start adopting started with suffering. Their daughter Erin was born with developmental disabilities that made school difficult and eventually led the family to homeschool all their children. Erin is now 27 and her mother’s faithful helper, but she will never live independently. Their son Ryan was born without one hand, which led to 15 years of medical visits as doctors in Louisville constructed a functional “helper hand” out of his own bones and tissue. These experiences prepared the Rosenows to deal with various disabilities and showed them the importance of having a home that is a safe haven for children who might otherwise face ridicule.
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationAdoption.indd 52
11/17/10 4:46 PM
requires five dozen eggs, a loaf and a half of bread, and three pounds of bacon. A typical dinner requires 10 pounds of chicken breasts, five pounds of steamed broccoli, and 15 pounds of potatoes. The Rosenows can no longer fit in one 15-passenger van: They also have a seven-passenger minivan, and even then it is a challenge to go anywhere as a family because they “have to fit in two, and sometimes three, wheelchairs.” The calendar each month contains 20 to 40 doctor and therapy appointments. Children need to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. A half-dozen kids require morning medications. They all need schooling. The Rosenows’ house has 2,100 square feet. A long table extends the length of the dining room and acts as a central hub. It’s easier for some of the children to crawl under the table to get to their seats on the other side than it is to squeeze around it. It’s the place they eat meals (although the growing family now requires an auxiliary table) and have family devotions. It’s also where the children do their schoolwork and form an assembly line to make sandwiches for lunch. The family room, furnished with a couch and love seat, serves as Scott’s office, a playroom for the younger kids, laundry folding station, and a place for group lessons and read-alouds. Its beige carpeted floor also serves as an impromptu changing table for many of each day’s more than 20 diaper changes. The Rosenows don’t do it alone—nor are they the only family adopting many hard-to-place children. Several years ago, WORLD reported on the Cooney family in Maryland (Jan. 22, 2005). As I researched this article, many other families came forward with their stories, and we’ll tell some of them next month. These families often rely on friends and fellow church members to help pay the cost of their adoptions, which can be as much as $35,000. The Rosenows’ church, North Cincinnati Community Church, supports TSC as part of its missions budget. Families from four churches each provide a meal a month to the Rosenows: That average of about two meals per week saves them about $400 per month in food expenses. Patrick Farrell, who heads up the effort, says, “The meal ministry is an indirect effort to answer God’s call to help and care for orphans.” Even the state helps by providing Medicaid as a secondary insurance for the adopted children. The Rosenows have no doubt that God called them to adopt many special-needs children. They also know that God called these children into their particular family. Kathy says they tell the children that God’s “plan was for them to be a part of this family—to be our children—from the beginning. He doesn’t make mistakes, and each aspect of their coming to us—even the painful and difficult parts of their stories—were carefully controlled and orchestrated by Him.” I asked, “Don’t you ever feel stretched too thin? Don’t the 101 appointments, including two surgeries, that occurred between July 31 and Nov. 4 get you down? How about that daily glass of spilled milk?” Kathy answered: “Absolutely. Very often—if we forget where our strength comes from. . . . It is only in knowing just how weak we are that we are able to do all that this life involves because in our weakness, we turn to Him.” This may be unfathomable to some others, especially non-Christians—but it’s a calling. A
CROWDED HOUSE: Kathy reads Little Women to the older children before bedtime.
The Rosenows first started thinking about adoption when they heard years ago a radio program with former major league pitcher Tim Burke and his wife Christine discussing their adoptions. As the Rosenows studied the lives of Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, Martin Luther, and William Tyndale, they became convinced that they wanted to “stand for the things that are important to Christ.” Eventually that led to adoption. Kathy says it is frustrating to know “the world is so very full of orphans, and no matter how hard we work we are barely scratching the surface in the vast ocean of need. We are forced to keep our eyes on the Author of our story.” So how do they know when to proceed? Scott Rosenow says, “We always pray extensively before making such a decision.” He says sometimes they’ve had an immediate sense that they are to “go after this child.” Other times they are less certain and “have moved forward in faith, trusting that God would close the doors if it turned out we had somehow missed His leading.” Still other times “we have felt strongly that we were not being led to begin an adoption, so we haven’t.” Without the God-centered perspective, it’s hard to imagine anyone pursuing a life that’s so demanding. Imagine: Breakfast
D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
VocationAdoption.indd 53
53
11/17/10 4:47 PM
Sisson World 1.10.indd 1 Ad Pages.indd 54
11/3/09 12:25:58 PM 11/15/10 10:44 PM
Honoring
Jack Templeton, of a wealthy foundation, has a rare commitment to donor intent
by Marvin Olasky in West Conshohocken, Pa.
his father F
, the billion-dollar Templeton Foundation is a puzzle. Its , Jack Templeton, is an elder in the theologically conservative Presbyterian Church in America, and it makes grants supporting free enterprise and educational competition that most members would cheer. For example, a Templeton grant made possible Jim Tooley’s research on the growth and success of private schools for the poor in Asia and Africa (see my column in our Nov. issue). And yet, Templeton has poured millions of dollars into grants supporting groups committed to macroevolutionary theory, which most evangelicals find theologically counter-biblical and scientifically questionable. To a one-word question—Why?—there is a one-word answer: Calling. The Foundation’s founder, Sir John Templeton, died two years ago at age , after his stock market picks made billions for himself and those who trusted him with their money. But once Sir John became wealthy, he spent much of his time working out a philosophy that melded dozens of exotic religious brands. His son Jack, age , retired from a renowned surgical career to carry out what he sees as his calling: to keep the foundation faithful to the intent of his dad. I drove to Templeton headquarters in a nondescript office building in a Philadelphia suburb and heard repeatedly Jack’s answer to just about every question: His calling is not to fund his own favorites but “to learn more and more clearly what Sir John’s specific donor intent FATHER AND was.” He makes such study SON: The late mandatory for everyone on the Sir John and Templeton Foundation staff, his son Jack so that all program officers ask Templeton. DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationTempleton.indd 55
WORLD
11/17/10 4:59 PM
WORLD
MARY ALTAFFER/AP • PREVIOUS PAGE: HAN DOUT
change in foundation goals and purposes to be made. Even to the same first question in considering every internally or exterchange the location of the board’s annual meeting requires a nally developed grant: “Would Sir John want to fund this?” percent vote of the honorary members. It’s not as if Jack doesn’t have his own ideas and his own The Foundation maintains Sir John’s “core funding areas.” standing. In he spent a summer at a Presbyterian medical The lead one, “Science & the Big Questions,” includes questions mission in Cameroon and resolved to have a career in medicine. about evolution. Other Templeton core areas are Character He became by all reports a great surgeon, working at one point Development (“We can determine how to be the masters of our with former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, who mentored habits”), Exceptional Cognitive Talent & Genius (humans can be him spiritually. Jack’s personal contributions do not mirror “helpers in the acceleration of divine creativity”), and Genetics those of the Templeton Foundation. But he believes strongly (the Foundation is not yet accepting unsolicited proposals in that that his calling is to pass out Foundation funds as his father area). Jack Templeton would not discuss any differences from would have wanted. Sir John in those areas: His calling is to do the will of his father. Those funds are large: The Foundation now has assets of The son clearly sees things the same way as his father in billion, and that sum will at least double with the settling of Sir one other Core Area, Freedom & Free Enterprise. Jack recalls John’s estate. Sir John set up his foundation in , but how Sir John “often spoke, year after year about ‘people’s years earlier he was already awarding the “Templeton Prize for capitalism’ and what it would mean if the overwhelming Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual majority of people in any country were shareholders themRealities.” Mother Teresa was the first winner, but recently the selves with the result that they would be much less likely to be prize has gone to theistic evolutionists like John Polkinghorne envious and instead would focus much more persistently on (), Michael Heller (), and Francisco Ayala (), ‘the good of the whole.’” principal author of Science, Evolution and Creationism, a critique of the Intelligent Design movement. Jack Templeton knows about his father’s desires not only through years “Eleven people from the media called of conversation but by piles of books and documents that his father wrote. Jack as me and wanted an interview. Ten a elder subscribes to the Westminster of the said, ‘Now that the old Confession of Faith from the s, but guy is dead, what are you his father wrote that “the rate of spirigoing to do to change the tual development is accelerating. . . . We may be setting the stage for a great leap place?’ That’s our culture. forward in our spiritual understanding.” No respect for the sense Jack recalls that when Sir John died of those things that in , “Eleven people from the media called me and wanted an interview. Ten probably ought to endure of the said, ‘Now that the old guy is and be strengthened.” dead, what are you going to do to change the place?’ That’s our culture. No respect for the sense of those things that probably I made one last try to understand the tension that might ought to endure and be strengthened. None of that.” affect the son in doing the will of the father: I asked how Jack Jack resisted then any questions about differences between Templeton’s personal giving differed from Templeton father and son. He resists them now. Last year the foundation Foundation philanthropy. He responded by emphasizing how world was buzzing when longtime Templeton Foundation his life’s work as a doctor influenced his charity: “A good part executive director Charles Harper lost his position, but Jack of my giving has had something of a ‘therapeutic nature’ to it.” would not answer my questions about that. He said after a He has given to trauma prevention programs and to attempts second inquiry, “Dad was not interested in the past. The to reduce youth substance abuse—“especially since there is a question is, What are you doing tomorrow?” growing level of evidence that abused substances from alcohol If Jack’s commitment were not enough by itself, his father to legal and illegal drugs clearly create variable and visible created an extraordinary way to enforce faithfulness to his damages to the brain.” intent. Every five years, three independent analysts are to He also has supported “education and empowerment of Third conduct a review to see if Jack Templeton (or his successor) is World women (especially mothers and home leaders) who are making grants consistent with Sir John’s intent. If they find trapped in a deeply entrenched culture of the mental and the that Jack is giving percent or more of the grants to causes material reality of poverty.” Yet he is not striving to change the inconsistent with paternal intent, he has one year to get back Foundation’s giving pattern, even if he could, and he speaks of into line. If not, Jack and his top two officers will be fired. “specificity in the intent, the purpose, goals and vision of the John Nor can Foundation trustees make changes by themselves Templeton Foundation with which I also strongly resonate.” or choose new board members. Templeton family members, This may seem strange to some, and I don’t like Templeton plus winners of the annual Templeton Prize, plus heads of support for evolution—but in a foundation world where sons several organizations Sir John respected (such as the Acton regularly disregard and even despise the intent of their fathers, Institute) are honorary members: There are about in all, and Jack sees himself called to honor “Sir John.” A percent of them must be in agreement for any substantive DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationTempleton.indd 56
11/18/10 5:12 PM
UNION UNIVERSITY
Doctor of Ministry
in Expository Preaching
Dedicated to serious scholarship and compelling expository preaching •
Opportunity for spiritual and professional growth.
•
Personal coaching, practical instruction, peer interaction and ministry-related projects.
•
Outstanding faculty in the School of Theology and Missions.
•
Residence seminars at Stephen Olford Center’s beautiful, 18-acre, retreat-like setting in Memphis, Tennessee.
dmin@uu.edu | 901.757.7977 www.uu.edu/dmin
E X C E L L E N C E - D R I V E N | C H R I S T- C E N T E R E D | P E O P L E - F O C U S E D | F U T U R E - D I R E C T E D
Ad Pages.indd 57
11/15/10 10:44 PM
The happy Hugh Ross, founder of Reasons to Believe, was called to science as a child
warrior
W
hen Hugh Ross took his first physics class at the University of British Columbia, the professor gave students a stern warning: If you have a girlfriend, you will fail this course. If you have a job, you will fail. If you have a hobby, you will fail. Ross, now 65, made sure he had none of the above: His sight was set on science from the time at age 7 he asked his parents, “Are stars hot?”—and then went to the library to find out. Later, a potential distraction entered: Kathy, the woman he married. Ross jokes that “I married my wife without any absolute proof that she exists.” Examining the scientific evidence, though, he went ahead with the wedding on the high probability that she did exist, and after 33 years of marriage feels he has more evidence. Kathy Ross, with her M.A. in English, also proved to be a helpmeet rather than a distraction: Next year is the 25th anniversary of Reasons to Believe, the science ministry Hugh Ross founded and heads; his wife is senior vice president, overseeing communications and other areas, and sometimes staying at their home and office in southern California while Hugh hits the road to speak about both science and biblical interpretation at conferences like a recent one put on by the Hill Country Institute for Contemporary Christianity. At the conference, Calvin College professor Deborah Haarsma argued that those who wrote the Bible had a different view of chronology than we have today, and we should not read into Genesis knowledge that the original authors couldn’t have had and the original audience wouldn’t have understood. But Ross smilingly insisted that “God has inspired the Bible to communicate to all generations.” Another theistic evolutionist, Regent College professor Ross Hastings, discussed the identity of Adam while stressing the “big difference between literal and literalistic.” Ross replied by citing the Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 2 that show “God is creating supernaturally a single man and a single woman from whom we’re all descended.” And so it went during five panel discussions in which Ross participated, and when he answered questions from conference attendees. Is the universe so vast that humans lack significance? Ross: Given the cosmic mass density and expansion time ready to make a planet like Earth, it couldn’t be any smaller. Why is Earth on the periphery? Ross: If we were in the center, light
58
from all the stars surrounding us would keep us from seeing distant reaches and learning how the heavens declare the glory of God. The hits kept on coming. Wouldn’t it be sweeter if humans lived longer? Ross: It’s long enough for us to see our sin pattern and turn to God, short enough to keep those who hate God and pursue evil from making life even harder. Why aren’t our brains bigger? Ross: If our cranial size were bigger, we’d cook ourselves to death; that’s why fevers are problems. Forty percent of a dog’s brain supports its nose, so we lost a lot of survival advantage by having a brain that could do calculus and spend hours in prayer. And more: Why do we have so many physical constraints? Ross: God limits the spread of evil and encourages people to develop skills and virtue. What’s the purpose of gas giant p lanets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? Ross: They work together to keep Earth from lifeexterminating collisions. Are some of Ross’ Old Earth creationist theories not fully established? Ross: Discontinuities are research opportunities. Ross’ sense of calling and cosmic optimism make him a modern version of the “happy warrior” praised by poet William Wordsworth in 1806: “the generous Spirit, who, when brought/ Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought/ Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:/ Whose high endeavours are an inward light/ That makes the path before him always bright:/ Who, with a natural instinct to discern/ What k nowledge can perform, is diligent to learn.” Ross went from childhood library explorations to a special program for teenaged budding scientists and on to college, graduate school at the University of Toronto, and postdoctoral work at CalTech. Theology, though, was not a straight line. He did not know any Christians when he was growing up, and as a teenager explored the works of a variety of philosophers, only
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationRoss.indd 58
11/17/10 4:50 PM
han dout
by Marvin Olasky in Austin, Texas
han dout
to discover “inconsistencies, contradictions, evasions, and circular reasoning.” He explored Eastern holy books and found their writing style “esoteric and mysterious.” Then he encountered the Bible: “It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed at the quantity of historical and scientific—testable—material it included. The first page of the Bible caught my attention. Not only did its author correctly describe the major events in the creation of life on Earth, but he placed those events in the scientifically correct order and properly identified the Earth’s initial conditions.” Many Christians worry about the reaction of others if they proclaim the Bible is not only spiritually but scientifically true: The three P’s—professors, peers, and parents—hold back many
professions of faith or critiques of Darwinism. Wordworth’s 1806 poem concludes that the Happy Warrior does not check public opinion before taking a stand because he “finds comfort in himself and in his cause;/ And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws/ His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.” Ross in this way also is a happy warrior. At first he feared “the contempt and ridicule that would surely come” from publicly affirming faith in Christ, but “I knew what I had to do”—and God gave Ross the courage to do it. He not only went public but after a time, while maintaining his scientific interests, became a church minister of evangelism. In 1986 he founded Reasons to Believe, an organization that shows how science gives Christians not a reason to be bashful but a reason to believe in God’s mercy in creating and sustaining all there is. Ross encounters some hostility from Young Earth creationists, since he accepts the standard scientific view that the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, and says it’s perfect timing: If we came earlier our Earth home would not have been ready, and if we came later we’d be able to see only a fraction of cosmic history (due to the universe’s accelerating expansion). God’s right timing, he says, gives us right now the right rotation rate for Earth, the optimal moment for petroleum and coal formation, and the best period for solar stability and luminosity. Ross also turns upside down the argument that 14 billion years makes the relatively tiny span of human existence seem insignificant—no, all that time spent to create a workable environment for humans means that we must have great worth and immense purpose. Nor is Ross flummoxed by scientists who play with string theory’s contention that there may be 10 dimensions. His reaction: Great, the existence of more than four dimensions helps us understand more about God and how we, existing in only four, see through a glass dimly. So Christians, Ross asserts, should not fear death: It’s the pathway to life in more dimensions. His ability to take negatives that Darwinians push regarding creation and turn them into positives sometimes flummoxes materalists, but this happy warrior is called to show that the universe is the perfect theater for God’s redemptive drama. A D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
VocationRoss.indd 59
59
11/17/10 4:51 PM
Body of wo
WORLD
VocationKnippers.indd 60
DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/17/10 5:10 PM
I Controversial Christian artist ED KNIPPERS says painting nudes is his calling by Marvin Olasky
photograph by Glenn Howell
work
F F” of an exhibit that opens on our cover date—Dec. —in Annapolis, Md. The exhibit notice explains, “On April , Edward Knippers’ wife died of cancer. In the years following his loss the artist has been investigating his personal version of transcendence.” Knippers explains, “The human body is at the center of my artistic imagination because I am a Christian, and because the body is an essential element of the Christian doctrines of Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection.” Well, sure, but nudes? Even though his are sweaty, not sultry, Knippers at age has had decades of both praise and condemnation. Gene Edward Veith, in his book State of the Arts, calls Knippers’ work “explicitly, confrontationally Biblical” and “eminently evangelical.” Covenant College art professor Ed Kellogg said about Knippers’ works when displayed at the college, “There was nothing lewd about his work nor were the few images of Christ in his terrible suffering and shame irreverent.” But Chattanooga resident Charles Wysong, after hearing about the paintings, went onto the Covenant campus and tore up three of them that portrayed Christ. Then Covenant president Frank Brock later said the college “erred in exhibiting Knippers’ work.” Others argued that nudes often appeal to prurient interests, and even if Knippers’ nudes do not preen and show off, accepting them creates a bad precedent. Knippers says God called him to persevere in art: He recalls that as an art graduate student at the University of Tennessee, “I wasn’t making the grade, and I had to go to the Lord and ask Him if this was His way of telling me that He required another direction for my life. Even harder, if He told me another way to go, I had to be willing to do it. He kept me at the university.” Later, Knippers says he was “drawn to the whole idea of dealing with the figure. God gave us bodies for a reason, and they are bodies we’ll be stuck with for eternity, because we believe in the resurrection of the body. Christ came in the flesh and redeemed it, and by doing so redeemed the entire world of matter.” He notes the difference between nudity and, as they say in Texas, nekkedness: but, given our sinful natures, do most people make that distinction? Knippers’ figures are not lewd. He argued in a recent essay, “My detractors have pointed out that nudity in the Scriptures is often a sign of shame and sinfulness, yet it does not follow, as some might think, that nudity is a sin in and of itself. It may be inappropriate in most situations, I think that it is, but that is not the same thing as saying that nudity is categorically evil. . . . I have seen the Lord use the nudity in my paintings to speak to my contemporaries—to raise theological questions about our bodies and our eternal personhood that need to be explored.” When cancer killed Diane Knippers five years ago, Ed says, “It was very sad, but I never felt abandoned.” He once again thought through his calling: “I had to go back to the Lord again. I had to ask if He wanted me to continue being an artist, continue being a painter. The insights I’ve gained from her death have directly affected my painting because I get a sense of the movement behind the veil, so to speak, of the reality that’s here all the time and we can’t see it. . . . Do I believe that the physical body can in reality take flight to a world beyond what we know? As a Christian I believe that there will be an actual resurrection of our bodies.” Knippers’ paintings remain controversial, but he does not give in or give up: “My identity is in Christ, my art is my vocation, and I sense it’s His calling so I can give it all I’ve got.” A DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationKnippers.indd 61
WORLD
11/17/10 5:10 PM
rıght banner Two former mayors found that leading a big-city government is not an easy calling by Russ Pulliam & Marvin Olasky
P
oliticians are notorious for obsessing about the next election, but two former Midwest mayors—Steve Goldsmith of Indianapolis and Ken Blackwell of Cincinnati—have gone deeper. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg earlier this year named Goldsmith his deputy mayor: Goldsmith will be 64 on Dec. 12 but is not ready to retire from his life calling of pushing for smarter municipal government. Goldsmith needs to streamline rules and revise regulations to gain $500 million in potential savings that he’s already identified—and it’s harder to push through such changes in New York than it was in Indianapolis, where he was mayor from 1992 to 2000. Goldsmith has long fought to bring principles of competition and efficiency from the private sector to municipal government. During the 1980s, as a prosecutor in Indianapolis, he computerized court records before the computer revolution made that obvious. Some in Indianapolis wanted him to use truancy laws against homeschools during the 1980s, but he refused to meddle in the details of parents teaching their own children.
62
Goldsmith’s Jewish background, with its emphasis on traditional values and free market economics, stood him on common ground with an emerging conservative Christian movement. During the 1990s he won two terms for mayor, gaining a national reputation for downsizing government and adding competitive elements in city services. He tried to take that record to the state level in 1996, but Indiana voters were skeptical of a big-city guy, and he lost by a small margin to then Lt. Gov. Frank O’Bannon, a Democrat. Goldsmith helped George W. Bush develop his faith-based initiative in 1999 and 2000, but Bush aides elbowed him out of a top spot in Washington. Now, in New York City, Goldsmith is in charge of key departments such as police, fire, and sanitation. He’s also responsible for pushing efficiency reform in all departments of the city government, which has 350,000 employees. That number includes teachers because the mayor now runs the city’s schools. In a late-night interview after his typical 15-hour workday, Goldsmith said the problems of New York City are similar to
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationPoliticans.indd 62
11/17/10 5:14 PM
go ldsm ith : Ch i p So m o devi ll a/Get t y I mages • b l ack well: To m Wi lliams/Ro ll C all/Get t y I mages
Carrying the
Blackwell’s mom, an eighthgrade dropout, loved that change in intentions: “She later went back and got her GED, and she was a voracious reader. She would read from the Bible or have us read from the Bible. My mom’s emphasis on reading and particularly on reading Scripture balanced out my dad’s appreciation for physical toughness: competitiveness tempered by spirituality.” Blackwell’s uncle also helped him appreciate the Bible and the way it strengthens us when life doesn’t go as we expect: “Dehart Hubbard was the first AfricanAmerican to win an Olympic gold medal: 1924, long jump. That year Eric Liddell decided not to run because the finals fell on the Sabbath. When my uncle came back, he said that God had provided him a great life experience those of Indianapolis, “but the scale is daunting.” The Tammany because he saw somebody choose fidelity to faith over fame.” Hall political machine, which operated under a system of favors Blackwell needed that preparation for his first full day as and jobs for political loyalists, governed New York in the late mayor in 1979, when 11 young people were trampled to death 19th century, and civil service reform early in the 20th century trying to get into a Who concert after a lot of drinking and helped but also hurt. “The Progressive movement created a pot-smoking. When the doors opened the band was ending its system that is really encrusted,” Goldsmith noted, with rehearsal, but people thought that the concert was starting so professional bureaucrats running the city by rulebooks that they rushed toward the few doors that were open: Eleven soon became antiquated. people suffocated. Bizarrely, the concert went on as the bodies More of a social conservative than Bloomberg, Goldsmith were taken away. stays out of controversial policy issues, such as the mayor’s Blackwell got to the deadly auditorium when the concert support for the proposed “Ground Zero” mosque: “I’m like a was almost over: “I had to make a decision as to whether or not city manager. I’m not into politics so much.” He misses the to stop the concert with seven minutes left, because I knew that day-to-day contact with many different people and groups that there were 11 young people in body he had in Indianapolis: “My instincts bags. It was crazy in there, and we were better refined in Indianapolis knew that if we stopped the show it was than they are here. I knew the context going to get crazier. I let them finish, better there.” But he’s learning: On and we were able to get people out Sept. 11, he made sure the police could Dick Armey, 70, former House majority without further incident. It was a crazy handle the 11 conflicting protests and Leader, grew up in Cando, N.D. He finished year. Two months later, a guy took over counter-protests over the proposed high school and “never thought about a Greyhound bus, shot a passenger, and mosque. going to college. Nobody in my family in then asked to speak to the mayor. We Ken Blackwell, 62, former mayor any generation on either side had ever were able to get the seven people off the of Cincinnati and secretary of state gone to college and going to college was bus. That was life as mayor.” and treasurer of Ohio, was the son of something I never thought I’d do. Well, in All of that prepared Blackwell for a meatpacker who wanted him to be a November we had a terrible blizzard. I what turned into a big defeat in the boxer. Blackwell recalls, “We grew spent about 3 to 4 weeks working night 2006 gubernatorial race. Blackwell up in a public housing community. and day rebuilding high wire lines, recalls, “Earlier, I lost a race for the My dad was a boxing fanatic and school board, I lost a bid for Congress. enrolled me in the boxing program at freezing out there in the cold.” In the final analysis, the question is did the Finley Street Neighborhood Then came the turning point: “One you lose carrying the right banner, House. I won my first four or five night about 3 a.m. I found myself on a standing for the right things? If you do, bouts with relative ease. My fifth bout 30-foot pole at 30 degrees below zero. I you’re able to get through it. My I got hit so hard in the nose that I had looked in the distance at Jamestown, strength and my hope come from the to go home and tell my dad that I was N.D., where two of my high-school fact that the God who is with me at the going to find something more friends I knew to be snug and warm in peak is with me in the valley.” A scholarly to pursue.” their beds. At that moment I decided that
go ldsm ith : Ch i p So m o devi ll a/Get t y I mages • b l ack well: To m Wi lliams/Ro ll C all/Get t y I mages
GOING DEEPER: Goldsmith (left) and Blackwell.
Cold calling
I was going to go to college.” (For more from Armey, see WORLD, Nov. 6) —M.O.
VocationPoliticans.indd 63
D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
63
11/17/10 5:14 PM
The unified life Monday through Saturday are not secular days for the Christian but days of service to God by Marvin Olasky
S
ome pages into Days to the Work You Love, author Dan Miller lists sentences not to put on a resumé. Among them are: “I am a rabid typist,” “Worked partytime as an office assistant,” “My experience in horticulture is well-rooted,” and “With my obsession for detail, I make sure to cross my i’s and dot my t’s.” A line like “Experienced in all faucets of accounting” would work only among Washington big-spenders. If only finding the right position were as easy as avoiding such errors. Example: Law school graduate Robert Stillwell, who worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget during President George W. Bush’s administration, read Miller’s book and others as he searched for a post-Bush job. His experience included high-level work providing legal counsel on budget issues and even higher-level work serving as the White House Easter Bunny alongside President Bush. Stillwell says he “found the path to take while exiting the White House by identifying the passions and desires God had laid on my heart and finding where they intersected with the skills and abilities He had given me.” He spent time identifying his skills and abilities, networking (LinkedIn helped), and taking practical steps ( Days helped). He gained inspiration from Eric Liddell’s declaration in the film Chariots of Fire that when he runs he feels God’s pleasure. The identifying passions experience of Stillwell, who now works with a leading management consultant firm, rings true to what I’ve found in advising students over the past three decades. One place to start: List your dreams and passions. What is it you find naturally enjoyable? If money were not important, what would you spend your time doing? When do you find the time just flying by? What are those recurrent themes that keep coming up in your thinking? What did you enjoy as a child but perhaps have been told was unrealistic or impractical to focus on as a career? Since man does not live on bread, houses, or cars alone, putting material considerations first in choosing a career is an invitation to disaster. As Miller writes, asking “How can I achieve that position, status, and power? [is] likely to be an elusive path, leading to rapid burnout.” Saying “show me the money,” going with “what will be in the most demand,” or searching for security are also ways to choose wrongly: A rapidly changing work environment means that “little security is found in any company or job.” But looking for the most “godly” or “humanitarian” jobs may also be a mistake: “While honorable, using these as external criteria can misdirect a person from doing what is a proper ‘fit.’” I’ve found two things to be key: Understanding the biblical approach to work, and understanding the talents God has
WORLD
DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationConclusion.indd 64
given you. Biblically, work is not “that necessary evil that consumes the time between our brief periods of enjoyment on the weekends.” It’s not “primarily a method of paying the bills” or “the shortest path to retirement.” Instead, just as the heavens declare the glory of God by showing the majestic extent of His creation, so we glorify God by showing the creative powers that He has given us. Think of the Hebrew word avodah, from which come both the words “work” and “worship.” Monday through Saturday are not secular days but days in which we worship as we work. Life is to be unified, with everything we do serving God. Miller writes of three workers at the Nissan plant in middle Tennessee summarizing their workdays. One, thinking in terms of job, says, “I’m a welder— that’s what they pay me for each Friday.” The second, thinking in terms of career, says, “I’m making a beautiful car today.” The third worker is thoughtful for a moment and then responds, “I’m helping to create innovative and responsible transportation for individuals, families, and companies.” That’s vocation, or calling. If we get that straight, the next question is: How do you find your calling? I’d suggest a selfexam with two questions: What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? The first question is important because God doesn’t hand out talents in such a willy-nilly way that most people are good in multiple areas—or, to be precise, so good that others will pay them to do it. And, most people come to find that they enjoy what they’re good at, because God gives us the desire to gain pleasure from being productive (and having others respect our work). Sometimes, though, what we most enjoy is not what we’re good at— and then it’s important to give ourselves enough time to see if we can become good. But Miller rightly criticizes “sanctified ignorance . . . the belief that if we love God and have committed our lives to Him, everything will work out.” He emphasizes that “knowing God’s will is not some passive guessing STI LLWELL: HAN DOUT • BUSH : CH I P SOM O DEVI LL A/GET T Y I MAGES
11/18/10 1:37 PM
“I found the path to take while exiting the White House by identifying the passions and desires God had laid on my heart and finding where they intersected with the skills and abilities He had given me.” —Robert Stillwell
(in the White House dressed as the Easter Bunny in )
game. Rather it is taking what God has already revealed to us and developing a plan of action”—and that includes an exit strategy if we find people over a period of time not appreciating what we most appreciate about ourselves. Specific detail is important both in writing and in thinking about callings. In school, we learn to be generalists: The goal is to get on the honor roll by getting good grades in all classes. In the work world, though, we specialize: We need to become excellent at one thing, and failing at some others is not failure. Miller gives this good advice: “Work where you are the strongest percent of the time, where you are learning percent of the time, where you are weak percent of the time.” He also notes that “fulltime Christian service” is a misleading expression, because “the Bible gives dignity to any work. All occupations are sacred.” He’s not saying that about prostitution or other ungodly vocations, but once we’ve dropped those negatives we also “need to eliminate the artificial ranking of the godliness of work. There are no second-class citizens in the workplace.” Thinking of this theologically: We are all actors on God’s stage who need to learn how we fit into His big story. Each role is important, and we are subjectively choosing moment by moment even though objectively the drama is already written: We can aspire to be heroes rather than villains or idiots. Miller rightly describes the importance of challenges. Here’s the first part of an ad that explorer Ernest Shackleton placed in the early s as he looked for candidates for a South Pole expedition: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, long hours.” The ad drew more than , candidates. Here’s David Livingston’s response from Africa when the missionary society asked him if he had “found a good road” so that other missionaries could easily join him: “If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.” A DECEMBER 4, 2010
VocationConclusion.indd 65
WORLD
11/18/10 1:37 PM
May the gifts we share this season be a reminder of God’s precious gift to us.
A VITAMIN COMPANY THAT ANSWERS TO GOD IN ALL WE DO. • LifeSource gives ALL proceeds to Christian Organizations worldwide such as Campus Crusade for Christ, The Jesus Film Project and many more… • We are dedicated to providing the best possible supplements for your family and mine. • We have hundreds of nutritional products, gourmet soaps, SLS-free shampoos and conditioners, organic skin care and much, much more. —Bruce Brightman, Founder
Take 10% off your order today! Coupon code: HOLIDAY10
Call today to place your order or request a free catalog
(800) 567-8122 | Lifesourcevitamins.com Ad Pages.indd 66
11/15/10 10:44 PM
Notebook SPORTS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HOUSES OF GOD
JOH N LOK/TH E SEATTLE TI M ES
‘My oh my!’ SPORTS: DAVE NIEHAUS brought a passion for Seattle baseball to his Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster BY MARK BERGIN
>>
N, the original broadcaster for the Seattle Mariners, died Nov. after suffering a heart attack. He was . News of his passing sent waves of grief across the city he served so well for years. But even in death, Niehaus managed to inspire some of the joy he’d delivered throughout his life. Though mourning, Seattle baseball fans found solace and levity in the memory of a single moment that defined the man.
Email: mbergin@worldmag.com
Sports.indd 67
The year was . The Mariners had lost the opening two games of their five-game divisional playoff series against the New York Yankees. The run of magic that had brought the team from as far back as games out of first place to an American League West title appeared over. But two unexpected Mariners victories evened the series and set up a decisive Game showdown in Seattle’s Kingdome. And in the extra innings of that game, the most important moment in franchise history sent chills down the spines of an entire city, ultimately rescuing baseball in Seattle for years to come. My memory of the moment is vivid, though not visual. As a -year-old Seattle native who grew up on the dismal diet DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/18/10 4:08 PM
Notebook > Sports
Sports.indd 68
WORLD
FLIGHT FROM FIXERS On Nov. , -year-old Zulqarnain Haider snuck out of his Dubai hotel room and hopped on a flight to London. He left behind him his promising career as a cricketer and kicked off a scandal that threatens to put the final nail in the coffin of Pakistani cricket. Haider is seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, stating that Pakistan’s government and the Pakistan Cricket Board () cannot protect him from a gambling syndicate that threatened him and his family if he refused to help fix a Pakistan vs. South Africa cricket match played in Dubai. Haider said a match-fixer told him, “You will make lots of money if you join us and help us. If not, then staying in the team could be difficult and we can make things difficult for you.” Match-fixing is big business in Pakistan and India, where underground syndicates often place mammoth bets on the smallest occurrences in a game—for example, whether a “bowler” (equivalent to a pitcher in baseball) will break a rule at a specific point in the match. For all but the biggest stars, the financial rewards of throwing a match can dwarf their legitimate incomes. Earlier this summer the suspended three Pakistani cricketers, including team captain Salman Butt and teen prodigy Mohammed Amir. Both were implicated in a match-fixing sting undertaken by a British tabloid during the Pakistan team’s July-to-September recent series of matches in England. Some would expect Pakistani anger to be directed against the match-fixers, but no: Haider has become the bad guy. officials claim that Haider broke protocol by not first informing team leaders about the match-fixer’s approach and threat. Pakistan Sports Minister Ijaz Hussain Jakhrani showed no sympathy for Haider’s fears that he and his family were in danger: “If he is such a weak and scared person he should not have played cricket in the first place. Particularly not for the national team.” Haider plans to cooperate with the in the VICTIM: Haider in coming weeks. But no matter what the investiDubai on Nov. ; at a gation unearths, it is unlikely that Haider has a London presser (top) future with the Pakistan team. The has in on Nov. . (top) and the past seemed more concerned with covering in Dubai on Nov. . up scandals than in fixing root problems. If the scandals keep mounting, they may not have any choice. Cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, may take control of Pakistani cricket, or suspend the national team from play. It’s been a long, grim summer for Pakistani cricket fans, and as their national pastime continues to crumble, even the optimists see only hard times ahead. —Daniel Olasky
TOP: AL ASTAI R GR ANT/AP • BOTTOM: R AN DI SOKOLOFF/AP
that was Mariners baseball throughout the s, I could hardly bear to watch the television broadcast as my boyhood team batted in the bottom of the th trailing -. As it turned out, I didn’t need to watch, just listen: “Right now, the Mariners looking for the tie. They would take a fly ball, they would love a base hit into the gap and they could win it with Junior’s speed. The stretch. . . and the - pitch on the way to Edgar Martínez swung on and , , ’ . . . ’ , ” The written word cannot do it justice. That play-by-play call from Niehaus echoes in my ears to this day. To dial it up online and hear it again is to teleport back in time. With every listen, the hair of my neck still stands on end. My heart quickens. My eyes well. And so it is for tens of thousands of Seattle baseball fans. The call is a work of art, the culmination of familiarity, passion, and drama. It was the defining brush stroke of a three-decade aural masterpiece Niehaus painted across Seattle’s airwaves. It landed him in baseball’s Hall of Fame. There were other memorable calls, too, including, “Get out the rye bread, Grandma. It’s grand salami time!” Niehaus’ genius flowed from a love of Mariners baseball. It was evident in “The Double” of and just as clear in the countless dog days of meaningless seasons when all hope of a pennant race had evaporated by June. No matter. Whether the M’s were playing for playoff glory or just trying to climb out the division cellar, Niehaus remained a fan. Though employed by the team, he was never afraid to call it as he saw it, describing the good and bad in a grandfatherly baritone. He was just the type you’d love to catch a game with. And so Seattle did, for years. A DECEMBER 4, 2010
11/18/10 4:10 PM
Notebook > Technology
FRIENDLY RESEARCH
Sentimental journey Pols look to eavesdrop on the internet to gauge public opinion of candidates BY ALISSA WILKINSON
I LLUSTR ATIO N : KRI EG BARRI E • FACEBOOK: KELSE Y YARB ER • REM OTES: MAT T BAKER/ISTOCK
>>
A A landline telephones for cell phones, traditional political polling grows less effective: A Pew Research Center report recently found that polls using only landlines to gather data can overestimate support for Republican candidates by to percentage points. Meanwhile, social media sites such as Twitter continue to gain users. In response to this shift, political campaigns are exploring “sentiment analysis”—a way to systematically eavesdrop on the public conversation about a candidate by gathering data from blogs, Twitter, and other social networking sites, then using a program to analyze how candidates’ messages and activities affect potential voters.
For instance, a sentiment analysis program might pick up a public Twitter update that mentions a politician’s name, then scan it to determine if the opinion expressed is positive or negative. Businesses already use sentiment analysis to keep tabs on their brands, but political campaigns have been slower to adopt the practice. One problem is that these programs cannot easily sense sarcasm, which is rampant on the internet. Yet a British company called Linguamatics used sentiment analysis to predict within a single point that the Conservative Party would win the last election, and some speculate that the practice will be common by the elections.
What can Facebook tell us about how we make friends? A lot, apparently. A recent study published in the American Journal of Sociology tracked a class of , new university students to see how they made friends. Rather than tracking subjects’ Facebook “friends”—since this relationship can be impersonal—the study looked at people who were tagged together in photos. What surprised researchers most was that the students were not attracted primarily to one another by race, as sociologists have long assumed. Rather, the study suggested that students are more likely to become friends with those they see often— roommates, or people who have the same major. Additionally, the students were two and a half times more likely to befriend people from their home state. The researchers noted that Facebook may represent a highly effective source of information for future projects because of the amount of information users tend to disclose. Yet while the researchers gained approval from the university and Facebook to perform their study, students did not know they were being tracked, sparking privacy concerns that could plague future research. —A.W.
Control issues
Complicated home entertainment devices mean complicated remote controls. But now, the companies that make such products are thinking about eliminating remote controls altogether. Mitsubishi, for instance, decided against creating a touch-screen remote control, since it would raise the price of its television by several hundred dollars. Instead, the company—and others like it—is developing apps for smartphones and tablets (like the iPad) that can do the work of remote controls. But there are drawbacks: For instance, remote control apps tend to drain device batteries. And what happens when several family members with smartphones and competing tastes in television can all control the television channel? —A.W. DECEMBER 4, 2010
Technology.indd 69
WORLD
11/18/10 2:22 PM
Notebook > Science
Backdoor ban
Protocol on ozone depletion may block a chemical that doesn’t deplete ozone By daniel james devine
>>
Some environmentalists expect the December un climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, to be as fruitless as last year’s rally to produce a global climate treaty in Copenhagen. So they’re placing their hopes on a different treaty, the Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987 to cut back the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. Unlike many CO2-reduction schemes, the Protocol has been enormously effective. In 2009 it became the only un
Powering down The federally approved organization that governs electric grid reliability warned of unreliability in a new report: The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said proposed pollution regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency could significantly affect the U.S. electricity supply. The EPA rules, which would require retrofitted upgrades to cooling water systems and air pollution controls at power plants, could force a loss of as much as 77 gigawatts of power capacity in 2015—equal to 7 percent of the
70
WORLD DECEMBER 4, 2010
Science.indd 70
Panel push The un continues its push for expensive environmental treaties. Delegates from nearly 200 nations met in Nagoya, Japan, in late October to work out a new conservation policy for the Convention on Biological Diversity. They emerged with a proposal similar to the UN’s approach to global warming: Developed nations would subsidize the preservation of animal and plant resources and even pay royalties for “genetic resources.” (This could take the form of a biodiversity funding tax on, for instance, a Western pharmaceutical drug made from a rare plant in an undeveloped country.) Delegates also encouraged the creation of the “Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.” Like the scandalplagued Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPBES would write expansive reports aimed at influencing governmental policymakers. The United States has not ratified the Convention. —D.J.D.
nation’s power supply. Much of the loss would come through the closure of power plants, with smaller, coalfired plants affected most sharply. The EPA quickly criticized the NERC report as “fortune-telling” that focused on “worst-case scenarios.” The power industry could spend $150 billion over the next decade to comply with the proposed rules. The report’s assessment didn’t include the EPA’s possible future regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. —D.J.D.
i llustr ation: Matt H ertel/istock • nagoya: K yodo via AP • power li n es: istock
treaty to be ratified by every recognized nation in the world, and it has propelled the ongoing industrial phaseout of such ozone-destroying chemicals as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their alternatives, HCFCs. At a November meeting of Protocol members, some nations proposed phasing out HFCs, a third class of chemicals ubiquitous in car air conditioners and supermarket cooling systems, but up to 11,700 times more potent than CO2 as greenhouse gases. The proposal would only be binding on signatories that agree to it: Nations like China and India want more time and financial incentives to replace the chemicals, but the Obama adminis tration supports the measure. Industries would need to pay for alternative refrigerants, and the treaty terms could cost up to $15 billion over 30 years—yet that’s only a fraction of what the proposals in Cancun could cost. Here’s the kicker: HFCs don’t deplete ozone. Mario Molina, one of the original scientists whose study of CFCs led to the Protocol, admitted using the ozone treaty for the purpose of combating global warming was “a stretch.” But with a carbon climate treaty on the rocks, it’s a backdoor option that just might come in.
Email: ddevine@worldmag.com
11/18/10 5:09 PM
Jo h n He ato n/scus ph otos/n ewsco m
Notebook > Houses of God
The Dutch Reformed Church in George, South Africa.
Also known as the Moederkerk, or mother church, it is one of many historic churches built in part with slave labor and once seen as synonymous with apartheid-era policies. But some Dutch Reformed leaders broke with apartheid policies and helped lead the country to democratic (and black) rule. D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 0 W O R L D
HousesOfGod.indd 71
71
11/18/10 5:38 PM
the world market Classifieds are priced at $23 per line with an average of 33 characters per line and a minimum of two lines. Bold text and uppercase available for $5 per line; special fonts and highlighting available for an additional charge. You will receive a 10 percent discount with a frequency of four or more. All ads are s ubject to the approval of world. Advertising in world does not necessarily imply the endorsement of the publisher. Prepayment dvertisers. and written confirmation will be required of all a contact: Dawn Stephenson, world, P.O. Box 20002, Asheville, nc 28802; phone: 828.232.5489; fax: 828.253.1556; email: dstephenson@worldmag.com
Christmas Gifts & Products I Visit: aperfectchristmasday.com for a free song rich in family tradition. i EVOLUTION NEEDS AN ADJECTIVE: Tossing Darwin Out of Science. An E-book by F.P. Nelson, M.D.; www.evolutionneedsanadjective.com. i BIBLE STUDY—Teachings of Jesus with Study Helps: Concise, paraphrased, almost chronological words of Jesus. To order call (800) 247-6553 or visit wordsofjesus.org. I For intelligent, Biblically accurate, refreshingly helpful books on a
believer’s conflict with real yet unseen “powers of darkness” please visit: Victory4You.net.
school employment
ministry employment
I ELEMENTARY PRINCIPAL: Laurel Christian School in Laurel, MS seeks an Elementary Principal with exemplary Christian character, commitment to the classical model, and excellent leadership and communication skills. Candidates should have a background in education with at least three (3) years experience at the elementary level, including supervision. The candidate should possess a Master’s Degree in Education or educational equivalent. The Candidate will work with the School’s Headmaster; supervise elementary faculty; coordinate fundraising; and teach upper elementary classes as needed, among other duties. The position provides a competitive salary and benefits and a stimulating work environment. Interested parties may email a resumé to Rick Bartley at bartley_r @bellsouth.net or mail a resumé to 1200 Hwy 15 North, Laurel, MS 39440.
I Director of Development for pregnancy care center in NC, full time; minimum three years management experience in major donor development, plus successful six-digit fundraising. Requires spiritually mature Christian candidates. Reply to jfgentry@bellsouth.net.
I Head of School - Bible Baptist School: BBS is a 37-yr-old ACSI & MSA Accredited PK-12 school with 365 students located in Shiremanstown, PA. Contact George Wiedman at gwiedman@bbsk12.org. Search data available at www.bbsk12.org. I HEADMASTER: Hilton Head Christian Academy, a SACS and ACSI accredited school has served Hilton Head Island, SC for 31 years, with 425 current K—12 students. HHCA seeks a Headmaster with a visible Christian testimony, proven leadership, excellent relationship skills and comprehensive knowledge of curriculum. Applicants should be certified by ACSI at the administrator level. Resumés can be sent via email to the HHCA Search Committee Chairperson, Kim Likins (kimlikins@roadrunner.com). For additional information visit www.hhca.org. I Help prepare future leaders of Iraq! Join our team working with students and families at English-speaking Christian schools in secure northern Iraq. Visit www.csmedes.org today to learn more.
24WORLDclassifieds.indd 72
professional employment I We are the owners of a small (50 seat) cafe and gift shop in N.E. PA, and are looking for someone, preferably a couple, to manage it. Strong faith, people skills and entrepreneurial bent are highly desired. We have been in business for 13 years, and presently we are open WedSat. 8-4 and Sunday 10-2; closed Mon. and Tues. Housing can be included in salary if desired. Please send a letter of interest to Bill Haas, PO Box 1. Bear Creek, PA 18602 or billhaas@mac.com. See our website, thebearcreekcafe.com for additional info.
opportunities I OPEN YOUR OWN READING CENTER: Make a difference in the lives of others. Operate from home. It’s needed. It’s rewarding. Great results. NOT a franchise. Earn $30-80/hr. We provide complete training and materials. www.academic-associates.com; (800) 861-9196.
business opportunities I Proverbs 31 Women and Others: Solid Ethics, Solid income. From Home. www.HomeBased4You.com. Call Beth (800) 867-1560. I CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR CHRISTIANS who want to earn a reliable income from home. Please request information from www.FamiliesinFaith.com. I Do You Want To Earn More Money? Call now and listen to what these people have done. Toll Free (866) 282-9890.
services I EDITOR/PROOFREADER for books, newsletters, and journals. Hourly rate or flat fee; professional references and pastors’ references available. Contact KMShaib@aol.com. I CHRISTIANS HELPING CHRISTIANS: Like-minded believers are sharing one another’s medical expenses through a unique ministry that doesn’t involve insurance. Samaritan Ministries, P.O. Box 3618, Peoria, IL 61612; or call 888-268-4377, ext. 23.
education I 4th-12th Grade Online Science Classes: Anatomy and Physiology, Biology, Pre-Chemistry, CLEP/ACT Science Prep, Research Methods/Critical Thinking, CSI, Sports Medicine, etc; w ww. HomeschoolScienceAcademy.com. I Homeschooling? Need help with math? DIVE into Math with Interactive Video Lessons on CD-ROM that teach every lesson step by step in Saxon Math. Available for Math54 thru Calculus and Physics; $50 per title. Call us at (936) 372-9216; www.diveintomath.com.
journalism education I CU majors in journalism— www.cornerstone.edu/journalism.
camps I Anatomy and Physiology Christian Worldview Camps: spring, summer, and fall camps. Early registration discounts available; www.Homeschool ScienceAcademy.com.
bible study resources I BIBLE STUDY—Teachings of Jesus with Study Helps: Concise, paraphrased, almost chronological words of Jesus. To order call (800) 247-6553 or visit wordsofjesus.org.
real estate I Maine Properties. Recreational, woodland, investment & residential. Owner financing; www.themainelandstore.com; (207) 290-2901. I Moving? Get home listings, community info, connect with churches & schools. REALTOR of integrity. Biblical values; (800) 395-8556; www.ExodusNetwork.com. I NEED A CHRISTIAN REALTOR in the PHOENIX area? Call Dan or Carol Smith
with Dan Smith Realty; (480) 820-6833; www.dansmithrealty.com.
health I NATURAL PROGESTERONE CREAM— BIO-IDENTICAL: In pump as described by Dr. John R. Lee. Special price. (218) 835-4340; www.zellersnaturalhealth.com.
church announcements I US Military: Active, Reserves, and Retirees. P&R Church Plants G lobally. Info: www.ministrytothemilitary international.com.
christian ceo/owner Are you a mature hristian who has C enjoyed a successful business leadership career as Owner, CEO, President or Executive Coach/Consultant & are now called to use these gifts to help other leaders fulfill their God-given calling & potential? Do you believe Christ is Lord, the Bible is true, God has an eternal plan for each believer’s life, & this plan includes their business? Would you be excited to build a high-impact professional practice to equip, encourage & inspire like-minded Christian leaders based on this truth? If so, you may be called by the Lord to be an Area Chair for The C12 Group, America’s leader in helping Christian CEOs & Owners Build GREAT Businesses for a GREATER Purpose. If you’re in a position to investigate a great franchise opportunity, visit www.C12Group. com to learn more!
Need a Christian Realtor in Phoenix? Over 850 homes sold in the Southeast Valley . . . Mesa . . . Tempe . . . Chandler . . . Gilbert . . . Scottsdale Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) and Graduate Realtor Institute (GRI) Professional Designations Honest • Professional • Old Fashioned Values
Dan & Carol Smith
Dan Smith Realty (480) 820-6833
www.dansmithrealty.com email: homes@dansmithrealty.com
11/17/10 3:54 PM
Providence Christian School of Texas • Dallas, Texas Athletic Director/Head Coach/Faculty (Fall 2011)
If you’re a Christian chief executive desiring the proven impact of a CEO roundtable, think for a moment about the voices contributing to the conversation. Of course, it’s vital that your advisors be professionally qualified and objective, but isn’t it equally important that your peers be rooted in shared values that truly matter? C12 MEMBER
“Fellowship with other Christian business owners, along with prayer, troubleshooting and business advice, is always beneficial.”
Building GREAT Businesses for a GREATER Purpose
Call (336) 841-7100 • www.C12Group.com
400,000 people are reading WHY ISN’T YOUR AD H E R E? For information about advertising, call: 828.232.5489 | fax: 828.253.1556 email: advertise@worldmag.com
24WORLDclassifieds.indd 73
Founded in 1989, Providence is a conservative, classical, independent, K-8, Christian day school located in the heart of Dallas, Texas. Our mission is to provide academically able students with a challenging educational experience designed to help them know, love, and practice that which is true, good, and excellent and to prepare them to live purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man. Our core values are: faith, family, intellect, counterculturalism and stewardship. Our athletic program consists of football, cross country (boys/ girls), volleyball, soccer (g), basketball (b/g), lacrosse (b/g), and track (b/g) with virtually 100% student participation. Primary Job Requirements SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND: We seek a candidate who is a mature Christian, who is passionate about Christ, and who treasures Him above all else. The candidate’s lifestyle must exemplify Christian character, and a commitment to personal holiness. The candidate should be an active member of a local church and experienced in mentoring and discipling young people. The candidate must be able to articulate a Christian worldview of athletics and be able to implement Biblical principles and character training in all programs. COACHING: The School seeks a candidate who has the vision and leadership skills necessary to build a superior athletic program known for its commitment to excellence in all aspects. A minimum of five years of successful
coaching experience is required and the ideal candidate should have the ability to coach more than one sport. Head coaching opportunities are available in all offerings except football. COMMUNICATION SKILLS: The candidate must be able to speak and write persuasively to a variety of groups, possess strong interpersonal skills, and be able to successfully resolve conflict. EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE: The candidate must have a Bachelor’s Degree and a minimum of five years of teaching or related experiences. Note: The current position involves administration, teaching (PE), and coaching. We are open to considering a candidate whose background and experiences are outside of a traditional educational model or whose teaching background is in a different subject matter. ADMINISTRATION: Strong aptitudes and interests in planning, organizing, promoting, implementing and scheduling are required for this position. The candidate must be able to effectively recruit, develop, and retain outstanding coaches and faculty. Compensation: Highly competitive salary and benefit package Candidates should first request and then submit the School’s Employment Application (please secure from our website at www.pcstx.org) and all supporting materials. Contact: Pat Sissom, Headmaster’s Assistant, via email at psissom@pcstx. org or 214-302-2801.
NEW MEXICO BOYS AND GIRLS RANCHES are seeking Christian married couples to serve as Resident Advisors and Associate Resident Advisors with youth ages 10-18. Our program focuses on educating youth, teaching life skills and values. Salary, on campus housing, moving allowance and other benefits. For more information, please call 1-800-660-0289
11/17/10 3:54 PM
PGE171-02_7.20x9.70_Layout 1 10/29/10 11:54 AM Page 1
SPECIAL MARKET OPPORTUNITY Your Expert Guide to the World’s Finest Coins
Nicholas J. Bruyer, CEO, First Federal Coin Corp. ANA Life Member Since 1974
How can two $5 Gold Eagles have a 600% difference in value? If you’re not interested in the answer, give this to your best friend. Almost everyday, very successful, very sophisticated business people tell us they’re interested in buying gold. The problem is, they don’t have the first notion of where to begin.
This is the pinnacle of a coin’s state of quality. It just doesn’t get any higher. Bottom line: collectors often pay more for them.
Our response is always the same: there’s bullion gold, and then there’s collectible gold. We’re not talking about bullion gold. We’re talking about a special kind of gold that collectors climb all over themselves to get their hands on.
You want to buy collectible gold, but not just any collectible gold.
Use our Collector’s Checklist when you go shopping for gold. First on our list: collectors look for a coin that’s in demand. And there are few gold coins that collectors want more than the American Gold Eagle. It was created during Ronald Reagan’s administration. In real estate, value is driven by location, location, location. In coins, it’s quality.
You’ve paid close attention to our collector’s checklist: Is it in demand? Has it earned the highest grade possible? Is it a First Strike? Our recommendation:
For collectors, the higher a coin’s grade, the higher the coin’s value. That’s number #2 on our checklist. One of those $5 Gold Eagles is the highest collectible grade possible: the absolutely flawless grade of MS70 (MS stands for “Mint State”). It’s referred to as the “perfect” coin.
But we have a special opportunity for you:
Consider this: In its bullion grade, a 2001 $5 Gold Eagle is valued at $150—but a perfect grade MS70 is valued at $950—a staggering 600% difference!
$279 each for up to 4 coins $265 each for 5 to 9 coins The best deal—$249 each for 10 coins or more!
Of course you have to understand that the population of this MS70 coin is small, but it’s an example of a coin in its finest Mint State grade.
Hurry! This is a first come, first served offer! Call 1-888-201-7047 to find out how you can qualify for free shipping. Mention offer code: PGE171-02
No. 3 on our checklist: Collectors covet First Strikes. If a $5 Gold American Eagle in MS70 is sizzling hot, what happens when it achieves the exalted status called First Strike™?
Actual size is 16.5 mm
A 2010 $5 Gold American Eagle MS70 First Strike. You’d expect to pay a premium for such a unique combination of quality factors.
Call First Federal Toll-FREE today 1-888-201-7047 to Reserve Your 2010 $5 Eagle MS70 First Strike! Offer Code PGE171-02
Please mention this code when you call.
Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Prices subject to change without notice. Note: First Federal Coin Corp. is a private distributor of government and private coin and medallic issues and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures were deemed accurate as of August 2010.
®
Ad Pages.indd 74
American Numismatic Association Nicholas Bruyer Life Member 4489
1-888-201-7047
www.1stfederalcoin.com/10geagle58
11/15/10 10:45 PM
MAILBAG
One who still controls this planet.
Middletown, Ohio
“In the thick of it” (. ) That was a wonderful article on Joni Eareckson Tada. She’s a great example of putting our faith in Jesus and letting our light shine. In just the few minutes it took to read, I got a needed attitude adjustment.
The forecast for St. Louis as I write this calls for a high of degrees. My wife and I are in our s and have praised the Lord while exercising with our bikes and kayaks almost every day for several weeks. “ degrees” reminded us how profoundly instructive, indeed miraculous, is the pleasure of beautiful weather.
, Cincinnati, Ohio “Gentle professionals” (. ) As a young “hippie” passing through New York in , I took a trip to Bellevue Hospital’s . I saw two Latinos aggressively protecting a kid in a wheelchair, a black man on a stretcher who’d been shot in the knees with a shotgun in a bar fight, and a multitude of others sleeping, groaning, complaining, and freaking out. When my turn came, to my grateful surprise I too was treated with respect and professionalism.
“78 degrees” (. ) I thoroughly enjoyed this column, although my own personal comfort zone is on the cooler side of . I often ponder the fact that God gives us so many perfect or near-perfect days in a year. Even the not-so-perfect days can be made bearable with a relatively small adjustment on our part. This assures us that God is our Creator and the
Jesus has always turned the temperature up or down to account for the vicissitudes of my too-often willful life. But He always provides more -degree days (with no humidity) to let me remember the blessed hope of many more to come.
Peachtree Corners, Ga.
“Don’t forget Obamacare” (. ) I am a Christian who supports and welcomes Obamacare. My husband and I are fortunate
Sucre, Bolivia /
White City, Ore.
Marvin Olasky’s observations about professionals treating the poor brought tears to my eyes and encouraged me, like a shot in the arm, to “go the distance” among poor school-age kids in the Ozark region another day.
St. Louis, Mo.
around the world
Nixa, Mo.
As medical director of a much smaller community , I believe there is a genuinely compassionate mindset among those who choose emergency medicine. But the sad reality is what happens after you leave the . Many who require follow-up care don’t have the wherewithal (or transportation even) to allow them to cope with the rigors of a system that can suddenly seem much less “gentle.” Williamsburg, Va.
Send photos and letters to: mailbag@worldmag.com
24Mailbag.indd 75
DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/15/10 11:05 PM
Where can you find a seminary that has existed for
200 years ...
... and is still committed to the authority of the Scriptures?
In Pittsburgh, at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary. RPTS continues to uphold the Word of God as divine revelation that explains to us general revelation and our Creator-creature relations, our human predicament after the fall, and how to be saved unto life by trusting in Jesus the Messiah, of Whom the Law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms all speak— and Who is self-disclosed in the glorious Gospel. By God’s grace, our staff, faculty, and Board of Trustees will continue to be faithful to His Word until the King returns like lightning on the Last Day!
Degree Programs M.Div. • M.T.S. • D.Min. Now offering concentrations in Biblical counseling through the new RPTS Biblical Counseling Institute directed by Dr. George C. Scipione!
1-866-RPTS-EDU www.rpts.edu
to have good insurance coverage, but I know many who do not. I believe that as a civilized society, and as Christians, we have a responsibility to take care of our children, our elderly, and our sick and infirm. The details of Obamacare are steps in the right direction. Chandler, Ariz.
Sierra Madre, Calif.
“A precipice up ahead” (. )
The Obamacare bill has already hurt me: This year Target cut my Basic Healthcare Insurance by raising my deductible to ,, which means I really am selfinsured up to that amount. The “family” deductible (for my wife and me) is ,. I’m already paying for the changes that went into effect in September.
Janie B. Cheaney’s column is spot-on and a call to the saints to get their game face on. Life for me has had a surreal quality to it ever since the sub-prime meltdown began and I sensed that this was going to be really, really bad. We should be in the streets by the millions shouting, “Stop! Stop it! Just stop it!”
Medford, Ore.
Germantown, Tenn.
As a physician with almost years of experience, mostly treating chronic illness, I believe Rick Santorum’s remark that preexisting illness is not a problem in our present system is simply not true. Yes, these people are technically insurable, but in practice people with common diseases such as diabetes or heart disease must stay with a larger company to keep affordable insurance. They often live in fear of layoffs or forced early retirement. Yes, Obamacare is a terrible bill, but ignoring deficiencies in our system rather than presenting creative solutions will only hinder efforts to overturn it. . Longwood, Fla.
“Pulpit partisans” (. ) This is very sad. Some church leaders, it appears, have substituted the gospel of healthcare reform for the good news from Isaiah :: “Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God.’” I hear those churches instead saying, “America, behold your god (big government) and its social gospel.”
Canton, Mich.
I recently read Erwin Lutzer’s book Hitler’s Cross, which tells how Hitler used churches to promote the Nazi agenda. Relations were friendly at first, but in the
24Mailbag.indd 76
end churches that refused to take the loyalty oath were easily identified and silenced. I think our churches should stick to carrying out those things Christ assigned for us and not get entangled in political agendas.
“Renegades’ religion” (. ) No one should be surprised that would “give far more time and weight to the fringe personalities” in its God in America documentary. When has ever gotten anything to do with God right? To watch a religious or scientific show, the viewer has to sit tilted way to the left.
Grundy Center, Iowa
“Crisis avoidance” (. ) Kudos to Krieg Barrie once again: His profile caricature of President Obama was a spot-on likeness of the stone heads on Easter Island, idols aloof from the fray. ..
Nathrop, Colo.
“The Social Network” (. ) I am shocked that you gave The Social Network such a positive review. What about the lesbian kissing scene? It gagged me. . Ardmore, Tenn.
“Frontier reformer” (. ) Thank you for your article on Joe Miller, a very good candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alaska. However, I take offense at the suggestion that Alaska is “a state long addicted to feeding from the federal trough.” On a per capita basis, that might
11/15/10 11:06 PM
appear to be the case, but three-quarters of our land is owned by the federal government, so there’s a small economic base. The feds promised development help to Alaska after locking up much of the state with the Alaska National Interests Land Conservation Act of . Please, bear with us while we build a sustainable economy.
Bettles Field, Alaska
“A touchdown for Sam” (. ) This article evoked memories of my autistic son, Justin, playing basketball on his middle-school team. He made one basket that season, but the coach awarded him the award medal for the year because the team coalesced as a team whenever Justin took to the court.
Richland Center, Wis.
“Wins & losses” (. ) It’s fantastic to subscribe to a publication that found a personal crisis in Tim Goeglein’s life worthy to share with its readers. It shows the power of forgiveness and grace. Wheaton, Ill.
What we’ve discovered about real grace.
R
eal grace in this world comes through real adults. Not Christians who imagine life in Christ with only smiles. Not Christians who are scared of teens who talk back. We parent children who need help through steady and joyful hands. At Cono, we teach them, too. Jesus blesses. We are doing this with teens who need a safe, yet challenging, place to overcome hopelessness, disruptive behavior, and attachment difficulties. Whether you need help for a child, or want to join us in this work.... Contact:
www.cono.org/involved.html 888-646-0038 x250 Cono Christian School, Walker IA
Deduct Now... Distribute later with an
Advise & Consult Fund
“A good guidebook” (. ) While I certainly understand Joel Belz’s concern that Christians should always be “mannerly” and “polite” when discussing politics with secularists, on the other hand it greatly concerns me that, during the last or so years while we have been mannerly and polite, left-wing political and sexual activists have taken over our culture by ignoring us or running right over us. Somers Point, N.J.
LETTERS AND PHOTOS Email: mailbag@worldmag.com Write: Mailbag, P.O. Box , Asheville, - Fax: .. Please include full name and address. Letters may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.
24Mailbag.indd 77
Whether you own stocks or mutual funds, support one or more Christian ministries, anticipate events that will result in taxable income, expect an inheritance, make anonymous gifts, or would just like to simplify your giving and reduce administrative time, establishing an Advise & Consult Fund (a donor advised fund) with the PCA Foundation just might be right for you.
The Advise & Consult Fund: • can be funded with cash, stocks, mutual funds and real estate • provides a current year income tax deduction and eliminates capital gains taxes • Simplifies your giving—one gift to your fund can be used to make distributions to one or multiple ministries months or even years later • allows you to set up a schedule of recurring distributions to your favorite ministry
Visit www.pcafoundation.com
or Call 800.700.3221
to learn more or to establish an Advise & Consult Fund... it’s quick and easy! Fax: 678-825-1041 • Email: pcaf@pcanet.org
© 2008 PCA Foundation, Inc., Lawrenceville, Georgia 30043
11/15/10 11:06 PM
A.D.
Welsey: A Heart Transformed Can Change the World Step into eighteenth-century England and experience the transformation of one man, whose heart-wrenching search for peace haunts him even as he pours himself into a life of service and evangelism. This feature film, based on the personal diaries of John Wesley, is a story that reads like a Hollywood screenplay—house fire, near shipwreck on the high seas, adventure in a new world, and ill-fated romance! Uncover Wesley’s spiritual struggle and renewal as never before while you learn about his controversial “Method.” Marked by confrontation, tension, and mob violence, Wesley’s perseverance compelled him to a new type of itinerant, open-air ministry to the lowest classes of society. John Wesley is well known as the spiritual father of Methodism. His heartfelt struggles, his passion for authentic faith expressing itself through meaningful kingdom work, and his message of saving grace resonate with audiences of all ages. Directed by the Reverend John Jackman, the feature-length film stars Burgess Jenkins, June Lockhart, Kevin McCarthy, R. Keith Harris, and Carrie Anne Hunt. 2 hours. $ 99 DVD - #501370D, $24.99 Introductory Sale Price
Picking up where the events of the acclaimed Passion of the Christ left off, A.D. vividly recreates the turbulent years following the death of Christ. The earliest experiences of the Christian church after Jesus' ascension are powerfully dramatized in this remarkably authentic TV miniseries epic covering the years A.D. 30-69. The perfect resource for any church or home study group wishing to explore the New Testament period, the Early Church, or the Book of Acts. This Biblically and historically accurate drama comes complete with a 56-page study guide in PDF, providing a 12-week course. Performances from an all-star cast, together with the scope of the project, also make this great Bible-based family entertainment. This Vincenzo Labella production features: Anthony Andrews, Colleen Dewhurst, Ava Gardner, David Hedison, John Houseman, Richard Kiley, James Mason, Susan Sarandon, Ben Vereen and many others. $ 99 DVD - #109269D,
Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace
Peter and Paul
What is a moral person to do in a time of savage immorality? That question tormented Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German clergyman of great distinction who actively opposed Hitler and the Nazis. His convictions cost him his life. The Nazis hanged him on April 9, 1945, less than a month before the end of the war. Bonhoeffer’s last years, his participation in the German resistance and his moral struggle are dramatized in this film. More than just a biographical portrait, Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace sheds light on the little-known efforts of the German resistance. It brings to a wide audience the heroic rebellion of Bonhoeffer, a highly regarded Lutheran minister who could have kept his peace and saved his life on several occasions but instead paid the ultimate price for his beliefs. Starring Ulrich Tukur, Robert Joy, Johanna Klante and Ulrich Noethen. Drama, widescreen, 90 minutes (includes Spanish, Portuguese, German, optional English subtitles, actors’ bios). $ 99 DVD - #4638D,
This Emmy Award-winning production, starring Anthony Hopkins and Robert Foxworth, captures the vitality, intensity, and humanity of two who were entrusted by Christ to carry the Gospel into all the world. Based on the Scriptures by and about Peter and Paul, this video shows how they were driven by a heavenly vision for a different kind of world. They paid a horrendous price for their devotion—Peter crucified and Paul beheaded—but their ministries transcended the cruelty of their enemies to become important pillars of the Christian Church. Drama, 194 minutes (includes Spanish, optional English subtitles, actors’ bios). $ 99 DVD - #4628D,
19.
19.
29.
19.
YOUR SATISFACTION IS GUARANTEED!
The best special of the year – a $94.96 value for only $39.99, #98059D. Save $54.97! Use promo code “wmsale” when ordering to receive this special price. Sale good until Jan. 15, 2011. TO ORDER, CALL:
MAIL TO (include $5.99 s/h):
ON THE WEB:
1-800-523-0226
Vision Video – Dept WM1210 PO Box 540 Worcester, PA 19490
Please reference code “WM1210” in catalog source field, and use promotional code “WMSALE” at step 4 of the checkout process.
Please mention source code “WM1210” when ordering.
Ad Pages.indd 78
www.visionvideo.com
11/15/10 10:45 PM
Andrée Seu
YOUR CALLING
HAN DOUT
F
Having a talent for something is not the only measure of what it will be
and you will know your calling. Well, hold onto that thought. God is not perverse; He gives gifts for a reason. But don’t be too quick to assume you know the reason. Charles Thomas Studd had mad gifts in cricket, and every intention of parlaying them into fame. Then his brother, also cricket-blessed, lay dying, and C.T. said, “Now what is all the popularity of the world to George? What is all the fame and flattering? What is it worth to possess the riches of the world, when a man comes to face Eternity?” Studd and the “Cambridge Seven” followed Hudson Taylor to China to save souls. Now Hudson Taylor, there’s an interesting case. How do you know your leading is from the Holy Spirit and not your overactive imagination? Here are the kinds of “confirmations” Taylor experienced: Rumors in England that China’s civil war was a mass movement of Christianity proved erroneous. Taylor’s first voyage in was nearly disastrous. In his preaching tours in Shanghai were often poorly received, and his medical supplies were destroyed by a fire. In he was robbed of nearly all his possessions. In his firstborn child died. Was the Holy Spirit telling him to hightail it back to England? Taylor remained years, learned four Chinese dialects, brought over missionaries, and started schools. Charles Finney was snatched from a promising career as a lawyer into the gospel circuit rider’s world of “if it’s Tuesday this must be Utica.” The other barristers probably said, “Foolish Finney. He could have made a name for himself like us. Now he will never amount to anything.” “Amounting to something” is the graveyard of many a spiritual calling. Charity Churchmouse, from my kids’ “Psalty the Singing Songbook” years, had a dream to make it big as a gospel singing star. When Psalty asked if she had prayed about it, she unfurled a high A for him and said, “Isn’t it obvious?” But the fact is that many opportunities that seem divinely Email: aseu@worldmag.com
Seu.indd 79
delivered on a silver platter come with little integrity tests. Say you feel the Spirit has opened doors for you all the way from Mayberry to Hollywood. Then at one audition they hand you a script that’s a Trojan horse for gender role obfuscation. You had better think twice about saying to yourself: “I need to suck it up in order to be light and salt in this Tinseltown mission field.” What kind of light and salt can you be now? You have just taught them that you are willing to compromise your convictions. In King Henry IV of France switched religion, saying, “Paris is well worth a Mass.” Where is he today? He is in a place where Parisian royalty and the Boulevard’s Walk of Fame mean nothing. “So you say the actor should refuse the plum role and get washed up in his Hollywood career?” someone will object. But the question itself is wrong. It presupposes that the future is a predictable chain reaction in a closed system. The truth is we live in an open system, with God intruding at every point. And God knows how to lift up the humble and bring down the willful. If calling were a function of talent, pure and simple, then your mother missed the boat because her piano, math, and business aptitudes were totally underutilized in her role as your potty trainer and short-order cook. And I have often marveled that the best Bible teachers I have sat under were women, but Jesus appointed men to the job. What is this strange divine economics of His? It is evident that the Holy Spirit told Hudson Taylor: “Go to China.” No one could brook such a barrage of counter-evidence without a calling that transcended it. But what the Lord is teaching me these days is not to look for his Leading with a capital “L,” but with a small “l.” His will unfolds in our pinpoint obedience to His minutest redirections of course on an ordinary Wednesday, that sets us up for Thursday—“Phone your Mom”; “Don’t tell that joke”; “Write to Bubba.” As Robert Frost said, “Way leads on to way.” Do you think Moses ever regretted turning down the perks of court in Pi-Ramesses? A DECEMBER 4, 2010
WORLD
11/16/10 10:57 AM
Marvin Olasky more fun than retirement. Besides, as Hugh Ross—see p. —writes, “The experience, education, and training we gain in this earthly life” prepare us for our roles—perhaps, as Paul told the Corinthians, even judging angels—in the new creation. Able people in their s, s, and s can still gain experience and wisdom for their calling after death.) Third, some contextualization to help us think about our own callings: The ancestors of most readers, and my own grandparents, came to a new world. They weren’t among those who remained in their old villages. We should not be among the many who, in the words of Hebrews, “shrink back and are destroyed.” With about calling for this God’s grace, we are “of those who have faith issue’s special section while thinking about the calling of some and preserve their souls.” With God’s grace, Christians who died centuries ago, the calling of two actors, and we—alongside great scribes and great actors— maybe your calling too. can react the same way great quarterbacks do First, the golden oldies: On a recent Saturday morning in New when it’s fourth and goal: “Let’s go for it.” York City, Susan and I visited a wondrous exhibit of illuminated (Leave it to the coaches to choose the security manuscripts at the New York Public Library. Some medieval of a field goal. Leave it to union bosses to argue scribes worked for decades copying one text and decorating it that our goal should be to spend enough years at with illustrations, ornate initial letters, and marginal drawings. a boring job to accumulate a pension. Leave it to Those with right hearts were determined to glorify God. Calling. most hobbits to stay home, but Bilbo and Frodo Determination. The exhibit is there through the end of February, head down the road that goes on and on, down and it’s free. from the door where it began. They have fright(If you visit, note the exhibitors’ theological liberalism, eviful adventures, but look at what they learn denced in sentences such as, “a man who made a covenant with about God’s sovereignty, Middle Earth, and God, a man named Abraham.” It was God, of course, who made themselves. Calling. Determination.) the covenant, as Hebrews : relates: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he In this column I’ve been mixing earthly and was called. . . . And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” That’s godly callings, and the two are very different: Abraham, but isn’t that all of us, proceeding with limited knowledge? God One is an existentialist desire to make a mark in Genesis merely tells Abraham to go “to the land that I will show you.” and not to go gently into the dying of the light. No Mapquest. Not even an initial house-hunting trip alongside a realtor. The other is a Christ-centered desire to go God says go, and we go.) wherever God leads us—or stay Second, two other GOOD WORK: A thwhere we are if that is the best golden oldies: That century manuscript of the way to glorify Him. We can Saturday evening we Gospel of Matthew; make an idol out of going and walked over to Vanessa Redgrave and an idol out of staying, so it’s Broadway to take in the James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy Daisy. not for me to say what’s best new stage version of for each individual, but I am Driving Miss Daisy, now going to extend an invitaastoundingly starring tion to readers who feel both James Earl Jones, called to write and lead. age , and Vanessa As publisher Nick Eicher Redgrave, . This esteemed actor reported in our last issue, I now and actress do not need to go on feel called to leave academics stage for minutes eight times and devote all my work time to per week for the money. They building . Early next obviously love what they’re doing year I’ll write about how many and do not want to retire. Calling. of you can become involved in Determination. The play goes ’s expanding mission. Is through the end of January and is God calling you? If so, be preexcellent, but pricey. pared to say yes. We’re going (When God calls people to for it. A particular labors, that work is far
GO FOR IT!
WORLD
24Marvin.indd 80
DECEMBER 4, 2010
H ERVE CHAM PO LLIO N/AKG-I MAGES/N EWSCO M • DRIVI N G M ISS DAISY: AN NAB EL CL ARK/TH E O AN D M CO./AP
I
With our work being a calling from God, it makes sense to be excited about it
Email: molasky@worldmag.com
11/16/10 11:10 AM
Mastering the classics while worshipping the Master Composer. It’s a rare university that can offer you a world-class educational experience in concert with a Christ-centered worldview, but Cedarville is just such a place. Step onto our campus, and you’ll be joined by 3,200 students from around the world in a daily celebration of faith. Step up to the challenges of top-ranked academic programs, and you’ll be inspired to perform at the highest levels of achievement. Step into the future as a Cedarville graduate, and you’ll be sought after by the best businesses and graduate schools. Discover a learning community that will equip you for a lifetime of leadership, service, and success. Find out for yourself what makes Cedarville so unique.
SoCedarville.com
Cedarville, Ohio | 1-800-CEDARVILLE | cedarville.edu Msc os eset seo ect s te cto of te fo yes t Ceve Uvesty. Te sc wos etet offes vety of coses tt y toy eowe fcty tz fst-css tecooy stte-of-te-t fctes.
CU-003 Piano Ad World new logo.indd 1
Ad Pages.indd 3
10/22/10 12:20 PM
11/15/10 10:45 PM
Ad Pages.indd 4
11/15/10 10:46 PM