Hope Award East and International finalists

Transcription

Hope Award East and International finalists
A UGUS T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
Question
authority
As one big natural
history museum holds
onto Darwinist dogma,
another plants
seeds of humility
ALSO INSIDE: Ministering
to refugees in California
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17 COVER.indd 2
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8/3/15 4:31 PM
“This is a terrifying, edifying, hopeful, and practical book for all
followers of Christ.” –PATRICK LENCIONI, New York Times bestselling author
IN PREPARE, author Paul Nyquist, president of the Moody Bible Institute, surveys
the decline of Christian values in America, expounds the Bible’s teachings on hostility
and persecution, and charts a path forward. It will wake you up to the challenges of
the times and help you face the days ahead.
17 COVER.indd 1
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17 CONTENTS.indd 2
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AUG2215
/ VOLUME 30 / NUMBER 17
A tale of two
museums
COVER STORY
32
23
A natural history museum in Washington offers
Darwinism with no room for doubts, but one in New
York offers a dose of refreshing honesty on what
science cannot tell us about the past. Could that
lead to bigger strides in intellectual honesty later?
F E AT UR E S
38 Friends and
strangers
38
44
Christians in Southern
California who help
international refugees
rebuild their lives are
discovering a new
mission field
17 CONTENTS.indd 3
5 Joel Belz
7 DISPATCHES
News
Human Race
Quotables
Quick Takes
44 Edifying CHAT
20 Janie B. Cheaney
23 CULTURE
48 In the shadow of ISIS
53 NOTEBOOK
Hope Award East region winner
helps poor students thrive
Charts for churches
Hope Award International
winner does its work among
the shattered families and
displaced children in
Iraqi Kurdistan
Where are they now?
ON THE COVER
Illustration by Krieg Barrie
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more
DEPARTMENTS
Movies & TV
Books
Q&A
Music
Lifestyle
Technology
Religion
Science
Houses of God
61 Mailbag
63 Andrée Seu
Peterson
64 Marvin Olasky
AUGUST 22, 2015
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Executive Producer Nickolas S. Eicher
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Joel Belz
Too tight to split
Social and economic policies form
the same piece of cloth
Are you a fiscal or a social conservative?
It’s a critical question, at least in the
minds of some, as folks are sizing up various
candidates for the presidency, and especially
the 17 campaigning under the Republican
banner.
But whichever you picked, if indeed you
chose one or the other, I suggest that you were
wrong. The distinction is superficial at best. At
worst, it’s phony and terribly misleading.
For in God’s order of things, everything fiscal
is also moral, and every social policy has fiscal
implications. In God’s scheme, everything
hangs together. You might say that He was the
original holistic thinker.
So, yes, I’d argue loud and long that Hillary
Clinton, although wrongheaded in her policies
on most fiscal and social issues, is at least
consistent in holding them together and side by
side. And the same should be said about the
other Democratic candidates—socialist Sen.
Bernie Sanders, former Gov. Martin O’Malley,
former Sen. Jim Webb, and so forth. Let’s give
them credit for being consistent—even if
almost always consistently wrong.
Meanwhile, Republicans seem to live hap
pily, if quite naïvely, with a logical disconnect.
They commonly assume that a candidate
should be free to think whatever he wants
about abortion or homosexual marriage so
long as he or she is appropriately conservative
on financial and tax issues. Or vice versa. By
leaving space on the Republican slate for some
one as crude and careless as Donald Trump, the
Grand Old Party suggests that even an explicit
profession of atheism is no disqualifier for
public office.
People who try to peel off the moral layers of
the onion so they can get down to the “real stuff”
of fiscal and economic issues will always dis
cover that the whole onion—all the way to the
core—is in fact made up of interrelated layers.
krieg barrie
R
 jbelz@wng.org
17 JOEL.indd 5
For anyone to
pretend that
he or she has
discovered a
neat way to
cordon off the
money issues
from the
moral ones
is wishful
thinking.
For example—and it’s a massive example
whose lesson the U.S. electorate should have
but has not yet absorbed—the relationship of
abortion and Social Security provides a vivid
illustration. Everyone has long known that the
great threat to the integrity of Social Security
was that there were relatively fewer and fewer
wage earners in the overall system and rela
tively more and more benefit claimers. That
was true in any case in a pyramid scheme that
was apparently flawed from the beginning. But
now, in our lifetimes, those badly constructed
assumptions were exacerbated
beyond repair by society’s decision
in the 1970s that it would be all
right regularly to snuff out a third
of all its pregnancies.
That may be the biggest example
available—but we’re already seeing
it repeatedly mirrored now in
Obamacare’s habit of bad statistics.
In a society where every tiny statis
tical nuance of every cause and
effect known to humanity has been
studied and restudied, why is there
so little public discussion about the
statistical validity of the myriad of
programs embedded in the overall
measure? Why have the media not ballyhooed
how costs are higher and benefits are lower?
It works both ways, as we have noted here
before. Fiscal policies always have moral and
social implications. We humans are not just
economic beings, as Marx suggested we are.
But we rarely make decisions in life apart from
economic influences. So when a combination of
governments at different levels takes 40 or
even 50 percent of its citizens’ earnings every
year, that taxation policy—all by itself—has a
profound effect on how much those same citi
zens have left to give to their churches, to pass
on to relief agencies, or to invest in education.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that tax policy
helps determine whether those same citizens
develop generous or stingy outlooks on life.
The close interface between fiscal and moral
thinking has other dimensions as well. Ethical
issues in spending the wealth of future genera
tions are deep and long-lasting, even apart from
what the money may be presently spent for.
So for anyone to pretend that he or she has
discovered a neat way to cordon off the money
issues from the moral ones is wishful thinking.
It denies the very manner in which God has put
us and our society together. A
A U G U S T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 W ORLD 5
8/5/15 9:59 AM
If the sexual revolution
took your ministry to court...
WOULD YOU BE READY?
ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES
Get the information you need to defend your ministry
from legal threats that seek to stifle or limit its
effectiveness. Our FREE legal guide contains simple,
effective ways for schools, churches, and ministries to
guard against lawsuits involving same-sex marriage,
sexual orientation, or gender identity.
If you are a ministry leader,
get your free copy at:
www.ADFlegal.org/pym
17 NEWS.indd 6
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DISPATCHES
NEWS / HUMAN RACE / QUOTABLES / QUICK TAKES
A Turkish police officer
questions a Kurdish boy after
a July 23 attack on police.
JULY 29
ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES
TURKEY BOMBS KURDS
In addition to its campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, Turkey launched
airstrikes on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq, upsetting Kurds who play a vital role in the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey
said the airstrikes were in response to the killings of policemen and soldiers
blamed on the Kurdish militant group. Another Kurdish group, the YPG, is an
important partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State as the only
troops on the ground, but Turkey is concerned about the YPG’s ties to the PKK,
and worries its increased strength could encourage Kurdish separatists.
17 NEWS.indd 7
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
7
8/5/15 10:32 AM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
JULY 28
LION’S SHARE OF
ATTENTION
A family protests outside
Palmer’s dental office.
The same week pro-life
activists released undercover
videos revealing how Planned
Parenthood sells aborted
human babies’ body parts for
research, mainstream media
were more upset about the
killing of a lion. Minnesota
dentist Walter J. Palmer shot
Cecil, the most famous lion in
Zimbabwe’s Hwange National
Park, with a crossbow after two
local guides lured the animal out
of the government reserve.
Cecil survived another 40 hours
until hunters tracked him down
and shot him with a gun. A
WhiteHouse.gov petition to
extradite Palmer to Zimbabwe
far exceeded the 100,000
signatures needed to trigger an
administration response.
JULY 28
8
WORLD
17 NEWS.indd 8
MINNESOTA: ERIC MILLER/REUTERS/L ANDOV • BRADY: ERIC CANHA/CAL SPORT MEDIA/AP
NFL Commissioner Roger
Goodell upheld the four-game
suspension of star Patriots
quarterback Tom Brady in
the scandal over the use of
deflated footballs in games.
Part of the reason Goodell
upheld the suspension is that
Brady had an assistant
destroy his cellphone
containing thousands of text
messages reportedly near
the date of Brady’s March 6
meeting with investigators.
Brady says the cellphone
was broken, and he’s asking a
federal court to overturn
Goodell’s decision: “I did
nothing wrong,” he said in a
Facebook post, “and no one
in the Patriots organization
did either.”
AUGUST 22, 2015
8/5/15
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11:03 AM
BRA ZIL : FELIPE DANA/AP • CINCINNATI: JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
BRADY SIDELINED
JULY 30
SANITATION GAMES
One year away from the Rio de
Janeiro Olympics, pollution in the
waterways where swimmers and
sailors will compete is causing
headaches for Olympic off icials—
and causing fever, vomiting, and
diarrhea for athletes training
there. An Associated Press
investigation found high levels of
disease-causing viruses linked to
raw sewage flowing into the
waters. When bidding to become
the Olympic host city, Rio promised
to spend $4 billion to improve its
waterways, but it won’t reach its
cleanup goal in time for the 2016
opening ceremony.
JULY 29
MINNESOTA: ERIC MILLER/REUTERS/L ANDOV • BRADY: ERIC CANHA/CAL SPORT MEDIA/AP
BRA ZIL : FELIPE DANA/AP • CINCINNATI: JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
OFFICER CHARGED
A white University of Cincinnati
police off icer could face life in prison
if convicted of murder for shooting
and killing an unarmed AfricanAmerican man during a traff ic stop.
Campus off icer Raymond Tensing
pulled over Samuel DuBose on July 19
for not displaying a front license
plate. Tensing initially claimed he
opened fire because he feared for his
life as DuBose started driving away,
dragging Tensing along. Yet footage
from a body camera showed he drew
his gun immediately as the car began
rolling forward and fatally shot
DuBose in the head. DuBose’s mother
told reporters that whatever the
outcome of the indictment, she knew
God would one day bring complete
justice. Yet “if [Tensing] asks for
forgiveness, I can forgive him. … God
forgave us.”
A protester stands outside the courthouse
after the announcement of charges.
17 NEWS.indd 9
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
9
8/5/15 11:04 AM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
Around the globe
UNITED STATES Authorities investigated
bombings of a Baptist church and a
Roman Catholic church in Las Cruces, N.M.
WEST BANK A firebombing attack
blamed on Jewish extremists killed
an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler
and badly burned the rest of the
family members, leading to protests.
CHINA The International
Olympic Committee chose
Beijing to host the 2022
Winter Olympics, despite
China’s dismal human rights
record and a lack of snow.
NIGERIA Nigerian
troops attacked Boko
Haram and rescued
178 kidnapped persons, although the
Chibok girls were not
among the rescued.
10
WORLD
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AUGUST 22, 2015
INDIAN OCEAN More than 500
days after the disappearance of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a
piece of an airplane wing washed
up on the French island of Réunion.
LIBYA A Libyan court sentenced
Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif
al-Islam to death in absentia in a
mass trial of former regime figures.
SOUTH CHINA SEA: U.S. NAV Y/REUTERS/L ANDOV • MEXICO: MARCO UGARTE/AP • NIGERIA: JOSSY OL A/AP
MEXICO The body of reporter Ruben Espinosa
was found bound and tortured in Mexico City,
the seventh journalist killed in Mexico this year.
SOUTH CHINA SEA
China is upsetting its
Asian neighbors by
building artificial islands
in the disputed South
China Sea, some topped
with military posts.
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8/5/15
11:00 AM
GREECE: THEO K ARANIKOS/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES • SUITES: HANDOUT • US AIRWAYS: MIXMOTIVE/ISTOCK • BIEBER: WALTER MICHOT/THE MIAMI HERALD/AP • SUPERMOON: MAT THIAS SCHRADER/AP
MORE NEWS OF THE WORLD IS ON OUR WEBSITE: WNG.ORG
Looking ahead
CREDIT
GREECE: THEO K ARANIKOS/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES • SUITES: HANDOUT • US AIRWAYS: MIXMOTIVE/ISTOCK • BIEBER: WALTER MICHOT/THE MIAMI HERALD/AP • SUPERMOON: MAT THIAS SCHRADER/AP
AUG. 20
A loan payment of $3.5
billion from Greece to the European
Central Bank will be due today. Greek
lawmakers and European central
bankers have been busy trying to
negotiate a new bailout before the
loan payment is due, while many
Greek citizens have taken to the
streets to protest restrictions on
government spending.
AUG. 22
Officials with the
San Francisco 49ers have agreed
to lease out luxury suites at Levi’s
Stadium so fantasy football fans
can conduct drafts. August marks
the most exciting time of the
fantasy football
season: draft
time. For
$950, a
league of up
to 12 players
can rent a
luxury suite at
the 49ers’
stadium on Aug. 22 and conduct a
fantasy draft overlooking San
Francisco’s gridiron.
AUG. 23
As part of its
merger with American Airlines,
US Airways will abandon its
state-of-the-art flight operations
control center at Pittsburgh
International Airport and transfer
operations to an American
Airlines facility in Fort Worth,
Texas. The two airlines officially
merged in April. The last plane
with a US Airways brand is
scheduled to touch down on Oct.
16, signaling the completion of
the merger.
AUG. 28
After spending
most of the last two years in the
news for the wrong reasons,
former teen icon Justin Bieber
says he’ll release a new single
today. Bieber, who hasn’t
released a new song since
November 2014, hasn’t cracked
the American Billboard charts
since 2013. The new song will be
titled “What Do You Mean.”
AUG. 29
Sky watchers observing the
night sky will see a supermoon this evening:
a full moon at its closest position to the
Earth during its elliptical orbit. According to
NASA, supermoons can appear 14 percent
larger and 30 percent brighter than the
moon at its furthest distance from the Earth.
17 GLOBE+LA.indd 11
8/4/15 4:45 PM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
City, Calif.,
announced they
had transplanted
“55 fully intact
human fetal
kidneys” into lab
rats. The company procured the
organs of aborted children from
StemExpress, a company that obtains
baby parts from Planned Parenthood.
Animal research with fetal tissue isn’t
a recent development, but Ganogen Inc.
says its technique is new. That means
the possibility of harvesting kidneys
from unborn children discarded
through abortion—with the goal of
transplanting the same kidneys into ailing adults wanting to live—adds another
grisly layer to a deeply disturbing story.
The company’s tag line: “Ending the
donor shortage.”
Cate Dyer, founder of StemExpress,
told The New York Times fetal tissue
accounts for about 10 percent of the
company’s business. Inc. magazine
reported the company’s revenue at
$2.2 million—about 1,300 percent
growth in three years.
To the Times, Dyer described the
remains of unborn babies as “biohazardous waste, discarded waste” and
spoke of collecting “tissues from those
waste products.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
testified about those so-called “waste
products” before the Texas Senate
committee in July, and noted Planned
Parenthood also contracts with companies to collect and burn the remains
of unborn children:
“As my staffers watched, a technician
took an aborted child from a jar, rinsed it
in a colander, and placed the body parts
in a tray. Fingers and toes, exceptionally
tiny but fully formed, were clearly
visible. The remains were eventually
deposited in a red plastic bag, about the
size of an average grocery sack.”
Paxton testified his office would
continue to investigate the practices of
Planned Parenthood in Texas: “But
more than any misdeeds involving the
sale of aborted baby parts is this fundamental truth: The true abomination in
all this is the institution of abortion.” A
Protesters
gather outside
a Planned
Parenthood
clinic in Vista,
Calif., on Aug. 3.
‘Pieces of children’
THE SCANDAL OVER PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND
DISCARDED BABY PARTS GROWS by Jamie Dean
12
WORLD
AUGUST 22, 2015
17 NEWS 1-PAGER.indd 12
companies supplying biotech
researchers.
Undercover videos released by the
Center for Medical Progress (CMP)
show Planned Parenthood staffers
picking through the remains of
unborn children and haggling over
fees for their body parts and tissue.
Planned Parenthood maintains it only
recoups its costs for supplying the
parts, a claim CMP disputes with its
video conversations.
Republicans vowed to continue the
battle to defund Planned Parenthood
this fall, suggesting they might block
any spending bills that include federal
funding for the abortion provider.
For now, other distressing questions arise: What happens to the
remains of unborn children once they
reach a lab?
In at least one facility, researchers
have transplanted fetal organs into lab
rats, with the goal of learning how to
grow the organs large enough to
transplant into ailing adults in need of
donations.
In January, researchers at Ganogen
Inc., a biotech company in Redwood
MIKE BL AKE/REUTERS/L ANDOV
Abby Johnson remembers what
former colleagues at Planned
Parenthood called the storage freezer
for the dismembered remains of
aborted babies at a Texas affiliate
where she worked: “The freezer was
jokingly called ‘the nursery.’ … That
was where all the babies were held.”
She also remembers the alternate
name some Planned Parenthood workers used for the so-called “products of
conception,” abbreviated “POC”: “The
joke was that it stood for ‘pieces of
children.’”
Johnson left Planned Parenthood
and became a pro-life advocate in
2009 after witnessing the abortion of
a 13-week-old unborn child. She
recounted the disturbing practices of
her former employer during a Texas
Senate hearing on July 29.
Johnson’s testimony in Texas came
five days before Democratic senators
in the U.S. Senate blocked an effort to
cut off federal funding for Planned
Parenthood. The move came in the
wake of a growing scandal over how
the nation’s largest abortion provider
harvests fetal tissue for middleman
R
 jdean@wng.org  @deanworldmag
8/5/15 11:13 AM
CREDIT
17 NEWS 1-PAGER.indd 13
8/3/15 4:46 PM
DISPATCHES
HUMAN RACE
STATED
Missouri state Sen. Bob
Dixon has become one of
the nation’s most wellknown gubernatorial
candidates after media
dredged up his homosexual past. The Republican
issued a statement on July
27 saying that sexual abuse
he endured as a child led to
years of “teenage confusion” he has put behind
him. Dixon, who is 46 and
has a wife and three daughters, said his Christian faith
will continue to guide his
actions. He criticized those
“who tear down others for
their gain.”
EXCAVATED
Bill Kelso, director
Archaeologists believe they found the bodies of four of America’s earliest
of archaeology
leaders buried beneath a former church at the country’s first successful
at Jamestown
English colony, Jamestown, Va. The men were likely Capt. Gabriel Archer,
Rediscovery
Sir Ferdinando Wainman, Capt. William West, and pastor Robert Hunt.
Chemical tests, skeletal analyses, genealogical records, and 3-D scans of
artifacts in the graves helped lead the Jamestown Rediscovery team to the identities. Most
Jamestown settlers died of disease, famine, or war with Native Americans.
Appeared
14 W O R LD A U G U S T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
17 HUMAN RACE.indd 14
RELEASED
Jailed at 12, the nation’s
youngest convicted killer
walked free July 28 at age
29. Curtis Jones is now an
bones: Susan Walsh/ap • Lim: K yodo via AP
A Christian pastor detained in
North Korea “confessed” to trying to “overthrow the state” in a
perhaps scripted press conference July 30. Authorities have
held Hyeon Soo Lim, the Korean
pastor of a Canadian megachurch, since January. Lim’s
statement spoke of drawing
crosses on food sacks to “create
the impression that it is God, and
not the Workers’ Party,” that sustains the North Korean people.
The Toronto church says Lim,
60, has made more than 100
trips to the communist nation.
An anonymous Alabama
prisoner who went to
federal court seeking an
abortion changed her mind
July 29. The American Civil
Liberties Union helped the
unnamed woman sue her
sheriff July 20, while the
state sought to terminate
the woman’s parental
rights, with a courtappointed attorney representing the child. But the
suit dissolved when the
prisoner revealed, in a
sworn statement, she now
wishes to give birth. The
statement didn’t explain
the reasons for her decision, but said she acted
without “undue influence,
duress, or threat of harm.”
8/5/15
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12:00 PM
Walsh: Steven Senne/ap • Brown: Universit y of Alberta • Poll ard: K arl DeBl aker/ap
Jude: pedro portal/Miami Herald
REVERSED
By the
numbers
ordained minister, and he
faces lifetime probation.
Jones and sister Catherine,
now 30, killed their father’s
girlfriend in 1999. Child
welfare investigators had
found signs of sexual
abuse in the family and did
nothing. The siblings had
also planned to kill their
father and a male relative,
but panicked after murdering the girlfriend.
Prosecutors charged them
as adults, and they pled
guilty to second-degree
murder. Catherine was
released Aug. 1.
bones: Susan Walsh/ap • Lim: K yodo via AP
Walsh: Steven Senne/ap • Brown: Universit y of Alberta • Poll ard: K arl DeBl aker/ap
Jude: pedro portal/Miami Herald
DECLINED
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh
on July 27 withdrew the
city’s bid for
the 2024
Olympics,
saying
he
would
not
“mortgage the
future of the
city away” by signing a host
city contract that would
leave the city liable to cover
cost overruns. Los Angeles,
which hosted the games in
1932 and 1984, remains in
the running for the 2024
games and faces competition from cities such as
Paris, Rome, Hamburg, and
Budapest.
KILLED
Three relatives of
late terrorist
Osama bin Laden
were among four
killed July 31 when
a private jet crashed
57
The percentage of American
voters who oppose
President Obama’s
nuclear pact with
Iran, according to a
Quinnipiac University
Poll released on Aug.
3. Only 27 percent of
American voters support the nuclear deal.
James Jude
in southern England. Arab
media said the former alQaida leader’s stepmother
Rajaa Hashim, sister Sana
bin Laden, and brother-inlaw Zuhair Hashim were
passengers when the plane
nose-dived in Hampshire.
The bin Ladens remain one
of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest
families thanks to the
construction conglomerate
Saudi Binladin Group. The
family disowned Osama in
1994 because of his terrorist activities, long before
his 2011 death from U.S.
special forces.
APPOINTED
Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper named
Russell Brown to the
Supreme Court of
Canada on July 27.
Brown will replace
retiring Justice
Marshall Rothstein and
will be the seventh justice
appointed by Harper,
whose
Conservative
Party took
power in
2006. Before
going to the
bench, the
professing
17 HUMAN RACE.indd 15
$546,000
Christian and law professor’s internet presence
appeared conservative.
He criticized legal precedent that led to this
year’s unanimous decision to legalize assisted
suicide. Brown also
appeared to endorse an
organization that
defended a Christian
law school provinces had
blacklisted for upholding
biblical sexuality.
Amount of money
the University of
California paid former
president Mark Yudof
in 2014, the year after
he left office, according to a July 29 report
in The Sacramento
Bee. Yudof told the
Bee: “This is the
t ypical arrangement
for presidents and
chancellors who
leave administration
and prepare to begin
teaching again.”
PAROLED
Jonathan Pollard, a former
civilian intelligence analyst
for the U.S. Navy convicted
of spying for
Israel, will
likely leave
prison
soon,
after 30
years in
jail. The
Obama
administration
announced it would not
oppose Pollard’s scheduled
parole in November.
Pollard stole entire databases of highly sensitive
information and sold it to
Israel in 1985 until he was
caught and arrested in
November of that year.
DIED
James Jude, a doctor credited with helping pioneer
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), died July 27 at
age 87. Before Jude’s work,
doctors would open the
chests of patients in cardiac
arrest to massage the heart
directly. Jude partnered
with two electrical engineers, Guy Knickerbocker
and William Kouwenhoven
(inventor of the portable
defibrillator), to publish a
chest compression technique in 1960. The trio
then combined their work
with Baltimore doctors
working on the respiratory
system to create CPR.
A U G U S T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 W O R LD 15
8/5/15 11:46 AM
DISPATCHES
QUOTABLES
‘I can make that
commitment.’
U.S. Rep. ROBERT PITTENGER, R-N.C.,
co-chairman of the House Task
Force to Investigate Terrorism
Financing, on the effect of
giving sanctions relief to Iran
as part of the proposed
nuclear pact.
‘Imagine
a NASCAR driver
mentally preparing for a
race knowing one of the
drivers will be drunk.’
IRS Commissioner JOHN
KOSKINEN, in a July 29
Senate hearing, in response
to a question from Sen. Mike
Lee, R-Utah, about whether
he would commit, absent
new directives from
Congress or the courts, not
to take action to remove the
tax exempt status from
religious colleges or universities based on their belief
that marriage is between a
man and a woman.”
JOHN WEAVER, chief strategist for presidential
candidate John Kasich, on preparing
for a debate that includes
Donald Trump.
‘All Pope.
All the Time.’
Brand slogan for POPECAST, a
24-hour online radio station,
run by CBS-owned KYW in
Philadelphia, devoted to
the September visit of
Pope Francis and the
World Meeting of
Families.
16
WORLD
17 QUOTABLES.indd 16
AUGUST 22, 2015
‘Who knew
jumping out
of planes was
safer than
getting out
of bed?’
Former President GEORGE
H.W. BUSH, 91, in a tweet to
well-wishers on July 30 as he
recovered from a fractured
bone in his neck.
PIT TENGER: BILL CL ARK/CQ ROLL CALL/AP • TRUMP: DANNY JOHNSTON/AP • POPE FRANCIS: ANDREW MEDICHINI/AP • KOSKINEN: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP • BUSH: OFFICE OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH/AP
‘Why turn a
garden snake
into a boa
constrictor?’
 Follow us on Facebook
8/5/15
11:09 AM
Pit tenger: Bill Cl ark/CQ Roll Call/ap • Trump: Danny Johnston/ap • Pope Francis: Andrew Medichini/ap • Deters: John Minchillo/ap • Bush: Office of George H.W. Bush/ap
8/4/15 9:43 AM
17 QUOTABLES.indd 17
DISPATCHES
QUICK TAKES
Acting out
Most fugitives try to keep a low profile, but not
Jason Stange. The convicted bank robber, who
last year escaped from a Spokane, Wash., halfway
house, sought out and received an acting role in
the low-budget horror film Marla Mae. Officers from
the U.S. Marshals Service recognized Stange in a
photo for a newspaper article about the shooting
of the film, and they arrested him near the film set
in Olympia on July 24. The film is scheduled for a
2016 release. “He did a good job. He was friendly.
Well-liked,” Marla Mae producer Brandon Roberts
told the Reuters news service. “We didn’t know
he was a criminal or anything like that.”
Florida find
Treasure seekers in Florida hit the jackpot
in June when they recovered 51 rare gold
coins and 40 feet of ornate gold chain from
an early 18th-century shipwreck off the
Florida coast. The Schmitt family, subcontractors of treasure-seeking company 1715
Fleet—Queens Jewels LLC, made an earlier
find in 2013 at the site where, in 1715, a
convoy of Spanish ships carrying silver and
gold back to Spain from the New World sank
off the coast of present-day Vero Beach,
Fla. Though the Schmitts made their most
recent discovery in June, they held back
the announcement to coincide with the
300th anniversary of the sinking on July 30.
Smoked out
A tradition as old as Texas is under assault in the Lone Star State’s own capital.
The Austin, Texas, city council voted July 23 to give preliminary support to a
measure that would restrict smoke emanating from the city’s beloved barbecue
restaurants. After hearing several citizen complaints of smelly homes, Councilman
Pio Renteria launched an initiative in April, proposing that barbecue joints either
purchase expensive smoke scrubbers or adopt natural gas barbecue pits. The
initiative to ditch traditional wood-fired or charcoal grills drew scorn from
barbecue aficionados.
18 Mil an: JACK WALSWORTH/MLIVE.COM/L andov • Stange: Tony Overman/The Olympian/AP • Treasure: 1715 Fleet—Queens Jewels LLC/AP • barbecue: L aura Skelding/Austin American-Statesman/ap
A grease overflow at a Milan, Mich., McDonald’s caused the city to shut down Dexter
Street for more than an hour on July 28. Milan fire chief Bob Stevens said his department
got a call at 10:49 a.m. that grease from underground containers underneath the local
McDonald’s had overflowed and spilled onto the road. “When it puddled, vehicles were
moving through, tracking the grease out of the parking lot onto the roadway,” Stevens
said. The greasy, slippery conditions caused a driving hazard. Public works crews and
two McDonald’s employees armed with mops and degreaser cleaned up most of the
spilled grease, and the city reopened the roadway.
W O R L D AUGU S T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
17 QUICK TAKES.indd 18
8/4/15
3:25 PM
Arenas: Instagram • mayflies: Bl aine Shahan/LNP/AP • Switzerl and: Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone/AP • Windows 10: Microsoft • Ley: TMC News
Road work
Swiss misstep
Bridge blockers
Arenas: Instagram • mayflies: Bl aine Shahan/LNP/AP • Switzerl and: Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone/AP • Windows 10: Microsoft • Ley: TMC News
Mil an: JACK WALSWORTH/MLIVE.COM/L andov • Stange: Tony Overman/The Olympian/AP • Treasure: 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels LLC/AP • barbecue: L aura Skelding/Austin American-Statesman/ap
Shot selection
What happens when a former NBA star
walks up to the basketball contests at
a county fair? According to Gilbert
Arenas’ Instagram account, the threetime NBA All-Star left the Orange County
Fair in California with a massive haul of
stuffed animals for his children. In an
Instagram post dated July 26, Arenas
showed off the bounty of prizes and
bragged that the fair had banned him
from the basketball games. In response,
a fair official told ABC7 in Southern
California that the former All-Star guard
simply reached the daily prize limit and
was welcome to come back anytime
before the OC Fair closes on August 16.
The bridge between Sabula, Iowa, and Savanna,
Ill., had too much traffic on July 18, and authorities had to shut it down. But the problem wasn’t
cars or trucks; it was mayflies. After sunset on
July 18, mayflies reportedly began congregating
on the U.S. 52 bridge that spans the Mississippi
River between the two towns. Later that night,
massive knee-high drifts of mayflies forced
local authorities to shut down the bridge until
road crews could snowplow the insect heaps
off the roadway. Additionally, Iowa authorities
opted to sand their side of the bridge because
millions of smushed insects had left the bridge
slippery. Authorities in both states promised
to leave the lights off on the bridge for a while
until mayfly season ends.
Renowned for its neutrality,
Switzerland staged an unex
pected invasion into France on
July 23 in order to save thirsty
Swiss cows. A recent heat wave
in the Swiss Alps left a few
Alpine herds in the nation’s west
dangerously low on water. To
solve the problem, the Swiss air
force sent helicopters across
the border to draw water from
Rousses Lake in Eastern France.
Days later, Swiss officials
apologized, saying they
believed at the time the heli
copter operation fell within the
rules of a bilateral agreement
that allows the Swiss air force
to fly over France. Government
officials in Switzerland have
promised to compensate
France for the stolen water.
Mayflies on the Route 462
bridge in Pennsylvania
Stacking the deck
Microsoft devotees making the switch to Windows 10
may make a rude discovery on their first lunch break after
upgrading. Microsoft’s popular solitaire time-waster will
integrate advertisements in the new operating system.
Good news, though: Solitaire junkies who don’t want ads
can pay $1.49 per month (or $9.99 per year) to upgrade to
Microsoft Solitaire Collection Premium and skip the ads.
Low-speed chase
Graham L. Ley’s escape from police was doomed from
the time he chose his getaway vehicle: a mobility
scooter. Police in Elyria, Ohio, went after Ley after complaints for days about a man in a mobility scooter driving
recklessly in traffic in the Cleveland-area town. On July
27, police spotted the 31-year-old driving erratically
and moved to pull him and his scooter over. Undeterred,
Ley attempted to make a slow-motion getaway, first
crossing four lanes of traffic and then pulling onto a
sidewalk. But eventually Elyria police were able to
corner Ley on a driveway and charged him with resisting arrest, criminal damage, and failure to comply.
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more 17 QUICK TAKES.indd 19
AUGU S T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 W O R L D 19
8/4/15 3:14 PM
JANIE B. CHEANEY
Information,
please
You may long for a break from political
news, but don’t take one
20 WORLD AUGUST 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
17 CHEANEY.indd 20
When ‘the
people’ can
influence
politics,
politics can
also influence
the people,
leading to
radicalism at
one extreme
and disenchantment on
the other.
Images of possible
Republican
candidates during
the Conservative
Political Action
Conference in
National Harbor, Md.
Carolyn K aster/ap
Seen on a T-shirt in New Orleans, years
ago: IT’S NOT THE HEAT, IT’S THE
STUPIDITY—referring to an overused coastal
summertime complaint. But there’s another
season that caption might fit, and it’s already
upon us.
Seen on a friend’s Facebook post a few days
ago: “I don’t think I can make it through
another presidential election season. Anybody
got a retreat in either Northern Scotland or Fiji
that I can rent for a couple of years?”
I sympathize. I was minding my own business, scanning my own Facebook page when I
came across a scurrilous post from another
friend about a candidate I like, followed by vehement agreements from further friends (and total
strangers), which felt like death from a thousand
paper cuts. How could they be so ignorant? And I
don’t have time to make a case, and it would just
raise my frustration level if I tried, and a long Fiji
retreat doesn’t sound too bad just now.
“Of the people, by the people, and for the
people” is a messy proposition, plain and
simple. The Founding Fathers constituted the
electoral college and indirect election of senators as a hedge against the messiness—or some
of it—but that was a futile hope. Presidential
elections got off to a rousing start with slashand-burn pamphleteers like James Callender, a
Scottish immigrant who didn’t seem to like
anybody. In 1796 Callender exposed an illicit
affair of Alexander Hamilton’s and won the
support of Hamilton’s bitter rival Thomas
Jefferson—then later speculated luridly on a
supposed relationship between Jefferson and
his slave, “dusky Sally” Hemings. Not even the
Father of His Country was safe from Callender’s
smears, though it took some imagination to
smear Washington.
R
George Caleb Bingham, Missouri artist and politician, portrayed antebellum democracy in a lively
series of paintings—for example, The County
Election, in which voters cheerfully accept whiskey bribes, haul comatose friends to the polls, and
flip coins to determine their choice. After the Civil
War, politics entered the machine age, including
backroom deals, ward bosses, and industrial kingmakers. The most dignified presidential elections
in American history probably took place in the
1950s—a period our liberated age often dismisses
as insufferably boring and conformist.
At least in the old days, one could cancel newspaper subscriptions, avoid political gatherings,
and steer clear of politically minded relatives for
the duration of the campaign. These
days no one is safe from robocalls and
political ads where Candidate A (the one
you should vote for) is represented by
inspiring tunes and heartwarming photos, while Candidate B enters the picture
with minor chords and scenes of despair.
The system comes preloaded with
serious flaws. When “the people” can
influence politics, politics can also influence the people, leading to radicalism
at one extreme and disenchantment on
the other. In God’s providence, however, this is
the system we have. And, cynics and shenanigans
notwithstanding, every citizen has a vote—Walt
Whitman called it “the still small voice vibrating.”
I don’t believe in 100 percent voter turnout,
but I do believe in 100 percent informed turnout,
and that’s why 18-month vacations in Fiji are not
an option. David Webb, a Washington, D.C., talkshow host, urges citizens to do their homework:
Compare candidates’ actions to their words,
weigh the candidates’ weak points, and consider
the candidates’ appeal to the general public, not
just their base. This might mean sacrificing
some of my precious leisure time in order to
peruse those online news sources I trust.
“The condition upon which God hath given
liberty to man is eternal vigilance” (attributed to
John Curran, Irish judge, 1790). A certain amount
of simplistic repetition, outrageous statements,
dirty campaign tricks, and plain old stupidity
figures in to those conditions, too. If freedom
means anything, people must be free to be wrong.
But other people—preferably a lot more—must
exercise their liberty to sort out claims and past
records as best they can, make an informed
decision, and raise their small still voices. And
try not to complain. Eternal vigilance is a pain,
sometimes, but the alternative is worse. A
 jcheaney@wng.org  @jbcheaney
8/4/15 11:58 AM
Carolyn K aster/ap
17 CHEANEY.indd 21
8/3/15 4:47 PM
CREDIT
17 MOVIES & TV.indd 22
8/3/15 4:48 PM
CULTURE
MOVIES & TV / BOOKS / Q& A / MUSIC
Movie
Better than Bond
Rogue Nation shows Ethan Hunt is a different breed
of spy from 007 by Megan Basham
It has taken five films
and two decades to
confirm it, but with the success of Mission: Impossible—
Rogue Nation, which topped
the box office with $56 million in its opening weekend,
American entertainment
insiders are finally comfortable declaring Ethan Hunt
our James Bond. That is, an
enduring icon of international espionage that will
Paramount Pictures
R
keep audiences returning
sequel after sequel.
It’s an interesting comparison, particularly as
Rogue Nation, perhaps
more than any other M:I
film, points up differences
between the two spies that
go far beyond accents. In
many fundamental ways,
each man embodies the
ideals of his culture of
origin.
 mbasham@wng.org  @megbasham
Though Daniel Craig’s
reign has taken some of the
metro out of the perennially
metrosexual Bond, with his
proclivities toward stylish
dress, drink, and cardsharping the character has
always had something of
the louche European about
him. He may sound British,
but his savoir-faire with the
femmes fatales (some of
whose names I still can’t
pronounce without blushing) has always seemed
decidedly French.
By contrast, who can say
whether Ethan Hunt (Tom
Cruise) takes his martinis
shaken or stirred—he’d
never dream of drinking on
the job. He may drive some
of the world’s most expensive sports cars now and
then, but not as an indulgence, as Bond does, but
because they’re handy and
part of his cover for the
mission. The practical workman Hunt would just as well
commandeer a Ford Focus
if it served his purpose.
However, it’s in his
dealings with women that
Hunt’s puritan roots are
AUGUST 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 WOR L D 23
8/5/15 9:22 AM
MOVIES & TV
most revealed. With the
exception of one scene in
the second film, the worst of
the bunch, Ethan is a loyal
monogamist who only gets
seriously romantic with the
woman who becomes his
wife. In Rogue Nation, he
receives nothing steamier
than a heartfelt hug from
leading lady Rebecca
Ferguson (though we have
by then seen plenty of her in
high-slit gowns and bikinis
DOCUMENTARY
Best of Enemies
R
BOX OFFICE TOP 10
For the weekEND of July 31-Aug. 2
according to Box Office Mojo
CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent
(V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10
scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
SV L
1̀ Mission: Impossible—
Rogue Nation* PG-13....................... 364
2̀Vacation* R................................................. 769
3̀Ant-Man* PG-13....................................... 154
4̀Minions* PG................................................. 242
5̀Pixels* PG-13............................................... 444
6̀Trainwreck* R......................................... 7 410
7̀Southpaw R................................................. 5 710
8̀ Paper Towns* PG-13......................... 434
9̀ Inside Out* PG.......................................... 131
` Jurassic World* PG-13................... 274
10
In the late 1960s
television news was
quietly, modestly liberal.
No one mistook Walter
Cronkite on CBS and Chet
Huntley/David Brinkley on
NBC as karate champs or
kickboxers. Few people
watched ABC News, and no
other TV news network
existed. Then came an ABC
stunt that opened the
doors for today’s verbal
cage-fighting—and Best of
Enemies, an 87-minute
documentary in some
theaters and soon on
DVDs, tells that story.
The two innovators
could not have been
more different ideologically or more similar
stylistically. In 1968
Gore Vidal (who said he
had sex with more than
1,000 men) published
Myra Breckinridge,
classified by one encyclopedia of gay culture
as the first novel in
which a major character undergoes a sexchange operation.
Meanwhile, William F.
Buckley Jr. edited
National Review, then
the one major U.S. conservative magazine,
and a stern opponent
of the cultural revolution
Vidal promoted. But both
had patrician mannerisms
and well-turned-sentence
eloquence, so
they were
Buckley
(left) and
evenly
Vidal
matched in
the 10 live
clashes ABC set up for
them at the 1968
Republican and Democratic
conventions.
Best of Enemies shows
the fireworks that resulted,
and points to the new era
of television news—ABC
suddenly jumped to No. 1 in
convention coverage
ratings—that soon
emerged. Documentaries
have a reputation for dullness, but this one is alive:
The commentary that
accompanies the Buckley/
Vidal jousting tilts liberal,
but the clips themselves
carry the show. We may be
better off with today’s
arguing than the pretense
of reasonableness that
once dominated television
news, but neither is ideal.
The Buckley/Vidal battles
were both a low point—
“crypto-Nazi … queer,” they
snarled—and a high point
for television news and
views. —by MARVIN OLASKY
Best of Enemies: ABC Photo Archives/Get t y Images • Rogue Nation: Paramount Pictures
that, along
with action
violence and a
smattering of mild profanity,
accounts for the PG-13
rating).
The franchise’s principals (including producer
Cruise) leave no doubt in
this latest firecracker of a
film that they understand
the innate American appeal
of their protagonist, making
wink-and-nod references to
past points of national pride.
Between his role here and
his time as Jack Donaghy on
30 Rock, I’m beginning to
think Alec Baldwin is a reallife political double agent.
He claims to be liberal offscreen, but as CIA head Alan
Ferguson
and Cruise
Hunley he growls that the
U.S.’s top IMF agent is “the
living manifestation of destiny” with such conviction,
he makes you wish we could
add another star to the flag.
Bond gets into plenty of
scrapes, sure, but always
with a feeling that life is a
breeze for him. He was born
to be handsome, sophisticated, and rich, and wherever his success comes
from, it certainly isn’t from
too much effort
or earnestness.
Hunt, on the
other hand—
perfectly embodied by the most
legendarily
disciplined
movie star of our
times—is all
bruising, shaking, unrelenting
effort. Nothing
but sheer determination and
pounding
industriousness
accounts for
what his
enemies dismiss as luck.
He wouldn’t be America’s
spy any other way. A
*Reviewed by WORLD
24 WORLD AUGUST 22, 2015
8/5/15 7:49 AM
A24
CULTURE
MOVIE
The End of the Tour
The End of the Tour is
the kind of film that may
keep you sitting and staring
long after the credits roll—
not because the movie was
so thrilling, or the message so
deep, but because you feel
physically pressed down by
the weight of the subject.
Tour is a biopic of novelist
David Foster Wallace, who
committed suicide in 2008 at
age 46, but the movie focuses
on a few days of his life in
1996. Wallace (Jason Segel in
a performance generating
Oscar buzz), then 34, had just
released his second novel,
Infinite Jest , a dystopian,
postmodern epic that drew
critical praise bordering on
hyperbole. He’s agreed to a
profile interview with David
Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), a
30-year-old probationary hire
for Rolling Stone who had
also just published his own
novel, The Art Fair, which
warmed some seats during
book readings but never
attracted the raving crowds
that Wallace’s did.
For a movie that’s 105
minutes long, there’s a whole
lot of cigarette-puffing
pontification and not a lot of
action. The entire plot is
about the two Davids travel-
Best of Enemies: ABC Photo Archives/Get t y Images • Rogue Nation: Paramount Pictures
A24
R
ing together to Minneapolis
for the last stop on Wallace’s
book tour—and during latenight munchies on Red Vines
and Diet Pepsi, Wallace
reveals his worldview. He
talks about depression and
suicide, fame and ego, marriage and sex. He describes
the heroin high of public
attention—and the emptiness
and loneliness of it all.
All the while, Lipsky plays
the responsive reporter with
his tape recorder and notepad, at times interjecting with
passive-aggressive comments on Wallace’s success
or grenade-bomb questions
to push Wallace to react with
something quotable. Wallace
is aware of Lipsky’s ploys to
scavenge ratings-driving
revelations: “I don’t even know
if I like you,” he blurts out on
their first night, “Yet I’m so
nervous about whether you’ll
like me.” Ever paranoid about
being portrayed as a “fraud,”
he frets that the Rolling Stone
piece will paint him as a
publicity “whore” milking his
fleeting moments of stardom.
One thing the movie does
well is to allow their conversations, which are based on
real-life recordings, to tangle
and flow naturally without
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
any discernible
narrative
structure. The two Davids’
interaction feels authentic
and unscripted with all their
awkward silences, meandering topics, lame jokes, and
crude language (hence the R
rating). But of course, this is
no typical chitchat between
two regular guys; there’s a
complex, fascinating dynamic
at play between the nation’s
most celebrated writer and
an interviewer who both
worships and resents his
subject’s brilliance. As much
as Lipsky laps up Wallace’s
existentialist musings, he’s
also envious and irritated
that he didn’t come up with
those sayings himself.
But really, nothing
Wallace—or any of the other
hyper-self-aware philosophers out there—said is new
or original or even particularly deep, though not for the
lack of groping for deeper
truths. We live in a culture
that perfected the art of
navel-gazing: Pop culture and
Disney preach the importance
of “staying true” to yourself;
“spiritual” movements
encourage baseless “selflove” and “self-acceptance”;
Segel (left)
and Eisenberg
self-help and therapy books
coach us on “self-identity”
and “self-purpose.” Wallace
was extraordinary up to the
fact that he knelt long and
hard enough before the
shrine of self, and realized he
didn’t like what he saw.
One night after Lipsky
accuses the famous writer of
hiding behind a Midwest
“down-to-earth” persona
while patronizing his intellectual inferiors, Wallace gives a
prophetic soliloquy about the
emptiness in his soul: “It’s
feeling as if it’s all nothing.
You are nothing. And feeling
as if you’re better than everybody because you see this,
but feeling as if you’re worse
than everybody because you
can’t function. It’s really horrible.” A person doesn’t commit suicide because he wants
to die, Wallace tells Lipsky. He
does it because he’s running
away from something more
horrible than death.
The End of the Tour is not
an uplifting story, nor is it
really even a story about
Wallace. It poses worthy
thoughts and questions, but
without freedom from
answers found in the gospel,
those ideas only bind and
oppress. —by SOPHIA LEE
AUGUST 22, 2015 WORLD 25
8/5/15 9:24 AM
BOOKS
gence agencies
can’t live without
his special talents.
Silva’s writing is
far above that of
typical thriller
authors, his intricate plots work
brilliantly, and his
evil characters—
terrorists and
Russians who
employ them—
deserve what they
Macintyre
get. Warning:
violence and
occasional bad guy
verbiage and
adultery.
Ben Macintyre’s
A Spy Among
Friends: Kim Philby
BOOKS HIGHLIGHT OPPONENTS OF LIBERTY, and the Great
Betrayal (Broadway
HERE AND ABROAD by Marvin Olasky
Books, 2014) is a
well-written
account of the British counterintelliDaniel Silva’s The English Spy is his
gence chief whose work for the Soviet
15th in a fiction series featuring
Union led to the murder of hundreds of
Gabriel Allon, a legendary Israeli spy and
agents. Michael Rubin’s Dancing with the
assassin. Allon is also a masterful restorer
Devil (Encounter, 2015), takes us through
of Renaissance paintings and prefers to
U.S. attempts to find common ground
live at peace amid art, but he is so good
with rogue regimes: North Korea, Iran,
at his violent tasks that not only Israel’s
Iraq, Libya, and more. He concludes that
Mossad but British and American intelli-
Freedom and
its enemies
R
OTHER SHORT STOPS
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17 BOOKS.indd 26
What Adam Smith Knew, edited by James Otteson (Encounter,
2014) includes essays praising or damning capitalism by John
Locke, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and
others. David Brooks’ The Road to Character (Random House,
2015) is promising in parts but deeply confused: Brooks writes
about the importance of humility and understands the need for
grace, but it’s grace without the cross.
Tom Cooper’s The Marauders (Crown, 2015) is an entertaining crime novel set in Louisiana swamps. David Downing’s
One Man’s Flag and Jack of Spies (Soho) are World War I
novels (warning: sexual situations and language) by the
author of the excellent John Russell series of novels set in
Hitler’s Germany. Thomas Mallon’s novel Finale (Pantheon,
2015) portrays Washington in the 1980s and off ers glimpses
of Richard Nixon. Benjamin Percy’s novel The Dead Lands
(Grand Central, 2015) is a well-crafted dystopia following
some American apocalypse. —M.O.
HANDOUT
Burton and Anita Folsom’s Death on Hold (Nelson,
2015) narrates well how their friendship with a
death row inmate changed his life and theirs.
Agenda Setting: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Influencing
Public Policy by John Miller and Karl Zinsmeister
(Philanthropy Roundtable, 2015) off ers some
rousing and some depressing stories of how
behind-the-scenes funders have changed American history.
Rodney Stark and Xiuhua Wang’s A Star in the East: The Rise
of Christianity in China (Templeton, 2015) succinctly tells of
what may be the world’s best hope of avoiding a future war
between the United States and China. Guy Sorman’s The Empire
of Lies: The Truth About China in the Twenty-First Century
(Encounter, first published in 2008) looks at the lives of the
1 billion poor Chinese we tend to overlook as the lives of 200
million upwardly-mobiles dazzle us.
the diplomats’ axiom, “it never hurts to
talk to enemies,” is a lie.
Jay Cost’s A Republic No More
(Encounter, 2015) shows how we moved
from checks and balances to expanding
the checkbook balances of special interest groups: James Madison called that
factionalism, and maybe “corrupt
special-interest democracy” is the better
term for today. A 2014 edition of James
Burnham’s 1964 Suicide of the West
(Encounter) shows how liberalism was
(and is) unable to stand up to dedicated
and persistent opponents.
Honest, hard-hitting essays on the
Middle East comprise Daniel Pipes’
Nothing Abides (Transaction, 2015).
Fighting the Ideological War, edited by
Katharine Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo
(Westminster Institute, 2012), has essays
showing lessons from the Cold War
against Communism worth applying to
the lukewarm war against Islamism.
Kirsten Powers’ The Silencing: How the
Left Is Killing Free Speech (Regnery, 2015)
points out the internal demoralization that
often accompanies external aggression.
In Universal Man, a biography of John
Maynard Keynes (Basic, 2015), Richard
Davenport-Hines praises Keynesian economics and Keynesian homosexuality:
Many upper-class Brits indulged in both,
but at 40 or so many of them married
women and had children.
AUGUST 22, 2015
8/3/15 11:41 AM
HANDOUT
CULTURE
Notable books
FOUR WORKS OF ACCESSIBLE THEOLOGY
reviewed by Tim Challies
PRAYING THE BIBLE Donald Whitney
Whitney observes that many Christians stop praying
because they are bored with their prayers: “They tend to
say the same old things about the same old things.” In this
book he recommends a prayer method that addresses
the sameness of our prayers: “Simply go through [a]
passage line by line, talking to God about whatever comes
to mind as you read the text.” The book’s tone is warm,
conversational, and encouraging. If you read it, you will
better understand his method and be more equipped to
practice it, understanding that it is one among many
systems of prayer.
SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP Wesley Hill
Wesley Hill addresses the subject of spiritual friendship
as a Christian who believes the Bible forbids homosexual
behavior, but who cannot deny his homosexual orientation.
He wonders if he is doomed to a lonely life. The solution,
he believes, is biblical friendship—yet friendship has
fallen on hard times. Our culture is obsessed with a kind of
freedom and autonomy in which meaningful friendships
seem to require too much to be worth the bother. But what
could we gain if we simply took friendship much more
seriously? Having read this book, I find myself wanting
deeper and more meaningful friendships.
THE PRODIGAL CHURCH Jared Wilson
When Jared Wilson was caught up in the church growth
movement, he felt restless. The model seemed woefully
inadequate. But the Bible transformed him from within,
enabling him to understand the utter centrality of the gospel
(and not programs) in the church. He critiques the seekerfriendly model by using the Bible to show where it falls short.
God calls believers to be faithful members of local churches
who pursue His work in His way, so I gladly commend this
book for your consideration.
SPOTLIGHT
Figures in Motion
(figuresinmotion.com)
puts out books of
tagboard paper
figures to color,
cut out, and
assemble with
brads. The three
most recent
series include
Famous Figures of
the Renaissance
(Columbus,
Gutenberg, Da Vinci,
Luther, and others);
Footsteps of Faith: Queen
Esther (Mordecai, Esther, Haman,
and the rest); and Famous
Figures of Ancient Times (Moses,
David, Hammurabi, Aristotle,
Jesus, and others). Happily, the
sets are historically accurate and
treat biblical sources as truthful.
Bradley Johnston’s 150
Questions About the Psalter
(Crown and Covenant, 2015)
comes from the publisher connected to an exclusive psalmsinging denomination, but all of
us would benefit from singing
more from the hymnbook of the
ancient church. This catechismstyle book provides useful information about the diff erent kinds
of psalms and their traditional
uses in worship. —Susan Olasky
THE ART OF WORK Jeff Goins
HANDOUT
HANDOUT
There is a lot to like about a well-written book packed with
interesting illustrations and interviews. I really wanted, and
even tried, to love it. Unfortunately, Goins gives the impression you can be truly, deeply, and eternally satisfied apart
from Christ. The gospel is entirely absent as is a faithful
handling of the Bible. I can only recommend this book as one
that contains helpful nuggets rather than as a wider system
for finding meaning and satisfaction in the work God intends
for you to do.
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
17 BOOKS.indd 27
AUGUST 22, 2015 WORLD
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8/3/15 11:51 AM
CULTURE
Q&A
DAVID SKEEL
Caught in
the thicket
RULES AND REGULATIONS—FOR
PERSONS AND SOCIETIES—CANNOT
DO THE WORK OF A SAVIOR
by Marvin Olasky
photo by Peter Tobia/Genesis
R
David Skeel is a professor of corporate law at
the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a
Presbyterian Church in America elder, and a God’s
World Publications board member. He is the author
of Icarus in the Boardroom, Debt’s Dominion, and The
New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act
and Its (Unintended) Consequences. His most recent
book is True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of
Our Complex World. Here are edited excerpts of our
interview in front of Patrick Henry College students.
because I had never been to Sunday school class. We
read a short story by Wright Morris, “The Ram in the
Thicket”—I had no idea what the subtext of the story
was. After enduring a class where I felt really ignorant, I
decided to read the Bible. The summer after my sophomore year in college a couple of friends and I drove a
van across the country. I started reading the Bible in the
back of the van, and by the time I’d gotten a few chapters
into Genesis I was persuaded it was true. I had never
read anything so beautiful, so psychologically real.
Your mom was a teacher, your dad an Air Force
doctor: What were they as churchgoers? My parents
Muslims tend to dislike Genesis because the heroes
are often not particularly heroic. I had precisely the
both came from churchgoing families that didn’t fully
internalize their faith. They went to church because
that’s what people did. When my parents got married
and started moving around with the military, they just
stopped going to church. I was in a church three or
four times the first 18 years of my life: no religious
background at all. I went to the University of North
Carolina. I had jumped through all the hoops I was
supposed to be jumping through and had this deep
sense that there had to be more to existence than
what I was seeing in my life. That started me down
the road to thinking about Christianity.
You majored in English. We read lots of books with
biblical themes. I never knew what the themes were
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17 Q&A.indd 28
opposite experience. When I read about Abraham,
when I read about Noah, when I read about Joseph, I
said, “I know these people.” God is using real people
in history. Any book that doesn’t look like the world
we inhabit I don’t find compelling. The flaws made it
real to me, and that’s still a big part of what makes it
real—that Peter renounced Jesus, when before he was
willing to give up his life for Jesus. Those are people I
understand. I guess, intuitively, at a very early age I
had a sense of my own sin and the sin of people
around me. Seeing that portrayed in a complex way I
found very powerful and very real.
Christianity impressed you because it’s complicated?
Absolutely. The psychological complexity of Christianity
AUGUST 22, 2015
8/3/15 11:58 AM
of the Bible as an “operator’s manual for planet
Earth.” I wrote True Paradox because I found it really
frustrating to hear biblical Christianity and
Christians described in a way that had nothing to do
with my faith and what Christianity is. In our culture
Christianity is often characterized as simplistic. This
book is for people who think there’s no reason to
take Christianity seriously. It’s to show people of that
sort—they surround me in my professional life—that
Christianity is much more plausible than they think.
‘Truth can’t be conveyed
in a single genre, so the
Bible’s mix of genres,
language, and images
is part of the evidence
for its veracity.’
giant piece of financial legislation
put in place in 2010: It’s 2,319
pages long and has completely
restructured the way we regulate
banks and other financial institutions. When you hear about big
banks and proposals to break them
up, those are conversations about
the Dodd-Frank act.
Has it done any good? It’s a real
mixed bag. It introduces some
regulation of derivatives and other
financial contracts. That’s pretty
good. Other parts of it are not good
at all. It created a form of corporatism, which is the way in Europe corporations tend to
be regulated. The underlying principle is we’ll allow
these giant institutions to exist as long as they do
what the government wants.
was really powerful for me, as was the complexity of
the language in the Bible. Truth can’t be conveyed in a
single genre, so the Bible’s mix of genres, language,
and images is part of the evidence for its veracity.
Will it prevent us from again having a debacle like
that of 2008? It was sold as bringing an end to tax-
The Bible’s different genres and writers also make
Muslims distrust it: They prefer one writer and the one
genre of the Quran, speechifying. Unity rather than
diversity. Another of the really compelling things
payer bailouts: That’s what President Obama said
when he signed it. Dodd-Frank sets up a lot of rules
designed to stop bailouts, to limit what the Federal
Reserve can do. None of those will work, at the end of
the day. If we have a big crisis with a big bank, the
Federal Reserve can bail it out if it wants to. That’s
likely to be what happens. I would not say it’s safe to
rest assured that there will never be another crisis
like 2008. I don’t think one is on the horizon now, but
it’s possible.
about the Bible, for me, is that it actually has both.
That Jesus is both man and God, that God is one God
but also three persons, reinforces the Bible’s complexity and truth.
Once you read the Bible and believed it’s true—what
happened next? Friends and I went to a series of talks
about the gospel designed for fraternity and sorority
students. One of my roommates turned to me and
said, “You don’t actually believe this stuff, do you?” I
said, “I do.” To identify publicly with Jesus, even in this
trivial, small way, was absolutely life-changing for
me. I had no idea why I said that—I didn’t think I was
a Christian at that point. But when I said “I do,” it was
like being married. That moment I married Jesus and
I knew that that was for good—that my life was
changed and it would never be the same.
Since you emphasize the complexity of Christianity,
I suspect you’re not thrilled when you see descriptions
 molasky@wng.org  @MarvinOlasky
17 Q&A.indd 29
I should ask you about the last
book you wrote in your professional
capacity. What is Dodd-Frank and
why should anyone care? That’s the
Do your last two books—on Dodd-Frank and on
Christianity—have a common denominator: Law
doesn’t settle our problems? The theme that underlies
A VIDEO OF THIS
INTERVIEW
IN ITS ENTIRETY
CAN BE FOUND
AT WNG.ORG
AND IN THE
IPAD EDITION OF
THIS ISSUE
important parts of both of them is that law can’t save
us. We have a temptation to think that if we just put
the right laws in place we can prevent financial crises
and we can solve the moral problems of the country.
History tells us, and the Bible tells us, that’s not
possible. We need to be humble about what the
secular law can do. A
AUGUST 22, 2015
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8/3/15 11:57 AM
MUSIC
Just as they were
ABBA LIVE AND UNENHANCED MAY BE
PART OF A TREND by Arsenio Orteza
In-concert live albums
have always been
curious creatures as far as
musical artifacts go.
From their fraudulent
early period (in which crowd
noise was often added to studio recordings) to their semifraudulent middle period (in
which postproduction studio
“fixing” was often done and
crowd noise was only sometimes added to studio recordings), they were part souvenir,
part redundant best-of, and
totally an easy way for acts to
R
meet the album-delivery
clauses of their recording
contracts.
Live albums still fall into
those categories. The 19
songs on the CD of Shania
Twain’s CD-DVD Still the One:
Live from Las Vegas (Mercury
Nashville), for instance, are
executed with such unerring
fidelity to their original
arrangements that one may
as well stick with her
21-track Greatest Hits from
2004. Similarly, Van Halen’s
Live: Tokyo Dome in Concert
(Rhino), a recently released
complete show from 2013,
will have listeners who’d
given up on the band marveling both at how strong the
middle-aged David Lee Roth
sounds and at how seamlessly the new bassist
Wolfgang Van Halen meshes
with his guitarist-father
Eddie and his drummeruncle Alex.
But the performances add
little if anything to the versions on the band’s
first six studio
albums—each of
which, incidentally
(and perhaps tellingly), have just
been reissued in
newly remastered
editions.
Still, in scrambling to
come up with fresh ways of
generating sales in the
revenue-challenged age of
streaming, acts have hit upon
other live-album categories
as well.
One of these, for lack of a
better term, might be called
the Real Thing—i.e., live
recordings free of after-thefact cosmetic surgery. ABBA’s
Live at Wembley Arena
(Polydor) is an especially
valuable example in that the
only previous such ABBA
album (Live, 1986) was
extensively doctored and
thus unrepresentative of an
actual ABBA performance.
The Swedish quartet’s
Wembley show occurred in
1979 at the end of a six-night
run. That ABBA had landed
such a gig was not in and of
itself remarkable—the group
was, after all, the most popular act in the world at the
time. What is remarkable,
especially for a group known
for its obsessive studio craft,
is the extent to
which Agnetha,
Benny, Bjorn, and
Anni-Frid were
capable of putting
on a high-quality
show.
Not that they
didn’t have help.
They were accompanied by
six instrumentalists and
three background singers.
But, as Live at Wembley Arena
consistently demonstrates,
what they accomplished
onstage went beyond merely
replicating the original
sound of their many hits to
injecting them with new life.
Some of what resulted
feels awkward (“Hole in Your
Soul,” “Summer Night
City”—ABBA was seldom
much good at rocking out).
Bjorn’s polite and humble
English-as-a-secondlanguage crowd interaction,
however, does not.
Occasionally, a live album comes to define an act, either by catching it peaking or by crystallizing
its most compelling elements. Frampton Comes Alive!, Cheap Trick at Budokan, and Johnny Cash’s
Live at Folsom Prison come to mind. The two-disc, never-a-dull-moment Live from the Woods at
Fontanel (Atlantic/Word) by NEEDTOBREATHE may well turn out to belong in such company.
The nine tracks from Rivers in the Wasteland would’ve been new to the Nashville crowd, so,
understandably, Bear and Bo Rinehart (and Seth Bolt, Josh Lovelace, and Randall Harris) play
them for maximum first-impression-making. But they also turn up the heat under the other eight,
reaching the first of several climaxes just three tracks in: “Drive All Night” is so hot it could’ve
been the encore. —by A.O.
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AUGUST 22, 2015
ABBA: GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS • NEEDTOBREATHE: HANDOUT
Big impression
 aorteza@wng.org  @ArsenioOrteza
8/4/15 4:17 PM
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GET T Y IMAGES
CULTURE
Notable CDs
NEW OR RECENT LIVE ALBUMS reviewed by Arsenio Orteza
LIVE IN DUBLIN Daryl Hall & John Oates
There are already quite a few Hall and Oates live
recordings in circulation, and the more of them
you’ve heard, the less you’ll crave any edition of
this one (Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-plus-two-CDs). What
justifies this one’s existence is its position on
Hall and Oates’ timeline: Now in their 60s and
with nothing left to prove except that men in their
60s can still do what they do, they sound more
relaxed—and thus in some ways better at doing
what they do—than ever.
Sly
LIVE IN THE U.K. 2010
Ian Hunter & The Rant Band
Hunter’s voice sometimes sounds as old as it was
(72), but the wear and tear are what bring out the
pathos in the Mick Ronson tribute “Michael
Picasso.” (That “Sweet Jane” would be a Lou Reed
tribute by the time of this album’s release was
presumably beyond anyone’s ken, but as such it
works too.) The continued presence of “Ships” is
touching as well—almost as touching as Hunter’s
admission that it was “probably … a hit” in the United
States only because “somebody else sung it.”
STILLNESS IN MOTION: VAI LIVE IN L.A.
Steve Vai
PROGENY: SEVEN SHOWS FROM
SEVENTY-TWO Yes
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GET T Y IMAGES
ABBA: GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS • NEEDTOBREATHE: HANDOUT
The merely curious will be exhausted by these
22 intensity-radiating guitar workouts, but
there probably weren’t many merely curious
fans in attendance at this 2012 show—not if the
enthusiasm with which the crowd hangs on to
Vai’s every sound eff ect (“Whispering a Prayer”)
and puts up with loosey-goosey shenanigans
(“Build Me a Song”) is any indication. They also
probably couldn’t care less that although “John
the Revelator” is about exactly what it says,
“Building the Church” and “For the Love of God” aren’t.
These unedited 43-year-old concerts are allegedly
for hardcore fans only. But might not the opposite
also be true? What better way for a prog-rock
novice to discover whether he likes Yes than to
see how far he can get with this box before crying,
“Enough!”? If he attends to the “lyrics,” he’ll bail
early. If, however, he simply wants to bask in the
virtuosity of Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, and the
late Chris Squire, he’ll find the meticulously
restored sound going a long way indeed.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
17 MUSIC.indd 31
SPOTLIGHT
The publicity accompanying
Legacy Recordings’ release of Sly
and the Family Stone’s Live at the
Fillmore East: October 4th & 5th,
1968, says the set’s four fulllength concerts (this was the
two-a-day era)
were originally
source material for
a live album that
would’ve come out
in 1969 if the single
“Everyday People”
hadn’t exploded in
the meantime, requiring the
release of a studio album (Stand!)
instead.
In short, unlike the set they
performed at Woodstock just 10
months later, Live at the Fillmore
East finds Sly and the Family
Stone merely on the cusp of
greatness. So, while they didn’t
lack chops, confidence, or enthusiasm, they did lack (or must have
believed they lacked) the material required to deliver a bangbang show instead of one padded
out with song-distending jams. Or
maybe it was simply that, having
broken in in San Francisco, they
thought that jamming was what
concerts were for. —A.O.
AUGUST 22, 2015
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8/5/15 8:57 AM
A tale of tw
A natural history museum in Washington offers Darwinism with no room
for doubts, but one in New York offers a dose of refreshing honesty on what
science cannot tell us about the past. Could that lead to bigger strides in
intellectual honesty later? BY MARVIN OLASKY IN WASHINGTON & NEW YORK
National
Museum
of Natural
History
17 COVER STORY.indd 32
8/3/15 4:19 PM
two museums
American
Museum
of Natural
History
M
ost big cities have natural history museums that display dinosaur bones and sometimes
much more. Christians, and particularly homeschooling Christians looking for an
educational field trip, tend to view those museums in two ways: Stay away from them
because they often offer up propaganda for Darwinism, or visit them and hope the kids
ignore that teaching.
And yet, all such museums are not the same. I visited America’s two most famous
ones, the National Museum of Natural History (I’ll refer to it as the Smithsonian) on the
mall in Washington, D.C., and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) adjacent
to Central Park in New York City. They provide opposing senses of what scientists know
and don’t know. Both provide teachable moments for parents who have done a little
boning up on ancient bones. We can find better alternatives than avoidance or ignoring.
This article shows how.
AUGUST 22, 2015
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Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Gett y Images • Previous spread: the Smithsonian: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Gett y Images; American Museum of Natural History: Ben Hider/Gett y Images
34 T
Smithsonian visitors
he Smithsonian in recent years has
peruse skulls said
clearly invested millions in creating
to represent the
light, bright rooms in which children
various stages of
human development.
can roam. A kindergarten teacher
asks her young charges, “Imagine
you’re right here and the dinosaur looks at you. What does
the dinosaur want to do?” Kids squeal, “Eat you.” Middle-school children
let their imaginations race as exhibits transport them to faraway places,
fostering a yearning for plane takeoffs, train whistles, and caravans
among some sick of their ABCs—alone, bored, or coddled.
But in exhibit after exhibit, the Smithsonian insists: “Evolution is the
cornerstone of modern biology. There is no scientific controversy about
whether evolution occurred or whether it explains the history of life on
earth.” That’s just wrong. At DissentfromDarwin.org, over 900 Ph.D. scientists have signed a statement agreeing that “we are skeptical of claims
for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the
complexity of life.”
Many museum placards are propagandistic: “Since Darwin died in
1882, findings from many fields have confirmed and expanded on his
ideas. We learned that Earth is old enough for all known species to have
evolved.” That ignores all the research showing that even 4.5 billion years
is not enough, given the multi-mutation features that require multiple
components to kick in to provide some survival advantage.
According to Smithsonian sleight of hand, mankind has a clear line of
descent from our ape ancestors. But two scientists recently writing in a
prestigious 2015 Springer-Verlag book on Macroevolution lamented “the
dearth of unambiguous evidence for ancestor-descendant lineages” within
the hominin fossil record. The famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr
acknowledged a “large, unbridged gap” between humanlike species in the
fossil record and our supposed apelike australopithecine ancestors.
The Smithsonian notes that “societies worldwide tell diverse stories about
how humans came into being,” but the museum claims immunity to that
WORLD AUGUST 22, 2015
8/3/15 4:20 PM
Peter Rigaud/l aif/Redux
F
irst, let’s examine some specific
detail concerning the problem,
which becomes apparent on a placard a few steps into the Smithsonian:
“EVOLUTION TRAIL. … Shaped by
natural selection, some species
diverge from their ancestors and adapt to
environmental change. … Evolution is at the
heart of this museum. Follow the evolution
trail to learn how, and let Iggy the Iguana be
your guide along the way.” Soon, bright lights
announce, “Welcome to the Mammal Family
Reunion! Come meet your relatives.”
The evolution trail takes us by an exhibit
celebrating Morganucodon oehleri, only four
inches long: “A close relative of this tiny creature was the first mammal on earth. Its DNA
was passed on to billions of descendants—
including you.” The trail leads to the Evolution
Theater, which features a film starring “Greatgrandma Morgie, only four inches long. … A
dragonfly for dinner. Mmm, mmm. Tasty. … The
dinosaurs towered over our mammal family
for a long time, until those dinosaurs had a
really bad day.”
Yup, that’s when a meteorite slammed into
earth, leading to a dust storm that shrouded
the planet. All the dinosaurs died, “but not our
family, no. We mammals survived … the meteorite was just the lucky break we needed.” The
film’s avuncular narrator then gives one
example of how mammal species evolved: The
brown fur on brown bears works well as
camouflage in the forest, but 150,000 years
ago some brown bears became stranded in
Alaska, and bears that survived “became
lighter and lighter and lighter until voilá, a
brand-new species, the polar bear.”
(If you’re familiar with the difference
between macroevolution and microevolution,
you may be noting that the film cheats. It purports to explain how one kind of animal gave
way—via time plus chance—to other kinds.
That’s the controversial theory of macroevolution, but the film’s one specific example is a
micro one that both evolutionists and creationists accept: Sure, bear hair color can become
lighter and bird beaks longer, but those
changes prove nothing about the macro
questions.)
The film concludes by stating that humans
are a recent addition to the mammal family, yet
we think we are “the life of the party. Truth is,
we just arrived. … Life is constantly changing
and evolving. Always has, always will. … We all
belong to a family that is constantly changing
and adapting. … If we’ve evolved this far from
mammals like Morgie, what new mammals will
Morgie find at the next reunion?”
temptation: It “presents research and findings based on scientific methods
that are distinct from these stories.” The Smithsonian refuses to admit that
scientists engage in speculation and storytelling all the time—especially
when it comes to human origins. As Mayr said, “Not having any fossils
that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored
method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.”
O
Peter Rigaud/l aif/Redux
Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Gett y Images • Previous spread: the Smithsonian: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Gett y Images; American Museum of Natural History: Ben Hider/Gett y Images
N
ew York’s AMNH facility, by comparison, seems old-fashioned. The darkness of the enormous diorama room focuses
attention on brightly lit cabinets containing scenes from the
Libyan desert, the Upper Nile region, and other exotic locales.
The exhibits of taxidermied lions, buffalo, okapi, giant sables,
giant elands, and more big game have changed little over the
past six decades, according to an elderly volunteer, Terry. She stood in her
red vest showing schoolchildren models of skulls, and explained that she
comes once each week because her parents took her in the 1950s: “I
loved the museum. When I retired, I wanted to come here and help these
children to love it. We have kids who can name every dinosaur.”
The upper-floor dinosaur exhibits show some humility: “Because we
cannot observe how carnosaurs searched for food, we cannot be sure
whether they were hunters or scavengers.” One placard presents theories
about the eye placement and skull bones of carnosaurs, and then states,
“All these ideas are controversial, because they are based on scientists’
interpretations of fossil bones that are often incomplete, or that have
become distorted over millions of years. We may never have all the evidence needed to support these ideas.”
AMNH shows a willingness to admit mistakes: “Bones thought to be
those of juvenile Coelophysis were found inside the body cavities of some
of the larger animals. They were used as evidence that Coelophysis was
cannibalistic. However, these bones have been shown to be those of primitive crocodiles.” The museum acknowledges changes:
“Pterosaurs, or ‘flying reptiles,’ … were originally
The American
thought to be mammals related to bats. Today, pteroMuseum of
saurs are interpreted as archosaurs related to crocoNatural History
diles.” AMNH is willing to admit disagreements:
“How plesiosaurs and their relatives swam is in
some dispute because their locomotion is not
clearly similar to that of any living animal.”
When AMNH is sure that a particular dinosaur feature existed, it still admits our lack of
knowledge. Regarding the horns on some
dinosaurs, “Paleontologists have speculated
that they may have provided a small measure of
protection against large carnivorous enemies.
Or they may have been used for sexual display,
or in combat between competing males during
the mating season.” They may also have been
used to break off large pieces of vegetation,
“but since no specimens of horned dinosaurs
have been found that preserve the stomach
contents, we can’t test this hypothesis.”
Contra numerous books with illustrations
purporting to show dinosaur life, a typical
AMNH exhibit asks, “What can the fossils really
tell us, and what mysteries remain unsolved?
Unfortunately, fossils of Barosaurus don’t tell
us what color the animal was, what noises it
made, or many other details about how it
behaved. We can’t even be certain whether
Barosaurus could really rear up on its hind legs
to feed in the tops of trees or defend its young.”
G.K. Chesterton a century ago explained that
he had “never read a line of Christian apologetics” on his road to belief in Christ, but agnostic
evolutionists “sowed in my mind my first wild
doubts of doubt.” AMNH exhibits could function
that way regarding faith in Darwin. We learn
about stegosaurs, “The vertical plates may have
been used for defense, species identification,
or radiation of heat, but these are guesses.”
Some exhibits make universal statements that
undercut pretensions: “We cannot be sure how
pachycephalosaurs used their skull caps,
because theories about the behavior of extinct
animals cannot be tested.”
f course, AMNH does an obligatory
curtsy to the religion of Darwinism.
One screen at AMNH runs a continuous loop with confessions of
evolutionary faith from Francis
Collins (“Without the framework
of evolution to understand what we look at
every day, it would make no sense”), biologist
Kenneth Miller (“Without evolution to tie it
together, biology is little more than stamp
collecting”), and National Center for Science
Education head Eugenie Scott (“Evolution is the
glue that makes biology make sense”). Those
views contrast strongly with the Bible’s proclamation that in Christ all things hold together.
AMNH also has life-size, lifelike statues of an
ape-man and ape-woman. One Queens-accented
AUGUST 22, 2015 WORLD 17 COVER STORY.indd 35
35
8/3/15 4:20 PM
Journalists say a dog biting a person is not much of a story, but manbites-dog is. Darwinist dominance in museums is sad and worth
documenting, but unsurprising. What’s new and positive is the dash of
humility evident at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
An intern and I looked at websites of many natural history museums
across the country to see whether arrogance or humility dominated, but
that was asking for more subtlety than the internet could provide. Clearly,
Darwin is still a god, but are dissident curators raising insubordinate
questions as hundreds of scientists are?
Want to be a WORLD scout? I took the photograph above on the
fourth floor of AMNH. If you go to a big natural history museum near you,
do you see any admission like that? Or do you see only exhibits like the
one below at the Smithsonian, which cheerily welcomes us to minimize
our humanity? —M.O.
P
arents visiting natural history museums should make sure their children
understand what AMNH admits in its
display of Allosaurus bones:
“Re-creating the behavior of extinct
animals is very difficult, and can only
be done by accepting certain assumptions.” Many exhibits offer speculation and then conclude, “These are all intriguing hypotheses, but the
fossils do not give us enough evidence to test whether any of them are
correct. The mystery remains unresolved.”
AMNH’s placard on a Hadrosaurus exhibit should flash on the computer screen of every Darwinist: “While it is important to make intelligent
speculations about extinct animals, we are overstating the strength of the
fossil evidence if we present these ideas as truth.” A
Marvin Olask y
mom stood before them with her two fourthgraders and said, “They’re your great-grandparents.” The kids laughed. “Want me to take a
picture of you with the naked people?” The
children were uncertain. The mom insisted:
“Kids, this is part of life.” They reluctantly
moved in for the photograph, but the mom
seemed to change her mind: “What a memory.
Lovely. That’s what they want pictures of?
Imagine.” The kids moved away, at which point
the mom started insisting again: “You want a
picture with the naked people or not?” The kids
got into position. The mom said, “Say cheese!”
Still, many AMNH exhibits display one small
step for museum honesty today, and that could
lead to one large leap for intellectual honesty
tomorrow. Jane Goodall, now an 81-year-old
Darwinist considered the world’s foremost
expert on chimpanzees, said, “I was brought up
to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution. I
spent hours and hours in the Natural History
Museum in London.” But what if the AMNH
admission that we don’t have all the answers
could lead children to understand what God tells
Job: “Do you give the horse his might?… Do you
clothe his neck with a mane? Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his
wings toward the south?”
Museums have consequences, and the New
York and Washington giants do have one trait in
common: They like to scare children. Parts of
the Smithsonian are a horror film. One poster
about oceans blares, “Pollution. Climate change.
Invasive species. Overfishing. Habitat Destruction.
Ocean Acidification.” Another placard shouts,
“Global Vanishing Acts. Life can be relatively
stable for ages and then—Wham! Mass extinction
hits.” A third includes scare headlines: “Are We
In ANOTHER MASS EXTINCTION?”
AMNH’s continuous loop of a film, The
Evolution of Vertebrates, combines Darwinism
with warnings of disaster. Narrator Meryl
Streep intones, “Just one species of vertebrates,
humans, has the ability to cause extinction perhaps on a scale greater than that of dinosaurs.”
Cue the dramatic, threatening music. One
woman with preschoolers sat down with them
in three of the 150 seats, promising, “If you
don’t like we don’t have to watch the whole
thing.” Two minutes later they left: She told a
waiting friend, “It was a little too intense for
them.”
8/3/15 4:20 PM
A FINAL
WORD
on the Issues
that Matter Most.
The Final Book by
Charles Colson
A clarion call for Christians to think critically
about the pressing issues of our day—crime and
our system of punishment, natural law, Islam,
gay marriage, Christian persecution, and more.
In his final published word, influential thinker
Chuck Colson shares his vision for Christian
public witness and a socially engaged church.
MARVIN OL ASK Y
LEARN MORE AT b i t . l y / m y f i n a l w o r d
8/3/15 4:28 PM
Friends and
strangers
Christians in Southern California who help
international refugees rebuild their lives
are discovering a new mission field
by SOPHIA LEE in Anaheim, Calif.
17 REFUGEES.indd 38
8/5/15 9:01 AM
hey looked lost and haggard at the Los Angeles
airport terminal, watching
human traffic zigzag in all
directions. It had been a long flight
from Afghanistan via Saudi Arabia for
the family of five and the 25-year-old
bachelor. They’d been strangers back
home, but here in this bustling airport, the family and young man were
linked by a temporary kinship: They
were all Muslim Afghan refugees
waiting for a stranger to pick them up
in a strange country.
Fadi Benosh spotted them immediately. He’d become an expert at
finding fresh refugees in an airport
crowd: This was at least his 50th time
doing so. He knew exactly what they
were thinking and feeling, and understood how overwhelming and terrifying it is to arrive in a new country
with an armful of bundles and heart
full of uncertainties.
So Benosh greeted
Students
them with a giant
at the VOR
smile. He bought
Learning
everybody coffee,
Center
T
juice, and potato chips, and then
walked them out of the chaotic airport
as leisurely as through a botanical
garden.
Outside, Benosh introduced himself
again. “My name is Fadi Benosh. I
work for a nonprofit Christian organization called Voice of Refugees that
helps any refugees in need. We’re not
your assigned resettlement agency,
but we sometimes give refugees
rides. We do this with love, we do this
in Jesus’ name.”
The two men grasped Benosh’s
hand with both hands and thanked
him profusely. The wife silently nodded, while her son and two toddler
daughters peered curiously about
with wide eyes. Then Benosh opened
his arms wide and said something
he’d been yearning to say since he
gained his own U.S. citizenship in
May: “Welcome to my country!”
The world is facing its worst refugee crisis on record, according to the
United Nations, with the scale of global
forced displacement “clearly dwarfing
anything seen before.” Last year alone,
AUGUST 22, 2015
17 REFUGEES.indd 39
WORLD
39
8/4/15 2:11 PM
armed conflicts or persecution uprooted 13.9 million people—
driving 11 million from their towns and 2.9 million across
national borders. Altogether, there are 59.5 million internally
displaced persons and national refugees worldwide.
Ongoing terrorism in Syria and Iraq has driven tens of thousands of people into neighboring countries such as Jordan,
Turkey, and Lebanon. Impoverished Africans have resorted to
paying smugglers to sail them secretly to Europe. Rohingya
migrants have packed into boats to flee discrimination in
Myanmar and Bangladesh. Sometimes, when trickles of immigrants become a flood, sympathy dries up: Southeast Asian
nations turned away boats full of starving Rohingya migrants in
May, but reversed course under international pressure.
The United States, too, is a major destination, taking in
70,000 refugees last year. In Southern California, one of the top
resettlement regions, many Christians are viewing refugees and
asylum seekers as an opportunity, not a burden. With wars and
persecution propelling unreached communities right into their
backyards, they no longer have to look for a mission field: The
mission field has come to them.
The city of Westminster in
3
Orange County, for example,
transformed into “Little Saigon”
in the ’80s after receiving the
second massive wave of post–
Vietnam War refugees, famously
known as the “boat people.”
More than 130,000 Vietnamese
took refuge at Camp Pendleton,
south of Los Angeles, and the
majority eventually resettled
across Southern California.
In response to the boat people
crisis, World Relief, an evangelical Christian organization that
provides resettlement services,
opened an office in Garden
Grove, Calif. World Relief mobilized local churches to sponsor
the Vietnamese refugees, and
church members drove to Camp
Pendleton to pick them up, some
even hosting them for weeks or
months.
This April, when Orange
County’s Vietnamese community
commemorated the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, churches
that had sponsored the refugees also celebrated the founding of
the first Vietnamese-speaking churches in America—fruits
reaped from interactions between local churches and strangers.
“It was a big celebration for evangelicals too,” said World
Relief Garden Grove director Glen Peterson. “People were so
open to the gospel in a way that they’ve never been in their own
country, because churches here responded to their needs.”
More recently, his office has been working to mobilize local
Christian families to “adopt” refugee families, not just to donate
couches or write checks, but to walk alongside them as friends
and neighbors.
31
(1) Fadi Benosh, a former
refugee, now works for
VOR. (2) A VOR tutor
assists students with their
English studies. (3) The
Asian Garden Mall in
Westminster’s Little Saigon.
2
3
Benosh, tutor: Sophia Lee
mall: H. Lorren Au Jr/ZUMA Press/Newscom
40 Today, Southern California receives a huge portion of Middle
Eastern refugees, since many of them have family and friends
who already live in the area. Migration is shifting the cultural
landscape of towns and neighborhoods: El Cajon near San
Diego, for example, is now nearly one-third Iraqi-American,
largely due to refugees from the Iraq War. Anaheim is now home
to Little Arabia, a concentrated row of halal markets, hookah
cafes, and Islamic apparel shops. That’s why Voice of Refugees
(VOR) chose Anaheim as its headquarters.
The building VOR rents belongs to a Southern Baptist
church that shares its sanctuary with a Korean Baptist church,
17 REFUGEES.indd 40
8/4/15 2:16 PM
rachel beatt y
3
Refugee arrivals by state
Top 10 countries processing
refugees to the USA
Fiscal Year 2015 through June 30, 2015
1,814
0
306
314
1,583
723
600
919
291
0
518
1,770
705
1,184
3,720
2,151
125
2,693
2,025
793
407
198
310
1,675 1,164
507
324
977
28
852
1,262
952
147
69
Ethiopia
3,164
973
120
Cuba
1,331
181
6
955
Turkey
3,653
Iraq
5,091
4
Jordan
1,675
1,552
2
4
4,904
1,941
352
Malaysia
7,440
1,853
Kenya
1,962
Nepal
3,612
91
125
1,748
Thailand
3,807
Uganda
1,550
6
BENOSH, TUTOR: SOPHIA LEE
MALL : H. LORREN AU JR/ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM
RACHEL BEAT T Y
SOURCE: WORLDWIDE REFUGEE
ADMISSIONS PROCESSING SYSTEM
a Spanish-speaking church, and a nondenominational Arabicspeaking church called Christian Arabic Church of Anaheim.
Senior pastor Nabil Abraham, an Egyptian-American, said his
church was established with the mission of bringing the gospel
to all Arabs. Starting with just 20 people in 1992, the church
swelled to 350-400 members, mostly of Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi,
and Lebanese backgrounds, and some of them Muslim converts
and refugees.
“Anaheim is turning into a huge mission field, where you
can find people from every walk of life and every tongue and
nation—so that we can witness to them the gospel of Jesus
Christ,” Abraham said. “In the past, the U.S. sent missionaries to
the Middle East, but now, God is bringing the mission field to us
in America.”
For Benosh, much of his mission work takes place in a
donated van. When stuck in LA traffic with passengers restless
and chatty after a 16-hour flight, doors to evangelism open
easily.
That evening in the van with the Afghan refugees, the three
children dozed off almost immediately. The mother sat quietly
pondering, but the two men were thirsty for companionship.
They’d both waited two years to enter the United States through
the Special Immigration Visa—a status granted to individuals
employed by the U.S. government in Afghanistan or Iraq. Back
home, they feared retribution from the Taliban. Here, they
worried aloud about finding employment.
Glancing at their furrowed brows, Benosh paused to think,
then said, “I learned one thing in my life: I put my eyes upon our
Lord. I will not depend on others, but I will only look to Him,
because God is so good. He loves us so much.” It was not an
answer the men expected, but they nodded solemnly, and nodded
some more as Benosh continued dropping bite-size gospel
comments during their conversation. Later the younger man
mused, “We grew up in a country where we just accept our
customs and beliefs. I think it’s losing its effect on me.”
The sky was dark when Benosh finally shook their hands
goodbye. The family had friends to host them, but the young
man stayed at a motel. Benosh left his cellphone number and
said, “My organization, VOR, we want to pray for you. Contact
me whenever you want.” The whole trip took six hours—that’s
in addition to Benosh’s regular work hours.
As he drove back to Anaheim, Benosh couldn’t stop thinking
about the father and the weight of responsibilities he must be
feeling as a family breadwinner. Few understand the trauma and
trials refugees experience, but Benosh does: He was a refugee
himself, a former youth pastor from Baghdad who survived a
terrorist kidnapping.
After being held for six days in a cave by Islamic extremists
and hearing the shrieks and hacks of a beheading, Benosh’s
captors inexplicably released him—but he still lived every
moment in fear. “I was so scared even to go outside my house,”
he recalled. “Yes, I trust that Jesus Christ protects me, but I
couldn’t ignore my feelings. I prayed to Him, ‘Lord, I’m afraid,
so afraid! I don’t want to live with this fear anymore.’”
So in 2007, Benosh moved with his parents to Egypt, where
they applied for refugee status in the United States. For the next
16 months, they filled out tedious paperwork, endured intensive
interviews, and waited, and waited. The wait turned agonizing
when Benosh received approval but his parents did not. Then one
evening, after just having been told to wait at least another year,
a dejected Benosh received a call informing him both parents
had suddenly received approval. He immediately dropped to his
knees. His mother picked up his cellphone and apologized,
“Sorry, my son can’t answer right now because he’s crying.”
17 REFUGEES.indd 41
41
8/5/15 9:03 AM
1
3
2
3
42 3
3
isn’t a single material that we can offer that they can’t find someplace else. So the only thing we have to offer them is eternity
through the gospel.”
I spent an afternoon at an intermediate ESL class with eight
women in their mid-20s to 40s—four Muslims, three Christians,
and one Baha’i from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. Some had
spent years in refugee camps at border countries. They all sorely
missed their hometowns and families.
One former pharmacist told me she fled Cairo with her husband and three children after witnessing a kidnapping incident.
She was with her young son when somebody sprayed a liquid
into a man’s eyes, pulled his son into a car, and drove off. “We
didn’t feel safe to walk the streets after that,” she said. Currently,
truck off-loading, meal: Steve Arnold
all other photos: Sophia Lee
Benosh still presses his thumb into wet eyes when he recalls
that moment.
In September 2009 Benosh and his parents arrived in
California. Today, he’s one of several former refugees working
at VOR. When families weep to him about their hardships,
Benosh weeps with them: “I so desire that these people open
their eyes to see the beauty of Jesus Christ. It’s a secret in life,
but if they can just discover it, what joy they can have despite
their sufferings!”
Three local Christians from Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan
founded VOR in 2009 after they saw the fresh waves of Iraqi
refugees in Southern California. Starting from a home garage
converted to a donation storeroom, these Californians used
their local connections to help refugees with their needs.
And their needs are many: Refugees often arrive with few
personal possessions and have to rebuild their lives from scratch.
They need help finding housing, and then need furniture, cooking utensils, clothes, and shoes. They struggle to learn English,
find employment, enroll their children in school, navigate the
transportation system, and understand American culture.
Many suffer from PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and many
become angry or disappointed when their unrealistic expectations are not met. Refugees in America get basic help from the
government—cash and medical assistance during their first eight
months, food stamps, and donated furniture and clothing—but
after three years, they slip through the cracks. That’s when a
long-term support system becomes crucial.
Over the years, VOR expanded to include ESL classes, summer tutoring programs, a food pantry, casework assistance,
translation services, transportation, job search help, and financial
coaching—often facilitated by volunteers from local churches.
But in terms of funding, VOR is still dwarfed by Muslim-run
groups such as Access California, a major nonprofit that contracts with Orange County and has deep roots in the existing
Muslim community—a rich resource for jobs, services, and
connections.
Yet some refugees still choose to attend ESL classes at VOR.
They say something is different about VOR. Executive director
and pastor Mike Long says it’s the love of Jesus: “Look, there
17 REFUGEES.indd 42
8/5/15 9:05 AM
she’s frustrated about having to retake the examination to
become a pharmacist in a language that still feels like a sock
over her tongue.
At the end of the class, a middle-aged Muslim Iraqi woman
introduced me to her 14-year-old daughter, wrote down her
home address onto my notepad, and kissed me on both
cheeks, saying, “Come visit us anytime. I cook for you delicious Arabic food, you like?” And then she added, “I very
bored at home.” VOR reminds her of family, which is why she
4
3
morning, she took Sharshar to VOR—just in time for the daily
morning devotion.
Raised an Orthodox Christian, Sharshar had always assumed
she was a believer. But after two years interacting with VOR
staff as an ESL student, she realized, “I’ve just been following
tradition. I have no real relationship with Jesus.” Sharshar says
she gave her life to Christ in August 2013—“and He changed
me,” she said, beaming. “By the Holy Spirit, I’m a happy person
now.”
5
3
(1) Mike Long, VOR executive
director. (2) VOR founder (center).
(3) Reem Sharshar cares for the
kids while their parents attend ESL
classes. (4) Volunteers help with
food distribution. (5) Fadi Benosh
(far left ) helps off-load the
donations for the weekly food
services. (6) VOR Thanksgiving.
6
3
TRUCK OFF-LOADING, MEAL : STEVE ARNOLD
ALL OTHER PHOTOS: SOPHIA LEE
enjoys coming. She first heard about VOR through her neighbors, and doesn’t seem to mind that it’s unabashedly Christian.
Her daughter said, “You can’t not hear about VOR in our community. Everybody knows VOR.”
That’s how Reem Sharshar found VOR. She and her Syrian
family waited four years in the United States before finally
receiving approval for asylum. During that period of delay and
uncertainty, Sharshar said she was “lost in desperation and
fear.” She couldn’t speak English and was jobless, lonely, and
homesick. At times, she ran out of her apartment, raised her
hands “like a crazy woman,” and screamed, “Oh God, where are
you?” Then one day, a Muslim neighbor heard her speak Arabic
and told her, “Meet me here at 8 a.m. tomorrow.” The next
 slee@wng.org  @SophiaLeeHyan
17 REFUGEES.indd 43
Today, Sharshar’s English is
good enough that she sometimes interprets during devotion time. She works part time
at VOR, caring for kids while
their parents attend ESL
classes. She teaches the children the Bible and how to pray
in Jesus’ name. The mothers notice her vibrant joy and unload
their burdens to her. A common grievance: “My husband never
says a single kind word to me.” Sometimes it’s more serious:
Domestic abuse is a significant problem. Sharshar then speaks
about the God she knows and prays with them. One Muslim
woman exclaimed, “Never have I heard that God is love! I was
always so afraid of him.”
At VOR’s morning devotion, it’s not unusual to see a woman
in a hijab reading a Bible or a grown man crying silently. “I
believe the Holy Spirit is here,” Sharshar said. “VOR does these
many services in Jesus’ name. I’m so proud. In my country, you
cannot, you cannot! They’ll persecute you, kill you. You cannot
be free as here. God gave opportunity here to show His love.” A
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
43
8/4/15 2:18 PM
EAST REGION WINNER: CHURCH HILL ACTIVITIES & TUTORING
EDIFYING CHAT
RICHMOND NEIGHBORHOOD GROUP HELPS POOR STUDENTS THRIVE
by Emily Belz in Richmond, Va.
T
44
WORLD
17 HOPE-EAST.indd 44
began having neighborhood children over after school.
Now, 13 years after the organization started, the group has
close relationships with about 160 children in the highunemployment neighborhood. Most CHAT staffers live in
the neighborhood and go to East End Fellowship. The city
has repeatedly “de-prioritized” Church Hill, said Stephen
Weir, CHAT’s executive director, leading to a neighborhood
that is often isolated from the relationships that can lead to
education and economic development.
CHAT, unlike many after-school tutoring programs, operates with businesslike efficiency—Weir, first a longtime
volunteer with the program, came from a job at Capital One.
The staff has a number of longtime members, a healthy sign,
and the organization builds on the foundation of several
local churches in the area: Other churches provide space
for CHAT’s preschool, high school, and summer camp.
Many CHAT mentors are black high-school and college
students who grew up in the neighborhood and went
through CHAT themselves. Neighborhood children want
to be involved because their peers and the cool older
teenagers are. CHAT has waiting lists for every program.
Shakim Avery, 16, who has a summer job at King’s
Dominion, a Richmond amusement park, says, “Anytime I
have a day off I’m always at CHAT.” CHAT this summer
employs 24 of its teenagers and graduates, with six
working at the neighborhood hospital, Bon Secours.
One of the “street leaders,” as CHAT calls the older
mentors, is Maoleoeke Watts, who grew up in the neighborhood, graduated from Church Hill Academy, and is now
a sophomore studying computer science at J. Sargeant
Reynolds Community College in Richmond. Watts is the
oldest of three boys whom his mom raised on her own.
One day Watts was playing with his friends in the street,
and the kids said they were leaving to go to CHAT. He
wanted to go too. Many CHAT students end up in the program through their peers because an adult tells them to go.
HANDOUT
he guards at the juvenile detention facility in
Richmond, Va., were surprised to see so many
people in the jail. Forty arrived with a big sheet
cake and walked down a hall past the cell blocks to a small
room. There they held a high-school graduation ceremony
for Maurice, 18, who processed in wearing his Sunday
clothes, along with another incarcerated student who had
made it to graduation. Maurice had finished high school,
but he was at the beginning of his incarceration.
Maurice went to jail just before Thanksgiving last year.
He and his friend had held up a restaurant; his friend
pulled out a gun, and Maurice told his friends and relatives
that he should have left the scene. But being part of an
armed holdup, under Virginia law, is the same as being the
one with the gun. Maurice’s sentence: five years in prison.
Before the holdup, Maurice was a student at Church Hill
Academy, a Christian high school that is part of Church
Hill Activities & Tutoring (CHAT), a Richmond tutoring
organization. The organization works with pre-K to
high-school students in the largely black Church Hill
neighborhood beyond: If one goes to jail, the Church Hill
staff will follow him there.
Maurice finished his degree this year, in jail, and received
a Church Hill diploma. At the graduation ceremony someone brought a keyboard and the gathering sang praise
songs. Skip Long, the principal of Church Hill Academy,
gave a short homily, and one of Maurice’s fellow graduates
spoke. Maurice himself spoke about the work God had
done in his life through prison. People grabbed each
other’s hands and two staff members prayed over him.
“We want kids to know two things,” Long said later.
“There’s somebody thinking the best of you, and there’s
somebody praying for you.”
CHAT grew out of the hospitality of Percy and Angie
Strickland, who are part of East End Fellowship, the
neighborhood church closely tied to CHAT. The Stricklands
AUGUST 22, 2015
8/3/15 2:34 PM
HANDOUT
A CHAT volunteer
tutors a child.
8/3/15 2:34 PM
RUNNER-UP
CHARTS FOR
CHURCHES
by Emily Belz in Boston
T
he graph is striking. One line shows the population of
Boston dropping precipitously starting around 1950.
Another line representing the number of churches in the
city surges up against the decline. Boston researchers
call it “the quiet revival,” an exponential growth of
churches—chiefly immigrant churches in low-income
neighborhoods—over the past 50 years. “The immigrant churches here have revitalized the
Christian faith,” said Jeff Bass, executive director of
Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC) in Boston.
EGC started as a church in 1938 with the goal of
serving the working poor in Boston’s South End, but it
became over the years a support and research organization for churches throughout Boston. Bass has diagrams
taped up all over his official walls: EGC’s nerdy, MITdegreed staffers love to draw diagrams on white boards,
simplifying the city’s problems into what they call “living
systems” based off the work of MIT scientist Jay Forrester.
the course of the
year for all CHAT
programs (includes
service groups)
46
WORLD
AUGUST 22, 2015
2015 budget:
$1,698,559
8/3/15 2:35 PM
HANDOUT
MONEY BOX
project. A few blocks away, another group of teenagers was
meeting at Principal Long’s home. The staff all have keys to
each other’s homes.
The high school grew out of the tutoring program eight
years ago. One of the longtime tutoring students dropped
out of high school, and the CHAT tutors decided they would
try to homeschool the student to graduation. That summer
10 students approached CHAT saying they wanted the
same thing, so the organization started a formal high
school which is now beginning the accreditation process.
CHAT hasn’t started an elementary or middle school
because other like-minded organizations already have
those schools in the neighborhood.
The high school meets in the Sunday school classrooms
of Carlisle Avenue Baptist Church, a largely white and
elderly church. Upstairs is a wall with photos of the graduates since the school started in 2007, all of them AfricanAmerican. Long, who is black, recalled how the white
congregants had in May announced in church, “Our kids
are graduating.” He loved the plural language: Our.
“Christ is at work,” he said.
HANDOUT
On the sweltering day I visited, Watts wore a Pink Floyd
sleeveless tee and played foursquare with the younger CHAT
kids. He said he decided to mentor the boys because he
wants them to know “what it means to be a gentleman.”
What does it mean? I asked. Watts answered with 1
Timothy 6:11: “Kindness, gentleness, humility, love.”
The tutoring takes place in homes all over the neighborhood, where students meet even during the summer: This
afternoon students met in six homes: CHAT’s goal is to give
children a safe, warm place to do work, in homes with
wooden bookshelves and front porches, and to teach them
to be equally open and generous with their homes someday.
One tutoring group met at the home of Murray Withrow,
the director of the after-school programs, officially on a
three-month sabbatical but still hosting. His toddler son happily stumbled around the kitchen table
where fourth- and fifth-graders sat reading aloud Freckle Juice by Judy Blume.
In fall and spring the children test
into their literacy levels; CHAT focuses
on those who are behind in literacy and
makes sure they make an additional
grade-level jump by the end of the
year. Each targeted student has an individualized, staff-created lesson plan.
During the school year about 20 students along with 20 tutors and staff
members meet for two hours at the
Withrows’ home.
Outside is a garden where children
Skip Long with
learn to grow plants and make salsa
Maurice at his
that they sell at the local farmers margraduation
ket, along with homemade ice cream.
ceremony.
Across the street, Bethlehem Baptist
Church hosts CHAT’s preschool. That
day the church was hosting the kindergarten through second-grade tutoring students. A teenage street leader who
had been in the CHAT program
since he was little was helping a
boy who was struggling to read.
Another, older group was
meeting at the home of the
2014 revenue:
$1,358,414
Stricklands, the founders of the
ministry. Some of the teenagers
2014 expenses:
were reading The Devil in the
$1,465,724
White City by Erik Larson, a
Net assets at the end
meaty history book. Some were
of 2014: $956,261
discussing their summer
Director’s
“majors,” where they focus on a
salary: $50,000
project for six weeks. Kelis
Staff : 43 year-round
Smith, 14, was studying psyemployees, 16 sumchology for her “major” and
mer interns. About
working on a personality test
800 volunteers over
HANDOUT
HANDOUT
Ruth Wong, second from left,
“Has Jeff showed you the
leads a discussion on urban
Venn diagram?” asked
education (above); Bass (right).
Brian Gearin, the head of
Starlight Ministries, the
homeless ministry arm of EGC. It wasn’t the last time I
heard that question over the course of my visit.
Staffers contend that diagramming, say, violence in a
community, lets pastors and planners know where different
church services are most likely to bring lasting change. EGC
then researches neighborhood assets and needs, trains
churches on launching social services in their particular
neighborhoods, and connects resources around the city.
The diagrams go from whiteboards to neighborhoods in
different ways.
In 1995 EGC’s research team found in all the city’s
churches only one full-time youth worker. Boston
churches set a goal to have 20 youth workers in the city in
the next decade, which they did with EGC’s fundraising
help.
“The church in Boston is probably better documented
than any church in the world,” said Bass, who repeatedly
asked that EGC not receive credit for different projects
where it served a support role, because the organization
does not want to take attention from the local churches.
Boston is a refugee resettlement area, and EGC staffers
reflect the diversity of the local churches: They speak Arabic,
Cambodian, Cantonese, English, French, Hebrew, Greek,
Haitian Creole, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Marathi, Spanish,
Tagalog, and Tamil. EGC also helps with church planting
and training indigenous church leaders. Its staff teach at
Gordon-Conwell’s Center for Urban Ministerial Education
in Boston, which EGC helped found in the 1970s. EGC supported a Cambodian
pastor who survived the Khmer
Rouge and fled to Boston and
started a ministry to Cambodian
churches. A similar “minister-atlarge” to Haitian churches in the
area helped coordinate Haitian
churches’ response to the earthquake in 2010.
The aftermath of a school
shooting in Boston this spring also
showed EGC’s influence. A youth
pastor (unaffiliated with EGC)
working at one high school but
allegedly running drug deals on the
side allegedly shot in the head a
student working for him. The
student survived, but after
that incident EGC staff
thought public schools
would cut off partnerships with churches.
Instead, the school asked
its partner churches to
bring in leaders for counseling after the incident.
EGC’s long history in Boston
has also given it credibility with churches. One example: In
the 1960s the city slated several blocks of EGC’s South End
neighborhood, then a slum, for demolition to clear the way
for a new interstate. Doug and Judy Hall, EGC’s leaders who
recently retired after 50 years, helped establish with other
neighborhood groups an “Emergency Tenants Council”
that fought the highway project for 14 years.
The council offered the city an alternative plan: A
community development group would redevelop the
neighborhood with low-income housing. The city accepted.
That housing project, Villa Victoria, still stands, and (unlike
public housing projects of
the era) the homes look like
real homes. Now Villa
Victoria’s affordable housing
sits in one of Boston’s
2014 revenue:
wealthier neighborhoods.
$1,299,676
“We’ve been planting and
2014 expenses:
watering,” said Bass. “God
$1,457,795
gives the growth.” He wants
Net assets at the end
pastors in Boston neighborof 2014: $751,016
hoods to ask not, “How do I
Director’s
reach this neighborhood?”
salary: $70,000
but instead, “What would it
take to reach this neighborStaff : 40 employees,
125 volunteers
hood for Christ?” A
MONEY BOX
2015 budget:
$1,581,354
 ebelz@wng.org  @emlybelz
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
47
8/3/15 2:36 PM
INTERNATIONAL WINNER: SHIVANI MEDES SCHOOL
IN THE SHADOW OF ISIS
C
rest the hill and the tents of Khanke IDP Camp
stretch far into the distance, rectangular specks of
white laid out in rows across the hillsides as far as
the eye can see.
IDP stands for Internally Displaced Person. Close to 2.5
million persons in Iraq have become IDPs since the march
of ISIS, or Islamic State, began in 2014. The displaced have
fled their homes, cities, and towns. As fighting enters its
second year between the militants and an array of Iraqi
forces—including Kurdish peshmerga and Assyrian and
other militias, with the United States and its allies providing
air cover—the IDPs have less and less hope of returning to
the life they once knew.
For a place epitomizing the limbo these Iraqis live in,
Khanke was a buzz of activity the day I visited. Young
48
WORLD
children played together in streets of dust. The women
hung laundry in a stiff breeze under the morning sun on
lines strung outside their tents. Local officials in suits and
white dress shirts strode down a hill to a fenced compound,
where the sounds of children singing rose up from a newly
poured cement courtyard. The suits were on hand for a
ceremony to mark the opening of Shivani Medes School—
the first refugee school to operate in fully erected classrooms for Yazidis, a population targeted by ISIS for
annihilation.
Shivani means Shepherd, and the Medes Shepherd
School grew from a trio of schools operated in Iraqi
Kurdistan for more than a decade under the leadership of
Iraqi pastor Yousif Matty, with support from Nashvillebased Servant Group International. Shivani opened in
AUGUST 22, 2015
17 HOPE-INTERNATIONAL.indd 48
8/3/15 2:24 PM
MINDY BEL Z
A CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL DOES ITS WORK AMONG
THE SHATTERED FAMILIES AND DISPLACED CHILDREN IN
IRAQI KURDISTAN • by Mindy Belz in Dohuk, Iraq
March with 350 students. By the end of
the school year more than 1,000 children of IDP families attended.
“The soldiers fight with guns, but
you are fighting with pens and with
your mind,” Matty told those gathered
for the dedication. In a world of sectarian and religiously driven violence his ministry crosses
those lines: There he stood, a Christian Arab addressing
Yazidis, Kurds, Muslim officials, and a few Americans
among the students, teachers, dignitaries, and visitors on
hand for the event last spring.
After Matty spoke at the dedication ceremony, highschool students from one of the other Medes schools sang
traditional Kurdish folk songs to the accompaniment of an
MINDY BEL Z
The Iraqi
Kurdistan
flag is raised
during the
Medes school
dedication
ceremony.
oud, a traditional Iraqi lute. One group moved to the center
of the courtyard, hoisted the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan up a
pole, and formed rows to stand and salute. A student led in
prayer, and more singing followed.
Hundreds of young Yazidi schoolchildren rimmed the
courtyard. They stood outside their classrooms, 15 prefab
units ringing the central courtyard, already equipped with
desks and chairs. One mother in the camp said her children
had been up the night before, too excited about the day’s
events to sleep. The opening ceremony held a particular
thrill for students who had lost everything: At the end of
the event each student received a new backpack.
Of the 2 million plus IDPs across Iraq, about 654,000 are
children ages 6 to 17. Many reside in camps like Khanke,
which use generators for electricity and hastily dug, often
inadequate wells for water supply. Trucks bringing food and
the necessities rumble constantly over dirt or gravel roads.
Education under such strained conditions takes a lower
priority. Nearly a half million children, or 70 percent of the
school-age IDP population in Iraq, remain out of school,
according to the UN. Islamic State militants “are the enemy
of education,” said Nisret Jemal, the assistant manager of
the Khanke camp. “It’s very important to plant a school
while ISIS is attacking us.”
Opening and filling a private school is an accomplishment. UNICEF has built a school on the other side of the
camp but it sits empty, its students still meeting in tents.
The UN agency has had a harder time recruiting teachers,
and many parents prefer the bright new classrooms, Yazidi
teachers, and Christians administrators of the Shivani
school.
For Yazidis in particular, the needs are enormous. Since
last August, ISIS has dislocated or killed nearly all the
500,000-700,000 Iraq Yazidis, a cloistered group of
religious adherents who practice some combination of
Zoroastrian, Muslim, and Christian rituals dating to the
12th century. Their numbers in Iraq represent nearly all
the Yazidis living anywhere in the world.
Thanks to ISIS, the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, once
300,000 strong—a city of Yazidis, Christians, and Shia
Muslims—is empty, as are other villages. In August 2014,
ISIS chased tens of thousands up Mount Sinjar, where hundreds perished of hunger and thirst. Their plight prompted
President Barack Obama to order aerial drops of food and
water on Mount Sinjar, then to order airstrikes against ISIS.
By then Islamic State fighters already had killed thousands
of Yazidis. They took captive thousands more mostly women
and girls. Many of the schoolchildren at Khanke watched
as ISIS brutalized their parents or siblings.
Khanke IDP camp currently houses about 20,000 Yazidis,
and you will have to search hard to find one intact family.
In one tent, a mother mourns a daughter ISIS captured. In
another, the father and all the sons are absent: ISIS gunned
49
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50
WORLD
AUGUST 22, 2015
 mbelz@wng.org  @mcbelz
8/3/15 2:29 PM
HANDOUT PHOTOS
MINDY BEL Z
The Shivani school is not in the same classical Christian
them down as they fled Sinjar. Many survivors, students
school pattern: Classes use existing Iraqi curriculum and
included, saw beheadings and executions. Dozens of the
some are in Arabic, explained Erik Aulie, an American who
350 Yazidi children attending Shivani are orphans.
serves as field manager for the Shivani school: “This is
Eighteen students have no relatives of any kind for school
really a ministry to children, providing the schools, and it’s
officials to locate. Zero. None.
a ministry to the education department and to the Yazidi
Other fractured families in the camp have taken in most
community.” This spring Yazidi children attended three
of those orphans. One Kurdish security guard at the camp
days a week and displaced students from Mosul attended
cares for an orphaned boy named Achil, perhaps 12: He
the other three days—more than 1,000 children in all.
knows nothing of his family’s whereabouts. He didn’t
Aulie said a “good spirit” prevailed among what
speak for weeks when he first started school, but now parappeared competing interests using the same facility.
ticipates in class. “Everyone is insecure,” Matty explained:
School is scheduled to begin again in October, after the
“Nervous politicians, nervous parents, nervous teachers,
hottest months. (The classrooms have no air conditioning.)
and nervous students.”
“We would love to be able to
The crisis forces new cooperprovide English instruction and
ation across sectarian and
other things we do at the other
religious lines. “No person, no
schools, but that is not our job
country, no humanitarian orgadescription right now,” Aulie
nization alone can supply this
added. “This is a means to servlevel of need,” Matty noted.
ing the community where it’s
Churches spared in the ISIS
hurting, and establishing a track
onslaught are stepping in to aid
record that may lead to other
the Yazidis. So are groups like
things later on.”
Matty’s and overseas Christian
Matty has long worked with
aid groups, helping them alongsupport from American churches
side the 150,000 or more ISISand Christian nonprofits.
displaced Christians.
Servant Group International
A year ago Matty had no plans
(SGI) provides the majority of
to serve Yazidi students and
that support—curriculum,
their families. The one-time
training, and American teachers
Kirkuk Evangelical Church
who supplement mostly Iraqi
pastor opened in 2001 his first
faculties—to the three existing
school in northern Iraq, the
schools plus the new Khanke
Classical School of the Medes.
school. Matty provides an Iraqi
Following the model of classical
face of leadership, integrates the
Christian schools in the United
schools with the local economy,
States, the school provides a
and makes work with local
broad, college-prep, K-12 educagovernments a priority.
tion in English. It became
Since the schools opened, SGI
popular among Kurdish Muslim
Pastor Matty with a student who
has provided more than 80 Christian teachers in the
parents wanting their children
just received a new backpack.
three main schools. The new school at Khanke “is
to be proficient in English, able
not really a change in direction,” said SGI executive
to take international examinadirector David Dillard, since the role of his group “is to
tions, and compete for college entrance at the best schools
help believers in Iraq serve their nation,” particularly by
in the region, or in Europe or the United States.
establishing and strengthening school programs. Of SGI’s
The Kurds, threatened with genocide themselves in the
$1.04 million budget, about 75 percent goes toward sup1980s and 1990s under Saddam Hussein, prize educational
porting the schools in Iraq.
opportunities for their children and don’t trust the central
Tensions flared in 2012 for the schools when a greatgovernment in Baghdad to provide for them. The Kurdish
nephew of then Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shot and
regional government’s tolerance toward non-Muslims has
killed at the Sulaymaniyah campus teacher Jeremiah Small,
become more apparent since ISIS split the country in two
33. The killer, one of Small’s students, then killed himself
and Kurdistan became the only safe haven for Christians.
(see “A rush of life,” March 24, 2012). The campus closed
The Kurdish regional government administers and profor several weeks and American teachers left, but it then
vides security for the Khanke camp.
WHERE ARE
THEY NOW?
by Jae Wasson, Katlyn Babyak,
and Onize Ohikere
T
his is the 10th year of WORLD’s awards
programs for Christian groups that
practice eff ective compassion, the kind
that helps people rise out of poverty and
not just stay in it. We wanted to see
whether winners of our first year’s competition, in 2006, had overcome obstacles
and persevered in their mission.
MINDY BEL Z
HANDOUT PHOTOS
The overall winner that first year was the
Christian Women’s Job Corps’ (CWJC)
Nashville site. It off ered and still off ers
women the opportunity to earn their GED
diplomas, take literacy and computer
classes, or learn English as a second
language. CWJC requires one class, Bible
study, and that means it does not receive
any government funds: Instead, it survives
on donations, fundraising, and the help of
volunteers.
CWJC serves women such as Teresa,
who had kept her illiteracy a secret all her
life but wanted to read the Bible to her
grandchildren. She joined a CWJC reading
class and a year later read through the
book of Ruth. Christian mentors meet
one-to-one with students to encourage
their emotional, spiritual, and academic
success. CWJC executive director Becky
Sumrall said the biggest obstacle since
2006 has been finding enough volunteers
and mentors, since some “Christians don’t
want to take the time. … That means we
can’t serve as many students.”
Still, Nashville CWJC has been able to
expand over the past decade. It’s added
three locations and is planning two more. In
2009 it advertised classes in a community
church: Even though CWJC is for women,
75 percent of the respondents were men
who wanted to earn their GED diplomas, so
the organization opened the Madison
Men’s center.
Rachel’s House (RH) in Columbus, Ohio,
was a 2006 finalist: We were impressed
with its Bible studies for female prisoners
and its invitation to regular attendees to
live at RH after their release. There, mentors helped residents to become financially
and emotionally stable, recover from
addictions, cultivate job skills, and eventually graduate from the program.
Last year the housing project welcomed
its 120th resident, and graduates of the
program now make up 45 percent of the
full-time staff. An assessment tool that
measures participants’ progress now
shows about 12 percent returning to
prison—that’s much lower than the
reopened and some American teachers came back, including Aulie, who helps to run the new Shivani school.
The schools now employ about 150 locals, so parents
can earn a living and not require a government stipend.
(Since ISIS invaded Iraq last year, officials have delayed
salaries and subsistence payments for government
employees.) Matty tells Kurdish officials, “As Christians
national average. The organization has
added trauma training for staff and volunteers, and next month plans to have an RH
graduate head up its first “social enterprise,”
the Mane Thing hair salon.
Lower Lights Ministries, RH’s parent
organization, allows RH graduates to
transition with their families to the Light
the Way Home program, which provides
nine homes and helps them find aff ordable
housing. The program, which includes
mentoring, case management, and peer
support, can last up to three years.
Urban Promise Ministries (UP) in crimeladen Camden, N.J., was another 2006
finalist. Last year the organization renovated its major after-school building, which
now includes a dining hall, full-sized
kitchen, gym, and IT lab. UP also runs a
Street2Leader initiative directed at young
people who have been in trouble, and a
food co-op used by 180 families.
One of UP’s staffers, Alex Vega, attended
UP’s Camp Joy with his twin brother when
they were five. They took part in the afterschool program, enjoying the art classes
and weekly trips, and returned each year,
getting help with their school work and
eventually serving as “street leaders” who
assisted younger campers. In 2006 Vega,
then a college senior, helped with the
camp. Now he has two children, works with
UP, and helped restart the camp he
attended as a child.
—The authors are World Journalism Institute interns
we want to cooperate with Muslims. We want to live with
you, not at the edge of life, we want to be at the heart of
Kurdistan. We don’t want to be lazy, we want to work for the
good of the community.” Officials reciprocate, Matty says:
They “have more understanding for private activities, like
ours. The Ministry of Education advisers do not interfere
as before.” A
51
8/3/15 2:29 PM
file photo/ap
17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 52
8/3/15 4:50 PM
NOTEBOOK
LIFESTYLE / TECHNOLOGY / RELIGION / SCIENCE / HOUSES OF GOD
LIFESTYLE
Still waiting
A year later, VA Hospital problems
are not fixed by Maria Baer in Phoenix
On a hot summer day
here, Kelly Arrington—
a walk-in patient, because
“getting an appointment is
very difficult”—sat in the
mostly empty waiting room
file photo/ap
R
of the Turquoise Clinic at
the Phoenix VA Hospital. The
hospital’s high-ceilinged
hallways open into a series
of cramped, clone-like
outpatient clinics, each
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more 17 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 53
named for a different precious stone. Each clinic has
its own staff of primary
care doctors and nurse
practitioners.
Last August, President
Barack Obama signed into
law the Choice Act, meant
to solve the problem of veterans having to wait longer
than 30 days for appointments in the Veterans Affairs
healthcare system. Almost a
year later, the problem has
worsened: Veteran wait
World War II veteran Harley
Parker (second from the right)
waits to speak with someone
at a healthcare crisis center
set up by the American Legion
in Phoenix.
times have increased by 50
percent, according to The
New York Times. I spoke
with veterans who say the
VA continues to use bureaucratic strategies to disguise
the size of the problem.
Arrington is one of
them. She says each time
A U G U ST 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 W ORLD 53
8/3/15 12:02 PM
LIFESTYLE
she calls, hospital staffers
tell her they’ll call her back.
In November, while suffering from a sinus infection,
she left 10 to 12 messages
requesting an appointment
before the clinic finally
scheduled her. (Even then,
she maintains she only got
a call back because her
didn’t happen. The Choice
Act’s solution, Choice Cards,
hasn’t worked. The cards are
supposed to allow veterans
to receive VA-subsidized
care from outside doctors if
they have to wait longer
than 30 days for an appointment. But VA officials barely
speak of the cards, and VA
get an appointment within
30 days. They also need
private doctors willing both
to accept the card and to
communicate with the VA
about the patient throughout the process. If a doctor
then recommends the vet
see a specialist, there’s no
guarantee the Choice Card
will cover that.
The Phoenix VA’s
Grippen says Congress
needs to make the Choice
Card process more userfriendly, but he doesn’t
think it would change much
in Phoenix because he says
vets love their VA doctors
too much to switch. That’s
true for patients like Dann
Ken Miller holds his Veterans
Choice Program card; the
Veterans Day parade
passes the Carl T. Hayden
Veterans Affairs Medical
Center in Phoenix.
Secretary Robert McDonald
tried unsuccessfully to
persuade the Obama
administration to defund
the program in its 2016 VA
budget.
To qualify for a Choice
Card, veterans need VA
approval, which depends on
showing they are unable to
Murray, who sat
in gym shorts in
the mostly empty
waiting room of
the Emerald
Clinic, waiting to
see a doctor for a
nasty cold.
A hoarse
Murray said the
Phoenix VA
medical staff is
exceptional. He
particularly likes
the nurse practitioner who has
satisfied his outpatient
needs for years. The hospital has only canceled on
him once, he said, when his
doctor was sick, and the
most he’s ever waited for an
appointment is three to
four weeks. But others, like
Harold Bolieu, have a different story. He has nerve
—Maria Baer is a graduate of the World
Journalism Institute’s mid-career course
Veterans Choice: Andy Tullis/The Bulletin • VA medical center: Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic/ap
OB-GYN pulled some strings
with a primary care doctor.)
Other disappointed vets
have joined an advocacy
group, Concerned Veterans
for America. Some say VA
staffers tell patients “we’ll
have somebody call you
back,” and others say they
receive appointments
within 30 days only to be
told, “canceled.” The result
is the same—waiting
months for appointments—
but the second way allows
the VA to say it had scheduled appointments in a
timely manner.
Glen Grippen, interim
director of the Phoenix VA,
said he hoped dishonest
scheduling practices were
not occurring in Phoenix,
but said the hospital has a
very large staff so he
couldn’t say the practice
damage in his arm, walks
with a cane, and recently
waited hours in the Phoenix
VA Emergency Room with
pneumonia. Twice.
Bolieu and his wife,
Irma, sat in the Emerald
Clinic waiting for an
appointment they hoped
would result in permission
for Harold to receive care
from a neurosurgeon outside the VA. The couple said
the only tangible change
they noticed in the VA after
last year’s scandal was wait
times in the emergency
room shortened dramatically for a few months, but
soon they crept back up.
Now the Bolieus are desperate. They worry that after
months of waiting for the
right type of neurological
consult for Harold, his
condition might deteriorate
beyond repair.
Harold said Irma is his
secretary when it comes to
scheduling VA appointments:
“She stays on the phone for
me for a long time.” Irma
has become aggressive in
trying to set up appointments for her husband. “I’m
not angry,” she said with an
embarrassed smile. “I’m
just a little more firm.”
Choice Act funding is
allowing the Phoenix VA to
hire more staff members,
and through June it had
added 165 medical professionals. But for the Bolieus,
fixes to the broken system
might be too little, too late.
“We’re here on our lastditch effort,” Irma said. If the
doctor doesn’t approve
their petition to go elsewhere, they’ll do it anyway,
she said. “Our sons offered
to lend us the money.” A
8/3/15
12:04 PM
CREDIT
NOTEBOOK
TECHNOLOGY
NOTEBOOK
VETERANS CHOICE: ANDY TULLIS/THE BULLETIN • VA MEDICAL CENTER: MARK HENLE/THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC/AP
FLYNN: REX FEATURES VIA AP • RHINO AND HANKOOK: HANDOUT PHOTOS
Savanna
dash cam
In the increasingly desperate
battle against poachers, a
British conservation organization is
equipping
South
African
rhinos with
video
cameras
implanted in
their horns.
The
“Real-time
Anti Poaching Intelligence
Device” (RAPID), developed by
Protect, a British consortium
backed by the Humane Society
International, consists of a
horn-cam, GPS collar, and heart
rate monitor attached to wild
rhinos. The system alerts a central control center if it detects
the animal’s heart has stopped.
Control center staff then
checks the animal’s video feed
to confirm it has been killed by
poachers, quite possibly catching the faces of the poachers on
camera. The center then dispatches a security team within
minutes by helicopter or truck
to the rhino’s GPS coordinates.
The RAPID system compensates for a shortage of antipoaching rangers patrolling
large areas.
“These devices tip the balance strongly in our favor,” said
Paul O’Donoghue, chief scientific adviser to the Protect
consortium and the inventor of
RAPID. “If we can identify
poaching events as they happen, we can respond quickly
and eff ectively to apprehend
the poachers.” —M.C.
Wireless sight
BIONIC EYE IMPLANT COULD HELP THOSE WITH MACULAR
DEGENERATION by Michael Cochrane
R
Ray Flynn, an 80-
year-old British man,
has become the world’s
first recipient of a bionic
retinal implant designed
to restore partially vision
lost to age-related macular degeneration. AMD is
the most common cause
of sight loss in the developed world, affecting
between 2 million and
3 million people in the
United States. The condition causes deterioration
of the visual receptors in
the back of the eye.
Performed at the
Manchester Royal Eye
Hospital in the U.K.,
Flynn’s implant procedure was part of a clinical
study to evaluate the
safety and feasibility of
the retinal device, called
the Argus II, for treating
AMD. The device has
already been approved in
the United States and
Europe for other retinal
degenerative diseases.
Ray Flynn’s retinal
implant contains an electrode array and a wireless
antenna that receives
video signals from a
camera mounted on a
pair of glasses. The
camera captures the
scene in front of Flynn.
After digitally processing
the signal through a unit
on his belt, the signal is
beamed wirelessly to the
implant’s antenna. The
video is then sent to the
electrode array, which in
turn stimulates the optic
nerve to produce images.
With a resolution of
only 60 pixels, the Argus
system restores enough
vision for Flynn to perceive simple shapes and
patterns, or slowly to read
large letters. He will have
to learn to interpret the
visual representations
produced by the implant.
Developers of the Argus II
are adjusting the system’s
settings based on Flynn’s
response. Because the
system is controlled with
software and is upgradeable, they believe performance will improve as
they refine the algorithms.
“Mr. Flynn’s progress
is truly remarkable; he is
seeing the outline of
people and objects very
effectively,” Paulo Stanga,
lead surgeon for the
procedure, told the BBC.
“I think this could be the
beginning of a new era for
patients with sight loss.”
Reinventing the wheel
A puncture-proof automobile tire may be in your future. South Korean tire manufacturer Hankook successfully
tested a non-pneumatic (airless) tire prototype made from a recyclable material. The company claims the
material significantly streamlines the manufacturing process and cuts down on emissions. In testing, the
tire’s performance rivaled conventional pneumatic tires in durability, stability, slalom, and speed. —M.C.
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
55
8/5/15 9:20 AM
NOTEBOOK
RELIGION
Blood sacrifice
ABORTION-PROMOTING PASTORS OFFER BLESSINGS
TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD by James Bruce
Katherine Hancock
Ragsdale—a lesbian
Episcopal priest who infamously chanted “abortion
is a blessing and our
56
WORLD
17 RELIGION.indd 56
AUGUST 22, 2015
work is not done” in 2007—offered
the following remarks before
Congress in 2012: “I recall vividly
one day when I left my home to pick
up a 15-year-old girl and drive her
to Boston for an 8 a.m. appointment
for an abortion.” She continued, “I
did not take her across state lines,
nor did I, to my knowledge, break
any laws. But if either of those
things had been necessary to help
that girl, I would have done them.”
Episcopalians aren’t alone. Earlier
this year Bill Mefford, the Director
of Civil and Human Rights for the
United Methodist Church’s General
Board of Church & Society, jokingly
tweeted he was inspired by the
March for Life on Jan. 22, the
anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Wade He
held a sign saying, “I march
for sandwiches,” prompting
Matthew Schmitz, deputy
editor of First Things,
Things to
tell him, “Part of the
shock comes from
your expressed
indifference to
abortion. Isn’t it a
violation of human
rights?”
In Sacred Work,
Davis says,
“Ultimately the
conflict between
the opponents of
Planned Parenthood
and its clergy defenders is a theological
one.” He’s correct, but
not for the reasons he
suggests. It’s not that
abortion advocates
embrace “a form of
humane theology.” It’s
that they ignore a preeminent sacred work:
the Bible.
Mormon studio
Studio C, a sketch comedy show on
YouTube, runs the gamut from
political correctness
and the police to awkward prom dresses. It
off ers clean, light-
A Studio
C scene
being
filmed.
hearted fun.
But there’s a twist: Produced by
Brigham Young University’s television station, Studio C is the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir of the digital age.
Studio C helps the Mormons, and
Mormons help Studio C. The LDS duo
of pianist Jon Schmidt and cellist
Steven Sharp Nelson, for example—
better known as the Piano Guys—
appeared in a sketch this May.
There’s in-house recognition of
the show’s potential to create a
favorable impression of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(LDS). Before its first season in 2012,
cast member Adam Berg told BYU’s
student newspaper The Universe, “I
think Studio C has such great potential to do a lot of good for the Church
and the members and to help break
down some social walls, that could
lead people to investigating the
Church.” —J.B.
RAGSDALE: DIMITRIOS K AMBOURIS/WIREIMAGE/OUT/GET T Y IMAGES • STUDIO C: © THE UNIVERSE/BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSIT Y
“God loves you and is with you
no matter what you decide.
You can find strength, understanding, and comfort in that love.” So
reads the “Pastoral Letter to
Patients” from the Clergy Advocacy
Board of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America. In the midst
of recent allegations surrounding
Planned Parenthood’s activities (see
p. 12), it’s sobering to remember
those denominational leaders who
support the abortion industry.
Churches have supported the
work of Planned Parenthood for
years. In his Sacred Work: Planned
Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances,
Tom Davis, a United Church of
Christ minister and past chair
of Planned Parenthood’s
Clergy Advocacy Board,
details the role “mainline
Protestant and Jewish
clergy, in their alliance
with Planned Parenthood,
have played … in achieving
respectability for birth
control,” while working
“below the public
radar.”
Sometimes they
work above the radar,
too: Presbyterian
Church (USA) minister
Andrew Kukla took to
his blog this spring to
say, “I love Planned
Parenthood. I love the
people that are Planned
Parenthood. I love their
ministry. I love that they
live resurrection in a way I
only talk about it.”
R
8/4/15
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Hammurabi Issues a Code of Law (1750 B.C.)
Moses and Monotheism (1220 B.C.)
The Enlightenment of the Buddha (526 B.C.)
Confucius Instructs a Nation (553–479 B.C.)
Solon—Democracy Begins (594 B.C.)
Marathon—Democracy Triumphant (490 B.C.)
Hippocrates Takes an Oath (430 B.C.)
Caesar Crosses the Rubicon (49 B.C.)
Jesus—The Trial of a Teacher (A.D. 36)
Constantine I Wins a Battle (A.D. 312)
Muhammad Moves to Medina—The Hegira (A.D. 622)
Bologna Gets a University (1088)
Dante Sees Beatrice (1283)
Black Death—Pandemics and History (1348)
Columbus Finds a New World (1492)
Michelangelo Accepts a Commission (1508)
Erasmus—A Book Sets Europe Ablaze (1516)
Luther’s New Course Changes History (1517)
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588)
The Battle of Vienna (1683)
The Battle of Lexington (1775)
General Pickett Leads a Charge (1863)
Adam Smith (1776) versus Karl Marx (1867)
Charles Darwin Takes an Ocean Voyage (1831)
Louis Pasteur Cures a Child (1885)
Two Brothers Take a Flight (1903)
The Archduke Makes a State Visit (1914)
One Night in Petrograd (1917)
The Day the Stock Market Crashed (1929)
Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
Franklin Roosevelt Becomes President (1933)
The Atomic Bomb Is Dropped (1945)
Mao Zedong Begins His Long March (1934)
John F. Kennedy Is Assassinated (1963)
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8/4/15 9:54 AM
SCIENCE
Criminal care
Detroit oncologist built empire
on his crimes by Julie Borg
Bacterial brain
Researchers at Virginia Tech have developed a mathematical
model that shows how bacteria can control the behavior of an
inanimate object like a robot.
“We found that robots may indeed be able to have a working
brain,” Warren Ruder, a biologic systems engineer at the school,
told Science Daily.
The bacteria used in the experiment turned green or red, based on what they ate. The
theoretical robot, equipped with sensors and a miniature microscope, measured the color of
the bacteria and determined where to go, and how fast, based on the color and its intensity.
The robot surprised the researchers when it performed behaviors consistent with higher
order functions. When the bacteria directed the robot toward more food, it paused before
quickly making its final approach, a classic predatory behavior characteristic of higher
order animals that stalk prey.
The discovery could lead to a broad range of applications such as studying interactions
between soil bacteria and livestock, further understanding the role of bacteria in controlling
gut physiology, and using bacteria-based prescriptions to treat both mental and physical
illness. —J.B.
58 W O R L D AUGUST 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
17 SCIENCE AND HOG.indd 58
Light
preservers
Light-emitting diodes (LED
lights) may be more than
just an energy-saving
light source. A team of
researchers from the
National University of
Singapore has discovered
that blue LED lights have
strong antibacterial
effects on major foodborne pathogens.
Bacterial cells contain
light-sensitive compounds that absorb blue
LED light, which can then
cause the cells to die. The
discovery may lead to a
chemical-free method of
preserving acidic foods
such as fresh-cut fruits
and ready-to-eat meat
when used in combination
with refrigeration. The
technology could be used
for cold-food supply
chains and retail settings
from food courts to
supermarkets, said lead
researcher Yuk
Hyun-Gyun.
“The next step for us is
to apply this LED technology to real food samples
such as fresh-cut fruits,
as well as ready-to-eat or
raw sea foods and meat
products, to investigate
whether LED illumination
can effectively kill pathogenic bacteria without
deterioration of food
products,” Hyun-Gyun
said. —J.B.
protest: Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP • research: virginia tech • LED: kellymarken/istock
Farid Fata, a
once highly
respected oncologist in Detroit,
Mich., carried a
handkerchief into
court and wept
when a federal
judge sentenced
him to 45 years in
prison.
The 50-year-old,
naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon
admits that between
Reaction outside the courthouse
2009 and 2014 he
after the sentencing of Fata.
billed $34.7 million
to patients and
pharmacy, a diagnostic
insurance companies and
testing center, a radiation
received payments of
treatment center, and a
$17.6 million for work
sham charity, by diagnosthat was unnecessary and
ing perfectly healthy peocaused harm to his
ple with terminal cancer
patients (see “Human
and then pumping toxic
Race,” Aug. 8).
chemotherapy into their
Fata built an empire
veins, sometimes for
consisting of seven
years, and overtreating
oncology practice sites, a
R
patients who did have
cancer, according to the
Detroit Free Press.
In some cases he
administered nearly four
times the recommended
dosage of aggressive cancer treatments and gave
one patient chemotherapy
for five years when the
standard treatment was
six months. He routinely
ordered unnecessary
maintenance doses of
chemotherapy for
patients in remission and
told terminally ill patients
they had a 70 percent
chance of recovery in
order to keep administering chemotherapy right
up to their deaths,
Medscape reported. He
undertreated patients
who had cancer when he
was unable to profit from
their treatment.
“I have violated the
medical oath, and I have
caused anguish, hardship,
and pain to my patients
and their families,” he said
in court. “They came to
me seeking compassion
and care. I failed them.”
8/5/15
11:15 AM
Merle Mate jk a
NOTEBOOK
HOUSES OF GOD
NOTEBOOK
CREDIT
MERLE MATE JK A
BROOKSBY, SASKATCHEWAN
An eroding Holy Ascension Ukrainian Orthodox Church is
one of many once-vibrant Ukrainian immigrant churches
that dot the landscape of the Canadian Prairies.
17 SCIENCE AND HOG.indd 59
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
59
8/4/15 12:02 PM
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17 MAILBAG.indd 60
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8/3/15 12:09 PM
MAILBAG
SEND LETTERS AND PHOTOS TO MAILBAG@WNG.ORG
J U LY 11
‘Blindsided’
, This article and its companion, “Proselytizing
Christians,” saddened me. These people try to justify
homosexuality by discrediting the Bible, suppressing
opposing voices, and claiming moral high ground,
but legalization and church membership can’t
provide peace of conscience. This is an opportunity
to proclaim the gospel, not crumble under the
pressure.
HENRY SCHUYTEN / CANTON, MICH.
, Your article about the Human
Rights Campaign’s meddling in the
body of Christ only scratches the surface. HRC and other pro-gay groups in
2006 targeted three mainline denominations; in less than a decade the first
two caved and the third may soon slip
over the edge. Now an even larger
group is spending millions to train
advocates in emotionally manipulative
storytelling. Only this time, evangelical
churches are in the crosshairs.
KAREN BOOTH / MONROE, WIS.
g Thank you for bringing some clarity
on the church’s stance regarding the
inclusion of practicing homosexuals
in the church body. The LGBT movement, I believe, is the greatest threat to
our nation and one of Satan’s vehicles
of attack against the church.
, I “pay the price” of “chaste singleness”
and “faithfulness” every day because I
know it honors God. Just because you
are attracted to someone doesn’t mean
you have to have sex with that person.
HOLLY SMITH / FRESNO, CALIF.
GLENN JONES ON WNG.ORG
, Sadly, some of our Christian
brothers and sisters are willing
to compromise and redefine
God’s standard of righteousness
to reach out to those who are
living outside of God’s will. It is
tragic.
The Dead Sea, Israel
submitted by
Scott Grunwald
‘Be on guard’
, A senior pastor is not necessarily
more likely to lead a church astray
than a junior pastor or others in leadership. I know of examples of both.
Perhaps the issue is whether the leader
is seeking to serve or is driven by
selfish ambition.
JOHN ADAMS / NORTH BEND, ORE.
, Thank you for this brilliant reporting.
CHRISTOPHER COLE / PENSACOL A, FL A.
, As usual, well said. A crisis of
leadership often finds its origins in a
crisis of faith. We thank God for
WORLD’s leadership.
GREGG CUNNINGHAM / L AKE FOREST, CALIF.
‘Proselytizing Christians’
, Lisbeth Melendez Rivera noted that
the Bible mentions homosexuality in
only eight verses, but each time it
addresses homosexual acts as sinful.
And if the Bible is the Word of God, it
only needs to state something once.
DON KIMBRO / ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
, Mail/email g Website
17 MAILBAG.indd 61
 Facebook  Twitter
AUGUST 22, 2015
WORLD
61
8/3/15 12:10 PM
MAILBAG
Best of all was the warning about how
to detect early the slippery slope of
compromise, reinterpreting Scripture,
and redefining truth.
piece. Still, the vast majority of people
who will never homeschool will
benefit from Nevada’s school choice
program.
NEIL SL AT TERY / FORT WORTH, TEXAS
‘Our exile in Babylon’
g Babylon may not be the correct
comparison. As barbaric as the
Babylonians and Persians were, Jews
could generally live according to their
customs, outside of temple worship. I
believe our time is more comparable
to late first- and second-century Rome,
given Revelation’s depiction of the
church. Are we ready? “Even so, come
Lord Jesus.”
JIM VENABLE ON WNG.ORG
g Pendulums always swing back.
Someday if Christianity is no longer in
retreat, it would be great if we were
known as loving people who always
helped and refreshed others with the
good news of Jesus Christ.
CHRISTINE WILSON ON WNG.ORG
, In the midst of so much anger, confusion, and discouragement, Janie B.
Cheaney has given us some godly
perspective. If we who are called by
Christ’s name do not choose to be light
in the darkness around us, who will? I
will pray for the welfare of this city.
JOAN M. HOCHSTETLER / ELKHART, IND.
‘Gays and God’
 I have Is God anti-gay? Allberry is
“same-sex attracted” yet recognizes
that the Bible identifies that desire as
one among many we must resist to
obey our Creator and find His best for
us.
ELI WALTERS ON FACEBOOK
, We so enjoy WORLD, but the head-
line and photo for this article are misleading. Those who don’t read it could
come away thinking you’re calling
Allberry’s book “sadly influential.”
MERIL STANTON / MOSCOW, IDAHO
‘Archimedes was right’
g If government buys the pie, its
fingers will soon be poking into each
17 MAILBAG.indd 62
CATHLEEN WINKLER ON WNG.ORG
‘Trust and obey’
g What a beautiful story of Elisabeth
Elliot’s life, and what a precious legacy
she has left us all!
CHERYL SCRIVENS ON WNG.ORG
Dispatches
, This humble group of faithful
Christian souls who experienced the
horrific shooting deaths of nine loved
ones forgave the shooter. Why?
Because God said so. This poignant act
should have us all on our knees begging God to show us how to triumph
through His grace.
MARTHA BALL / PIT TSBURGH, PA.
‘After we’ve blown it’
arning about the profanity and
w
sexuality?
GLENN L AFY / TOWANDA, PA.
M AY 30
‘The ones who stay’
, I thought I knew racial segregation,
but my short-term missions trip to
New Song Church in Sandtown
changed my perspective completely.
The stories I heard from children and
young teenagers about incarcerated
parents and fatal shootings affected
me deeply. A New Song service struck
me with the joy and abandon in its
worship and praise. I also learned
about their close bonds of community
and family that transcended the drugs
and murder. In the aftermath of
Freddie Gray’s death, I realized again
the truth of Corrie ten Boom’s quote,
“In darkness, God’s truth shines most
clear.”
CHRISTIAN HAMMOND / MEMPHIS, TENN.
, As I was grieving over a recent and
somewhat deserved rebuke, this
column refreshed and instructed me.
JEFF PESHOFF / RUSTON, L A.
‘Speech, speech’
g I want to thank all of the WORLD
staff for what you do. Your reporting
and writing come from minds that
seem clear and free from bitterness.
MICHAEL LOT T ON WNG.ORG
, Mindy Belz uncovered a sore spot
for me: politically correct attacks on
humor. Even the comics avoid themes
that might refer to some group or
other—except Christians, of course.
People who once poked fun at each
other and laughed together have
become afraid to enjoy our foibles. The
world is becoming a dreary place.
ROLLIN MANN / SIERRA MADRE, CALIF.
‘Reasonable doubt?’
g Thanks to Megan Basham for the
review of Proof. With its compelling
topic—God’s existence—and potential
to generate discussions with our
neighbors, it was such an opportunity.
But it’s such a big disappointment.
GREG THORNTON ON WNG.ORG
Corrections
Shelby Steele was born on Jan. 1, 1946
(“Three wise men,” July 25).
City Church received contributions
of $118,000 on four Sundays in May
and $300,000 on the middle Sunday of
the month (“Blindsided,” July 11).
The most expensive house in the
world is billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s
$1 billion skyscraper home in
Mumbai, India (Quick Takes, June 27).
LETTERS & PHOTOS
, Email: mailbag@wng.org
, Mail: world Mailbag, PO Box 20002,
Asheville, nc 28802-9998
g Website: wng.org
JUNE 27
‘Mmm … four books
of the year’
 Facebook: facebook.com/
WORLD.magazine
, Why didn’t your review of The Book
of Strange New Things contain a
 Twitter: @WORLD_mag
Please include full name and address. Letters
may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more 8/3/15 12:12 PM
Andrée seu peterson
Summer
time travel
The past has perished,
but the present is
the land of choice
Before she died, my maternal grandmother threw out the box of family
hotos I used to look through on Saturday
p
mornings as a child. And what my grandmother
missed, my mother tossed before she died. I
have retained a fistful of grade B Polaroids that
escaped the landfill—“as the shepherd rescues
from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece
of an ear” (Amos 3:12). It is, of course, sheer
coincidence that I grew up 32 miles from a
more sensational family breach of etiquette:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her
mother forty whacks. And when she saw what
she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”
I returned to my hometown this summer to
visit my sole remaining aunt, as I did not want
to be shouting the gospel into a comatose ear
on sudden notice. She had a photo (also salvaged
from a graven-image-disdaining mother) and I
became immediately obsessed. There was my
great-grandmother, austere and flanked by nine
grandchildren; I spotted my father, well-scrubbed
in a Sunday shirt, tie, sweater, and Mona Lisa
smile. The others are all poker-faced boys
(except beaming Rita, whom I heard smiled all
her life), which was the fashion of the day, along
with the Wallace and Gromit floral wallpaper.
Napoleon in the upper left-hand corner will
die in WWII. Just in front of him, Raymond will
survive 23 bombing raids over Germany only to
be felled by polio at home in 1953. Bob will
wreck his family with philandering. There they
stand, not knowing what’s coming, not yet having
made bad choices, or perhaps in the course of
forming them even as the shutter clicks. One
wants to issue individual warnings: Don’t be
stiff-necked. Don’t lust for money. Mind your
own cistern.
CBS Photo Archive/Gett y Images
R
 aseupeterson@wng.org
17 SEU PETERSON.indd 63
If we are on a
bad course,
we may turn
from it and get
right with God
before we
even finish
reading this.
Gig Young as
Martin Sloan
in “Walking
Distance.”
There is something called “breaking the
fourth wall,” where the play comes alive and
starts talking to the audience. I heard the voices,
the water lapping. It was summer. I was at the
cement raft my grandfather built in the middle
of the pond, cousins diving off the
edges and Aunt Simone calling
from the shore for lunchtime.
The impulse to return is a
seductive siren: The Purple Rose of
Cairo (Woody Allen), “The SixteenMillimeter Shrine” and “A Stop at
Willoughby” (Rod Serling). At first
one is excited to go back. In
Serling’s “Walking Distance”
(1959), tired business executive
Martin Sloan pulls into a service
station near his old hometown,
walks to it, and finds it is 1934.
He heads to the park carousel to tell a little boy
named Sloan to enjoy his childhood while it
lasts, but the encounter scares the boy. His own
father, a man his age, entreats him to go back
where he belongs.
Martin walks back to the car and to 1959,
and the episode ends with this voice-over:
“Martin Sloan, age 36, vice president in charge
of media. Successful in most things but not in
the one effort that all men try at some time in
their lives—trying to go home again. …” We could
have told him so in our saner moments. For
somewhere it is written, “Say not, ‘Why were the
former days better than these?’ For it is not from
wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10).
What is wise to say then? Only this: “Today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts
as in the rebellion” (Hebrews 3:7-8). And this:
“It is appointed for man to die once, and after
that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). As for
the dead, “their love and their hate and their
envy have already perished, and forever they
have no more share in what is done under the
sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:6)
But you and I are not dead, but alive! Here,
among the living, is the land of choice, sweet
choice, thrilling choice. Here is the only place
of actualization. If we are on a bad course, we
may turn from it and get right with God before
we even finish reading this column of print.
Ebenezer, waking from time travel, found it so,
and he rejoiced: “Yes! And the bedpost was his
own. The bed was his own, the room was his
own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before
him was his own, to make amends in” (Charles
Dickens, A Christmas Carol). A
AU G US T 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 W ORLD 63
8/4/15 2:05 PM
MARVIN OLASKY
No foolish romance
Evangelicals should start voting with
clear eyes to the future
64 WORLD AUGUST 2 2 , 2 0 1 5
17 OLASKY.indd 64
Another term
or two of a
socially radical
president will
likely lead to
discrimination
against any
evangelical
institution that
discriminates
in favor of
Bible-approved
marriage.
krieg barrie
Barack Obama became president in 2008
by gaining 53 percent of the vote against
John McCain’s 46 percent. That was a sweeping
victory, but think: If one out of 25 Obama voters
had voted for McCain, Obama would have lost the
raw vote and maybe the Electoral College as well.
Let’s think some more: Obama lost votes of
those who would not support an AfricanAmerican, but he apparently gained more from
those who wanted to put a black man in the
White House. It’s very good in the history of this
country that an African-American is there, but
very bad that this particular gentleman is the
one. Every evangelical who voted on the basis
of skin and ignored a sinful ideology acted with
romantic abandon rather than discernment.
OK, let me anticipate some defensiveness.
Agreed that good looks and a good voice
swayed some voters—but shouldn’t we know
that Lady Liberty needs a good husband, not an
impressive date? Agreed that candidate Obama
hid his views and conned voters—but we knew
enough. (Those who fall for a con usually want
to fall for it.) Agreed that Republicans put up
mediocre candidates; but when we elect a president, we’re choosing big chunks of the executive and judicial branches, not just one person.
Have we learned that romance is wonderful
in marriage yet destructive in public policy?
Political romance has brought us two Supreme
Court justices who choose ideology over judicial humility. It’s given us foreign policy
appeasement likely to lead to more war. It’s
now bringing great threats to religious liberty.
That last sentence makes me hope a crucial
number of evangelicals won’t be all heart and
no brain in 2016, since another burst of evangelical romanticism will lead to the closing of
many evangelical institutions.
Another term or two of a socially radical
president will likely lead to discrimination
against any evangelical institution that discrim-
R
inates in favor of Bible-approved marriage.
Judges appointed by such a president are likely
to curtail freedom of religion and freedom of
speech. At the start, the big impact will be financial: Institutions that embrace homosexuality
will continue to have tax-exempt and taxdeductible status, but institutions that embrace
the Bible will lose those benefits and see their
buying power hatcheted.
Long-range, if trends continue, the issues
will be not economic but existential: Will evangelical churches and colleges that stay faithful
to the Bible be legal at all, or will we descend to
a situation like that of China, with its stateapproved religious institutions and its underground ones? Evangelical romantics may say,
So what: Despite and in some ways because of
persecution, Chinese Christianity is growing.
But that’s a historical anomaly, as the sad sagas
of many Muslim countries show: More often
than not, slow-but-steady persecution saps the
strength of the oppressed.
In a modern, interlinked society, what’s
been called the Benedict Option—create
Christian communities distinct from a larger
culture bound for destruction—doesn’t work
by itself: Central governments stifle dissent.
A terrific new biography, Stalin, by Stephen
Kotkin, shows how the Soviet kingpin was not
content to rule all within ready reach, but
headed to Siberia to expand his hegemony. No
monastery was an island then. Today, the U.S.
radical left desire is to make us all wards of the
state—with no one left behind.
As I wrote last month, evangelicals instead
should embrace the Daniel Option, modeled
after the biblical hero who for decades stood up
to kings. Today, most of us don’t want to say NO
and possibly end up in a lion’s den. Today, from
fantasy football to Second Life, from gated communities to the Big Sort (so we don’t interact
with persons unlike ourselves), from pornography and homosexuality—in both, guys don’t
have to deal with real women—to Martha
Stewart perfection, many romantics think we
can avoid education through suffering.
Daniel Option realism offers pain but also
gain. Romantics often fall into gushy solemnity,
but Daniels can combine seriousness and
smiles, since they know the circus in front of us
is not the ultimate reality. Daniels can be happy
warriors, and in that way teach others not to
despair. Even today, when the sky seems to be
falling, Daniels can and do remember that God
holds up the sky. A
8/5/15 11:07 AM
krieg barrie
17 OLASKY.indd 3
8/3/15 4:53 PM
Bethany’s story:
College student
Member for ten years
Torn ACL & Meniscus
Go to: mysamaritanstory.org
Bethany
“This is how God works! Just to show how mighty He is, He can
use anybody. It can be just a normal person—like me!”
For more than twenty years, Samaritan Ministries’ members have
been sharing one another’s medical needs, without using health
insurance, through a Biblical model of community among believers.
Samaritan members share directly with each other and do not share
in abortions and other unbiblical practices.
Come see what our members are saying and start your own
Samaritan story today at: mysamaritanstory.org
Biblical community
applied to health care
• More than 47,000 families
(over 156,000 individuals)*
• Sharing over $13 million* in
medical needs each month
• The monthly share has never
exceeded $405 for a family
of any size*
samaritanministries.org 888.268.4377
facebook.com/samaritanministries
twitter.com/samaritanmin
* As of May 2015
17 OLASKY.indd 4
8/3/15 4:54 PM

Hope Award East and International finalists

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