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BLAMING CHRISTIANS FOR ORLANDO TERROR
J U LY 9, 2016
This issue: Southeast, Northeast, and
International winners in our 11th annual
look at poverty-fighting programs that
change lives by offering challenging,
personal, and spiritual help
CONTENTS
|
30
July 9, 2016 • Volume 31 • Number 14
5
17
44
50
F E AT U R E S
30 Upholding the hard work
of compassion
Hope Awards for Effective Compassion, Year 11
32 The music man of Birmingham
Daniel Cason’s music school teaches kids more than just songs
36 Oaks in the city
Indianapolis classical school promotes a culture of high expectations
40 Home for the helpless
A Chinese foster home cares for sick babies society has abandoned
44 Fatal connections
As the Clinton-led State Department dragged its feet against Boko
Haram, Clinton Foundation donors made millions from Nigerian oil
50 Rocket man
A high-achieving scientist with a troubled personal life, Henry
Richter found a faith that transformed him
ON THE COVER: Daniel Cason at K.I.D.S. Christian Music Center (photo
by Hal Yeager/Genesis). Top inset: Oaks Academy students (photo by Paul
D’Andrea). Bottom inset: New Day Foster Home (photo by June Cheng)
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DISPATCH E S
5 News / Human Race /
Quotables / Quick Takes
CU LT U R E
17 Movies & TV / Books /
Children’s Books / Q&A / Music
NO T EBOOK
55 Lifestyle / Technology /
Education / Religion
VOICE S
3 Joel Belz
14 Janie B. Cheaney
28 Mindy Belz
61Mailbag
63 Andrée Seu Peterson
64 Marvin Olasky
NOTES FROM THE CEO
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—Psalm 24:1
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lowman • Cal Thomas • Lynn Vincent
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MIS S IO N STATEMEN T
To report, interpret, and illustrate the news
in a timely, a
ccurate, enjoyable, and arresting
fashion from a perspective committed to
the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.
VOICE S Joel Belz
Disappearing
evangelicals
WHERE DID ALL THAT CLOUT GO?
If you are disappointed, as I am, at the
dismal recent showing by presidential
candidates with bona fide labels as “evangelicals,” maybe it’s time for an altogether different
way of looking at things.
By my count, zero out of two Democratic
candidates sought to be identified as evangelicals, while four (or, at most, five or six) out of 17
Republicans seemed to welcome the label. In
descending order of their campaign longevity,
Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, and
Scott Walker all eventually had to tell their
evangelical backers that 2016 just wasn’t the
year. (Whether you’d add Seventh-day
Adventist Ben Carson or Roman Catholic
Marco Rubio to that short list is a subject for a
good discussion another time.)
Where did all those evangelicals go? We
could, and probably to some extent should,
blame it on the evangelical voters, who in
massive throngs preferred the populist and
simplistic promises of Donald Trump. In state
after state, pragmatism trumped principle—
even among principled evangelicals.
But my focus is on the candidates themselves. Is this handful of folks the best we can
produce? With 100,000 to 200,000 evangelical congregations across the country; with
several hundred colleges and seminaries
committed to the development of a so-called
biblical worldview; with more than 250
publications listed in the Evangelical Press
Association and more than 1,000 Christian
radio stations—with all that and more, what
does it say about the evangelical community
that we have not shaped somebody with a
strong enough biblical and philosophical
understanding of issues, big enough leadership skills, a clean enough personal record,
and courage enough to take the risks and pay
the price of getting out front?
KRIEG BARRIE
R
 jbelz@wng.org
The evangelical candidate
who will
ultimately win
needs also to
produce and
dramatize a
track record
of lifetime
accomplishment.
Well, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. One
r eason we don’t have a bigger roster on the
political front is simply that we have a similar
shortage in just about every field of endeavor.
Where are the standouts in business and economics, in law and public policy, in medicine
and healthcare, in science and technology, in
education, in the media? Where are the men
and women in these and other fields who have
developed leadership skills honed by biblical
teaching, principles, and values?
But such an awareness, along with an ability to articulate it winsomely and clearly, is just

a start. The evangelical candidate who will
ultimately win needs also to produce and
dramatize a track record of lifetime
accomplishment, rooted in biblically
illuminated truths. As much as I had an
inclination in the last few months to back
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, such support
was minimized by their relative inexperience. Both were freshman senators. Both
had relatively meager records of realworld achievement. Both brought some
serious negative baggage to the contest—
including a simple inability to get along.
In every vocation, in every calling,
God asks his people not merely to wrap a
Christian veneer around what they do—but
radically to reform all such tasks through biblical insights and Spirit-provided power. Only
then will the larger public come to sense that
we are Daniels in the top halls of government,
and not just one of King Nebuchadnezzar’s
other ding-a-ling no-names.
Keeping in mind such a combination of (1)
clear thinking and (2) record of accomplishment, does a single one of the recent evangelical
wannabes leap out as “just right”? Not one of
them has approached the American voting public with a clear explanation of why he believes
what he believes. That explanation doesn’t have
to be narrow and sectarian. It starts instead
with a simple affirmation of what Francis
Schaeffer said a generation ago: “He is there,
and he is not silent.” A presidential candidate
who has thought through the issues should be
able, without mean-spirited offense, to anchor
his proposed program in the historic truths of
the Bible and to explain to the American people
how such truths offer hope for a world that is
increasingly broken and terror-stricken.
Next time around (if there is one!), these
folks will have put on a few years. Whether
they add wisdom and serious accomplishment
as well will be another matter. A
July 9, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 3
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News / Human Race / Quotables / Quick Takes
News
Beastly analyses
PUNDITS TRY TO BLAME CHRISTIANS FOR A
TERRORIST ATTACK BY A MUSLIM by Marvin Olasky
When university studies of
mythology began in the 19th
century, scholars often saw myth as
primitive science. Why did seas surge
and winds blow? Edward Burnett
Tylor, Oxford University’s first professor of anthropology, argued that
cultures evolved from belief in randomness to a higher faith in causation.
The tidal wave was not accidental. It
came because Poseidon was angry. Next
time we’ll make a s acrifice and avert his
anger.
RED HUBER/ORLANDO SENTINEL VIA AP
R
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On Sunday morning, June 12, the
murder of 49 souls and the wounding
of more began at 2 a.m. During the
next hour, murderer Omar Mateen
called 911 three times and pledged
allegiance to ISIS. He called News 13
Orlando and told a producer he was
killing for ISIS. At about 5:15 multiple
gunshots signified more bloodshed,
with the last crimson splatter coming
from Mateen himself.
The logical question at that point:
What can we do to protect America
Aerial view of the mass shooting scene
at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando
against ISIS lone wolves? But many
pundits did not want to take Mateen at
his word. Time Editor at Large Jeffrey
Kluger dismissed the power of ideas
when he wrote, “The Orlando shooter,
like so many terrorists, was nothing
more than an ideological opportunist—
a lonely, angry, violent man who likely
would have found his way to murder
one way or another.” That’s wrong:
Lots of people are angry, but few do
mass murder unless they see themselves as soldiers in a war against evil.
Kluger’s analysis was also unsatisfying because it suggested mass murder will just continue to happen,
randomly. That’s in line with neo-Darwinism, which adds Mendelian genetics to “survival of the fittest” and
D I S PA T C H E S News
6 WORLD Magazine • July 9, 2016
A candlelight vigil in
Orlando (top); a
makeshift memorial
(middle); activists
promote gun control
at a vigil (bottom).
Those without an
understanding of
original sin often do.
World War I, World
War II, and now
World War III shock
those who believe
we’ve evolved beyond
our ancestors, animal
and human. When evil
blooms, they need
someone to blame—
yet they’ve heard
Islam is a religion of
peace, and anyone
who says Islam is
more complicated
than that is a hater.
The repetition of
Chase Strangio’s message is no surprise.
When we suppress what Adam and Eve
knew, we’re riding a bucking bronco.
Human attempts to create religions are
always ways to smooth the ride by
asserting order over chance. The religion of liberalism assumes a good
TOP: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES • MIDDLE: JOHN RAOUX/AP • BOTTOM: RICARDO RAMIREZ BUXEDA/ORLANDO SENTINEL VIA AP
claims change comes not only through
natural selection but via genetic drift—
random changes in the frequency of
genes. We exist purely by chance:
Paleontologist Stephen Gould said, “I
believe … any replay of the tape would
lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually
taken.” We also live or die purely by
chance.
Most people are uncomfortable with
such notions of randomness. On June
12 some imitated the ancient Greeks
who hoped to placate Poseidon by tying
up an unpopular person and throwing
him into the sea: They rushed to blame
Christians for the deaths, as if murderer Omar Mateen was a regular
viewer of The 700 Club. For example,
transgender ACLU lawyer Chase
Strangio tweeted on that Sunday at
10:31 a.m.: “The Christian Right has
introduced 200 anti-LGBT bills in the
last six months and people blaming
Islam for this. No.”
By Sunday evening others had
hearted that tweet 8,155 times and
retweeted it 9,344 times. Strangio was
evidently scratching an itch—even
when from Mateen’s own words it was
clear that the tweet’s emphatic “No”
should have been a “Yes.” Soon, a herd
of armchair psychologists set aside the
murderer’s profession of faith. The
common message: Pay no attention to
what that man behind the curtain—now
dead—said. Listen to our loudspeakers
and repeat one hundred times: If
Christians shut up, if we say nice things
about Muslims, if we have more guncontrol laws so a person intent on
murder will have to work harder to get a
gun, we’ll be safe.
Thoughtful Christians on that
Sabbath had a different reaction. Some
in church prayed for living victims and
victimized families. Many were unflustered: Particular murders stun us, yet
ever since that sad day in the Garden,
the general tendency toward death and
destruction is no surprise. Humans,
created in God’s image, became killers
by nature, leading—were it not for the
grace of God—lives nasty, brutish, and
short. Christians mourn. Jesus Himself
wept. But we don’t panic.
BY THE NUMBERS
$1.3 million
The Donald Trump campaign’s cash on hand at the end of May,
according to federal filings. By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s campaign
had $42 million in cash on hand. Trump raised just $3.1 million
in May and lent his campaign $2.2 million to cover costs.
122
The high temperature set in Palm Springs, Calif., on June 20 during
a California heat wave. The 122 F heat was just one degree shy
of the 1995 record for the city.
human nature until churches, or capitalism, or bourgeois families corrupt
children and adults. The “Christian
Right,” with its support of all three
institutions, is the perfect bogeyman.
Ancient Hindus had a trinity of
sorts: Surya (sun, creator, or life force),
Vayu (wind or air, sustainer), and Agni
(fire, destroyer). Many contemporary
propagandists of the left have their own
triad: evolution (creator), media (windy
sustainer), and Christian conservatives
(the destroyer who will burn down
everything unless he is destroyed first).
When we accept that perverse theology,
we know exactly what to do. Tim
Teeman in The Daily Beast laid it out:
“If politicians profess horror at
Mateen’s actions, the most effective
thing they could do would be to ensure
that their children know there is nothing strange about two men kissing.”
Yes, in that beastly analysis,
Christians should make sacrifices to
bring societal peace. We should teach
our children to see homosexuality
unbiblically. But that will lose more
lives, not save them. To be realitybased, we have the much harder task of
figuring out what to do about ISIS lone
wolves. A
 molasky@wng.org  @MarvinOlasky
1,072 feet
The water elevation as of June 20 at Nevada’s Lake Mead, the
nation’s largest water reservoir. The level marks an all-time low amid
a 16-year drought in the region.
100
The number of passenger jets Iran’s state-controlled airline has
agreed to buy from Boeing for a reported $17 billion. The deal comes
as the United States and other nations relax sanctions on Iran.
65.3 million
The number of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced
persons around the globe in 2015, a record high, according to the UN.
One out of every 113 persons on earth is now displaced
(see “Olympian effort,” p. 28).
D I S PA T C H E S Human Race
British lawmaker Jo Cox, a
Labour Party proponent of
keeping Britain in the
European Union (EU), died
June 16 in a possible assassination. Authorities say
52-year-old Thomas Mair
stabbed and shot Cox, 41,
outside a library where she
had been meeting with
constituents. Reports
raised questions about
Mair’s mental health and
noted his links to nationalist groups. The death of
Cox, a former aid worker
and supporter of Europe’s
migrant refugees, led both
sides of the June 23 EU referendum to halt campaigning for days.
Died
In the first in
a series of
tragedies in
Orlando,
police say a man
entered a concert
venue June 10 and killed
singer Christina Grimmie,
22. Kevin James Loibl, 27,
shot the former Voice
c ontestant as she signed
autographs, killing himself
when Grimmie’s brother
tackled him. Authorities
say they’re unsure why
Loibl traveled 100 miles to
commit the crime or how
he got weapons into the
venue. Grimmie was an
outspoken Christian, and
the Santa Monica Observer
reported that police were
investigating the murder as
a hate crime. Authorities,
though, did not confirm
that report. Hundreds
attended Grimmie’s funeral
June 17 at Fellowship
Alliance Chapel in New
Jersey.
Died
In another
Orlando tragedy, an alligator killed a
toddler near
dusk on June
14 outside
Disney’s Grand
Floridian Resort & Spa.
Lane Graves, 2, was wading
at the edge of a lagoon
when the alligator
attacked, and his father
was unable to rescue him.
Search crews found the
boy’s body the next day.
Lane Graves
Signs only read “No
Swimming.” Authorities
captured five alligators in
the lagoon and planned to
test bite marks to
verify the killer
gator. Walt Disney
World Resort
announced it
would install signs
warning of alligators and snakes
at its beach
locations.
Banned
The German government will not recognize
polygamy and child
Lost
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va.,
on June 14 became the
second Republican incumbent to suffer an upset loss
in a 2016 primary. Forbes is
founder and co-chair of
the Congressional Prayer
Caucus, with a staunchly
conservative record on religious liberty and abortion.
But he changed districts
following a court redistricting, and he fell to
Scott Taylor, a state
legislator and former Navy SEAL.
Forbes’ defeat
came one week
after that of
Rep. Renee
Ellmers,
R-N.C., whose
record had
alienated
many conservatives. A
Southern Baptist,
Forbes, 64, has represented Virginia
since 2001.
Visit WORLD Digital: wng.org
COX: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • ROBB D. COHEN/INVISION/AP • GRAVES: ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE • FORBES: BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
Died
marriages among refugees,
Justice Minister Heiko
Maas told the tabloid
newspaper Bild. “No one
who comes here has the
right to put his cultural
values or religious beliefs
above our law,” Maas said.
German law already bans
the practices, but Germany
opened its doors to 1.1
million refugees in 2015,
largely from troubled
Muslim countries. German
states are reporting hundreds of migrants with
brides under 18, with many
under 16. It’s unclear what
German authorities plan to
do about the existing marriages of new migrants.
Courts currently decide
such matters on a case-bycase basis.
D I S PA T C H E S Quotables
Dr. THOMAS R. FRIEDEN, director of
the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, after a large number
of recent blood donors in Puerto
Rico showed signs of being
infected with the
Zika virus.
Vice President JOE BIDEN,
saying he had strongly opposed
the 2011 toppling of Muammar
Qaddafi in Libya, opposing both
President Obama and thenSecretary of State Hillary
Clinton. He said he argued Libya
would become “a petri dish for
the growth of extremism” and
“it has.”
‘If Josef Stalin
and Franklin Roosevelt
could get together to defeat
Adolf Hitler, we can end the
schism in our party.’
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, a top fundraiser for Mitt
Romney’s 2012 campaign, on his desire to see the
GOP unite behind Republican candidate Donald
Trump. The Trump campaign entered June with
$1.3 million, compared with $42 million
for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
‘Barack
Obama is directly
responsible for it.’
U.S. Sen. JOHN McCAIN, R-Ariz., on the
June 12 Muslim terrorist attack on an
Orlando, Fla., nightclub. McCain argued
ISIS—which inspired the gunman—rose in
the wake of President Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. McCain
later clarified his remarks: “I was
referring to President Obama’s
national security decision, not
the president himself.”
‘Socialism, failing
to work as it
always does,
this time in
Venezuela. You
talk about giving
everybody
something free
and all of a
sudden there’s
no food to eat.’
Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster VIN SCULLY commenting
on June 17 as Milwaukee third
baseman Hernán Pérez, a
Venezuelan, was at bat during
a Brewers game.
FRIEDEN: ANDREW HARNIK/AP • SCARAMUCCI: JACOB KEPLER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES • McCAIN: ALLISON SHELLEY/GETTY IMAGES • SCULLY: MICHAEL BUCKNER/GETTY IMAGES
‘Thousands
of pregnant
women in Puerto
Rico could be
infected.’
‘My question
was, “OK, tell me
what happens.”
He’s gone. What
happens?
Doesn’t the
country
disintegrate?’
D I S PA T C H E S Quick Takes
Caught by cowboy
Police got the help of a talented cattle rancher on June 10 after an attempted
bicycle theft. According to authorities, a man stole the bicycle of a woman
from a Walmart parking lot in Eagle Point, Ore. Bystanders were unable to
catch the suspect, but a 28-year-old rancher also at the scene had an idea.
Robert Borba retrieved his horse from his trailer, grabbed a rope, and took off
after the thief. “I wasn’t going to catch him on foot,” Borba told the Medford
Mail Tribune. “I don’t run very fast.” After Borba and white steed Long John
caught up with suspect Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, the alleged thief
attempted to flee on foot. Thinking quickly, Borba lassoed the suspect’s feet
and kept him tied until police arrived 15 minutes later.
Driving in disguise
That’s gratitude
Caught by cow
A manhunt in Texas ended when
the hiding suspect was outed by a
herd of staring cows. Police in
Bryan, Texas, say that when they
attempted to pull over Samuel
White on a routine traffic stop in
early June, the local man fled, leading to a high-speed car chase. After
crashing into another vehicle, the
fugitive fled on foot into pasturelands surrounding the Texas city.
Police eventually found him hiding
in the grass after they observed
nearby cattle staring intently at him.
Own a business and wish to thank your
customers? Better consult a lawyer.
American financial conglomerate
Citigroup launched a lawsuit against AT&T
in a New York federal court over the
telecommunications giant thanking its
customers. According to the June 10
lawsuit, Citigroup claims the phone
company’s use of the words “AT&T
Thanks” in its customer loyalty program
violates a trademark Citigroup filed in
2004 for the phrase “Citi ThankYou.” An
AT&T spokesman said the Dallasbased company will fight the
allegation in court, saying Citigroup can’t
“own the word
‘thanks.’”
ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • BORBA: DENISE BARATTA/THE MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE VIA AP • CITI CARD: HANDOUT • COWS: STEF BENNETT/ISTOCK
Authorities in Smiths Falls, Ontario, became suspicious of a woman taking a drivers test when they
noticed her wig, glasses, and questionable clothing. According to the Smiths Falls Police Service,
the unnamed woman entered the testing center
on June 9 claiming to be 73 years old. Her clothes
looked the part, but the testing instructor noticed
the woman was wearing a wig. After further questioning, police discovered the driver was actually a
39-year-old woman posing as her 73-year-old
mother in order to take the driving test on her
behalf. Police arrested the woman and charged
her with a single count of impersonating an adult.
Candy corner
M&M’s, the world-famous chocolate candies that melt in your mouth and not in your hand, may
soon be banned from Sweden. That’s because another candymaker, Marabou, already sells
chocolate-covered peanuts in the Scandinavian country using an “m” logo. A Swedish court ruled on
June 8 that the lowercase “m” stamped on M&M candies infringes on Marabou’s trademark. Mars, the
maker of M&M’s, could appeal the ruling. But if not, it has a second option, already approved by the
court: It can sell its colorful, candy-coated chocolates in Sweden using a capital “M” instead.
MARABOU CHOCOLATE: HANDOUT • SHEEP: POLICÍA LOCAL HUESCA • SOUDÉE: HANDOUT • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • ROBLES: KSAT/ABC
Bird on board
A man from France has set out on a sailing
adventure with an unusual sidekick: a pet
chicken. When Guirec Soudée started out from
the Canary Islands on a one-man journey around
the world in 2014, he considered taking a cat
along for a companion. But after deciding a feline
would be too much work, he instead recruited a
red hen named Monique. “She was only about 4
or 5 months old then, and had never left the
Canary Islands,” Soudée, 24, told the BBC. “I
didn’t speak any Spanish and she didn’t speak
any French, but we got along.” Since then, the
sailor and the hen have visited the Caribbean and
Greenland, documenting their travels on
Facebook. Monique contributes to the team by
laying about six eggs per week. “Compared with
people, she doesn’t complain at all,” said Soudée.
Sleepyhead shepherd
The practice of counting sheep seems to have overpowered a drowsy shepherd in Spain. Citizens of the village of Huesca awoke to a flock of over 1,000
sheep roaming the town streets on June 7. According to local officials, the
flock was being herded to summer pastures in the Pyrenees Mountains, but
the flock’s shepherd fell asleep and allowed the sheep to wander off. Police
rounded up the stray herd before the shepherd noticed his flock was gone.
Phantom face-off
Police outside of Detroit ended an
11-hour standoff not with a bang but a
whimper. After receiving reports about
a domestic dispute involving a possible
weapon just after 12 a.m. on June 11,
police blockaded the neighborhood
and settled in for a siege of the home.
After waiting 11 hours, police decided
to storm the house using robots and
tear gas. But upon entering, they
quickly discovered no one was home.
Soudée and
Monique
Clutch moment
A would-be car thief in San Antonio was stymied on June 10 by a basic car
feature: the manual transmission. Alan Robles says a carjacker high on narcotics
approached him holding a knife and demanded the keys to his car. Robles
complied and looked on tentatively as the thief attempted to start and drive
Robles’ Ford Mustang. “I kept trying to explain to him, ‘You have to engage the
clutch,’” Robles told KENS. “I pretty much had to teach him how to steal my car.”
Following more failed attempts at the stick shift, the frustrated thief demanded
that Robles himself drive the car. After 10 minutes of Robles making a getaway
in his own stolen vehicle, the carjacker demanded to drive again, whereupon he
promptly crashed the vehicle. Police later arrested the unidentified suspect and
Robles escaped unharmed—more than can be said for his Mustang.
VOICE S Janie B. Cheaney
Happy days?
JOHN ADAMS’ THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT,
240 YEARS LATER
Adams’
frame of
reference was
Christian
overall—
especially
with his wary
eye toward
human
nature and
its tendency
to excess.
 jcheaney@wng.org  @jbcheaney
NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES VIA AP IMAGES
When time is ripe, it moves quickly. Only
10 years after the notorious “Stamp Act”
had thrown the colonies into an uproar and
brought out some of the Americans’ worst
character traits, war began. After a year of
shooting, shouting, desperate diplomacy, and
furious debate, the colonists declared independence on July 2, 1776.
What then?
Revolutions are easy; nation-building is hard.
But never before, and never since, have time and
circumstance collided so providentially to meet
that challenge. For two generations Christian,
Enlightenment, and pre-Romantic thinkers had
been debating what the ideal state would look
like. If any man had read them all, and formed
decided opinions of all, it was John Adams.
He was already a man of influence, having
served in both Continental Congresses (1774
and 1775), helped draft the Declaration of
Independence, and nominated George
Washington as commander in chief of the
ragtag army. Unlike his cousin Sam, he’d come
relatively late to the conviction that the United
States ought to be free and independent, but
once converted, he brought valuable erudition
to the cause. Short, round, and self-assured,
Adams floated in his element, theorizing
endlessly on matters of state.
He wasn’t the only one. While Washington
played cat and mouse with British troops in
New York, the former colonies began writing
their state constitutions. Their optimism seems
astonishing today: With only a tattered band of
volunteers between themselves and the world’s
best-equipped fighting force, they were debating
how to govern themselves once the redcoats
left. In 1776, knowing John Adams’ expertise,
delegates from North Carolina and Pennsylvania
asked him for advice. He was happy to oblige
with Thoughts on Government, later revised and
widely published.
R
“[T]he divine science of politics is the
s cience of social happiness,” Adams began, and
“the happiness of the individual is the end of
man.” Happiness he defined as “ease, comfort,
security,” adding the time-honored, classical
condition that “the happiness of man, as well as
his dignity, consists in virtue.”
Adams went on to claim that the best form
of government is republican, summed up by
one of his favorite quotes: “an empire of laws,
and not of men.” Making law should be the
work of representatives elected by the people,
but so much responsibility would be dangerous.
A smaller, more exclusive body should be chosen
by the representatives to act as a brake on their
passions and a liaison between the executive
and the legislative body. The judiciary should
be separate and unbiased.
Elections should be held once a year, in order
to hold representatives to account and teach
them “the great political virtues of humility,
patience and moderation, without which every
man in power becomes a ravenous beast of
prey.” Thrift should be encouraged as “a great
revenue, besides curing us of vanities, levities,
and fopperies.”
Adams made no mention of God and referred
to specifically Christian faith only once, but his
frame of reference was Christian overall—
especially with his wary eye toward human
nature and its tendency to excess. The goal
was human happiness; the means were balance,
prudence, and moderation. Thoughts on
Government strongly influenced the state
constitutional committees, and in spirit if not
in detail its recommendations found their way
into the U.S. Constitution.
But even then, the times were quickly overtaking Adams’ carefully measured recipe for
good government. Only 50 years later, boisterous
supporters of Andrew Jackson would be trashing
the White House as they immoderately celebrated the inauguration of an outsider and enemy
of the establishment. Adams almost lived to see
it; as an old man he sometimes despaired of his
countrymen’s excess enthusiasm and impatience.
And today, 240 years later? Most Americans
agree with his definition of happiness as “ease,
comfort, and security,” but don’t seem especially
happy. Adams would say it’s because they have
forgotten virtue, but that’s not necessarily the
case. The average American considers himself
virtuous (he’s just not sure about his neighbor).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a political philosopher
from another revolution, would put it differently:
It’s because they have forgotten God. A
WLD28
CULTURE
Movies & TV / Books / Children’s Books / Q&A / Music
M OV I E
Finding others
PIXAR FILM AFFIRMS RELATIONSHIPS,
INCLUDING ONES WE MAY NEED BUT
NOT WANT by Megan Basham
In 2008, during an
interview to promote
WALL-E, writer/director
Andrew Stanton told me,
“The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to
love, but that’s not always
our priority. … We’re not
engaging in relationships,
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS
R
which are the point of
living—relationship with
God and relationship with
other people.”
Stanton has had a hand
in nearly every one of
Pixar’s blockbusters. He is
a professing Christian, and
the theme of relationship
 mbasham@wng.org  @megbasham
plays a role in all the feature films he’s written, but
perhaps none more so than
Finding Nemo and now
Finding Dory, rated PG for
mild elements like Dory
mistakenly thinking she’s
being called upon to
explain the birds and the
bees (or maybe the sharks
and the squids?) to a group
of schoolchildren. (Don’t
worry, it’s a sweet, familyaffirming scene, and
smaller kids won’t get why
mom and dad are laughing.)
When we catch up with
everyone’s favorite forgetful blue tang, a year has
passed since she helped
clownfish Marlin (Albert
Brooks) search the oceanwide for his son, Nemo
(Hayden Rolence). Dory
(Ellen DeGeneres) now
lives next door, and dealing
with her short-term
memory disability has
become a constant source
of frustration for Marlin.
He’s even more frustrated
when Dory starts to
remember a few things,
like where she’s from and
how she lost her parents
back in Morro Bay, Calif.
Nemo helps Marlin realize
that as Dory’s new family,
C U LT U R E Movies & TV
creatures, and sometimes
we find the limitations of
others irritating. So, like
Marlin, we don’t bear them
perfectly. We forget to
encourage the fainthearted,
help the weak, and be
patient with everyone. Or,
like Hank, we think that if
we separate ourselves from
others, so they can’t make
demands on us, we can
escape responsibility. Until,
that is, we remember that
we need others to bear with
us too.
That’s what fellowship
is. That, as we see in
Finding Dory, is what family is, and it should lead to
an ever-broadening circle
of those we welcome into
the fellowship.
(One final note—while
it’s annoying to have to
address this issue at all,
contra news reports you
may have heard, there’s
nothing to indicate that two
women briefly glimpsed
during a madcap escape
scene are lesbians. There’s
also nothing to indicate that
they aren’t. They’re just two
people having an unsettling
encounter with an octopus
disguised as a baby.) A
M OV I E
Free State of
Jones
R
Without question,
the life of Newton
Knight, a Confederate
soldier who deserted to
the swamps and discovered a worthy cause to
fight for, has the makings
of a compelling story.
However, Free State of
Jones exercises a weak
grip on the storytelling.
Brilliant moments
occur throughout the
film (rated R for extreme
war violence and racial
language). Matthew
McConaughey plays
Knight with a rangy zeal
that makes us understand why so many poor,
desperate people would
risk their lives to follow
him. And the script
includes facts mainstream studio
historicals tend to
FOR THE WEEKEND OF JUNE 17-19
according to Box Office Mojo
leave out: The characters, both black
CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V),
and white, take
and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale,
Scripture seriously
with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
as a source of com
SVL
fort and guidance.
1̀ Finding Dory* PG.................................... 131
An earnest belief in
2̀ Central Intelligence PG-13.........465
heaven gives them
3̀ The Conjuring 2* R.............................. 162
courage to push on
4̀ Now You See Me 2* PG-13........... 154
amid crushing injus5̀Warcraft PG-13........................................... 261
tice. The political
6̀ X-Men: Apocalypse* PG-13........ 265
party of slavery and
7̀ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
segregation is actu Out of the Shadows* PG-13...... 253
ally named—blacks
8̀ Alice Through the
Looking Glass* PG................................ 141
turn out to vote
BOX OFFICE TOP 10
9̀ Me Before You* PG-13....................... 322
10 Captain America:
`
Civil War* PG-13......................................... 173
*Reviewed by WORLD
Republican but elections
are rigged by Southern
Democrats. One scene
with three farm girls
makes a persuasive argument for the Second
Amendment. Pretty subversive stuff for a major
Hollywood production.
Other historical
details are as troubling as
they are fascinating: The
owning of 20 slaves, an
indication of affluence,
exempts sons of wealthy
families from military
service. After the Union
victory, entrenched
Confederate powers
enact new laws involving
“apprenticeships” to
keep slave labor under a
new name. Free State of
Jones shows us the
massive, sustained
commitment it takes to
finally wrench power
from oppressors.
The story sometimes
lacks momentum.
Interludes to a loosely
related 1940 court case
are awkward, and the
plotting and pacing
feel fragmented. Even
so, there’s much in Jones
worth seeing and
considering—for those
who can stomach the
war violence.
—by MEGAN BASHAM
BLUEGRASS FILMS
they have a responsibility to
help her find her old one.
A few characters from
the first film resurface, like
surfer-dude sea turtle
Crush (voiced hilariously,
as he was in Nemo, by
Stanton himself ). But for
the most part Finding Dory
offers a whole new array of
aquatic animals with characteristics that point up
Stanton’s thematic preoccupation. Curmudgeonly,
seven-armed octopus Hank
(Ed O’Neill), for instance,
wants nothing more than to
make it to a tank in a zoo in
Cleveland where he can
live out the rest of his life
alone, unmolested by the
irritating needs and shortcomings of people like a
severely nearsighted whale
shark, a pathologically insecure beluga, or a surgeonfish with short-term
memory loss.
Despite stunning artistry that leaves you awed
at the simple image of kelp
waving in the current,
Finding Dory suffers at
times from sloppy plotting,
and some sight gags seem
to fill no other purpose
than passing time. At one
point fish are flying everywhere and we can’t quite
remember who’s trying to
get where and why. But
even if Dory doesn’t quite
measure up to its groundbreaking predecessor, it
still provides plenty of
entertainment as well as
some wonderful opportunities to discuss with children
what living as Christ commands us to really looks
like when it comes to
difficult people.
As Stanton noted, Christ
calls us to community and
to fellowship despite our
faults. But we’re fallen
D O C U M EN TA R I E S
Seen and heard
LIFE, ANIMATED AND MY LOVE,
DON’T CROSS THAT RIVER ARE
AFFECTIONATE PORTRAITS OF
PEOPLE SOCIETY OFTEN IGNORES
by Emily Belz
Two excellent documentaries in U.S. theaters this summer spotlight
people who, these films
suggest, deserve more of
our respect and attention:
the elderly, and those with
autism.
Owen Suskind, the subject of the documentary
Life, Animated, in theaters
July 1, seemed like a normal
child when he was born.
But as a young boy, he
stopped talking. His parents
spent desperate years
trying to understand what
happened to their silent
son, whom doctors diagnosed with autism.
One thing the boy loved:
watching Disney animated
movies. The documentarians show clips from Owen’s
favorite Disney movies, like
the Peter Pan sword fight
Owen re-enacts as a young
boy before he loses his
speech.
Years passed, then
something strange happened. Owen’s father Ron
heard his son mumbling and
discovered he was saying a
line from The Little
Mermaid. (I won’t spoil the
story by revealing the line—
but it shows how incredibly
perceptive the boy was
despite his silence.) This led
to the realization that Owen
had memorized every
Disney movie and could use
that dialogue to communicate with his family.
Ron Suskind was a
Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall
Street Journal reporter. His
wife Cornelia also is a former reporter, and like good
journalists they kept track
SUSKIND: ILYA S. SAVENOK/GETTY IMAGES FOR TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL • MY LOVE: ARGUS FILM
R
of their son’s story with
home videos. Some may
already know Owen’s story
from Ron Suskind’s bestselling book Life, Animated.
The story shows the
incredible nature of the
brain even with a disability
and shows the use of art to
solve medically unexplainable problems. As a grown
man, Owen now speaks,
though sometimes with
difficulty. He is working on
his own cartoon story,
made up of characters he
calls “sidekicks”—the
less-recognized characters
in films who are essential to
the hero’s success. The
parallel is easy to see—this
disabled man is essential to
those around him.
One side note: Owen’s
loyal brother Walter briefly
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
tries to educate his grown
brother about sex, but
Owen is mostly uninterested. That moment aside,
this documentary is family
friendly, moving, and very
well done.
Owen’s dad asks: “Who
decides what a meaningful
life is?”
A
nother lovely documentary, My Love,
Don’t Cross That River, is
about an elderly Korean
couple living out their final
year together. The film
opened in select U.S. theaters June 17. The roomful
of stodgy New York film
critics exiting a screening
with puffy eyes and tearstained faces showed how
unusual this film is.
My Love, Don’t Cross
That River was a box office
smash in South Korea,
becoming the highestgrossing independent
Korean movie ever. Perhaps
it hit a nerve in a society
where the elderly are often
forgotten and alone. That
forgetfulness isn’t unique
to Korea.
Married when they were
young through a family
arrangement, the film’s
98-year-old husband and
89-year-old wife have
experienced war and
poverty and the loss of
My Love,
Don’t Cross
That River
children.
Now they
are alone
together,
living in a
remote area. The husband
gathers and carries stacks
of wood on his back while
the wife cracks that he
used to be strong. She
often asks him to sing to
her. The film can be a little
saccharine in its editing
and use of music, but the
sweetness between the
couple is genuine.
This documentary captures the union and selfgiving nature of marriage
because the camera is
always present—when the
couple falls asleep, and
when the husband wakes
up with a hacking cough in
the night. The film doesn’t
spend much time on the
couple’s religious beliefs,
but they allude to a vague
afterlife, and the wife
burns clothes for them to
wear there.
In their rare visits, the
couple’s children squabble
over helping them. Likely
all who see this film will
leave with a desire to
spend more time with
aging parents or the
elderly—not just out of
a sense of shame, but
because of what you might
be missing.
C U LT U R E Books
Admission of
function
JUNKING SLURS ABOUT ‘JUNK DNA’
by Marvin Olasky
July 11 is the 10th
anniversary of the
publication of theistic evolutionist Francis Collins’
The Language of God,
which became a New York
Times bestseller largely
because of Collins’ reputation as director of the
National Human Genome
Research Institute. That
book, in turn, helped Collins
gain new fans and a nomination from Barack Obama
to head the National
Institutes of Health.
Confirmed by the Senate,
Collins has been in that
position ever since, and I’m
glad he’s there. But his book,
and a talk about it I heard
Collins give in New York,
also displayed what Collins
now admits was arrogance.
Collins claimed on page 136
that huge chunks of our
genome are “littered” with
ancient repetitive elements
(AREs), so that “roughly 45
R
percent of the human
genome [is] made up of
such genetic flotsam and
jetsam.” In his talk he
claimed the existence of
“junk DNA” was proof that
man and mice had a common ancestor, because God
would not have created
man with useless genes.
Last year, though, speaking at the J.P. Morgan
Healthcare Conference in
San Francisco, Collins
threw in the towel: “In
terms of junk DNA, we
don’t use that term anymore
because I think it was pretty
much a case of hubris to
imagine that we could
dispense with any part of
the genome, as if we knew
enough to say it wasn’t
functional. … Most of the
genome that we used to
think was there for spacer
turns out to be doing stuff.”
Good for Collins—and
maybe he’ll go on to deal
Collins
with other times scientists
feel sorry for God as they
look at His purportedly
poor design. For example,
evolutionists use the retina
of the eye as evidence
against creation, because
nerve endings are at the
front rather than at the
back, which at first glance
seems better placement.
Yet, as Lee Spetner explains
in The Evolution Revolution
(Judaica Press, 2014), physicists now see front placement as the best one for
“ingeniously designed light
collectors.”
The list of needed
retractions should include
what you probably learned
BOOKMARKS
Listen, Liberal (Henry Holt, 2016) attacks
the Democratic Party from the left. If
your high-school student says he’s a
socialist, Gerald Grafe’s The Root of All
Money (CreateSpace, 2015) could serve
as an antidote. —M.O.
PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES
Cristóbal Krusen’s They Were Christians
(Baker, 2016) has readable chapter
biographies of notables including Dag
Hammarskjöld, Frederick Douglass, and
Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and Philosophy in
Seven Sentences by Douglas Groothuis
(IVP, 2016) introduces readers to seven
philosophers.
The war against Darwin dissenters
continues, as Jerry Bergman documents
in Silencing the Darwin Skeptics
(Leafcutter, 2016). Thomas Frank’s
in high school about apparently purposeless human
vestigial organs. Robert
Wiedersheim’s 1895 list of
86 has shrunk, as almost all
of them have proved to have
functions. For example, the
most famous vestigial
organ—the vermiform
appendix—is a crucial
storage place for benign bacteria that repopulate the gut
when diarrhea strikes. The
appendix can be a life-saver.
I haven’t seen Richard
Dawkins recant his 2009
statement: “What pseudogenes [often labeled as junk
DNA] are useful for is
embarrassing creationists.
It stretches even their creative ingenuity to make up a
convincing reason why an
intelligent designer should
have created a pseudogene—
a gene that does absolutely
nothing and gives every
appearance of being a superannuated version of a gene
that used to do something.”
Why? Maybe so when
we look at the work of
God’s fingers, from the moon
and stars to the way He has
knit together our inward
parts, we bow our heads in
awe. Maybe to embarrass
evolutionists.
SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS
reviewed by Madison Frambes, Becca Robb, Ciera Horton, & Ashley Bloemhof
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS Robert Rogland
None of Sinbad’s first seven voyages are as important as his
eighth—for on his eighth, he finds Christ. This account follows
Sinbad and his companion Selassie—master and slave, Muslim and
Christian—on a daring adventure at sea. Although imprisoned in
a city under the sea and nearly torn apart by apes, Selassie and
Sinbad wriggle their way out of danger just in time—all while
maintaining dialogue about their religious beliefs. The book’s
overtly Christian message and discussion of the differences
between Islam and Christianity will please parents of children ages
7 to 14 who aren’t put off by its didactic tone.
JON-LOROND SAVES THE DAY Hanna Rasco
Swashbuckling boy Jon-Lorond wants to fight off the vicious pirates
he imagines all around him. His mom tells him to leave his sword at
home and stop jumping on the furniture. That’s hard: “Pirates didn’t
leave their swords at the door just because their moms said so.” He
learns that loving his mom is more important than catching pirates
and being a hero. Engaging, crayonlike illustrations accompany the
text. The ending is a little abrupt, but the storyline is true to a day in
the life of a typical kid—imagining playmates, making messes, and
getting in a bit of trouble. (Ages 4-8)
THE BODY TITHE DEVOTIONAL Matthew Pryor
For Pryor, fitness is not just a health issue, but a heart issue:
Christians should be good stewards of physical health because our
bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). He offers a
90-day workout plan that includes spiritual exercises, prayers, and
daily devotionals to encourage readers in their fitness goals. His
advice: Don’t expect perfection, but do accept challenge. Pryor
shares about his own weight struggles as a child, but convincingly
shows that fitness victory is not about a number on the scale. It’s
about honoring God with our bodies.
SOLDIER: ZABELIN/ISTOCK • ROACH: JEN SISKA
A PLYMOUTH PILGRIM Donald W. White
White offers a modern paraphrase of William Bradford’s Of
Plymouth Plantation, Bradford’s lengthy history of 26 years of
Plymouth Colony. White stops after one year—and simplifies the
language to make it friendlier for modern readers. He explains how
he changed Bradford’s third-person narrative into first person to
draw readers into the story. His entries illustrate tales of disease,
starvation, encounters with Squanto and Samoset, and tension
between the Mayflower crew and its passengers. While easy to
digest, the simple language nearly causes readers to forget they are
reading an account written centuries ago.
The reviewers are graduates of the 2016 World Journalism Institute
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
AFTERWORD
In Grunt: The Curious
Science of Humans at War
(W.W. Norton & Company,
2016), Mary Roach applies
her fearless, brash reporting
skills to questions facing
military planners,
equipment
designers,
scientists, and
psychologists
who want to
know how to
keep soldiers safe
in perilous conditions. She
travels to scientific labs and
testing facilities where scientists constantly test and
improve equipment in response
to changes in the
ways our enemies
fight.
No subject is
off-limits, including the diarrhea
soldiers experience in East Africa
and the research into
repairing psychologically
and physically debilitating
genital wounds. Roach’s
reporting method often puts
her into the story—tasting,
carrying, hunkering down
with soldiers—to better
understand her subject.
Surprisingly, her focus on
gritty details far from battle
makes the horror of war
more vivid. Not surprisingly,
some soldiers use R-rated
language. —Susan Olasky
C U LT U R E Children’s Books
Four for the Fourth
PATRIOTIC PICTURE BOOKS by Betsy Farquhar & Megan Saben
LADY LIBERTY’S HOLIDAY Jen Arena
Lady Liberty is feeling blue … despite being green. Taking her pigeon
friend Moe’s advice, she ventures off to see the great USA. Clever
illustrations reinforce Liberty’s immense size as she tours iconic
American sights such as the St. Louis Arch and the Grand Canyon.
When Liberty hears the mayor of New York has canceled July
Fourth celebrations because she’s missing, she gasps, “The Fourth
of July isn’t about me. It’s about America!” A fun, patriotic introduction to America’s man-made and natural wonders, the book includes
interesting facts about Lady Liberty in the back matter. (Ages 4-8)
WE CAME TO AMERICA Faith Ringgold
We came to America, every color, race, and religion, from every
country in the world. Ringgold’s refrain rings out from simple, bold
illustrations portraying a wide range of immigrants sharing their
ethnic and religious cultures in America. Some came in chains, some
fled persecution, and some simply came—but all are now Americans.
A celebration of our melting-pot heritage, this is a good choice to
introduce the concept of immigration to younger children—and to
remind ourselves, during a tense election year, that our nation is
more than any one people group. (Ages 3-7)
DIANA’S WHITE HOUSE GARDEN
Elisa Carbone
Ten-year-old Diana’s father is Harry Hopkins, chief
adviser to President Roosevelt during World War II.
She lives in the White House. Although eager to
support her country, Diana’s activities—spying,
making quarantine signs, and sticking pins upright in
chairs to thwart the enemy—annoy the adults. When
she hears about the need for home gardens, Diana
gets involved. She helps plant the first victory garden
on the White House lawn, setting an example for the
nation. This book is an enjoyable read-aloud based on memories of the real Diana and
accompanied by lively illustrations. (Ages 5-8)
AMERICA’S TEA PARTIES: NOT ONE
BUT FOUR! Marissa Moss
In Surprised by Joy, C.S.
Lewis writes of his service
in World War I, with a special mention of “dear
Sergeant Ayres” and 2nd Lt.
L.B. Johnson, who argued
philosophy in the trenches.
Ayres, Johnson, and Lewis
himself are characters in
Douglas Bond’s
historical novel
for teens and
adults, War in
the Wasteland
(InkBlots
Press, 2016).
With the fictional Nigel
Hopkins, readers overhear
many of those arguments, as
Lewis defends his youthful
atheism against Johnson’s
developing theism.
The story proceeds as a
series of set pieces, vividly
portraying the dreariness,
filth, exhaustion, madness,
and horror of “the war to
end all wars.” Nigel’s relationship with his talented
dog, Chips, and the courageous nurse Elsie provide
human interest, but the
focus is on Lewis, as the
seeds of his faith are planted
in a time of crisis and testing. Lewis fans will even
recognize some of his later
arguments in the words of
Lt. Johnson. —Janie B. Cheaney
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
HANDOUT
This meaty, informational picture book sheds light on the
symbolism of tea for the American colonists, who staged
four protest “tea parties” in Boston, Charleston, New York,
and Philadelphia. While fairly presenting the British side
of the argument, Moss provides the patriot’s perspective.
Historical maps, engravings, political cartoons, and portraits—as well as sidebars explaining practices such as
tarring and feathering—enhance the text. Back matter
includes a detailed timeline, lengthy bibliography, and more.
A conversational tone, historical and contemporary comparisons, and depth of research
make this a remarkable resource for young students of American history. (Ages 10 and up)
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C U LT U R E Q&A
KENT CLARK
Man with a mission
NO SUPERMAN, BUT A LIFE-CHANGER by Marvin Olasky photo by Daniel James Devine
In this issue we run our first
stories about finalists in our 11th
annual Hope Awards for Effective
Compassion. Last year Grace Centers
of Hope in Pontiac, Mich., won, so
here’s my recent interview with Grace
CEO Kent Clark, who’s been married
for 47 years and has spent 27 of them
heading up what was an old rescue
mission badly in need of revitalization.
R
What was it like when you started?
Same people in, same people out. Feed
them, clothe them, shelter them. They
would draw a welfare check, leave the
center, then come back. That was
wrong. We had to do more than simply
be a feeding trough for drug addicts.
Many of them had been there for three
or four years. Two weeks after I became
the active CEO they arrested 27 men
out of our big dorm for stealing cars.
You told the board things had to
change. We started telling people, “We
will help you for 30 days while you look
for a job or get an apartment. After 30
days you have to leave, and you can’t
come back for a year—or you can go
into the one-year drug rehab life skills
program.”
What do you emphasize in that
one-year program? First of all, Christ.
There has to be a change from the
inside out. Programs do not change
drug addicts—only a heart change and
only God can do that. We believe salvation is by grace through faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ—and there’s hope for
the worst of the worst. We emphasize
the gospel in all of our classes—teaching people how to live from the biblical
perspective, with accountability and
responsibility.
You offer skills classes, and they
have to attend church: You don’t ask
them to make a profession of faith or
say anything, but they do have to listen. You can get a GED, and most of our
folks are going on to college. Life skills
classes: Most of our moms don’t know
how to be moms. Overall, if you are
here to help people, you’ve got to start
with a truthful premise. Our premise is
that men are sinners, and until there is
a change of nature, there is not much
change in practice.
They also have to submit to random
drug tests and work? They do. A lot of
drug tests. It bothers me a bit that we
spent approximately $35,000 last year
on drug tests, but that’s because we
want accountability. The one-year program also has the biblical principle “He
who does not work does not eat.” All of
our people earn their keep with job
responsibilities whether it’s working at
our thrift store or in our kitchen (we
served 150,000 meals last year).
What comes after the one-year
program? Then you can go into Little
Grace Village, where we rent you a
room or an apartment. You get a job.
We help you with that. After two years
in aftercare you have the opportunity
to buy one of our houses on contract.
We have 45 houses now, and 16 of our
people have bought them.
ALLEN EINSTEIN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
What percentage of those who
come to Grace Centers are addicted or
are victims of abuse? About 98 percent
of our folks are addicted to drugs and/
or alcohol. Some domestic violence
goes along with that. Many have been
sexually abused as well. That’s especially true of many of our women, who
have to deal with issues of the past. The
gospel is so awesome and wonderful
because it clears up that whole past:
God removes our sins as far as east is
from west, and that’s where we see
recovery.
You don’t take government money:
If you did, what do you think would
happen to your mission? We would go
straight down. No doubt about that. It’s
been great to see every day how God
supplies our need as we live by faith
and not by sight, and as we trust Him.
In the Old Testament they had enough
manna for the day and anything beyond
that spoiled. God provided.
We told stories last year about
some graduates of your program. How
did you meet Ginger Couch, and what’s
happened to her? I was eating at a
r estaurant uptown in Pontiac, and she
was my waitress. I saw the tracks on
her arm and she was also a cutter, and it
was obvious that she was in big trouble.
She was prostituting down on Seven
Mile Road in Detroit to buy her drugs. I
would go in there on purpose just to see
her. I would say to her, “Now I’m going
to give you a
good tip, but
you can’t buy
drugs.” And
she’d make that
promise and
we’d talk.
Finally I began
to tell Ginger
something like
this: “Ginger,
you’re going to
die if you stay
out there. You’re
going to die. You
need to come to
Grace Centers
of Hope.” She
came, and five
years ago she
came to know
Christ and her
life totally
turned around.
Those are happy stories, but I
imagine you have many sad ones. Far
more funerals because of overdoses and
relapse than I would ever desire to
have—maybe 15 per year, and mostly
young people. It’s very, very sad. We
war not with flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers.
How is Pontiac doing, and what are
your relations with City Hall? The city
of Pontiac was a bankrupt city, and
Grace Centers of Hope has the distinc-
‘There has to be a change from
the inside out. Programs do not
change drug addicts—only a heart
change and only God can do that.’
What happened to James and Miranda
Glascock? Both of them were addicts.
James is 38 now. He came when he was
18 years old with just the clothes on his
back. We call him Big Young’un
because he’s a big strapper and one of
the kids in the day care called him
“young’un.” He went through our program and sang with our Men of Grace:
That’s a group of men who traveled all
over the world, sang for two presidents,
made 12 CDs. James and Miranda met
at the mission. She was a heroin addict.
They married and they have two babies.
We claim them as our grandchildren as
well. They bought a house from us, and
they are one of the four couples who
have their house paid off. Both of them
now work at Grace Centers of Hope.
Watch a video of this interview in its entirety at wng.org and in the iPad edition of this issue
tion of being the
first faith-based
rescue mission
ever to be raided by
a local police
department. The
police thought we
were a problem:
Get rid of the rescue missions, get rid
of the homeless shelters, get rid of the
problem. Things have tremendously
changed now. The mayor is a frequent
visitor to Grace Centers of Hope,
attends all of our events. The Oakland
County court system sends people to
us. One of our graduates is a City
Council member. The city of Pontiac
has come out of bankruptcy and is
coming back. A
Clark with former
Detroit Pistons
player Richard
Hamilton and his
mother at a
Thanksgiving
meal at Grace
Centers of Hope
C U LT U R E Music
Spiritual Stranger
PAUL SIMON’S NEW ALBUM CONFRONTS
SERIOUS REALITIES by Arsenio Orteza
But “Proof of Love” and “Wristband”
reinvigorate more than Simon’s sense
of the ironic. They also reinvigorate his
interest in experimental musical textures and in using them to echo the
quirkiness of his words and melodies.
Stranger to Stranger’s credits identify
over 30 supporting vocalists and musicians, the latter of whom play everything from electronic drums, conga
drums, and maracas to marimbas (two
IAN GAVAN/GETTY IMAGES
Although Paul Simon turned 74
last October, his new album,
Stranger to Stranger (Concord), confirms
he’s as committed as ever to finding
new ways of exploring his favorite
motifs. It’s a process he describes in the
title track as “working the same piece
of clay, / day after day, / year after year.”
“Reconstruction,” he concludes, “is a
lonesome art.”
The lonesomeness of the art notwithstanding, Simon brings a humor to
his reconstructions that, along with his
mischievously boyish voice, allows him
to confront serious realities without
seeming morbid or maudlin.
For the second album in a row, for
instance, he includes a comic song
based on the fear of not getting into
heaven. In “The Afterlife” (from 2011’s
So Beautiful or So What), a newly
deceased Everyman discovers that he
must fill out a form and wait in line. In
Stranger to Stranger’s “Wristband,” a
musician gets locked out of the club
that he’s headlining and has to produce
proof of his having paid the admission
price to get back in.
And, also for the second album
in a row, Simon leavens a meditation on love with references
to Christmas. “Silent night, /
still as prayer,” he sings in
“Proof of Love,” “darkness
fills with light. / Love
on Earth is everywhere.” The song’s two
refrains—“I trade my
tears / to ask the Lord /
for proof of love” and
“Amen, Amen”—underscore Simon’s need to
believe in the sacred
even if it takes Christian
shapes not obviously
compatible with the
Judaism into which he
was born.
R
kinds), mbiras (ditto),
and the zoomoozophone.
Not surprisingly,
rhythms more than
melodies drive the songs.
As for the aforementioned “Christian
shapes,” they’ve been appearing in
Simon’s work as far back as his 19731974 world tour, when The Jessy Dixon
Singers sang Dixon’s “What Do You
Call Him” and Andraé Crouch’s “Jesus
Is the Answer.” Six years later, on the
soundtrack to his film One-Trick Pony,
Simon sang, “Some people say Jesus,
that’s the ace in the hole, / but I never
met the man, so I don’t really know.”
To the extent that Simon has waxed
spiritual in his subsequent albums, he
has often seemed like someone pressing his nose to the glass through which
another famous Paul once wrote that
we “see darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
But seeing darkly beats not seeing at
all. And on Stranger to Stranger’s
“Insomniac’s Lullaby” (a prayer) and
“Street Angel” (about a homeless man),
what Simon
sees includes
the possibilities that
resting in
peace is related
to the forgiveness of sin and that
God is a fisher of men
respectively.
The most ambitious song
is the dramatic monologue
“Cool Papa Bell.” Sung from
the point of view of a reallife Negro-baseball-leagues
star as famous for his clean
living and clean mouth as for
his speed, it uses profanity to
express the ugliness of profanity, astronomical metaphors to
express the hope for universal
salvation, and the thrill of
momentum to express the joy
of living in the moment.
In 1968, Simon took the musical question “Where have you
gone, Joe DiMaggio?” to the top
of the charts. Nearly 50 years
on, it’s déjà vu all over again. A
RECENT JAZZ ALBUMS
reviewed by Arsenio Orteza
THEME MUSIC FROM “THE JAMES DEAN
STORY” Chet Baker & Bud Shank
Hagiographic melodrama all but suffocates the 1957 James
Dean documentary for which these recently rereleased Leith
Stevens–composed recordings serve as incidental music,
music made even more incidental by the documentary’s
inevitable talkiness. Their Dean-specific titles aside, however, the performances breathe freely when heard on their
own. Chet Baker was at the top of his cool-jazz, trumpetplaying game, and, whether playing flute (“Fairmont, Indiana”)
or saxophone (the others), Bud Shank added suggestive textures. There’s nothing classic or definitive. But there’s nothing merely incidental either.
HE WAS THE KING Freddy Cole
PIKET: JOHN ABBOTT • MCPARTLAND: JOE HEIBERGER/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
The concept: Freddy Cole has a go at songs recorded by his
legendary older brother but sings them in his own way atop
refreshingly different arrangements. Consider, for instance,
“Funny (Not Much).” Nat gave it the formal, satiny treatment,
strings included. Freddy treats it casually, allowing the saxophone as much space as his relaxed, grainy voice. Whether
in the end one prefers Freddy’s or Nat’s “Mona Lisa” or “It’s
Only a Paper Moon” is beside the point. That Freddy prefers
Nat’s is the point of the title tune.
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR Bill Frisell
No matter how singular a sound Frisell gets from intertwining his crisp guitar with Eyvind Kang’s plaintive viola, TV and
film sources as incongruous as Alfred Hitchcock (“Psycho”),
Gary Larson (“Tales from the Far Side”), Walt Disney (the
title cut), and the Cartwrights (“Bonanza”) can’t help feeling
like eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake. Of course, locating
and expressing the unity underlying apparent diversity is one
of a jazzman’s job descriptions. Locating and enlisting singers
as adaptable as Petra Haden when nothing but the human
voice will do is another.
MUSIC OF WEATHER REPORT Miroslav Vitous
Miroslav Vitous’ bass anchored Weather Report during its
first three years (1970-1973), a time of rapidly shifting sands
in the jazz world. On this album, Vitous revisits two of that
period’s Weather Report songs (“Seventh Arrow,” “Morning
Lake”), one from the post-Vitous Alphonso Johnson period
(“Scarlet Woman”), and two from the post-Johnson Jaco
Pastorius period (“Birdland,” “Pinocchio”). The goal isn’t to
resolve unfinished business but to blow on still-glowing
embers. The achievement isn’t fire but occasionally flying
sparks and continuously fascinating smoke.
 aorteza@wng.org  @ArsenioOrteza
Piket
ENCORE
Marian McPartland, who
passed away in 2013 at the
age of 95, was best-known
to many jazz fans as the
affable and knowledgeable
hostess of the long-running
NPR show Piano Jazz. But
she was also an accomplished pianist, a prolific
recording artist, and a gifted
composer. It’s the last of
these identities to which
the pianist Roberta Piket
particularly calls attention
on her latest album, One for
Marian: Celebrating Marian
McPartland (Thirteenth
Note). Of course, in remaining faithful to her heroine’s
virtuosic touch, Piket calls
attention to McPartland’s
elegant musicality as well.
Accompanied by a gently swinging quintet on
seven of the numbers and
accompanying the singer
Karrin Allyson on another,
Piket evokes McPartland’s
spirit with such fidelity that
listeners might believe
they’re hearing alternate
renditions of these songs by
McPartland herself. They
might also mistake Piket’s
two originals (the title track
and “Saying Goodbye”) for
McPartland compositions,
so seamlessly do the former
blend in with the latter. —A.O.
McPartland
VOICE S Mindy Belz
Olympian effort
RELIEVING A GLOBAL REFUGEE CRISIS ISN’T
THE WORK OF ONLY POLITICIANS
If one could
gather all the
refugees in
the world
together,
they could
populate a
country the
size of South
Africa,
France, or
Italy.
A migrant boy holds on
to a fence near the
border gate between
Greece and Macedonia.
R “Wow, wow, wow. That is the best news,”
said Peter Akinola, the former Anglican primate of the Church of Nigeria, when I told him
WORLD had placed in Africa its first full-time
reporter, a fellow Nigerian based out of his
home territory in Abuja. Onize Ohikere adds to
our fledgling overseas staff and already is an
important contributor. Besides her almost daily
reports for WORLD Digital, she provided
valuable on-the-ground reporting and research
for this issue’s feature story on Nigeria’s
Clinton connections. Africa encompasses the
fastest-growing populations of the world and of
the church, along with its fair share of menaces,
including brutal terror groups. What better
place to expand biblically based worldview
reporting? A
 mbelz@wng.org  @mcbelz
VADIM GHIRDA/AP
When the Summer Olympics open in Rio
de Janeiro in August, one team will enter
Maracanã Stadium for the opening ceremony
under the Olympic flag—a team of refugees.
The International Olympic Committee in
June approved the team of 10 to compete—six
male and four female athletes. The team will
consist of two swimmers from Syria, a pair of
judokas from the Democratic Republic of Congo,
five runners from South Sudan, and one runner
from Ethiopia. One Syrian lives in Germany,
another in Belgium. Ethiopian marathoner
Yonas Kinde lives under special protection in
Luxembourg, where he works as a taxi driver.
The Olympic Committee announcement
prompted warm profile stories in news media,
and these Olympians will be symbols of hope
for their fellow refugees. But recognizing the
refugee crisis as now big enough to comprise its
own country shouldn’t win our celebration, but
our shame.
If one could gather all the refugees in the
world together, they could populate a country
the size of South Africa, France, or Italy.
Worldwide, the number of forcibly displaced
people has topped 60 million, the largest
number in recorded history. Two out of every 5
refugees are from Syria, where a five-year conflict has launched the largest wave of refugees
to overtake Europe since World War II.
The attention focused on an Olympic refugee team, while refugees themselves bake
another year in the hot sun of too many underresourced refugee camps, reminds me of too
many varied, useless hashtag campaigns.
Remember #BringBackOurGirls or #Kony2012?
Most of those Chibok girls are still in captivity,
and Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance
Army—despite media hype and White House
pledges—are plaguing Africans again.
Over and over, we see how the top-down
solutions of the world’s centrist planners fail.
R
The International Criminal Court can indict all
the African war criminals it wants, but it has
yet to find an army willing to bring them in.
The UN Refugee Agency is tracking and registering refugees, but its member states won’t
contribute sufficient funds to resettle them. In
the last year it’s actually approached private
relief groups to take over camps processing
migrants, so overwhelmed are their workers
and plagued with political infighting.
More international cooperation and highlevel political solutions are needed to resolve
desperate crises facing places like Syria, South
Sudan, and Congo. In an election
year we should be looking to political
leaders at all levels with serious ideas
to relieve a crisis bound to get only
worse otherwise. But political strategies won’t be enough. And the church
can do so much more.
In 1944, with millions of people
made homeless by World War II,
churches and civic groups around the
world established war relief funds.
Members of Park Street Church in
Boston resolved to go without meals
and contribute the money they would
have spent on food to such a fund. Other
churches joined the Park Street “War Relief
Fund,” and together they raised $600,000—or
$8 million in today’s dollars. Out of that effort
grew World Relief, the aid and development
organization of the National Association of
Evangelicals that is today at the forefront of
refugee resettlement in the United States.
The important thing isn’t establishing big
endgame goals; the important thing is simply
to start.
P R O V I D I N G C L A S S I C A L E D U C AT I O N F R O M A C H R I S T I A N W O R L D V I E W
TAKE SOME OF THE STRESS OUT OF HOMESCHOOLING
WITH VERITAS SELF-PACED ONLINE HISTORY COURSES
“The Self-Paced history classes are VERY
IMPRESSIVE! My 10-year old likes them so much
I use them as ‘dessert,’ requiring him to finish all
his work before he can do the Veritas History.”
—Sarah, Veritas parent
L E A R N M O R E AT :
V E R I TA S P R E S S . C O M /
S E L F PAC E D
P R E PA R I N G F O R L I F E T M
F E AT U R E S
UPHOLDING
THE HARD WORK OF
COMPASSION
TOP: HAL YEAGER/GENESIS PHOTOS • MIDDLE: PAUL D’ANDREA • BOTTOM: JUNE CHENG
H
ope Awards for Effective
Compassion, Year 11. Thank
you to all the members who
have over the years nominated Christian
community-based poverty-fighting
groups that offer challenging, personal,
and spiritual help and do not depend on
government financing. Once again we’ve
done initial research by internet and
phone, then sent reporters to eyeball
and write about some interesting and
replicable ones.
One geographic change: Since year
after year members nominated many
poverty-fighting groups from the South
and few from the Northeast, we’ve
revised our domestic regions for the final
four. Northeast now includes everything
east of the Mississippi River and north of
Washington, D.C. Southeast is similar:
east of the Mississippi and southward
from Virginia and Kentucky. Extend the
horizontal line westward to create
Northwest and Southwest regions. Add
one International winner, and we have
the Final Five.
We feature in this issue the Southeast,
Northeast, and International winners.
The next issue will display two others,
along with an impressive D.C.-area group
that’s ineligible for the $15,000 grand prize
because of its federal funding. Regional
winners receive $2,000 each, plus lots of
publicity and increased credibility that
they often fruitfully use in their own
areas to multiply those dollars. But we
hope our members gain as much as these
groups do: Faith soars when we see how
God inspires His people to help others.
—Marvin Olasky
SOUTHEAST REGION WINNER: K.I.D.S. CHRISTIAN MUSIC
CENTER AND COMMUNITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
THE MUSIC MAN
OF BIRMINGHAM
DANIEL CASON’S INNER-CITY MUSIC SCHOOL
TEACHES KIDS MORE THAN JUST SONGS
by Marvin Olasky in Birmingham, Ala.
photo by Kelsey Freeman for Birmingham magazine
G
rowing up in Boston, I approached Fenway Park for the first time in 1961.
It sat then in a gray industrial landscape, and the outside walls offered
little hope of thrills within. But inside, through a dark tunnel, the left field
wall loomed over the largest and greenest patch of perfect grass an urban kid like
me had seen. Fenway was, and is, a magic kingdom.
African-American children in Birmingham, Ala., have an experience like that
when they approach a big, drab, low-slung building in an impoverished area close,
by distance, to downtown but light years away in sparkle. Inside, one room has a
mountain of old giveaway clothes, and other rooms store donated food, with
emptied food buckets catching drips from a roof with holes. But children who
walk farther in can hear music that changes their lives.
The story of K.I.D.S. Christian Music Center and Community School of the
Arts begins 112 years ago in Cleveland. There, Eleanor Rainey in 1904 donated
funds to create a neighborhood center for the benefit of immigrants from Eastern
Europe. Over the years local demographics changed, and the neighborhood
became largely black. A half-century ago one of the new neighborhood children,
8-year-old Daniel Cason, raised his hand when asked if anyone wanted to act in a
play to be put on at the Rainey Institute.
Little Daniel had a role in the play, but one day he sat down at the Rainey piano
and learned God had given him a gift that made possible a larger role: “I could
play from day one, just by ear, immediately.” His first teacher, Jim Hawkins,
“showed me how to put my hands in the middle of the piano and find middle C.
He taught me how to read music. Immediately it clicked. I give all credit to God.”
The Rainey Institute, which began as a reading and lunch room for European
boys and workmen, became 60 years later a haven for a young
African-American then living in a single-parent home and
Daniel Cason
suffering abuse. Daniel at age 11 started teaching other children.
at K.I.D.S.
At 13 he received a scholarship to a University of Southern
Christian
Music Center
California summer music program. In high school he played the
piano one night for a traveling evangelist who invited him
to stay with the show. Cason, sick of the abuse, left home,
played at the minister’s old-time tent revival meetings, and
eventually came to believe in Christ.
Succeeding years brought more study and travel, highschool music teaching, and service as a pianist and music
workshop director across the United States and in Russia,
England, Ireland, Italy, and Nigeria. Daniel and Gwendolyn
Cason, married for 31 years, now have two grown children:
Their son plays the drums; their daughter, the flute. On
Sundays, Cason at age 59 is the organist at Briarwood
Presbyterian Church, a PCA stalwart, and that salary
allows him to without additional pay pass on his knowledge
of music to poor children ranging from kindergarten to
college-age. His summer camp in particular makes K.I.D.S.
this year’s Hope Award Southeast Region winner.
B
rown patches of grass dotting gray cement: Another
hot, disenchanted evening in inner-city Birmingham,
but in parts of Cason’s building several volunteers were
preparing bags of school supplies to give children. Others
discussed who would be on duty to offer medical screenings,
haircuts, and groceries to poor neighborhood residents. In
one room with donated church pews and vertical blinds,
80 of Cason’s 200-plus summer students, ranging in age
from kindergarten to high school, sat and stood for a halfconcert, half-class.
The students’ demeanor and manners showed that
Cason was teaching not only music skills but mental skills
and life skills. No backward hats or pants on the floor.
Children paid attention, did not yammer, and said “yes,
ma’am.” As Cason explained, “We don’t even allow you to
address an adult just ‘yes’ and ‘no’—there has to be a
‘ma’am’ or a ‘sir.’ I know that’s a Southern thing, but that’s
just what we do. Children should not talk to an adult like
they talk to each other. … The things we hold dear are not
always accepted among the masses, but we still believe
biblically there are words called respect and honor. My
wife and I stand for that.”
Cason’s summer camp officially is for ages 6-18, but
some 6-year-olds bring their younger siblings, and Cason
has learned to accept that: “I tell my
wife, ‘We’re not a baby-sitting
Cason leading the
children in singing
service,’ but then the Holy Spirit
HANDOUT
the Father. We believe in
Christ the Son. … We believe
in the blood that frees us. …
Holy, holy.” Their most jubilant number was “When the
Saints Go Marching In.”
High-school boys stood by
one wall and high-school
girls stood at the other, and
they courted each other as
they volleyed notes over the
younger children on the
pews. Cason coaxed more
from each group: “Tenors, I
can’t hear you. Altos, show
them what you’ve got.”
During the school year,
Cason and his ministry have
Saturday programs that
include training in vocal
technique, choir, hand bells,
piano, and the Orff
Approach, a child-centered
style of musical education.
Cason has been able to place
pianos in the homes of some children whose families could
not afford them. (Condition: The child needs to work hard.)
On this summer night some of the older students and
alumni explained what Cason’s work meant to them.
Coreen Dixon said: “This is my fifth year. When I first came
here, I thought it wasn’t really cool to praise God. … When
you come here, you have people who love God the same as
you do. If you give God praise, nobody should be ashamed.”
Destiny Collins, now attending Seton Hall University, said
she was in the program for
about 12 years and learned
perseverance: She still loves
music and plans to major in
creative writing.
2015 contributions:
The evening culminated
$76,000
with Cason handing out
2015 expenses:
scholarship checks for $200
$76,000
to $500. Later, he talked
Assets: $100,000
about what he saw as significant in his work: “They’re
Daniel Cason’s
so gifted. … The music helps
K.I.D.S. Christian
Music Center
them develop mental and
salary: $0
motor skills. … I reward good
behavior and I punish bad
Volunteers: 75
behavior.” Beyond the music,
Website:
he summarized his two major
danielcason.org/
objectives: “That they’ll finish
content.
high school. They will come
asp?id=95287
to know Christ.” A
HANDOUT
‘MY GOAL IS BEYOND THE MUSIC. MUSIC IS
WHAT I DO, BUT ULTIMATELY MY GOAL IS
SPIRITUAL, THAT THEY WILL KNOW CHRIST.’
speaks.” Cason doesn’t turn away even the youngest,
because “my goal is beyond the music. Music is what I do,
but ultimately my goal is spiritual, that they will know
Christ. … We do not play any games.”
Cason has diabetes and a bad back, which hurts when
he’s preaching or conducting but not when he’s at a
piano—and that’s where he was on this summer night as he
began the class with admonitions: “Let me see good posture
on the edge of your chair. … I need every eye on me. … Sit
tall on the edge of your seat.” He fell off the stage two years
ago: “Almost hit my head on a corner. I was paralyzed the
night before the concert. Rushed me to the hospital. But if
I have to go in a wheelchair, I go.”
Cason’s health is only one of the problems he’s had to
overcome: “We’ve had to ask families to leave, because
we’re not going to have children curse out other children.
Sometimes we say, ‘You have one more chance. Don’t let
that come out of your mouth anymore. We do not use foul
language in this ministry.’” But he’s tried to meld justice
with mercy and recalls how “the Lord had to deal with me.
We brought a whole lot of kids from the projects and had a
child call one of my teachers a word that rhymes with
‘witch.’ God spoke to my heart: I was going to put her out—
but if she comes from a community where that’s common,
you might want to be a little more patient and correct her
and try to understand. ... It took me a while.”
The kids on this summer night followed Cason’s injunctions: “Keep your hands to yourself and your spit in your
mouth.” They beautifully sang hymns: “We believe in God
MONEY BOX
NORTHEAST REGION WINNER: THE OAKS ACADEMY
OAKS IN THE CITY
A MULTIRACIAL CLASSICAL SCHOOL IN INDIANAPOLIS
IS PROMOTING A CULTURE OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS
by Russ Pulliam • photos by Paul D’Andrea
W
hen The Oaks Academy in Indianapolis opened in 1998, its home was a
former public school building in a crime-ridden neighborhood called
Dodge City that was full of vacant lots and abandoned houses.
The school’s founders wanted to help families in need by going deeper than
after-school tutoring and summer camp. Putting Oaks in a tough neighborhood
helped fulfill that vision, and the founders wanted a tough curriculum. Soon 53
students, almost evenly divided between black and white, were memorizing the
preamble to the Constitution, diagramming sentences, and working on Latin
conjugations.
Students, prompted to be all they could be, responded with hard work.
Outside the school, change also came. The Oaks helped attract adventurous
middle-class families who rescued broken-down houses and built some new ones
on the vacant lots.
Over the years crime decreased, the neighborhood improved, and the school
grew to 665 students—half are low income, one-fourth middle income, and onefourth higher income. Racially, of every five students, two are African-American,
two are white, and one is biracial, Asian, or Hispanic.
The school curriculum incorporates a biblical worldview but does not shout it.
“We are Christ-centered,” says administrator Bruce Crawford: “Christ modeled for
us how to love one another in community and in fellowship. It’s not just in chapel,
but all day long. We’re trying to live out our faith and not just adopt the Christian
label.”
For example, The Oaks highlights Bible verses in a subtle way. When the building was a public school, school officials had relegated small stained glass windows,
displaying John 8:31-32, to the basement of a nearby house. Neighbors found the
windows, which are now in the school’s entrance doors.
School families appreciate the classical model because students get a challenging
curriculum without the bells and whistles of the latest grand experimental educational schemes. They develop discipline through memorization. They learn to
follow stories as second-grade teachers read aloud The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. They read classic texts: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,
Kindergarten
John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
students at
Many schools, according to The Oaks CEO Andrew Hart,
The Oaks Fall
grow “cynicism among teachers and parents about a flavor-ofCreek campus
the-month approach in public education.” He compares
that with the “timeless and predictable” classical model,
featuring “a robust, thoughtful curriculum that will not
be changed every two years.”
Students at The Oaks wear uniforms: khaki pants, white
shirt, and tie for the guys; tartan jumper and white blouse
for the girls. Parents don’t have to worry about the wardrobe, and students aren’t making fashion statements or
showing off family wealth. Amid economic and racial
diversity, parent Lori Chandler appreciates the literal
uniformity: “Everyone wears a uniform. It puts everybody
on a level playing field.”
She and her husband Mike live in a fast-growing suburb, Fishers, with strong public schools that their children
attended in early grades. “We desired a school where our
children got to know teachers and students who are not
like them,” she said, explaining their willingness to make
the one-hour commute each way, every day, for their
daughter and son.
Other suburban white families also come to The Oaks
out of a desire for their children to have a broader perspective of the world than they might receive in their local
schools. The school does not celebrate Black History
Month but weaves in African-American history throughout
the year, such as in literature (To Kill a Mockingbird) or in
history (the autobiography of Frederick Douglass).
African-American families appreciate the high expectations for all students in The Oaks culture. Jonathan and
Devonia Harris, who have four black sons, saw from public
school experience a subtle attitude of lowered expectations
for their children. It wasn’t so much racial prejudice as an
unconscious assumption by teachers that young black
males would cause trouble and not do well in the
classroom.
The Oaks offers a protected environment in that sense—
protection from stereotypes about African-American males
in what will be a challenging culture to live in anyway, for
black or white males. Devonia Harris now teaches a pre-K
class at The Oaks and wants her children to be “in a classroom without cultural
expectations about their
ability to learn.” She recognizes that educational problems go beyond race: “We
2015-16 revenue:
are in a place where we are
$7,693,300
failing boys in general.”
2015-16 expenses:
Michael and Frances
$7,693,300
Dailey, a mixed-race couple,
Net assets
wanted a school close to
(as of July 2015):
their family mix, but they
$4,162,063
also saw that “diversity” at
The Oaks is not an end in
Average teacher
salary:
itself. “They don’t see it as
$43,000
just a big social project,”
says Michael about school
Staff: 78 faculty;
40 administration
staff members: “They have
a purpose in mind for the
Website:
diversity. Minority kids
www.theoaks
don’t experience low
academy.org
expectations.” Frances
MONEY BOX
PHOTOS BY PAUL D’ANDREA
added, regarding their sons, “We want them to be aware of
racial identity, but not be wholly defined that way.”
Providentially, The Oaks started in Indiana just when
the city and state were moving from a limited set of public
and private options to a dizzying array of choices: public
(with cross-district enrollment choice), private (with
vouchers for low-income families), and charters (some
online). Indiana’s state voucher program is one of the
largest in the nation.
The Oaks has benefited from the new options. More
than half the students use vouchers—yet the school was
committed to economic diversity long before vouchers
came. A good donor base allows for a $2 million scholarship program that gives 85 percent of the students some
kind of scholarship assistance.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for The Oaks now is its
success and the temptation to drift away from the school’s
original goal of helping those in need. One way of responding to that challenge: Open new schools on sites in other
low-income areas. The school tackled a long waiting list a
few years ago by opening up a second site, The Oaks
Brookside, in another low-income neighborhood on the
city’s east side. “We’re a catalyst for renewal,” says
Brookside school head Kelly Altman.
The old Brookside public school building filled up
quickly, prompting the opening of a third site, another old
public school, for what is now the middle school. The Oaks
likes taking over public school buildings no longer in use
in central Indianapolis, which has declining school enrollment. The brick buildings, at least 80 years old, can be
high-maintenance but offer solid structures, spacious
classrooms, and high ceilings.
A good idea can be ruined when entrepreneurs try to
grow it too fast. Oaks leaders have tried to avoid that
danger in several ways. They have used focus groups and
outside research consultants to count the cost carefully
when opening up new sites. They have not borrowed
money for expansion but instead relied on contributors,
some of whom see The Oaks as part of a larger spiritual
urban renewal in Indianapolis. They also have stepped
back from building a high school so far, because the
higher grades require bigger and more expensive sports
facilities.
Could The Oaks example work elsewhere? Some
Chicago community leaders have been meeting prayerfully
over that question after being impressed with what they
saw in visits to The Oaks in Indianapolis. The group
includes some Indy families who have moved to Chicago.
They have a website (thefieldschool.org) and hope to open
The Field School in 2017.
The Oaks led the state on the Indiana academic test
this past year, beating out better-endowed private schools
and suburban schools—but Oaks CEO Hart remembers a
much bigger purpose for the school. He wants to bring a
blessing to Indianapolis, in accord with Isaiah 61:3-4:
“They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the
LORD for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the
ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they
will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for
generations.” A
INTERNATIONAL WINNER: NEW DAY FOSTER HOME
HOME FOR THE HELPLESS
A CHINESE FOSTER HOME CARES FOR SICK BABIES SOCIETY HAS ABANDONED
by June Cheng in Beijing
JUNE CHENG
O
n a hot summer’s day in Beijing’s outskirts, 2-yearold Jack carefully studies the plastic water gun in
his hand. A New Day Foster Home volunteer
squirts him in the leg and he squeals, and then he gleefully
dips his own water gun into a bucket of water. Alfred, at 18
months, sits nearby on a Mickey Mouse waterproof play
mat: His bowed legs prevent him from standing, yet his
eyes carefully follow the flight of a stray bubble blown by
another volunteer. Jack runs around grinning, soaked from
head to toe.
It’s all typical toddler’s play, yet these children may
never have had the chance to enjoy that summer day without the work of New Day Foster Home. All these children
are abandoned by their parents and suffer severe disabilities, but government orphanages, especially those in more
rural areas, rarely have access to doctors who can treat
severe conditions. Through New Day, though, children
with diseases like hydrocephalus (water in the brain) and
congenital heart disease receive the medical care, therapy,
and love they need.
The 36-year reign of China’s one-child policy—now
loosened to a two-child policy—left many parents thinking
that if they could only have one, the child
had better be healthy. They often left
Jack
babies with deformities or disabilities in
playing
garbage dumps, on the side of the road, or
with a
water gun
at the hospital. The Chinese government
claims 600,000 orphans exist nationwide,
yet outside groups put the number closer to 1 million. New
Day has 25 beds, mostly for newcomers. Recovered children live with foster parents in the neighborhood. More
than 300 New Day children have gained adoptive homes,
and every morning the staff prays that Christians will
adopt them. Most often, they do.
N
ew Day Foster Home originated with the conversion
of a Chinese businessman. In the early 1990s, Richard
Lee owned a company that manufactured souvenir items
like magnets, and he was losing money. One Sunday, when
his wife invited him to attend her church, a sermon about
Jesus Christ’s unconditional love stunned him. A dutiful
Communist Party member who lived through the Cultural
Revolution, Lee had believed unwarranted love did not
exist. Now he wanted to know this Jesus.
Over the next year, Lee’s faith in Christ grew. When his
business recovered, he started making magnets that read
“God is love,” and he added Bible verses to picture frames,
cups, and framed paintings. In 1996 New York natives
Byron Brenneman and his wife Karen joined Lee in seeking to use the business as a ministry to their workers.
Karen says, “When you’re working together five days a
week, very quickly you realize they see you when things
are going good and going bad, and you have a whole lot
more influence in their lives.”
Today, 150 Chinese Christian bookstores sell New Day
Creation products, and Lee exports them to the United
States, Europe, and Asia. Lee said his Chinese market is
growing by 20 to 30 percent annually as the number of
Chinese Christians increases. Lee and the Brennemans
wanted to expand the company’s influence beyond the
factory walls, and saw a serious need as children with disabilities filled orphanages around the country. In 2000, the
Brennemans started caring for two children who needed
cleft lip and palate surgeries. The number of children grew,
forcing them to find a larger space, and they built the foster
home on a piece of land next to the New Day Creations
factory in Qingyundian.
Later, Karen Brenneman, now the unpaid director of
New Day Foster Home, learned that locals considered the
land they bought cursed: Some teenagers went there to
commit suicide. Yet one factory worker said her grandfather, who at the time was the only Christian in the area,
went to that field every day to pray. One night he dreamed
foreigners would buy the land and build a church and
orphanage on it. The man died five years before New Day
arrived, so Brenneman considers New Day “an answer to
his prayer.”
Today, 35 orphanages across China call New Day when
they have children they can’t care for. The Chinese government helps orphans receive lifesaving surgeries if doctors
can guarantee the surgery’s success. With some risky, complicated surgeries costing upward of $30,000, desperate
orphanages look elsewhere, calling New Day and similar
foster homes that can provide assistance. When New Day’s
beds are all full, nurses put the child’s name on a waitlist,
but death sometimes comes first.
The foster home, which includes two additional locations in southern China (Guangdong) and northern China
(Inner Mongolia) that house about a dozen children each,
has 1 caretaker for every 3 children, compared with the 1 in
15 ratio at typical orphanages. Because the foster home has
I
n a setting where children are often close to death,
prayer is vital. Every day staff members pray for the children’s healing. Again and again they’ve seen miracles.
Karen Brenneman said one Beijing doctor once asked a
New Day employee, “What is it with New Day kids? We tell
you it’s a serious situation, but then we go to do the surgery
and either it’s not as serious as we thought or they don’t
need surgery.” The employee wasn’t a Christian, but she
replied it was “because we pray.”
Sometimes God has a different plan for these babies’
lives. Fall 2014: New Day lost three of its children, all of
whom had liver problems. One boy had a liver transplant
and post-operation stayed in ICU for 55 days on life support. On the day Brenneman went to the
hospital to tell the doctor to take him off life
support, she found him awake in his room,
sitting up and playing. But then staff members had trouble getting him off the ventilator, and the hospital didn’t have the proper
trach tube. While Brenneman was bringing
back a donated trach from the United States,
the 18-month-old died.
Staff members held memorial services for
that boy and the other two babies. They
looked through photos, remembering
together, and sobbed into each other’s arms.
Sometimes New Day children find their
way back. Erwan (adopted by French
Canadians Alex and Juliette Pierre) and his
older sister (also adopted from China)
attended a vacation Bible school at New Day
last summer while their parents volunteered
at the foster home. Erwan was abandoned at
4 months and diagnosed with ventricular
septal defect, meaning he had a hole in his
heart. His orphanage in one faraway city
arranged for a heart surgery in Tianjin, and
asked New Day to care for him since that
orphanage was too distant to bring him back
for regular checkups.
The Pierres now sponsor other children
at New Day, which helps pay for surgeries,
medicine, and other daily needs. Foreign
staff members at New Day don’t take a paycheck, relying on self-funding. “I think what
New Day does reaches far beyond what they
can see. They’ve changed our lives,” Alex
Pierre said. He noted that while other
adopted children sometimes struggle to
receive affection, Erwan quickly bonded
JUNE CHENG
Volunteers and
children play
with bubbles
at New Day.
certified nurses, therapists, and a doctor on site, hospitals
are willing to release the children earlier, cutting down on
medical costs.
(1) Karen Brenneman.
(2) The first Christian
magnet that Lee
created for New Day
Creations. (3) The
Pierre family.
1̀
2̀
with him and his wife and is not
afraid of hugging: “We could tell
that Erwan received a lot of love
here.”
N
ew Day also serves the surrounding neighborhood by
employing local residents: All the paid staffers are local
Chinese, and New Day receives about 50 applicants for
every nanny position available. It started a community center to teach English and computer skills, staffed by volunteers. Short-term teams come to fix houses or bring
needed items to the poor. Seeing the need for Christian
education in China, New Day has also started with four
families a homeschool co-op, using A Beka curriculum.
New Day is a registered charity in the United States and
Hong Kong. New Day Creations, a legal Chinese company,
owns its buildings. Donors fund New Day’s $1 million budget and are becoming more local. When New Day began in
2000, nearly all its donations came from the United States,
but now about half come from China. As the concept of
charity becomes more common in China, more Chinese
companies, foundations, and individuals are donating
money as well as skills like photography, dentistry, medical
care—or just playing with the kids.
While China is increasingly accepting care for orphans,
many Chinese still stigmatize adoption. Husbands and
wives who can’t have their own children may adopt, but
they want only healthy babies and likely won’t tell anyone
the child was adopted out of fear of how the child may be
treated.
The growing church in China can make a difference in
this area. Foreign adoptions take two to three years to process, and they remove children from their birth culture—
but local adoptions take
only a couple of months.
Karen Brenneman
believes that if local
churches taught about
2015 expenses:
“God’s heart for adop$1.06 million
tion and how we are all
Executive director’s
adopted into God’s famsalary and benefits:
ily,” more babies would
$0 (Karen Brenneman
find loving homes.
and all foreign staffers
On a recent New Day
are volunteers. None
daily prayer list, two
receives a salary.)
requests under the headStaff: 90 paid Chinese
ing of “Dreams” stood
staffers in the three
out: “$0.00 medical bills
locations, 9 foreign
because ALL children
volunteers
are healed as soon as
Website:
they arrive” and “Orphan
newdaycreations.com/
problem in China solved
foster
by the Chinese church.” A
1 & 2: JUNE CHENG • 3: HANDOUT
MONEY BOX
3̀
F E AT U R E S
FATAL CON
People run for safety as
smoke rises from the police
headquarters bombed by
Boko Haram in Nigeria’s
northern city of Kano
on Jan. 20, 2012.
STRINGER/REUTERS/NEWSCOM
NECTIONS
As the Clinton-led State Department dragged
its feet against Boko Haram, Clinton Foundation
donors made millions from Nigerian oil fields
by MIN DY BELZ & J.C. DER R ICK in Washing ton
HE ATTACKS ON JAN. 20, 2012, BEGAN
not so much as an explosion but as an
earthquake.
“Whole buildings were shaking,” said secondary
school vice principal Danjuma Alkali. “There was
so much vibration that some people collapsed from
it.” When the jolts stopped, with smoke rising and
fire igniting all over the city of 10 million, it became
quickly apparent the Islamic terrorist group Boko
Haram had pulled off the unthinkable.
The next day, Jan. 21, the U.S.
Embassy warned U.S. citizens “to
review personal security measures,”
and it prohibited government personnel from traveling to northern Nigeria.
But tracking and cutting off the
insider flow of funds propping up
Boko Haram was what was needed—
and the Kano attacks presented
one more overwhelming
reason the United States
should have designated the
group a Foreign Terrorist
Organization, or FTO (see
“Troubling ties,” June 10).
A strong chorus rose
in Washington for FTO
designation—from
bipartisan members of
Congress to
Pentagon officials (including
then-head of U.S.
Africa Command,
Gen. Carter Ham) to a
coalition of faith-based
human rights groups. At
the State Department,
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton continued to resist it and other rudimentary steps against the
terror group.
Meanwhile, Boko Haram
often showed up better
equipped than the Nigerian
military: “Boko Haram was
extorting even government
officials in the north, state
and local officials, and
certainly the military,”
said an American working
P
ERHAPS
the most
prominent
Nigerian
with ties to the
Clintons is Houstonbased Kase Lawal. The
founder of CAMAC
Energy, an oil exploration
and energy consortium,
Lawal had a long history
with Bill Clinton before
becoming a “bundler” for
Hillary’s 2008 presidential
bid, amassing $100,000 in
contributions and hosting a
fundraiser in his Houston
home—a 14-room,
15,264-square-foot mansion.
Lawal maxed out donations to
Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen
donated $50,000—the most
allowed—to President Obama’s
2009 inaugural committee.
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS/NEWSCOM
In coordinated bombings at 23
s eparate locations in the city of Kano,
including police headquarters and
military barracks, the group left one of
Africa’s largest cities in disarray and
panic. The January attacks killed
more than 185 people—Africa’s worst
terrorism since the 1998 al-Qaeda
attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania.
Alkali said in the streets he saw “so
many bodies that they were lifted into
heavy lorries. Only a few could be
identified.” The city fell under weeks
of dusk-to-dawn curfew. Shops stayed
closed, banks opened only for several
hours each day, and heavily armed
checkpoints became a way of life. At
Alkali’s school, attendance fell from
700 to 300.
Boko Haram leader Imam
Abubakar Shekau took responsibility
for the Jan. 20 attacks in a video
posted on YouTube: “I am not against
anyone, but if Allah asks me to kill
someone, I will kill him, and I will
enjoy killing him like I am killing a
chicken.” Boko Haram had struck
before, but the citywide attack in the
industrialized heartland of northern
Nigeria carried a new message to
Muslim authorities and business leaders: Support our call to create a radical
Islamic state or else.
It would be difficult for
Washington to look away: Nigeria at
the time was the third-largest source
of U.S. crude oil imports. Further, the
same day, American Greg Ock was
kidnapped in Niger Delta, and Boko
Haram announced “an arrangement”
to kidnap 22 other Americans.
in the area for more than a decade,
who spoke to WORLD and is not
named for security reasons. “Very
wealthy Muslim businessmen totally
have been backing Boko Haram. There
was huge money involved. Money
used to purchase arms—it was crazy.”
Where were the funds and support
coming from? In part from a corrupt
oil industry and political leaders in
the North acting as quasi-warlords.
But prominently in the mix are
Nigerian billionaires with criminal
pasts—plus ties to Clinton political
campaigns and the Clinton
Foundation, the controversial charity
established by Bill, Hillary, and
Chelsea Clinton in 1997.
The Clintons’ long association
with top suspect tycoons—and their
refusal to answer questions about
those associations—takes on greater
significance considering the dramatic
rise of Boko Haram violence while
Hillary Clinton was secretary of
state. Did some Clinton donors
stand to gain from the State
Department not taking
action against the
Islamic terrorist group?
CLINTONS: JOHN GRESS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES • EKO ATLANTIC: HANDOUT
process, contracting for lifting
has been awash in kickbacks,
bribes, and illegal activity.
Overland lifting contracts
often involve partnership with
the North’s past and present
governors, including those who
serve as quasi-warlords with
ties to Boko Haram and other
militants.
Lawal’s enterprises have long
been rumored to be involved in
such deals, as have indigenous
oil concerns like Petro Energy
and Oando, Nigeria’s largest
private oil and gas company,
based in Lagos and headed by
Adewale Tinubu, another
controversial Clinton donor.
In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5
percent of that year’s pre-tax
Lawal describes himself as a
devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending
an Islamic school. “Religion played a
very important role in our lives,” he
told a reporter in 2006. “Every time
you finish a chapter they kill a
chicken, and if you finish the whole
thing, a goat.”
Today the Houston oil exec—who
retired in May as CEO but continues
as chairman of the board of CAMAC,
now called Erin Energy—tops the list
of wealthiest Nigerians living in North
America. His firm reports about $2.5
billion in annual revenue, making it
one of the top private companies in
the United States.
In Africa, Lawal has been at the
center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over
the last decade, he faced charges in
South Africa over an illegal oil scheme
along with charges in Nigeria of
illegally pumping and exporting 10
million barrels of oil.
In the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to
purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel
warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to
massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda
Chelsea, Hillary, and Bill Clinton
(above) during the Clinton Global
Initiative event in Chicago. Bill
Clinton with Bola Tinubu (right)
and then-Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan at the Eko
Atlantic dedication in 2013.
was on a U.S. sanctions list,
meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to
20 years in prison. Lawal
contacted Clinton’s State
Department, and authorities in Congo
released his plane and associates in
the plot. He never faced charges in the
United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of
Houston.
Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative
offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well
as exploration and production licenses
in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where
he operates in a conflict-ridden area
largely controlled by Somalia’s al-
Shabab militants.
The firm also has held contracts in
Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to
refineries. Until last year, when newly
elected President Muhammadu
Buhari began an effort to reform the
profits and 1 percent of future profits
to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale
gained notoriety when the Panama
Papers revealed he holds at least 12
shell companies, leading to suspicion
of money laundering, tax evasion, and
other corruption.
In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu,
while attending the dedication of a
massive, controversial reclamation
project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call
Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All
Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s
“looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire
landowner was governor of Lagos
State (1999-2007), he funneled huge
A
2̀
3̀
4̀
5̀
BOUT THE TIME OF THE
Kano bombings, a lucrative
potential for new oil
opened up in Nigeria’s
North—precisely in the Borno State
region where Boko Haram has its
headquarters.
Between 2011 and 2013, the
Nigerian government allocated $240
million toward oil and gas exploration
in the Lake Chad Basin, a petroleum
reserve stretching from western Chad
across Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon.
Largely unexplored until recently, oil
production hit 100,000 barrels a day
in 2013 on the Chad side of the basin.
On the surface Boko Haram violence halted exploration in Nigeria.
Despite the millions it was investing,
Nigeria’s government geologists and
technical staff fled the region in fear of
their lives. Using verified incidents
provided by the Nigeria-based
Stefanos Foundation and other
sources, WORLD documented 85
separate terrorist attacks between
2011-2016 in the Lake Chad Basin
areas of Nigeria (see map).
The attacks ranged from market
bombings that killed half a dozen to
the January 2015 Baga attacks, which
killed an estimated 2,000, destroying
Baga plus 16 other towns and displacing more than 35,000 people (while
the world fixated on Paris after the
Charlie Hebdo attack).
Beneath the surface, literally, Boko
Haram was making it possible for
(1) Imam Abubakar Shekau.
(2) Ali Modu Sheriff. (3) Bosco Ntaganda.
(4) Adewale Tinubu. (5) Bola Tinubu.
illicit operators to lay claim to the area
for their own purposes, and to pump
oil from Nigeria’s underground
reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling,
Chad operators can extract Nigerian
oil—without violating Nigerian property rights—to sell on open markets.
One benefactor of the arrangement is
Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician
in the North, Borno State governor
until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of
Boko Haram, who is close friends with
longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.
The very terrorism that seems to
be deterring oil exploration in reality
can help illicit extraction, forcing
residents to flee and giving cover to
under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a
year when overall oil prices dipped 6
percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock
value skyrocketed 295 percent—the
best-performing oil and gas stock in
the United States.
The more unstable an area is, the
more such traders can control supply
and pricing, explained an oil analyst
who asked not to be named for security reasons: “Terrorism is the poor
man’s weapons of mass destruction.
You want the land and what might be
beneath, not the people, so you kill
them.”
It’s happened elsewhere: A decade
ago in Sudan’s civil war Islamic
militias drove tens of thousands of
Christians from their land, torching
their villages and killing them. After
paying off the militias and their
power brokers, international oil
consortiums moved in to begin drilling and now extracting oil. It’s not
hard to envision a similar scenario
unfolding in the Lake Chad Basin with
Boko Haram.
Christians are the predominant
victims of Boko Haram in Borno and
surrounding states. Among 85 documented attacks in a five-year period,
Boko Haram killed at least 11 pastors
and destroyed more than 15 churches.
They also destroyed about five
mosques. In all, Boko Haram and its
affiliated militants have killed an
estimated 6,300 people and displaced
2 million in the Lake Chad Basin area
since 2011.
SHEKARAU: JACOB SILBERBERG/GETTY IMAGES • SHERIFF: HANDOUT • NTAGANDA: MICHAEL KOOREN/AP • ADEWALE TINUBU: GEORGE OSODI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES • BOLA TINUBU: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
1̀
amounts of state funds—up to 15
percent of annual tax revenues—to a
private consulting firm in which he
had controlling interest.
In the United States, where he
studied and worked in the 1970s and
’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he
allegedly operated with his wife and
three other family members. In 1993
Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American
authorities, who believe he trafficked
drugs and laundered the proceeds.
mali
niger
chad
Washington, D.C. “Stop
this terror and terrorism
in Nigeria.”
Maiduguri, capital of Borno State
Besides military interand headquarters for Boko Haram
vention, the United States
has many tools for aiding
Nigerian authorities. The
Treasury Department’s
Kano
Office of Foreign Assets
Control—the unit tasked
benin
Chibok
with enforcing key aspects
of FTO designations—
togo
r
purportedly doesn’t have
Area where oil
The Lake
Abuja
reserves exist,
Chad Basin
enough staff to focus on
according to
Boko Haram financing.
The Bluestone
The administration
Group, a
maintains that Boko
U.S.-based
petroleum and
Haram raises its funding
mineral
through local means,
exploration
such as robbing banks
c a m e r o o n company.
Area of
enlargement
and pillaging v illages,
even though WORLD
Boko Haram attacks with
obtained evidence the
a death toll exceeding 100
militants have access to
international bank
accounts.
HE 2014 KIDNAPPING
“I want to the U.S. government to
“There has not been an investigaof 276 girls from a Chibok
please, please, please to bring back our
tion that has had any positive conseChristian school catagirls and bring peace to the Northeast,”
quences,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.,
pulted Boko Haram into
a Chibok mother named Mary (last
chairman of the House Africa subcomthe international spotlight and
name omitted for security reasons)
mittee. He said he plans to convene a
sparked first lady Michelle Obama’s
told WORLD during a June visit to
hearing to find out why U.S. inattention
#BringBackOurGirls social media
persists: “It’s time to have [some]
campaign. Hillary Clinton called the
people come up and testify.” A
Martha Mark, the mother of one of the
mass abduction “abominable” and
—with research by Kristin Chapman and
kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, cries as she
“an act of terrorism.” Clinton said “it
holds a photo of her daughter.
reporting by Onize Ohikere in Nigeria
really merits the fullest response
possible, first and foremost from the
government of Nigeria.”
Critics argue it was Clinton herself
who has led the way on U.S. indifference, spurning the standard FTO
designation (issued 72 times since
1997) that could have bolstered U.S.
efforts against Boko Haram years
before the infamous kidnappings.
While it’s become increasingly
clear that oil and corruption are
fueling Boko Haram, the full story
will take a serious U.S. investigation.
Yet even now there is no evidence it’s
happening. The Chibok girls, for
example, are known to be in the
Sambisa Forest with Boko Haram,
but authorities have not pursued
them.
nigeria
MAP: KRIEG BARRIE; SOURCE: BLUESTONE GROUP • CHIBOK: SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP
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 mbelz@wng.org  @mcbelz
 jderrick@wng.org  @jcderrick1
F E AT U R E S
ROCKET MAN
A high-achieving scientist
with a troubled personal life,
Henry Richter found a faith
that transformed him
by SOPHIA LEE
HENRY RICHTER heard it first—a
thunderous roar as the long, white
rocket lifted up, up, up into the night sky,
interrupting the darkness with flares
and flashes. Moments later, Explorer 1,
the first earth satellite of the United
States, was successfully in orbit.
It was Jan. 31, 1958, at 10:48 p.m. in
Cape Canaveral, Fla. Richter, then a
lanky 30-year-old, was sitting in the
control room, watching history happen
through green-tinted, bulletproof glass.
As project manager at the then-obscure
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
Pasadena, Calif., he and his team
helped develop Explorer 1 and choose
its scientific instrumentation, which
led to the discovery of the Van Allen
radiation belt.
That night at the launch area,
Richter’s job was to update the Pentagon
via teletype. In the Pentagon’s war room
paced an anxious group of three scientists, the Army secretary, and the Army
vice chief of staff. President Eisenhower
was on a golfing trip in Georgia, his
evening of bridge forgotten as he stuck
close to the telephone for news.
So it was with great excitement that
Richter waited for the first telltale singsongy tones from the satellite’s signal as
it passed California. But at the expected
arrival time, he heard nothing. “We were
just waiting ... chewing our fingernails,”
said the 88-year-old Richter, 58 years
later. “And then one … two … three … four
… five … six … seven … eight minutes—and
we had it! We had a very nervous eight
minutes when it was supposed to
show up but was late.” Eisenhower, too,
breathed a sigh of relief: “That’s wonderful. I sure feel a lot better now.”
Miles north in rainy Washington, D.C.,
journalists packed into the auditorium
of the National Academy of Sciences.
LAUNCH, EXPLORER DIAGRAM, NEWSPAPER: NASA • EISENHOWER: CHARLES GORRY/AP • RICHTER: SOBOTKER • SATELLITE MODEL: OFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
President Eisenhower, in his
White House office, with the
nose cone of Explorer 1;
Explorer 1 diagram (below).
There, the three key developers of
Explorer 1 spontaneously lifted a model
of the satellite over their heads—a
moment captured as one of the most
iconic photographs of the Space Age. As
for Richter, he was so “numb” from all
the tension and frenetic activities leading up to that pinnacle that he barely
remembers returning to his motel.
It was a glorious day for America,
but not a victory. That laurel went to the
Soviet Union, which launched Sputnik,
the first-ever man-made satellite to
circle the earth. Sputnik spun into orbit
on Oct. 4, 1957, then Sputnik 2 a month
later, this time carrying a female mongrel named Laika. Aghast at this public
gauntlet-tossing from its Cold War
enemy, the United States plunged into
the space race.
But insiders like Richter knew
Explorer 1 had been ready to launch
more than a year before Sputnik. So
despite celebrating the success of
Explorer 1, Richter also felt regrets: “We
could have been first.”
Richter lived through a politically
charged, boundary-pushing era of
scientific accomplishments. He witnessed the creation of NASA. He
watched JPL transform from a littleknown group in a barrackslike structure
developing missiles for the Army into a
prestigious NASA-affiliated agency
working on spacecraft in a top-notch
facility. He helped develop the Ranger,
Mariner, and Surveyor spacecraft and
send Apollo to the moon. He managed
the planning for JPL’s Deep Space
Network, a worldwide network of deepspace communication facilities that still
track spacecraft today.
Yet, yesterday’s success was never
enough. As the two superpowers raced
for global superiority, so too was Richter
charging to show the world that he was
somebody great. He calls himself a “proverbial workaholic” and an “absentee
father” during his younger years, at one
point commuting twice a week between
Richter in
1959
News coverage of Sputnik
included this photo of Henry
Richter (right) and Robert
Legg as they tracked the
Soviet satellite.
Developers of
Explorer 1 celebrate
with a model of the
satellite shortly after
its launch.
JPL and the Pentagon. In 1960, Richter
left JPL, disgusted by the federal government’s constant interference. His
other career ventures also left him disappointed and unfulfilled.
Meanwhile, his family was falling
apart: His first wife, Marilyn, frequently
broke down into all-night weeping episodes, terrified that she was condemned
to hell. The doctors later diagnosed her
with schizoid personality disorder, but
Richter also blamed her religion and
resolved always to avoid those “kooky
born-again-type Christians.” After 22
years of unhappy marriage, Richter
divorced his wife, leaving him alone
with five teenagers. By then, he was
ready to confess that Henry Richter was
a false idol.
The 50th anniversary of Explorer 1 in
2008 was supposed to be the capstone of
HENRY L. RICHTER was born on June
14, 1927, in Long Beach, Calif. Both of his
parents were painters who met in
Chicago—he an instructor, she a student.
They married, moved west to warmer
pastures, and taught art at a local high
school. Richter remembers his father
taking him along on sketching trips to
the mountains and deserts. While Henry
Sr. drew, Henry Jr. prowled around
experimenting on rocks.
Richter’s fascination with science
began in third grade, when his aunt gave
him a Gilbert chemistry set. From then
on, he mowed lawns and did odd jobs to
spiff up his chemistry tools, which grew
into a breakfastroom-turned-laboratory stacked with
100 different chemicals and various
glassware. In fifth
grade, Richter took a
summer high-school
chemistry course.
The next year, he
became a lab assistant in that chemistry class, an earnest
squirt among highschoolers who
shaved. The local
Richter lectures at
newspaper did a
the 50th anniversary
feature on him titled
celebration of the
“Ambitious Local
Explorer 1 launch.
Lad.”
And ambitious,
he was. After a short stint serving in the
U.S. Navy during World War II, Richter
married pretty, curly-haired Marilyn
and earned a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry,
physics, and electrical engineering at the
California Institute of Technology. He
entered his first job at JPL as a senior
research engineer and within four
months rose to chief of the satellite
development team.
It was a horrifying day for Americans
when the Soviets successfully launched
Sputnik, but a much-awaited opportunity for Richter. While he was holed up
in an office basement, tracking the audio
from Sputnik on reel-to-reel recorders,
the American public was panicking:
What’s that beeping thing above our
heads? What kind of crazy, new-tech
Soviet weapon is next? Every major
newspaper featured Sputnik, and nothing
Eisenhower said could assuage public
apprehension.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy had been
preparing a satellite program called
Project Vanguard, even though the
Army/JPL already had a rocket system
ready by then. In 1955, the two military
branches vied for the honor of sending
America’s first satellite into space.
Ultimately, politics pushed Washington
to bet on Vanguard: The Army’s rocket
derived from a ballistic missile designed
by Wernher von Braun, a controversial
ex-Nazi German engineer, whereas the
Navy’s Vanguard would create fresh
rockets intended for peaceful science.
Eisenhower wanted America’s first satellite to appear civilian, not militaristic.
FOLLOWING SPUTNIK, Washington
hustled Vanguard to conduct its first satellite launch months ahead of schedule.
Then on Dec. 6, 1957, the Navy’s rocket
exploded into smoke and fire mere
seconds after its launch. “Kaputnik,”
“Puffnik,” and “Flopnik” were among
the labels in newspapers comparing the
Vanguard satellite to Sputnik. Richter
felt embarrassed for his country, but also
cheered, “Whoopee! Now’s our chance!”
Nearly two months later, Explorer 1
redeemed America’s dignity with its
successful launch.
After that, Richter wore the attire of
a man who had made it. The house he
built in western Pasadena expanded to a
three-story “Spanish castle.” After JPL
he became vice president of a high-tech
research company, then a senior research
geophysicist at UCLA, then headed his
own electronics manufacturing business
that eventually flopped. He also began
dating his former secretary, Beverly Ott.
Beverly was a small-town girl from
Nebraska who graduated from Biola
University. A 44-year-old single mother
of three, she struggled to make ends
meet ever since her first husband, a
pastor, abandoned his family for a
woman who sang in the church choir.
Richter knew her story, which was
why the bright-faced, ocean-eyed
woman so impressed him: “There was
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID COPPEDGE
Richter’s career. As one of the only surviving managers of the Explorer 1 team,
he was the star of the three-day fanfare
in Pasadena. Later, the American
Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics invited him to its annual
black-tie awards ceremony, where he
joined other former JPL directors
onstage to receive the Achievement
Award. But throughout that flurry of
celebration and honor, his heart was
heavy. His second son, David, a retired
Pasadena police lieutenant, was missing.
Months later, someone found David’s
body under a bridge. Apparently, he had
shot himself.
Richter is a stoic man who states the
facts and little else, but his second and
current wife, Beverly, told me that was
the lowest period of his life. She said
only faith—which Richter by then had—
brought them through it: “We were very
precise in our prayers. We believed in God
of our hope. We knew that our God is
able to sustain us and carry us through.”
SOPHIA LEE
just something very peaceful about her
life. And then I found out she’s one of
those strange creatures who call themselves ‘Christians.’”
For years, Richter was a model
cultural Christian. He was chairman of
the official board at a Methodist church,
but considered the gospel “a bunch of
nonsense.” He attended church simply
because it boosted his reputation as a
respectable American.
But Beverly was different. This
woman, who had every right to be bitter,
instead talked joyfully about “a true God
who loves and sustains us.” His curiosity
piqued, Richter blew dust from his
Bible—and for the first time in his life,
the living, breathing Word spoke to him.
Then one day, while driving to work,
Richter suddenly felt an “overwhelming
presence of Jesus.” He cried out, “Lord,
if You want me, I want You.” That was
Oct. 4, 1969. The same evening, Beverly
dragged him to a Billy Graham Crusade
at Anaheim Stadium. When Graham
made the altar call, Richter jumped to
his feet and sprinted down the field to
 slee@wng.org  @SophiaLeeHyan
profess faith in Christ. “I just knew that
my life was changed at that moment,”
Richter recalled. “I was washed clean.”
So when Richter proposed to Beverly,
she said yes. Even so, she had concerns,
thinking, “I hope, I hope, I hope this guy
is a true Christian.” Forty-six years later,
the ivory-haired Mrs. Richter told me, “I
took a risk, and it worked out wonderful
for 46 years.” She then placed a wrinkled,
soft hand over her husband’s own mottled
one, and the couple exchanged a beam.
Today Richter, 88, and his wife, 90,
live in a residential community for
seniors in Escondido, Calif. His father’s
paintings adorn their modest one-story
home, including an oil painting of a
7-year-old Henry in overalls, button nose
buried in a giant book. Scientific journals
and papers cover the coffee table and
office desk. Among them is his latest
book project on why the universe is too
marvelous to be a cosmological accident.
Richter, now a young-earth creationist, said the more he studied science, the
more he questioned the Darwinist
teachings he had once accepted. His
involvement
with NASA
and the
Institute for
Creation
Research further clinched
his conviction in a perfect, wise Creator
who fine-tuned creation. Mere fascination lifted into awe. Hunger for selfcredit crumbled into gratitude and
humility as he realized: “I’m not the center of the universe. It’s not important for
me to prove that I’m a success anymore.
There’s greater things in life to do.”
Those greater things include roasting
chicken and crimping dough to make
Mom’s cherry pie for his wife. He also
prays for the souls of his three remaining children (the oldest son died of a
heart attack), 11 grandchildren, 13 greatgrandchildren, and three great-greatgrandchildren. He grieves that only a
few profess Christ, but rejoices in the
ones who do. His last breath, he says,
would be to “tell my children how my
life has changed by meeting Jesus.” A
Richter and
Beverly at their
residential
community in
Escondido, Calif.
NOTEBOOK
Lifestyle / Technology
/
Education / Religion
Lifestyle
Winds in the East
AS LIBERAL WESTERN VALUES ENCROACH IN
TAIWAN AND CHINA, CHRISTIANS AND
TRADITIONALISTS SEEK TO PRESERVE MARRIAGE
by June Cheng
Taiwan, an island of 23 million, is
one of the most LGBT-friendly
regions in Asia. The city of Taipei
hosts a gay pride parade each year that
attracts tens of thousands of attendees.
The rest of the year, coffee shops
display rainbow flags and same-sex
couples embrace on the subway.
KIN CHEUNG/AP
R
Same-sex marriage is not legal on
the island, but many believe that will
soon change: Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s
new president, took her oath of office
in May and vocally supports gay
causes—but any move to legalize gay
weddings on the island will be met by
furious opponents who uphold
t raditional family
morals.
The Chinese
mainland, too, has
so far refused to allow same-sex marriage. The Communist Party maintains
a tight grip on controversial social
issues, including gay rights. In April
the government rejected the country’s
first same-sex marriage lawsuit, citing
Chinese m
arriage laws that specify
marriage is between a man and a
woman. Yet the decision sparked a
debate on social media: In one online
poll, 51 percent of Chinese said they
opposed gay marriage, while 49 percent supported it.
One big reason for opposition to gay
marriage in the East: The heterosexual
A gay pride
parade in
Hong Kong
NOTEBOOK Lifestyle
definition of marriage lines up with
the traditional Confucian focus on
family.
Yet as younger generations grow up
on Hollywood movies and television
shows, traditional Chinese values are
fading. Christians in Taiwan and the
mainland are observing this culture
shift, and hope to do something about
it: Though living as marginalized
minorities, they are seeking ways to
promote biblical marriage in their
homelands.
In China, Pastor Wang Yi of
Chengdu Early Rain Reformed Church
is among those who believe Christians
need to fight against the current. His
church is hosting ministries focusing
on the marriages and families within
the church, and Wang is considering
how to bring God’s truth about these
topics out into society as well: “The
church should play a bigger role in
marriage, family, and counseling—this
is very important for the future.”
Wang said that although small
communities of human rights activists
and liberal intellectuals are advocating
for gay rights, he does not yet believe
society’s tide has turned in favor of
same-sex marriage. “The Chinese
media is not yet supportive of gay
marriage … so I think we still have some
time in China.” Wang noted a generational divide, with older Chinese
people more likely to hold a traditional
view of marriage.
changing the
term “man and
woman” to “two
parties,” and
“father and mother” to “parents.”
(To date, the wordings have not been
changed.)
Some believe Christians need to
find a new way to discuss family values. By the time churches in Taiwan
reacted to LGBT political advocacy, it
was too late. In last January’s election,
Christians created their own political
party, touting candidates who would
protect traditional marriage. But without a well-thought-out platform on
other issues, they failed to win any
seats. (It didn’t help that Christians
make up only about 5 percent of the
population.)
“Taiwan’s situation is not suitable
for a Christian political party because
Taiwan is not a Christian culture,” said
Ke. Rather, he believes churches
should continue preaching what the
Bible says about gender, sexuality,
marriage, and family. Among Taiwan’s
Christian community, Ke said, “very
few people can talk about marriage
and family in terms that a non-
Christian can understand.”
Ke hopes Christians will learn how
to dialogue with secular society in
“everyday language”—ultimately
expressing to their neighbors the value
of biblical marriage. A
Pastor Wang Yi
officiates a
wedding.
WEDDING: ZHONGMING JIANG • YU JIE: CLIFF OWEN/AP
Dissident writer Yu Jie, who currently lives in Virginia, said traditional
Confucian views supporting heterosexual marriage may be “easy to overturn” because they are not rooted in
the gospel. Chinese tradition views
family as a miniature version of the
government, with the father seated in
the place of the king and the rest of the
family falling under his rule, Yu said.
Parents play a large role in their children’s marriages and still wield control after the wedding, in contrast to
the Bible’s call for a man to “leave his
father and his mother and hold fast to
his wife.”
In Taiwan, Immanuel Chih-Ming
Ke, a professor at Providence
University in Taichung, said the
island’s traditional view of marriage
began changing about 20 years ago.
After a pro-gay church formed in 1995,
the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan
invited Ke to discuss how Christians
should tackle the issue. At the time,
they viewed homosexuality as just one
of many problems facing society.
Today, things have changed:
Movies and TV have normalized
homosexuality, news media depict
only positive stories about the LGBT
movement, and academia has long
embraced liberalized sexuality. Ke
points to influence from the West, as
most of the professors in Taiwan
studied in the West and brought back
liberal ideas: “Taiwan is like a colony
of Western secular culture.”
Still, not all Taiwanese have
embraced LGBT values: In November
2013, tens of thousands of protesters
took to the streets to oppose a proposal
to revise the island’s Civil Code by
NOTEBOOK Technology
Freedom of speech
WIRELESS EARPIECE PROMISES REAL-TIME
LANGUAGE TRANSLATION by Michael Cochrane
A New York startup wants to
take computer-assisted language
translation to the next level. The
company’s earpiece technology could
allow two users to converse face to
PILOT: HANDOUT • BUS: SHENZHEN HUASHI FUTURE PARKING EQUIPMENT • ROBOT: A*STAR INSTITUTE FOR INFOCOMM RESEARCH
R
face, without a human translator and
without any understanding of each
other’s mother tongue.
Computers have already become
adept at translating text from one language into another. With an app such
as Google Translate, a smartphone or
tablet can function as an interpreter
for two people speaking different
languages.
Waverly Labs’ new Pilot system
consists of two Bluetooth earpieces
that connect wirelessly with a smartphone. Place one in your ear and give
the other to the person you want to
speak with. Bring up the language to
be translated in the Pilot system’s
smartphone app, and it will translate
your conversation in real time. Unlike
the Google Translate app, Pilot doesn’t
require using the smartphone’s microphone and speaker since each earpiece
contains its own.
Language packages available for
the device include English, Spanish,
French, and Italian. Eventually other
languages will be available for download for an additional fee, according to
tech website CNET.
Waverly Labs launched an
Indiegogo crowdfunding page in late
May and raised $2
million in three
weeks. Investors can
pay $199 to preorder
the system, consisting of two earpieces,
the mobile app, and
a portable charger.
The company says
it will start
deliveries in
May 2017.
HIGH ROLLER
A new bus transit concept
could perform the function of
a subway—but at a fraction of
the cost.
The Beijing firm Transit
Explore Bus demonstrated a
fully functioning scale model
of its elevated transit bus last
month at the China Beijing
International High-Tech Expo.
The bus rides on rails spanning two lanes of traffic and is
elevated so it can straddle
cars up to 6.6 feet high.
Traveling up to 37 mph
and carrying 1,400 passengers, the proposed bus
could replace as many as 40
conventional buses, saving
tons of fuel and reducing
carbon emissions, according
to Xinhua News Agency. A
full-scale version is under
construction in Changzhou,
with testing to begin in July
or August. —M.C.
FRESH OFF THE SHELF
Library patrons looking at books frequently place them back on the shelves in the wrong location. That creates headaches for
librarians, who must regularly check for misplaced books.
Now robots may be able take over this tedious task. Researchers at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore
have developed a wheeled robot that can navigate library aisles during the night,
scanning shelves for out-of-place books and compiling a report for human librarians
to use the next day.
Libraries increasingly incorporate radio frequency identification (RFID) technology
as a means to facilitate the checkout and check-in of books. The “autonomous robotic
shelf-scanning platform” (AuRoSS) uses a reader to scan the RFID tags on every book
on the shelf to determine which books are in the wrong place.
The robot self-navigates along the shelves using laser and ultrasonic sensors that
guide it with a level of precision down to the centimeter, keeping the RFID scanner at
just the correct distance from the book spines for an accurate reading.
According to A*STAR, during tests in Singapore libraries, the AuRoSS robot achieved
up to 99 percent accuracy even with curved shelves. —M.C.
NOTEBOOK Education
Showdown in Cowtown
TRANSGENDER STUDENT GUIDELINES GALVANIZE FORT WORTH by Katie Gaultney in Fort Worth, Texas
Alison Kelley, yoga teacher,
mother of four, and Fort Worth
Independent School District (FWISD)
taxpayer, spent much of this spring
firing off emails to board members and
district officials, hosting meetings in
her home, and organizing others to do
adding that students may use restrooms and locker rooms based on their
own, self-perceived gender identity,
without “medical or mental health
diagnosis.” The district also now supports self-designated-gender participation in athletics, and encourages
the same via social media. She wasn’t
alone. Community members opposed
to a controversial set of “transgender
student guidelines” created Stand for
Fort Worth, an organization with a
Facebook group now boasting more
than 3,500 members.
At an FWISD board meeting on
April 26, Superintendent Kent
Scribner had unceremoniously
announced new transgender student
guidelines to ensure that students are
protected from bullying and discrimination. According to district procedures, since they were labeled
“guidelines” and not “policy,” they
could be implemented without debate,
discussion, or vote.
The guidelines expand on a 2011
district anti-discrimination statement,
teachers to use
inclusive terms
like “students”
or “scholars”
rather than “boys and girls.” Teachers
must use the pronoun and name preferred by the student, regardless of the
student’s legal name or parents’
permission, and they are not to tell
parents about their children’s gender
confusion.
“The school’s responsibility is to
educate students. It’s not to parent,”
Kelley said. “We care deeply about all
students, especially vulnerable ones
like transgender [students]. But these
children don’t deserve to be a political
pawn through this process.”
District officials have publicly stated
they believe seven to 10 transgender
Kelley speaks in
protest at a news
conference.
students are in the FWISD, out of
about 86,000 students districtwide.
The U.S. Department of Education’s
Title IX requires that schools provide
“separate toilet, locker room, and
shower facilities on the basis of sex.”
All 146 FWISD schools currently have
alternate restrooms available, whether
a single-stall restroom or a nurse’s
restroom.
Kelley and others created a furor
that led to six public forums.
Responding to Stand for Fort Worth,
supporters of Superintendent
Scribner and his transgender provisions created their own Stand with
Scribner Facebook page, which
gained more than 1,800 members.
Advocates for the guidelines repeatedly noted incidences of bullying and
suicide among transgender teens.
One FWISD school board trustee,
Ann Sutherland, often considered
one of the more left-leaning board
members, sided with the opposition
to Scribner and proposed scrapping
the guidelines, saying they were
causing huge division within the
community. Sutherland said no students had requested the right to use
“opposite-gender” restrooms prior to
the development of the guidelines.
During the last of the six public
forums, Scribner announced the
board would form an advisory
committee to clarify the transgender
guidelines. Opponents to the measures say a committee is not enough:
Mom-of-five Julia Keyes said during
the public comment period: “The
only way to heal the divide you have
created in our city is to repeal the
policy, start the conversation with
parents and taxpayers that never
occurred, and put any policy to a
board vote. … I’ve changed a few
diapers in my time. … When your kid
makes a mess … you have to start over
with a brand-new diaper.” A
PAUL MOSELEY/THE STAR-TELEGRAM
R
NOTEBOOK Religion
Southern
summit
SOUTHERN BAPTISTS
REJECT CONFEDERATE
FLAG, ADDRESS CULTURAL
CONCERNS by James Bruce
Moore
“It’s not often that I find myself
wiping away tears in a denominational meeting,” Russell Moore,
president of the Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention (SBC), wrote on
his blog, “but I just did.”
The cause was SBC passage at its
June 14-15 annual meeting of a resolution urging Christians “to discontinue
the display of the Confederate battle
flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole
Body of Christ, including our AfricanAmerican brothers and sisters.”
R
Moore underscored the significance
of the decision: The word “Southern”
in Southern Baptist Convention
“doesn’t speak to geography,” he
wrote. “It speaks to history,” a history
that includes the denomination’s
formation in 1845 “over a controversy
about appointing slaveholders as
missionaries.”
Delegates in the wake of the
Orlando shooting at an LGBT club also
adopted a resolution to pray, to donate
blood, and to give other assistance.
They reaffirmed that “marriage is
between one man and one woman”
and expressed “dissent from the
Obergefell opinion that purports to
redefine the institution of marriage
created by God.”
One resolution expressed support
for laws defending religious freedom,
and another praised 11 state attorneys
general who are challenging the
Obama administration’s guidance on
transgender bathrooms.
Baptists also addressed the refugee
crisis. Noting past instances of the SBC
caring for displaced peoples, a resolution encouraged Baptists “to welcome
and adopt refugees into their churches
and homes as a means to demonstrate
to the nations that our God longs for
every tribe, tongue, and nation to be
welcomed at His throne.”
Delegates at the convention
voted twice to elect a president, but
no one gained a clear majority. J.D.
Greear, pastor of The Summit
Church in North Carolina, and Steve
Gaines, p
astor of Bellevue Baptist
Church in Tennessee, came to a near
tie on the second round of voting.
Greear then withdrew his name and
endorsed his opponent. “The task
for those of you who voted for me is
not to complain that things didn’t go
our way,” Greear wrote on his blog.
“It’s to follow the example of our
Savior, who came not to be served,
but to serve.”
MOORE: ADAM COVINGTON/BAPTIST PRESS • RCA: HANDOUT
MARRIAGE PROPOSALS
The 2016 General Synod of the Reformed Church in America (RCA) on June 13
surprised many members by adopting only one out of five recommendations from a
special council of 74 RCA leaders it had convened in April to deal with same-sex
marriage and ordination issues.
Accepted: That the RCA adopt as constitutional an “Order for Christian Marriage”
liturgy that describes marriage as “a joyful covenanting between a man and a
woman.” The key turn-down: That the RCA also adopt as constitutional a marriage
liturgy that defines marriage merely as “between two persons,” whatever their sex.
The following day RCA delegates called for denominational governing bodies to
“assure that marriages in a church or congregation are between a man and a woman.” The changes become official only if
they gain approval by two-thirds of the RCA’s 45 district and affinity groups, along with a majority of delegates to next
year’s General Synod.
Last year Pastor Fred Harrell and most elders of one key RCA church, City Church in San Francisco, decided that sexually
active gay and lesbian couples in same-sex marriages could become church members (see WORLD, July 11, 2015). Some
leaders want local churches or affinity groups to create their own standards concerning LGBT issues. Harrell on his Facebook
page criticized on June 14 “the Injustice of General Synod 2016.” —Marvin Olasky
VOICE S Mailbag
‘A man, a plan,
a canal, Panama’
I was amazed to learn that the same mosquito that carried
the deadly yellow fever epidemic now spreads the Zika virus. It’s
good that we know how to kill the mosquitoes, but discouraging
that the same junk science mentality that led to the deaths of so
many in Panama back then is alive and well today.
MAY 28
—DAVE NYHUIS / Eatonville, Wash.
I grew up in Panama. My parents often
spoke of Dr. William Crawford Gorgas
and his eventual triumph over yellow
fever. The French workers arrived in
Panama with their belongings packed
in the coffins their bodies went home
in. My mom often mentioned that
wherever Christians have gone,
schools and hospitals have been built;
no other religion can claim this.
—STEPHANIE ANDERSON on wng.org
It sounds like targeted use of DDT
could be a good part of the solution.
Why are we so afraid to use the tools
God has given us?
—JOSIE PILLMAN on wng.org
‘No and maybe’
MAY 28 Donald Trump was my last
choice in the primary. However, as the
three most important factors for
evangelicals are abortion, religious
freedom, and Supreme Court nominations, a vote for Hillary Clinton—or
not voting for Trump—will give the
worst possible result for all three.
—JIM HOGREFE on wng.org
Does no one think of the horrific scenario of Trump as our foreign policy
leader? Can we see this naïve blowhard “negotiating” with Vladimir
Putin or Xi Jinping? I’ll take the risk
that Hillary can be controlled by
Congress and the courts, domestically;
at least she has some experience and
some respect abroad.
—MIKE ROGERS / Waxhaw, N.C.
We need a bully to overcome the
Democrats and take back our country.
God has given us a bully, and his name
is Donald Trump.
—JIM RICHARDSON / Oro Valley, Ariz.
I believe Hillary will win by a landslide, but I’m not too concerned. The
next four years are going to be disastrous, so let them be Hillary’s disaster.
That will put us in a better position to
pick up the pieces for 2020.
—ARI HEINZE on wng.org
Many Christians have warned that
unless our nation mends its ways it
will face God’s judgment. Given our
probable choices for president, is it
possible judgment has already begun?
—LEWIS BLODGETT / Asheville, N.C.
‘Into the fight?’
MAY 28 Women in offensive ground
combat operations will put missions at
risk and service members will die
needlessly. This is a foolish idea based
on a worldview that rejects God’s
created order and considers men and
women to be interchangeable parts.
Also, I have never been in a unit where
women “can usually road march for
longer than men.”
—PAUL JAEDICKE on wng.org
I was in the military, and it is not good
for women and women are not good
for the military. If military dads started
talking about protecting their daughters
instead of promoting their daughters’
careers, there might be a sudden exodus from the military of women who
never wanted to be there anyway.
—KAREN TALLENTIRE on wng.org
‘Signage of the times’
MAY 28 Joel Belz’s column was excellent
in explaining that our culture is in
open rebellion against God’s creation
order. Wouldn’t it be great if the
government’s energy and money
advancing the demands of a tiny
minority instead were used to attack
sex trafficking?
—DICK DICKERSON / Mechanicsville, Va.
As a kid I was fond of football and
helping my dad fix the car. I told my
mom that I wished I was a boy. She
said God does not make mistakes;
instead He uses your likes and dislikes
to accomplish wonderful things for
His glory. Now that I’m a wife and
mom of four, I can see she was right.
—LYNN HEFLIN on Facebook
‘Quiet calling’
MAY 28 Having retired from 32 years of
teaching in public schools and community college, I share Cheryl Perez’s
devotion to serving students as a
Christian. As we seek to be faithful,
our heavenly Father will provide
countless opportunities to minister to
our disheartened youth.
—RICHARD ARAGON / Buena Park, Calif.
When will Christian parents and
teachers figure out we need a mass
VOICE S Mailbag
exodus from the public schools? Our
children are being indoctrinated daily
with false ideas.
—LINDA JINKENS / Arlington, Wash.
‘A job with results’
MAY 28 Thanks for your reflections on
daily monotony that is part of life. One
of my favorite things about being a
stay-at-home mom is all the time amid
dishes and laundry and scrubbing I
have for prayer, and who knows how
God uses those prayers?
—ERIN LONG / Egg Harbor Township, N.J.
‘Unequal protection’
Regarding assisted suicide legislation: Francis Schaeffer warned in
1973 that if we allow parents to kill
their unborn, there will come a day
when children will kill their parents.
Well, here we are.
MAY 28
—AUSTIN ABERCROMBIE on wng.org
‘Golden opportunity’
MAY 28 Old age is also a golden opportunity for parents to talk about the
process of dying. I’m in the next
generation to cross the Jordan, and
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SCHOOL EMPLOYMENT
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B Director of Learning Enrichment Services: The person serving
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B United Christian Academy,
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hossearch.
B Gifted teen writers sought for
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EMPLOYMENT
B Amnion Crisis Pregnancy
enter in Burnsville, MN, seeks an
C
Executive Director ministry leader.
Job information:
www.AmnionCPC.org/Friends.
CHURCH EMPLOYMENT
B Covenant Church (OPC) in
Reading, PA, is seeking a pastor
with strong preaching, leading, and
organizational skills. For more information, please contact pastoral
search@covenantberks.org.
while I’m not afraid, it might have
given me comfort had my parents
shared their perspectives.
—DAVID TROUP on wng.org
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VOICE S Andrée Seu Peterson
An intertwining
OUT OF A HORRIBLE MURDER, GOD DRAWS
HIS PEOPLE TOGETHER
In October of 2006 when I heard on the
radio of the Nickel Mines, Pa., schoolhouse
shooting in the Amish community, and in the
same week of the Amish forgiveness of it, I was
not much impressed by forgiveness quickly
tendered. Perhaps God was not much impressed
with my lack of being impressed, for he brought
the incident to my attention again nine years
later, long after the news vans had moved on,
and set me straight.
The speaker at a luncheon I was invited to
happened to be Terri Roberts, mother of the
33-year-old driver of a milk truck servicing
Amish farms, who on one ordinary day in
autumn parked his delivery vehicle, walked
into a schoolhouse, and inexplicably unloaded
his shotgun on the room, killing five little
Amish girls and wounding others, then turning
the weapon on himself.
Terri, a Christian woman eating lunch
outdoors at Sight & Sound theater with a
colleague at that very hour, heard the sirens,
saw the helicopter, and stopped to pray for
whoever it was that was in trouble. She and her
husband had raised four Christian sons of good
repute, and to this day still knows not why her
firstborn made a fearful choice, and why the
God she had faithfully prayed to for her boys
allowed it:
“… [I]f we never met the dark, and the road
that leads nowhither, and the question to which
no answer is imaginable, we should have in our
minds no likeness of the Abyss of the Father,
into which if a creature drop down his thoughts
forever he shall hear no echo return to him.
Blessed, blessed, blessed be He!” (C.S. Lewis,
Perelandra).
God makes no apologies, He gives no explanations. Colossians 1:9-14, which Terri had
numberless times prayed over each son by
name to make a mother’s heart requests, comes
to her mind again after months of grief, and she
tries to resist it but finds her hand stuck to the
MARK MAKELA/REUTERS/NEWSCOM
R
 aseupeterson@wng.org
What is
known by
Terri amid
all the
unknowable
is her own
faith’s
growth.
Roberts speaks at
New Covenant
Community Church
in Delta, Pa.
Bible. “In my heart and soul, I heard God commanding me, ‘Pray that Scripture right now for
the three sons you still have with you.’ … I cried
out, ‘No, God, that is too hard!’ Again, I felt a
gentle, loving nudge: ‘Pray that prayer right
now.’”
What is known by Terri amid all the
unknowable, and recounted in her book
Forgiven, is her own faith’s growth, like flint
polished seven times in the coarse grit in a
rotary tumbler. We also learn of the gem-
making of other principals in the incident, each
with their separate stories known
only to themselves and to God. This
is the strange expanding of the
Kingdom, “the Great Dance, …
woven out of the intertwining
undulation of many cords or bands
of light, leaping over and under one
another and mutually embraced in
arabesques and flower-like subtleties” (Perelandra).
There is her son Zach, refusing
to attend the funeral of his brother,
until an Amish man, laying aside his
distaste for technology, picks up a
telephone and calls New York and
bids him come. There is the phalanx
of 30 black-clad Amish in tall black
hats and white bonnets appearing at
the funeral, shoulder to shoulder
providing a human wall between
the Roberts gravesite and the road where media
cameras craned. It was to the Robertses as
when “the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and
he looked and saw the hills full of horses and
chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).
There is the survivors’ hard-won learning
that “forgiveness is a choice”; and the perfection of God-ward yielding where there are no
quid pro quos; and the divine “intertwining
undulation” by which an Amish family of
Lancaster, which never had much commerce
with the “English,” brought a wooden doll bed
they handcrafted to the grandchild of the
woman whose son had killed their children.
There is—to this present day—Terri Roberts
paying regular therapy visits to the home of the
6-year-old wheel-chaired victim and now
teenage Rosanna.
“All that is made seems planless to the
darkened mind, because there are more plans
than it looked for. … There seems no plan
because it is all plan: there seems no centre
because it is all centre. Blessed be He!”
(Perelandra). A
VOICE S Marvin Olasky
Keeping our
terms straight
DEVELOPING A GOD-HONORING VOCABULARY
We should
not twist
words, and
ourselves,
into pretzels.
KRIEG BARRIE
July is named for Julius Caesar, so let’s
momentarily return to ancient Rome and
reflect on how even everyday words like
fortunate reflect theology.
Many folks back then worshipped Fortuna,
the Roman goddess of luck or fate and the root
of our word unfortunate. Julius, seen as
exceptionally fortunate when winning battles,
apparently became unfortunate on March 15,
44 b.c., when Brutus and others assassinated
him. But Fortuna does not exist, and God does,
so in WORLD we try to minimize use of words
like fortunate or lucky. A much better word to
shape our thinking, and reflect reality, is
providential. That word recognizes God’s
sovereign ordering of all that happens.
Here are seven other examples of word usage
that reflects worldview:
A is for abortionists: In WORLD we don’t call
them doctors, because instead of curing they kill.
We try to avoid abortion clinic, because a clinic is
a healthcare facility: We’ll say abortion business,
center, or facility. We also avoid using the Latin
term fetus, because that also distances ourselves
from the tragic reality of killing an unborn baby.
B is for b.c., an abbreviation increasingly
unpopular among secularists who don’t recognize Christ as the fulcrum of history: They
want to use b.c.e., “before the Common Era,”
but we stick with honoring Christ by calling
every year of the past two millennia an anno
Domini, a year of our Lord.
C is for compassion, rightly defined as a
willingness to suffer with a person in need. We
try not to use it as synonym for sympathy,
government welfare programs, or pitying the
needy without taking action (often time-
consuming and costly) to help them.
D is for differentiating the Divine from the
man-made: We capitalize God when referring
to the God of the Bible but refer in lowercase to
R
the gods of Hinduism or other false religions.
We do capitalize proper names of particular
gods (Vishnu, Shiva, Allah) for the same reason
we capitalize proper names of individuals or
characters in novels.
E is for extremists such as those who
murdered innocent people in Orlando, San
Bernardino, Chattanooga, Fort Hood, Boston,
Paris, and Madrid. We do not shy away from
identifying them as Muslims when they are, or
recognizing that we are in a war against Islamic
terrorism.
F is for fundamentalist, an honorable word
and not one to be used to equate ardent Muslims
with ardent Christians. We celebrated last
year the centennial of the completion of
The Fundamentals, a set of 90 essays published between 1910 and 1915 that affirmed
theologically conservative Protestant
beliefs, including the historical reality of
Jesus’ virgin birth, miracles, and resurrection, along with the crucial importance of
Christ’s death as the atonement for sin.
G is for gender, originally a grammatical
term but now a common way of referring
to maleness or femaleness without using
the word sex. The World Health
Organization offers a good distinction: “What
do we mean by sex and gender? … Sex refers to
the biological and physiological characteristics
that define men and women. Gender refers to
the socially constructed roles, behaviors,
activities, and attributes that a given society
considers appropriate for men and women.”
Using gender when we mean sex reflects the
non-Christian view that the difference between
males and females is essentially a human construct rather than one ordained by God, as
Genesis 1:27 states: “So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Thinking of gender as something constructed
by man leads into the current headlines about
“transgenderism”—but subjective assertions do
not change the objective fact that God created
humans male and female. If we accept the nowconventional practice of changing pronouns as
soon as someone says, “I feel I’m a man trapped
in a woman’s body,” we’re signing on to an
unbiblical anthropology/physiology, because
the difference between males and females is
not just sex organs.
At WORLD we can sympathize with the
unease and dissatisfaction of those who feel
trapped, but we should not twist words, and
ourselves, into pretzels. A
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Go to: mysamaritanstory.org
Brett & Christina
“We are connecting with people who we don’t know, but
the only bond that we share is Christ—living out New
Testament Christianity that we see in the Book of Acts.”
For more than twenty years, Samaritan Ministries’ members have
• More than 61,000 families
been sharing one another’s medical needs, without using health
(over 202,000 individuals)*
insurance, through a Biblical model of community among believers. • Sharing over $18 million* in
Samaritan members share directly with each other and do not share
medical needs each month
in abortions and other unbiblical practices.
• The monthly share has never
Come see what our members are saying and start your own
exceeded $405 for a family
Samaritan story today at: mysamaritanstory.org
of any size*
Biblical community
applied to health care
samaritanministries.org 888.268.4377
facebook.com/samaritanministries
twitter.com/samaritanmin
* As of June 2016

PDF - World Magazine

Transcription

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