clinton, inc. - World Magazine

Transcription

The divorce revolution hits a third generation
J U N E 11, 2016
CLINTON,
INC.
Did the State Department
downplay terror attacks to protect
the family foundation?
“Today’s Christian
college students and
graduates will face
challenges that previous
generations could not
have imagined.”
R. ALBERT MOHLER JR. | president
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
and Boyce College
Exclusive offer for World readers
See what’s different about Boyce College and
apply now for FREE using the waiver you find at
BoyceCollege.com/worldmag
CONTENTS
|
June 11, 2016 • Volume 31 • Number 12
30
40
17
46
50
F E AT U R E S
30 Troubling ties
DISPATCH E S
5 News / Human Race /
Quotables / Quick Takes
40 Power campaigns
CU LT U R E
17 Movies & TV / Books /
Children’s Books / Q&A / Music
46 Struck down, standing fast
NO T EBOOK
55 Lifestyle / Technology /
Religion / Medicine
Under the Clinton State Department, influence from big money
donors appeared to thwart efforts to combat Boko Haram—
efforts that might have saved thousands of lives
The GOP is fighting to maintain control of Congress after
Election Day. Here are seven races that could shift the Senate
Chinese churches prove resilient, with or without crosses
on their steeples
50 Sins of their fathers & mothers
The divorce revolution is now affecting a third generation,
as children and grandchildren of divorced couples
carry scars of the past into relationships
ON THE COVER: Photo illustration by Krieg Barrie
(Hillary Clinton: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images; Bill Clinton: Rex Features via AP;
explosion at Christ the King Catholic Cathedral on June 17, 2012, in Zaria, Nigeria:
stringer/AFP/GettyImages)
Give the gift of clarity: wng.org/clarity
VOICE S
3 Joel Belz
14 Janie B. Cheaney
28 Mindy Belz
61Mailbag
63 Andrée Seu Peterson
64 Marvin Olasky
NOTES FROM THE CEO
As I write, we’re halfway through our World Journalism Institute (WJI) course
for college students, and it’s hard to be in the office without getting caught up in
the energy and emotion. We hear a lot of worrisome news about the next generation,
but these students defy the trends, spending precious summer weeks learning to
bring their Christian worldview to bear on the practice of journalism.
This year’s 14-student class includes aspiring
journalists from 11 states and 12 colleges. We settled
on our class size a few years ago, when we determined that 14 represented the number of students
we could train most effectively, given the resources
available. The instruction is hands-on, so it would
be tough to accomplish our goals with more students in the class.
Yet that doesn’t stop the nagging feeling that
we’ve left a lot of great students out. Every year we
have to turn away dozens of eligible candidates for
the few seats we offer. In addition, we want to be
able to provide paid internships, either at WORLD
or with other news organizations, to deserving WJI
graduates.
As Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky has noted, WJI grads produce more than half
of what you read in WORLD Magazine and on WORLD Digital, and they are
roughly half of the journalists you hear on WORLD Radio. But the vast majority of
our alumni serve in newsrooms outside WORLD, which is consistent with another
of our strategic goals.
We’re always looking to train more and turn away fewer. If you’re interested in
what we’re doing in journalism, visit worldji.com.
Kevin Martin
[email protected]
CONTACT US: 800.951.6397 / WNG.ORG
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“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof;
the world and those who dwell therein.”
—Psalm 24:1
Chief Content Officer Nick Eicher
Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky
Senior Editor Mindy Belz
Editor Timothy Lamer
National Editor Jamie Dean
Managing Editor Daniel James Devine
Art Director David K. Freeland
Associate Art Director Robert L. Patete
Washington Bureau Chief J.C. Derrick
Reporters Emily Belz • June Cheng
Sophia Lee • Angela Lu
Senior Writers Janie B. Cheaney • Susan Olasky
Andrée Seu Peterson • John Piper
Edward E. P
lowman • Cal Thomas • Lynn Vincent
Correspondents Megan Basham • Julie Borg
Anthony Bradley • Andrew Branch • Bob Brown
James Bruce • Tim Challies • Michael Cochrane
Kiley Crossland • John Dawson • Mary Jackson
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Editorial Assistants Kristin Chapman
Amy Derrick • Mary Ruth Murdoch
Graphic Designer Rachel Beatty
Illustrator Krieg Barrie
Digital Production Assistant Arla J. Eicher
Website wng.org
Executive Editor Mickey McLean
Managing Editor Leigh Jones
Assistant Editors Lynde Langdon • Dan Perkins
Reporters Onize Ohikere • Evan Wilt
Editorial Assistant Whitney Williams
Website wng.org/radio
Executive Producer/Cohost Nick Eicher
Senior Producer/Cohost Joseph Slife
Correspondents Paul Butler • Kent Covington
Jim Henry • Mary Reichard
Producers Johnny Franklin • Carl Peetz (technical)
Christina Darnell • Kristen Eicher (field)
Listening In Warren Cole Smith • Rich Roszel
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Martin
Founder Joel Belz
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Account Reps Arla J. Eicher • Al Saiz • Alan Wood
Member Services Alison Foley • Summer Langford
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Website wng.org/children
Publisher Howard Brinkman
Editor Rich Bishop
wo rld jo urnalis m inst i t u t e
Website worldji.com
Dean Marvin Olasky
Associate Dean Edward Lee Pitts
B OARD o f directo rs
John Weiss (chairman)
William Newton (vice chairman)
Mariam Bell • Kevin Cusack • Peter Lillback
Howard Miller • Russell B. Pulliam • David Skeel
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Raymon Thompson
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
‘Never’ too soon
WE HAVE NO NEED TO RUSH TO JUDGMENT
IN THIS ODD ELECTION SEASON
“I can’t believe the mess we’re in,” one of
my very savvy political friends fretted to
me the other day. “How will we ever get it all
straightened out by November?”
Well, we won’t. But one of the wonderful
things the Bible makes clear about our great
God is that He never seems to be in a hurry.
Quick to show mercy—yes! But undoing the
awful calamities His people regularly bring on
themselves? No, He’ll devote 40 years to one
reclamation project, and maybe 70 years to
another. Even in the New Testament when
He was performing one-on-one miracles, He
tended to frustrate folks by just taking His time
getting to the scene of the problem.
Does God seem a little slow right now getting to the scene of the breakdown? Are you
frustrated because He hasn’t made clear yet (to
you, at least) which candidate should get your
support in this fall’s presidential election—and
maybe some other offices as well? Does it
frustrate you to be reduced to phrases like
“NeverTrump” or “Worser of Two Evils”?
So keep this in mind, please: If the God
of the universe takes His time sorting things
out, why should you rush to judgment? If in
His order of things, you’re allowed six more
months to make up your mind about who
should be our next president, why’s it so
important that you show how smart you are by
announcing your decisions even before God
has made His purpose clear?
I’m not saying it’s wrong to latch on to your
favorite candidate and then to give him or her
the energetic benefit of your backing. I am saying it’s a bit presumptuous to assert that there’s
simply no further evidence the Almighty could
show you that could possibly prompt you to
change your mind. Isn’t that at least part of the
reasoning behind scheduling a fairly lengthy
campaign? If we already know everything we
need to make thoughtful choices, why not just
settle for a three-day election cycle?
TRUMP: RICHARD DREW/AP • CLINTON: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
R
 [email protected]
If we already
know everything we
need to make
thoughtful
choices, why
not just
settle for a
three-day
election
cycle?
No, we need that extra time—and a good
case in point is right at hand. It’s fair to assume,
I think, that an overwhelming majority of
WORLD readers would, over the last few years,
have put themselves in a pretty dogmatic
“NeverHillary” category. But then along comes
this fellow Donald Trump, with all his
baggage—prompting a number of people to back
off a bit and to qualify their “NeverHillary” to a
more cautious “AlmostNeverHillary.” In a
“lesser of two evils” contest, these folks would
say, she doesn’t look quite as bad now as she did
before. Well, now.
Isn’t that what
political campaigns are all
about?
But it works
just as well in the
other direction.
Significant numbers of WORLD
readers, I sense,
have been in the
“NeverTrump”
category. I’ll confess you could have legitimately slapped such a
label on me. With all his negatives it has been
hard for me, over the last six months, to imagine
any development that might make me think
more positively about Mr. Trump. Yet then, in
mid-May, along comes Trump’s release to the
public of his surprising list of 11 examples of the
kind of jurists he would name to the Supreme
Court if he is elected president. It was not only
an outstanding list; its publication at this point
in the campaign was an unprecedented gift to
the voting public.
“Did you see that?” a number of “Never
Trumpers” immediately asked me by phone
and email. “Does that change your thinking
at all?”
Of course it does. Enough to back off the
word “Never”? Maybe not—at least not yet. But
maybe enough to make me question whether I
should have said “Never” in the first place.
There’s just so much to learn. There’s so much
out there that God knows, but that I don’t know
yet—and maybe never will.
Indeed, God operates with a very long
calendar. He’s not in a hurry, just as He never
has been, to share with us everything He
already knows. For me, that’s enough to turn
the traditional advice upside down and warn
everybody instead: Whatever you do, don’t vote
early! A
June 11, 2016 • WORLD Magazine 3
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DISPATCHES
News / Human Race / Quotables / Quick Takes
Mascots and
manipulators
RESPONDING TO THE TRANSGENDER
DEBATE WITH TRUTH AND LOVE ELAINE THOMPSON/AP
by Marvin Olasky
Manage your membership: wng.org/membership
D I S PA T C H E S News
A mother and daughter attend the State
Board of Education public comment session
on the board’s bathroom guidelines in
Lansing, Mich. (left); Kendall Balentine
(below), who has had sexual reassignment
surgery, talks with a transgender woman.
Previous page: Students hold stickers for a
new gender neutral bathroom as members
of the cheer squad applaud during a
ceremonial opening for the restroom at
Nathan Hale High School in Seattle.
6 WORLD Magazine • June 11, 2016
you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.” Physical disease. Psychological
disease. Things aren’t right. In looking
at anyone, including ourselves, we need
to keep in mind both Genesis 1-2 and
Genesis 3: We are all made in God’s
image. We are all sinners. For a small
number of humans, one aftereffect of
Genesis 3 is gender dysphoria, a profound state of depression about one’s
God-given sex, either male or female.
To grasp that particular effect of
original sin, visit the “asktransgender”
subreddit of Reddit, which with 83 billion page views last year is one of the
most visited U.S. websites. One afternoon’s comments included this one:
“I’ve been crying all morning. A friend
posted a candid picture of me and all I
see is the horrible man I can’t escape. …
This is never ever going away even
after years and years of hormones. I
want to die … why can’t I just
disappear?”
And this comment: “I feel absolutely
like I am a woman stuck in a man’s
body, and I spend a lot of time thinking
and reading about transitioning. I occasionally have these insidious doubts. …
I’ve had anxiety since childhood and
struggled with depression through my
teen years … What if these thoughts of
being trans are just me trying to escape
from these problems? ... Maybe I just
all mixed up in some way) be transdespising or trans-phobic? No: The joys
God designed in making us male and
female, and letting us unite in marriage,
are so great that we should be sad
regarding anyone who doesn’t have
them. Our battle is not with depressed
transgenders but with those who make
them “mascots”—to use Thomas
Sowell’s expression about liberal use of
poor people—and put them on display.
(Sowell: “The problem with being a
mascot is that you are a symbol of
someone else’s significance or virtue.
The actual well-being of a mascot is not
the point.”)
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER: ROBERT KILLIPS/LANSING STATE JOURNAL VIA AP • BALENTINE: KRISTINA BARKER/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Obama administration on
May 13 directed public schools to
allow students to use the bathroom of
their choice. Withholding of federal
funds could be the prod for schools that
don’t fall in line. How might Christians
think through the transgender issue?
A generation ago some conservatives
sneered at “welfare queens” and some
liberals made them all heroines. Both
generalizations were wrong. A similar
problem is evident today in discussion
of the much smaller minority known as
“transgendered.” To some conservatives
they are perverts, and that’s the end of
the discussion. To some liberals they
are nature’s nobility. A Christian
perspective is different from both.
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.” In the next chapter
Adam looks at Eve and says, “Bone of
my bones, flesh of my flesh.” Chapter 2
ends, “Therefore a man shall leave his
father and his mother and hold fast to
his wife, and they shall become one
flesh. And the man and his wife were
both naked and were not ashamed.”
That’s it. Everything’s great. That’s the
end of the Bible, right?
Not exactly. Chapter 3 describes the
Fall and its terrible consequences:
“Cursed is the ground … pain … sweat …
R
want a fresh start, and this is the most
extreme way of getting that?”
And this comment: “I want to look
like a girl. I never could. My body’s an
inverted triangle shape. … My feet are
size 12. … People say ‘suicide is never
the answer,’ but I need to know WHY
it’s not the answer. Because as far as I
can see, it is. That, or I get some bolt of
inspiration from God. … I pray every
night. I don’t even know who to or
what for. Because I need something to
change.”
Should the rest of us who aren’t
mixed up in this particular way (we’re
157
BY THE NUMBERS
Here’s one comment I ran across on
Reddit last year: “I’m transgender. …
Countless trans people tell me and
others … the only reason we feel badly
about ourselves is because of how cis
[non-transgender] people judge us. I
knew my body was screwed up before I
even knew what the term cis meant. …
Whenever I go to support groups or
LGBT events I’m always lumped in
with people who hate non-trans
people, want to break down all of the
oppressive systems around them, and
frankly just want to be seen. The thing
is, I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want
to be a femme genderqueer trans boi. I
just wanna be a normal guy.”
Since it’s now a legal requirement in
New York City to address a person with
the pronoun and title the person wants,
here are two more relevant Reddit
comments: “I’m trans … and I have
never met anyone who says … ‘fight the
cistem’ or insists upon flavour of the
month makey-upey pronouns, or tells
anyone else the only reason we feel bad
about our bodies is cis people.” And, “I
knew a genderqueer couple that
required you use rotating pronouns for
them. (xe, she, he, xis, his, her) I just
said ‘they’ or didn’t talk to them. … Most
trans people just want to live … and not
turn everything into a battle.”
When Christians enter into bathroomuse debates, we should distinguish
between those building careers as transgender activists by deliberately rebelling against God’s order, and those who
resent mascot treatment and merely
want to find a way to minimize their
soul-tearing misery. Strugglers should
be shown the love of Christ. Agitators
for whom “equality” is not an end-state
but an industry—and, sadly, perhaps
even a religion—also need compassion,
in the form of truth delivered in love.
All of them, like all of us, need God,
and we reduce the possibility of their
finding Him if we react to the “We win,
you lose” demands of media-designated
spokespeople merely by shouting back,
“No—we win, you lose.”
Wise policymakers will look for
ways to make bathrooms safe for
children and adults. We’ll report on
their efforts. A
 [email protected]  @MarvinOlasky
The number of pregnant women in the continental United States who have
tested positive for the Zika virus, according to a May 20 report from the CDC.
Another 122 pregnant women in U.S. territories have caught the virus,
which puts their unborn babies at risk of microcephaly.
488 million
The estimated number of social media posts and comments generated
by the image-conscious Chinese government every year, according to
a study led by a Harvard University researcher.
54 mph
The average speed of the Solar Impulse 2 during one American leg of the
experimental solar-powered airplane’s circumnavigation of the world. The
pilots of the solar plane made the flight from Phoenix to Tulsa, Okla., in 18
hours and hope to complete their historic circumnavigation by late summer.
63.8 pounds
The weight of 13-year-old Charles Patchen’s state-record-breaking catfish
catch on the Chattahoochee River in Florida on May 15. The Alabama teen
needed two hours to reel in the humongous fish.
$2.2 million
The endowment retired businessman Louis J. Appignani gave to the
University of Miami to create the nation’s first academic chair “for the study
of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.” Appignani told The New York
Times, “I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists.”
D I S PA T C H E S Human Race
Rescued
Died
Longtime 60 Minutes
correspondent Morley
Safer died on May 19,
one week after retiring. He
was 84. In his 61 years in
journalism, Safer filed 919
reports for 60 Minutes,
often traveling 200,000
miles in a year. Safer helped
shaped public opinion as
he traveled with troops in
Vietnam, showing Marines
in 1965 torching the huts
and food stores of villagers
in Cam Ne. In 1983, he
exposed the wrongful
it and throwing stuff” as
Jones pushed Belcher out
of the store. Jones works
for a third-party security
company. The assault is
listed on a police report as
a potential hate crime.
Euthanized
The Brazilian Senate voted
55-22 on May 12 to begin
an impeachment trial of
President Dilma Rousseff,
a move requiring her to
step down from office for
Dutch officials last year
allowed doctors to prescribe
a lethal injection of drugs
to a child sex abuse victim
in her 20s who wished to
die, according to a report
from the Dutch Euthanasia
Commission. The unnamed
woman, who suffered
abuse between the ages of
5 and 15, had developed
post-traumatic stress
disorder, severe
anorexia, chronic
depression, and hallucinations. Doctors and
consultants, though, called
her “totally competent”
and said her condition was
incurable, despite
improvements during therapy two years ago. In the
Netherlands, qualifying for
euthanasia simply requires
an “unbearable” and incurable condition, a standard
that increasingly includes
depressed individuals and
lonely senior citizens.
Arrested
Police in Washington, D.C.,
detained security guard
Francine Jones, 45, and
charged her with assault
after a male who identifies
as a transgender woman
said the guard pushed him
out of a women’s restroom.
Ebony Belcher, 32, had
entered the women’s restroom at a Giant supermarket on May 18 when Jones
demanded that Belcher
leave. A witness told WJLA
the two were “getting into
Suspended
up to 180 days, including
during the planned
Summer Olympics in Rio
de Janeiro. Rousseff,
Brazil’s first female president, allegedly used illegal
accounting tricks to hide
budget troubles. A stalwart
of the left-wing Workers’
Party, Rousseff calls the
impeachment a coup. The
Senate has 180 days to vote
whether to remove
Rousseff permanently.
About 60 percent of
Brazilian lawmakers in
Congress face corruption
accusations as the country
languishes in its worst
recession in at least 80
years. Vice President
Michel Temer of the
Democratic Movement
Party is serving in
Rousseff’s stead in the
interim.
Visit WORLD Digital: wng.org
NKEKI: AZEEZ AKUNLEYAN/AP • SAFER: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES • ROUSSEFF: ERALDO PERES/AP
Government-backed vigilantes in the Sambisa
Forest of Nigeria on May 17
discovered Amina Ali
Nkeki, one of scores of
schoolgirls Islamist militants kidnapped from the
town of Chibok in 2014.
Now 19, Nkeki is the first of
the Chibok schoolgirls to
be rescued. Boko Haram
terrorists kidnapped 276
mostly Christian girls in
April 2014, though 57 soon
escaped. Numerous reports
later claimed the remaining 219 had been sold as
slaves or forced into suicide bombings. Nkeki said
six of the girls have died in
captivity. Nkeki now has
a 4-month-old baby:
When vigilantes found
her, she was accompanied by a man claiming
to be her “husband”—a
suspected Boko
Haram militant.
c onviction of a black man
from Texas, Lenell Geter,
winning his release from a
life sentence. Safer earned
the George Polk Award for
career achievement, along
with Emmy and Peabody
awards.
D I S PA T C H E S Quotables
‘It sounds
like that
somehow
the ball was
dropped.’
Rescued Chibok schoolgirl
AMINA ALI NKEKI, kidnapped in
2014 by Boko Haram in northern
Nigeria along with 275 others,
on being reunited with her
Former Defense Secretary LEON
PANETTA on President Barack Obama’s
failure to foresee the rise of ISIS.
“It struck me,” he said, “that I did
not see anything thatindicated
that there was concern about
ISIS developing.”
‘This was
not a protest.
It was a riot.’
Albuquerque, N.M., City Council president
DAN LEWIS on anti-Trump demonstrations outside a May 24 rally for Donald
Trump in the city. The demonstrators
reportedly threw rocks and burning
T-shirts that may have broken
windows at the Albuquerque
Convention Center.
‘There are
probably more
ugly women
in America than
attractive women.’
ED RENDELL, former governor of
Pennsylvania and a prominent supporter
of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign,
on why Donald Trump’s comments
about some women’s looks will hurt
him with female voters.
Amina and her mom
mom. Since the kidnapping, 18
parents of the girls, reportedly
including Nkeki’s father, have
died, relatives say due to stress.
‘Yes, the thought
of male genitalia
in girls’ locker
rooms—and vice
versa—might be
distressing to
some. But the
battle for equality
has always been
in part about
overcoming
discomfort.’
An editorial in THE
CHARLOTTE OBSERVER in
support of the Obama administration’s efforts to force school
districts to allow transgender students to use the
restrooms and locker
rooms of their choice.
PANETTA: DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES • ALBUQUERQUE: ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL/ZUMA/NEWSCOM • RENDELL: OWEN SWEENEY/INVISION/AP • AMINA: FLORIAN PLAUCHEUR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
‘Please Mum, take
it easy. Relax. I
never thought I
would ever see
you again, wipe
your tears. God
has made it
possible for us to
see each other
again.’
D I S PA T C H E S Quick Takes
Life after death
When Chuck Zellers noticed something unusual with his
Social Security payment back in March, he phoned a
government office looking for answers. The call may have
surprised the government worker he contacted, considering the U.S. government listed the Nebraska man as
deceased. “Oh, by golly, you are dead,” the Social Security
Administration clerk told the very-much-alive Zellers. “She
told me it could be a funeral home declared [me] dead; or
that someone just put in a wrong keystroke or something
like that,” he said. Zellers spent weeks appearing in person
at government agencies before officials finally designated
Zellers as “alive” in May.
A rare domesticated and housebroken bison sold for $5,960 on
Craigslist. The seller, Karen Schoeve of Argyle, Texas, transported the
massive beast to a family in Flower Mound, Texas, outside of Dallas on
May 14. According to Schoeve, the bison called Bullet has a great
personality and roamed her house with impunity. Besides tracking mud
in, Schoeve said, she had no problems with the domesticated Bullet.
Questions questioned
What alcoholic drinks do 14- and 15-year-olds prefer? That
was a question millions of students in the United Kingdom
faced when they took a standardized biology test on May
17. The remainder of the General Certificate of Secondary
Education biology exam
contained similar offtopic questions, such
as one asking
students to
define what an
independent
company is and
another about
an obscure
research study on drunk rats. An uproar
over the unusual questions spilled over to
Twitter where more than 100,000 students
weighed in. The company that created the
test defended the questions, saying the
subject matter appeared on the syllabus.
Weight training
Among the many ways the
Chicago Bears would like
rookie draft pick Leonard
Floyd to prepare for his first
NFL season, only one requires
alarms on his phone. “I’ve got
prompts set up on my
phone [multiple] times
in the day that I’m supposed to eat,” the No. 9
pick in the 2016 NFL
Draft told CSN
Chicago. Floyd said
team officials
weren’t specific
about the menu or
about the types of
food the 6-foot-4, 220pound linebacker should eat,
“as long as I eat a lot of it.”
BISON: VERNON BRYANT/THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS • ZELLERS: GWYNETH ROBERTS/THE JOURNAL-STAR VIA AP • ALCOHOL: HANDOUT • FLOYD: GREGORY PAYAN/AP
Biggest pet on the block
ARDMONA: HANDOUT • EINSPAHR: WELD COUNTY • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • VERONNEAU: THE FRESNO BEE • UNDERGROUND: DAVID HENDERSON/ISTOCK
Tomato
explosion
Caught with the kids
The Australian government has
warned grocery shoppers across
the Outback
to beware
of an explosive batch
of canned
tomatoes.
On May 13,
canning
company
SPC
Ardmona
announced it
was pulling some of its canned
tomatoes from supermarket
shelves in Australia because a
packaging defect made the cans
susceptible to exploding upon
opening. The Australian government quickly stepped in with an
official product recall.
A Colorado baby sitter’s alleged bank robbery plan turned out as
audacious as it was ill-conceived. Police say 28-year-old Rachel
Einspahr on May 13 loaded her two young baby-sitting charges in her
Nissan SUV and went to the drive-thru of the Colorado East Bank &
Trust in Severance, Colo. There, she allegedly passed a note through the pneumatic tube to a
teller saying that a man in her car was threatening the children unless the bank gave her
money. The teller dutifully handed out $500 and then called police. Authorities found Einspahr
and her vehicle a short time later just blocks from the bank.
Antique flak
Perhaps stricken by a berserker rage at a
medieval festival, a Middle Ages re-enactor
felled a drone from the sky using a spear. The
incident occurred during Rusborg 2016, a
Russian Middle Ages festival that ended on
May 9. According to witnesses, a drone pilot
was using a quadcopter to buzz actors just
before a battle scene when one of the participants took exception to the 21st-century
technology. The actor took down the drone
with one heave but later promised the pilot
to pay for the damage.
Catty couple
For some, the thought of being married in front of more than a thousand
feline celebrants would be a nightmare. But for Louise Veronneau and
her new husband Dominic Husson, it was the wedding of their dreams.
The Canadian couple traveled to the largest no-kill cat sanctuary in
North America, outside of Fresno, Calif., for their nuptials in May after
three years of dating. Shelter founder Lynea Lattanzio became ordained
so she could officiate the event for the couple and an audience
composed of 1,100 cats and an unreported number of human spectators.
Here comes the sun
Unusual weather racked London’s mass transit
system on May 13 causing disruptive delays across
the system. The problem in the famously cloudy
nation? Too much sun. According to London
Underground officials, above-ground trains
depend on CCTV monitors to pull away safely
from train platforms. But “excess sunlight”
prevented conductors from seeing the monitors,
forcing them to wait for platform staff to give
the all-clear.
VOICE S Janie B. Cheaney
Costly speech
THE CONSEQUENCES OF CENSORSHIP ARE
WORSE THAN THE RISKS OF FREE SPEECH
It’s better to
allow bruising slurs
than to ban
them, for,
when words
go on the
chopping
block, the ax
doesn’t know
where to
stop.
 [email protected]  @jbcheaney
KRIEG BARRIE
Here’s a thought experiment. Which of
the following statements would have the
most powerful effect if spoken out loud?
“Ready, aim, fire!”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal. …”
“Your nose looks like a potato.”
“Trump 2016!”
“This action is about a great deal more than
just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and
respect we accord our fellow citizens. …”
The answer: It depends. It depends on who
is speaking and why; whether the “Fire” command is coming from an army captain or a boy
with a stick, whether the potato comment is
spoken in a comedy routine or in a junior-high
gym class, or whether the bathroom theorizing
comes from a faculty meeting or from the U.S.
attorney general. It’s complicated, and yet most
humans of average intelligence can sift the
hundreds of statements they hear or read every
day and determine which are actually potent
and which are throwaways or metaphors.
It makes you wonder about the average
intelligence on college campuses. The story
about the Emory University students who were
“traumatized” by seeing the words “Trump
2016” written in sidewalk chalk around campus
received wide coverage, at least in conservative
circles. To be fair, it was (probably) only a
handful of students who were lacerated by the
likelihood of a Trump supporter walking
around loose. But a survey of college students
earlier this year, evaluating their attitudes
about free speech, is more troubling.
These young people appear to be struggling
with where the lines should be drawn. While
72 percent agree that offensive political views
should not be restricted, a sizable majority (69
percent) want to outlaw offensive Halloween
costumes. Seventy percent say the press should
be free to report on campus protests—but only,
apparently, if the coverage is favorable, because
R
nearly half saw reasons to restrict the press if
coverage was likely to be unfair.
We sigh and tell them to grow up. A developing mind should be able to grapple with a
dissenting view, even a hateful one, without
exploding. Liberal gadfly Camille Paglia traces
some of the hypersensitivity back to academic
fads like poststructuralism, which taught that
language shapes reality. Paglia scoffs at the
notion, which universities take to ridiculous
lengths, but in a way language does shape
reality: Words need authority to back them up,
but authority needs words to legitimatize itself or accomplish its aims. A
declaration of independence once
brought forth a nation. “Let there be
light” produced an entire universe.
The kids are right: Words are powerful, and often harmful. But they’re
wrong about the implication.
“Free speech” is a positive value
with some negative effects.
Censorship is a negative value with a
negative effect. We can predict the
good or harm that might result from
provocative speech—such as shouting
Fire! in a crowded theater—but
censored speech, while preventing
some of the bad, also prevents the
good. That’s why First Amendment
advocates say the best remedy for
harmful speech is more speech, not less. In the
marketplace of ideas, foolish, impractical, or
evil propositions will eventually lose out.
The key word is eventually—bad ideas have
their day; but if better ideas are free to compete,
that day is limited. In the long run, it’s better to
allow bruising slurs than to ban them, for, when
words go on the chopping block, the ax doesn’t
know where to stop. As I write, a municipal
judge in Wyoming faces dismissal for saying,
out loud, that she will not perform same-sex
weddings. Those were potent words, costly to
her and painful to certain members of her
community—would they have been better left
unsaid?
Once, in first-century Athens, the Apostle
Paul proclaimed a radical idea that would
reshape history. His audience was free to laugh
at him but did not shut him down. For all their
faults, the Athenians understood something
about ideas and the words used to express them:
They have hard, pointy distinctions. Sometimes
they hurt. Often they have consequences. But
shutting down speech reduces all ideas to
spongy gray, with spongy minds to match. A
WLD25
CULTURE
Movies & TV / Books / Children’s Books / Q&A / Music
M OV I E
Uncertainty
principles
CRITICS PRAISE DOUBT, BUT IT IS
NOT MORE NOBLE THAN FAITH
by Megan Basham
When The Washington
Post ran a piece on
May 12 by chief film critic
Ann Hornaday titled “The
Rise of Christian Movies
for the Rest of Us,” I had to
sit up and take notice. She
started out with some of
SABAN FILMS
R
the same criticisms of
evangelical films that I’ve
voiced—namely that they
tend to lack realism while
gorging on sentiment. Still,
I couldn’t help feeling a
little annoyed when she
began trotting out jabs as
 [email protected]  @megbasham
simplistic and unimaginative
(“God’s Not Dumb”) as the
movies she was panning.
It’s like when someone
bad-mouths the family
member you’ve been complaining about for ages. You
can say negative things
about the family member,
because, at the end of the
day, it’s your sister or
brother and you love them
even when they’re driving
you crazy. But some
stranger? Someone who
isn’t motivated by a desire
to see that brother or sister
rise to his or her potential?
Clive Owen and Jaeden
Lieberher in The Confirmation
Well, then it feels like fighting words.
The problem is none of
the movies Hornaday
applauds for their complex,
nuanced approach to some
aspect of Christianity were
directed (with the possible
exception of the famously
reclusive Terrence Malick)
by professing Christians.
And as we’ve seen with
several high-profile biblical
flops in recent years, that
faith perspective (or lack of
it) matters. A lot.
I was most intrigued by
Hornaday’s praise of
recent indie release The
Confirmation. She lauds
the PG-13 rated drama
C U LT U R E Movies & TV
what do you think?” asks his
son. Walt responds, “I think
I don’t know. And no matter
what they say, neither do
they.” Later Walt undermines the meaning and
purpose of Communion by
advising his son that it’s OK
to participate in it even if he
doesn’t believe in Jesus
because it will make his
mother happy and “it won’t
hurt you.”
This isn’t cast as wellmeaning but misguided
advice. Rather, the message
of The Confirmation is
clear—doubt, embodied by
the character of the father,
is far more noble and courageous than faith, embodied
by the character of the
mother.
This lack of surety in
Christ, in any sense of that
word, is what, to Hornaday
and many other secular critics, makes the story laudable
as a Christian film. You get
the sense that she would
rule out The Pilgrim’s
Progress, The Brothers
Karamazov, and Paradise
Clive Owen, Matthew Modine,
Lost as great works of art
and Maria Bello
because they commit that
great postmodern crime of
conviction in their explicitly
and spiritual understandbiblical worldview.
ing.” Nor that it should be
That’s not to say that
“intellectually complex,
doubt can’t be a part of a
carefully crafted, and morChristian’s character arc.
ally engaged.” I just think
But movies like The
she betrays a misguided
Confirmation elevate charsecular elitism in thinking
acters whose default reality
these things are best (indeed
is skepticism. Rarely have I
only!) achieved in stories
witnessed earnest treatment
built upon the shifting sands
of a character who possesses
of spiritual uncertainty. A
a sincere faith
that’s worked out
in daily, mindBOX OFFICE TOP 10
renewing spiriFOR THE WEEKEND OF MAY 20-22
according to Box Office Mojo
tual disciplines,
occasionally
CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V),
beset by doubt.
and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale,
with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
I take no
SVL
issue with
1̀ The Angry Birds Movie PG.....332
Hornaday’s idea
2̀ Captain America:
of what a “good”
Civil War* PG-13..................................... 173
Christian movie
3̀ Neighbors 2:
should be: that it
Sorority Rising R............................... 7 610
should “[invite]
4̀ The Nice Guys R.................................. 7 710
viewers into a
5̀ The Jungle Book* PG................... 141
6̀ Money Monster* R...........................5 510
much bigger pic7̀ The Darkness PG-13......................... 165
ture, to wrestle
8̀Zootopia* PG............................................ 132
with their own
9̀ The Huntsman:
sense of purpose
Winter’s War* PG-13.......................363
10 Mother’s Day* PG-13........................435
`
*Reviewed by WORLD
SABAN FILMS
because, in phrasing she
borrows from author
Barbara Brown Taylor, it
“prizes holy ignorance
more highly than religious
certainty.”
After viewing it, I can
agree with most of her
description, though what
she calls “holy” ignorance, I
would call simply ignorance—there’s nothing set
apart by God in the main
character’s inability to render a verdict on the validity
of the Bible or Christ as the
Son of God. (And I’ll restrain
myself from going on a rant
about the tendency of some
writerly sophisticates to
attach the word holy to
expressly unholy things
with the aim of muddying
the conversation and
affording themselves some
kind of religious cred.)
The acting and pacing in
The Confirmation are
superb, gently bringing us
into empathy with out-ofwork, alcoholic carpenter
Walt (Clive Owen), who
finds everything going
wrong during the weekend
his ex-wife (Maria Bello)
entrusts him with custody
of their 9-year-old son. As
his car breaks down, his
toolbox is stolen, and an
eviction order locks him out
of his house, he begins to
form a bond with his son
through shared suffering—
a suffering peopled with
fellow fallen souls who ring
absolutely authentic. Sadly,
the movie isn’t able to bring
the same sense of authenticity to those characters who
profess belief.
“These things that they
tell you,” Walt tells his son
of his ex-wife’s rather
uptight churchgoing ways,
“they might be true, they
might not be true.” “And
D O C U M EN TA RY
Almost Holy
R
M OV I E
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP: ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS • ALMOST HOLY: THE ORCHARD AND ANIMAL
Love & Friendship
R
Expectations run
high whenever Jane
Austen comes to the big
screen. Although Love &
Friendship remains true
to Lady Susan (a novella
Austen wrote as a teenager but never saw
published in her lifetime),
moviegoers must brace
themselves for an atypical
Austen main character.
At the story’s center
is the scheming and
manipulative Lady Susan
(Kate Beckinsale), spinning a web of deceit.
Recently widowed and
out of funds, she seeks
matches for herself and
her teenage daughter,
Frederica, while juggling
single and married paramours. (The PG-rated
film steers clear of
suggestive visuals and
language.) Except for the
young and naïve Reginald
(Xavier Samuel), her late
husband’s relatives see
right through her. They
try to extract Reginald
from Lady Susan’s
entanglements, and,
out of pity, block her
scheme to pair Frederica
with the wealthy but
slow-witted Sir James
Martin (Tom Bennett).
Viewers might need
most of the film’s brief
90 minutes to sort out its
many characters. And
Austen fans won’t be
blown away: Plagued by
repeated punchlines,
Love & Friendship weighs
in a couple of notches
below the comic genius
of (the real) Pride and
Prejudice. Even so, Love
& Friendship exhibits
Austen’s flair for snappy
dialogue and buffoonish
characters. Sir James is a
real peach.
“Tiny green balls!” Sir
James exclaims at dinner,
pushing his plate’s contents around with a knife.
“Good tasting! What are
they called?” (“Peas,”
Reginald groans.)
The film rewards viewers with sumptuous sets
and elegant costumes.
But Austen, known
through fitting finales to
reward chaste characters
and punish lascivious
ones, shows little sign of
that later formula in this
story. Still, its Christian
tone rings through in four
lively discussions of the
Ten Commandments.
And there’s no mistaking
Austen’s faith when
Reginald corrects Lady
Susan for suggesting his
father fears his demise.
“Father is a Christian,”
Reginald explains, “for
whom death is neither
cold nor the end.”
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
The Soviet Union’s
collapse and transition into emerging sovereign states created a
vacuum of power,
employment, and basic
services. Thousands of
children ultimately fell
into the cracks of that
political earthquake.
Almost Holy documents
Pastor Gennadiy
Mokhnenko’s mission to
rescue Ukrainian street
children from prostitution and drug addiction.
“I hate many wicked
things about this city, but
I love it,” Mokhnenko says
during an early morning
jog along a wharf in the
port city of Mariupol. He
says God told him he
could no longer walk past
homeless children, runaways from alcoholic
parents and soft targets
for pimps and druggies.
Seeing little government
interest in the welfare of
street children (some as
young as 6), Mokhnenko
became a one-man justice system. By day, he
leads protest marches
and confronts pharmacists who sell prescription
painkillers under the
counter to drug dealers.
On night raids, Mokhnenko
pulls kids—sometimes
forcibly—out of sewers
and basements of abandoned buildings. He
drives them to the
Republic of Pilgrim, a
rehabilitation center he
established in 2000.
Heartbreaking scenes
(and a few expletives)
earn Almost Holy an R
rating. Covered with
sores and needle marks,
teenage Tolik dies of
AIDS not long after being
rescued, and the Pilgrim
household buries him.
Mokhnenko removes
deaf-mute Luba from the
dilapidated dwelling
where for years a man
twice her age has kept
her in sexual servitude.
More than 1,000
children have passed
through Pilgrim.
Mokhnenko and his wife,
Lena, have added 32
adopted kids to their own
three. Disappointingly,
director Steve Hoover
(“not a person of faith,”
he says of himself) plays
up Mokhnenko’s eccentricity—self-assuredness
just shy of a savior
complex—while almost
entirely neglecting the
pastor’s faith and Lena’s
contributions. Still, the
documentary doesn’t
cheat viewers of tender
scenes showing boys
wrapping their skinny
arms around their new
dad’s broad shoulders.
The gospel radiates
from this courageous,
selfless father who
showers love on his
adopted children.
—by BOB BROWN
—by BOB BROWN
C U LT U R E Books
Reformed thought
BEGINNING AND ENNS by Marvin Olasky
Bruce Gordon’s John Calvin’s
Institutes of the Christian
Religion: A Biography (Princeton, 2016)
tells of the great work’s influence over
almost half a millennium. Gordon also
shows the influence of Calvin’s “graceful economy of language” on French
R
prose: “With short, elegant sentences,
Calvin turned religious writing away
from the prolix mess of early French
Protestant authors.” Shawn
Wright’s Theodore Beza: The Man
and the Myth (Christian Focus,
2015) is a readable biography of
Calvin’s successor in Geneva.
Some recent successors are
not so faithful. The Sin of
Certainty (HarperOne, 2016)
is a quasi memoir of the
spiritual journey that took
Peter Enns from biblical
orthodoxy as a Westminster
Theological Seminary professor to the focal point of
controversy and dismissal
by the seminary’s board of
trustees. Enns now teaches at Eastern
University.
Enns does not recount in this book
the Westminster controversy, although
his pointed title displays a sarcastic
flair. He seems certain that we should
be uncertain. He trusts evolutionists:
“The study of genetics seems to be a
slam-dunk-over-the-defense-breakthe-backboard proof for
evolution.” He trusts
secular archaeologists who say the
stories of c reation
and flood from
other cultures are
older than the biblical accounts. His
trust in German
higher criticism
also leads me
to think he’s
looking for evidence in all the
wrong places.
Calvin
BOOKMARKS
CALVIN: ALBUM/PRISMA/NEWSCOM
Dallas Denery’s The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the
Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment (Princeton, 2015) is a
detailed, academic history of our everyday sin. Mark Belz’s
A Journey to Wholeness: The Gospel According to
Naaman’s Slave Girl (P&R, 2015) lucidly shows how God
displayed surprising mercy to an enemy general, and also
punished a liar, Elisha’s servant Gehazi, but did not give up
on him.
Hell and Good Company by Richard Rhodes (Simon &
Schuster, 2015) is a loaded history of the Spanish Civil War
that emphasizes the right’s atrocities and minimizes the
left’s. Gary Murrell’s “The Most Dangerous Communist in
the United States” (UMass Press, 2015) sympathizes with
its subject, propagandistic historian Herbert Aptheker:
For half a century he hatcheted anyone who deviated from
the Communist Party line, and finally party leaders purged
him too.
This month brings the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s
attack on the Soviet Union. As German troops advanced
through eastern Poland, local anti-Semites used the
opportunity to kill Jews. Anna Bikont’s The Crime and the
Silence (FSG, 2015) records her investigation of the July
day when 40 residents of the Polish town of Jedwabne
herded hundreds of Jews into a barn and set it on fire.
Intense hatred among some and passivity among many
led to holocausts in town after town well before Nazis
made it “scientific” through construction of gas chambers.
Mark Riebling’s Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War
Against Hitler (Basic, 2015) takes the side of Pope Pius XII,
who could have saved many lives by commanding Polish
Catholics not to help Nazis kill Jews, but remained silent.
Instead, Riebling writes, Pius XII plotted unsuccessfully to
assassinate Adolf Hitler.
June 23 brings the big British vote on the European
Union. Todd Huizinga’s The New Totalitarian Temptation
(Encounter, 2016) helps to explain what’s at stake: “The
loss of a religious sense of purpose has left a hole in the
European soul, which is being filled for many by a belief in
the vision of supranational governance.” Huizinga calls the
EU “Christendom gone apostate.”
Many of us know from the movie Chariots of Fire how
God made Eric Liddell fast but also called him to China.
Duncan Hamilton’s For the Glory: Eric Liddell’s Journey
from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr (Penguin, 2016)
fluidly tells the story. Jessica Chen Weiss adds realism to
China-watching in Powerful Patriots (Oxford, 2014), which
shows how China’s
leaders are riding a
nationalist tiger:
They’ve made the
tiger roar for their
own purposes, but its
sharp teeth may yet
bite them, and us. —M.O.
FOUR RECENT NOVELS
reviewed by Susan Olasky
GOOD NIGHT, MR. WODEHOUSE Faith Sullivan
Born in the late 19th century, Nell Stillman moved as a young,
Irish-Catholic bride to a small town in Minnesota. Her abusive
husband dies when their child is young—and she takes a job
teaching school, which she holds for more than three decades,
through war and Depression. Books, especially those by P.G.
Wodehouse, become her friends during times of joy and sadness.
This book celebrates community, family, and reading—but
Sullivan’s 21st-century worldview crashes the party, plopping
modern concerns onto someone born 100 years earlier.
HEAT & LIGHT Jennifer Haigh
Novelist Jennifer Haigh, who writes about western Pennsylvania
as one who knows rust belt territory, explores how fracking
affects a dead town. In finely wrought detail she portrays the
industry’s winners and losers and shows the effect of a boom
industry on the everyday lives of ordinary people. For the most
part she avoids political clichés, focusing instead on things that
drive human beings: love, greed, selfishness, and ambition. The
resulting story highlights man’s fallenness—often expressed in
R-rated language—and creation groaning from the effects of
the Fall.
THE QUALITY OF SILENCE Rosamund Lupton
Yasmin and Ruby, mother and deaf daughter, expect to vacation
with their husband/father in northern Alaska. But their plane
from England lands in Fairbanks, and they receive word that his
village has been leveled by fire. He’s presumed dead. They don’t
believe it and rush to find him—never mind that it’s winter and the
big-rig driver who’s giving them a lift has a stroke. This novel
offers a heart-pounding mother-daughter battle for survival that
requires smarts and ingenuity. Downsides: some R-rated language
and a disappointing ending that concludes a super story with a
political screed about fracking.
HANDOUT
RE JANE Patricia Park
Based loosely on Jane Eyre, this coming-of-age story features a
Korean-American orphan living with her uncle’s family in Flushing,
New York City. She ends up working in his grocery store and then
as a nanny for a feminist professor, her younger husband, and
their adopted Chinese daughter. Jane falls for the husband, flees
to Korea, and struggles to fit in. Park explores identity and what it
means to belong, but she veers far from the Christian themes
found in Brontë, whose Jane resolves to “keep the law given by
God.” Park replaces them with R-rated language and some sexually
explicit scenes.
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
AFTERWORD
Home by Nightfall by
Charles Finch (Minotaur
Books, 2015) is a clean mystery set in Victorian London
and featuring Charles
Lenox, younger brother of a
baronet. He
returns to Sussex
to be with his
brother who is
mourning his
recently deceased
wife. Together
they investigate a
series of strange
happenings. The
book has a leisurely pace
and includes characters
with strong family bonds
and community
connections.
Ron Rash’s Above the
Waterfall (Ecco, 2015) takes
place in the Appalachians,
where a fancy resort abuts a
national park and
marijuana growers, meth makers,
and hermits relish
privacy. In the
three weeks before
his retirement, the
sheriff has to wrap
up business—
including a meth
raid and an unconventional arrangement with
pot growers. In alternating
chapters, the sheriff and a
female park ranger narrate
the story and recall past
events that shaped their
lives. His matter-of-fact
voice contrasts with her
poetic one. Both appreciate
the natural world and
understand the flawed
people in it. —S.O.
C U LT U R E Children’s Books
Illustrated adventures
DINOSAURS, BALLERINAS, YAKS, AND A MYSTERIOUS
GARDENER by Betsy Farquhar & Megan Saben
ARE WE THERE YET? Dan Santat
This book takes readers inside a young boy’s vivid imagination as
he takes a cross-country trip to visit his grandmother. As the hours
go by, he envisions himself among 20th-century road races,
pirates, knights and princesses, and even dinosaurs. Clever,
detailed illustrations reward close inspection, making this book a
perfect choice for a long road trip. Young readers will especially
enjoy the tale’s interactive elements, including QR codes for
smartphone-equipped readers. Santat includes a casual mention
of a “million years” alongside a dinosaur image and offers the mild
crudity “butt.” (Ages 4-8)
EMMA AND JULIA LOVE BALLET
Barbara McClintock
This parallel story follows beginner ballerina Emma and
professional dancer Julia through their daily ballet
routines. Detailed illustrations capture their graceful
movements, as Emma (who is white) and Julia (who is
black) both work diligently toward their dancing dreams—
and Emma gets to go backstage to meet Julia. Awardwinning author and artist Barbara McClintock affirms the
experience of young girl and boy dancers from a range of
ethnicities, while pointing them toward their future … if
they persevere. (Ages 4-8)
THE NIGHT GARDENER Terry Fan & Eric Fan
At night an elderly stranger shapes trees into animals, transforming
bleak Grimloch Lane into a beautiful place to live. An orphan sneaks
out of his orphanage to discover the identity of the gardener, who
takes the boy under his wing and teaches him how to shape the
trees. Illustrations track the changed neighborhood, from drab to
beautiful. They offer plenty of details for children to discover
through multiple readings. The story highlights the importance of
intergenerational mentoring, community, and doing things that
matter, even if they don’t lead to recognition. (Ages 4-8)
YAKS YAK: ANIMAL WORD PAIRS
AFTERWORD
A new Zonderkidz series of
children’s board books (A
Land That I Love Book)
shows that Christian publishing is in real trouble.
Written and illustrated by
Englishman Peter Francis,
God Bless America, God
Bless Florida, and God Bless
Texas (Zonderkidz, 2016)
offer a basic introduction to
big tourist spots and landmarks. Each book has 16
pages (plus cover)—but
about 50 percent of those
pages recycle the clunky
rhymes and illustrations
from the other books. For
instance, each book has two
pages devoted to souvenir
shopping with identical text
and pictures (with slight
substitutions in flags, hats,
background). Each book
opens with a spread showing Henry (the bear protagonist) hopping out of bed
and ready to go on his trip:
again, same text with small
changes to indicate where
he’s going. Kids will surely
spot the identical rhymes
and pictures, and parents
will feel like suckers if they
spend 10 bucks per book.
—Susan Olasky
Linda Sue Park
Yaks Yak plays with homographs (words with the same
spelling and sound, but different meanings). The resulting
short, amusing sentences will delight children who are
discovering the playfulness of English. The ink-andwatercolor illustrations carry the absurdity to another
level. The text on one spread reads “Fish fish.” The
illustration shows one fish with a Book of Compliments
on his hook. Other word pairs: Bats bat, quails quail, and
slugs slug slugs. The book defines the words and includes
further explanations—including word derivations—at the end. (Ages 4-7)
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
WESTERN CONSERVATIVE SUMMIT
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C U LT U R E Q&A
ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Growing the
conservative
heart
SHARING HAPPINESS, PROMOTING EARNED
SUCCESS by Marvin Olasky photo by Jay Westcott/Redux
R
Arthur Brooks is the president of
the American Enterprise Institute
and the author of 11 books including his
most recent work, The Conservative
Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier,
and More Prosperous America. He’s
one of the few geniuses I know, so over
the years we’ve had more Q&As with
him than with anyone else: See WORLD,
Dec. 9, 2006; May 17, 2008; Jan. 16,
2010; and Sept. 22, 2012. Here are
edited excerpts of our latest:
Spanish. At one juncture we had just
enough communication for me to
confess that I dropped out of
college. She started laughing
and told me she dropped out of
high school when she was 16
to join a rock band. That’s a
really bad career direction. I
don’t recommend it to my
kids or to any of the Patrick
Henry College students
here.
Not many people move from
laying the French horn in Barcelona
p
to being in charge of a major think
tank. Why Barcelona? Some kids want
You both benefited
from correspondence
courses. She wound up
to grow up and be a baseball player. I
wanted to be a French horn player,
which is really nerdy and weird.
Started at age 8, and it’s a blast to be
better than all the other kids at something. I wanted to do it for a living. My
parents made it possible for me to
pursue that dream. I’m really grateful
to them for that. I went with the
Barcelona Symphony because I was in
hot pursuit of the girl I wanted to
marry. We’ve now been married for 25
years and have three kids.
You and your wife both had unusual
educational paths. When I first met
her, it took a while before we could
communicate because she didn’t speak
any English and I didn’t speak any
going back to high
school by correspondence and graduating
at 29. I finished c ollege
by correspondence
just before my 30th
birthday. When we
were newly married,
she was taking a
calculus class—
she taught me a
little bit and it
was the most
interesting
thing, so I
started taking a college
correspondence class
in calculus. One thing led to another,
and I wound up back in college. It was
so interesting—a vast amount of knowledge out there, and I liked it so much.
And Ester helped you make the
change. She said, “I don’t think you’re
really happy as a musician. Why don’t
we move to the States and you finish
your college degree and then try something new?” It seemed like a crazy idea
at the time, but we did it. We didn’t
have any money. She got four job offers
in her first month, all minimum wage
jobs. She said, “This is the greatest
country in the world for people who
want to work.”
Then Thomas Edison State College,
RAND Ph.D., Syracuse professorship,
AEI, and now The Conservative Heart:
Why that title? Too often people think
that being a conservative means that
you’re hard-hearted. Last year we
had a public forum about
poverty at Georgetown
University. Onstage I said
to President Obama,
“The reason I’m a
conservative is
because poverty is
what I care about
the most.” He
looked at me with
surprise. He
couldn’t believe
what I just said.
Why does
conservatism
go along with
effective antipoverty work?
It’s the best way
to build a system
that treats the poor
as people with
potential, and believes
they should have the
opportunity to earn
their success. When the
Savior walked along the
Sea of Galilee and saw
Peter working on his nets,
He didn’t say, “I’m here to
help you.” He said, “I need
you to do My work.” That’s
how He talked to the apostles
all throughout His ministry
for three years: “I need you.” That’s
empowering.
That’s what the United States
used to say to immigrants. At the
ottom of the Statue of Liberty, “Give
b
me your poor.” We’re going to build
our great country on your work and
your toil and your energy and your
entrepreneurship. Now, we’ve rendered 25 percent of the population
show that 15 percent don’t have
earned success financially. It’s not
good to feel you’re not earning your
success. Here’s a vital statistic: The
percentage of guys aged 20 to 64 who
are not working or in school or prison
used to be 7 percent. Now it’s 18 percent.
That’s a powder keg, and deeply
immoral. It’s a bad social situation, but
it’s deeply immoral as well. We give
‘When people believe they’re creating
value with their lives and value in
the lives of other people, they truly
tend to be happier people.’
superfluous. That’s a civil rights
nightmare, and a moral mistake.
them a dole. We don’t help them become
good stewards of their own talents.
You’ve argued for the importance
of “earned success.” Earned success as
You write in The Conservative
Heart, “Creating a separate set of
moral standards according to
socioeconomic status is not an act of
mercy. It is a crime against the poor.”
a concept grew out of work in the late
1960s by a great social psychologist,
Martin Seligman. He studied “learned
helplessness,” which happens when
you take away from somebody what
they earned or give them rewards they
didn’t earn. They become helpless,
despondent, depressed. We’re wired to
earn things. We’re not wired to be
helpless and get stuff for free.
False compassion creates learned
helplessness? It treats the poor as less
than the rest of us. It cuts into their
dignity and denigrates their potential.
One of the great secrets to happiness is
earned success. When people believe
they’re creating value with their lives
and value in the lives of other people,
they truly tend to be happier people.
Earned success comes from all different
forms, not just starting a business. It’s
also raising a family, creating a beautiful work of art, or doing something in a
social sphere that’s totally uncompensated in terms of money but creates
value and lets your life be your witness.
The official poverty rate has
changed little in 50 years: about 15
percent then, about 15 percent now. In
one way that’s unrealistic, because it
doesn’t take into account welfare
payments. But this statistic does
Watch a video of this interview in its entirety at wng.org and in the iPad edition of this issue
People ask about the poor, “How can
you expect for them to form and
maintain intact families? How can you
expect them to stay in jobs when
they’re dead-end jobs? How can you
expect them to not want to tear up the
community property in their neighborhoods when these are lousy neighborhoods to begin with?” The answer: If
we believed the poor to be inferior,
we’d treat them with different moral
standards. But nondiscrimination and
nonbigotry mean treating the poor with
enough respect to hold them to the
same moral standards.
So what’s the first message a
erson suffering from learned helpp
lessness needs to hear? “I need you.”
One example: Richard, a year out of
prison after serving 22 years for
murder, was at a minimum wage job
working for an exterminator company.
I asked him how things were going,
and he showed me an email from his
boss: “Emergency bed bug job E. 65th
Street. I need you now.” I said, “So?” He
said, “Read it again. ‘I need you now.’
That’s the first time in my life anybody
said that to me.” A
C U LT U R E Music
other 11 songs, by the gossamervoiced Ellie Rusbridge, it situates Shakespeare among the
great love-song composers, a
category to which his accomplishments as a dramatist and a
poet can make people forget
that he belongs.
The other poets whose
verses Rusbridge sings include
Emily Brontë, James Joyce,
Walter Savage Landor, Francis
Pilkington, Thomas Carew, and
William Blake, whose “A
Dream” and “The Little Boy
Lost” open the album and
whose “A Cradle Song” closes it.
Thomas takes great pains to
ensure that neither the melodies nor the instruments
(Thomas’ guitars, keyboards,
double bass, gamba, and cello
percussion; Dave Shulman’s
clarinets; Liam Byrne’s viola da
gamba; Malte Hage’s electric
bass) overwhelm the words. In
so doing, he increases the likelihood that other projects of this
kind will attempt a similarly
gentle sensitivity—and that
other projects of this
kind will happen.
The two explicitly Shakespearean
albums bypass the “Rival Poet”
sonnets altogether and give
short shrift to those addressed
to the mysterious “Dark Lady,” emphasizing instead the “Fair Youth” sonnets
(1-77 and 87-126), in which a middleaged man celebrates the beauty of a
son-like figure and urges him to reproduce lest his image die with him.
Kelly’s 20-minute Seven Sonnets and
a Song (Cooking Vinyl) opens with a
cabaret-friendly rendition of the “Dark
Lady” Sonnet 138 but proceeds apace
Sonnets
and songs
ARTISTS OFFER
MUSICAL TRIBUTES TO
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
by Arsenio Orteza
 [email protected]  @ArsenioOrteza
KRIEG BARRIE
April 23 marked the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s
death. The Australian singer-songwriter
Paul Kelly, the American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and the
British multi-instrumentalist Fred
Thomas have seized the day by releasing masterly tributes to the Bard’s
sonnets and songs in particular and to
great poetry in general.
Of the three albums, Thomas’ The
Beguilers (F-IRE Recorded
Music Ltd.) is the least
Shakespearean, numbering
only one Shakespeare lyric,
“Take, O Take Those Lips
Away” from Measure for
Measure, among its dozen
tracks. But as sung, like the
R
to a waltz-time setting of the “Fair
Youth” Sonnet 73. At a succinct one
minute and 54 seconds, it honors the
poem’s wistful recognition of time’s
self-consuming nature and proves the
wisdom of Kelly’s decision to limit
himself and his accompanists to folkmusic instrumentation.
Kelly sets Sonnets 18 and 60 to
minor-key melodies and stretches them
to over three minutes each by singing
them twice. He echoes the accomplishment in his combination of Sonnets
44 and 45. Midway, Kelly’s fellow
Australian Vika Bull takes the lead
vocal on Sir Philip Sidney’s “My True
Love Hath My Heart.”
Seven Sonnets concludes with a
setting of “O Mistress Mine” that, if
only for its simplicity, should become
the standard for future productions of
Twelfth Night.
Wainwright’s Take All My Loves:
9 Shakespeare Sonnets (Deutsche
Grammophon) has grander ambitions.
Like Kelly, Wainwright prefers the
“Fair Youth” sonnets. Unlike Kelly,
Wainwright pulls out the stylistic stops.
Opera-friendly settings predominate,
but there’s also something for rock,
Kurt Weill (Sonnets 66 and 87 are in
German), and recitation fans as well.
The reciters include Inge Carter,
Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher,
Siân Phillips, Frally Hynes, Peter Eyre,
and—in Sonnet 129—William Shatner.
The vocalists include the surprisingly
sympathetic Florence Welch, the
unsurprisingly sympathetic Austrian
coloratura soprano Anna Prohaska,
and the entirely adequate Wainwright
himself.
The resulting whole will overwhelm
anyone in search of easy access to why
Shakespeare has long been considered
the greatest writer in the English
language. It will not overwhelm the
patient novice or the
many who’ve already
been enlightened by
these magnificent
texts and for whom
the issue of
Shakespeare’s
stature is beyond
dispute. A
FOUR RECENT ALBUMS
reviewed by Arsenio Orteza
FALLEN ANGELS Bob Dylan
The novelty shock having been absorbed by its immediate
predecessor, this album frees listeners to assess soberly
both Dylan’s way with Sinatra-era classics and his aesthetic
priorities. Why, for instance, have these 12 songs been
segregated from Shadows in the Night’s 10 when all 22
were recorded during the same sessions? Well, these 12
certainly feel less shadowy, enlivened as many of them are
by jaunty rhythms. More importantly, those rhythms loosen
Dylan up. “That Old Black Magic” features his most carefree
vocal since “Must Be Santa.”
PERFECT Half Japanese
Half Japanese’s 2014 collaboration with Danielson gave rise
to hopes that Jad Fair had become a Christian, hopes that
suffered a partial setback on Half Japanese’s 2015 EP Bingo
Ringo. This full-length offering could give those hopes
fresh life. No less noisy or messy (or catchy) than Fair’s
typical recordings, it kicks off with a celebration of “good
news” that urges listeners to “throw the devil into a pit,”
and the subsequent songs contain similar Christian-friendly
expressions. The possibility, however, that they’re only
optimist-friendly persists.
CLASSIC CARPENTERS Dami Im
When this Australian X Factor winner was born (in South
Korea), the most recent of the Carpenters hits that she
covers on this album was already 12 years old. Yet she has
an affinity for each song that bridges the gap, delivering
each well-known lyric and melody with affection and
imagination (in that order). For that matter, her inclusion of
such lesser Carpenters singles as “I Need to Be in Love”
(which peaked at No. 25) and “This Masquerade” (a B side)
shows imagination (and affection) too.
CAMERON WITTING
SANTANA IV Santana
Carlos Santana, Gregg Rolie, Neal Schon, and the Michaels
Carabello and Shrieve last recorded together when the
Vietnam War was still going and Woodstock memories
were still fresh. So, insofar as context matters, this attempt
at rekindling old Latin-tinged, hard-rock/fusion-jazz fires
risks falling unheard in a forest. It deserves better. The
Spanish chants don’t sound corny. The lead vocals (whether
Rolie’s or the cameo-making Ronald Isley’s) do the job. And
the guitarists play like their 1971 selves—with 45 more
years of practice.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
ENCORE
The albums John Chelew
produced for The Blind
Boys of Alabama in 2001
and 2002, Spirit of the
Century and Higher Ground
respectively, sought to do
for that venerable gospel
group what the Rick Rubin–
produced American albums
had done for Johnny Cash:
introduce a legendary act to
a discerning and enthusiastic new audience. Chelew
achieved his goal.
Omnivore Recordings
has recently reissued both
titles, expanding them with
live cuts that demonstrate
the fidelity of Chelew’s studio approach to The Blind
Boys’ onstage sound.
Accompanied by sympathetic instrumentalists
(David Lindley, John
Hammond, and Charlie
Musselwhite on Spirit of the
Century; Robert Randolph
and the Family Band on
Higher Ground), the group
sounded reinvigorated and
entirely at home with the
material. More importantly,
the material—including
gospel-friendly songs
written and originally
recorded by The Rolling
Stones, Prince, Tom Waits,
Stevie Wonder, Aretha
Franklin, Jimmy Cliff, and
Ben Harper—sounded
reinvigorated and entirely at
home with the group. —A.O.
VOICE S Mindy Belz
Many voices
not heard
A NARROW HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA
DOMINATES THE OBAMA ERA
Not having
access to one
door of many
bathrooms
is hard to
compare to
languishing
in a prison
cell in wrist
shackles.
 [email protected]  @mcbelz
CAROLYN KASTER/AP
When President Barack Obama stepped to
the podium in Hanoi in May to end a halfcentury arms embargo against Vietnam, more
than opening the spigot to a cache of sophisticated American-made weapons was at stake.
The president showed, as he has in other parts
of the world, his “pivot” to Asia is a pivot away
from human rights. Far from a passive move—
simply overlooking in favor of economic and
other interests China’s gulags, Burma’s camps, or
Vietnam’s disappeared dissidents—Obama
overruled even allied human rights advocates.
It’s a message not lost on the authoritarians
in Southeast Asia, the Islamic terrorists of the
Middle East, or the despots in Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia who drink at the American taxpayers’ trough while shackling freethinkers and
devout believers.
“President Obama might have just given up
one of the few remaining leverages that the
United States has,” said Nguyen Dinh Thang,
president of Boat People SOS and an escapee of
the Communist takeover of Vietnam in 1975.
Nguyen called Obama’s action a “regrettable
and premature decision,” pointing out Vietnam
has made no significant steps toward promoting
individual and religious freedom since the start
of talks toward loosening U.S. restrictions. It has
failed to revise and pass a draft law on religion
or association, keeping in place instead a 2004
ordinance so restrictive on religious communities it’s faced widespread condemnation.
This didn’t faze Obama. “What we do not
have is a ban that’s based on an ideological
division between our two countries,” he said in
Hanoi, highlighting that “both sides have
established a level of trust and cooperation.”
After a question about human rights from a
reporter, Obama acknowledged, “we still have
differences.” Vietnamese President Tran Dai
R
Quang’s follow-up to the same question was
more telling: By expanding “dialogue,” he said,
“we can narrow the gap in understanding.” In
other words, the issue isn’t Vietnam’s record on
human rights but America’s coming to terms
with it.
Vietnam’s record is unequivocally bad. Since
2001 the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom has ranked it a Tier 1 violator of religious freedom. The State Department
also condemns Vietnam in its annual human
rights reports, together with a broad coalition
among the human rights community. Led by
Freedom House, 27 organizations issued a
“joint statement of concern” last November,
saying, “Vietnam’s draft Law on Belief and
Religion is inconsistent with the right to freedom
of religion or belief.” Human Rights Watch, too,
issued a report last year focusing on persecution
of Vietnam’s Montagnard Christians to show
how Vietnamese government control over
religion has increased, not decreased, with
Obama-led U.S. engagement.
These are hardly conservative factions or farright zealots the president chose to ignore. His
jettison of human rights in Vietnam highlights a
wider trend, and at least two deeper concerns.
One, we’ve heard how the president has
centered policymaking in the White House,
overriding even his own bureaucracy. American
taxpayers should have a say in this, paying for
vast bureaus to monitor human rights to no
avail. Lawmakers and civil groups need to be
more active than ever on this front, as it’s
unlikely to change (unless for the worse) under
a Clinton or Trump administration.
Two, human rights once were principally the
domain of Democrats. Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan and President Jimmy Carter elevated
human rights above the geopolitical pragmatism
of the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon
years. Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and
Bush extended that understanding. But under
Obama and with increasing and widespread
support of Democrats, once-fringe groups—
gays, lesbians, and transgendered—with
dubious claims to disenfranchisement have
overtaken the human rights agenda.
Not having access to one door of many bathrooms is hard to compare to languishing in a
prison cell in wrist shackles, or being taken
from one’s family for years. In the Obama era, if
a cause can’t be hashtagged #LGBT, it can be
thrown under the bus. For Vietnam’s hundreds
of political and religious dissidents, that disregard is a matter of life and death. A
F E AT U R E S
TROUBLI
2012: Bauchi, Nigeri
a
2011: Madalla, Nigeria
2012: Jos, Nigeria
2011: Damat
ur
u, Nigeria
Under the Clinton State Department,
influence from big money donors appeared to
thwart efforts to combat Boko Haram—
efforts that might have saved thousands of lives
by MIN DY BELZ & J.C. DER R ICK in Washing ton
ING TIES
UST HOPE YOU’RE NEVER
trapped inside the work of a suicide
bomber. Victims say the first sensation is
not the sound of a powerful explosion but
the ear-splitting suck of air going out of
the room, of every noise imaginable
concentrated into a tiny, painful point in
the middle of your skull—all before the
terrifying and truly deafening fright of the
actual explosion. The force and flash will
knock you to the floor, leave you breathless
for minutes, sightless at least a bit longer,
deaf for longer still, perhaps a lifetime, and
forever traumatized. That’s if you survive,
aren’t dismembered or diced fatally by a
thousand shrapnel pricks. In the seconds
after you realize you’ve just been bombed
and become aware you are still breathing,
you will have to live agonizing minutes of
terror longer as you learn whether others you
know survived. And that’s before the building
around you starts to collapse.
The bombing of the
UN headquarters in
Nigeria happened just this
way. On a sultry Friday, Aug. 26, 2011,
at 10:30 in the morning, a Honda CR-V
with tags from Nigeria’s northern
Kano State tore through two separate
gates of the compound in the capital,
Abuja, and drove its way into the
sprawling five-story building where it
exploded. Glass shattered and the
concrete structure’s first three floors
collapsed, plunging dozens of staff
members plus the suicide bomber and
his car into the basement below.
Fire erupted from the car, soon a
cindered mass of metal. Flames rose
from the basement, blackening the
building from bottom to top as smoke
filled the neighborhood, which
included the American embassy and
other diplomatic posts. Rescue workers arrived, followed by police and
soldiers. They flung ladders into a
gaping hole, rescued bloodied survivors, and dragged them over bloodied
steps to a grassy lawn strewn with
body parts. At one point rescuers
hauled over a nearby construction
crane to assist fire crews trying to
reach survivors on the upper floors.
“All the people in the basement
were killed. Their bodies are littered
all over the place,” said Ocilaje
Michael, one of 400 UN staff members
working in the complex, which also
housed 26 affiliated humanitarian and
development agencies.
Hours later, the Islamist militant
group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack, its first on an
international target. As word spread
among the diplomatic community of
an American who survived the attack
inside the UN building, where she
worked, many expected the United
States and others to take stepped-up
precautions to protect their own
1̀
2̀
c itizens and to combat terrorists in
Nigeria. By all outward appearances,
that’s not what happened.
The State Department never made
public the presence of Vernice Guthrie,
an African-American attorney who
represented the American Bar
Association in Nigeria before she
took an assignment with the UN
Development Program. And what
followed the bombing were months
stretching into years of uncharacteristic foot-dragging by then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. Amid interventionist stances on Libya, Syria, and
other hot spots, Clinton resisted the
PREVIOUS SPREAD: CLINTON: WIN McNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES • CHURCH ATTACKS: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AFOLABI
SOTUNDE/REUTERS/NEWSCOM; STR/EPA/NEWSCOM; STR/REUTERS/NEWSCOM; STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
3̀
(1) People watch as rescue teams work in the debris of the United Nations
House in Abuja on Aug. 26, 2011. (2) The UN House following the attack.
(3) A man walks by the debris of the car that rammed into the building.
HENRY CHUKWUEDO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
pleas of lawmakers and
the recommendations
of both high-level
officials and Pentagon
brass to designate
Boko Haram a Foreign
Terrorist Organization
under U.S. law.
Five years and
many Freedom of
Information Act filings
later—including four
filed by WORLD—no
clear explanation
exists for Clinton’s
refusal to designate a
terror group a terror
group during her
tenure as secretary of
state. Further, given
the controversy that’s
unfolded over her
decision, the State
Department appears
determined not to
divulge documents
pertaining to that
decision—and some
documents may be lost
to Clinton’s now
infamous in-home server.
While the full truth may never
come to light, what’s at issue are longstanding Clinton ties to controversial
Nigerian businessmen—billionaires
who have donated money toward both
Clintons’ presidential campaigns and
the Clinton Foundation—who could
benefit in seeing Boko Haram proliferate. Knowing whether she placed
financial ties and influence peddling
ahead of national security interests
during that time period is more
urgent than ever, now that the former
secretary of state could become the
commander in chief.
“We know Hillary Clinton is both a
centrist and a hawk. Yet this became
another example of her doing something that’s simply out of character,
dragging her feet on confronting a
terrorist group,” said Peter Schweizer,
a former Hoover Institute fellow,
whose 2015 bestseller, Clinton Cash,
became the basis for a documentary
premiering in May.
In the five years since the Abuja
bombing, Boko Haram has morphed
into the deadliest terrorist organization in the world, responsible for
killing 10,000 people in 2015 alone. It
linked its cause with Somalia’s al-
Shabab, with al-Qaeda, and most
recently with ISIS, or Islamic State—
proclaiming a mimic caliphate in
—Gen. Carter Ham
August 2014. Nigeria had experienced
no suicide bombings before 2011, but
last year endured 89. Boko Haram’s
rapid expansion posed a serious threat
to Nigeria’s more than 160 million
residents, the most densely urbanized
population in Africa. To date, the
group’s attacks are responsible for displacing more than 2 million residents
across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger,
Chad, and other states.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar
Shekau continued to direct threats
against the United States as well,
including a threat in 2012 to assassiAmerican survivor. Neither the bombnate U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria
ing nor Guthrie were items in the
Terence P. McCulley.
following week’s daily press briefings
Had Washington designated
at the State Department.
Boko Haram a Foreign
Reporters didn’t know an
Terrorist Organization
American survived the
(FTO) early on, the United
attack, so they didn’t ask.
States would have proAs a result—although a
vided legal clarity and
five-person FBI team
triggered enhanced
assisted the Nigerian
military surveillance and
investigation—the Justice
Guthrie
financial tracking to stem the
Department did not include
Islamist group’s growth. Clinton
the August bombing in its
took none of those steps, instead actu“Terrorist Incident Designation List.”
ally blocking sales of U.S. helicopters
That meant Guthrie as a terror victim
to aid in counterterrorism and a sale
wasn’t eligible for benefits (like paid
of aircraft to Nigeria by Israel. Such
trauma counseling) under U.S. law.
actions led newly installed President
Muhammadu Buhari last year to
THER, MORE BRUTAL
complain the U.S. government “aided
bombings have taken
and abetted” Boko Haram.
place in Nigeria since
“With Nigeria there isn’t a policy
2011. But the UN bombing
explanation that justifies her delaying
was a game-changer, according to the
here; it’s inconsistent with everything
highest-ranking U.S. military officer in
Hillary Clinton says she is for,”
Africa at the time, Gen. Carter Ham.
Schweizer told WORLD. “And people
He took charge of U.S. Africa
died and are still dying as a result.”
Command in March 2011. Boko
In all, Nigeria would report 23 perHaram’s alliance with al-Qaeda and
sons dead and 116 injured in the Abuja
other groups, Ham had told reporters
bombing. President Barack Obama
a week before the UN bombing,
and Secretary Clinton each issued
presented “the most dangerous thing
statements the same day condemning
to happen not only to the Africans,
the bombing, without mentioning an
but to us as well.”
‘Boko Haram
had gained
capabilities that
needed to be
addressed.’
With terrorist attacks in Nigeria
rising and countermeasures
apparently tabled, WORLD on
May 3, 2013, filed a Freedom of
Information Act request with
the State Department for documents related to the UN bombing, including information on
Americans present. In March
2016, three years later, State
provided 20 documents. While
giving extensive details of the
attack and noting “significant
casualties,” none of the documents mentioned Vernice
Guthrie or any American present
at the bombing.
The department’s talking
points for Nigerian officials
stressed not overreacting to
Boko Haram, encouraging
Nigerian officials to “address
this attack as a police matter”
and “avoid excessive actions by
security forces that raise human
rights concerns.”
In June 2014, WORLD filed a
similar request with the FBI,
which declined to produce any
documents on the grounds that
it “could reasonably be expected
to interfere with enforcement
proceedings.” —J.C.D.
GUTHRIE: VIDEO IMAGE • HAM: THIBAULT CAMUS/AP
O
‘A police matter’
JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP
Nigeria’s minister of state for foreign
affairs greets Secretary of State Clinton
as she arrives in Abuja in August 2012.
(Johnnie Carson is behind Clinton.)
The UN attack, Ham recalled in
an interview with WORLD, “signaled
that Boko Haram had gained capabilities that needed to be addressed,
and it was my view—and I was not
alone—that we could best help
Nigeria if we were able to employ
the full suite of tools available to the
U.S. government.”
At this time the United States
was involved in a NATO-led military
intervention in Libya, where the
United States sided with a transitional government to oust leader
Muammar Qaddafi. As a result, arms
and mercenaries were flowing
across Africa from Libya to (among
other places) Nigeria, boosting
groups like Boko Haram. In policy
debates, the military stood accused
of favoring military solutions, but
Ham, who is now retired, said that’s
not what he argued for in Nigeria.
“While military engagement might
achieve near-term tactical successes,
it cannot achieve the long-term objectives,” he said. The “most important”
reason for FTO designation, in his
view, “is financial tools that allow the
Department of Treasury and others to
subpoena and have access to records
and more effectively impede and stop
the flow of funding that fuel these
terrorist organizations.”
Long after the Pentagon, the
Department of Justice, the CIA, the
FBI, and lawmakers in both parties
were all on the same page, State
remained the only holdout—and even
it was divided. The counterterrorism
bureau argued in favor of an FTO
designation, but the Africa bureau
resisted pressure in debates that
unfolded in front of Secretary Clinton
on multiple occasions.
“At the time I thought FTO designation was not appropriate and made
that recommendation—a recommendation I continue to stand by based on
the circumstances at the time,”
Johnnie Carson, then-assistant secretary for African affairs, told WORLD.
He said FTO discussions dated as far
back as late 2010: “We were taking the
issue of Boko Haram very, very seriously, and we were looking at all sides
of the issue.”
Clinton went along with those who
argued Boko Haram was not a threat
to U.S. interests. With Boko Haram
pledging to establish an Islamic
caliphate across West Africa, Carson
repeatedly asserted “that religion is
not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria.” FTO critics
said a terror designation needlessly
would raise the group’s profile. They
claimed Boko Haram was not attacking
foreigners and not using international
finance.
Evidence gathered from interviews—
which included Ham, five former U.S.
ambassadors in Africa, numerous
Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea at the Clinton
Global Initiative in 2013.
S
TOPPING THE FLOW OF
illicit funds is a tall order in a
country like Nigeria, where
systemic corruption has
dogged one government after another.
While Secretary Clinton stalled efforts
to combat Boko Haram, former
President Bill Clinton was making
money on its home turf.
Clinton has given two of his three
most lucrative overseas speeches in
Nigeria—earning $700,000 each in
fees in 2011 and in 2012. Hosting
Clinton at both events: Nduka
Obaigbena, a flamboyant Nigerian
media mogul.
At another paid Obaigbena event in
2013, Clinton handed out checks to
schoolteachers from Obaigbena after
giving a speech about education.
Later, the checks bounced. Recently,
Obaigbena has come under ongoing
scrutiny as part of a $2.1 billion arms
scam.
Of the Clintons’ Nigerian associates,
Obaigbena is the rule, not the exception—one of several wealthy donors to
the Clinton Foundation and its affiliate,
the Clinton Global Initiative, who are
presently under scrutiny or facing
criminal indictment.
The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation got its start in 1997, before
President Clinton left the White
House, ostensibly as a nonprofit group
collecting funds for his presidential
library. That purpose quickly shifted,
and the foundation became essentially
a clearinghouse for the Clintons to
receive tax-exempt donations.
Hillary Clinton, whose campaign
did not respond to multiple interview
requests, served on the board of directors from March 2013 to April 12,
2015, when she launched her 2016
presidential bid. A Washington Post
investigation last year revealed how
the Clintons with decades in public
MARK LENNIHAN/AP
defense and intelligence experts, and
Nigerian church leaders—plus State
documents undercut each rationale.
Guthrie’s presence at the UN
bombing, along with kidnappings of
American citizens and other events,
demonstrated threats to U.S.
interests.
The State Department designated
at least five lesser-known groups as
terrorist organizations in the two
years following the Abuja bombing.
WORLD obtained evidence showing Boko Haram operatives use
sophisticated methods—including
social media—to funnel illicit proceeds
from Western sources through
European banks and to northern
Nigerian charities that push cash to
militants. In one case (where WORLD
saw documents on condition it not
divulge details) a multinational
corporation hired a private security
team to locate what turned out to be a
Boko Haram operative raising funds
via online scamming.
HANDOUT
life amassed a donor list of roughly
336,000 individuals, corporations,
unions, and foreign governments. The
Post concluded: “The Clintons’ fundraising operation—$3 billion amassed
by one couple, working in tandem for
more than four decades—has no
equal.”
A “public charity,” the Clinton
Foundation’s online roster shows
programs in areas like global health,
climate change, and business development, but there’s little on-the-ground
evidence of it: In 2013 the Clinton
Foundation took in $140 million and
spent only $9 million on direct aid
(under 7 percent). Tax-exempt charitable organizations, according to the
IRS, “must not be organized or
operated for the benefit of private
interests,” yet over and over the
foundation’s donors look more like a
list of influence-seekers and power
brokers in search of access to top
government officials.
Meanwhile, the foundation has run
afoul of the Better Business Bureau
for failing to meet minimum standards
of transparency and accountability.
Charity Navigator dropped its evaluation of the foundation altogether,
saying its “atypical business model
can not be accurately captured in our
current rating methodology.” More
recently, Wall Street analyst Charles
Ortel—whose investigation of GE
accounting practices resulted in the
conglomerate paying a $50 million
fine to the SEC—announced in May
more than 40 separate investigations
into Clinton Foundation programs,
telling WORLD they are “committing
epic charity fraud.”
Nigeria—with the largest economy
in Africa and hefty proven oil reserves—
is fertile ground for opaque Clinton
Foundation donors. It’s saying something that on a donor list including the
State of Qatar and the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, Nigerian magnate
Gilbert Chagoury ranks among toptier givers. Chagoury has donated
between $1 million and $5 million to
the foundation and in 2009 pledged
$1 billion to the affiliate Clinton
Global Initiative.
Chagoury with his brother Ronald
founded a construction, healthcare, and
telecommunications conglomerate—
the Chagoury Group—developing a
reputation for corruption starting in
the 1990s. Gilbert, an adviser to the
late Nigerian military dictator Sani
Abacha, used his controlling interest
in South Atlantic Petroleum to siphon
off millions in oil sales. He and Abacha
dumped the revenues in overseas
bank accounts, allegedly helped by the
head of Nigeria’s Petroleum Trust
Fund at the time, current President
Muhammadu Buhari. Central to the
taken refuge in Switzerland (where he
died in 2013), facing a 65-count criminal indictment for tax evasion in the
United States. On his last day in office,
President Bill Clinton pardoned
Rich—a move even The New York
Times in an editorial called “a shocking
abuse of presidential power.”
Bill Clinton traveled with
Chagoury on his first trip to Nigeria as
president. The two have been photographed together multiple times
there, including in 2013 to celebrate
the opening of Eko Atlantic, a massive,
$6 billion reclamation project the
deal was American Marc Rich, the
fugitive financier who bought up oil
on the black market (evading U.S.
sanctions, for example, to buy oil from
Iran while it held 53 American
hostages), funneling also Chagoury/
Abacha oil receipts into foreign bank
accounts.
Nigeria’s former top anti-corruption
prosecutor Nuhu Ribadu alleges
Chagoury steered more than $4 billion
in illicit oil revenues into bank accounts
in Switzerland and elsewhere. In
2000 Swiss authorities convicted
Chagoury of money laundering, and
he returned $300 million in fines (“a
tithe,” according to one financial
analyst) in exchange for legal immunity. Marc Rich by that time had long
Clinton poses with Gilbert (left)
and Ronald Chagoury.
Chagoury brothers plan to make “the
financial center of Africa in the near
future.” When finished, the peninsula
city built on land reclaimed from the
Atlantic Ocean is supposed to accommodate some 250,000 residents in
luxury high-rises and businesses
poised to compete with a Gulf hub
like Dubai. According to the project
website, “The development is privately funded and supported by
Nigerian banks in association with
international investors.”
Chagoury was putting together
investments in the project at the same
NIGERIANS
AND THE
CLINTONS
Sani Abacha
dictator 1993-1998;
deceased
Muhammadu Buhari
president 2015present
$1 billion
pledge
to CGI
1990s looting
Gilbert Chagoury
1% annual
company
profits
to CGI
Ronald Chagoury
2000
Senate race
adviser
Contributed
millions to
Buhari
campaign
Bundler for
Hillary’s 2008
presidential
campaign/
appointed by
Bill to trade
advisory panel
2015
presidential
campaign
David Axelrod/
AKPD
Eko Atlantic
Ruling party
leaders
Conspired
to move
illicit oil
out of
Nigeria
Adewale Tinubu
Bola’s
nephew
Recruited/
paid AKPD
Received
presidential
pardon on Bill’s
last day in office
Kase Lawal
Paid
$700,000
each
for two
speeches
by Bill in
Nigeria
Bola Ahmed
Tinubu
Marc Rich
deceased
Nduka Obaigbena
CLINTONS: MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES • BUHARI ANDREW HARNIK/AP • AXELROD: CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP • LAWAL: GLOBE NEWSWIRE/AP • OBAIGBENA:
SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP • RICH: URS FLUEELER/AP • ADEWALE TINUBU: GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • BOLA TINUBU: AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS • NEWSCOM • RONALD
CHAGOURY: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • GILBERT CHAGOURY: ALEXANDRA WYMAN/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES • ABACHA: ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Abacha’s
head of
Petroleum
Trust Fund
time he made his $1 billion pledge to
the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).
CGI at its annual meeting in New York
in September 2009 awarded Chagoury
a “commitment certificate,” even
though it wasn’t clear what purpose
or program his $1 billion pledge
would serve. “Commitments” are
the currency of CGI and “can be
small or large and financial or nonmonetary in nature,” according to
the CGI website. The organization
serves as “a catalyst for action,” the
website reads, “but does not engage
in actual implementation of
commitments.”
At CGI’s 2009 annual meeting,
President Obama made a surprise
appearance at the opening session,
and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
was the featured closing speaker,
talking about food security. She also
thanked those making “exceptional
commitments” to the foundation,
according to the transcript posted on
the State Department website.
As dredging and construction for
Chagoury’s Eko Atlantic began—and
would continue for years—any international sanction like the FTO designation was likely to dampen investors’
enthusiasm. A Center for a New
American Security study found a
decrease in investment activity—both
foreign and domestic—is the primary
effect of such U.S. scrutiny. Financial
surveillance to hunt down terror networks may also bring to light everyday
corruption. While FTO designation in
Nigeria’s case was against an organization, not the state, it still would
discourage investment.
Could Chagoury’s pledge have
been aimed at influencing policy, a
quid pro quo?
“He does nothing other than that,”
said former U.S. Ambassador to
Nigeria William Twaddell, a Bill
Clinton appointee to the post from
1997 to 2000. He called Chagoury a
“huge beneficiary” of Nigeria’s
corruption problem. “I have no idea
what he was doing with the Clinton
Global Initiative, but it’s the sort of
honey pot that he would try to get
some benefit from.”
 [email protected]  @mcbelz
Bribery defined
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) got
its start in the 1940s running the U.S.-led Marshall Plan. Today it’s a
UN-affiliated organization combating bribery and graft, one of the hallmarks
of its success in post–World War II Europe.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010 appeared in an OECD video
lauding its anti-bribery convention as “a milestone” encouraging “responsible and accountable governance.” She pledged U.S. support for its “anti-
corruption agenda.”
The OECD Working Group on Bribery states, “Individuals and companies
can also be prosecuted when third parties are involved in the bribe transaction, such as when someone other than the official who was bribed receives
the illegal benefit, including a family member, business partner, or a favorite
charity of the official.”
Based on the OECD’s definition of bribery, there does not need to be an
explicit quid pro quo. That coincides with a 2009 ruling from the U.S. 6th
Circuit Court of Appeals in a corruption case: A quid pro quo does not
require “a particular, identifiable act” when the funds were transferred.
“Instead, it is sufficient if the public official understood that he or she was
expected to exercise some influence on the payor’s behalf as opportunities
arose.”
Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer, citing the case, concluded: “Friends,
money, and politics are a dangerous cocktail. The Clintons should know to
avoid this kind of drinking while driving U.S. policy.” —M.B.
H
ILLARY CLINTON’S
successor at the State
Department, John Kerry,
did approve the FTO designation for Boko Haram in November
2013, but there are few signs the
Treasury Department has engaged in
a serious investigation into the group’s
financing. The prevailing narrative is
Boko Haram is a localized terror
threat that strictly funds its activities
through robbing banks, pillaging
villages, and other local thievery.
Chagoury is far from the only one
to benefit from the lackluster
response: Prominent, wealthy
Nigerians Kase Lawal (who lives in
Houston) and Bola and Adewale
Tinubu have ties to the Clintons and
also have faced charges of criminal
wrongdoing. (Their entanglements
will be the subject of a future article.)
Bola Tinubu proved useful in
steering Nigeria’s election last year
toward his party colleague and longtime associate Muhammadu Buhari, a
northern Fulani Muslim who failed in
three previous presidential bids.
Buhari won election on a platform
to fight terrorism and corruption.
Who did his party hire to craft his
 [email protected]  @jcderrick1
isciplined campaign for change?
d
AKPD, a Chicago-based consulting
firm co-founded by David Axelrod—
the chief architect of President
Obama’s election victories and senior
adviser at the White House until 2011.
AKPD’s quiet involvement has led
stateside Nigeria observers to question
whether electing Buhari was the endgame of the Obama administration’s
policies. That’s a reasonable conclusion, according to Jacob Zenn, a
Jamestown Foundation analyst and
leading expert on Boko Haram: “It
would be consistent with their view
that observant Muslims, and in some
cases Islamists, in power would be a
bulwark against groups like ISIS and
al-Qaeda.”
Now a year into his presidency,
Buhari has taken concrete steps to
address corruption and terrorism, but
some Nigerian church leaders remain
skeptical: “The government has yet to
prosecute anyone who has been
involved with Boko Haram,” said A.B.
Lamido, an Anglican bishop in northern Nigeria. “Who is responsible?
They have to be brought to justice.” A
—with research by Kristin Chapman
and Amy Derrick
F E AT U R E S
Power
campaigns
The GOP is fighting to maintain control
of Congress after Election Day. Here are
seven races that could shift the Senate
by
JAMIE DEAN r photo by Franck Reporter/Getty Images
hile Donald Trump, Hillary
Clinton, and Sen. Bernie
Sanders, I-Vt., dominate
news cycles ahead of summer
political conventions, another major campaign unfolds in states across the country:
Republicans face a substantial battle to
retain control of Congress in the fall.
Democrats need to grab five seats to gain
control of the Senate—or just four seats if a
Democrat wins the White House. Both The
Cook Political Report and the University of
Virginia Center for Politics rate seven
Senate races as toss-ups, based in part on
recent polling data.
Republicans hold six of those seven seats.
Michael Coulter, a political science
professor at Grove City College, says
Republicans would have faced a tough
Senate map this year even without Trump,
the presumptive Republican presidential
nominee, on the ticket. A handful of the
toss-ups are in swing states. (The House
seems far less likely to flip, with Democrats
needing 30 seats to win, but the party could
see gains.)
Will Trump’s high “unfavorable” ratings
with voters drag down GOP candidates on
the rest of the ballot this fall? Will a sub
stantial chunk of GOP voters stay home?
Predictions abound, but Coulter thinks it’s
too early to know, particularly since
Democratic presidential front-runner
Hillary Clinton nearly matches Trump’s
levels of unfavorable views among voters,
and national polls show a tightening race
between the two candidates.
Polls and providence change in unexpected ways during the course of an election
season. But with religious liberty, Supreme
Court nominations, and other major issues
in the balance, Coulter says one thing is
certain: “These are crucial elections in
American politics.”
Here’s a look at seven potential toss-up
races in the Senate that could determine
whether the GOP holds on to Congress in
the fall:
2 0 1 6 S E N AT E R A C E S
SOURCE: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CENTER FOR POLITICS
Solid D
Likely D
Switch from R to D
No election
Toss-up
Democrats: 47
Illinois
When it comes to Senate races, Sen. Mark Kirk
may be the most vulnerable Republican this year.
The freshman senator from Illinois faces a tough
race for a second term in a state President Barack
Obama won by 6 points in 2012.
Likely R
Solid R
Republicans: 48
One of Kirk’s challenges: He doesn’t differ
much from Democrats. The pro-abortion, progay-marriage senator joined Democrats last year
to oppose a bill defunding Planned Parenthood.
Kirk says he won’t attend the GOP convention
this summer, but he will support Trump for at
least one strategic reason: Trump could drive up
voter turnout in the state. If so, Kirk could reap
the benefits of Republican voters pulling a
straight ticket.
Trump won the Illinois primary, where voters
named job creation as a top issue. The Illinoisbased machinery company Caterpillar announced
it would cut up to 10,000 jobs by 2018. Mitsubishi
Motors said it would shut down its only U.S.
plant, based in Normal, Ill. Those are red-meat
realities for Trump, who promises to bring jobs
back to the United States by imposing high tariffs
on imports.
But Kirk faces a tough opponent in a
Democrat with a compelling story: U.S. Rep.
KIRK: M. SPENCER GREEN/AP
5
Leans R
Tammy Duckworth is a
double-amputee veteran of the Iraq War.
(She lost both legs in
2004 when Iraqi
insurgents hit her
Blackhawk helicopter
with a rocket-propelled
grenade.) The proabortion EMILY’s List
endorsed Duckworth in
the Senate race, and the
congresswoman may have a Trump card of her
own: Democratic turnout is particularly high in
the state during a presidential election.
Wisconsin
DUCKWORTH: NAM Y. HUH/AP • JOHNSON & FEINGOLD: SCOTT BAUER/AP • PORTMAN: JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
Outside of Illinois, Wisconsin is the second state
rated by UVA as likely to lose its Republican-held
Senate seat to a Democrat in the fall. Republican
Sen. Ron Johnson faces a rematch with former
R-Texas.) Johnson said he opposed Obamacare,
but insisted the strategy wouldn’t work. (It
didn’t.)
Feingold supported the advent of Obamacare
and other Democratic policies for decades. He
also joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in spearheading a controversial campaign finance bill the
Supreme Court largely struck down. He voted
against the Defense of Marriage Act that
Democratic President Bill Clinton signed in 1996.
(That measure is dead now too.)
Feingold sees a promising opportunity to
regain his former Senate seat, but Johnson is
encouraged by voter turnout in the primaries:
Some 1.1 million Republicans voted in the state’s
primary contest—about 100,000 more than
Democrats.
Still, during his campaign for president, Ted
Cruz won that contest by 13 percentage points,
leaving many wondering whether GOP voters
will show up for Trump—and pull the lever for
Johnson. At the state’s GOP convention in midMay, many Republican officeholders didn’t mention Trump by name. (Trump has also had trouble
winning over U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a
Republican from Wisconsin.)
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told the GOP
crowd that turning out voters for Johnson should
be their focus, saying holding the Senate was
crucial: “That’s where we can have the biggest
impact, not just in the state of Wisconsin, but the
nation as a whole.”
Ohio
Sen. Russ Feingold, a
Democrat who held the
Wisconsin seat from
1993 until his defeat by
Johnson in 2010.
Johnson, a businessman who had never
held political office,
defeated Feingold in
the 2010 election
during a tea party wave
that swept dozens of
Republicans into Congress and returned the U.S.
House to GOP control. (Republicans regained
control of the Senate in 2014).
Johnson ran as a strident opponent of
Obamacare, but he opposed GOP efforts to shut
down nonessential parts of the government over
defunding the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
(Those efforts were led by Sen. Ted Cruz,
The Buckeye State will host this summer’s
Republican National Convention, a four-day event
a top Trump aide promised will be “the ultimate
reality show.” Meanwhile, reality for incumbent
Republican Sen. Rob Portman means he faces a
Pennsylvania
Four days after the confetti drops (or some other
spectacle unfolds) at the GOP national convention, Democrats will hold
their own meeting in
Philadelphia, just after
the 240th anniversary of
the signing of the
Declaration of
Independence in the city.
While nothing quite as
grand is expected to happen this year, the event
will be an important
window for Democrats to
pitch their case to voters
in the swing state Obama
won in 2012.
Meanwhile, incumbent Republican Sen. Pat
Toomey will continue a
close bid to defeat Democratic
opponent Katie McGinty. She
could be a formidable challenger: In April primaries,
McGinty closed a 17-point gap
to defeat her Democratic
opponent by 10 points.
Now the former chief of
staff for Gov. Tom Wolf is
seeking to paint Toomey as a
Wall Street “wheeler-dealer”
more concerned about protecting big money than voters.
Toomey—former head of the
conservative Club for Growth—
dismisses the criticism and
says he favors fiscal discipline.
In 2013, Toomey argued against
raising the national debt ceiling for
a simple reason: The U.S. government shouldn’t raise the ceiling to
borrow more money to pay interest
on other debt.
Toomey also has been willing to
criticize Trump when other
Republican lawmakers were ducking reporters in
the halls of Congress. When Trump called for
banning all Muslims from entering the United
States, Toomey tweeted: “Trump is wrong. We
should not have a religious test for admission to
U.S. We should have a security test, and it should
be bullet proof.”
New Hampshire
In the bucolic towns of New Hampshire, blazing
autumn leaves and clapboard church buildings
aren’t the only features of the New England
horizon. These days, another reality darkens the
landscape: heroin and painkiller addiction.
Abuse of such opioids is the leading health
crisis in New Hampshire, and it’s a top campaign
issue in a swing state with another Senate race
that could help determine whether Congress
remains in GOP hands in November.
Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte is defending her
STRICKLAND: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP • TOOMEY: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/AP • McGINTY: BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/AP • AYOTTE: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
tight battle for reelection in a swing state that
could help decide the presidential election as well.
Portman faces off against former Gov. Ted
Strickland, a Democrat who lost his post after
one term. But Strickland does have
name recognition: In a February
survey, some 39 percent of Ohio voters
said they didn’t know enough about
Portman to have an opinion about
him. (He’s been a senator for five
years.) Only 26 percent said the same
about Strickland.
Portman has been a consistent prolife proponent in the Congress, and
he’s led a Senate investigation into an
internet company utilized by sex traffickers. But Portman has also changed
course on one major issue: In 2013, he
declared his support for same-sex
marriage after his son announced he was gay.
Portman said he wanted to support his child.
So far, Portman has distanced himself from the
GOP front-runner. “I am not Donald Trump,” he
told Politico. “And no one perceives me as Donald
Trump.” It’s a tightrope for Portman: Presidential
politics are a decisive factor in voting habits for
Ohioans, but Trump lost the state’s primary to
Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Meanwhile, Strickland briefly distanced himself from Hillary Clinton after she commented
on promoting clean energy. “We’re going to put a
lot of coal miners and coal companies out of
business,” said Clinton. That was an unpopular
declaration among a dwindling number of coal
miners in a state with a long history of coal
industry activity.
HASSAN: JIM COLE/AP • LÓPEZ-CANTERA, MURPHY & GRAYSON: STEVE CANNON/AP • JOLLY: JOHN RAOUX/AP • HECK: BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/AP • CORTEZ MASTO: JOHN LOCHER/AP
seat against Democratic
Gov. Maggie Hassan.
Both leaders are popular, and both have tried
to spearhead initiatives
to battle addiction to
painkillers and heroin
in the state.
But Ayotte’s
opponent is emphasizing a national issue in a
bid to unseat the
Republican: Gov. Hassan has hammered Ayotte
over joining other Republicans in blocking a vote
on Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee for the
Supreme Court. Like many other Republicans,
Ayotte has said she thinks the Senate should wait
until after Election Day to consider a nominee to
replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Ayotte won her Senate seat in 2010 despite her
objections to same-sex marriage in a state that
legalized it in 2009. If she wins another term, it
likely would be her last: The senator favors term
limits and has vowed never to serve more than
two terms in office.
When asked about Trump, Ayotte appeared
conflicted: She told reporters she would “support”
Trump if he’s the nominee, but said she won’t
endorse him. Other lawmakers have made similar
distinctions—a position some find confusing. Ayotte
recently tried to explain it, saying she would vote
for Trump, but she wouldn’t campaign for him.
sider focus. “Why is it in politics that experience and
qualifications count against
you?” he asked. “Candidates
who run as outsiders simply
for the sake of being an outsider at some point need to
answer for what are their actual
skill sets to get things done.”
Two Democrats are vying
for a spot on the fall ticket.
Vice President Joe Biden
recently campaigned for
U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy in
Orlando on the home turf of
Murphy’s opponent, U.S.
Rep. Alan Grayson.
Florida
With Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., retiring his oneterm Senate seat after an unsuccessful presidential bid, the Senate race is wide open in the
famously unpredictable swing state. At least five
Republicans plan to compete in a
primary on Aug. 30, and more
could sign up: The deadline
is June 24.
Rubio insists he won’t
be on the ballot, and he
dismisses speculation
about running for governor in 2018. In mid-May,
the senator was giving signs
he might endorse Lt. Gov.
Carlos López-Cantera in the
race. Like most of the other
GOP contenders, LópezCantera promises he
won’t get co-opted by
Washington.
At least one
Republican, U.S. Rep. David
Jolly, has resisted the out [email protected]  @deanworldmag
Nevada
The gambling mecca of Nevada may be the
GOP’s only chance for moving a state from
the Democratic column to Republican control. Republicans are placing their hopes
on U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, a brigadier general
and a doctor who has won reelection to
Congress three times—in a swing district.
Heck faces former Nevada Attorney
General Catherine Cortez Masto, who has
strong appeal in the state with a large Hispanic
population. Cortez Masto would be the first
Latina elected to the Senate.
A GOP victory in Nevada would be a
huge win for Republicans on another front:
Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, the former
Senate majority leader, is retiring from
Congress after holding his Nevada seat for
30 years. A
F E AT U R E S
Struck down,
standing fast
Chinese churches prove resilient,
with or without crosses on their steeples
by ROBERT KATZ & JUNE CHENG
NEAR A GRIMY STEEL-WELDING FACTORY
on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Wenzhou, a
six-story, 900-seat, modern gothic-style church
looms overhead with its lancet windows, spires,
and stained glass. A chorus of 300 voices singing
hymns in a local dialect to an out-of-tune piano
rises from the sanctuary, and school-aged children
learn about Christ’s ascension in Sunday school
classes next door.
Yet something feels amiss about the imposing
building. An upward glance to the top of the church
reveals nothing but gray sky and an empty steeple—
the cross that once stood there, a symbol of God’s
reconciliation with man through Jesus, is gone.
Across Zhejiang, the eastern coastal province
where Wenzhou is located, about 2,000 of these
bright-red crosses are missing after a two-year
governmental cross demolition campaign that saw
excavators barreling through church façades, police
in riot gear clashing with worshippers, and officials
arresting dissenting pastors on trumped-up
charges. Many see the demolitions as a power move
by a fearful Communist Party in the face of an evergrowing Christian population. While the implications of the Wenzhou cross removals for the larger
Chinese church remain to be seen, the events have
revealed the resilience of the Wenzhou Christians
and the power of international pressure to sway the
country’s Communist leaders.
The Zhejiang cross demolitions, which began in
early 2014, are unique: No other Chinese city has as
many prominent churches as Wenzhou, known as
the “Jerusalem of the East,” where Christians make
up about 11 percent of a total population of 10 million. The churches typically maintain good relations
with local authorities, as some officials are believers
themselves, and Wenzhou churches can legally
register their buildings as sites for religious activity
without falling under the authority of the ThreeSelf Patriotic Movement, the government-sanctioned
Protestant denomination. It is surprising the government is now targeting these registered churches
rather than house churches.
Ostensibly, the so-called
“Three
Rectification and
A church member
shovels cement mix
One Demolition” c ampaign
while preparing to
aimed to take down illegal
replace the Taitou
structures in Zhejiang. But
Village Protestant
as the number of churches
church building’s
affected rose into the thoucross, at left, which
was pulled down by
sands, it became clear the
Chinese government
campaign had a target.
workers in eastern
Leaked internal documents
China’s Zhejiang
revealed the government
province.
wanted to regulate
MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AP
“ excessive religious sites” and “bring down the
crosses from the rooftops to the façades of the buildings.” And a proposed bill regulating minute details in
church buildings further showed the government’s
fear of Christianity’s visible influence in the city.
“Removing the crosses has become both a
political statement of state sovereignty as well as an
attempt to show the churches that the government
could still exert more control if it so chooses,” said
Jonathan Yang, an elder at a church of 600 in
Wenzhou’s Yongqiang district.
The churches’ responses have differed: Some
reluctantly cooperated with government officials,
allowing them to take the physical cross from their
roofs in hopes they could continue worshipping
freely. For instance, Peter Jiang, an evangelist at a
church of 500 in Wenzhou, said congregants could
do nothing but watch as about 100 soldiers arrived
at their five-story church to remove its cross in
June 2014. “They did this just to humiliate us,” said
Jiang, whose name, like that of other Wenzhou
church leaders interviewed for this story, has been
changed for his protection. (Chinese authorities
have in the past punished those who speak out to
foreign media.)
Members of Jiang’s church then took the large
concrete cross and affixed it by the entryway of the
church courtyard, a persistent symbol of who is
Lord of the property. While the church plans to
engrave the date of the rooftop removal on the base
of the cross as a “permanent reminder of this
humiliation,” the fervor inside the crossless church
remains undiminished. On a recent Sunday, the
sanctuary filled with worshippers praying loudly as
children from first to 12th grade listened to Bible
stories in the adjacent administration building.
Other churches resisted peacefully, engaging in
some of the most overt protests by Three-Self pastors against the government to date. Congregants
physically blocked officials from reaching their
cross. Pastors signed letters objecting to the campaign. One group demonstrated by walking through
the streets wearing matching T-shirts and holding
small wooden crosses. Yet the punishment for
defiance was swift: Since 2014, hundreds of pastors
have been detained for opposing the campaign.
Some were released after a couple of days, according
to the Christian advocacy nonprofit China Aid.
About a dozen still remain in prison.
Yang, the elder in Yongqiang, felt the consequences firsthand as a key leader in uniting the
churches to resist the cross ban. In 2014 he wrote a
letter protesting the government’s actions that was
signed by 98 churches and sent to seven governmental agencies. In response, a local official threatened
not only to demolish his church building, but to
audit his business and inspect his home. “If you
disagree [with the government] and your church
doesn’t want to take down the cross, then they
arrest you on trumped-up charges of building code
or fire code violations,” said Yang. “Then they bring
in officials from other agencies to find additional
violations.”
A short yet commanding man in his 50s, Yang
invited the official to check his home, unfazed by
the threats and eager to prove his house was in
order. At that point, the official switched tactics,
asking him to discuss church grievances in person
rather than writing letters, as he feared the written
correspondence would attract international attention. While discussions abated the demolitions for
a little while, the government returned to strike
down more crosses in the summer of 2015.
At that point, the churches turned to Beijing
lawyer Zhang Kai for help. Zhang, who had
provided legal aid to Wenzhou’s churches and
imprisoned pastors, formed a 13-point resistance
plan, including small-scale demonstrations Yang
helped to organize. Long before reaching the 13th
goal on the list, Zhang was arrested on Aug. 25,
2015.
The next day, government officials detained Yang
along with more than a dozen Christian leaders.
For 3½ months, officials interrogated the leaders—
but did not torture them—in an undisclosed detainment center, keeping each detainee under 24-hour
surveillance. Yang recalled officials explaining to
him that the church and the government were
competing for the role of “elder brother” in society:
“There can only be one big brother. The government
must be the big brother.”
Yang believes that what the Chinese Communist
Party fears is not that the church would destabilize
Chinese society, but that it would weaken or topple
the party. Some analysts expect China to become the
most Christian nation in the world by 2030 with a
total of 247 m
illion Christians, including Catholics,
according to Purdue University professor Yang
Fenggang. And the current number of Christians in
China—114 million, by one estimate—already surpasses the 87.8 million Communist Party members.
Local and provincial leaders told Yang the
Communist Party “felt like the government was no
longer able to control the Christians in Wenzhou”
through the approved Three-Self Patriotic
Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian
Council. And the demolitions have elicited even
more objections to government control—some
pastors have vowed to leave the TSPM, while
pastors that typically work closely with the
government have spoken up about the issue.
For instance, Pastor Gu Yuese of the uncommonly large 10,000-person TSPM Chongyi Church
in Hangzhou wrote an open letter criticizing the
cross removal policy. His outspokenness led to his
removal from the church and detainment earlier
this year. In February, authorities arrested Gu on
embezzlement charges and released him two
months later to “residential surveillance.”
“Pastor Gu is a good man in a very difficult situation,” Yang said. “He sided with us during the cross
ban, yet he must represent the government by his
involvement in the TSPM.” Gu, who was part of
China’s national Standing Committee for religious
authority, as well as a provincial head of the China
Christian Council, was the highest-ranking religious
official arrested since the Cultural Revolution.
Yang believes it was his duty as a Christian and a
law-abiding citizen to resist the government’s
unlawful action. Officials had no official letter
when they announced his church’s cross had to go.
“Since having a cross was not illegal, for him to
insist that we take down the cross was a violation of
our constitutional and legal rights,” Yang said. “The
party says that China has moved to become a country ruled by law. How does breaking the law further
the goals of the party or the nation?”
When church leaders were unable to thwart the
government’s campaign through dialogue or legal
avenues, they took the issue to the watching world.
The Chinese government worked overtime to wipe
any mention of the cross demolitions off the internet, and the Zhejiang government disseminated
propaganda claiming the campaign had nothing to
do with religious freedom. Yet with the help of
China Aid, and thanks to images and videos captured on cell phones, international media quickly
spread stories of persecution: police beating peaceful church congregants who were protecting their
house of worship, white-collared priests holding
banners denouncing the demolitions, and a
church’s cross burning while the government’s
machinery malfunctioned.
China Aid founder Bob Fu sees his role as being
a “reliable, accurate voice, providing information to
the international community for the people of
Wenzhou, who otherwise would not have a voice.”
This dedication has made Fu a specific target for
the Communist Party. In a televised confession,
lawyer Zhang named Fu and China Aid, saying the
group is on a smear campaign of China’s human
rights record. (Many believe the “confession” was
scripted and made under duress.)
To aid the release of Zhang, Yang, and other
detained leaders, Fu said China Aid “successfully
built up an international united front” by briefing
the U.S. State Department and several European
parliaments about the situation in Wenzhou. As
Chinese President Xi Jinping made state visits in
the West, his counterparts had up-to-date lists of
the Christians currently imprisoned. Fu said this
1̀
3̀
2̀
4̀
(1) An empty steeple at a
Wenzhou church. (2) The cross
in the courtyard of Jiang’s
church. (3) Zhang Kai. (4) Tu
Shouzhe stands on the roof of
his Protestant church after
Chinese government workers
cut down the building’s cross
in Zhejiang province.
(5) Members of the Lower
Dafei Church, at left, block the
church’s entrance as Chinese
government workers, at right,
wait to enter to cut down the
building’s cross.
5̀
1 & 2: ROBERT KATZ • 3: CHINA AID
4 & 5: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AP
pressure forced Xi to calculate how much the
continued detainment of these pastors would cost
China diplomatically.
Although Chinese officials have become
increasingly flippant toward human rights admonishments, the international pressure has been
effective in some instances. Yang said officials
referenced China Aid’s work as the reason they
were being released late last year. Authorities
released Zhang in March, after nearly seven
months of detainment. “The campaign to free
Zhang Kai proved that if we are persistent, if we
join hands together and have accurate information,
they will respond,” Fu said. “China does care about
international opinion.”
Wenzhou church leaders interviewed for this
story said that since the cross removals, authorities
have n
either disrupted their regular weekly ministries nor interfered with their Sunday preaching.
Yet the government has appointed an on-site
official to each of the churches where crosses were
removed to keep close watch on their activities.
At some churches in the Zhejiang region, the
government has set up propaganda bulletin boards
on church property. Last year the Zhejiang gov
ernment unveiled a campaign titled “Five Entries
and Five Transformations,” which attempts to
bring the Wenzhou churches more in line with
the Communist Party through actions such as
making finances public, standardizing management, and bringing traditional Chinese culture
and government policies into the church.
Christians have opposed these measures: One
church said it planned to chant Bible verses should
the government send an official to spread propaganda from the pulpit, according to a Wenzhou
pastor interviewed by the human rights website
China Change.
Back at Jiang’s church, the rugged, weathered,
red cross greets visitors as they enter the courtyard in front of the building. Up close, the cross is
massive. Thick wires keep it upright, as its base is
cracked where it had been dislodged from its
perch on the roof.
Daniel Liu, a church leader and successful
factory owner in his 30s, pointed to the blessings
the trials of the past two years have brought: “The
churches in Wenzhou had become proud and
arrogant. God allowed the persecutions to get our
attention and wake us up to our need to cling close
to Him.”
Liu gazed up at the empty church spire before
turning to gesture at the cross: “The cross is in the
courtyard, but our belief in Jesus is deeply rooted
in our hearts. Nothing can take that out.” A
—Robert Katz is a research analyst on
church-state relations with an international,
China-focused missions agency
F E AT U R E S
SINS OF THEIR
FATHERS &
MOTHERS
The divorce revolution is now affecting a third generation,
as children and grandchildren of divorced couples
carry scars of the past into relationships
AT 22, DAWN HOLIDAY had spent the previous two years
getting to know her father. He was now remarried with children and planned to attend her college graduation, making it
the first time in 20 years her divorced parents, along with
their separate families and friends, would be in the same
place. During the ceremony, Holiday consciously divided her
time between the two groups, grateful they were unlikely to
meet at the large event.
Afterward, Holiday went to eat with her father. But out of
the hundreds of restaurants in Waco, Texas, her mother’s
family happened upon the same one and sat only tables away.
Awkward introductions and an uncomfortable lunch ensued.
Holiday could hardly wait for it to end. She was overwhelmed
by unresolved questions, confusion, and guilt: “I wanted to feel
free to love them both. But love has a spoken or unspoken aspect
of loyalty, creating a double-bind reality for children of divorce.”
June, marriage month, also brings sad realizations:
Millions of Americans have experiences like Holiday’s, and
the sting of divorce is now generations deep. As divorce
by M A RY JACKSON
ermeates American culture, its ripple effects are felt in norp
mally joyous occasions like weddings, graduations, children’s
births, and holidays. Some children of divorce enter marriage
with more resolve, but many others are cynical of marriage
and prefer cohabitation, leading to more broken relationships.
The sexual revolution and women’s rights movement of
the 1960s shifted American views of marriage from happiness
achieved through duty and sacrifice to an ephemeral individual happiness and “fulfillment.” In 1969, California passed the
nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing one spouse to
dissolve a marriage for any reason and gutting marriage of its
legal power. No-fault laws quickly swept the nation: By 1980,
the divorce rate had more than doubled, spawning what many
call the “divorce revolution.”
Psychologist and researcher Judith Wallerstein aptly asked,
“But what about the children?” Her 25-year investigation
followed children of divorce into adulthood, documenting
their struggles, particularly in forming romantic relationships
and starting families of their own.
illustration by Leon Zernitsky/Illustration Source
Wallerstein died in 2012, but a body of research now supports her findings and reveals in more detail the long-term
effects for adult children of divorce: less education, lower
income, poorer mental and physical health, more suicide,
weakened parent-child relationships (particularly with
fathers), more cohabitation, more problematic marriages, and
more likelihood of divorce.
—Dawn Holiday
At one rehearsal dinner, a bride asked Hissa to tell her dad
she planned to walk down the aisle with her stepfather: “He
blew up and stormed out.” Napa and Sonoma wedding planner Brooke Menconi, 36, recalls a bride’s father showing up at
a traditional, $100,000-plus wedding with his 30-yearsyounger mistress-turned-wife. The bride and her mother, his
ex-wife, watched as the woman danced provocatively at the
reception in a short, body-hugging dress. Menconi says, “It
was one of those times you want to tell everyone to look away.”
Many who have experienced these realities are delaying or
rejecting marriage, choosing instead to cohabit. Over 6 in 10
adult children of divorce think cohabitation before marriage
is a good idea, and they are more likely to be living with their
GARY FONG/GENESIS PHOTOS
FOURTEEN YEARS INTO MARRIAGE, Zeke Sevier, 41, of
Santa Rosa, Calif., says, “We realize there’s a target on us.” He
and his wife, Lisa, 40, are both grandchildren of divorce.
Zeke’s parents’ divorce left him afraid of marriage—he dated a
girl for eight years with no intention to marry her. At a
friend’s engagement party, he met Lisa, who had been in and
out of relationships since her parents’ divorce and had only
recently broken up with her live-in boyfriend.
The two entered marriage idealistic, and Zeke wrote in a
premarital counseling notebook, “I hate divorce … for me it is
unacceptable.” For Lisa, saying their vows “was like nothing I
had ever experienced. All I knew were broken relationships.”
Cleveland, Ohio, wedding planner Amy Hissa, 37, says, “It’s
rare to see a couple who both come from still-married parents.”
She’s been in the planning business for 10 years and says
mitigating family tension by working through details—seating
arrangements, reception speeches, and whether to allow an
expectant stepmother into the bride’s dressing room—is one
of her chief tasks. When interviewing a couple, Hissa tries to
figure out, “Are they all amicable or do they hate each other?”
‘You think as an adult
you have moved on,
but the tension never
fully goes away.’
HANDOUTS
partner than those from intact, married families, according to
W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia’s National
Marriage Project. These trends are worrisome, as cohabitation
leads to more breakups, divorce, and economic instability,
creating a complex web that increasingly involves children.
Wilcox’s recent project, a five-minute video with Prager
University titled “Be A Man. Get Married,” targets apathetic,
cohabiting boyfriends and fathers. He says the video has
received a “huge pushback,” with many men who have experienced divorce leaving comments. One wrote, “Marriage is
like letting a coin flip decide if you will die immediately or die
slowly. … The only way to win is to not play at all.” Another: “I
went through a tough divorce five years ago. ... I have absolutely
no hope for marriage. None.”
Wilcox avoids wishing back fault-based divorce laws of the
past—“We’re not in 1946 … there were abuses”—but he notes
that no-fault laws give more power to the spouse who leaves,
and 4 out of 5 marriages end unilaterally. Often judges, when
making decisions on alimony, child custody, and the division
of property, fail to take into account whether a spouse has
been unfaithful or abusive. Like many marriage advocates,
Wilcox supports a slower divorce process, including a waiting
period and more education
about its risks for adults and
children. About a dozen states
Lisa and Zeke Sevier on
have waiting periods of at
their wedding day 14
least a year (or less with
years ago and today
mutual consent).
with their five children
For some children of divorce, painful experiences have led
them to enter marriage with more resolve. “That’s the good
news,” Wilcox said. The divorce rate has declined since its
1980 peak, particularly among those with a college education
and those who marry at later ages. About 40 percent of first
marriages now end in divorce, compared with 50 percent in
1980.
DAWN HOLIDAY SURVIVED that uncomfortable lunch
following graduation and now, at age 46, is a Novato, Calif.,
family counselor, pastor’s wife, and mother of four sons. Her
husband is also a child of divorce, and the couple made it a
part of their vows 19 years ago to “do whatever it takes” to
make their marriage work. Sometimes that has meant seeking marital counseling. Holiday still regularly deals with
divorce realities. Special events still carry added stress with
extended family in the same room together: “You think as
an adult you have moved on, but the tension never fully
goes away.”
Holiday and her husband previously ran a juvenile boys
camp, and now she professionally counsels young people,
particularly those coping with divorce. She says many children
of divorce take on a “caretaker” role with their parents. They
learn to repress their own emotions and often feel pressured
to side with one parent, feeling at home with one and a
“guest” with the other. A typical question: “When I’m with
Dad, do I defend Mom?”
One 20-year-old with drug problems made it to graduation at the juvenile camp. All during his stay he claimed to
have a good relationship with his divorced parents, telling
Holiday they were “perfect.” But during the graduation ceremony he blew up at his parents, cursing and storming out.
Later he told Holiday, “I didn’t know I was so mad at them.”
Erin Hiebsch, 26, runs co-parenting workshops for
divorcing parents at Hope+Wellness of Marin in Corte
Madera, Calif. Even though she’s set up the workshops for
both parents to attend separately, most often only one parent
participates. Many come from divorced families themselves
but find it difficult to think about their divorce from their
kids’ perspective. She shows a video about divorce’s longterm effects that leads many to tears: “There’s a fair amount
of shame. … They don’t want their kids repeating their
mistakes.”
The Seviers in Santa Rosa are making their marriage
work. On one sunny May afternoon, Lisa Sevier was planting
tomato starts in her garden while her five children, ages 11 to
3, shot baskets and ran in and out of the backyard sliding
door. She recounted their toughest year of marriage so far:
Their third child was newly born, and Zeke’s new landscaping business was providing a “feast or famine” financial
return. Lisa battled depression: “I was at my lowest point. …
I didn’t think I could go on.”
Lisa confided with a friend from their congregation who
told her, “This is not between you and Zeke. This is between
you and God.” That change in perspective was a turning point
and the beginning of their “faith walk” as a married couple.
The verse from Proverbs emphasized at their wedding, “Trust
in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own
understanding,” came alive. Lisa says: “I realized I had my
eyes on Zeke and not Christ. … People run dry.” A
NOTEBOOK
Lifestyle / Technology / Religion / Medicine
Steinem feature in the
Lands’ End catalog
BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
Lifestyle
Mail order makeover
FROM MIDWEST WHOLESOME TO ‘A MEANINGFUL,
GLOBAL LIFESTYLE BRAND’ by Marvin Olasky
Remember the public
opinion iceberg that
in February crashed into
the Lands’ End clothing
company after it had proabortion militant Gloria
Steinem offer her words of
wisdom in its catalog? It
turns out that Lands’ End’s
R
glorification of Steinem,
which led to boycott threats
and ended with Lands’ End
apologizing, was not an
iceberg but only its tip.
Some background:
Lands’ End for decades
produced middle-class,
nonsexualized clothing,
including uniforms for some
Christian schools. Its catalogs featured wholesome,
well-scrubbed models. It
was a marketing alternative
to fashion-forward enticers.
A snarky Washington Post
story in February described
the company’s “snoozy
a esthetic … sensibly priced
blouses … soft pastels, seasprayed golden retrievers.”
The Wall Street Journal
last month quoted Lee
Eisenberg, a former Lands’
End creative director,
saying Gary Comer—who
founded the company in
1963 and served as CEO
and, later, chairman—did
not want Lands’ End to be
“a me-too clothing brand. …
The F-word at Lands’ End
was fashion.” Comer placed
Lands’ End headquarters
in Dodgeville, Wis., where,
the Journal said, “the call
NOTEBOOK Lifestyle
‘Making personal connections and
speaking to our customers on a
much deeper level is so important
to me and to Lands’ End.’ —Marchionni
bolster corporate profits
long-term, the early returns
were not good. Lands’ End
went from a $74 million
profit in 2014-15 to a $20
million loss in the year that
ended on Jan. 29, 2016.
It’s not too early to see
other ramifications of
Marchionni’s attempt to
reposition Lands’ End for a
different lifestyle. A company catalog early this year
described pro-abortion
Steinem as “our Legend”
and had a photo of
Marchionni listening attentively to her and gushing:
“Making personal connections and speaking to our
customers on a much
deeper level is so important
to me and to Lands’ End.
You have spent your life
making deep connections
with people across the
globe.”
Lands’ End did make a
deeper connection with
customers such as Sue R.
Head, a vice president at
the Point Lookout, Mo.–
based School of the Ozarks,
which had spent more than
$150,000 on Lands’ End
school uniforms. Head
wrote to Marchionni: “In
your short tenure as CEO,
it is clear to me that you do
not know who your
c ustomer base is yet. … I
find it ironic that your
cover f eatures young
children and their families
having an Easter egg hunt
when Ms. Steinem stands
for ending life in the womb.
We will not be part of
advancing your agenda or
hers.”
Others wrote comments
like this one on the company’s Facebook page: “You
obviously don’t know who
shops with you, or maybe
you do and don’t care. In the
midst of the celebration of
Easter (life), you interview
and glorify a woman who
fosters a culture of death.”
The negative response
from customers was such
that Lands’ End soon
issued a statement: “It was
never our intention to raise
a divisive political or religious issue, so when some
of our customers saw the
recent promotion that way,
we heard them. We sincerely apologize for any
offense.” Lands’ End had
promised to donate part of
its receipts to the ERA
Coalition’s Fund for
Women’s Equality, but
under pressure announced
it would not do that.
That apology and reneging produced a counter
protest by supporters of
Steinem and abortion. The
New York Times complained
that Lands’ End had
decided to “prostrate itself
to critics.” (More recently,
the Times has wanted the
state of North Carolina to
prostrate itself to critics.)
Whether product or
politics is Lands’ End’s
main obstacle now, the
price of a share of its stock
has dropped by more than
a third since Marchionni
took over. A
CHRIS GOODNEY/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
center, staffed by farm
wives, took pride in answering phones in one ring.”
Comer retired in 2002
and died in 2006, and a
new generation arose that
did not know Gary. A
merger with Sears did not
work. Quality and service
declined, according to
many customers. In 2014
the board of directors of
Lands’ End, once again
independent, had to make
hard decisions: try to
regain the confidence of its
former long-term fans, or
reposition itself as a flashy
fashion brand.
The board moved
toward the latter when it
chose Federica Marchionni,
44, to be the new CEO. The
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
called the Marchionni–
Lands’ End match “an odd
couple—the glamorous,
Italian-born New Yorker,
brought in from luxury
fashion house Dolce &
Gabbana to run the
Dodgeville-based retailer
of cable-knit sweaters and
button-down Oxford shirts.
If she was red stilettos,
Lands’ End was a pair of
sensible shoes.”
Marchionni sneered at
Lands’ End sweaters and
pants: “Who would wear
that?” She said her mission
was “to evolve Lands’ End
into a meaningful, global
lifestyle brand” and in that
way attract newer, younger
customers. Marchionni
works primarily from New
York City, dropping in on
Dodgeville for holiday parties and at other obligatory
times: Her contract requires
her to be in Dodgeville one
week every month.
Although it’s too soon to
say whether Marchionni’s
red-stiletto changes will
NOTEBOOK Technology
Wrinkle resistance
‘SECOND SKIN’ HAS BOTH COSMETIC AND
MEDICAL APPLICATIONS by Michael Cochrane
Ads for skin creams claiming to
eliminate eye bags and smooth
wrinkles seem to appear everywhere
on the internet. Customers buy them
hoping to tighten aging skin with
little fuss.
Now, scientists at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and
Massachusetts General Hospital have
developed what may be a high-tech
approach to skin tightening treatment. Their product is a siliconebased polymer that mimics healthy,
youthful skin, reshaping eye bags and
acting as a moisturizer. The scientists
describe the polymer as a “second
skin” in the May 9 online issue of
Nature Materials, and they say
doctors could even use it to deliver
topical drugs.
The new material goes on in two
steps: First, a user applies a siliconoxygen cream to his skin. Second,
he adds a platinum-based catalyst
ointment, causing the polymer to
harden.
In tests with human subjects, the
polymer eliminated eye bags for up to
24 hours. Eye bags are the protrusions
below the eyes (caused by fat pads
POLYMER: MELANIE GONICK/MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY • THAILAND: ASST. PROF. PAKARAT JUMPANOI/RANGSIT UNIVERSITY VIA AP
R
“Second skin”
in action
under the skin) that often form as the
skin ages and becomes less elastic.
The research team also found that
polymer-treated skin retained moisture much more effectively than skin
treated with a high-end moisturizer.
That could be important for treating
skin conditions such as eczema and
psoriasis as well as the dry skin that
comes with aging, the researchers said.
“We tell people to pat their skin
with a damp washcloth and put on a
heavy moisturizer, but that only lasts
a short time,” Barbara Gilchrest, a dermatologist and co-author of the paper,
told The New York Times. “They end
up with greasy goo all over the sheets,
and they wake up in the middle of the
night, terribly uncomfortable. We
[needed] something that was easier to
use and didn’t make a mess and stays.”
A new startup, Olivo Laboratories,
will further develop the technology,
focusing initially on medical applications. According to The Washington
Post, users—for now at least—can’t
layer the polymer with makeup, a
cosmetic disadvantage that may keep
it from becoming an affordable beauty
product for customers.
STATE-OF-THEART CHEATING
The temptation to cheat on an
exam can be very strong,
especially in cultures that view
entrance exams as make-orbreak for career s
uccess. For
some students, it seems that
sophisticated, miniaturized
technology can make that
temptation even stronger.
Rangsit University in Thailand
recently caught a group of students using smartwatches and
tiny cameras concealed in eyeglasses to cheat on a medical
school entrance exam, forcing
the cancellation of the tests.
According to Reuters, the
elaborate scheme involved three
groups of students. The first
group entered the examination
room and photographed the test
using their advanced glasses.
After only 45 minutes, they left
the room, uploaded the test
images, and sent the images to a
second group, who answered all
the questions and passed the
answers to those students still
taking the exam via their wireless smartwatches.
“They answered all the questions then sent text messages to
those students who wanted to
be in the medical department,”
Rangsit University deputy director Nares Pantaratorn told Thai
television.
The university “blacklisted”
three students following the
cheating scam and rescheduled
the exams for a later date. —M.C.
NOTEBOOK Religion
a bortion on demand (see below).
Delegates also voted 478-319 to end
denominational affiliation with an antiIsrael group, the U.S. Campaign to End
the Israeli Occupation.
Many delegates on the floor of the
assembly and through social media said
United Methodists had strayed from the Bible by not enforcing the denomination’s Book of Discipline, which says homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian teaching and
stipulates that self-avowed, practicing homosexuals should
not be certified as clergy candidates or ordained as ministers.
The Book of Discipline also says marriage is between a man
and a woman and the officiating of same-sex unions is a
chargeable offense under church law.
More than 100 clergy and clergy candidates declared
themselves to be homosexual the day before the conference
began. It’s unclear whether a moratorium exists on complaints
against them for violating denominational rules. During the
meetings pro-homosexuality demonstrators clad in colorful
scarves paraded through the enormous ballroom, chanting
slogans and singing. During one demonstration, several protesters lay on the floor with their hands and feet bound behind
their backs to express disapproval of The Book of Discipline.
Jerry Kulah, a delegate from Africa, said many U.S. congregants subscribe to practices that are disdained by African
Christians and have no place in the church. But he said he
will return to Liberia with a hopeful message: “The voice of
Africa is rising higher and higher in global United Methodism.”
Between 2009 and 2014 U.S. membership declined from 7.7
million to 7.2 million, while membership in Africa, Europe,
and Asia grew from 4.4 million to 5.1 million.
Bishop Bruce Ough, president of the denomination’s
Council of Bishops, noted “the pain, distrust, anger, anxiety
and disunity we observe and experience in our beloved United
Methodist Church.” Despite technical snafus—delegates
used temperamental, handheld pads to vote—bickering over
parliamentary procedure, political posturing, a hacked
Twitter feed, and serious differences in biblical interpretation, conference participants sang together and shared an
occasional spoof of themselves on a church news website.
They consumed 1,000 gallons of coffee and donned infrared
headsets to hear translations in eight different languages.
Demonstrators
bind their
wrists and feet
at the UMC
General
Conference
2016.
Delaying
methods
THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
POSTPONES DECISIONS ON HOMOSEXUALITY by Melinda Taylor in Portland, Ore.
FAMILY-FRIENDLY BREAKUP
Delegates struck a bright note in an otherwise dissonant conference by ending the United Methodist Church’s decadeslong
affiliation with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), a Washington, D.C., lobby opposed to any restriction
on abortion. The denomination in 1973 was instrumental in creating RCRC, originally called the Religious Coalition for
Abortion Rights.
In arguing for withdrawal from RCRC, delegates in Portland questioned how the church could justify affiliation with an
organization that condones partial-birth abortion and doesn’t even oppose abortion as a form of birth control. Some who
opposed withdrawal said the denomination should be a positive influence on RCRC, but Darcy Rubenking, a delegate from
Iowa, disagreed: “Abortion is murder. I don’t want the name of my church or finances associated with RCRC.” —M.T.
KATHLEEN BARRY/PROUNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE
More than 4,000 United Methodists meeting here in
mid-May for their quadrennial general conference
failed to settle issues concerning homosexuality that have
divided denomination leaders for 44 years.
Delegates voted 428-405 to delay further decisions on gay
clergy and same-sex marriage. Instead, Methodist bishops
will appoint a commission to re-evaluate church policies, a
kicking-the-can-down-the-road move. Many complained
they traveled long distances and made a strong effort to vote
on petitions that now will be postponed until the next
general conference in 2020, one or two years after the
commission meets and makes its recommendations.
Methodists waded through hundreds of petitions, voting
on matters such as the environment, healthcare, and “names
demeaning to Native Americans.” Two victories for nonleftist
Methodists stand out. The denomination by a vote of 425268 withdrew support from the Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice, an organization that advocates
R
NOTEBOOK Medicine
Reflux drug rethink
vitamins B-12 and D. Thankfully, these
deficiencies are easy to detect and
treat with supplements.
More worrisome are studies showing an association between PPI use
and the increased risk of infections,
hip fractures, kidney disease, heart
blood vessel cells to a commonly used
PPI. They found that the PPI caused
the cells to age by impairing their garbage disposal systems, known as lysosomes. Lead investigator John Cooke
told the Reuters news service that “the
health of our blood vessels is necessary for normal functioning of our
heart, brain, and kidneys. Damage to
the lining of our blood vessels could
lead to heart attack, dementia, and
renal failure.” The researchers were
careful to note that the cell damage
they observed occurred in test tubes.
The study did not examine whether
PPIs harm cells in living people.
disease, and
dementia. It’s
important to note
these studies do
not prove that
PPIs cause these
health problems.
As statisticians
remind us, correlation does not
necessarily mean causation. To clarify
whether PPIs are truly bad actors,
researchers must do the kind of studies
capable of showing causation.
Still, one recent study, published
online in Circulation Research in May,
found a potential mechanism by
which PPIs could possibly cause harm.
Researchers at Houston Methodist
Research Institute in Texas exposed
So what should doctors and
patients do with this information? If
you are regularly taking a PPI, should
you immediately stop doing so? First,
it’s important to understand there are
situations when the benefits of PPIs
clearly outweigh their risks. For
instance, PPIs decrease the risk of
esophageal cancer in people with a
condition called Barrett’s esophagus.
Nonetheless, many doctors and
patients regularly prescribe and take
PPIs without much reflection. This is
because PPIs are very effective and
until recently were thought to be quite
safe. Now, with growing concerns
about possible harms from this class of
drugs, doctors and patients should
have a thoughtful conversation about
when they are truly necessary. A
NEW RESEARCH MAY LINK POPULAR ACIDFIGHTING MEDICATIONS WITH HEALTH PROBLEMS
by James Marroquin
Richard was enjoying a night
with his wife at their favorite
restaurant when he suddenly could
not swallow. The food in his throat
would not budge, even after someone
beat on his back. Paramedics took him
to the emergency room where a physician looked into his esophagus and
removed the bite of steak that caused
so much distress. After the procedure,
the doctor explained that years of acid
splashing from his stomach into his
esophagus had caused it to scar and
narrow. The good news was that a
strong acid-reducing drug called
Nexium would heal the esophagus and
prevent another swallowing crisis.
Nexium belongs to a class of drugs
called proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs).
Our stomachs normally produce acid
to digest food. But in a condition
called gastroesophageal reflux disease
(GERD), acid moves from the stomach
up to the esophagus and vocal cords
where it causes damage. The result
can be heartburn,
nausea, coughing,
hoarseness, and
difficulty swallowing.
It can also sometimes
increase the risk of
esophageal cancer.
PPIs such as
Nexium, Prilosec,
Prevacid, and Protonix
effectively treat GERD
by blocking the stomach’s production of acid. Since their
arrival in the 1990s, PPIs have become
among the world’s most widely prescribed and used medications. But
recent studies have raised concerns
about their safety. PPIs impair the
stomach’s ability to absorb vitamins
and minerals. In my own medical
practice, I regularly see PPI users
become low in magnesium, iron, and
PATIENT: KEN TANNENBAUM/ISTOCK • NEXIUM: DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
R
John & Julie’s story:
Members for three years
College student
Freedom to choose own provider
Chest pain
Go to: mysamaritanstory.org
Be a Voice of WISDOM
in Your CHILD’S
LIFE
John & Julie
“When I had my need, I talked to a gentleman
who was able to answer all my questions and
even prayed for me on the phone.”
For more than twenty years, Samaritan Ministries’ members
have been sharing one another’s medical needs, without using
health insurance, through a Biblical model of community
among believers. Samaritan members share directly with
each other and do not share in abortions and other unbiblical
practices.
• More than 61,000 families (over 200,000 individuals)*
• Sharing over $17 million* in medical needs each month
• The monthly share has never exceeded $405 for a family of
any size*
Come see what our members are saying and start your
own Samaritan story today at: mysamaritanstory.org
Biblical community
applied to health care
samaritanministries.org 888.268.4377
facebook.com/samaritanministries
twitter.com/samaritanmin
* As of May 2016
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thousands of media
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influencing the way they
think and act, competing
for their allegiance.
God’s Big WORLD,
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Get the tools your kids
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more and purchase now.
VOICE S Mailbag
‘House church
on a hill’
APRIL 30 As a first-generation immigrant to the United States and a
first-generation Chinese Christian, I found your honest and timely
reporting refreshing and exciting. I knew about Early Rain church and
pastor Wang Yi, but from WORLD I learned the whole story of the
“house church on a hill.” —DAIXIN YIN on Facebook
‘Strange sympathies’
Trump brings lots of personal
baggage, but he also brings solutions
to problems ignored for too long, like
illegal immigration. Questioning
Trump’s intelligence smacks of elitism,
and calling him unsavory is to insult
the intelligence of many of your
readers.
Trump and Clinton, how do I vote? I’ll
walk away from the booth knowing I
fulfilled my constitutional and Christian
duty but feeling like I need a shower
because of who I had to vote for.
APRIL 30
—JULIE GERSTNER on wng.org
‘Values platform’
APRIL 30 Why should any believer spend
precious time and resources or vote for
a candidate that explicitly advocates
sinful behavior? I’ve been a GOP precinct leader for over 15 years; if the GOP
abandons marriage or its pro-life position, it won’t receive my time or effort.
In so many ways we seem, as a culture,
simply committed to self-destruction.
—IGOR SHPUDEJKO / Goodyear, Ariz.
Voter frustration is understandable,
but this perilous year is not the time to
smash the system and start over.
Those on the left—burdened going
into 2016 with a failed presidency and
a lack of rising political talent—must
now be thrilled at their chances in
November.
—TOM GROSS on wng.org
If gay marriage is a constitutional right
because biracial marriages were also
at one time unconstitutional, then why
not polygamy or polyandry? If Ted
Olson has a discriminatory nuptial
line, he should explain why and where
it is in the sand.
—KATHY SHAIBANI / Lynchburg, Va.
Great piece. It’s now very difficult to
identify the true “lesser of two evils,”
to choose between a candidate with
terrible principles and a candidate
with no principles. Some think the
latter is “safer.” Both are menaces.
—DAVID ROSE / Canton, Mich.
—KEVIN ROUINTREE on wng.org
We can complain about the GOP
wavering all we like, but even some
evangelical denominations are wavering on how to address homosexual
marriage as public policy. Politicians
pick their battles, and if the church
won’t stand on the marriage issue,
they won’t either.
It is important that Hillary Clinton
does not become president because
several members of the Supreme
Court may be replaced during the next
eight years. Whether you like Trump
or not, he is a patriot. Get on the
“Trump train.”
—DORETTA ERB / Valley Forge, Pa.
Andrée Seu Peterson asked very good
questions, but given a choice between
—DANIEL M c PHEARSON on wng.org
‘The GOP divide’
Read more Mailbag letters and comments at wng.org
APRIL 30
This column was insightful yet
tragic; some of us have never veered
from our belief that conservatism is
the only ideological way to address the
“uns.” May we shower this nation with
prayer, and hope to renew the GOP as
a party for ideas, not strongmen.
—NICK CAROW / River Falls, Wis.
Marvin Olasky suggests we show how
“only approaches consistent with the
Bible work.” Absolutely, but only people who believe the Bible will recognize
the fact, and even believers seem to be
ever searching for workable alternatives to God’s ways. We should support
politicians we agree with, but we
should not expect civil unity to last long
or truly affect our national character.
—NEIL EVANS on wng.org
‘The final fall’
APRIL 30 Thank you to Mindy Belz for
continuing to reveal the atrocities of
the genocide of Christians, Jews, and
religious minorities in Iraq. And
shame on our government for doing
almost nothing to stop it. Her firsthand account reminds us of what
happens when evil is unchecked.
—SHARON DIERBERGER / Stillwater, Minn.
‘Yappy hour for Phydeaux’
APRIL 30 Reading this article about
ampered pet dogs immediately after
p
reading about genocide in “The final
fall” made me feel sick. Thank you.
—JOHN TORCZYNSKI / Albuquerque, N.M.
‘Jungle feast’
APRIL 30
When Disney rethinks its
VOICE S Mailbag
olicy of threatening state legislatures
p
over sexual politics, then I might think
about going to another Disney movie.
In the meantime, I have no use in
funding my own persecution.
We drew your letter from our prayer
basket and prayed for you at WORLD.
We are thankful for a newsmagazine
that doesn’t embrace the viewpoints of
the world.
—SHERYL NELSON on wng.org
—MEL & DONNA KOSLOWSKY /
Casper, Wyo.
Comments
I no longer wish to receive your magazine. You can’t get it through your heads
that Donald Trump is, was, and always
will be the best and only hope America
has to get this country back on track.
—KIM MILLICAN / Lakeside, Calif.
Corrections
Land of Silence is a historical novel
about ancient Israel (“Four recent
Christian novels,” May 14, 2016).
Tom Hiddleston stars in the British
miniseries The Night Manager (“The
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EMPLOYMENT
B If you believe that abortion is a
violation of a woman; if you have a
passion to offer practical solutions
to abortion, and believe that
education is necessary to end
poverty; if you believe the church
not the government has the responsibility of caring for the homeless
and orphans, and that a relationship
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have strong managerial skills, are a
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BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT
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MINISTRY OPPORTUNITIES
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SCHOOL EMPLOYMENT
B The Christian Academy,
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applicants for Director of Development for the ’16-’17 school year.
The Christian Academy is a fully
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VOICE S Andrée Seu Peterson
Going the extra mile
WEEK TWO ON MY NEW JOB
My new job is very interesting, and I
believe I will have fun when I get better at
it. This week I learned that if you mix chlorine
products with ammonia products you will
create the deadly gas used in World War I. So
you must be careful not to do that if you take on
custodial employment like me.
My workplace is a microcosm of the general
population, sort of like the cast of Cheers but
with better marriages. (This is a church.) On
the subject of kitchen wooden cutting board
disinfectants, you have your damn-the-
torpedoes-full-speed-ahead chlorine bleach
types who nuke potential E. coli bacteria, and
your au naturel types who hold steadfastly to
the vinegar camp. I read the literature on the
debate they handed me, but I shan’t tell you
what side of the argument I have come down
on. I will say only that it is important to know
with whom you are working on any given day.
When my husband died in 1999, I came on
board with a landscaper lady named Lynn. She
was passionate about her company and told me,
“Nobody cares about your business like you do.”
I felt bad about the implicit judgment on my
character and wanted to prove her wrong and
myself as zealous for her azaleas and bottom
line as she was. But after accidentally slicing
through two of her power trimmer electric
cords, I didn’t last very long. Perhaps she was
right after all. Last time I ran into Lynn she was
working for Primex Garden Center and was
very cordial.
The Ken Burns series on the Civil War says
about Ulysses S. Grant that he was “a failure in
everything except marriage and war.” I found
that an odd statement. There is very little else in
life besides the two, seems to me. Still, it helps,
for reasons that must surely be sinful, to know
the Ohioan failed in farming and bill collecting.
I feel now that I can soldier on in spite of mistakes without great impediment to my identity.
I am trying to work as if the sprawling midtown facility is my own. This is not as saintly as
KRIEG BARRIE
R
 [email protected]
If I do more
work than
the boss asks
me to do, I
am suddenly
in control of
the situation
rather than
a grudging
slave to it.
at first appears, for there is a wonderful psychological trick involved. I discovered immediately
that if I do more work than the boss asks me to
do, I am suddenly in control of the situation
rather than a grudging slave to it. (I hope this
makes sense.) It is the same dynamic as that
embedded in Jesus’ command to “turn the
other cheek” or to “go the extra mile” when
forced to go merely one. It shifts the power
from the demander to the bestower of excess.
So the boss asked only that I wash down the
countertops on
the far wall of
the kitchen. But
when I noticed
that the front
grill of the air
conditioning
unit above that
counter was
filthy and that
the blinds above
that had not been
touched in years,
one thing led to
another; and
before I knew that
the sun had gone
down, he walked
into the room and
said sympathetically that at this
rate I could
scarcely get to my
other tasks in the
allotted time.
When I told him I
wasn’t concerned
about fitting everything into my eight scheduled
hours per week, he came up with the idea that
there was payment for the extra hours if it came
to that, for my predecessor’s sudden departure
had left three weeks of untouched moneys in
the budget designated only for my position.
My present husband got a job working at
Chrysler in Detroit in the early ’70s, and when
he was switched from the small parts department to the warehouse where they fill orders
for the dealers, he reported to the foreman and
said, “They said I’ll be working with you.” The
foreman promptly replied, “Go find a place to
hide till lunchtime.” This is not necessarily a
comment on unions but on a state of mind I
wish to avoid. I once heard it said that “nobody
works harder than a lazy person.”
And frankly I don’t want to work that hard. A
VOICE S Marvin Olasky
Minor regrets
COMING CLOSE IS NOT A TRAGEDY
Filled with
passion while
contemplating
Susan’s
suffering, I—
astoundingly—
hit the ball on
a line over the
center fielder’s
head.
KRIEG BARRIE
I’m going through life without ever having
hit a home run. To hit a ball perfectly and
round the bases, touching home: That must be
a pleasure.
Once I came close. Just turning 26 and
finishing my dissertation, I played on the
American Culture team in the University of
Michigan graduate school coed softball league,
one of the weakest leagues imaginable. Susan
had finished her undergraduate career there
and was technically ineligible, but we were
short of women who didn’t—to use a phrase
from those sexist days—throw like girls.
Here’s the scene, one week before our June
1976 wedding. Susan leads off and hits a hard
ground ball to the left side. A few steps down
the first baseline she pulls a muscle. The
Philosophy Department shortstop fields the
ball cleanly but starts thinking about Kant and
Hegel. He decides to scrutinize the ball to see if
it is objectively knowable or just an artifice of
our human sensibility.
At this point everything seems to be going in
slow motion—no, everything is going in slow
motion. Susan, game as always, heads toward
first base, pulling her sprained limb. The shortstop continues to philosophize. Susan makes
slow, struggling progress. The shortstop finally
decides the ball is worth throwing, but he’s a
second late. Susan, amazingly safe at first, limps
off as a pinch runner takes her place.
Unable to comfort her immediately because
I was next up at bat, I decided to swing at the
first pitch if it was reachable and get off the
field. The pitch was right over the plate and,
filled with passion while contemplating Susan’s
suffering, I—astoundingly—hit the ball on a line
over the center fielder’s head. Upping my baserunning speed from slowest to slow, I rounded
third as the now-energized shortstop was ready
to throw home the ball he had just received
from the center fielder.
Then came my sad, several-step retreat to
third base. Yes, a good throw would have
R
nabbed me at the plate, but how likely was a
good throw? A pinch runner came in for me so
I could leave the field and take Susan home. At
the moment her pain was more important than
my missed opportunity. Later, contemplating
my unnecessary stop, I figured many other
opportunities to hit a home run would come.
They never did. I played on the Baptist team
in a San Diego softball league where the big
game at the end of the season
was against the local brewery,
but we used a softball twice
the normal size that could not
be hit very far. Over the years
children and career came
before softball. Never again
was it convenient to play
against players as weak as
myself.
In the slightly nutty but
evocative baseball movie Field
of Dreams, protagonist Ray
Kinsella tells an old doctor—
when young, he was a good
ballplayer who made it to the
majors once, at the end of a
season, but never got to
bat—“Fifty years ago, for five
minutes you came within … you
came this close. It would KILL
some men to get so close to their dream
and not touch it. They’d consider it a tragedy.”
Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham replies,
“Son, if I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five
minutes … now that would have been a tragedy.”
Had I missed, or later messed up, my marriage, that would have been a tragedy. Had Joel
Belz not asked me 24 years ago to become
involved in editing WORLD, that would have
been a tragedy. I have minor regrets about
things missed and opportunities passed up.
You probably do too, but the most important
keys to happiness are a good marriage and a
good calling, both gifts from God.
My favorite Psalm these days is 73, the
perfect poem for a Christian journalist because
it concludes, “I have made the Lord God my
refuge, that I may tell of all your works.” It
describes our covetous tendencies: “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity
of the wicked.” It describes God’s kindness in
giving us a present and a future: “You guide me
with your counsel, and afterward you will
receive me to glory.” And it gives us no other
reasonable option: “Whom have I in heaven but
you?” A
Is Your
daughtEr’s FaIth
rEal Enough
to show
?
After years of following in the footsteps of your faith she finds
herself confronted with Prof. Jensen’s class,“How Minds
and Groups Make Religion and Superstition.”
What happens next?
At Worldview Academy we’ll help you make sure she has the
foundation and the confidence to listen carefully, ask pointed
questions, and demonstrate her own faith.
Worldview Academy: Camps
where students become bold
leaders in truth and grace.
Register now • 800.241.1123 • www.worldview.org

clinton, inc. - World Magazine

Transcription

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