Danger zone: sex counseling and the state

Transcription

Danger zone: sex counseling and the state
M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
Bethany’s story:
College student
Member for ten years
Torn ACL & Meniscus
Go to: mysamaritanstory.org
Bethany
“This is how God works! Just to show how mighty He is, He can
use anybody. It can be just a normal person—like me!”
For more than twenty years, Samaritan Ministries’ members have
been sharing one another’s medical needs, without using health
insurance, through a Biblical model of community among believers.
Samaritan members share directly with each other and do not share
in abortions and other unbiblical practices.
Come see what our members are saying and start your own
Samaritan story today at: mysamaritanstory.org
Biblical community
applied to health care
• More than 47,000 families
(over 154,000 individuals)*
• Sharing over $13 million* in
medical needs each month
• The monthly share has never
exceeded $405 for a family
of any size*
samaritanministries.org 888.268.4377
facebook.com/samaritanministries
twitter.com/samaritanmin
* As of April 2014
10 COVER.indd 2
4/27/15 9:27 AM
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24/04/2015 14:57
4/27/15 9:29 AM
MAY1615
/ VOLUME 30 / NUMBER 10
COVER STORY
Coverage vs. care
38
Medicaid expansion under Obamacare may
result in more Americans being covered,
but it is deepening long-standing problems
with the program at the expense of those
who need it most
F E AT UR E S
DEPARTMENTS
44 Disorientation
6 Joel Belz
New laws—and a potential
federal ban—against
reparative therapy are
causing more confusion than
remedy for those struggling
with sexual identity
9
48 Shoestring classics
44
The post-communism
explosion of high-quality
Romanian films continues at
the Tribeca Film Festival
52 Remembering
the forgotten
The 100th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide revives
old wounds and new fears
of ethnic—and religious—
cleansing
52
ON THE COVER
Illustration by Krieg Barrie
9 DISPATCHES
News
Human Race
Quotables
Quick Takes
24 Janie B. Cheaney
27 CULTURE
Movies & TV
Books
Q&A
Music
36 Mindy Belz
59 NOTEBOOK
Lifestyle
Technology
Science
Houses of God
Sports
Money
67 Mailbag
71 Andrée Seu
Peterson
72 Marvin Olasky
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more
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MAY 16, 2015
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Website worldandeverything.com
Executive Producer Nickolas S. Eicher
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4/28/15 3:13 PM
GOD IS AT WORK—
AND HE INVITES YOU
TO JOIN HIM
IT’S EASY to get discouraged
by the brokenness we observe in the
world around us. The depravity can
leave us with feelings of fear, worry,
and abandonment. Restoring All
Things is a look at how God is actively
working for good, and how he is using
everyday people to accomplish his
beautiful, renewing goals.
“Stonestreet and Smith aim to restore
some balance to the doom and gloom
narrative by pointing us to the stories
that prove that God is still at work today,
through people who are addressing the
brokenness and taking the opportunities
right in front of their noses.”
—ERIC METAXAS,
New York Times bestselling author
b
10 CONTENTS.indd 5
Available wherever books and ebooks are sold.
4/27/15 9:31 AM
Joel Belz
Taking the
baker’s challenge
How would you go the extra mile
in this day and age?
6 WORLD MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 JOEL.indd 6
Many more of
us are likely to
be challenged
in the months
and years just
ahead to say
what we think
on this and
related issues.
NATE CHUTE/REUTERS/LANDOV
“Dr. Clark,” one of his students asked
philosopher Gordon H. Clark during
class one day, “why do you always answer our
questions with more questions?”
“Well,” he replied, “why not?”
Some years later, I asked him if he didn’t
think that was a little harsh—and that a poor
undergraduate might feel put down, or even
silenced, by such a rejoinder.
“Have you ever counted,” Clark asked with a
twinkle in his eye, “how many times Jesus
answered questions with more questions?”
So if Jesus, the master teacher, considered it
an appropriate part of His rhetorical style when
dealing with His doubters and detractors, to set
them back a bit with penetrating queries, might
it not be a worthy exercise for us as His followers
to study His technique? To be sure, He didn’t ask
questions because He was looking for answers.
Always, it was a measure not of Himself, but of
those with whom He was conversing.
Indeed, here was the Creator of the heavens
and the earth—the one who said of Himself, “I
am the truth”—and He was again and again
asking questions. But nothing superficial;
always, you might say, He was promoting what
we like to call “critical thinking.”
But first, a slightly different reminder how
upside down Jesus sometimes could come
across in His teaching style. Try, for example,
His famous Sermon on the Mount instruction
in Matthew 5: “If anyone slaps you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone
would sue you and take your tunic, let him have
your cloak as well. If anyone forces you to go
one mile, go with him two miles.”
So I’ve been trying for the last several weeks
to apply these unusual approaches to some of
the public debates we’ve been watching so
R
closely. Specifically, I’ve wondered how I might
have replied if I had been the owner or manager
of the little pizzeria in Indiana that became the
center of a national firestorm over attitudes
toward same-sex marriages. Even more specifically, I’ve wondered about the applicability of
Jesus’ “tunic plus cloak” teaching to this situation. And I’ve wondered how to frame all that in
the form of a penetrating question that would
be seen not as an assault or an insult, but as a
sincere invitation to join an important
discussion.
I’m not criticizing the beleaguered folks in
Indiana who in recent weeks had to make their
responses in real time, with the TV news cameras rolling—and without the opportunity to
think or rethink how
their responses might
sound in the public
media. I am insisting,
though, that the rest of
us do have that opportunity. Many more of
us are likely to be challenged in the months
and years just ahead to
say what we think on this and related issues.
Will we be ready?
As an exercise I’m challenging you readers
right here to imagine that you’re the manager
of a bakery. Here comes a homosexual couple,
asking you to provide a cake for their wedding a
month from now. And here’s your assignment,
which you can complete with either an email or
a brief letter:
Part I should be your response to this couple
in the form of a question. No smart-aleck
put-downs, no insults. A question, like one
Jesus might have asked, that clarifies matters.
You might want to read the Gospels for an hour
or two for some real-life reminders about how
Jesus did it.
Part II should be a specific offer to the couple,
conveying the spirit of Jesus’ “if he sues you for
your cloak give him your tunic also” teaching. If
you think Jesus’ teaching doesn’t apply here,
say so.
Send your letter to Joel Belz/World Magazine,
P.O. Box 20002, Asheville, N.C. 28802. Send your
email to [email protected]. I suggest that you do
this sooner rather than later. My sense is that
your opportunity to practice this art before you
are asked to exercise it in a real-life setting may
be shrinking more rapidly than you think. A
 [email protected]
4/28/15 10:03 AM
PMS 289 and 2995
TOM COYNE/AP
10 JOEL.indd 7
4/27/15 9:34 AM
CREDIT
10 NEWS.indd 8
4/24/15 10:45 AM
DISPATCHES
NEWS / HUMAN RACE / QUOTABLES / QUICK TAKES
Kingdoms totter
NEWS
Omar Havana/Get t y Images
Nepal’s tiny Christian minority responds to the
Himalayan nation’s devastating earthquake by Jamie Dean
Near the end of church
services across the
Kathmandu Valley on April
25, stunned Christians staggered toward exits as the
power blinked off and the
R
earth rocked beneath their
feet.
For many Nepalese
Christians, Saturday is the
usual day of worship, and
believers in the country’s
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more 10 NEWS.indd 9
small religious minority
were winding down church
services around noon when
a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Himalayan
nation and killed over 4,000
people. In Kathmandu, at
least 80 worshippers died
when an evangelical church
collapsed.
The tremor struck some 9
miles below the earth’s surface, but scientists said the
quake was shallow enough to
cause massive damage above
ground and strong enough
to equal the power from an
explosion of more than 20
thermonuclear weapons.
Indeed, the quake was
about 16 times more
MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5 W O R L D 9
4/28/15 10:34 PM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
10 W O R LD M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 NEWS.indd 10
have more freedom to meet
openly, though proselytizing
remains illegal.
Baptist Global Response,
the international humanitarian arm of the Southern
Baptist Convention (SBC),
reported local churches
were pooling limited
resources to become
community hubs for relief,
offering shelter, clean
water, and food to neighbors
in need. (A local partner
told the group at least 17
bodies had been found in a
nearby church. The church’s
pastor lost three of his
family members.)
Workers at Rescue
Network Nepal, an indigenous Christian organization,
activated volunteers they
had already trained through
local churches to provide
first aid and trauma care in
rural regions.
Outside Christian organizations responded as well:
Samaritan’s Purse and
Convoy of Hope dispatched
teams and supplies to the
region to offer relief in conjunction with church networks in local communities.
David Platt, president of
the SBC’s International
Mission Board, said his
denomination would also
help with relief efforts,
including both material and
spiritual needs.
“In light of the lack of
gospel access in so much of
Nepal, seeing urgent
physical and spiritual need
collide like this is overwhelming,” Platt wrote after
the earthquake. “A natural
disaster like this in Nepal
underscores the reality that
in a world of pain and suffering, the ultimate hope for
the nations is the gospel of
Jesus Christ.” A
FROM TOP: Niranjan Shrestha/AP • Ra j K Ra j/Hindustan Times via Gett y Images • Altaf Qadri/AP • Niranjan Shrestha/AP
powerful than the deadly
tremor that struck Haiti in
2010. (An aftershock the day
after the Nepal quake shook
buildings nearly 700 miles
away in the Indian capital of
New Delhi.) At least 18
climbers—including four
Americans—died when the
earthquake triggered an
avalanche at Mount Everest.
Hospitals grew overwhelmed as seriously
injured patients outstripped
medical capacity in the
impoverished nation, and
devastated villages at the
epicenter near the district of
Gorkha remained cut off by
landslides that blocked roads
with boulders and mud.
In Nepal’s capital of
Kathmandu, the quake
toppled temples and other
religious sites in the predominantly Hindu nation,
and grieving families began
solemn Hindu rituals to
cremate their loved ones.
Some carried dead family members down hillsides
on bamboo stretchers to
build funeral pyres at riversides. A local priest said
families had burned more
than 1,200 bodies within 48
hours in rituals near a
temple in Kathmandu.
As smoke rose from riverside funeral pyres, prayers
and singing rose from open
fields in neighboring towns,
as Christians from local
churches huddled with
others outdoors to avoid the
dangers of powerful aftershocks. Some had lost their
homes in the quake.
Christians make up less
than 3 percent of the population in a country once
considered the world’s only
Hindu kingdom. After years
of intense persecution,
Nepalese Christians now
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and more 4/28/15 10:37 PM
What does it mean to be a man made in the image of God? And, what does it mean to be a man under God’s grace,
called according to His purpose? In The Masculine Mandate, former tank commander, Dr. Richard D. Phillips,
provides clear biblical instruction for husbands, fathers, and sons as he carefully examines Scripture. Each
chapter highlights important truths for men of all ages as they identify the source of true masculinity found only
in the Creator. Now available in print and digital editions wherever books are sold.
CREDIT
ReformationTrust.com | 800.435.4343
10 NEWS.indd 11
4/27/15 12:39 PM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
April 20
Fatal passage
Rescuers help
migrant refugees
on the island
of Rhodes.
Saudis strike
Saudi artillerymen fire at armored
vehicles near the Yemeni border.
Saudi Arabia announced
an end to its airstrikes
against Yemen, where
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels
have ousted President Abed
Rabbo Mansour Hadi and
taken control of significant
parts of the country. But
days later, the airstrikes
resumed as ground fighting
continued and negotiations
didn’t materialize. A U.S.
aircraft carrier and a missile
cruiser moved to the Yemeni
coast, where seven other
U.S. warships are stationed.
U.S. officials said the
warships are protecting the
vital shipping lanes there and
preventing Iran from bringing
weapons to the rebels.
12 W ORL D MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 NEWS.indd 12
migrants: Argiris Mantikos/Eurokinissi via AP • yemen: Hasan Jamali/ap • BALTIMORE: Patrick Semansk y
April 21
Up to 900 migrants died when a
boat sank while crossing the
Mediterranean Sea from Libya
to Italy, bringing the number
who died trying to reach Europe
by sea in April to at least 1,750,
a record. The number making
such dangerous sea crossings
has spiked since last year when
220,000 persons made the
journey according to the UN
High Commissioner for
Refugees. Migrants are fleeing
conflicts and poverty in Africa
and the Middle East, and
tumultuous Libya has become
the hub for human smugglers.
European authorities are
weighing the appropriate
response to the crisis,
balancing search and rescue
operations with a desire to
discourage smugglers. Italy
ended an aggressive search
and rescue program months
ago over its expense, but after
this incident the European
Union boosted funding for
rescue operations.
 Download WORLD’s iPad app today; details at wng.org/iPad
more g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and4/28/15
10:39 PM
MIGRANTS: ARGIRIS MANTIKOS/EUROKINISSI VIA AP • YEMEN: HASAN JAMALI/AP • BALTIMORE: PATRICK SEMANSK Y
APRIL 27
RIOTING IN BALTIMORE
Rioting that began on April 25 in Baltimore
escalated rapidly on April 27 and left destruction
in its wake. In the hours following the funeral of
Freddie Gray, an African-American Baltimore
resident who died in police custody, bands of
looters roamed the streets, smashing windows,
hurling rocks at police, and torching buildings. By
the next morning, 21 police off icers were injured
(six seriously), 20 businesses and 144 cars had
been set on fire, and more than 200 persons had
been arrested. President Barack Obama the next
day said there was “no excuse” for the violence
as he denounced the looters as “thugs” and
“criminals”: “They’re not protesting, they’re not
making a statement, they’re stealing.”
10 NEWS.indd 13
4/29/15 9:49 AM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
april 28
SUPREME COURT
supreme court: Olivier Douliery/Get t y Images • trafficking: Patrick Semansk y/ap • isis: Rex Features via AP
Leading up to gay marriage arguments on April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled it would likely legalize gay
marriage nationwide through this case, as it repeatedly declined appeals of circuit court rulings that struck down
state marriage laws. As proponents gathered outside the court, inside the justices appeared divided, with the cagey
Justice Anthony Kennedy holding the key vote. Kennedy and a majority of the other justices expressed reservations
about the court changing an institution that had existed for “millennia.” Then again, Kennedy also talked about the
“noble purpose” of same-sex couples seeking marriage and their unfulfilled “dignity.” The court focused little on legal
precedent and more on what marriage signifies for the state. It will issue a ruling likely near the end of June.
10 NEWS.indd 14
4/29/15 9:13 AM
April 22
supreme court: Olivier Douliery/Get t y Images • trafficking: Patrick Semansk y/ap • isis: Rex Features via AP
The Senate acts
A survivor of sex trafficking rests at the
Samaritan Women house in Baltimore.
After weeks of gridlock from
Senate Democrats and proabortion groups, the Senate
passed the widely popular
Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act, which
increases human trafficking
penalties and boosts law
enforcement’s tools against
traffickers. The bill passed
unanimously out of committee,
but then Democrats blocked
the measure over Hyde
Amendment language in the
bill, which forbids federal fines
paid into a victims’ fund to be
used for abortions. Now the
money for victims’ medical
services will come out of a
different federal fund, which
already forbids
abortion funding except in
cases of rape or incest. Senate
Republicans had held up
Attorney General Loretta
Lynch’s confirmation after
Democrats blocked the
trafficking bill; the
confirmation vote went
forward once the trafficking
bill passed.
April 19
Christians
executed
In another grim video, ISIS
militants executed at least 35
Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
Terrorists beheaded one group
of Christians on a beach,
reminiscent of the executions
of 21 Egyptian Christians in
February, and shot another
group in a different location.
“We swear to Allah, the one
who disgraced you by our
hands, you will not have
safety, even in your dreams,
until you embrace Islam,” the
video’s narrator said. An
Ethiopian official said the
Christians were likely migrants
trying to reach Europe.
10 NEWS.indd 15
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD 15
4/28/15 10:44 PM
DISPATCHES
NEWS
Around the globe
UNITED STATES The FBI arrested six people
in San Diego, Calif., and Minneapolis, Minn.,
for attempting to travel to Syria to join the
Islamic State.
NORTH KOREA The family of South Korean
pastor Kim Dong-shik won a $330 million
ruling against the North Korean government
from a U.S. court, for the pastor’s wrongful
kidnapping, torture, and death.
TURKEY Armenians marked the 100th
anniversary of the genocide in which
Ottoman Turks wiped out 1.5 million
Armenians and at least 250,000
Assyrian Christians (see p. 52).
CUBA President Obama removed Cuba from
the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors
of terrorism, a big step toward normalizing
relations between the two countries.
PAKISTAN The White House reported that a
U.S. counterterrorism operation in January
killed an American and an Italian hostage,
whom al-Qaeda captured several years ago.
EGYPT An Egyptian court sentenced former
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to 20
years in prison for his government’s arrest and
torture of protesters in 2012.
CHILE The Calbuco volcano
erupted in Chile, forcing 6,000
to evacuate, collapsing roofs,
and blanketing crops and
livestock in ash.
WORLD
MAY 16, 2015
10 NEWS-GLOBE+LA.indd 16
NG HAN GUAN/AP
16
EUROPE Under scrutiny for donations from foreign
governments with bad human rights’ records, the
Clinton Foundation adopted new rules that forbid
donations from all countries except Australia,
Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and
the United Kingdom. Other governments may still
give to the Clinton Global Initiative.
d Listen to WORLD on the radio at worldandeverything.com
4/29/15
9:33 AM
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MORE NEWS OF THE WORLD IS ON OUR WEBSITE: WNG.ORG
Looking ahead
NG HAN GUAN/AP
SCHOOL : SILVIA JANSEN/ISTOCK • BICYCLISTS: SPENCER PL AT T/GET T Y IMAGES • HARDY: © 2014 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC • BIDEN: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP • LET TERMAN/JEFFREY R. STA AB/CBS
MAY 10
Elementary-school
teachers in Ontario, Canada, voted to
authorize a strike beginning today if
the government and the teachers
union cannot solve an ongoing labor
dispute. The teachers have been
working without a contract since the
beginning of the school year.
MAY 15
Mad Max is back even if
Mel Gibson isn’t. English actor Tom
Hardy will reprise the role of Mad
Max in the postapocalyptic series
when Mad Max: Fury Road debuts to
a worldwide audience.
MAY 15
Motorists should be
on the lookout when bicyclists
from across the nation participate
in National Bike to Work Day. The
League of American Bicyclists and
local biking clubs support and
promote the event.
MAY 17
Yale University will host Vice President
Joe Biden for its commencement exercises today.
Biden’s speech will come as many are wondering
whether the two-time presidential candidate will
challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic
nomination. Biden has said he will decide by late
summer, but he has already visited three early
primary states this year.
MAY 20
CBS late night veteran David
Letterman will retire after recording one
last installment of the Late Show today.
Letterman debuted on late night television
in 1982 on NBC. The 68-year-old known for
his acerbic wit and Top 10 lists will give way
to former Comedy Central star Stephen
Colbert who will officially take over the
show in September. (See p. 59.)
10 NEWS-GLOBE+LA.indd 17
4/29/15 10:40 AM
DISPATCHES
HUMAN RACE
Jackie Robinson West Little
League (JRW), stripped of
its U.S. title in January, has
severed some ties with the
league, the Chicago Tribune
reported. While still a charter member of Little League,
the Chicago-based children
will play in the Cal Ripken
Division of the Babe Ruth
League. A team spokesman
cited “disrespect” from
Little League for allegedly
failing to inquire of JRW
officials about cheating
accusations before stripping the team of the title.
Adults are accused of illegally manipulating districts
to create a super team.
OVERTURNED
A federal appeals court on April 22
overturned Barry Bonds’ obstruction
of justice conviction in a 10-1
decision. Baseball’s home run
king was convicted in 2011 in
part for an irrelevant
answer to a 2003 grand
jury question on
steroids, instead
talking of his
childhood. He has
maintained he
didn’t realize the
substances he
used were illegal.
Baseball writers
have consistently
voted to keep the
steroid-era All-Star out
of the Hall of Fame.
RECOVERED
TRIED
DIED
Mary Doyle Keefe, the model for Norman Rockwell’s “Rosie the Riveter” in 1943, died April 21.
She was 92. Rockwell paid the petite Keefe $10 for two mornings as a model and transformed her
into “sort of a giant” for the famous poster and Saturday Evening Post cover image. With big arms,
blue jeans, a lunch box, and feet resting on Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf manifesto, “Rosie” symbolized
the women who worked in American industry while millions of men were at war. Keefe worked
as a dental hygienist before having four children with her husband, who died in 2003.
18
WORLD
10 HUMAN RACE.indd 18
MAY 16, 2015
Oskar Groening, a former
Nazi SS sergeant who
manned the entrance to
Auschwitz-Birkenau death
camps, went on trial April
21 on 300,000 counts of
accessory to murder. The
93-year-old told the
German judge he shares
BONDS: THEARON W. HENDERSON/GET T Y IMAGES • KEEFE: JIM COLE/AP
R.C. Sproul went home
from the hospital April 23
after suffering a stroke.
Ligonier Ministries
reported that Sproul has no
paralysis and remains his
“jovial self.” The pastor and
theologian had checked
himself into the hospital
several days earlier
suspecting a mild stroke.
Doctors confirmed the
stroke and discovered
undiagnosed diabetes. His
speech and strength are
still returning.
more
g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and4/29/15
11:36 AM
PAKISTAN: FAREED KHAN/AP • HUNTSMAN: RICK BOWMER/AP • HAIL : BEN McMILL AN/AP • GEORGE: MARCO Di L AURO/GET T Y IMAGES • SWEETEN: JORDAN STRAUSS/INVISION/AP
LEFT
By the
numbers
“moral guilt” in atrocities
he witnessed. Termed the
“Accountant of Auschwitz,”
he often oversaw the confiscation of arriving Jews’
belongings. He coped with
vodka. The 70th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz has led to a 40
percent spike in visitors to
the camp this year.
$1.2244
trillion
Pakistani police
inspect Lobo’s car.
SENTENCED
BONDS: THEARON W. HENDERSON/GET T Y IMAGES • KEEFE: JIM COLE/AP
PAKISTAN: FAREED KHAN/AP • HUNTSMAN: RICK BOWMER/AP • HAIL : BEN McMILL AN/AP • GEORGE: MARCO Di L AURO/GET T Y IMAGES • SWEETEN: JORDAN STRAUSS/INVISION/AP
Megan Huntsman, 40,
received life in prison
April 20 for killing
six newborns and
keeping their
bodies for 18
years. She pled
guilty in February
to asphyxiating her
children soon after giving
birth between 1996 and
2006. A seventh body she
kept was stillborn, she said.
Police arrested Huntsman
in April 2014 after her
estranged husband found
one of the children, all of
whom were his. A meth
addict before succumbing
to alcohol, Huntsman
stated there’s “no reasonable answer” for her “sick
and heinous crime.”
DIED
Cardinal Francis E. George,
a Roman Catholic archbishop who led stern
responses to sexual abuse
and religious liberty
issues, died on April 17.
He was 78. George
came to national
prominence in 2002
during the sexual
abuse scandal, urging
the Church to bar
any priest from
serving who faced credible
allegations. He remained
vocal on principle after
his cancer diagnosis
in 2006, fighting
Obamacare’s contraception mandate and closing
Catholic Charities’
Chicago foster care
arm in 2011 when the state
tried to force the group to
place children with samesex couples.
SHOT
American physician and
teacher Debra Lobo, 55,
faces a long recovery after
suspected ISIS militants
shot her on April 16. Four
gunman shot her twice in
the head as she left the
Karachi, Pakistan, medical
school where she
teaches. She
faced several
surgeries, but
doctors told
the family she should
recover. The wife of a
Pakistani man and mother
of two teen daughters, Lobo
has worked in Karachi for
22 years. Pro-ISIS
pamphlets near her body
promised more attacks.
VINDICATED
A Kentucky court ruled
Lexington printer Blaine
Adamson may decline to
print messages that
conflict with his Christian
beliefs. A local human
rights commission had
found Adamson guilty of
discrimination after he
declined to print T-shirts
for a gay pride festival in
2012 (see “Losing their
shirts,” May 2). The commission may appeal the
court’s decision, but
Adamson’s attorneys at
Alliance Defending
Freedom said the ruling
affirms a business owner’s
freedom to exercise his
conscience at work.
DIED
Former child actor Sawyer
Sweeten, who played
Geoffrey Barone on
Everybody Loves Raymond,
The amount owed by
the United States to
Japan at the end of
February, making the
country America’s
largest foreign creditor. The U.S. Treasury
owed China, which had
been the largest creditor, $1.2237 trillion.
$100,000
The fine retired Gen.
David Petraeus
received, plus probation, on April 23 after
pleading guilty to
mishandling classified
information. Petraeus
admitted to giving the
information to his
mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell.
4.25 The
diameter of hail, in
inches, reported in
Stephenville, Texas,
on April 26. A standard
softball has a 3-inch
diameter.
committed
suicide on
April 23.
Sweeten,
19, starred on
Ray Romano’s popular
sitcom alongside real-life
twin, Sullivan, and sister,
Madylin, who both played
siblings on the show.
MAY 16, 2015
10 HUMAN RACE.indd 19
WORLD
19
4/29/15 11:56 AM
DISPATCHES
QUOTABLES
‘Are you
kidding me?’
‘I forgive the
hands of the
people who had
a hand in my
son’s murder,
either before
or after.’
An UNIDENTIFIED MOTHER in Baltimore
caught on camera confronting
and smacking her son for taking
part in the Baltimore riots
on April 27.
U.S. Rep. RAÚL LABRADOR, R-Idaho, on the spate
of congressional activity in the first 15 weeks
of 2015, including budget bills and Medicare,
education, and human traff icking
legislation.
‘Deep-seated
cultural codes, religious
beliefs, and structural
biases have to be changed.’
Democratic presidential candidate HILLARY
CLINTON on laws related to “reproductive
healthcare and safe childbirth”
during an April 24 speech
in New York.
20
WORLD
10 QUOTABLES.indd 20
MAY 16, 2015
‘It is likely
that I will die
in my bed. My
successor will
die in prison.
His successor
will die
executed in the
public square.
His successor
will pick up
the shards of a
ruined society
and slowly
help rebuild
civilization, as
the church has
done so often in
human history.’
Roman Catholic Cardinal
FRANCIS GEORGE of Chicago,
who died April 17.
MOTHER: ABC • L ABRADOR: ALEX BRANDON/AP • CLINTON: WIN MCNAMEE/GET T Y IMAGES • WARD: DOMINICK REUTER/POOL PHOTO VIA AP
‘It’s easy to be
bipartisan when you’re
adding to the debt.’
URSULA WARD in a statement before the court in Fall
River, Mass., after Aaron
Hernandez was found guilty
of the murder of her son,
Odin Lloyd.
more
11:30 AM
mother: ABC • L ABRADOR: Alex Brandon/ap • CLINTON: Win McNamee/Get t y Images • Ward: Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo via AP
4/29/15 12:05 PM
10 QUOTABLES.indd 21
DISPATCHES
QUICK TAKES
Rapid descent
Abbot t: Fairfax Media via Get t y Images • professor X: handout • honeybees: Ian Terry/REUTERS/L ANDOV • Portland International Airport: STEVE DIPAOL A/Reuters/L andov • Roberts: Nati Harnik/ap • Jedlick a: handout
Rowing: handout • worms: krieg barrie • chimpanzees: coronado/shut terstock
In Australia, a man of the people guzzles beer, and
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott isn’t above
showing off while doing so. Goaded on by members
of an Australian Rules football team inside a bar in
Sydney, the leader of the center-right Liberal Party
was caught on camera downing a pint of beer in just
seven seconds on April 18. Abbott’s feat, however,
did not approach the prowess of former Australian
Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who once downed 2½
glasses of beer in 11 seconds.
Flying cargo
A tractor-trailer that overturned on Interstate 5 in Lynnwood, Wash., on April 17
shut down two lanes of traffic, but that wasn’t the biggest concern. The overturned truck unleashed a massive swarm of angry honeybees. The truck was
carrying freight for Belleville Honey, a company that rents out its bee colonies for
area farmers. According to the company, more than 22 million bees were on
board at the time of the accident. Many of the bees died in the crash, and company
officials spent much of the rest of the day trying to round up survivors.
Eating on the job
Faced with invasive plants like blackberries and thistles, authorities at
Portland International Airport in April have called in the one brushclearing crew guaranteed to work: goats. Numbering 40, the leased goats
will enjoy clearing a five-acre area near the airport. The airport acquired the
goats from Portland-area business Goat Power, which included one guard
llama to help protect the goats from coyotes.
Nine political lives?
When polls closed on April 9 for student government elections at North Dakota State University, it
seemed that Professor X’s write-in campaign had
succeeded. Professor X, a stray cat whose
adopted owners pushed the feline for political
office, garnered the seventh-most votes—good
enough for one of the 11 Student Senate seats.
Unfortunately
for Professor
X’s campaign
team, the NDSU
student government ruled
X’s election
invalid because
the cat was not
an enrolled
s tudent at the
university.
22 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
10 QUICK TAKES.indd 22
more g Visit our website—wng.org—for breaking news and4/28/15
10:54 PM
ABBOT T: FAIRFAX MEDIA VIA GET T Y IMAGES • PROFESSOR X: HANDOUT • HONEYBEES: IAN TERRY/REUTERS/L ANDOV • PORTL AND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: STEVE DIPAOL A/REUTERS/L ANDOV • ROBERTS: NATI HARNIK/AP • JEDLICK A: HANDOUT
ROWING: HANDOUT • WORMS: KRIEG BARRIE • CHIMPANZEES: CORONADO/SHUT TERSTOCK
Back
to the
bench
He was good enough
to be chosen by
President George W.
Bush and confirmed
by the Senate, but
Chief Justice John
Roberts was rejected
when he reported to
jury duty on April 15
in Rockville, Md. The
Supreme Court chief
justice was part of a
jury pool to resolve a
2013 car crash case.
Roberts answered
questions from
Maryland Circuit
Judge Ronald Rubin
about connections
he may have to the
case. Six jurors were
chosen for the case.
Roberts, juror No. 49,
was not one of them.
Rowing scared
Territorial claim
On April 15 a 31-year-old Czech politician strode
toward the banks of the Danube river, planted a
flag, and proclaimed himself the president of a new
micronation. Liberland, as founder Vit Jedlicka
(second from right) calls it, occupies an uncommon
area of terra nullius: land claimed by no nation. The
2.5-square-mile parcel lies along the banks of the
Danube between Croatia and Serbia and represents an area claimed by neither state. In the days
following the flag stunt, Jedlicka filed papers with
nearby countries and the United Nations and then
began a media campaign to attract potential
settlers to his libertarian paradise. Hoping for
5,000 volunteers, Jedlicka received inquiries from
more than 160,000. One possible roadblock:
Potential Liberland residents may have to contend
with Paraduin, another would-be micronation that
claimed the land two weeks earlier.
Freshmen rowers at Washington University in St.
Louis found themselves under attack when hundreds of Asian carp began jumping and flailing near
the students’ boats. “The freshmen were panicking,”
said crew captain Benjamin Rosenbaum. And who
could blame them? Easily frightened by passing
boats, Asian carp can jump up
to 10 feet out of the
water. Rosenbaum
said surviving a carp
onslaught has
been a rite of
passage for
members of the
crew team since
Creve Coeur Lake
became infested
with the highly invasive species about a
decade ago.
Animal persons?
A New York trial court judge on April 20 granted
human-style legal rights to a pair of chimpanzees
kept by Stony Brook University. The judge,
Barbara Jaff e, granted habeas corpus rights to
the animals and required the university to
provide the court with a legally suff icient reason
to keep Hercules and Leo in custody. The
Nonhuman Rights Project began the legal
process on behalf of the animals and declared a
preliminary victory with the judge’s ruling. The
animal rights group has unsuccessfully argued
for legal personhood for chimpanzees in three
other courtrooms in New York before
finally winning in Jaff e’s
Manhattan courtroom.
Squirmy weather
Reports of earthworms raining down over
parts of Norway like droplets of water have
baff led scientists in the Scandinavian
country. Biologist Karsten Erstad came
upon thousands of earthworms lying
motionless on the snow while skiing earlier
in April. According to Erstad, the snowpack
is too deep for the worms to have tunneled
through. After garnering a bit of attention
in the local news, corroborating reports of
earthworm rain in Southern Norway have
flooded in to Norwegian media. Some
scientists speculate that the worms are
being lifted into the air by strong gusts of
wind and simply landing like rain.
10 QUICK TAKES.indd 23
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
23
4/29/15 8:56 AM
JANIE B. CHEANEY
The force is weak
Earth-bound obsessions will inevitably
disappoint and disillusion
24 WOR L D M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 CHEANEY.indd 24
Lucas himself
experienced
legendary
flops, costly
divorces,
and severe
burnout; more
than once
he declared
himself done
with Star
Wars.
star wars: handout • Lucas: Mat t Sayles/ap
A long time ago in a mythical Modesto
childhood, a boy sat in a darkened movie
theater week after week and watched thrilling
adventures unfold on a screen. Later, in a nonmythical adulthood, he watched some of those
adventures again and was struck with how bad
they were. “Loving them that much [as a child]
when they were so awful, I began to wonder
what would happen if they were done really
well.” The boy was George Lucas and the eventual result, inspired by the Flash Gordon serials
of his youth, became the most enduring film
franchise ever.
Does anyone remember how miserable the
’70s were? A lost war, a presidential scandal
and resignation, stagflation, and dwindling fuel
supplies—to many astute observers, it looked
like the beginning of a USA decline. Star Wars
opened May 25, 1977, on fewer than 40
screens. Studio execs dismissed it; the project
had been plagued from beginning to end and
labeled as “weird” by viewers of the early cuts.
Its success took everyone by surprise, including
George Lucas.
Star Wars, later titled A New Hope, recalled
the old Saturday-matinee serials but cast them
in gold. It strode boldly across genre lines,
smashed previous notions of what special
effects could do, and solidified the term “summer blockbuster.” All mixed blessings, we can
see now, but at the time the movie signaled “a
new hope,” not just for filmmaking but for the
nation. “Morning in America” (cue the Reagan
revolution) waited just around the corner.
That was almost 40 years ago; plenty of time
for disenchantment. The two sequels carried
the franchise forward successfully, but the
three prequels, beginning in 2000, bitterly
disappointed first-generation fans. Elsewhere
in the film industry, what was new and exciting
became derivative and calculating (“Another
comic-book movie? Can’t we get back to story
R
and character development?”). Lucas himself
experienced legendary flops, costly divorces,
and severe burnout; more than once he
declared himself done with Star Wars.
That’s the way of the world: Earth-bound
obsessions will inevitably disappoint.
Disappointment is a major theme of history,
but few ask why our hopes should be so high to
begin with, or why a movie or a song or a stunning baseball play plucks invisible heartstrings.
Why are we this way—and why continually
disappointed, as though expecting something
that never seems to arrive?
C.S. Lewis called it “joy”—the
mysterious longing that could never
be fulfilled on earth, at least not permanently. The substitutes we invent
for Pascal’s God-shaped space or
Augustine’s restless heart can be as
grandiose as a film spectacle or as
pedestrian as a new job. At the end
of another movie, Boyhood, the title
character’s mother sees him off to
college with something like despair.
“You know what I’m realizing? My
life is just gonna go [snap] like that. A
series of milestones: getting married,
having kids, getting divorced ...
finally getting the job I wanted. ... You
know what’s next? My [expletivedeleted] funeral.”
Our name is Ichabod: “the glory
has departed” (see 1 Samuel 4:22).
But Hollywood has an antidote: Star
Wars: The Force Awakens, opening in December.
The first words spoken on the new trailer—“The
Force was strong in my family”—are meant to
stir the jaded heart. Hop aboard the Millennium
Falcon for one more thrilling ride, with droids
and light sabers and Sith lords and Han Solo—
yes, it’s Harrison Ford, visibly battered after
30-odd years and some unfortunate career
choices, but sporting the same goofy smile,
saying to the bandolier-strung Wookie at his
side, “Chewie. We’re home.”
No, not yet. Huge crowds will surround
theaters on opening day. Some will love The
Force Awakens and some will not, depending on
how closely it lines up with their idea of glory.
Those ideas vary infinitely, as “star differs from
star” (1 Corinthians 15:41). That’s because our
individual notions are not the real thing but
only point to it: the one glory we were all made
for. It’s the fantasy of our childhood, “done
really well”—done perfectly, at last. A
 [email protected]  @jbcheaney
4/28/15 9:28 AM
star wars: handout • Lucas: Mat t Sayles/ap
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CULTURE
MOVIES & TV / BOOKS / Q& A / MUSIC
MOVIE
Noble
effort
Biopic of children’s
crusader is effective
but difficult to
relate to by Megan Basham
Noble, an Irish drama
that tells the true
story of children’s rights
campaigner Christina
Noble, offers two movies
for the price of one, though
the first succeeds far better
than the second.
The film flashes back
and forth between what
could be viewed as the two
halves of Noble’s life—her
child- and girl-hood when
she is a victim of evil and
neglect and her empowered
adulthood when she
Destiny Films
R
becomes a crusader on
behalf of similar victims.
Noble’s early experiences are gut-wrenching to
witness, though by all
accounts the movie offers a
restrained version of actual
events. After her mother
dies, 10-year-old Christina
and her five siblings are left
in the care of their father.
Little time passes before his
alcoholism leaves the family
destitute and they are
placed in “industrial
schools.” Once she ages out
 [email protected]  @megbasham
of this system, Christina is
left homeless. The streets
bring perils both depressingly predictable—as when
her vulnerable living situation makes her a target of
rapists—and astonishingly
unexpected—as when her
baby is adopted without her
consent.
The actresses playing
both the child (Gloria
Cramer Curtis) and twentysomething (Sarah Greene)
Christina turn in phenomenal performances, capturing
a sassy, optimistic spirit
that give us hope she will
find joy in the future even
as she sustains a series of
seemingly unending blows.
This part of the movie is
so strong, it holds up a
lagging interwoven storyline where we see Christina
embark on the work that
has changed the lives of
tens of
thousands of
Deirdre
Mongol and
O’Cane as
Vietnamese
Christina
street kids.
Noble
MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5 W ORL D 27
4/29/15 11:58 AM
MOVIES & TV
Noble’s philanthropy began,
but we miss the details. In
an interview with the Los
Angeles Times from 1992,
Noble recounted how, on
her first trip to Ho Chi Minh
City, she saw two little girls
so hungry they were trying
to catch and eat ants. The
horrible specificity of this
recollection points out
what’s missing from the
same scene in the movie,
which simply shows the
young sisters squatting in
the dirt. It’s a generic image
of exotic poverty, not much
different from the footage
playing in the background
of a Feed the Children commercial. It can’t help but
pack some emotional punch,
but it lacks the authentic
human connection it could
have had.
Still, the fact that what we
see of Noble’s story leaves
us wishing we had more
speaks to the effectiveness
of the film. We walk away
with plenty of questions
about what’s going in
Noble’s mind, but one clear
conclusion—both halves of
her life would and should
make compelling movies in
their own right. A
MOVIE
The Age of Adaline
BOX OFFICE TOP 10
For the weekEND of April 24-26
according to Box Office Mojo
CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent
(V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10
scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com
If you never aged like
title character Adaline
Bowman in this fantasy
romance, wouldn’t you try
to make life exciting? Jump
out of more airplanes?
Take more road trips? Read
more? Youth is wasted on
the young, we’d say, so why
squander such a sweet
ephemeral thing?
Never in our blandest
imaginations would we want
less—ridding ourselves of
relationship and fleeing
from the worlds we know
best would be outlandish.
Yet this is what The Age of
Adaline (rated PG-13 for
sexual innuendo and language) tries to convince
us we’d do, and it’s such
a baffling leap that we
hardly see ourselves in
the movie’s take on agelessness and Adaline’s
desire to run from life.
After a freak car
accident in the 1920s
keeps Adaline (Blake
Lively) a wrinkle-free
beauty for the next
eight decades, she’s left
making up excuses for
her unchanging face.
Growing weary of the
gossip, Adaline abandons her school-age
daughter and moves
away, drifting in and out
R
SV L
1̀ Furious 7* PG-13..................................... 465
2̀ Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 PG........... 241
3̀ The Age of Adaline* PG-13....... 443
4̀Home* PG........................................................ 131
5̀Unfriended R............................................. 6 710
6̀ Ex Machina* R.......................................... 656
7̀ The Longest Ride* PG-13............ 543
8̀ Get Hard R...................................................... 8 510
9̀ Monkey Kingdom G.......................... 320
10 Woman in Gold* PG-13................... 145
`
of life but never actually
living it. She leaves lovers,
dispassionately dumps
friends, and slips out of
jobs all before anyone
catches on. And for what—
because she couldn’t face
the gossip?
The movie claims Adaline
feared becoming a guinea
pig for science, but her life
choices leave such a torrent
of relational and emotional
destruction that life as a
lab rat almost sounds more
appealing. It would have
been more reasonable—and
perhaps more entertaining—
if Lively’s Adaline had channeled some of Bill Murray’s
ageless wit in Groundhog
Day, or even Brad Pitt’s
melancholy in The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button. In
those films, we see someone maturing in a meaningful way even as time does
strange things with their
bodies.
Adaline’s self-imposed
identity crisis catches up
to her when she meets Ellis
Jones (Michiel Huisman)
and his canny father
(Harrison Ford) but sadly by
then, the viewer will likely
have already aged enough
to realize growing old might
not be such a bad thing.
—by JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON
Diyah Pera/Lionsgate
What’s missing most
from Noble’s middle-aged
life in Ho Chi Minh city is an
exploration of where her
strength and determination
spring from. We understand
that her own painful
childhood gives her a psychic bond to discarded and
abused children. But empathy is one thing, the grueling, persistent, day-to-day
work of battling endemic
poverty another. A quick
dream sequence suggests
Noble’s Catholic faith may
be her motivation, yet her
interaction with God never
goes much beyond some
understandable railing. And
with the exception of her
very good works, Noble’s
spiritual life disappears
almost completely once she
founds her charitable
organization.
In fact, as played by veteran Irish actress Deirdre
O’Cane, Noble is so resolved,
so tenacious, so unrelentingly confident it’s hard to
relate to her as anything
other than a saint with a salty
way of speaking (minimal
profanity and realistic depictions of child sex trafficking
account for the movie’s
PG-13 rating). Surely in the
early days of her ministry,
the real Christina Noble had
doubts about what she was
doing. Surely she had dark,
defeated moments where
she questioned the viability
of her goals. Yet the somewhat hagiographic narrative
never betrays any hint of
weakness. Seeing some
chinks in Noble’s steely,
crusading armor would have
made her more relatable
and her story all the more
inspiring.
In like manner, we get
the broad brush of how
*Reviewed by WORLD
28 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
4/29/15 11:59 AM
Ex Machina: A24 Films • Age Of Ultron: Marvel/ Walt Disney Studios
CULTURE
MOVIE
Avengers: Age of Ultron
In this PG-13 sequel to
The Avengers (2012),
Marvel’s misfits are back to
save the world—or at least
keep it entertained for a
few hours with 3-D action
scenes and one-liners. The
film starts with a bang as
the Avengers attack a
mountain fort owned by
Hydra’s henchmen in
Eastern Europe.
When the dust clears,
Iron Man/Tony Stark
(Robert Downey Jr.) finds a
scepter containing a Mind
Stone with magical properties. Soon, Stark convinces
Dr. Banner/the Hulk (Mark
Ruffalo) to help him harness the Mind Stone and
create a new form of artificial intelligence. Stark’s
goal is to design a robotic
system so powerful that
the Avengers will be able to
go on permanent vacation.
Somehow, though,
(surprise!) things go awry
in the mechanic’s shop.
Even as Steve/Captain
America (Chris Evans),
Thor (Chris Hemsworth),
Natasha/Black Widow
(Scarlett Johansson), and
the rest of the gang celebrate their recent victory,
Stark’s new robot, Ultron
(James Spader), makes his
appearance—and the party
Diyah Pera/Lionsgate
Ex Machina: A24 Films • Age Of Ultron: Marvel/ Walt Disney Studios
R
is definitely over.
Ultron’s aim is the
destruction of the human
race, and besides all the
brawn of his robotic army,
one of Ultron’s minions—
the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth
Olsen)—is playing mind
games with our superheroes. The Avengers will
have to overcome their
fears, reign in their overthe-top personalities, and
work together as a team if
they hope to triumph.
This movie doesn’t have
the heart of the original
Avengers film. Still, director
Joss Whedon manages to
keep the sprawling story
moving ahead, and its CGI
spectacle doesn’t disappoint. A romantic subplot
between Black Widow and
the Hulk adds emotional
depth, though both Iron Man
and Captain America are
regrettably less developed.
Crude and offensive
language as well as intense
violence make this a movie
parents may want their
children to skip. Viewers
who go may find it a lot like
Stark’s robot—intelligent,
full of clever quips and
engaging action, but certainly not all he dreamed it
would be.
See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies
—by EMILY WHITTEN
MOVIe
Ex Machina
What makes humans,
human? What is the
essence of humanity that
sets man apart from all
other creatures? Ex
Machina, an intellectually
stimulating, visually captivating, and psychologically
disturbing sci-fi thriller,
provides few answers but
leaves your mind crackling
and popping.
Artificial intelligence is
a familiar theme in cinema,
but few films have philosophized and dramatized the
battle of wills between
man and machine as
powerfully and hauntingly
as Ex Machina (rated R for
nudity, language, sexual
references, and some
violence) has.
Programmer Caleb
(Domhnall Gleeson) wins a
weeklong vacation at the
home office of his boss
Nathan (Oscar Isaac), CEO
of a world-domineering tech
company. An obsessive
recluse, Nathan lives with
one personal assistant
(Sonoya Mizuno) in a semisubterranean lab tucked
between vast ice sheets
and pristine mountains.
Caleb soon discovers that
he’s really there to evaluate Nathan’s top-secret
pet project Ava (Alicia
Vikander), a model-figured,
honey-eyed female android
R
who lives locked up in a
glass box. Ava can talk wittily, look shy, and express
empathy, but it’s up to Caleb
to determine if this seemingly flesh-and-blood robot
has true human consciousness—whatever that is.
“If you’ve built a conscientious machine, that’s not
the history of man—it’s the
history of gods!” Caleb
gasps in awe, which Nathan
accepts as confirmation of
his godhood. They later discuss the role of gender and
sexuality in human nature,
but completely miss
another uniquely human
characteristic: man’s fallen
nature—the unlearned
ability to lie, cheat, manipulate, and betray.
Even somebody as
insanely smart as Nathan is
not God—a fact reinforced
by his drunken stupors and
hubris but also by his failure
to realize that a human is
more than the molecular
components that make him
tick. Essentially, Nathan has
created humanity 2.0 after
his own sinful image—a
soulless being that displays
a complex and sophisticated range of human-like
impulses and desires. Ava
can no doubt think and feel,
but the greater question is:
What is she thinking and
feeling? —by SOPHIA LEE
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD 29
4/29/15 12:00 PM
BOOKS
Tangled net
ONE FAMILY’S STORY OF LIFE TRAPPED IN
A BROKEN SYSTEM by Marvin Olasky
30
WORLD
10 BOOKS.indd 30
not make it on Dave’s income
alone, but to qualify for social
assistance he could not earn
more than $2,100 per month
and they could not have more
than $3,150 in
assets, not counting
their house and car.
The Wagners
also had to get rid
of their 401K retirement savings
account. They could
not establish an
emergency fund in
case their water
heater broke or they needed
a new roof. Campbell writes,
“In sum, they are barred
from doing many of the
things middle-class families
are constantly advised to do.
Save for retirement. Save for
emergencies. Take advantage
of tax-free college savings
plans.”
The result, for the Wagners
and author Campbell, an MIT
political science professor, is
frustration in attempting to
navigate “a collection of one
hundred programs, each
with its own income methodology and rules. … [The
Wagners are] trapped in an
eccentric’s mansion, where
the stairways lead to ceilings
and the doors open onto
walls. … There’s not much
incentive to earn more
money, because social assistance recipients will lose
most of that earning power
as their benefits fall away.”
Campbell thus recognizes
what conservatives have
been saying for years: “Why
seek a higher-paying job if it
means a lower food stamp
benefit and Earned Income
Tax Credit refund? … The
structure of American
means-tested programs helps
keep people poor.” It also
keeps them unmarried or
sometimes even pushes them
toward divorce. Campbell’s
solution is to have the government spend even more
money, but that would end up
hurting the poor even more
and bankrupting America.
The only good news in this:
The Wagners encounter compassion, not from government
officials but from private
citizens. Dave’s retired mother
moves in and cares for the
Wagners’ son, and when she
has to leave, a preschool
gives him a scholarship. A
doctor waives his fee. Mercy
Medical Center donates an air
ambulance ride. Friends and
family renovate the Wagners’
house to make it wheelchair
accessible. A local construction company volunteers to
coordinate the subcontracting. Local vendors donate
items or offer them at cost. A
KRIEG BARRIE
Andrea Campbell’s
Trapped in America’s
Safety Net: One Family’s
Struggle (University of
Chicago Press, 2014) is a
book from the left
that provides evidence for what
compassionate
conservatives have
long been saying: The
social assistance
system that purportedly serves the poor
costs $1 trillion each
year but works
poorly for those who need it
the most.
Campbell describes what
happened when a hit-and-run
accident left her sister-in-law,
Marcella Wagner, paralyzed
and dropped into the tangled
webs of welfare hell. Given
medical costs, she and her
husband Dave Wagner could
R
Such rules counter the
schemes of those who game
the welfare system, but they
do not and probably cannot
take into account the individual situation of “a disabled
person like Marcella who
needs medical equipment
such as a wheelchair, incontinence supplies, and assistive technologies, not to
mention an accessible place
to live and a wheelchair van
for transportation. … Medicaid
will pay for incontinence
supplies, although fewer than
Marcella actually needs;
every month she has to apply
and get approval for thirty
additional catheters.”
Equipment is another
matter: “The rehab facility
social worker doubted MediCal would pay for a fully
reclining wheelchair, and
ordered a partial-tilt one
instead. Now when Marcella
has to be catheterized every
four hours, she has to stop
what she’s doing and go
home to a bed where she can
lie flat. Later, her rehab physicians wrote her caseworker
saying that Marcella needs a
reclining wheelchair. After
six months, no response.”
Welfare programs need
income restrictions or else
they would expand even
more quickly than they do,
but the restrictions can keep
families from climbing out of
poverty: When Dave increases
his income, Marcella loses
program eligibility. “Could
we approach Marcella’s
caseworker to run the what-if
scenarios and see how much
income Dave could earn without threatening her eligibility?
No, state officials told me:
county caseworkers are
incredibly busy, particularly
with Medi-Cal expansion
under the Affordable Care Act.”
MAY 16, 2015
4/23/15 9:38 AM
HANDOUT
CULTURE
Notable books
FOUR RECENT CHRISTIAN NOVELS reviewed by Emily Whitten
SPOTLIGHT
A SPARROW IN TEREZIN Kristy Cambron
Sera and William Hanover are enjoying their wedding day
when an uninvited guest arrives with police. They arrest
William after accusing him of stealing over $12 million.
Meanwhile, Polish refugee Kája Makovsky nightly
navigates the dangers of London’s bombings during World
War II, all while growing closer to a war correspondent.
Eventually, Kája’s faith and selflessness in saving children
from a Nazi concentration camp play a pivotal role in
helping Sera and William. At times the plot feels contrived,
but the story’s rich writing, relatable characters, and
historical context largely outweigh its flaws.
HOSTAGE RUN Andrew Klavan
In the first book of The MindWar Trilogy, a leg-crushing
car accident ended Rick Dial’s football career and his
relationship with girlfriend Molly. But his gamer skills
made him a top recruit for a U.S. anti-terrorism unit. As
book two begins, the terrorist leader of the MindWar
Realm, a virtual world blurring the line between fantasy
and reality, abducts Molly. Rick will have to trust Molly’s
rescue to a fellow agent if he’s to stop the MindWar
attack on American targets. Fast-paced action and
creative world-building make this an engaging read
beyond the teen market.
THE SIGN PAINTER Davis Bunn
Left homeless by her husband’s death, Amy Dowel and
her daughter Kimmie need a new start. They get it when a
Christian outreach center director off ers Amy a new
home, which leads to a new job. Then Amy witnesses a
drug deal, and the drama ramps up as outreach security
volunteers seek to keep her out of the crosshairs of
big-time drug dealers. Complicating things is a budding
romance with her new boss, yet Amy constantly looks to
the Lord to protect her daughter and her new life from
disaster. Although the ending is too good to be true, this
is a suspenseful novel with a lot of heart.
Colin S. Smith brings the thief on
the cross to life in the 96-page
novella Heaven, How I Got Here
(Christian Focus, February 2015).
He writes imaginatively from the
thief’s perspective while dealing
respectfully
with the biblical
account. For
instance, he
doesn’t invent
words to put in
Jesus’ mind or
mouth. Instead,
as we follow the
thief through
his last day on earth—
from eating his breakfast, to
carrying his cross, to finally
breathing his last—Smith shares
poignant reflections on law,
justice, faith, and forgiveness.
Through it all, he continually
brings our attention back to
Christ’s work on the cross and
His off er of salvation to all who
believe.
Christians looking for a book
to savor at the beach, share
with graduates, or challenge
unbelieving friends will want to
take note. —E.W.
KRIEG BARRIE
HANDOUT
EDWIN: HIGH KING OF BRITAIN Edoardo Albert
King Edwin is as pagan as they come, and though he
respects his new wife’s Christian religion, he and his men
will not be easily swayed. But when he almost dies at the
hands of an assassin, a Christian priest saves his life and
gains his trust. Soon, Edwin’s faith in the God of the Bible
frees him from superstition and points the way to a
Christian future for Britain. This tale is more ribald and
gory than necessary (parents of teens, beware!) and its
ending is too abrupt, but the sympathetic characters and
shifting alliances make a fascinating canvas for its clash
of worldviews.
To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books
10 BOOKS.indd 31
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
31
4/23/15 9:37 AM
CULTURE
Q&A
Joshua Muravchik
A nation
without allies
How the world over the last five decades
became an enemy of Israel by Marvin Olasky
Israel declared its independence from
British control on May 14, 1948, and in
subsequent fighting against Arab armies
made brave words a reality. Two-thirds of a
century later, though, Israel has never
seemed more lonely. The Obama administration is openly hostile to the tiny country’s
willingness to fight back against foes who
have vowed its destruction. Many Israelis
have the sense that they’re slammed if they
do, dead if they don’t.
Joshua Muravchik, also 67 and with 11
books under his belt, is a fellow at the
Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins
University’s School of Advanced
International Studies. Before an audience of
Patrick Henry College students I asked him
about his new book, Making David Into
Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel.
R
32 Greg K ahn/Genesis
to the emergence of Palestinian nationalism,
which had not existed before then. Before
that the hot idea was pan-Arabism, with all
the Arabs in one omnibus state that Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to lead.
Why him? Nasser was then, and remains
to this day, the most popular leader ever in
the Arab world. But Nasser’s war in 1967 was
a devastating humiliation, and pan-Arabism
collapsed. Palestinian nationalism became a
new thing, put on the global map by spectacular acts of terrorism by Palestinian radical
groups: airplane hijackings, bombings, and
then the murder of Israeli athletes in the
Munich Olympic Games in 1972. That was
the first punch: International terrorism
intimidated Europeans and moderate Arabs
to the point when these terrorists were
captured in the midst of one of these acts,
governments would release them. They
feared that, if they kept these people in
prison, their comrades would stage another
hijacking and demand their release.
Then came the oil embargo in 1973. The
second punch. European leaders in that
period said openly, “We need their oil. We
have to adjust our policies so that they won’t
be so angry at us.” Later there came to be a
whole ideology that went along with this, but
initially it was just raw intimidation that
started to change things.
W ORLD MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 Q&A.indd 32
4/24/15 10:04 AM
Bernard Gotfryd/Hulton Archive/Get t y Images
Let’s start with the Six-Day War in 1967,
when the world largely cheered Israel’s
astounding victory against huge odds. But you
write that beneath the surface new trends
were developing. The outcome of the war led
rich, workers against capitalists. After World War II
ethnic, racial, or national struggles became dominant,
growing out of anti-colonial movements. People of
color against the white man, a great redemptive
struggle, and in the Arab-Israel conflict the Israelis
are the Western, white guys and the Arabs/
And the depiction changes: No longer tiny Israel
versus this huge opponent in terms of land and
population, but Israel versus the Palestinians. Yes:
Israel suddenly seemed the larger party and the
Palestinians the ones deserving sympathy. In the West
Bank and in Gaza, Israel rules a couple of million
Palestinian Arabs, and Palestinians are saying, “We want
self-determination. We want our national liberation.”
Israel was occupying territory the Palestinians wanted
for their own and standing in the way of the national
aspirations of the Palestinians to have a state of their
own. I can understand why people would sympathize
with that. What is harder to understand and requires
that we go further in seeking an explanation, is why
the world has gotten so exercised about this.
‘[European social democrats] began
to forget their commitment to
democracy and embraced military
dictatorships and the Palestine
Liberation Organization.’
Palestinians are the anti-colonial people of color. The
people who used to be down are now fighting to be
up and that’s what’s important. You’re on their side
regardless of how many bombs they put in pizza
parlors.
One of your chapters describes how the Communist
bloc starting in 1950 was very hostile to Israel, but
Socialist International parties were friendly toward
Israel, governed by the Labor Party. But that changed.
By the 1970s the European social democrats were
feeling very guilty that they were part of the Western
white world and not in tune with these militant third
world peoples. They began to forget their commitment
to democracy and embraced military dictatorships
and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
What about the condemnation of Bernard Lewis and
what became known as “Orientalism” by Edward Said,
whose books are required reading in hundreds of
classes? The Guardian in London described Said as
Greg K ahn/Genesis
Bernard Gotfryd/Hulton Archive/Get t y Images
The world has many occupations and many
thwarted aspirations. When was the last time you saw
an angry demonstration on a college campus over the
brutal occupation of Tibet? If the government of
China would offer to the Tibetans the kinds of terms
of settlement that Israel has offered the Palestinians,
the Dali Lama would dance for joy. Think of the Kurds:
five times more numerous than the Palestinians, with
a sense of national identity that is 5,000 years old, not
50 as with the Palestinians. As far as I can see, no one
except the Kurds themselves gets upset that Kurdish
national aspirations have been brutally thwarted.
The Chinese authorities don’t allow a lot of media
cameras in Tibet, but there could be a lot of interest in
the Kurds. Why isn’t there? Partly because of raw
ressure because of oil and terrorism, but also
p
because of an intellectual transformation not specific
to the Middle East. For 100 years the core idea in leftist
thought was economic: class struggle, poor against
 [email protected]  @MarvinOlasky
10 Q&A.indd 33
Anti-Israeli
protesters in
Central Park,
New York City,
in 1967.
A video of this
interview
in its entirety
can be found
at wng.org
and in the
iPad edition of
this issue
arguably the most influential intellectual in the 20th
century. He symbolizes this new leftist idea that it’s all
about race and not about class, and that the great
moral drama is the history of the oppression of people
of color by white people, and the rebellion of the
people of color against this repression. Said’s thick
book, Orientalism, takes this core idea and puts it in
fancy but fraudulent intellectual jargon. It impresses
many professors and students because it’s hard to
understand, with sentences that go on for 250 words,
words that send you running to the dictionary to look
them up, sometimes words he invented.
A lot about racism. The whole idea here is that
white people are inherently racist. This itself, if you
stop and look at it, is a racist assertion, but taking this
simple indictment of white people and putting it in
fancy academic language seemed to give it a weight
and a respectability that gained tremendous prestige.
It took a schoolyard insult and made it seem like
profound social analysis. A
M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5 W O RLD 33
4/24/15 10:01 AM
MUSIC
Holiday
sorrow
TRIBUTE
ALBUMS
CAPTURE THE
SUFFERING
OF JAZZ’S
GREATEST
SINGER
by Arsenio Orteza
34
WORLD
10 MUSIC.indd 34
MAY 16, 2015
maybe by the racism and the sexism that
afflicted her adulthood). But her circumstances don’t explain her practically
embracing victimization during the
years that she was becoming, and knew
that she was becoming, the greatest jazz
singer ever. By all accounts, she was
aware of the preciousness of the gift that
she was destroying.
James and Wilson are aware of it too.
Together they cover only 17 of the more
than 300 songs that Holiday recorded
(including four of the 10 that she wrote
or co-wrote). But their albums make up
in depth what they lack in breadth. And
the three songs that they
share—the cautiously
optimistic “What a Little
Man knows not his time
Moonlight Can Do,” the
The London-born jazz pianist Ralph Sharon died on
cautiously pessimistic
March 31 at 91. He left a recorded legacy that included
“Good Morning Heartache,”
19 solo albums and 16 with Tony
the outright despairing
Bennett, whom he accompanied
on and off for more than 50 years
“Strange Fruit” (about
and to whom he introduced “I
black lynchings in the Deep
Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
Sharon’s music was rivaled
in class and elegance only by his
reticence regarding his private
life and his insistence that accompanying was not a subordinate art.
“It’s a very specialized thing,” he once said. “I
don’t think the public realize too much about it, but
the people who are in the business know about it—
that’s the main thing.” —A.O.
HOLIDAY: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GET T Y IMAGES • SHARON: NICK Y J. SIMS/REDFERNS/GET T Y IMAGES
April 7 marked the centennial of
Billie Holiday’s birth. It’s an occasion
that the jazz singers José James and
Cassandra Wilson have celebrated with
creative and sympathetic tribute albums.
James’ is Yesterday I Had the Blues:
The Music of Billie Holiday (Blue Note);
Wilson’s, Coming Forth by Day (Legacy).
Both capture the complex and seemingly
bottomless sorrow at the heart of
Holiday’s most enduring performances.
And by doing so with dignity (instead of,
say, parasitism), they redeem the suffering to which Holiday succumbed at the
age of 44.
To quote Legacy.com, Holiday’s
career “was often overshadowed by
personal problems.” These included
addictions to alcohol, heroin, and abusive men. That the post–Jazz Age buoyancy of her first decade of recordings
belied these problems only emphasizes
the degree to which her last decade of
recordings brought them to the fore.
Holiday’s selfdestructiveness
can be explained
to a large extent
by the abandonment, the rapes,
the prostitution,
and the incarceration that afflicted
her youth (and
R
South)—highlight Holiday’s stillastonishing emotional range.
James’ album is, in some ways,
the greater accomplishment.
According to the tenets of contemporary feminism, James, as a man,
should be congenitally incapable of
feeling, let alone of giving voice to, a
woman’s pain.
But while there is a certain
androgyny to his deeper readings,
James does, if ever so gently, assert
his masculinity. (He drops the
“man,” for instance, from the refrain
of “Lover Man.”) Ultimately, his performances inhabit and illuminate
the overlapping portion of the Venn
diagram mapping male and female
emotions.
Wilson, of course, has no gender
barriers to overcome. But there’s
also androgyny in her voice, the gauzy
alto nature of which blends nicely with
the dark, jazz-noir shadings of her eclectic
accompanists, the rock-noir inclinations
of her producer Nick Launay, and the
psychedelic-noir inclinations of her
arranger Van Dyke Parks.
Every piece breathes, but it’s the sole
Wilson original “Last Song (for Lester)”
that highlights the project’s ambition.
Holiday, having been denied permission
to sing at her friend Lester Young’s
funeral, was shattered. Wilson’s conception and delivery of what Holiday would
have sung is shattering as well.
 [email protected]  @ArsenioOrteza
4/28/15 9:56 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CULTURE
Notable CDs
NEW OR RECENT JAZZ ALBUMS reviewed by Arsenio Orteza
SPOTLIGHT
HEAVY FEEL Larry Coryell
Even in his 70s, this pioneering fusion guitarist is
pushing himself, feeling out nooks and crannies
lest he may have missed something the first,
second, or third time around. When George
Brooks applies his saxophone, the feel tends to
lighten. But when Mike Hughes’ drums and Matt
Montgomery’s bass jut out (the title cut and
“Sharing Air,” for instance), the feel gets heavy
indeed, with Coryell skronking, wah-wah-ing, and
soloing as if he still remembers the ’60s in general and “The Jam with Albert” in particular.
IMAGINARY CITIES Chris Potter/Underground Orchestra
“I didn’t want a classical-meets-jazz feeling,” the
saxophonist-clarinetist Chris Potter has said. “I
wanted it all to be completely integrated.” He and
his orchestra (actually a jazz sextet plus a string
quartet) succeed on both counts. Would the four
(of eight) mysteriously expansive cuts that
comprise the title suite sound of a piece without
their titles (“Imaginary Cities, Pt. 1: Compassion,”
“Imaginary Cities, Pt. 2: Dualities,” etc.)? Maybe
not, but they’d still provide a welcome sense of
utopia (New Jerusalems?) in these dystopiaobsessed times.
A pop-fusion/smooth-jazz patina still adheres to
Sanborn’s music, but there’s a world, maybe even
a solar system, of diff erence between him and
Kenny G. And although the vocalist showcases
(“The Windmills of Your Mind” featuring Randy
Crawford, “Can’t Get Next to You” featuring Larry
Braggs) feel more like ringers than facilitators of
the titular flow, a flow does develop, and Sanborn
does more than just go with it. Sometimes it’s
even hard to tell whether the bassist Marcus
Miller is pushing him or vice versa.
THAT LOVIN’ FEELING Steve Tyrell
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOLIDAY: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GET T Y IMAGES • SHARON: NICK Y J. SIMS/REDFERNS/GET T Y IMAGES
TIME AND THE RIVER David Sanborn
Capitol/UMe has jump-started
the celebration of Frank Sinatra’s
100th birthday with Ultimate
Sinatra, a four-disc-plus-book
collection spanning 40 years of
Sinatra recordings. It begins with
the career-inaugurating “All or
Nothing at All” from 1939 and
ends with a previously unreleased 1979 rendition of “Surrey
with the Fringe on Top.” The 99
intervening hits and deep cuts
split the diff erence between
emphasizing Sinatra’s most
consistently great decade (the
1950s) and masking the unevenness to which he was increasingly
prone as time went by.
Dive in anywhere, and you’ll
be entertained. Absorb the music
in long chronological stretches,
and you’ll hear why it’s barely an
exaggeration to say that, while
the two coexisted, Sinatra was
America and America was
Sinatra. Devotees will quibble
over the inclusion of certain
tracks at the expense of others.
They will agree that those others
should have definitely included
one or two from 1981’s underrated She Shot Me Down. —A.O.
Tyrell’s performances of these oldies fall
somewhere between Las Vegas and Branson,
and a few fall flat. But the fact that they’re
neither Vegas nor Branson gives them an edge
suff icient to keep them from being mistaken for
the kitsch with which they flirt but with which
they ultimately play hard to get. Getting a
Righteous Brother to sing with him on “You’ve
Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was a good idea. Getting
B.J. Thomas to sing with him on “Rock and Roll
Lullaby” was a great one.
To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music
10 MUSIC.indd 35
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
35
4/28/15 9:58 AM
MINDY BELZ
U-N
When it comes to the global refugee crisis,
how do you spell failure?
36 W ORLD MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 MINDY.indd 36
The methods
for giving
temporary
shelter are
broken. It’s
a problem
shaping the
future,
c onsidering
50 percent
of all refugees
are under
age 18.
UNRWA/ap
Migrants are leaving Libya, every day by
the thousands, and already 1,750 have
drowned in the spring sailing season. Migrant
shipwrecks are the leading edge of a crisis, but
they tell only part of the story.
A global refugee catastrophe is unfolding,
and the United Nations—which sets the rules
and runs the camps—is hard-pressed to meet
new needs. Plus, it’s so mired in sluggish
bureaucracy, without help it can’t respond to
the rapidly changing situation.
Last year’s reports tell a staggering story—
51.2 million people forcibly displaced around the
world—an average of 32,200 persons per day
forced out by conflict and persecution. The year
2013 saw the highest number on record of newly
displaced persons—8.2 million—homeless but
still living within their own country. Another 2.5
million became new refugees forced to leave their
own country, the highest number since 1994.
All that was before ISIS moved into central
Iraq last summer, displacing 2.5 million people.
With ISIS onslaughts also in Libya, Nigeria, and
elsewhere, we can safely assume when the UN
releases its global refugee report next month, it
will be another record-setting year.
While the deep security and foreign policy—
and dare I say religious?—issues feeding the
global disorder ought to be addressed, so must
refugee system reform. To the detriment of
millions, the methods for giving temporary
shelter are broken. It’s a problem shaping the
future, considering 50 percent of all refugees
are under age 18.
Without outside attention, especially from
the 17 nations that regularly accept “quota
refugees” from refugee camps (including the
United States), the nations hosting the refugee
camps, or the refugees themselves, are taking
matters into their own hands.
In mid-April officials in Kenya gave the UN
Refugee Agency an ultimatum: It must close
R
Dadaab refugee camp within three months and
return its residents to Somalia. Otherwise
Kenya will “relocate them ourselves.”
Dadaab, at 225,000 mostly Somali refugees,
is the world’s largest refugee camp. It’s been in
operation since 1991 in barren scrubland of
northeast Kenya. Think “Black Hawk Down,” the
notorious U.S. pullout from Somalia, and a failed
UN peacekeeping effort in Mogadishu. Kenya has
for years been battling violence spinning out from
Dadaab, and on April 2 it had enough. That’s the
day al-Shabaab militants, some, Kenyan officials
claim, hidden inside Dadaab,
killed 148 mostly Kenyan
students, all Christians, at
Garissa University.
Predictably, Amnesty
International and other
UN-aligned organizations
warn against the move. But
Dadaab is like a mini-nation all
its own, growing young militants along with despair and
regular outbreaks of violence.
Yarmouk is another. Formed in 1957 to
house Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli
War, it’s one of the largest Palestinian refugee
camps. Yasser Arafat and the PLO staged rocket
launches on Israel from camps like Yarmouk, and
were the ones who refused to allow the refugees
there to be repatriated anywhere else—because
if they did, what would become of the PLO’s
raison d’etre over stateless Palestinians?
Flash forward to 2015 and three years of
civil war in Syria. In April ISIS fighters took over
much of the camp, and Yarmouk’s nightmare
came into focus. A camp that housed 160,000
refugees in 2011 was down to 18,000. Why? No
one knows. The camp had become a hotbed of
Syrian rebel groups, and it’s likely that thousands
of children and others have died there.
The UN revealed it delivered food to Yarmouk
on only 131 days in 2014, and then only 89 boxes
per day, when at least 400 were needed. A UN
official who showed up at the camp this year
(cameras and journalists in tow) brought only
60 boxes, and was overwhelmed by a throng of
refugees beyond desperation (pictured here).
God is our refuge, the psalmists tell us. And if
that isn’t enough to spur us to bring the refugees
of the world into a place of real shelter and rest,
we have instructions to shelter the homeless,
feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. A wide-open
door of international failure yawns for the church
and faith-based organizations to enter in. A
 [email protected]  @mcbelz
4/28/15 2:08 PM
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10 COVER STORY.indd 38
4/28/15 9:40 AM
Coverage
vs.care
Medicaid expansion under Obamacare may result in
more Americans being covered, but it is deepening
long-standing problems with the program at
the expense of those who need it most
by J.C. Derrick in Longview, Texas
p h o t o I l l u s t r at i o n b y K r i e g B a r r i e
J
ackie LaBaron spent 25 years working as an assistant veterans
services officer in East Texas county government. She loved
helping veterans receive the services they earned and says she
would still be doing it if health problems hadn’t forced her to
retire early. Due to frequent falls at home, she moved into a
nursing home and onto Medicaid in 2012.
LaBaron says she gets adequate care for her lung and nerve-damaging
diseases, but she wishes she could hear her 12-year-old granddaughter
in both ears. The Texas Medicaid program used to cover two hearing
aids, but it dropped to one in 2012. “I’ve got to sit on the right side of
people, so I can hear them,” said LaBaron, 67, who colors her cropped
hair brown. “You work all your life, and then you need care, and it’s not
always there for what you need.”
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD 10 COVER STORY.indd 39
39
4/28/15 9:47 AM
40 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
4/28/15 9:48 AM
Craig Oppenheimer/Wonderful Machine
persons to the program would only make those problems
worse, hurting those the program was most intended to help.
Medicaid rolls have ballooned to 62 million—equivalent
to the 23rd largest nation in the world—and the ACA plans
to increase that number beyond 80 million by 2020. The
Congressional Budget Office projects in 2030 Medicaid,
Medicare, Social Security, and interest payments on the
national debt will consume all federal revenue.
President Barack Obama once saw this as a problem. In
2009, he said it wasn’t acceptable simply to add more people
to Medicaid or Medicare to increase coverage without cost
controls and reform: “Another way of putting it is we can’t
simply put more people into a broken system that doesn’t
work.”
Yet that’s exactly what happened the following year,
when Obama signed the ACA featuring Medicaid as the
primary means of expanding healthcare coverage. It didn’t
include any structural changes to a program that was
already busting state budgets and producing long wait
times and worse health outcomes than those with private
insurance—or even those with no insurance at all.
A 2010 University of Virginia study based on almost
900,000 surgical operations found Medicaid patients were
13 percent more likely than uninsured persons to die
before leaving the hospital (even after adjusting for age,
health, gender, region, and income). The New England
Thomas Patterson/The New York Times/redux
Hannah Lobingier, who works
Nelda Worley, LaBaron’s
for a program that tries to keep
social worker at Clairmont
Medicaid patients from relying
Longview, told me the story is a
on emergency rooms, with a
common one. She routinely
patient in the ER at Providence
St. Vincent Medical Center
hears from crying patients who
in Portland, Ore.
say the government doesn’t care
about them anymore, because
they can’t get the healthcare they need. Worley works out of
a tiny closet-turned-office with wall art that reads, “Keep
calm and think of the beach." She said the problems have
worsened over the last six months. “You’ve pretty much got
to be like a piranha” to get anything approved, she said,
citing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the primary factor:
“Some people die waiting.”
Texas is one of 22 states that have so far declined to
expand Medicaid to cover more persons—and the pot of
federal money that comes with it. Obamacare supporters
paint these state decisions as purely political moves undermining the law’s main goal of lowering the number of
uninsured Americans. I traveled to Texas, the largest nonexpansion state, to see if that was true and found evidence
that non-expansion states have good reasons to think twice.
Texas’ already overloaded program is struggling to keep
up with population growth, state lawmakers are scrambling
to fund it, and “covered” Medicaid enrollees are searching
for care from a shrinking pool of providers. Adding more
Thomas Patterson/The New York Times/redux
Craig Oppenheimer/Wonderful Machine
Journal of Medicine published a study on Oregon’s 2008
Medicaid expansion that found it increased the use of
healthcare services but “generated no significant improvement in measured physical health outcomes.”
What might structural changes look like? Congressional
Republicans are pushing plans to give states flexibility in
the way they administer their programs, such as a capped
allotment of money that would grow with inflation and
population increases. The primary Democratic proposals
include more spending and price controls.
Avik Roy, a health policy scholar at the Manhattan Institute,
suggests allowing adult enrollees to shop on exchanges
similar to Obamacare, giving patients incentive to control
their own care and costs while keeping whatever they save.
But states can’t make such changes. “Texas is constrained—
there’s only so much they can do,” Roy told me. “Every
change has to be approved by the Health and Human
Services secretary in Washington. That can take years.”
t a recent Medicaid briefing at the U.S. Capitol, I
sat down beside two suit-clad men who were
discussing how well the ACA is working. They
noted the decrease in the uninsured rate—
down from 14.4 percent in 2009 to 11.9 percent now,
according to Gallup—and marveled that the law doesn’t
have an 80 percent approval rating. Raw partisanship is the
only answer, they said.
The presentation, held for congressional staffers and
policy wonks, did little to change minds: It focused on
abstract charts, statistics, and systems—all positive—with
no discussion of the actual care people receive. There was
no hint of why in March, on the ACA’s fifth birthday, a Real
Clear Politics polling average showed Americans disapprove
of the law 53.5 percent to 42 percent—a
10.5 percent deficit identical to the day the
legislation passed.
To understand those numbers you have
to talk to someone like Nelda Worley at
Clairmont Longview, or Charles Beatty, who
operates East Texas Hearing Solutions two
miles away. Beatty, 68, fit his first hearing
aids as a teenage apprentice to his father in
1964, before state laws licensed and regulated audiologists. Walking down the hallway
to his office reveals a visual history of hearing
aids: Shadow boxes display amplification
devices that date back to 1908. Several look
more like walkie-talkies than hearing aids. Beatty can recite from memory details
about recent studies showing the links
between hearing loss and Alzheimer’s,
expertise that is more than professional—
it’s personal. A childhood bout with the
mumps left Beatty with significant hearing
loss, which he says helps him relate to his
patients. In his East Texas drawl he
recounts patient stories of a blind man
whose hearing aids allowed him finally to get a cell phone,
and a woman who, through tears, said her husband was
able to converse with his sons for the first time in 10 years.
Beatty accepted Medicaid patients for years, but he
stopped after the state cut reimbursements down to the net
cost of one hearing aid. He said the paperwork was
“unreal,” and it would take four or five months to receive a
check. Now he works with the Starkey Foundation to obtain
free hearing aids he fits without charge for low-income
patients. “It costs me less to donate my time,” said Beatty,
whose wire-rimmed glasses sit between his graying hair
and mustache.
Beatty’s dilemma is not an outlier. Last year Forbes magazine named Longview the sixth-fastest growing small city
in the United States, but no audiologist in the area of more
than a quarter-million residents accepts Medicaid patients.
Provider shortages are worst among specialists, including
audiology, neurology, and most specialized pediatric care,
but it also extends to primary care physicians.
According to a biannual Texas Medical Association
(TMA) survey, the number of physicians accepting all new
Medicaid patients plummeted from 67 percent in 2000 to
32 percent in 2012. That number ticked up to 37 percent
last year due to an ACA-mandated bump in physician
reimbursements, but the temporary increase expired in
December.
The physician exodus from Medicaid has occurred while
Texas Medicaid rolls doubled from 2 million to 4 million.
That dynamic has funneled scores of patients into crowded
emergency rooms, where care costs most but admittance is
guaranteed.
“The vast majority of the time
Charles Beatty with his visual
the emergency rooms are used
history of hearing aids.
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD 10 COVER STORY.indd 41
41
4/28/15 2:05 PM
‘What good is a list of statutory benefits if they
can’t find a doctor to provide them?’ —Rep. Joe Pitts
M
edicaid spending, meanwhile, is crippling
state budgets as well as the federal Treasury.
Texas Medicaid spending has spiked from 12
percent of the state budget in 1989 to an
expected 29 percent in the 2016-17 biennium. Lawmakers
have allocated $24.8 billion in state funds for Medicaid—
surpassing the education budget for the first time. The
Heritage Foundation estimates Medicaid expansion would
cost Texas an additional $4 billion by 2022.
“It should be clear to all that this trajectory is simply
unsustainable,” said Republican state Sen. Charles
Schwertner, a physician who chairs the Health and Human
Services Committee. During a March press conference he
said the federal government uses “gold-plated handcuffs”
to prohibit states from instituting necessary reforms,
including health savings accounts, co-pays, and work
requirements for able-bodied adults.
As states try to control costs, cutting doctor reimbursements tops a short list of options. The federal government
requires certain populations remain eligible, restricts costsharing, and prohibits eligibility guidelines that would
result in fewer qualified enrollees.
Many states have moved toward managed care models,
which proponents say curb overtreatment. Private companies overseeing care have been able to cut costs, but patient
advocates say it often comes at the expense of vulnerable
people who have nowhere else to go. Nelda Worley told me
Medicaid case workers are making it much more difficult
to gain approval for legitimate needs.
Although the Supreme Court’s 2012 Obamacare decision
made Medicaid expansion optional for states, the federal
government has continued to pressure states into expanding: Indiana had a special waiver to administer its altered
program, but the administration wasn’t going to renew it
without expansion—which Indiana announced in January.
In April, Florida announced plans to sue the administration
over its threat to withhold $1 billion in annual funds for
low-income Floridians because the state hasn’t expanded
Medicaid.
Some states have negotiated reforms with the federal
government: Michigan enacted cost-sharing measures for
new recipients, and Arkansas used expansion money to
purchase private insurance plans. Doctors and hospitals
say Texas should pursue similar reforms while expanding
immediately, but critics argue the deals always favor the
federal government. “What they start with is hard core, but
it ends up Medicaid expansion with a few tweaks,” said John
Davidson, director of health policy at the Texas Public Policy
Foundation. “The Pennsylvania governor couldn’t even get
a $2 increase [from $8 to $10] in co-pays for
non-emergency emergency room use.” Lost to fr aud
The FBI estimates Medicare and Medicaid fraud cost taxpayers between $75
billion and $250 billion in 2012 alone—enough to fund the entire Department
of Homeland Security roughly up to six times. Using conservative estimates,
about 10 percent of all claims are fraudulent, but some experts believe it may
be as high as 20 percent to 30 percent.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., has
introduced the PRIME Act, a bill that would impose incentives and penalties
at various levels of the programs to help clamp down on waste, fraud, and
abuse.
The legislation has 46 co-sponsors, 27 Republicans and 19 Democrats, but
don’t expect a groundswell of support any time soon. Since eliminating
waste, fraud, and abuse ultimately means investigating their own, ofteninfluential constituents, lawmakers are likely to leave it on the back burner.
According to Open Secrets, in 2014 the medical industry spent more than
$488 million on lobbying—among the highest amounts of any industry. —J.C.D.
42 S
tates have found expansion doesn’t
solve the kinds of problems Texas is
experiencing. I spoke with social
workers in Maryland, which
expanded Medicaid two years ago, and they
confirmed that expansion has brought significantly longer wait times to many patients.
Hospitals across the country have reported
heavier emergency room traffic. The
Department of Health and Human Services
inspector general released a nationwide
report in December showing half of all
doctors listed as taking Medicaid patients
were not available to treat them. Many who
did participate required long waits.
“What good is a list of statutory benefits if they can’t find a doctor to provide
W OR L D MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
4/28/15 2:03 PM
Sarah L . Voisin/The Washington Post via Gett y Images
by Medicaid patients as primary care physicians,” said Dr.
Doug Curran, vice chair of TMA’s board of trustees.
Curran told me Medicaid reimburses him about $30 for
a routine office visit that costs him $45. Curran takes some
Medicaid patients at his family practice because “it’s the
right thing to do,” but “we have to be careful how much we
do, because we have to keep the doors open.”
Bottom line: Coverage is not the same as care, and
expanding Medicaid coverage to more people has led to
less care for those who really need it.
SARAH L . VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GET T Y IMAGES
them?” Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Pitts, chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Health, told me. “A lot of time Medicaid
promises care but denies access—and for a lot of patients,
care delayed is care denied.”
Worse than the unintended consequences, expansion is
inherently unfair: As Medicaid opens to persons up to 138
percent of the federal poverty level, including childless
adults, the federal government is paying 100 percent of the
cost. That progressively drops to 90 percent in 2020, but
federal reimbursements for existing Medicaid patients—
likely the neediest—will remain between 50 percent and
73 percent. That gives states and providers a perverse
incentive to focus on a higher-income, able-bodied
population.
The high match rate is the biggest argument for expansion, but Chairman Pitts said it’s a “virtual mathematical
certainty” that the promised 90 percent will not last. He
said Congress—facing large deficits—historically pushes
costs onto states: “States that have expanded Medicaid
under Obamacare may come to regret that decision in a few
years.”
Another unfair feature of expansion: Medicaid continues to subject traditional enrollees in the long-term care
population to an asset test, meaning their net worth must
 [email protected]  @jcderrick1
be very low before they qualify
for coverage. The expansion
population has an income test,
but no asset test. States have reported numerous millionaire lottery winners whom they can’t eject off Medicaid,
because their income remains low.
That’s a bitter pill to swallow for Jackie LaBaron, who
had to get rid of her truck and run her assets dry before
Medicaid would pay for her stay at Clairmont Longview. She
never sees her monthly retirement or Social Security
checks, she said, but instead receives a $60 monthly
allowance. That’s especially hard since it keeps her from
doing much for her granddaughter: “Medicaid makes it so
dog-gone tough for people, you just have to get rid of
everything. … You can’t buy hardly anything for $60.”
Supporters point out that new Medicaid-eligible, single
adults still only make about $16,000 a year. It’s easy to
argue the government should help that population with
healthcare—but harder when it’s at the expense of those
who need it even more. LaBaron worries that further
expansion will water down her care. She told me able-bodied
adults have an option to work that she doesn’t have:
“[Eligibility] should be about your physical ability to work. …
If you’re in a nursing home, you need the care.” A
Patients wait at a community
clinic in Takoma Park, Md.
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
43
4/28/15 2:03 PM
New laws—and a potential federal ban—
against reparative therapy are causing more
confusion than remedy for those struggling
with sexual identity by Jamie Dean
Disorien
From an office in Brick, N.J., therapist Tara
King counsels clients struggling with addictions,
abusive pasts, broken relationships, and occasionally those dealing with same-sex attractions.
For 15 years, King—a former lesbian—has told
clients about how her relationship with Christ
transformed her life and helped her leave a
homosexual lifestyle. She says she doesn’t
promise clients their attractions will change, but
she tells them changes are possible.
Now there’s an exception: She can’t offer that
counsel to minors.
In 2013, Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed
a New Jersey law prohibiting state-licensed
counselors from engaging in “sexual orientation
change efforts” with minors. California lawmakers
passed a nearly identical bill in 2012. (The District
of Columbia passed a ban in 2014.)
Proponents of the laws—and many media
outlets—narrowly characterize the legislation as
a ban on a type of counseling known as reparative
44 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
10 REPARATIVE THERAPY.indd 44
or conversion therapy and claim such therapy is
harmful to minors. But the bans are much
broader.
In both New Jersey and California, the legislation says state-licensed therapists can’t talk with
minors about changing their sexual orientation,
but also prohibit discussions about changing
behavior or pursuing efforts “to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings
toward a person of the same gender.”
That means the laws don’t affect just one type
of therapy: They include any counseling that
suggests it’s possible for a person to change—or
even reduce—same-sex attractions.
For Christian counselors licensed by either
state, the directive is clear: The laws prohibit them
from talking with minors about resisting same-sex
attractions, including any biblical encouragement
to pursue repentance and faith in Christ.
At least 18 other states have considered similar bans on therapy for minors, but many of the
Photo illustration by numbeos/istock
4/29/15 11:13 AM
entation
4/29/15 11:13 AM
Tara King at her office in Brick, N.J.
46 It’s chilling to consider just
who will see troubled children.
In California, where the Pacific
Justice Institute is challenging the talk
therapy ban now in effect, business is
open at the transgender clinic at the
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
The hospital reports that since 2011,
the clinic has accepted over 100 new
youth “seeking information or medical
intervention to assist in their transition
process to bring their physical bodies
$
into closer alignment with their internal
gender identity.”
Norman Spack pioneered the practice
of puberty-blocking drugs given to minors
(usually at age 11 or 12) in his work as
head of the Gender Management Service
clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. In
2012, Spack authored a report on 97 children who visited the clinic between 1998
and 2010. The youngest was 4 years old.
The Endocrine Society, a hormone
research organization, endorses the use
Marilynn K . Yee/Genesis
bills have died in legislative committees.
Colorado lawmakers rejected a ban in
April.
Still, on April 8, the Obama administration announced its approval of state bans
and said it would support federal legislation if Congress acts. It’s unclear whether
the White House support will revive state
efforts—or lead to a national push—but
Oregon's House of Representatives passed
a version in March, and the state's Senate
will consider the bill this spring.
The Christian legal firm Liberty
Counsel is appealing the New Jersey ban
to the U.S. Supreme Court and expects
the justices to decide in early May
whether they will accept the case. King,
the New Jersey therapist, is a plaintiff.
Although the ban doesn’t include pastors or Christian counselors who don’t
pursue state licensure, it’s still alarming,
says Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel: “I
think it’s a very dangerous position for
the government to say it knows best
what kind of counseling someone
should receive.”
The New Jersey ban does make a striking caveat: It doesn’t include counseling
for a minor seeking to transition from one
gender to another. Similarly in California,
the ban doesn’t apply to therapies that
affirm a minor’s sexual orientation.
That means in both states, licensed
therapists may talk with minors about
changing their bodies if they want to be
another gender, but not about changing
their feelings if they don’t want same-sex
attractions.
While states do have power to regulate standards for licensure, Staver says
he’s not aware of other cases where state
lawmakers specifically tell counselors
what they can and can’t say: “And it’s
unprecedented that they’re telling the
client they can only get one viewpoint.”
For King, a member of the American
Association of Christian Counselors, the
New Jersey ban means she now turns
away some clients. She says a worried
mother recently called and said she discovered her 16-year-old son watching
male pornography. Could King help?
King spoke with the mother, but says, “I
had to tell her: ‘I can’t see your son.’”
W O RL D M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
4/29/15 11:13 AM
of puberty-blocking drugs, and then
allowing youth to begin taking lifelong,
sex-changing hormones at age 16.
Spack told the Associated Press his
clinic has worked with surgeons who
performed breast removal surgery on
girls at age 16, but said the surgery could
be avoided if puberty is halted soon
enough.
Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-inchief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, warned
against such extreme practices in a Wall
“Many of these individuals and groups
appeared to be embedded within the
larger context of conservative religious
political movements that have supported
the stigmatization of homosexuality on
political or religious grounds.”
Supporters of bans on change
therapy—including Gov. Christie—have
cited the APA resolution in approving the
legislation and noted APA evidence
stating change therapy had harmed
minors.
goodness of God as He’s revealed in
Jesus. … If God is good, then what He
says—His laws—may be hard, but they
are good, and point the way to a life that
can be satisfied in God.”
Other evangelicals have also noted
that focusing on family relationships
alone isn’t a distinctly Christian
approach. The Atlantic magazine seized
on such statements recently to ask: “Why
did Christian conservatives turn against
gay conversion therapy?”
Even if some Christians
don’t endorse reparative
therapy, the notion that
Bible-believing evangelicals now believe Christians
can’t resist homosexual
temptation (as any other
temptation to sin) with the
help of the Holy Spirit
betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of basic
Christian doctrine.
“In fact, we believe that
every Christian is a work
in progress,” wrote Denny
Burk of Boyce College in response to The
Atlantic article. “The Holy Spirit works in
every Christian to transform them into
the image of Christ.”
I THINK IT'’S A VERY DANGEROUS
POSITION FOR THE GOVERNMENT
TO SAY IT KNOWS BEST WHAT
KIND OF COUNSELING SOMEONE
SHOULD RECEIVE. —Mat Staver
Street Journal column last year, noting
puberty-blocking drugs can stunt a
child’s growth and risk causing sterility.
“Given that close to 80 percent of
such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life
if untreated, these medical interventions
come close to child abuse,” McHugh
wrote. “A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.”
EVEN DEVOTED PARENTS need
help with struggling children.
It’s worth noting most youth experiencing same-sex attractions don’t want
to change genders, and the most devoted
parents can’t necessarily prevent a child
from developing homosexual desires.
Indeed, while some with same-sex
attractions cite broken families in their
homosexual inclinations, others say they
had loving homes and healthy relationships with their parents. Either way,
many parents have sought help for their
families through counseling.
In 2009, the American Psychological
Association (APA) passed a resolution reaffirming same-sex attraction as “normal
and positive” and condemning what it
called “sexual orientation change efforts”
by therapists and organizations, including
faith-based groups:
$
MARILYNN K . YEE/GENESIS
 [email protected]  @deanworldmag
Much of APA’s reporting has focused
on reparative therapy—a specific method
focusing on repairing relationships
between a client and a parent. (APA notes
some therapists have promised clients
their sexual orientation will change.)
During legislative hearings on therapy bans, some adults testified such therapy traumatized them as children. Others
have reported similar experiences and
say they suffered depression and despair.
But King notes other clients have found
such therapy helpful and says allegations
that therapists routinely use abusive
practices in therapy sessions aren’t true.
(If therapists do use unethical or abusive
tactics, King says they should lose their
licenses.)
While some therapists, including
King, use a mixture of secular and
Christian principles in therapy sessions,
other therapists use secular methods
alone. Many Christian counselors—both
licensed and unlicensed—emphasize a
distinctly biblical approach in counseling
those with same-sex attractions.
Ed Welch of the Christian Counseling
and Educational Foundation is a statelicensed Christian counselor in neighboring Pennsylvania and says he emphasizes
the gospel and Christian discipleship: “I
want to surprise the person with the
ALLAN EDWARDS, pastor of Kiski
Valley Presbyterian Church (PCA)
in Pennsylvania, recently wrote about
his own struggles with unwanted samesex attraction on the website of the
Christian ministry Harvest USA.
Edwards, who grew up in a Christian
home, began experiencing same-sex
attractions as a teenager and knew they
conflicted with his Christian beliefs. In an
email interview, Edwards—now married
and expecting a baby with his wife in
July—emphasized the importance of
relationships in the church in facing any
struggle against sin: “The local church
has to be the place where sinners work
out their salvation—the good, the bad,
and the ugly.”
Though Edwards says he is attracted
to his wife physically, emotionally, and
spiritually, he says he still experiences
same-sex attractions, though not in the
same way and intensity. The pastor notes
Christians are always in the process of
resisting temptation: “I think ‘reorientation’ is too small a goal. Loving and living
for Christ changes everything about us.” A
$
MAY 16, 2015
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b y E m i l y Be l z i n Ne w Y o r k
The pos t- communism e x pl osion of high - qu a l i t y Roma nia n films
con t inues at t he T ribec a Fil m Fes tiva l
Romanian director Alexander
Nanau’s young son Jacob, jet-lagged,
had fallen asleep at a New York
coffee shop near the Tribeca Film
Festival. Nanau gently woke him:
Time to go. People to meet.
Screenings to host.
Nanau had spent 15 months filming a boy slightly older than his son
in one of the worst neighborhoods in
Bucharest for his documentary film,
Toto and His Sisters. Toto had its U.S.
premiere at Tribeca, although Nanau
has been on the road for six months
at other festivals where the docu-
48 mentary has won award after award.
It garnered best documentary in
Zurich and Warsaw, among others.
Toto was one of two Romanian
films at the swanky Tribeca festival,
where the attendees are beautiful
and the Vitaminwater is free. The
other Romanian film, Aferim!, was a
feature film whose director Radu
Jude, won the Silver Bear for directing
at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival
this year. (Jude has a fear of flying
and didn’t make it to Tribeca.) Toto
has recently gained distribution in
French and Italian cinemas, a huge
accomplishment for a documentary.
Aferim! also has distribution deals in
Europe.
For the last decade Romanian
films have consistently won top
prizes at film festivals around the
world. In a country that escaped
perhaps the stiffest repression in the
Soviet bloc, the small industry has
blossomed. In 2013, Child’s Pose won
the Golden Bear at
Berlin, the top prize.
A scene
Other critically
from Toto
acclaimed films paved
and His
the way with prizes at
Sisters.
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10 EMILY-MOVIES.indd 48
4/29/15 11:02 AM
Toto and His Sisters: Strada Film • Nanau: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Gett y Images for ZFF
Shoestring classics
TOTO AND HIS SISTERS: STRADA FILM • NANAU: VIT TORIO ZUNINO CELOT TO/GET T Y IMAGES FOR ZFF
Cannes and elsewhere in the previous
decade, like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
(2005) and 12:08 East of Bucharest
(2006). Nanau’s first documentary, The
World According to Ion B, won an international Emmy in 2010.
“Because there is freedom, there are
good films,” said Nanau. He said
Romanian filmmakers are free from both
government control and the big corporations that dictate artistic direction in
larger markets.
After the fall of communism in 1989,
foreign film companies began projects in
the affordable Romania, putting many of
the current Romanian talent to work.
Ada Solomon, one of the producers of
Aferim! who was at the Tribeca festival,
worked for foreign film companies in
Romania post-communism before starting her own production company,
HiFilm, 10 years ago. Her company has
backed several big festival successes.
These Romanian directors have spent
most of their lives out from under
communism: Nanau is 36 and Jude is 38.
The industry is tightly knit. In between
screenings at the festival Solomon and
Nanau visited the Museum of Modern
Art together. The technical talent that
worked on Aferim!—the director of photography, the editor, the set designer,
and the first assistant director—has
worked together for a decade. The
friendships bring a unity of vision and,
Solomon says, diffuse conflicts that
could delay production and increase
costs.
Festival prize-winning films can be
unapproachable for regular audiences,
but both Romanian films at Tribeca have
a relevance to American culture. Though
set in different eras, both center on the
Roma, the minority group long marginalized in Romanian society. Roma (or
“gypsies”) were slaves in Romania until
the mid-19th century and continue to be
a subclass today.
Set in 1835, Aferim! is a black-andwhite drama that has the feel of a
Western. A constable and his son are
searching the Romanian countryside on
horseback for a runaway Roma slave.
The constable’s incessant comedic banter
is drawn almost entirely from Romanian
literature and creates a detailed portrait
of a cruel era. At one point the constable
affably explains to the captured slave,
slung over his horse, that this is much
better than the days when masters would
shoot Roma slaves for sport. Solomon
said the film is a counter to the historical
propaganda films under communism
with nationalistic heroes.
“Aferim! is a no heroes film,” she said.
But it’s also honest about problems in
Romanian society that are deeper than
communism. “There are things that
were not functioning far earlier.”
Realism is a characteristic of the new
Romanian cinema. Unlike directors of
many films at festivals now, both Jude
and Nanau insist they are not interested
in making political statements, but
showing the human condition.
“In [Jude’s] kind of cinema everything
stems from the basis, the core of the
body, the cell—the family,” said Solomon.
Family relationships are central in
Nanau’s film as well. Toto and His Sisters
is like a Romanian episode of the HBO
series The Wire. The drugs, family decay,
racial divides (in this case between
Romanians and Romas), are all familiar.
Nanau never interviews anyone in the
film or flashes information and statistics,
so it is an entirely immersive experience
like a feature film. He thinks the style of
most American documentaries is “horrible.” “They always sound the same,” he
said. Documentaries should be more
“cinematic,” he said.
The film follows the effervescent
10-year-old Toto, a Roma, growing up
without parents in a tiny
apartment with his two
teenage sisters Ana
and Andreea, where
drug-dealing
uncles and heroin
junkies regularly
invade. Nanau
knew the Roma
head of a neighborhood nonprofit
—NANAU
who arranged a
meeting with the drugdealing uncles to assure
them that he was “cool.” Romanians
sometimes talk about Romas as if they
are animals, said Nanau, so he needed to
bridge the racial divide in order to film.
“It’s an area that no one sets foot in, no
journalists, no cameras,” Nanau said.
“But the people are good people, I was
never afraid of them.”
Nanau filmed by himself in the apartment, with an assistant bringing him
fresh batteries and memory cards as
needed, because as he explained, no one
else would fit in the room. The access he
gains into these children’s lives is
breathtaking. He watches Toto fall asleep
as junkies shoot up around him, goes to
‘Because
there is
freedom, there
are good
films.’
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
49
4/29/15 11:02 AM
50
WORLD
MAY 16, 2015
Czech Republic, and the European
Union. Even a Romanian real estate
investor, who is also an art collector,
put a small investment into the film.
Now the filmmakers wait to see
whether they pass the test at Tribeca
and reach an American audience.
Nanau will be traveling to other
major film festivals over the next
months with Toto and hoping to pick
up more distributors. Jude is already
working on his next feature film.
Solomon is hoping the filmmakers
A scene from the film Aferim! (top);
the One World Romania international
documentary film festival in Bucharest.
can recoup some of their investment
to put into the next film. “After the
success of Aferim!, it’s easier to
finance [the next film], but not easyeasy,” she said with a smile before
going down the steps to greet potential distributors coming to the film’s
next screening. A —These films aren’t
available in the United States yet.
AFERIM!: SILVIU GHETIE/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP • BUCHAREST: DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES
Ana’s court hearings after she is
arrested and to Toto’s dance competition. He’s there when Andreea
learns what the word “word” means
at a neighborhood nonprofit teaching Roma children.
Nanau taught a film and storytelling class to children including
Andreea at the nonprofit, which
became a central part of the
children’s lives. He incorporates
footage Andreea took with a camera
herself. One of the most heartbreaking scenes is Andreea’s footage:
She confronts her rail-thin sister
Ana about her drug use and tries to
convince her to move to a children’s
shelter with her and Toto. Andreea
mentions the running water at the
children’s shelter.
“I don’t need to be washed by
anybody,” Ana barks back.
“Because it’s filmed by Andreea
the whole energy is towards the
camera,” Nanau explained. “You
experience it firsthand. It’s a bit like
virtual reality.”
Foreign arthouse films often
have the problem of being too dark
for American audiences. But I
wanted to watch Toto again as soon
as it ended. Still, some American
critics described Toto as dark.
“How much more optimistic can
you be?” Nanau shrugged. “What
should happen? Should they win
Jeopardy? I don’t know.”
In the film industry context,
making and shopping a documentary is particularly hard work.
Nanau invested his own money into
Toto and had to pitch other producers
around the world as he was shooting
in the Bucharest ghetto for 15
months. He pieced together funds
from different organizations, and
HBO Europe eventually backed the
project.
Solomon’s production company
HiFilm was the chief financial backer
for Aferim!, with its extremely low
budget of $1.5 million, but she also
gathered funding from Bulgaria, the
 [email protected]  @emlybelz
4/29/15 11:03 AM
CREDIT
4/27/15 9:50 AM
52 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
10 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE.indd 52
4/28/15 5:57 PM
Remembering
the forgotten
The 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide revives old wounds and new
fears of ethnic—and religious—cleansing
by Mindy Belz in Mardin, Turkey
he hill country of Tur Abdin rises above
the Tigris River valley in southeastern
Turkey, watering lands also soaked in
blood. Tur Abdin means “mountain of the
servants of God” in Syriac, the dialect of Aramaic
that’s been spoken here since before the time of
Jesus. From the hillsides of Mardin, a city of 90,000
still dotted with some of the oldest churches in the
world, churches where Scripture still is read in
Syriac, the flat grassy plains stretch east across Syria
and to the deserts of Nineveh in Iraq.
In the years of end-on-end massacres of Armenians
that began in 1915, Tur Abdin became both a transit
for survivors and a graveyard for victims. That winter
the Ottoman army set up labor battalions of Armenian
men, but eventually disarmed then slaughtered them.
Without their men, Armenian communities increasingly were vulnerable: Deportations and massacres
spread the length and width of Turkey, and the Ottoman
armies force-marched women, children, and the elderly
out of their towns and toward Tur Abdin then further
down to Aleppo in modern-day Syria and across the desert to Mosul in Iraq, all at that time under the Ottomans.
Tens of thousands died of starvation and disease in
these wide-open hills, and many eventually were massacred in what they’d been led to believe was a safe
haven. The deportations to this region, in fact, were
A man holds a photograph of his great-grandmother
and great-aunt who were both murdered during the
genocide at a march commemorating the 100th
anniversary in London on April 18.
PHOTO BY EDMOND TERAKOPIAN/EYEVINE/REDUX
systematic, the Turkish army forcing the Armenian
Christians into remote, unreachable country before
their slaughter. Some were stuffed into caves where
they died of starvation or were asphyxiated by brush
fires lit inside—primitive gas chambers, as journalists
uncovering the Holocaust would later point out.
As the killings extended into 1916, a new wave of
genocide spread from Tur Abdin into the deserts of
today’s Iraq—including not only Armenians but also
Assyrian Christians. What’s commonly portrayed as
an ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Empire’s
Armenian population was in fact a religious cleansing
of all Christians in the Turkish heartland. The expert
historians say somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million
Armenians were killed in the genocide—but 250,000
Assyrian Christians also were murdered. (Some estimates say the number is much higher, but a delegation
representing Christians to the Paris Peace Conference
in 1919 documented this number of deaths.) Their
plights and those of their surviving relatives are even
less noted than the Armenians’.
Today in Tur Abdin they are still collecting the
bones of so much carnage. At Mor Augin, a Syrian
Orthodox monastery south of Mardin dating from the
fourth century, a cave sits about 30 yards from the
entrance. Inside locals and church leaders have
collected an untold number of human remains they
believe date to 1915-16. The cave may have been the
site of an actual massacre a century ago, but now
bones lie scattered about. In addition, several dozen
sacks sit to the side, full of skeletal remains. Even in
recent years, human remains have been brought
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
53
4/28/15 5:57 PM
54 mardin: Renato Valterza/zuma press • Mor Augin: Andy Spyra/l aif/Redux • Ozmen: mindy bel z
from construction sites and other places nearby where locals
continue to uncover them.
“This sounds like a major discovery,” David Gaunt told me
after I sent him photos by email from the cave site. Gaunt is
professor of history at Södertörn University College,
Stockholm, Sweden. He’s also an expert on the genocide of
Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syrian Christians during World War I,
and author of the book Massacres, Resistance, Protectors:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World
War I (Gorgias Press, 2006).
Gaunt has traveled the region examining remains and has
studied 150 separate massacre sites in Mardin carried out in
the summer of 1915. In Mor Augin the bones all seem to date
from the same time period, signifying killings en masse, but
it’s impossible to know much more since they’ve been moved.
“In order to determine causes of death, it would be necessary to examine the soil beneath the bodies,” Gaunt said; “for
instance bullets that were in the bodies would drop down into
the ground, even pieces broken off from swords or knives
might be there.”
WORLD MAY 16, 2015
4/28/15 5:57 PM
genocide: associated press • Yerevan: Sergei Grits/ap
2̀
One reason the Mor Augin site has
become a sequestered repository for
human remains is that others have been
tampered with, even destroyed, by Turkish
officials. In 2007 Gaunt had his own run-in
with authorities. He and other experts
traveled to Turkey after several newspapers
reported the discovery of a mass grave
dating to 1915 near Nusaybin, about 12
miles from Mor Augin. From published
photographs, the site, a hole in the ground
about 6 feet deep, appeared extensive—
possibly 200 bodies—and included many
skulls and large bones that appeared stacked
as those killed at one time might be.
Upon arrival, Gaunt found, “the many
skulls and skeletons shown in the news
paper photos were entirely missing.” The
site, he and others concluded, had been
“more than just ‘tampered with.’”
Gaunt was told local police carried the
bones away, and later learned from a
British archaeologist the site had been
burned or doused in a chemical. The
1̀
Turkish Historical Society, which initially
had invited Gaunt to investigate, subse(1) Mardin, Turkey.
(2) Remains from the
quently dated the bones to Roman times.
cave in Mor Augin,
And the Kurdish newspaper in Turkey that
Turkey.
first reported the finding was shut down.
Gaunt’s conclusion: “We are not sure that
the time is ripe for really investigating by international scientific project … mass graves in Turkey.”
For the survivors, present-day realities are steeped in what
happened a century ago. “Tur Abdin had a million Christians
100 years ago,” said Yusuf Begtas, “and
now they have been killed and
scattered through all the world.”
Saliba Ozmen, the Syriac
Orthodox archbishop of Mardin,
told me only 3,000 Christians
remain in the area. “We are
Christians and so we are always
under attack, for the sake of
Christ,” he said, “but I think it is
important these days to realize that
early Christianity spread from this part
of the world. Our Christian legacy is not important only for
‘our side’ but for the West too.”
Restrictions on Christians, particularly those who want to
highlight their genocidal past, continue. The Turkish government refuses to return property belonging to Armenian or
Assyrian Christians confiscated a century ago. It blocks access
to the archives of the Ottoman Empire. And it has written the
genocide out of history textbooks, required texts for all
schools in Turkey, including what few Armenian institutions
remain—only 16 schools, all in Istanbul.
Elementary and middle-school textbooks for the 2014-15
school year (available by download on the internet) characterize Armenians as people “incited by foreigners, who aim to
break apart the state and the country, and who murdered
Turks and Muslims.” The genocide is described as “the
Armenian matter” and as a lie meant to threaten Turkish
security.
hristians in this part of Turkey are acutely aware of the
latest threat: ISIS, or Islamic State, controls villages just
across the border in Syria from Nusaybin and about 40 miles
from Mardin. In early March ISIS captured Assyrian villages
along the Khabur River, killing 15 Christian residents, kidnapping about 200 (whose whereabouts remain unknown), and
displacing 1,400 families. Those families currently live in
churches or with other Assyrian families in the nearby cities
of Qameshli and Hassaka.
From Nusaybin and other parts of Tur Abdin, the Khabur
River valley is visible across a chain-link fence border. In
March from there one could see smoke rising from the
Assyrian villages where ISIS was burning homes and
Who speaks today
of the annihilation of
the Armenians?
The first genocide of the
20th century gains scattered
remembrance 100 years later
by Marvin Olasky
wa r n i ng : t h i s a rt ic l e c on ta i n s g r a ph ic de ta i l .
GENOCIDE: ASSOCIATED PRESS • YEREVAN: SERGEI GRITS/AP
MARDIN: RENATO VALTERZA/ZUMA PRESS • MOR AUGIN: ANDY SPYRA/L AIF/REDUX • OZMEN: MINDY BEL Z
churches. The latest attacks are
eerily reminiscent of the deportations and massacres of a
century ago.
“We must stay at it, and we
must finish Islamic State,” said Yusuf Begtas. “So everyone can
be free to live a kind of common life as in past centuries.”
Ottoman Turks killed Begtas’ grandfather and grandmother in Tur Abdin in 1915, the year his father was born. His
great-aunts lived in a cave outside the town of Midyat and
later were forced to become Muslims to survive.
Many contemporary Muslims are discovering they have
Christian roots—popularized by the 2008 memoir My
Grandmother by Fethiye Çetin. Çetin, a Muslim, learned upon
her grandmother’s death she was an Armenian Christian
kidnapped and adopted by a Turkish soldier.
Begtas’ father grew up in an Assyrian village that escaped
massacres, though in the nearby village of Zas, 350 Assyrians
were killed “all together,” he told me.
Begtas’ father became a priest, and while other relatives
eventually left for Europe, his immediate family stayed. “My
father told me not to leave my county. And so I am here. My
brothers, sister, and my mother are here, to help our culture,
our tradition, and our language. We have good knowledge of
the Syriac language. It binds us here.” A
Armenians marked the
centenary of the
genocide in Yerevan,
Armenia, on April 24.
 [email protected]  @mcbelz
ccording to documents exhibited at the Nuremberg
Tribunal following World War II, Adolf Hitler wrote
on August 22, 1939: “I have placed my death-head
formations in readiness—for the present only in
the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly
and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish
derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living
space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Thankfully, some today do speak of the killing of 1 million
or more Armenians that began on April 24, 1915. Pope Francis
on April 12 called it “the first genocide of the 20th century.”
The parliament of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest state, passed a
resolution declaring April 24 “Armenian Genocide
Recognition and Remembrance Day.” The German government, which for years had refused to use the word “genocide,”
changed its position on April 20. Two dozen countries and 43
states have declared the mass murder to be “genocide.”
Candidate Barack Obama in 2008 pledged, “as president I will
recognize the Armenian Genocide”; but Turkey’s government
wishes to suppress the story, and President Obama once again
this year refused to use the word “genocide.” On April 21 Ken
Hachikian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of
America, said, “President Obama’s surrender to Turkey represents a national disgrace. It is, very simply, a betrayal of truth.”
To understand what happened in 1915, we should start
with what happened 20 years earlier in eastern Turkey, where
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56 WORLD MAY 16, 2015
and just indignation of the American people, and we believe
that the United States should exercise all the influence it can
properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end.”
he atrocities did end—then. But in 1915, during World
War I, ostensibly concerned that Armenians would give
aid and comfort to potential Russian invaders, Ottoman
leaders decided to complete the job begun two decades
before. Mustafa Hayri Bey, the Ottoman Empire’s leading
Sunni authority, urged his followers to commence jihad. One
pamphlet declared, “He who kills even one unbeliever … shall
be rewarded by Allah.” The Ottoman Ministry of the Interior
gave instructions to exterminate all males under 50, all
priests, and all teachers—but leave girls to be Islamized.
The Ottoman government set up special killing squads and
developed techniques later used by the Nazis, such as piling
those to be killed into train cars—90 in a car with room for
36—and leaving them locked in for days, starving and terrified.
4/28/15 5:58 PM
refugees: Pictures From History/The Image Works
2̀
genocide victims: Pictures From History/ The Image Works • illustration: Photo12/UIG/Get t y Images
Christians had lived for almost two
millennia. Here’s part of a missionary’s letter published in the
June 1895 Woman’s Journal: “The
less horrible outrages were some
of the following: bayoneting the
men … outraging [a euphemism
for raping] women and then
dispatching them with bayonets or
swords; ripping up pregnant
women; impaling infants and
children on the bayonet, or dispatching them with the sword;
houses fired and the inmates
driven back into the flames.”
A British couple described
numerous Armenians walking
around “mutilated, hands and
right arms cut off, and eyes gouged
out,” with Turks taunting them:
“Where is your Christ now?
Where is your Jesus? Why does he
not save you?” British consul
Henry Barnham visited the town of
Aintab and described its massacre:
“The butchers and the tanners,
1̀
with sleeves tucked up to the
shoulders, armed with clubs and
cleavers, cut down the Christians with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ …
when midday came they knelt down and said their prayers,
and then jumped up and resumed the dreadful work.”
Imams incited mobs, and mosques became places of
mobilization, especially on Fridays. Under Ottoman law
churches were to be respected as places of refuge, but one
survivor, Abraham Hartunian, wrote about what happened in
the town of Severek: “The blows of an axe crashed in the
church doors. The attackers rushed in, tore the Bibles and
hymnbooks to pieces, broke and shattered whatever they
could, blasphemed the cross. … The leader gave the order to
massacre. The first attack was on our pastor. The blow of an
axe decapitated him. His blood, spurting in all directions,
spattered the walls and ceiling.”
British ethnographer William Ramsay, who spent more
than a decade in Turkey and was fond of the Turks, noted that
in some cases Ottoman officials were “especially merciful
[and] offered their victims an escape from death by accepting
Mohammedanism.” British Counsel G.H. Fitzmaurice told of
how on December 28 and 29, 1895, some 10,000 Armenians
died in Urfa, known in ancient times as Edessa. Survivors of
an initial Turkish attack sought refuge in their cathedral, but
Turkish troops broke down the iron door, shot or bayoneted
everyone on the floor of the church, blocked up the staircases
leading to the gallery, and set the church on fire.
Eyewitness accounts in The New York Times and other
newspapers around the country prompted an outpouring of
contributions to help Armenians. Officials allowed Clara
Barton to come with an American Red Cross relief squad in
spring 1896. The Republican Party platform in 1896 declared,
“The massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy
torturing a man would pull off his
fingernails and toenails, then “tear
off his flesh with red-hot pincers, and
then pour boiled butter into the
wounds. In some cases the gendarmes would nail hands and feet to
pieces of wood—evidently in imitation of the Crucifixion, and then
while the sufferer writhes in his
agony, they would cry, ‘Now let your
Christ come help you.’”
3̀
(1) The corpses of Armenian victims of the
genocide laid out in a courtyard, 1919. (2)
An illustration showing the killing of a
priest and looting of a monastery during
the 1895 killings. (3) Armenian refugees
fleeing Turkish massacres in 1915.
FOR A FURTHER STUDY …
REFUGEES: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/THE IMAGE WORKS
GENOCIDE VICTIMS: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/THE IMAGE WORKS • ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO12/UIG/GET T Y IMAGES
U.S. Consul Jesse B. Jackson in 1916
described the results: Armenians for
five days “did not receive a morsel of
bread, neither a drop of water. They
were scorched to death by thirst,
hundreds upon hundreds fell dead
along the way, their tongues turned to
charcoal. … On the seventy-fifth day
when they reached Halep [Aleppo] 150 women and children
remained from the whole caravan of 18,000.”
The governor of Van province, Jevdet Bey, gained the
nickname “the horseshoe master” because he nailed horseshoes to the feet of Armenians. I visited Lake Van a decade ago
and saw its beautiful deep blue, but a century ago the shore
turned red. Consul Jackson described what he saw: “The sides
of the roads are strewn with the bones of decaying bodies.”
Since some of the Armenians, like Jews in Germany, were
often richer than the majority populations, Jackson called the
jihad a “giant plundering scheme as well as a final blow to
extinguish the race.”
Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey,
later described what the rare survivors had told him: Those
orgenthau, moved by what he
heard, tried repeatedly to get
Ottoman officials to call off their assassins. Interior Minister
Mehmed Talaat once asked him, “Why are you so interested in
the Armenians anyway? You are a Jew; these people are
Christians.” Morgenthau replied, “My country contains
something more than 97,000,000 Christians and something
less than 3,000,000 Jews. So, at least in my ambassadorial
capacity, I am 97 per cent Christian.” Talaat later asked if
American life insurance companies that had written policies
for Armenians could be pushed to name as beneficiaries the
Ottoman government, since they will “have left no heirs to
collect the money.”
One survivor’s story became a hit book, Ravished Armenia,
that was then turned into a silent film. Aurora Mardiganian
had made it to Ellis Island in 1917 following the deaths of her
mother, father, brother, and sisters. British authorities allowed
showing of the film in their country only after producers
deleted a scene of Armenian women being crucified—but the
story behind that scene shows how today’s Islamic State is not
setting the record for barbarism.
Mardiganian acknowledged that the scene, which showed
the women crucified on large crosses with their long hair covering their nude bodies, was inauthentic. She said, “The Turks
didn’t make their crosses like that. The Turks made little pointed
crosses. They took the clothes off the girls. They made them
bend down. And after raping them, they made them sit on the
pointed wood, through the vagina. That’s the way they killed.”
She said Americans had made a more civilized movie:
“They can’t show such terrible things.” A
The Burning
Tigris by Peter
Balakian
(Harper, 2004)
They Can Live
in the Desert
but Nowhere
Else by Ronald
Grigor Suny
(Princeton, 2015)
Armenian
Golgotha
by Grigoris
Balakian
Ravished
Armenia
by Aurora
Mardiganian
Ambassador
Morgenthau’s
Story by Henry
Morgenthau
(Vintage, 2010)
(Indo-European
Publishing, 2014)
(Cosimo
Classics, 2007)
Forgotten Fire
by Adam
Bagdasarian
(Laurel Leaf,
2002)
My
Grandmother
by Fethiye
Çetin
(Verso, 2008)
“100 Lives”
(100lives.com),
an online,
ongoing
documentary
project
collecting
stories of
“survivors and
saviors” of the
Armenian
Genocide.
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
57
4/28/15 5:58 PM
“EVERY CHRISTIAN CONFRONTED WITH
THESE ISSUES SHOULD READ THIS BOOK.”
President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
CURTAIN: BRIANSM/iSTOCK • FALLON: DOUGL AS GORENSTEIN/NBC • COLBERT: DREW ANGERER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
—RUSSELL MOORE,
Kevin DeYoung challenges us to take a humble look at God’s Word. Examining
key passages as well as the Bible’s overarching teaching on sexuality, DeYoung
responds to popular objections raised by Christians and non-Christians—offering
a timely resource for thinking through one of the most pressing issues of our day.
crossway.org
10 LIFESTYLE and TECH.indd 58
4/27/15 11:29 AM
NOTEBOOK
CURTAIN: BRIANSM/iSTOCK • FALLON: DOUGL AS GORENSTEIN/NBC • COLBERT: DREW ANGERER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
LIFESTYLE / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE / HOUSES OF GOD / SPORTS / MONEY
LIFESTYLE
including
Letterman’s.
Fallon’s show
does particularly
well among
young people.
Fallon has a
little bit of the
edginess of late
night comedy, but he is
cleaner and more cheerful
and has more wide-ranging
talent than his immediate
predecessors. Letterman
and Leno
couldn’t
Fallon (left)
sing in a
and Colbert
Late night laughs
TWO SHOWS, TWO COMICS, TWO VERY
DIFFERENT STYLES by Emily Belz
Late night comedy’s
two biggest shows
have new faces. Comedy
Central’s The Colbert Report
ended in December as
Stephen Colbert began
preparing for his new gig as
host of CBS’ Late Show,
R
where he’ll replace David
Letterman in September.
And Jimmy Fallon took over
NBC’s The Tonight Show from
Jay Leno last year, where he
has won the ratings game
in every demographic over
other late night shows,
barbershop quartet or do
rap battles.
I attended tapings of
both The Colbert Report and
The Tonight Show, the toughest ticket to acquire in the
late night scene. All tickets
to these shows are free, but
you have to be a fast clicker
when they become available
online. Each month NBC
doles out Tonight Show tickets for the following month,
and they’re usually gone in
about a minute.
On the day of the taping
the Fallon audience had to
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
59
4/23/15 9:28 AM
LIFESTYLE
arrive at 30 Rockefeller
Center by 3:30 p.m. The
audience had a lot of
standing in line and waiting
before the actual taping
began. Most seemed to be
tourists, laden with shopping bags from places like
the M&M’s store in Times
Square.
NBC staff members
sternly instructed everyone
the best parts of being in
the Tonight Show audience.
As the Fallon writers
finished last-minute rewrites
and a crew member filled
Fallon’s coffee mug with
water, a stand-up comic
from the New York comedy
club scene appeared. His
job was to warm up the
audience so they would
laugh big at Fallon’s jokes.
Colbert
answers
questions
from the
studio
audience
before
taping
(left);
Sigourney
Weaver
and Fallon.
60 W OR L D MA Y 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
The Roots played a quick
set before the taping began.
Then Fallon made his grand
entrance from behind the
blue curtains and the
“applause” sign flashed, but
no one needed any encouragement after the two-hour
wait to see the man himself.
Watching late night
comedy hosts do the work
of recording their shows
gives you a different view of
this taping he interviewed
longtime Oklahoma meteorologist Gary England.
“How do you become a
famous—can I say weatherman or is that an insult to
meteorologists?” Colbert
asked.
“Whatever you want to
call it,” said England.
“OK, cloud jockey,”
Colbert returned.
When the show finished
taping, Colbert came close
and took questions from
the audience, many of them
longtime fans. Colbert fans
are famous for their devotion. When NASA asked the
public to vote from among
four options for the name of
a room in the International
Space Station, Colbert fans
won the voting with writein votes for “Colbert.” The
space agency agreed to
compromise by naming a
space station treadmill after
Colbert; it named the room
Tranquility.
In the question time after
taping, one fan familiar
with Colbert’s obsession
with J.R.R. Tolkien asked if
he knew any poems from
The Lord of the Rings
series. Colbert, without a
pause, launched into a
recitation of a long Tolkien
poem. No one else will ever
see that performance.
Fallon didn’t do question
time after taping Season 1
Episode 214 of The Tonight
Show. He ran through the
crowd giving high fives and
exited. In September, Colbert
will see if he still has time
to take questions from his
audience and recite poems.
For Fallon, there was no
dawdling because he had
another top-rated show to
record tomorrow, and the
day after that. A
Colbert: Todd Heisler/The New York Times/redux • Fallon: Dougl as Gorenstein/NBC
to turn their phones off,
resulting in a flurry of last
minute selfies outside
Fallon’s studio. When staff
finally directed the audience into their seats in the
studio, I won a front row
seat right in front of Tariq
“Black Thought” Trotter of
The Roots. Seeing The
Roots, the Grammywinning hip-hop and soul
band, perform live is one of
their skills and talents. Hosts
have to be both performers
and show runners. I left the
Fallon taping thinking of him
in a more managerial way.
On camera, he laughs
constantly and looks like a
teenager who can’t believe
the fun he is having. But
between takes, he makes
decision after decision in a
few seconds. Swarms of people come to talk to him about
what’s going to happen next:
Publicists for celebrities (in
this instance, Sigourney
Weaver) go over questions
he’ll ask. He quickly negotiates on bits with his sidekick
and longtime collaborating
writer Steve Higgins. A
makeup artist comes to do
a touch-up. A crew member
shuffles through cue cards,
SNL-style. The taping
wrapped in about an hour.
The businesslike
approach to taping was true
for Colbert’s show too, but
he engaged the audience
more between takes. The
stakes felt a little lower at a
Comedy Central show that
was second string to The
Daily Show. Colbert was
invariably collegial, laughing
at his writers’ jokes as they
rewrote on stage and
chatting with the audience.
Colbert lost his cool at
one moment during taping
when a large bug fell from
the ceiling into his hair.
Although the editors cut the
segment of the bug falling,
Colbert later incorporated
the bug into a joke in the
show that aired—a side comment only the live audience
would get. His background
in improvisational comedy
is apparent every moment.
Colbert is also a sharpwitted interviewer, one
area where Fallon flails. At
4/23/15
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9:28 AM
Teen Drive: handout • LEAPTech: Rex Features via AP Images
NOTEBOOK
TECHNOLOGY
Auto report cards
CHEVY CAR ALLOWS PARENTS TO MONITOR THEIR TEENAGERS’
DRIVING BEHAVIOR by Michael Cochrane
R
“Dad, can I borrow
the car?”
Parents of teens know
how much anxiety a question like that can generate.
Though you can’t always be
children’s driving habits
and even restrict certain
automotive features.
The new system, called
Teen Driver, will debut in
the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu
in the car with your teens
when they’re behind the
wheel, GM has developed
new technology allowing
parents to monitor their
and places limits on certain
features and provides
immediate feedback to the
driver. For example, it will
mute the radio or any device
paired with the car’s audio
system when front seat
occupants aren’t wearing
their seat belts. It will give
both audible and visual
warnings when the vehicle
is traveling faster
than a pre-set
maximum speed
between 40 and
75 miles per
hour.
But perhaps
the most important feedback
will come via the
customizable
report parents
can download
filled with such
information as
distance driven,
top speed achieved, preset
speed warnings exceeded,
number of stability control
and anti-lock braking events,
as well as forward-collision
NOTEBOOK
alerts and auto-braking
events (on vehicles equipped
with those features).
Tech-savvy teens won’t
simply be able to turn off
the car’s stability control or
traction control to evade
detection by the system. A
PIN-protected menu enables
parents to determine which
features can and cannot be
deactivated. “We developed
this system so parents
could use it as a teaching
tool with their kids—they
can discuss and reinforce
safe driving habits,” said
General Motors safety engineer MaryAnn Beebe in a
statement.
While Chevy’s system
may go a long way toward
encouraging safe driving
among teenagers, it doesn’t
appear to address perhaps
the most alarming trend
among younger drivers: distraction via mobile devices.
Car and Driver reports that
“in-car device-muting
technology is being worked
on in the industry as a
whole, but it still isn’t ready
for prime time.”
TEEN DRIVE: HANDOUT • LEAPTECH: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES
COLBERT: TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX • FALLON: DOUGL AS GORENSTEIN/NBC
Flight control
NASA’s latest experimental aircraft, the X-57, looks to break all the rules of how
planes fly and may pave the way for entirely new aircraft designs.
Code-named LEAPTech (Leading Edge Asynchronous Propellers Technology)
the plane will be about the size of a small general aviation aircraft, but instead
of a single large propeller, LEAPTech will integrate 18 tiny electrically powered propellers into a narrow wing with a total area of about 5 square
meters. A conventional plane of the same size would need three times as
much wing area.
The smaller wing area significantly reduces drag when the aircraft is
at cruise altitude, making the plane much more efficient. LEAPTech uses the 18 small electric engines to blow air directly
across the wing, generating greater low-speed lift during takeoffs. Traditional aircraft use their engines exclusively for
forward propulsion, and lift is generated as a byproduct of that forward movement.
Also, because maximum power isn’t necessary for efficient cruising, some of the 18 engines can be shut down and their
propellers folded back against their nacelles to make the aircraft even more aerodynamic.
NASA is currently testing the wing at Edwards Air Force Base and will build a prototype plane within two years. If the X-57
is successful, NASA hopes it will lead the aircraft industry into a transition to electric propulsion within a decade. —M.C.
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
61
4/24/15 10:11 AM
NOTEBOOK
SCIENCE
Harmful hype?
PRESIDENT LINKS HEALTH RISKS
TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN ORDER
TO JUSTIFY EXECUTIVE ACTIONS
by Julie Borg
science. “Linking asthma
and children’s health
problems to climate
change is the worst form
of hype. The president has
no credible evidence to
back up his claims, but
rather he tries to use
scary threats to children
to push his unpopular
climate agenda. Obama’s
climate actions are likely
to cause far more harm to
people, especially the
poor, than any purported
threats from global
warming,” he said.
Obama linked climate
change to health at the
same time he began to
seek support for his
policies of strict emission
limits on vehicles and
power plants.
Robotic awakening
Researchers at Bielefeld University in Germany
have developed software that they say allows a
walking robot, modeled after a stick insect and
aff ectionately known as Hector,, to demonstrate
various levels of higher consciousness. The
researchers are still investigating to what extent
Hector can be programmed for consciousness. They
believe the robot will demonstrate emergent abilities; that is, capabilities that
have not been preprogrammed but suddenly develop, sort of like learning.
The researchers will program Hector to solve problems by using imagined
behavior. Instead of automatically performing a predetermined action, the
robot will look for a new solution and then evaluate whether the action makes sense.
The researchers believe Hector may have the ability to judge the emotions of others. “It
may be able to sense other people’s intentions or expectations and act accordingly,” said
researcher Holk Cruse. “The robot may then be able to think: ‘What does this subject expect
from me?’” —J.B.
62
WORLD
MAY 16, 2015
10 SCIENCE and HOG.indd 62
Fuel of
the future
Researchers at Virginia
Tech discovered a method
to make hydrogen fuel
from the bounty of leftovers found in cornfields:
cobs, husks, and stalks.
Hydrogen, which produces almost no greenhouse gas emissions, has
traditionally been slow
and costly to produce and
distribute. But a new
technique uses the sugars glucose and xylose
simultaneously, increasing the rate hydrogen is
released by threefold.
Other methods must use
the sugars sequentially,
increasing production
time and cost.
Furthermore, the use
of corn byproducts
reduces expenses by
using a source that is
readily available near the
energy plants and
reduces the required
facility size to about that
of a typical gas station.
The researchers hope
the new technique will
help speed the widespread use of hydrogenfueled cars, displacing
fossil fuels. —J.B.
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more
10:16 AM
© TONYREINKE.COM
the American people have
not warmed to the idea of
costly environmental
policies in response to
dire warnings about
risks to the planet. The
Huffington Post reported
that “polls consistently
show the public is skeptical that the steps Obama
has taken to curb pollution are worth the cost to
the economy. So Obama is
aiming to put a spotlight
on ways that climate
change will have real
impacts on the body.”
H. Sterling Burnett,
managing editor of
Environment and Climate
News, believes the president used alarmist tactics
and based his grim predictions on unsound
OBAMA: CAROLYN K ASTER/AP • CORN: CA2HILL/iSTOCK • HECTOR: CITEC/BIELEFELD UNIVERSIT Y
President Barack
Obama announced
recently that he will initiate a series of executive
actions to reduce the
health effects of climate
change. He says rising
temperatures can lead to
more smog, longer
allergy seasons, more
insect-borne illness, and
increased incidence of
extreme-weather-related
injuries that put vulnerable populations, including
children, asthma sufferers, the elderly, the sick,
the poor, and some
communities of color, at
greater health risks.
Some believe the
president chose to focus
on alleged health risks of
climate change because
R
HOUSES OF GOD
NOTEBOOK
OBAMA: CAROLYN K ASTER/AP • CORN: CA2HILL/iSTOCK • HECTOR: CITEC/BIELEFELD UNIVERSIT Y
© TONYREINKE.COM
ORLANDO, FLA. At The Gospel Coalition’s 2015 national
conference, pastors leading the event prayed together (bottom)
before taking the stage (top, l-r): D.A. Carson, Miguel Nunez,
John Piper, Thabiti Anyabwile, Voddie Baucham, and Tim Keller.
10 SCIENCE and HOG.indd 63
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
63
4/24/15 10:19 AM
SPORTS
Outside the playbook
Louisiana looks to take on Big sports in a battle to
protect consciences by Andrew Branch
64 W O R L D MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 64
Act in addition to his state’s
2010 RFRA, protecting
citizens’ consciences on
marriage specifically. Some
voices say it’s better than a
RFRA, because critics cannot say it endorses “no gays
allowed” signs in restaurants. Others say Jindal is
“doubling down” on his
state’s “anti-gay” laws.
The current slate of
NCAA Final Fours, All-Star
games, and particularly
Super Bowls is rewarding
cities participating in the
new stadium boom. Yet, as
Jindal pushes the bill in the
last month of the legislative
session, he acknowledged
the potential power of corporate pragmatism as the
LGBT movement invokes
civil rights language.
Big sports exerted similar pressure on legislatures
during integration, particularly in Louisiana, where
racial segregation following Brown v. Board of
Going to texas
The Los Angeles Angels traded Josh Hamilton back to the
Texas Rangers on April 27 as the troubled player rebuilds
his career. Hamilton admitted to a cocaine relapse
earlier this year, the last straw in a strained two-year
relationship with the Angels. He told MLB.com’s Alden
Gonzalez that he’s taking five drug tests a week, “making changes” so he can “be OK after baseball is over.”
Hamilton also filed for divorce from his wife, Katie, in
February. The couple often toured to talk about their
faith and about staying strong against the lasting effects
of his past addictions. The divorce filing has 34 requests,
including prohibiting his wife from “hiding” their children. For
now, he may only see his children with supervision, according to records ESPN obtained.
On the baseball diamond, Hamilton expected to begin playing for the Rangers right away.
Texas, Hamilton says, is “home.” —A.B.
Jindal : Nati Harnik/Gett y Images • Hamilton: Tom Pennington/Gett y Images
In the wake of
Indiana’s Religious
Freedom Restoration Act,
when corporations threatened to withdraw their
business from the state,
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
is telling big business to
“save your breath.” In other
words: Bring your worst.
“Liberals have decided
that if they can’t win at the
ballot box, they will win in
the boardroom,” read his
New York Times manifesto
on April 23, supporting his
state’s legislative efforts.
If history is any guide, the
corporate sports world could
take him up on the offer. In
March, sports magnates led
by the NCAA expressed “concern” with Indiana, veiling
threats to “examine” future
events in the state. Arizona
Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed similar legislation last year
under pressure from Major
League Baseball and the
Super Bowl committee.
Jindal wants to pass the
Marriage and Conscience
R
Education met the national
scene in the Sugar Bowl.
After Georgia Tech
defeated integrated
Pittsburgh 7-0 in a controversial but largely uneventful 1956 Sugar Bowl, the
Louisiana legislature
banned state schools from
playing integrated teams.
Pittsburgh pledged to boycott future Sugar Bowls,
while others rejected basketball or football invitations with Louisiana. The
legislature refused to back
down, largely downgrading
the Sugar Bowl to a regional
event until integrated
Syracuse agreed to play LSU
in 1965, after the Supreme
Court invalidated laws segregating teams and stadium
seating.
Of course, the reason
for those laws, as some
Southern politicians publicly moaned, was that 60
minutes of equality on the
field could affect perceptions of equality off the field.
Such a disrespect for human
dignity is where “Jim Crow”
comparisons to RFRA architects and their intentions
die. But that hasn’t stopped
many from promoting the
opposite perception.
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9:29 AM
Trinit y Wall Street: handout • shareholders: Jamie McCarthy/Gett y Images for Wal-mart • Walton: Sarah Bentham/ap
NOTEBOOK
MONEY
Death by proxy
SEC RULES LEAD TO SHAREHOLDER
MEETINGS SIDETRACKED BY SOCIAL
ACTIVISTS by David Skeel
Late spring is the
season when shareholders come together—in
a manner of speaking—for
annual meetings at Wal-Mart
and DuPont and other corporations. Very few ordinary
shareholders go to the
meeting. Sometimes the
company offers a free lunch,
which might attract a retiree
or two (including several of
my relatives). An angry
investor might come to the
meeting to yell at the company’s chief executive. But
most shareholders vote by
“proxy.” Along with an
annual report and other
materials, the company
sends each shareholder a
proxy “card” with boxes to
check to vote for director
candidates and on the other
issues.
This is where the mischief comes in. Federal law
increasingly micromanages
shareholder proxy voting.
In 1993, after concluding
that corporate executives are
paid too much, the Securities
and Exchange Commission
required companies to disclose in their annual report
how much the top executives
are paid. The SEC thought
the new requirement, and
others that followed, would
embarrass companies that
paid big salaries. But they
were wrong. Shareholders
wanted to make sure their
executives were well-paid
by comparison to the
executives of other similar
CREDIT
TRINIT Y WALL STREET: HANDOUT • SHAREHOLDERS: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GET T Y IMAGES FOR WAL-MART • WALTON: SARAH BENTHAM/AP
R
10 SPORTS and MONEY.indd 65
companies. Now that they
know what those other
executives are being paid,
shareholders approve larger
compensation packages,
not smaller ones.
The SEC also requires
the company to include
proposals made by ordinary
shareholders unless,
among other things, the
proposal is illegal or would
meddle in the company’s
ordinary business operations. Although some of
these proposals deal with
basic corporate governance, others read like a
roll call of the trendy social
issues of the moment. In
the 1980s, the issues were
divestment from South
Africa and tobacco; in the
1990s, foreign suppliers
that failed to pay their
workers a living wage.
Wal-Mart, which is a
magnet for these kinds of
proposals, is at the center
of the key social activism
battle of the current proxy
season. Trinity Wall Street,
a mainline church that
holds Wal-Mart stock in its
enormous endowment,
submitted a shareholder
proposal asking Wal-Mart’s
board of directors to create
a new policy policing its
sale of products that
“would be reasonably
considered by many as
offensive to the family and
community values integral
to the Company’s promotion of its brand.” In its
supporting statement,
Trinity made its real objective clear: It wants to stop
Wal-Mart from selling
guns with high-capacity
magazines.
I personally don’t like
guns with high capacity
magazines any more than
Trinity Church does. But
these are precisely the
kinds of ordinary operations that shareholders
should not be meddling in.
Under the current federal
framework, anyone who
buys $2,000 worth of stock
and holds it for a year can
submit a proposal like this
one.
In an important new
decision, a federal appeals
court in Philadelphia
brought a little bit of sanity
to the proxy voting process. Although it has not
NOTEBOOK
yet released its reasoning,
the court held that WalMart is entitled to exclude
the proposal from the proxy
materials it sends to
shareholders.
The shareholder proxy
process is still a mess. If the
SEC were serious about
creating a more meaningful
voting process, it would
require that shareholders
hold a lot more than $2,000
of stock in order to submit
a proposal. A shareholder
who owns $50,000 or
$100,000 of stock is much
more likely to take the company’s interests into account
than one who holds $2,000.
The SEC also should
encourage companies to
allow their shareholders to
vote electronically and to
broadcast their meetings
on the web.
The appeals court decision doesn’t do any of these
things. But it is a small gesture in the right direction. A
Trinity Wall Street;
Wal-Mart 2014
shareholders’ meeting;
Wal-Mart Chairman of
the Board Rob Walton
(left to right).
MAY 16, 2015
WORLD
65
4/28/15 12:20 PM
the world market
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APRIL 4
‘Cultural hardball’
g Recently I asked a dear friend and minister if,
with our culture in a slog toward Sodom and
Gomorrah, I had wasted 20 years as a naval officer
protecting our country and culture. He replied that
we’re not in a slog, we’re running, and if Christians
are true to the Scriptures we’ll be persecuted. There
has always been a cost to discipleship, and our
culture is raising the price.
TOM GROSS ON WNG.ORG
, This article underscores how
American “culture police” promoting
rebellion against God’s design for
people are not materially different
than the culture police in Middle
Eastern countries like Iran. One intimidates in the name of “god,” the other
in the name of opposing “hatred.”
F.M. RAMSEY / GRANTS PASS, ORE.
, We must stem the rising tide of
angry, hateful opposition to freedom
of speech and religion, especially that
fomented by the gay pride movement.
more difficult now that the balance of
power and the law is with those who
endorse homosexuality.
RONALD CL ASS / INDIANAPOLIS, IND.
, I too lament these cultural changes,
but I was shocked by the example of
the teenage girl rooming with a lesbian peer on a school trip. Why isn’t
that seen as an opportunity for the
Christian teen to demonstrate the
unconditional love of Jesus? We have
become the Pharisees.
ANNE DAVIS / ORMOND BEACH, FL A.
 I get the need to fight this stuff in court
and fight for at least some measure of
sanity, but we live in an increasingly secular, Jesus-hating world. We in the U.S.
expect “fairness” and “freedom.” Well,
that time is coming to an end. It’s time
to respond with love and be shameless
with our faith in awkward situations.
DANIEL DERRICK ON FACEBOOK
‘Mental blocks’
, Andrée Seu Peterson’s eulogy for
cursive writing suggests that cursive
was employed for its beauty. I would
argue that prior to the ballpoint pen,
cursive was simply faster and less
splotchy than print. Also, how is how
one writes remotely as important as
what one writes?
MICHAEL NORONHA / TACOMA, WASH.
, Peterson didn’t mention how the
loss of personal signatures will affect
Yangshuo, China
submitted by
Stuart Sinisi
BOB MEREDITH / GOLDEN VALLEY, MINN.
‘The blink of an eye’
g We must learn to weep for the
redemption of sinners adrift without a
Shepherd and not fall into the trap of
treating others as one-dimensional
persons. The battle will be won neither
at the ballot box nor through cultural
media. It will be won as individual
Christians see their neighbors simply
and awfully as sinners, like us, in need
of the Savior.
J. NEAL EVANS ON WNG.ORG
, This column is a severe warning to
SEN
DU
Christians. We’re called to love the
sinner but hate the sin. That is much
, Mail/email g Website
10 MAILBAG.indd 67
 Facebook  Twitter
S YO
UR P
HO T
O S!
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD
67
4/22/15 9:26 AM
MAILBAG
identity verification. But have no fear. Our
government will think of something—
perhaps mandatory fingerprinting of
infants, fed into a national database.
 How many more like Schock are living
the same life but simply haven’t been
caught, or won’t be caught because of
sympathetic media?
PETER KUSHKOWSKI / PORTL AND, CONN.
MARK PICHA J ON FACEBOOK
‘Parents vs. doctors’
 This is where assisted suicide and
other forms of euthanasia are taking us.
If we do not stand against it, then the
government will decide when to
resuscitate.
GEORGE RAMSEY ON FACEBOOK
‘Sudden departure’
, The revelations about Rep. Schock
may be a shock, but equally shocking is
the idea that some want him to “weather
the storm.” He should face charges. The
Republican Party has to stop such
behavior if it is to reach the standards it
professes, or become something I want
to be a part of.
MARK J. ANTHONY / MONUMENT, COLO.
10 MAILBAG.indd 68
‘A bird in winter’
, My wife and I have loved the Tippetts
family since they served in our church
several years ago. I so appreciated Mindy
Belz’s kind and comforting words. Just
as our God watches over the sparrow, He
is certainly holding Kara.
MIKE L AWING / BL ACK MOUNTAIN, N.C.
Editor’s note: Kara Tippetts died March 22.
Dispatches
, Two fraternity members at Oklahoma
University received no second chance,
justifiably expelled for singing a racist
chant. But why isn’t OU and its president
in big trouble for giving two talented
football players second chances earlier
this year after two separate assaults on
women? I don’t condone either racism
or hitting women, but how can anyone
say that the fraternity members “hate”
any more than the athletes?
THOMAS SUFFIELD / HOUSTON, TEXAS
‘Ready to play’
, If you home educate to keep your kids
out of public school classrooms, why in
the world would you want them in public
school locker rooms?
WILL CARL / MADISON, WIS.
‘Idol inspection’
, I loved the interview with Nancy
Pearcey. Yes, it’s time to get off the fence
and be a messenger for Jesus!
PAUL MATLOCK / PAGOSA SPRINGS, COLO.
‘Constructed babies’
, And so it begins: the opening stages of
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The book
described artificial wombs in factories
4/27/15 9:54 AM
producing slaves that were kept in a state
of euphoria by a drug called soma. What
hideous conditions will prevail if we continue to mess with God’s created order?
WILLIAM CAMP / PIKE, N.H.
MARCH 21
‘Acronym absurdity’
 LGBTA-Z and you’re done. Everyone is
covered. Society as a whole will one day
tire of the whole thing.
GINNY TEAGUE ON FACEBOOK
‘The kids are not all right’
, Excellent article. In addition to
homosexual parents, the three subjects
had a parent whose sexual orientation
changed as an adult. My own sister
went through this transformation at
age 50. How does that fit with the
“born that way” position that sexual
orientation cannot (and should not!) be
changed?
BRUCE LINDBLOOM / EDEN PRAIRIE, MINN.
‘Danger zone’
g Thank you for covering the situation
in Nigeria; they so need our prayers. My
heart goes out to my missionary colleagues there who never know if they’ll
be the next to catch a bomb blast but
continue to minister all the same.
JENNYBETH ALFORD ON WNG.ORG
g I pray for these people. They are in a
battle to the death with these demonic
Islamic loons who do not hesitate to
wipe out any trace of the living Word and
His people.
ROB FUENTES ON WNG.ORG
‘Shot selection’
, As a nurse, I believe vaccinations are
in most cases wonderful, life-saving, preventative treatments, but the government
should not make them mandatory. Once
it starts, there will be no stopping it. And
is it best to give so many vaccines at one
time? I would like to know which diseases
are most prevalent and threatening in my
area and have my children receive their
vaccinations on a modified schedule.
SHARI SOLBERG / MALTA, MONT.
Corrections
Malath Baythoon ended the Bible study
with Hebrews 12 (“Starting over,” April
18, p. 38).
Jennifer Schoenrock has two grandchildren (“A clerk’s struggle,” April 18,
p. 46).
LETTERS & PHOTOS
, Email: [email protected]
, Mail: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box 20002,
Asheville, NC 28802-9998
Website:
wng.org
g
Facebook:
facebook.com/

WORLD.magazine
 Twitter: @WORLD_mag
Please include full name and address. Letters
may be edited to yield brevity and clarity.
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Andrée seu peterson
The river of
your delights
God is bullish on giving us pleasure
“They feast on the abundance of your
house, and you give them drink from the
river of your delights” (Psalm 36:8).
My husband phoned from work (repairing a
deck) insisting I find an excuse to take a walk.
It’s sunny and 75 degrees, and the chances of
that in a random Darwinian universe are nil.
But the mercury does not begin to tell the story
of delights. There are the waves of childhood
memory borne on a breeze that grazes a dogwood, or the snap of clean laundry on a clothesline; they break your heart with longing, and yet
you are glad to have it broken.
Scripture says that “when the Queen of
Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, the
house that he had built, the food of his table,
the seating of his officials, and the attendance
of his servants, … and his burnt offerings that he
offered at the house of the Lord, there was no
more breath in her” (2 Chronicles 9:3-4).
This is what April does to us: “there is no
more breath in us.” Yet King Solomon in all his
glory, said Jesus, compares unfavorably to the
rapture of a single lily (Matthew 6:29). And I
would have to say that, personally, the greatest
proof of the two kingdoms vying for our
lives, God’s and Satan’s, outside the Bible, is the
juxtaposition of spring-sparrows-and-gurglingstreams with sex-slavery-porn-backroomdeals—and Boko Haram.
krieg barrie
R
 [email protected]
10 SEU PETERSON.indd 71
Who are these
fortunate
recipients?
… The most
miserable
hard-scrabble
life has seen a
sunset and a
sunrise.
Psalm 23 brings us back to the “river of
delights,” where God “gives them drink” (Psalm
36:8). Who are these fortunate recipients? What
elite subset of humanity is allowed this happy
state? Not elites at all! Verse 7 says they are “the
children of mankind.” None on earth excluded.
The most miserable hard-scrabble life has seen
a sunset and a sunrise:
“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and
on the good …” (Matthew 5:45).
God is so bullish on giving us pleasure that
C.S. Lewis’ demon Screwtape declared Him
“vulgar” and of a “bourgeois mind”: “He has
filled his world full of pleasures. There are
things for humans to do all day long without
His minding in the least—sleeping, washing,
eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying,
working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s
any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side” (The
Screwtape Letters).
One hears the unfair mock that a Calvinist is
someone who is worried that somebody somewhere is having fun. If this was ever true of a
Calvinist, it is certainly a calumny against God.
It is not from St. Paul but Seneca that Stoicism
comes:
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later
times some will depart from the faith … who
forbid marriage and require abstinence from
foods that God created to be received with
thanksgiving by those who believe and know
the truth. For everything created by God is good,
and nothing is to be rejected if it is received
with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the
word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:1-5).
The handiwork by which God declares
Himself (Romans 1:20) so brims with its own
intrinsic appreciative pleasures that even when
we are indoors, as I am today, it makes us feel
good just to know they’re out there:
“It is the feeling that would make a man
unwilling to deface a great picture even if he
were the last man left alive and himself about to
die; which makes us glad of unspoiled forests
that we shall never see; which makes us anxious
that the garden or bean-field should continue to
exist. We do not merely like the things; we pronounce them, in a momentarily God-like sense,
‘very good’” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves).
I met a man in the dog park who belongs to
an orchid club. “You talk about nothing but
orchids?” I asked. I was put in my place before
him and the angels. “There are 25,000 varieties,”
he said. A
MAY 16, 2015 WORLD 71
4/29/15 10:10 AM
MARVIN OLASKY
Storming the castle
sometimes the long race to the top pays off
72 W ORL D MAY 1 6 , 2 0 1 5
10 OLASKY.indd 72
‘I thought I’d
be jumping
out of my
skin, but it’s
been such a
battle. So,
reverent
thankfulness.’
—Chris Smith
John Newton (Josh
Young) finds himself
torn between following
in the footsteps of his
father—a slave trader
—and embracing the
more compassionate
views of his childhood
sweetheart.
Ama zing Grace The Musical
Does Christian perseverance pay off? In
a fallen world, often not. Sometimes the
grace is in the running of the race, not the
outcome. But sometimes …
In 2007 I met a former Pennsylvania
church youth director and policeman, Chris
Smith, a 37-year-old without formal music
training or Broadway connections. A child of
divorce who grew up with a manic-depressive
mom, Smith listened to John Williams movie
scores—Star Wars!—and taught himself to play
the guitar. When he graduated from nearby
Eastern in 1992, he went immediately from
Christian college to police academy.
Oh, and he started writing some songs by
sitting at a keyboard and tapping out melodies.
And he thought someday he could hear them
sung on Broadway. And he wrapped them into
what he thought could be a musical about a
slave trader. Something happy like that, just
what could attract about $13 million from
investors, just what New York theatergoers
would want to see. Dream on.
Smith dreamed, wrote, and planned for 10
years, and in 2007 pulled together a few actor/
singers to do what’s called a read-through
(actually, more of a sing-through) of Amazing
Grace, his story of John Newton. I’m a poor judge
of musicals, but the moving lyrics and soaring
score impressed me. I liked Smith’s audacious
goal: to go outside the evangelical ghetto, provide stylish entertainment on Broadway (see
“Broadway mission,” Dec. 1, 2007), and grip the
hearts of scoffers as Newton once was.
I wrote at the time that “the musical has a
good shot at success,” told Smith (quoting
Miracle Max from The Princess Bride) “Have fun
storming the castle,” and said to my wife, “It
will take a miracle.” Smith worked it, worked it,
even when others said his project was mostly
dead. He told me, “The actors can go back to
other jobs, but I can’t go back. My job as a
police officer is gone.” Smith kept grinding
R
away—helped by others who caught the
vision—and raised enough money to have other
read-throughs, then to have a “developmental
production” in 2012 at a theater in Connecticut,
then a full production in Chicago last year.
You can see portions of that last production
at amazinggracemusical.com. My favorite song
is one in which a born-again John Newton
sings, “It was not in me to change, but God in
His mercy has called me by name, and He lifted
me out of the pit of my shame.” The joy of new
life freed from the worst of
sin becomes evident: “And
the man that I was I cast
upon the fury of the sea, let
the wind and the waves
wash away the fool I used
to be, and I won’t be
ashamed to stand and
proclaim, I am free.”
Then April 16, morning:
An announcement that new
rehearsals for Amazing
Grace will soon begin, leading to a July 16 opening
night at Broadway’s famous
Nederlander. That theater,
built in 1921, was the venue
for legendary productions
ranging from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? to the Tony-award-winning Rent.
And now it will display the work of Chris Smith,
“concept creator, composer, lyricist. … Chris
thanks his best friend and wife Alana; his children Joshua, Alana, and Alexandra; his parents;
investors; and, above all, God, who made this
whole impossible dream a reality.”
April 16, evening: I called Chris Smith and
said, “You’ve won the World Series. How does it
feel?” He said, “I thought I’d be jumping out of
my skin, but it’s been such a battle. So, reverent
thankfulness.” Chris and Alana Smith have been
married for 23 years, and their three children
are 22, 20, and 3: Their youngest was “a big
surprise, a great surprise,” but when Alana was
seven months pregnant, she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. She’s now healthy, but that
was an enormous stresser at a time when
Amazing Grace on Broadway was still just a hope.
Smith concluded, “I had to grow in so many
ways. I was the type of person who would ask
the Lord for patience, but I wanted it right
now. … Used to be that when a deal fell through,
I’d feel ‘I can’t make this work.’” Now 45, he said,
“I’ve started to enjoy the passing of time.” A
4/28/15 4:46 PM
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Danger zone: sex counseling and the state

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