News
Timothy C. Morgan
In ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ (The Joy of the Gospel), Francis says too many Christians have lost the joy of the Lord.
Pope Francis in Varginha, Brazil, in July 2013.
Christianity TodayNovember 26, 2013
Wikimedia
Today from the Vatican, Pope Francis released his most significant writing since taking office—the 50,000-word "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel). The document focuses on the pope's vision for evangelism, concern for the poor, the disabled, and the unborn.
Catholic News Service reports:
Pope Francis' voice is unmistakable in the 50,000-word document's relatively relaxed style—he writes that an "evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!"—and its emphasis on some of his signature themes, including the dangers of economic globalization and "spiritual worldliness." Inspired by Jesus' poverty and concern for the dispossessed during his earthly ministry, Pope Francis calls for a "church which is poor and for the poor."
Evangelicals who read the lengthy document may find themselves agreeing with the pope's thoughts about changing the Roman Catholic church. Here are five key ideas:
1. The church must find new ways to evangelize.
"In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church's journey in years to come."
2. The church must wake up to the reality that consumerism poses an existential threat to Christianity.
"The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless."
3. The church should recover its enthusiasm for evangelism.
"[An] evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral! Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that "delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow… And may the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the good news not from evangelizers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervour, who have first received the joy of Christ".
4. Preaching the good news should be "first and foremost."
"[We] cannot forget that evangelization is first and foremost about preaching the Gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ or who have always rejected him. Many of them are quietly seeking God, led by a yearning to see his face, even in countries of ancient Christian tradition. All of them have a right to receive the Gospel. Christians have the duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone."
5. The church should put the poor, disadvantaged, and overlooked at the front of the line for hearing the good news.
"[The] Church… has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, "those who cannot repay you" (Lk 14:14). There can be no room for doubt or for explanations which weaken so clear a message. Today and always, "the poor are the privileged recipients of the Gospel",52 and the fact that it is freely preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor."
In addition, Pope Francis includes sharp criticism of the economic priorities in the developed West. He writes:
"Just as the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say "thou shalt not" to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape."
CT will update this report as reactions develop.
- More fromTimothy C. Morgan
- Economics
- Evangelism
- Pope Francis
News
Jeremy Weber
(UPDATED) Do for-profit corporations have religious rights? Justices will consider cases of Hobby Lobby (which won) and Conestoga Wood Specialties (which lost).
Christianity TodayNovember 26, 2013
TexasGOPVote.com/Flickr
Update: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals by Hobby Lobby, an evangelical-owned craft chain which won in the Tenth Circuit, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a Mennonite-owned woodworking company which lost in the Third Circuit.
Hobby Lobby explained in a statement that its Green family owners "have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the HHS mandate and do so at no additional cost to employees under their self-insured health plan." "My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case," said founder and CEO David Green.
Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore labeled the decision "the most important religious liberty question in recent years." In a press release for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, he writes:
"We cannot accept the theology lesson that the government has sought to teach us, that religion is merely a matter of what happens during the scheduled times of our services, and is left there in the foyer during the rest of the week. Our religious convictions aren't reduced to mere opinions we hide in our heart and in our hymns. Our religious convictions inform the way we live.
"I pray the Supreme Court recognizes what the founders of this country saw, that religious liberty isn't a gift handed to us by Uncle Caesar. Religious liberty is given to us by God and is inalienable. Let's pray for the justices as they think through this monumentally important case."
The high court will combine the cases. Oral arguments will likely happen in March, with a decision expected in June.
Hobby Lobby is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Conestoga is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
—–
After more than 80 lawsuits from hundreds of concerned Christian groups (among other plaintiffs), today the U.S. Supreme Court is finally poised to pick one of the many challenges to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.
CT previously previewed the top contenders the court will choose between today. Smart money says the justices will choose Hobby Lobby's high-profile challenge to the mandate's requirement that employers provide employees with emergency contraceptives that many evangelicals consider to be abortifacients.
CT also previously reported the core question at stake: Whether for-profit companies have religious rights, via the court's extension of corporate "personhood" in Citizens United. Religion Clause's Howard Friedman told CT this is "one of the most difficult legal questions I've seen."
Appeals courts have disagreed on whether for-profit corporations with religious owners are allowed free exercise of religion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Seventh Circuit and Tenth Circuit have said yes. But the Sixth Circuit and Third Circuit have said no.
Most of the legal action has been on the for-profit side (43 cases and counting), where—out of the 38 lawsuits decided on the merits of their complaints—32 have secured temporary bans against the mandate's enforcement and 6 have been denied, according to a helpful scorecard kept by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
CT has chronicled the many legal developments regarding the contraceptive mandate, including most recently on the nonprofit side where a court ruled that the mandate splits religion into worship or good works.
News
Kate Tracy
(UPDATED) America’s oldest book is now also the world’s most expensive. Meanwhile, these Bibles actually went to the moon.
Christianity TodayNovember 26, 2013
Courtesy of RR Auction
Update: Today the Bay Psalm Book indeed became the world's most expensive, selling for more than $14 million dollars at auction, reports The New York Times.
The buyer, philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, "edged out a $12 million dollar pre-set bid" by Steve Green of Hobby Lobby's Green family, reports Religion News Service. The Green family is building a Bible museum near the National Mall.
—–
$130,056 may seem like an outrageous price tag for three Bibles. But that is exactly what the Lunar Bible Collection sold for at a New Hampshire auction last week.
The Lawrence McGlynn Lunar Flown Bible Collection and Archive includes the only complete set of microfilm lunar Bibles that flew on the Apollo 12, 13, and 14 missions.
"Due to weight restrictions on personal items that could be carried by the Apollo astronauts in their assigned personal preference kits, it was necessary to find a Bible small enough and light enough to be taken," notes a press release from RR Auction.
However, the sale figure for these Bibles is nothing compared to what America's oldest book—the Bay Psalm Book —is projected to sell for today: $15 million to $30 million, according to The New York Times (NYT).
If the auction goes as expected, that will make the book the most expensive ever sold at auction, outselling even Shakespeare's First Folio ($8.14 million in today's dollars).
For a book that experts call "rather shoddily done," this may seem expensive. But it is the first printed book from the colonies—dating back to the 1640s from a Massachusetts Puritan colony—and only 11 other copies exist.
Michael Inman, curator of rare books at the New York Public Library, told the NYT:
"These 11 copies symbolize the introduction of printing into the British colonies, which was reflective of the importance placed on reading and education by the Puritans and the concept of freely available information, freedom of expression, freedom of the press. All that fed into the revolutionary impulse that gave rise to the United States."
Religion News Service reports how Boston's Old South Church parted with one of their two copies, and how the Green family may be one of the bidders. The NYT also discuses Benjamin Franklin's role as safe-keeper of rare books, including The Whole Booke of Psalmes.
CT previously reported what you need to know about the Bay Psalm Book's history and significance.
- More fromKate Tracy
- Bible
- Puritans
Culture
Review
Brett McCracken
An inspiring yet imperfect biopic of a man more complex than he appears here.
Idris Elba in 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom'
Christianity TodayNovember 26, 2013
The Weinstein Company
Some biopics of towering historical figures focus on rather narrow episodes of the subject's life (see Lincoln, The Queen, and so on). But Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom opts to cover nearly all of Nelson Mandela's life as a lawyer, anti-apartheid political leader, and South African icon.
Normally this approach falters, simply because that breadth almost always means sacrificing depth in a two- or three-hour film. A person's entire life—full of episodes, rabbit trails, and a tangled web of complexity—does not always translate cleanly to a focused, insightful feature-length screen portrait. The best biopics often focus on one period in a person's life to showcase their character and complexity—the early career of Johnny Cash (Walk the Line), Truman Capote's writing of In Cold Blood (Capote), or Nelson Mandela's recognition that the 1995 Rugby World Cup was an opportunity to help heal his post-Apartheid nation (Invictus).
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, directed by Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl), takes the long-view approach to the life of Mandela (Idris Elba), as its title implies. Based on his 1994 autobiography of the same name, Mandela covers about 50 years of the man's life, from his childhood as a herd boy in South Africa's rural Cape region, to his rise as an Apartheid resistance leader. Mandela was then a prisoner for three decades before ascending in 1994 to the South African presidency as the nation's first black president, elected in the nation's first fully representative, multiracial election.
In this case the long view approach (mostly) works, given the single-minded focus at its core. Mandela wants freedom for his people. That is what drives him (and the movie). It's a classic movie redemption arc: the oppressed and subjugated in search of freedom and justice. And Mandela's is one of the most compelling of all redemption tales.
How should an oppressed people group—like black South Africans under Apartheid—push back against their oppressors? Should violence be met with violence? Is the path of nonviolent reconciliation too slow and soft?
This is one of the tensions of Mandela—and indeed a tension within Mandela himself. As a young lawyer and activist, Mandela is at first committed to fighting for freedom through nonviolent means. But gradually he becomes more militant and guerilla in his tactics, ultimately resulting in his arrest and imprisonment.
During his long tenure in prison (27 years), Mandela's wife Winnie (Naomie Harris) carries the militant torch and is intermittently arrested and jailed herself. When Mandela is finally released from prison in the early 90s, he's firmly committed to peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. But this is hard for Winnie to take. She's not ready to forgive and reconcile. Justice and retribution are more attractive to her; she's suffered too much at the hands of hate. Eventually this leads to her separation from Nelson.
Winnie and Nelson's divergent paths make for a convenient (if somewhat obvious and simplistic) juxtaposition to highlight the film's themes. What's fascinating about where Nelson lands is that he of all people, having been imprisoned for nearly three decades in the prime of his life, would seem justified in rage and militancy. But instead he comes out of prison and forgives his captors and white oppressors, urging his fellow black South Africans to do the same. The film is imperfect, but at least it is a compelling picture of the power and freedom that comes through forgiveness.
What Mandela lacks is a sense for who Mandela really is. We understand the injustice that drives him and the struggles he and his people endure during their "long walk to freedom." But who is Mandela the man?
Idris Elba delivers a fine, sometimes brilliant performance. But the audience is rarely invited into the man's interior world. The film is too busy covering its prodigious narrative ground.
And its credibility suffers a bit from its too obvious hallowing of the hero: aside from some womanizing tendencies, Mandela appears to lack any detectable flaws. That halo around him makes him even less relatable. We relate to the idea of Mandela, and we like the reconciliation which he comes to symbolize, but the man himself feels abstracted—too iconic, too perfect to be real.
In some ways, Mandela has become almost a caricature of feel-good geopolitical activism, a grandfatherly advocate for all things love, peace, and "we are the world" togetherness. And at times, this feels like exaggerated, naïve optimism—in the film's last line, Mandela says, "People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
Is that true? Because from what I read in the Bible and know of my own depraved heart, hate seems to be our more natural bent. Mandela is right that love can be learned. But it is not something that comes naturally. It only becomes natural by God's grace and the Holy Spirit's power. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). We trust the inherent goodness of humanity—and its power to redeem itself—at our own peril.
Mandela is a good-hearted film, and a welcome change from the bleak fare that often characterizes "awards season." But is it too good-hearted? Perhaps we are too cynical these days to believe in such a straightforward story of goodness and reconciliation.
Yet despite our skepticism, something about Mandela still clicks. I think it's the collective groaning for justice that we all feel, the longing we all have for shalom to overtake strife. What Mandela did in South Africa wasn't perfect, but it was at times exactly the sort of healing, reconciliation work that provides glimpses of the kingdom of God.
Caveat Spectator
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is rated PG-13 mostly for instances of violence: beatings, shootings, dead bodies in the streets, massacres of protesters by armed guards, and so on. None of the violence is particularly explicit by today's standards, however. The film also contains a couple instances of non-explicit sex, and some brief strong language.
Brett McCracken is a Los Angeles-based writer and journalist, and author of the books Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Baker, 2010) and Gray Matters: Navigating the Space Between Legalism and Liberty (Baker, 2013). You can follow him @brettmccracken.
- More fromBrett McCracken
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
expandFull Screen
1 of 2
Keith Bernstein / The Weinstein Company
Idris Elba and Naomie Harris in 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom'
expandFull Screen
2 of 2
The Weinstein Company
Idris Elba in 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom'
Books
Review
Thomas S. Kidd
An evangelical historian teaches us how to think critically about the heroes of our past.
Christianity TodayNovember 26, 2013
In 1623, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford proclaimed the first Thanksgiving. "The great Father," he declared, "has given us this year an abundant harvest…and granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience." He directed the Pilgrims to gather that November, "the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Plymouth Rock, there to listen to ye Pastor and render Thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all his blessings."
The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History
Robert Tracy McKenzie (Author)
Brand: IVP Academic
219 pages
$16.59
Except Bradford didn't write that. Someone—we don't know who—fabricated this "proclamation" in the late 20th century. (And the "first Thanksgiving" actually happened in 1621, anyway.) Yet quotes from Bradford's "proclamation" circulate around the internet and appear in books such as 48 Liberal Lies About American History and Sermon Outlines for Busy Pastors. Surviving records from the Pilgrims actually tell us little about the "first Thanksgiving," tempting folks to fill in details where they don't exist. In this, the Pilgrims join a long line of historical characters that Americans—and especially some evangelicals—have attempted to form in their own image.
In The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History, Robert Tracy McKenzie takes the historical challenges posed by the Pilgrims as his starting point. I cannot recall ever reading a book quite like The First Thanksgiving. It is an entertaining retelling of a seminal moment in American history—and a remarkable reflection on how Christians should handle history in general.
Crisis Point
American evangelicals seem to have reached a crisis point over the study of history, especially the history of the American founding. For decades, many evangelicals have turned to popular history writers who have presented America, especially of the colonial and Revolutionary era, as a straightforwardly Christian nation. In response, a respected cohort of academic evangelical historians, led by Mark Noll and George Marsden (my doctoral advisor), have concurrently mapped out a more complex view of religion's importance in American history.
While those academic evangelicals at least implicitly disagreed with parts of the "Christian America" thesis, they have struggled to compete with the popular audience won by writers such as Peter Marshall and, most controversially, David Barton. Barton's recent book, The Jefferson Lies, which presented Thomas Jefferson as embracing relatively orthodox Christian views until late in life, unleashed an unprecedented torrent of evangelical and conservative criticism, precipitating the decision by Barton's publisher, Thomas Nelson, to pull the book from distribution in 2012. (I covered the controversy over The Jefferson Lies for WORLD magazine.)
McKenzie, professor and chair of the history department at Wheaton College, may not resolve the academic/popular rift in evangelical history, but The First Thanksgiving is a promising step forward. Written for a popular audience, the book is a great choice for anyone wanting a reliable history of what we know—and what we don't—about the Pilgrim Fathers.
In telling this story, McKenzie clears up a host of misconceptions about the Plymouth settlers, who certainly did not wear buckled hats or black clothes (those were a 19th-century sartorial invention). He demonstrates that the quest for "religious freedom," in the modern sense, did not really animate the Pilgrims. Yes, they wanted to find a place where they could worship God according to Scripture and the dictates of conscience. But they had already discovered those conditions in Holland, where a number of English dissenters had gone in the early 1600s.
The most pressing concern that led the Plymouth Separatists to leave Holland was that they found the Netherlands "a hard place to maintain their English identity and an even harder place to make a living." They did not worry so much about religious persecution (at least not since they left England), but about "spiritual danger and decline." They worried about the cultural corruption they saw around them in foreign Dutch culture, and struggled to find profitable employment that could nourish their common identity. America seemed to offer both better opportunity and a place to preserve their sense of covenanted community.
McKenzie's focus here is not so much how America was founded as a refuge for religious freedom. The real lesson has to do with maintaining Christian commitment in the midst of a worldly, permissive culture. "The Pilgrims grappled with fundamental questions still relevant to us today: What is the true cost of discipleship? What must we sacrifice in pursuit of the kingdom?" To what lengths should we go—how far should we go—to maintain a proper separation from the world? The Pilgrims decided they should traverse the dangerous Atlantic to do so, yet they found that the New World had many of the same challenges as the Old, plus some new ones, such as relating to Native American neighbors.
Flawed Heroes
I'm struck by how distinctively Christian McKenzie's concerns are—more so than much of the "Christian America" literature, where you're never sure if the nation or the Kingdom gets first billing. The priority for McKenzie is faithful thinking and living as Christians, and history can help by providing examples from which we can learn. But we have to balance learning from people in the past—and even embracing them as heroes—against turning them into "idols." All people, past and present, have their limitations and failings.
We should remember, McKenzie cautions, than not long after the first Thanksgiving—which was indeed a peaceful, if tense meal between the English and their Wampanoag neighbors—the Pilgrims launched a preemptive assault on local Massachusetts Indians that resulted in violence and bitter resentments. The English even placed the severed head of one Native American on a pike outside their fort. Recalling this is telling the truth, not revisionist history. Even one of their dismayed former pastors wrote from Holland that he wished they had converted some Indians to Christianity "before you had killed any!"
Some readers may find McKenzie a bit dismissive about the Pilgrims' relevance as moral and cultural guides. We need not agree with everything that the Pilgrims or the Founding Fathers did to regard them as a trove of historical wisdom in their views on liberty, moral responsibility, and the grounds of government (as articulated in the Mayflower Compact).
I'm also not sure that the Pilgrims are the most obvious candidates for correcting historical idol-making among evangelicals. How many evangelicals—or Americans generally—actually know any of the Pilgrims' names, aside (perhaps) from Myles Standish or William Bradford? Yes, for the past century Americans have vaguely celebrated the Pilgrims' memory in November, but it is harder to make idols of people we barely know.
The temptation toward idol-making seems much more pressing with the titans of America's national history, those who line the mall in Washington, D.C. Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington: These are the ones that, despite limited evidence of orthodoxy, many of us want—or need—to be evangelical Christians, just like us. We desperately need help to know how to think about those Founders.
But those are subjects for other books and other times. McKenzie has done an enormous service by writing an engaging, morally reflective story about the Pilgrims and the problems of history. May there be many more books like McKenzie's, which might inspire a new evangelical generation toward greater intellectual and ethical discernment about the American past.
Thomas S. Kidd is professor of history at Baylor University and the author, most recently, of Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots (Basic Books).
- More fromThomas S. Kidd
- Founding Fathers
- History
- International
- Patriotism and Nationalism
- Pilgrims
- Thanksgiving
- United States
Pastors
Leadership’s managing editor talks about his book, “Generation Ex-Christian.”
Leadership JournalNovember 26, 2013
Does God make atheists sweat? Plus, guest Drew Dyck, managing editor of Leadership, talks about his book, Generation Ex-Christian, and the reasons more and more Christian kids are walking away from their faith! Don't miss it! It may or may not have something to do with the end of Western Civilization as we know it!
Listen to the podcast via iTunes.
Jen Pollock Michel
Toronto’s tolerance gets tested by Ford’s embarrassing antics.
Her.meneuticsNovember 25, 2013
shot7photos / Flickr
If you watch any late-night television, you know the name Rob Ford. Mayor of Toronto, Ford recently revised months of denials and admitted what the press and police already knew (and had on tape): Yes, he'd regularly drunk too heavily. Yes, he'd smoked crack cocaine while in office.
Americans don't typically follow Canadian politics, but a crack-smoking mayor is scandalous enough to draw attention. What is happening in Toronto? my American friends ask. What is up with your mayor?
I won't pretend to fully get it. As an American who moved to Toronto months after Ford took office in 2010, there is a sensibility in this city that isn't mine. I'm a stranger to Toronto's history, an outsider to its politics. Still, I'm an avid observer and find this a fascinating cultural moment.
Since 1898, Toronto has held the nickname "Toronto the Good," coined in a book by C.S. Clark. The city earned the label for its benevolence and broad-mindedness. It was a city to be esteemed for being "liberal in matters of opinion." Toronto still lays claim to its moniker. We are a good city: good because we are environmentally conscious, good because we are unapologetically tolerant, good because our cultivated gentility drives both a law-abiding and mind-your-own-business nobility.
And now, the good people of Toronto—embarrassed and fed-up with Ford's behavior—are actually powerless to remove their leader from office. But maybe this isn't simply because there is no legislative statue for recalling a mayor. Maybe it's because Toronto the Good lacks the confident language to demand moral credibility of its political leaders who go bad.
Toronto is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, with immigrants making up nearly half of its population. Although its people are wildly diverse, Toronto manages to respect its differences. It's a city of warm and liberal welcome—and I love living here.
However, if you live in Toronto and wish to test the resilience of that tolerance, mention either that you read your Bible regularly or believe in the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Conversation will halt, and behind the glassy-eyes of your broad-minded Torontonian friends, you may notice a glimmer of polite disdain. Belief—an assertion of absolute truth—may as well be bigotry in this city. In Toronto, it's hard to admit that you're an evangelical Christian.
In C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man, he examines what happens to a society that tries to abandon its allegiance to objective values, much like Toronto has. Until the Enlightenment, Lewis writes, people agreed that virtue (and virtuous judgment) had to be cultivated. We needed to be taught to love the lovely and despise the despicable. Our "affections" needed to be trained, and education, as Aristotle said, should endeavor to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.
Today, cities like Toronto aim to make its citizens "liberal in opinion." Virtue cannot be decided objectively. The only agreed-upon virtue that remains is open-mindedness. Toronto the Good becomes Toronto the Tolerant. "Such is the tragi-comedy of our situation," writes Lewis. "We continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible."
Tragic comedy seems sadly relevant in the case of Mayor Ford. "His mayoralty has been an experiment in what would happen if you had a feral 16-year-old boy for mayor," wrote Toronto-based writer Stephen Marche in the New York Times.
Marche, like other urbane Torontonians living in the downtown core, demand that Ford and his adolescent numbskullery must go. Though Toronto's City Council has recently stripped him of the majority of his mayoral powers, reducing his staff from 20 people to eight, Ford refuses to resign.
In his most recent interview with the CBC, Ford quoted a Bible verse (badly): "'He who shall cast the first stone has never sinned.' I admitted I sinned. I've let a lot of people down. [But] the past is the past." Politicians don't regularly go around quoting the Bible in Canada, certainly not in Toronto. The Scriptures spoken by Rob Ford, a man who does not claim to be religious, seem especially unusual.
But maybe not. Rob Ford is Toronto's anti-elite. He was voted in on a wave of suburban anger. After some of Toronto's outlying suburbs became part of its municipality, suburbanites have despised that city spending favors the needs of the wealthy living in Toronto's downtown core. Ford was elected on the promise that he would make city government work for them, too. Though himself a wealthy man, Ford postures himself as the friend of the blue collar worker living in Scarborough, not the banker living in a Toronto high-rise. Ford plays on the anger that is fueled by inequity, and that's why he continues to find support, despite having now admitted to criminal behavior.
Stephen Marche was also interviewed on the CBC, just after news of the police possession of the incriminating video was released. "The man has no honor," Marche exclaimed. "And I can't believe how incredibly old-fashioned I sound to myself." He recognized that the judgments he wanted to make about Rob Ford offended his own "liberal" sensibilities. It's easy to be liberal in opinion—to live and let live—until one's mayor makes international headlines because he's smoking crack-cocaine.
It seems preposterous, but in the days following the police confirmation of the long-rumored video, Ford's approval ratings rose. Despite the newest reiterations of political scandal emerging out of Toronto in the heft of its mayor, some have remained as bored as the ancients. Nothing new under the sun. A lying, even crack-smoking politician? Yawn.
Still, I believe Toronto is good, and I hope to stay. Rob Ford is not representative of this great city. But I can also hope and pray that Toronto will mature into a greater goodness than tolerance—even into our oldest ideas about virtue.
And if that's old-fashioned, I welcome a return to the good 'ole days.
Jen Pollock Michel lives in Toronto and worships at Grace Toronto Church.
This article was originally published as part of Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women.
- More fromJen Pollock Michel
- Canada
- CT Women
- International
- Jen Pollock Michel
- Politics
- Tolerance
News
Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
Gospel rescue missions report drop in visits by vets who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Persian Gulf.
Christianity TodayNovember 25, 2013
Fewer veterans are seeking food or shelter from rescue missions, according to an October survey of almost 17,000 individuals.
Overall, veterans made up 12 percent of those seeking help from the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (AGRM), which surveyed more than 100 of its 285 members offering "radical hospitality in the name of Jesus."
The number of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan dropped from 12 percent of identified vets to 8 percent, while those who served in the Persian Gulf dropped from 16 percent to 12 percent. By contrast, the numbers of those who served in Vietnam (20 percent) and Korea (4 percent) remained steady.
The overall drop is welcome news after last year's report that twice as many Iraq and Afghanistan vets were seeking help from AGRM missions. The numbers reflect a larger drop counted by the Housing and Urban Development Department, which recently reported an 8 percent drop in homeless veterans.
The needs of homeless veterans are often complicated by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a Veterans Day broadcast, televangelist Kenneth Copeland and controversial historian David Barton told radio listeners that God's promises can release them from PTSD.
Religion News Service covered the heated response. "For them to denigrate the suffering of men and women traumatized by war—and to claim biblical support for their callow and doltish views—is both shocking and unconscionable," Joe Carter, communications director for the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told RNS.
Many church leaders are working to engage veterans, aiming to be a consistent presence for soldiers as they transition back home. Veterans Affairs has ramped up training for clergy to learn how to help those in the service, and several ministries help churches offer programs and counseling to veterans.
CT regularly reports on homelessness and veterans, including advice from Iraq War veteran Logan Mehl-Laituri on how to recognize and engage veterans in the church.
- More fromSarah Eekhoff Zylstra
- Homelessness
- International
- Iraq War
- Surveys
- Veterans
Lincoln Brunner and Jim Killam in Jordan.
At Jordan border, Christians turn out in force to provide help and hope.
Living on the Edge: In squatter camps, Syrian families congregate on a desert hillside outside Amman, Jordan.
Christianity TodayNovember 25, 2013
Photo by Jim Killam
On a desert hillside, 225 miles from their bombed-out homes in Syria, a half-dozen refugee fathers and sons have a modest winterization project going on.
Using lumber scrounged from pallets, plus a few rugs and canvas scraps, they tack together a vestibule for an 18-by-32-foot tent that 16 family members will share. The vestibule will help keep freezing winds out of the main living area, which is warmed by one small propane heater. Everyone will sleep on thick foam mattresses with a thin rug between those and the rocky ground.
"Winter is close," says Anas Mustafa Halif, 30, through an interpreter. "We have no clothing, no shelter, no fuel for heating, or even firewood. We can manage such hardships. We move around. But the children? It's very difficult for the children."
About 50 tents comprise this makeshift camp. Most of the Syrians here fled from the outskirts of Hama, a northern city that's been hit hard by Syria's two-and-a-half-year civil war. In fact, 45 are relatives or friends from the same neighborhood. They've landed on the east edge of Amman, opting for this grim arrangement over official refugee camps: Za'atari, to the north, is overrun with more than 130,000 people.
The UN estimates 3.5 million Syrian refugees are in the region and the refugee crisis is reaching historic proportions. The UN has "not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago," said UN high commissioner for refugees António Guterres at a New York meeting this summer.
When Vera Haddad pulls up in her red Peugeot compact, the men pause from their work to crowd around with their wives and kids. Haddad, a Jordanian Christian, visits once a week, and she always looks first for the new arrivals. She whips out a notepad and starts taking their names, including those of Halif and his family. As partnership coordinator for the Jordanian Evangelical Committee for Relief and Development, compassion for refugees is in her DNA.
"In 1970, we did experience civil war here in Jordan," says Haddad, 56. "I know what war is like. I know what fear is like. The first thing that occurs to my mind is what can we do? How can we help these people? And how can we let them see Jesus in our lives?"
Economic Strains
Sader and Foza, a Syrian couple from a village near Hama, have been living with Sader's sister in a tent in east Amman since July. Before coming to Jordan, the couple and their six children (four with cerebral palsy) were on the run for a year within Syria. The oldest, 17-year-old Muhammad, died of exhaustion en route to Jordan.
"It is hard to see your children suffer while they are living with you," Foza says. "We wish that we will die, but even death is not coming. Winter is at hand, and we have nothing."
Since 2011, 1.3 million Syrians have fled into Jordan, a nation of 6 million. Thousands more pour over the border each month, straining Jordan's economy. Food prices have soared. One local resident says cucumbers and tomatoes cost four times more than a year ago.
Demand for living space has tripled rents in urban areas. In one village Haddad visited recently, homes that recently rented for the equivalent of US$85 to $110 per month now go for $280 to $350. (Jordanian laborers typically make only 17 Jordanian dinars—$24—a day.) But in a country that's just 2.2 percent Christian, the crisis also has allowed the church to shine. In official and unofficial refugee camps, and house by house in the cities, Jordanian Christians and Syrian Muslims are encountering each other over tea, conversation, and compassion.
One Christian worker in Jordan (who asked not to be named) sees God's hand in it all. Though Syria itself was about 10 percent Christian before the war, most neighborhoods in Syrian cities like Hama or Homs were unreached by the gospel. Now, "God has brought them to us," he says.
"So we believe that God is doing things, moving and shifting people from different places and taking them out of the secure zone to be able to be open to the gospel," he says. "But most of the people we go to visit today, you could not go to their home in Homs and share the gospel. You would be dead. You would be hung in broad daylight."
While the attention of the world's aid agencies focuses mostly on refugees outside Syria, a Lebanese church and a Syrian church have linked arms to help internally displaced refugees too.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, the Free Evangelical Church of Beirut has been funneling aid from a handful of U.S. and Canadian churches to the Free Church of Latakia, in northwest Syria. The coastal city is a Christian enclave and also home to many Alawites loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
About 2.5 million Syrian Christians and Muslims from around the country have fled to the relatively peaceful city, tripling the metro area's prewar population. Because it is an Alawite stronghold, the city has been spared much of the destruction suffered by cities such as Aleppo, Hama and Homs to the south.
In response to the flood of refugees, the Free Church of Latakia has helped about 300 displaced families with monthly food coupons worth about $30 each. However, the massive influx of people has driven up prices for rent and food fourfold.
Also, the war has thrown millions of people out of work. "It's increasingly getting worse and worse, because there is practically no work," says Georges Bitar, pastor of the Free Church of Latakia. "Factories have closed. Factories have been looted. Industry is not functioning. Import-export has been paralyzed."
Bitar says his great hope is to use this opportunity to present Jesus to people, because he knows Christ is the only solution for them.
"What we are urged to do is give them God's hope so that when they go back – because we don't know how long they will stay – they will carry with them the best thing they have received – Jesus and his Word," Bitar says.
Joseph Najem, pastor of the Free Evangelical Church of Beirut, acknowledges that there are plenty of refugees inside Lebanon that he could be helping instead. Unofficial estimates say 1.3 million Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon—about the same as neighboring Jordan, perhaps more.
However, the FECB has focused on supporting families inside Syria: Rather than just walk into a neighborhood, hand out food and then leave, Najem's church is supporting Syrian Christians, who can maintain the relationships they're making now long after the civil war has ended.
"The idea is to have the right people to do it," says Najem, who has relatives still living in Syria.
"We have the right people, who are Syrians, who belong to the country and who can deal with their own people much better. As a Christian, you want to be really close and help and be alongside these people, not just go and distribute and come back."
Helping inside Syria
Long-Term Commitments
The story of refugees fleeing a war next door is familiar in Jordan, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis since the First Gulf War (1990–91) and 1.5 million Palestinian refugees from earlier conflicts.
One Iraqi refugee told Haddad that he believes Syrians are receiving substantial support. At the beginning of the year, the monthly assistance he was receiving from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to help with rent and utilities abruptly stopped.
One Jordanian ministry corroborates that cutbacks are underway for Iraqis. This ministry, which asked not to be named, said it has supplied aid to Iraqi refugees for more than 10 years. Many Iraqis still need all the things that the Syrian refugees do—blankets, mattresses, and food. Aid from relief organizations has dried up. Jordan has 450,000 Iraqi refugees, but the UN has funds to help 30,000.
An hour's drive north of Amman, and just nine miles from the Syrian border, the once-quiet city of Mafraq struggles to cope. During the past two years, 70,000 Syrians have come, more than doubling the population. Mafraq is a first stop for many refugees once they've received permission to leave the Za'atari camp six miles away.
On a Thursday morning at Mafraq's National Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, pastor Nour Sahawneh doubles as the doorman. Syrians flock to the church because it's become the local clearinghouse for help. As sunlight illuminates the cross on the east door, Sahawneh speaks with a group of mothers and children. If they're new, and have their UNHCR papers, they can come inside and get added to the church's list.
The list at last count had more than 5,000 families. Each one receives a welcoming kit that includes a mattress, blanket, camp stove, and bottle of butane. Among today's group, most already have registered. They're here to ask if they can receive more supplies. Sahawneh has the difficult task of telling them no, but to check back next week.
"Their needs are numerous, and they start from zero," he says. "So whatever you do for them is not enough. And it's not for one time. It's continuous.
"Can I think of all their needs? Can I think of all the Syrians in Mafraq? I cannot. Otherwise I would be overwhelmed. But I think this is God's concern. He will take care of them. I have limits of time, money, effort. So I don't carry all of them over my shoulders. But the ones who the Lord brings my way, whom I can help, yes, I'll do that."
Beginning with just three employees two years ago, the church staff has grown to 45 full- and part-time helpers.
Egab Sahawneh, pastor Sahawnah's cousin, sits at a plastic table at the front of the sanctuary and registers new families. Never leaving his chair, he bobs from one conversation to the next: with a Syrian woman sitting at the table, then to his mobile phone, then a fellow staff worker walking up with a question, back to his phone, and finally with a Syrian man showing him his UNHCR paperwork.
It goes nonstop. "In the summer, we were helping 80 to 100 families a week, but we [now] register 100 to 120 families a week," says Hythem Betts, a worker at the church. "That was with all of the resources that we could handle. We just don't have the resources, the manpower—and time in the day—to keep up with it."
Short-term volunteers from all over the world rotate in and out of the church. Along with the long-term staff based in Mafraq, they visit more than 500 homes every two weeks—talking, laughing, crying, drinking tea, and praying with Syrian families.
Today, several volunteers crowd into a small storage bin turned into an apartment for a refugee family. The only furnishings are the foam mattresses that serve as beds for the husband, wife, and three preschoolers. The family came to Jordan in February after fleeing Homs. Because they still have relatives who can't get out, they asked that their names be concealed.
Life in Mafraq has been tough. They're behind on rent, and frustrated. "It is written on the [UNHCR] paper that I cannot work here," the father says. "I am a man. I want to work." Instead, he spends his days going to the mosque, reading the Qur'an, and visiting his sisters who also fled the country. One of their husbands was beheaded in Syria.
The war has left them all traumatized, including the children. "Every time they hear a plane here, they crouch and shout, 'Bashar is coming to bomb us!'" the father says, referring to Syria's president.
"In our hearts, we want to go back and be with our families, but we cannot. When we do talk to them, they say, 'Don't come. There is no security for you and your children.' "
Deep Desire to Return
A cell phone from Syria is one of the few things these refugees still possess. The phones serve as a lifeline to loved ones in Syria and hold powerful images, including harrowing videos of homes set ablaze by Syria's national army, targeting anyone they thought might sympathize with the rebel Free Syrian Army.
"All of our houses were destroyed," one man says to Vera Haddad. "The army bombed us. They concentrate on the civilians—not even the rebels. That's their target."
Eight civilians in their neighborhood, including his uncle, were killed by tank fire. Some could only be identified by pieces of their hands and feet.
"The rebel army helped transport us to safety," he says. "We had to leave. They were cutting the throats of children. If we had stayed, none of us would be alive."
The Syrians long to return home, but they know they can't until there is peace. For now, life is a nightmare, interrupted periodically with all-too-brief visits from a few compassionate people. The chance to extend hospitality, to sit and talk with visitors, restores a bit of dignity.
A Syrian man, Abu Mahmoud, approaches Haddad's car as she's making her way out of the refugee camp. They've met before.
"You are the best people," he tells her. "Many NGOs came, took names, and spent time at the camp. They collected all the information and they promised us that they would come back with help, and they did not.
"You are the only good people who kept your words. You have said, 'We're coming back,' and you came back. And you have helped us generously."
Haddad smiles and thanks him. "I am so thankful to be in the right place with the right people," she says. "The need is beyond imagination. Sometimes they say, 'Come, please. There's no need to bring things. Just come. We'll drink tea and coffee together. Let's sit together.' They want that."
Lincoln Brunner and Jim Killam are journalists based in the Midwest and associated with Reach Global News. For more information about Syrian relief, click here.
- More fromLincoln Brunner and Jim Killam in Jordan.
- Church
- International
- Jordan
- Refugees
- Syria
- War
Theology
Caryn Rivadeneira, R.M. Stone, Marlena Graves
We’re not the only ones responsible for our financial state.
Her.meneuticsNovember 25, 2013
Senor Codo / Flickr
Three Her.meneutics writers reflect on the difficulty of poverty and some misguided beliefs about the poor.
The Problem with Lists
Caryn Rivadeneira
For the longest time I wondered why God allowed me—and my family—to go broke. After so many cries for rescue, after so many laments, after so many opportunities where God could've "fixed" our financial crisis easily, but didn't, I wondered what he was up to. Wondered why he wasn't "blessing" us with financial abundance the way he had in the past.
At long last, I figured maybe God was actually blessing us with a time in relative poverty. That maybe, God allowed us to linger in financial desperation so that we might learn something life-changing through a time of total and utter dependence on him. That maybe learning what it is to lean on God and God's people, to fully understand the beauty of asking for and receiving daily bread would be a bigger blessing than some zeroes on a savings account.
But I was wrong. At least, according to a post on Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey's site. Based on that advice, we went broke—from rich to poor—because I wasn't forcing my children to read at least two non-fiction books a month… or following those 19 other things Rich People Do Every Day that Poor People Don't.
If this is true, it makes total sense why I'm no longer rich: I may have spent two hours last night in bed with Jane Eyre, but since I did not spend 30 minutes reading something career-related, I have no hope. It doesn't help that I choose NPR over audio books or that I usually speak what's on my mind. You know, like we broke people do.
But of course, I jest. This list's truthiness isn't its biggest problem. The problem is the prevalence with which so many Christians seem to think lists like this are helpful. After all, why should Christians be so concerned with what the rich do—how they become so or how they act? According to Jesus, they are not the blessed ones. They have the harder time finding the Kingdom.
While some of the items on the list make common sense (reading more of anything is always a good thing), if in my most desperate financial need someone handed me this list and told me to hop to it, I'd never seen Jesus poking through these words. Not like I saw him peek out when friends handed us stacks of grocery store gift cards or family members sent checks—with no repayment expectation. There, I saw love. There, I saw grace, There, I saw Jesus. In the gifts, not the lists.
Our Gifts, God's Grace
Rachel Marie Stone
From Proverbs, we might conclude that God rewards the hardworking with wealth, while poverty is the result of laziness. The book is full of aphorisms like, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich" (10:4) and "Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread" (19:13).
This idea—that people who are poor are poor simply because they haven't cultivated the right habits—gets labeled as biblical, but tends to foster a contempt for the poor that's anything but.
Scripture reminds us many times poverty itself is by no means a cursed state (Prov. 15:16) and condemns contempt for the poor: "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him" (Prov. 14:31). Deuteronomy 15:7-8 warns Israelites not to be "hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be."
The Bible doesn't indicate that people must be worthy of such generosity, no provision made for excluding the person from charity because of laziness. We see that kindness and generosity are to be given without reservation, without restriction. Perhaps this is because all good things—including the ability to work hard—come from divine grace. The prosperity that can follow hard work is not exclusively our natural and inevitable reward, but in fact a gift from God.
I understand this idea much more clearly since I came to live in Malawi, Africa, which is one of the ten poorest countries in the world. It's common to see even very small children with babies tied to their backs, carrying buckets of water on their head, and women and girls cultivating the ground with short hoes or stooped over, gathering firewood: literally backbreaking work. I have never worked as hard as many women and even children do here, day in, day out, year after year. Yet my annual income exceeds theirs many, many times over. Not because of my hard work, but because I was born someplace else.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 reminds us that "under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all." Sometimes riches do indeed come from hard work, but when hard work can result in riches, it may be an accident of birth, or God's unknowable providence—in Manhattan, say, rather than in Malawi—that makes it so.
Whatever we have is because of God's generous grace, which we acknowledge when we, in turn, are generous and gracious.
What Poverty Really Looks Like
Marlena Graves
I'm familiar with poverty. I grew up poor and have worked with and among the poor. As the director of an after-school program in one of the poorest counties in Ohio, I remember watching a father tear up as he told me, "Thank you so much for teaching my son to read. I never learned to read, I've only got a sixth grade education." I could see how desperately he wanted a different life for his son. This father walked nearly four miles each day to work at a Burger King. He was a cook. With his educational level and the nearly non-existent jobs in rural Appalachia, he was doing the best he could for his family. That was in 2001, way before the economic downturn of 2008.
His story is not unusual for poor families. So I read Tom Corley's 20 Habits of the Rich (that the poor don't do) on Dave Ramsey's website, I wondered if either grew up poor or had spent considerable time among the poor. If they had, it's hard to believe they would've uncritically posted such suggestions out of context.
Most I know work long hard hours for very little pay, if they have a job. By the time they get home (assuming they work first shift), they're exhausted. It's all they can do to get supper together, help the kids with homework, and put them to bed. So they may grab whatever pre-packaged food is available (Habit #1).
And it's not that they don't want to read to their kids (Habit #10). They're tired and just trying to survive while providing the most basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. With little time for leisure, watching television is one of the only luxuries they have (Habit #s 13, 14). The next day, they wake up and do it all over again without breaks. Many will not wake up hours early; rest is a gift (Habit #15).
They don't have the support networks and safety nets we take for granted. If no friends or parents are available to watch the kids, a large portion of their income goes to childcare. And if the car breaks down and there's no public transportation, then their job is in jeopardy. God forbid someone gets sick and needs medical attention. Many don't have health insurance and live with chronic health problems.
With whom are many of the poor going to network (Habit #12)? In the world's eyes, they have nothing to offer. Networking is mostly about quid pro quo. If I didn't have the mind God gave me, I couldn't have gone to college. And if I didn't go to college, I wouldn't have met so many of the people who've made me the person I am now, so many people God used to open doors for me. I stand on the shoulders of others. Many have no shoulders on which to stand.
Growing up, I felt like an outsider looking into the normal, comparably chaos-less life many of my friends lived. Too many things were stacked against me to succeed. And so when I see lists like these, I remember list makers are taking too much privilege for granted and not telling the whole story.
This article was originally published as part of Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women.
- More fromCaryn Rivadeneira, R.M. Stone, Marlena Graves
- CT Women
- Generosity
- Giving
- Money and Business
- Work and Workplace