I Kissed Dating Goodbye

Kissing courtship goodbye // Remembering civil rights history

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

0 Picture books, novels, and nonfiction 0 Gender fluidity for preschoolers 0 Diversity and the culture of censorship Medi-Share World Ads5.indd 5 8/30/17 5:55 PM CONTENTS | February 17, 2018 • Volume 33 • Number 3

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FEATURES DISPATCHES 29 7 News / Human Race / Children’s Books of the Year Quotables / Quick Takes 0 PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR: A psalm-inspired story of classmate reconciliation CULTURE 0 DISSOLVING IDENTITIES: Gender fluidity for preschoolers 0 NOVEL OF THE YEAR: A New York story about a family in Harlem 17 Movies & TV / Books / and a misanthropic landlord Children’s Books / Music 0 AGE OF OUTRAGE: Have diversity police created a culture of censorship? NOTEBOOK 0 MIND BUILDERS: A five-book selection of outstanding nonfiction 0 CATHEDRALS AND VALLEYS: Discovering “the scarred hands of 55 Lifestyle / Science / an unseen Liberator” Sports / Religion

40 Kisses of regret VOICES The influential courtship manifestoI Kissed Dating Goodbye turns 21 this year, but some former fans of the book aren’t celebrating 5 Joel Belz Q&A WITH JOSHUA HARRIS: Lessons learned two decades 26 Mindy Belz after the courtship revolution 61 Mailbag 46 Still taking the narrow path 63 Andrée Seu Peterson Chinese Christian millennials are living out the challenges and 64 Marvin Olasky opportunities of Christian life in the communist country

50 Mississippi turning ON THE COVER: A new civil rights museum reflects a state grappling with history Illustration by Krieg Barrie

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cultivate, the bad ones difficult to break. Daily Bible reading Chief Content Officer Nick Eicher Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky is a good habit, and although it takes effort to maintain, it Senior Editor Mindy Belz W always bears good fruit. Eating chips and salsa, arguably, is a bad habit that if not broken can bring a host of negative Editor Timothy Lamer National Editor Jamie Dean consequences. Believe me, I know. Managing Editor Daniel James Devine Art Director David K. Freeland At WORLD, we’ve been working to create digital news content that’s an easily Associate Art Director Robert L. Patete Reporters Emily Belz • Sophia Lee cultivated daily habit and bears good fruit. WORLD Magazine writers Jamie Dean, East Asia Bureau June Cheng • Angela Lu Fulton Story Coach Susan Olasky Emily Belz, and Sophia Lee produce regular personal online journals. WORLD Senior Writers Janie B. Cheaney Andrée Seu Peterson • John Piper Digital produces weekly roundups on life, education, arts, poverty-fighting, family, Edward E. Plowman • Lynn Vincent Correspondents Sandy Barwick • Megan Basham origins, and religious liberty—as well as Washington policy and politics, and inter- Julie Borg • Anthony Bradley • Bob Brown Michael Cochrane • John Dawson national news. Additionally, we produce a popular daily quick read on the news Juliana Chan Erikson • Katie Gaultney Kim Henderson • Charles Horton • Mary Jackson that we call The Sift. Jill Nelson • Henry Olsen • Arsenio Orteza Jenny Schmitt • Jae Wasson • Emily Whitten In the months since we rolled out all that content online, we’ve begun emailing Mailbag Editor Les Sillars Executive Assistant June McGraw it as well, including a daily email of The Sift. It’s pretty simple to visit the website Editorial Assistants Kristin Chapman Amy Derrick • Mary Ruth Murdoch to consume those stories, but the emails tend to reinforce the habit of doing so. Graphic Designer Rachel Beatty Illustrator Krieg Barrie Much as I hate to admit it, I know that not all WORLD members read every Digital Production Assistant Arla J. Eicher word we write. I get it. We’re all busy. But there’s something nice about being able

to skim an email—especially The Sift, because it contains the “big” stories of the Website wng.org Executive Editor Mickey McLean day—and find out if I’m missing anything important. Managing Editor Leigh Jones Assistant Editors Kiley Crossland I’ve already heard from many of you that you appreciate The Sift for its quick Lynde Langdon • Dan Perkins Reporters Onize Ohikere • Evan Wilt update format. If you’ve managed to ignore the email—or worse, you’ve unsub- Correspondents La Shawn Barber • Gaye Clark Laura Finch • Samantha Gobba • Anna K. Poole scribed to it—I encourage you to give it another chance. Make it a habit. I think Bonnie Pritchett • Julia A. Seymour you’ll be glad you did. Editorial Assistant Whitney Williams

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market that for a decade or more has been headed toward shrinkage? Thoughtful people may well disagree on the answer to that question. Some are of the opinion that such a flat line of no growth probably wouldn’t have happened if the United States had continued to welcome immigrants in recent years in the same way it had for most of Diapers are our country’s history. Such immigrants would not only add to the number of people already living here, but most of them would tend toward demography having bigger-than-average families. More AREN’T YOU CURIOUS TO KNOW WHY market possibilities for Kimberly-Clark. HUGGIES EXECUTIVES ARE WORRIED ABOUT The U.S. Census Bureau, meanwhile, argues that it’s not immigration, but fewer women A DECLINE IN SALES? giving birth that has reduced and shrunk the size of the American A couple of news items grabbed my atten- market. The bureau R tion a few days ago. But it was more for says that babies born what they didn’t report than for what they did. in the United States The first involved a veteran CEO’s report to account for almost the stockholders of his big company. “Times are four times as many net good,” he was able to report truthfully. The new Americans as do consensus in the room was that the economy is first-generation good and that the new tax laws are favorable. immigrants—a claim But then, conceding that there were also a few that obviously rests in dark clouds on the horizon, the executive part on the birthrate stopped short of what seems to me might have among those usually been a very helpful analysis. productive immigrants. The company is the Kimberly-Clark Corp. An The whole discussion about immigrants, The good news/bad news messenger was Tom though, does nothing but divert attention away Falk, head of the giant manufacturer of paper unexpected from the real cause of market shrinkage. Just products like Huggies, Kleenex, toilet tissue, decline in how do any of these specialists and analysts and countless other consumer items. He knows the U.S. pretend to be serving up an accurate his business, and that is so partly because he explanation of market shrinkage when they also knows his customers—at least up to a point. birthrate never mention the reality of abortion numbers? Included in Falk’s report was the assertion has caught Americans may debate the morality of so-called that Kimberly-Clark’s marketers are likely to find consumer “abortion rights.” But even those who argue for fewer and fewer of their traditional customers those rights don’t deny the fact that already in the years just ahead. Indeed, the picture is product more than 900,000 babies disappear every sufficiently grim that Kimberly-Clark will soon analysts by year. What might make CEO Falk gutsy and be cutting at least 5,000 jobs worldwide—or surprise. courageous enough to point out that grim about 13 percent of its 38,000 personnel. statistic at the next stockholders’ meeting? Obviously perplexing to Falk—but not quite And one more suggestion for Mr. Falk, if he’s perplexing enough—is that American women serious about finding all those missing persons. I are having fewer and fewer babies. We’ve been remember when I was little and saw a big family headed that way for some years, but an unex- at a restaurant or a school. The automatic pected decline in the U.S. birthrate has caught assumption back then was that these folks were consumer product analysts by surprise. The Wall Catholics. That assumption became less and Street Journal reported late in January that the less accurate through the years. When my own United States had hit an all-time low in 2016, children were little and saw a big family at a with 2017 pushing the birthrate even lower. restaurant or a school, we all assumed these But both Mr. Falk, and the Journal in its folks were homeschoolers. If Kimberly-Clark’s extensive report on the dip at Kimberly-Clark, Kimberly-Clark market gurus could identify the next group of products on display at seemed to ignore the obvious question: Is there Costco in Mountain big families, it just might be the difference

PAUL SAKUMA/AP anything we can do to stimulate and enlarge a View, Calif. between a profit and a loss.A

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DISPATCHES News / Human Race / Quotables / Quick Takes

Still coming Migrants on a partially submerged dinghy call out to rescuers for help in the Mediterranean Sea. Rescuers picked up about 800 migrants and two dead bodies on Jan. 27, according to the Italian coast guard.

LAURIN SCHMID/SOS MEDITERRANEE VIA AP

Manage your membership: wng.org/membership February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 7 DISPATCHES News

A present-day Richards, Samuel might write Meehan, about our time, “In and Nassar (left to No king in Israel those days 88 percent right)

AMERICANS, TOO, CONTINUE TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT of American AP VIA NEWS YOUNG/DETROIT G. DALE • NASSAR: CALL ROLL WILLIAMS/CQ TOM • MEEHAN: AP VIA SHMIKLER/ABIMAGES BENJAMIN RICHARDS: IN OUR OWN EYES by Marvin Olasky households had a Bible. Some said they had six copies. Most said they read them rarely, if at all. Everyone Paris has three chefs for every aide. He then used thousands of taxpayer did what was right in his own eyes.” R lawyer, but Washington, D.C., has dollars to hush up the matter. But it all In Moral Combat: How Sex Divided 15 lawyers for every chef, according to came out, and on Jan. 25 he acknowl- American Christians & Fractured the N58 Policy Research website. No edged he had acted “selfishly,” would American Politics (Basic, 2017), R. wonder our laws are increasingly not run for reelection, and had used the Marie Griffith shows WORLD’s Sept. unpalatable. The nation’s capital also money of others because House attor- 17, 2016, cover—the Grim Reaper wears has 10 economists for every member of neys said that was regular practice. Oh. an “I’m with her” button—and notes the clergy, yet our national debt has What else didn’t matter to USA how it shows “Hillary risen to $21 trillion, and some of our Gymnastics and Michigan State Clinton and her baby boomer financial wizards say it University doctor Larry Nassar, 54— pro-choice supporters doesn’t matter—but it will to our until he had to listen to 156 women and to be agents of death.” children and grandchildren. girls day after day testify to his face in That’s true, and What else doesn’t matter to some court that he had sexually abused them although pro-choice now-notorious boomers? Close to 4 over the past two decades? Nassar had is a misnomer for million dead babies, according to Cecile written that he was “manipulated” into supporters of Richards, 60, who confirmed on Jan. 26 pleading guilty, for “Hell hath no fury abortion—dead her retirement from the Planned like a woman scorned.” After his week- preborn babies had no Parenthood presidency after 12 years. long foretaste of Hell—unless he truly choice—it may be true In the ninth grade Richards wore a repents—Nassar seemed shaken, saying generally: Adultery, black armband to protest the Vietnam on Jan. 24, “I will carry your words abuse, and abortion all spread War, but in late January she said with me for the rest of my days”— when everyone does what is right in his leading an organization that aborts which will be spent in prison. own eyes. more than 300,000 children per year What do those three events have in But in late January we could also was “the honor of my lifetime.” At least common, other than that they occurred remember past heroes, such as she’s had a lifetime. on three successive days? The missionaries who died during the Viet What else didn’t matter to Rep. thrice-repeated refrain in the Old Cong’s Tet Offensive that began on Jan. Patrick Meehan, 62? The married Testament book of Judges is haunting: 30, 1968. (Communist soldiers lost that Republican, a member of—hold the “In those days there was no king in battle 50 years ago but won the media laughter—the House Ethics Committee, Israel.” The last sentence of the book war.) Career missionary Reg Reimer wanted to be romantically and perhaps reads, “Everyone did what was right in recalls his sad discovery: “We pulled sexually involved with a much-younger his own eyes.” back the body bag and there was the

8 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 BY THE NUMBERS

body of our colleague Ed Thompson, with his arms wrapped around his wife below him, and a row of bullet holes $463 million right down the middle of his back.” The drop in casino mogul Steve Wynn’s net worth over three days Thompson’s crime: He wanted people following revelations of the billionaire’s purported sexual misconduct to read the Bible and do what’s right in with multiple employees. Axios reported the figure based on the plummeting stock value of Wynn Resorts. God’s eyes. We also learned about current heroines like Rachael Denhollander, the first to allege publicly that Nassar was a child molester. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina told her, “You started the tidal wave. … You are the bravest person I’ve ever had in my courtroom.” After 155 other survivors had said their piece, Denhollander had the last, eloquent word, based on her observation that Nassar had brought a Bible into the courtroom: “If you have read the Bible you carry, you know the definition of sacrificial love portrayed is of God Himself loving so The age Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., will be in April, when she’s due to give birth to her second child. She will become the first U.S. senator sacrificially that He gave up everything ever to give birth while holding office. to pay a penalty for the sin He did not commit. … Should you ever reach the 50 point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet. Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. … I pray you experience the soul- 646,000The maximum estimated number of deaths around the world every year due crushing weight of guilt so you may to seasonal flu outbreaks, according to a study inThe Lancet. someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God.” Does everyone do what is right in his own eyes? Denhollander faced the abuser and said, “Larry, I can call what you did evil and wicked … because the straight line exists.” Newspapers across the country, and magazines like People and Glamour, all positively profiled Denhollander—but they left out her consistency in showing what happens when we pretend that line does not exist, The percentage increase in murders in the United States during the first half and then do what is right in our own eyes. of 2017, even as total violent crime fell, according to FBI data. Eight years ago Denhollander wrote 1.5% in the Journal of Creation, “A battle is raging over evolution today, but it is not confined to the scientific arena. Like rip- ples on a pond, the effect of an ideology in one area of life spreads to each area, and the consequences are never neatly contained. … The time has come where 250,000The approximate number of Venezuelan bolivars required to purchase Christians must either acknowledge one U.S. dollar in Venezuela’s black market in January. Inflation God’s lordship in every area … or very in the country hit 2,616 percent last year. possibly suffer permanent defeat.”A

 [email protected]  @MarvinOlasky February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 9 DISPATCHES Human Race

deleted the mes- began in what they said sages after Green was a nonviolent encoun- died. The second ter. The boy will be student, a boy, said charged with murder and Green had called attempted murder. him saying she had tried to kill herself. He said something like, “If you’re going to do it, do it,” and hung up, police say. He warned no one. Killed A 15-year-old boy opened fire with a handgun at Attacked through the seven days of Marshall County High Attackers bombed offices his trial, face-to-face with School in Benton, Ky., Compromised

of the Save the Children their abuser in the court- before classes started on Houston entrepreneur WHITE ANDREW FOR TEXANS • WHITE: HANDOUT • HOLT & COPE: AP VIA TANYA GREEN • GREEN: PARWIZ/REUTERS/NEWSCOM CHILDREN: THE SAVE charity in eastern room (see p. 8). Judge Jan. 23. His attack killed Andrew White is seeking Afghanistan, killing two Rosemarie Aquilina told two students and injured the Democratic Party’s people and injuring 12 oth- Nassar in court that it was 14. Bailey Holt, 15, died in nomination for governor of ers. The Islamic State has her “honor and privilege” the school from her Texas, and he affirms the claimed responsibility. The to sentence him. wounds. Preston Cope, party’s standard positions attack began early in the another student, was in favor of legal abortion morning of Jan. 24 when a brought to the hospital but and same-sex marriage. suicide bomber detonated a died soon after. Police But he is also an elder at vehicle explosive at the arrested the shooter about Christ the King Presbyterian entrance of the compound. 15 minutes after the attack Church, which is part of a A gunman also hit the denomination—the front gate with a rocket- Presbyterian Church in Holt propelled grenade. About America (PCA)—that holds 50 staffers were inside the to Biblical standards oppos- building at the time. ing abortion and homosex- Afghan commandos and uality. “My personal faith is police joined together to personal to me, but I will fight back, rescuing about Green not let it interfere with 45 people from the base- how I govern,” White said. ment, while fighting in the Charged His stance did not sit well top stories of the building. Police in Panama City in the PCA. “I am praying Beach, Fla., charged two for you Mr. White,” wrote Sentenced middle-school students PCA Pastor Todd Pruitt in Larry Nassar, a former U.S. with cyberbullying after an open letter for allian- Olympics doctor, received a their schoolmate, 12-year- Cope cenet.org. “I am praying prison sentence of 40 to old Gabriella Green, hung that the Lord will open How do you make a deeper, clearer connection to God’s Word? 175 years for sexual assault herself. The first student, a your eyes and grant you and possession of child girl, admitted to starting repentance from your The Christian Standard Bible is proven to be an optimal blend of pornography. Nassar had rumors about Green online: current views. I am praying accuracy and readability. So it’s as literal to the original as possible worked with the U.S. claiming she had sexually that, should you harden without losing its ability to stir your heart. You’ll ﬁ nd it to be highly Olympics gymnastics team, transmitted diseases, call- your heart and maintain sexually abusing his young ing her offensive names, your current position, your trustworthy—and deeply satisfying. The CSB: Truth so clear, you’ll patients under the guise of and threatening to reveal church and presbytery want to read it, share it, and live it. treatment. Nearly 160 of his Green’s personal secrets. will … exercise proper victims gave testimony Police say the suspect discipline in your life.” Learn more at CSBible.com.

10 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 Visit WORLD Digital: wng.org

Client: B&H Publishing Group Publication : World Convention Issue Agency: Grey Matter Group Contact: 616-458-8750 www.greymattergroup.com How do you make a deeper, clearer connection to God’s Word? The Christian Standard Bible is proven to be an optimal blend of accuracy and readability. So it’s as literal to the original as possible without losing its ability to stir your heart. You’ll ﬁ nd it to be highly trustworthy—and deeply satisfying. The CSB: Truth so clear, you’ll want to read it, share it, and live it.

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‘They’ve done nothing wrong. They’re here because of their parents. They can’t be sent back. Why don’t ‘Loneliness they deserve amnesty?’ is the sad reality A tweet from CATHOLICVOTE. ORG, referring to babies in the womb, after the Pain-Capable of modern life.’ Unborn Child Protection Act failed in the U.S. Senate. The bill British Prime Minister THERESA MAY, announcing a new would have banned abortion government position, the “minister of loneliness.” after 20 weeks of pregnancy,

A British government commission found that when a child can feel pain. MAY: JONATHAN BRADY/PA VIA AP • WALKER: SUSAN WALSH/AP • MOSUL: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES • FETUS: NINJAMONKEYSTUDIO/ISTOCK loneliness was as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

‘A wake up call for Republicans in Wisconsin.’ ‘The ballooning Wisconsin Gov. SCOTT WALKER in a tweet after costs of (health Democrats won a special election in the care) act as a western part of the state. Republicans had hungry tapeworm held the state Senate seat since 2000, and President Donald Trump won on the American the district by 17 points in the economy.’’ 2016 election. Investor WARREN BUFFETT of Berkshire Hathaway in ‘And now announcing a new partnership with Amazon and JP Morgan all at once we Chase for delivering healthcare to their employees. Industry have rediscovered analysts said the joint effort could shake up the insurance that we can have and prescription drug industries. Paul Fronstin, an economist a good time.’ with the nonprofit Employee ROUA AL-MALAH, 34, on being out late in Benefits Research Institute, told the evening with her family in Mosul. For CBS News: “One of the mes- the three years that ISIS ran Mosul, sages they are sending is they’ve given up on traditional restaurants and most stores were ways in which employers have closed, and no one came out tried to reduce costs or manage A mall on the eastern bank of Mosul on the streets at night. costs better.”

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Corzine refund and left the store. refund reported, the woman received her received the woman reported, claimed she was entitled to a refund a refund entitled to claimed she was media, a Costco shopper at the Santa shopper at media, a Costco Clarita, Calif., store dragged in her old dragged store Clarita, Calif., Christmas tree on Jan. 4 to demand a 4 to on Jan. Christmas tree who published their accounts on social who published their accounts One suburban Los Angeles woman has woman Angeles Los One suburban McGreevey because the tree was dead. After a bit of After dead. was the tree because shaming from other customers, witnesses customers, other shaming from pushed Costco’s return policy to its logical policy to return pushed Costco’s In the holiday spirit conclusion. According to several customers customers several to According conclusion. refund. According to witnesses, the woman the woman witnesses, to According refund. - , gave up , gave Whitman ’s law to curb single-use curb to law ’s Israel Oymyakon, Russia bulk to use as garbage bin liners rather rather bin liners as garbage use bulk to for got previously ones they than reusing groceries. when shopping for free In the bag experimen of year the end of the first At tation, has had a plastic bags supermarket of use the increasing impact: curious the tax on plastic bags After plastic bags. the January 2017, in effect into went be using fewer to public seemed Israeli as thebags, plastic difficult-to-recycle as the year However, intended. Knesset research supermarket on, a study by wore Israelis that indicated StoreNext firm in plastic bags buying cheap now were - - - thermometer in thermometer in the 500-person when temperatures counting Fahrenheit. degrees minus 80 reached village outside go to willing residents town Some brave reach temperatures saw they reported and check small said a media reports Local minus 88.6. to the occasion took tourists of Chinese group village The far-flung spring. hot swim in a nearby to place the coldest as bills itself Russia in Eastern to dropped temperatures In 1933, on Earth. live recorded temperature the coldest minus 89.9, outside of Antarctica. Out cold in a Siberian village freeze a deep 13, On Jan. The electric town thermometer. the official broke Quick Takes

February 2018 17, • Republican, broke her right leg. her right broke Republican, their left legs while Whitman, a while their left legs Previous Governor Christine Todd Todd Christine Governor Previous Hazardous duty Columbus, who brought attention to to attention who brought Columbus, Christie’s accomplishment on Twitter, on Twitter, accomplishment Christie’s skiing accident in Switzerland in 1999. in 1999. in Switzerland skiing accident sor John Corzine broke his leg in a car his leg broke John Corzine sor Upon leaving office as governor of New of governor as office Upon leaving Jersey Shore and broke his leg in 2002. in 2002. his leg and broke Shore Jersey Whitman suffered a broken leg during leg a a broken Whitman suffered noted that Democratic governors broke broke governors Democratic that noted plish something no Garden State gover State no Garden plish something nor has done since 1994: He didn’t break break He didn’t 1994: nor has done since McGreevey fell down during a visit to the a visit to during down fell McGreevey his leg while in office. Christie’s predeces Christie’s while in office. his leg Jersey, Chris Christie managed to accom to Chris Christie managed Jersey, accident, while Corzine’s predecessor Jim predecessor while Corzine’s accident, Former Obama administration official Eric official Obama administration Former DISPATCHES WORLD Magazine 14 X-RAY: BMJ: WANDING YANG • ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE • DELOREAN DMC-12: HANDOUT • HAWAII: BRITISH AIRWAYS • BITCOIN: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES Manage your membership: wng.org/membership the manaboarding passonthegrounds that heposed asecurity threat to the Airways flight from Iceland to London, Hawaii put seeing acarparked inasnow removal zone. flight. Undeterred, Hawaii tried again thenext day with EasyJet and was again on eight pairs ofpantsand10 shirtsthat wouldn’t A Canadian manwithtimeonhishands and hahahahaha.” Thenext morningsnowplows After further investigation, theofficer a left Some airlinepassengers willdowhatever ittakes snowstorm blanketed Montreal onJan. 15, charges nearly $55 for economy passengers to take attention ofaMontreal police officer who sculpture was good enough to attract the shape ofa grabbed histicket bookbelieving hewas a neighborhood full ofsnow managed to an extra bag onthat route. Theairlinerefused to issue to avoid checking abag. Andthenthere’s collecting snow and moldingitinto the fit inhiscarry-on bag on Jan. 10. BritishAirways ticket that read, “You madeournight pull afast oneonlocalpolice. After a 33-year-old SimonLaprise got busy Hawaii Not built to last built Not destroyed Laprise’s sculpture. denied. Hawaii finallymadeitback to London onaNorwegian airline. . Before attempting to board aBritish DeLorean DMC-12 Ryan’s hope “dangerous maneuver andshouldbeavoided.” authors wrote that holdinginsneezes was a had blown outapartofhistrachea. Thereport’s the neck. Aseries of enced pain,avoice change, andswelling around closed.” After hesneezed, thepatient experi “pinching thenose andholdinghismouth The manreportedly triedto stop thesneeze by man broke histhroat by tryingto holdinasneeze. in thejournal probably let it out. According to one case revealed If you feel like sneezing, doctors say you should clearing Throat . Thesnow BMJ Case Reports Ryan Ryan X-rays payments until14days before theconference began: “We wishthiswas easier.” Conference organizer MoeLevin told Bitcoin.com that theevent accepted bitcoin payments inbitcoin because ofslow transaction timesandexpensive trading fees. week before thecryptocurrency summit, event planners stopped accepting ticket conference organizers would not accept ahead oftheJanuary meeting: bitcoin. A their tickets withcredit cards, debitcards, orcash.But onemethodofpayment Attendees oftheNorthAmericanBitcoin Conference were ableto pay for currency Degraded revealed theman , a34-year-old - assignment. Police inSaint JohninNew Brunswick, the scent almostimmediately andenthusiastically led officers toa 29-year-old hunt down acriminalaccused ofstealing steaks from alocalstore. Police say thedog picked up next day, saidsteak was “probably not thebest Diesel thepolice dog hasnever hadso easy an thing to becarryingwhenadetermined police Canada, calledinthetracking dog onJan. 9to gotten meat. Thedepartment,inarelease the service dog istracking you down.” Smell test February 17, 2018 February suspect carryingill- • WORLD Magazine WORLD 15 PEER ADVISORY GROUP 1ROUNDTABLE

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Berry and Hollywood

Television known in its native U.K. as first aired on the BBC in The Great British Bake Off. 2010, the show has been an Like many other reality anomaly. First, there are Made with love TV series, the premise of the judges. Had this been this cooking show is sim- an American network pro- THE LONG-RUNNING GREAT BRITISH ple. Each week a group of duction, no doubt contes- BAKING SHOW IS REALITY TV WITH A amateurs pit their baking tants would have faced by Megan Basham skills against one another some gorgeous celebrity DASH OF KINDNESS in increasingly difficult foodie in the mold of tasks, after which one per- Padma Lakshmi or Giada Admittedly, the era of get some blank stares. son is voted out until the De Laurentiis. Instead, R binge-watching comes Instead, many people last contestant standing is Love Productions recruited with a lot of downsides. But responded with squeals of, crowned winner. From Mary Berry, a cookbook one upside is that, thanks “Oh I love that show!” and Survivor to Top Chef, it’s author who was in her 70s to the global nature of “Isn’t Mary Berry wonder- the same model we’ve seen when the show premiered. streaming services, hidden ful?” and “Wasn’t Martha from the genre for years. They paired her with then- gems rarely stay hidden. from the first season so Except that with The Great 40-something chef Paul For example, when I adorable?” (Yes, she was.) British Baking Show, some- Hollywood, and the cheeky told friends I was planning This was how I discovered thing is missing—namely, chemistry between the to review The Great British how late a comer I was to backbiting and rivalry. two—where the gruff

LOVE PRODUCTIONS LOVE Baking Show, I expected to the baking competition From the moment it Hollywood pays subtle

 [email protected]  @megbasham February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 17 CULTURE Movies & TV

deference to Berry as both a actual kindness between lady and his elder—is unlike people of different back- Television anything else on television. grounds, the show offers a The pun-loving middle- smorgasbord of humble aged comediennes who act delights to behold. From The as hosts are similarly atypi- lambs frolicking over roll- cal in their relatable appear- ing green hills during the Resident ances and dress sizes. cutaways to the contes- If you’re planning to Second, there are the tants’ fluffy meringues and R undergo surgery in contestants. Rather than crusty brown bread loaves, the next few months, do undermining and plotting it all serves a quiet yourself a favor and stay against each other, they reminder of the common away from The Resident, cheer one another on while grace of good food and our Fox’s new midseason focusing on producing their creative capacity. drama. personal bests in short- ABC has tried and failed A botched surgery opens the series, involving breads and choux pastry. for three seasons to launch doctor selfies, blackmail, Not to say there’s no a version of the show that and a cover-clad shoe hearing only his symp- drama—as when one could match the success of sludging through a pud- toms). Unlike House, contestant loses his cool its British counterpart. dle of blood. “Medicine where the villain in each and dumps an underdone Rumors are now flying that isn’t practiced by saints. medical case was usually a dessert in the trash rather the network is done trying It’s a business,” says one tiny unnoticed symptom, than present it for judging— to reinvent the macaron jaded nurse to a brand- The Resident’s antagonist but better instincts quickly and will simply reunite new intern. OK, Fox, we is the healthcare system prevail (he later sheepishly Berry and Hollywood for get it. Insurance: bad. itself. We’d like to think apologizes and wishes the American audiences. Let’s Veteran doctors: bad. that any patient could others well in going hope that’s true, because Fresh doctors: good—or walk into any hospital forward). when the British show’s at least, mostly good. and receive the same The most surprising creators moved the series to Matt Czuchry of The level of care in all of thing about The Great another U.K. network last Good Wife and Gilmore them. Not so, says this British Baking Show, how- season, Berry and the origi- Girls leads the cast in the show. Healthcare quality ever, has to be how it grew nal hosts left, and a far less same rule-breaker role depends on money, he pretty much always power, and politics. to be a ratings juggernaut likable team replaced them. plays—this time as Conrad and comrades that swept stateside to con- In the meantime, we can tattooed former Navy diagnose and treat com- quer American audiences all enjoy the comfort food corpsman and surgical plex cases but must also as well. Maybe it grew so that is the original series on resident Conrad Hawkins. navigate around big egos, A popular because it illus- Netflix. Surrounding him are all the politics of UNOS, and trates the common culture the usual, one- even a billing consultant we all share at a time when dimensional sus- who stops and starts we feel so politically divided pects for a medical expensive tests depend- from our neighbors. From BOX OFFICE TOP 10 drama: the wide- ing on patients’ insurance FOR THE WEEKEND OF JAN. 26-28 an unassuming start on a according to Box Office Mojo eyed intern, villain- status. The medical accu- lesser BBC channel, it ous chief of surgery, racy on the show—or lack became the most-watched CAUTIONS: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and Conrad’s love thereof—has sparked and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, show in Britain in 2016. U.K. with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com interest—a blond outrage on Twitter. nurse, of course. The Resident is supermarkets and depart- S V L It’s hard to nowhere near as soapy as ment stores report that fans `1 Maze Runner: The believe this is the Grey’s Anatomy, but char- are driving the rising sales Death Cure PG-13...... 1 5 4 same network that acters joke euphemisti- of baking ingredients and `2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle PG-13...... 4 5 4 brought us the cally about sex and sleep accessories. Naturally, `3 Hostiles R...... 1 7 5 unforgettable Dr. together. For a better American audiences have `4 The Greatest Gregory House cast and more compelling taken notice, with steady Showman* PG...... 3 3 2 (though they try characters, check out DAVID JOHNSON/FOX growth on PBS and word of `5 The Post* PG-13...... 1 3 5 hard to remind us, ABC’s The Good Doctor— mouth about the show’s `6 12 Strong* R...... 1 6 7 as when Conrad or even some vintage E.R., availability on Netflix. `7 Den of Thieves R...... 5 7 10 diagnoses a patient recently made available Along with the increas- `8 The Shape of Water R...... 8 7 6 with lupus after on Hulu. —by LAURA FINCH ingly rare spectacle of `9 Paddington 2 PG...... 1 3 1 `10 Padmaavat (unrated)...... not rated

*Reviewed by WORLD 18 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 Documentary Of Fathers and Sons In this gripping soldiers before coming R documentary, home to dote on his eight director Talal Derki offers sons. a rare glimpse into the The film shows how inner workings of a Abu Osama’s violence radical Syrian Islamic mirrors itself in his family. The Syrian con- children’s lives. One son flict’s effect on children proudly says he cut the and families who have head off a bird “like you Day-Lewis fled Syria is well-known. did to that man, Dad.” and Krieps What isn’t known is how The camera captures the the conflict has impacted boys throwing rocks at the children of the girls leaving school, Movie jihadists who remain yelling, “Allah is great!” there, and Derki returned The children also make Phantom Thread to his Syrian homeland their own homemade from Berlin to find out. bomb, taking turns Director/writer Paul cannot start my day with Derki and cinematog- kicking it around. R Thomas Anderson confrontations. I simply rapher Kahtan Hassoun But juxtaposed with has done it again, creating have no time for confron- pose as war photogra- these instances is the a classic in Phantom tations,” Reynolds tells a phers sympathetic to the boys’ perfectly normal Thread, which garnered girlfriend early in the story Salafi jihad and earn the brotherly fun and six Oscar nominations. who is wondering about trust of a radical family in affection for each other: Anderson and Phantom the future of their rela- the northern Syrian prov- older boys helping the Thread’s leading man tionship (I laughed). ince of Idlib. (Talal Derki younger ones get dressed, Daniel Day-Lewis Anderson’s slow unfolding is an atheist.) Derki and laughing and swimming previously collaborated of Alma and Reynolds’ Hassoun live with the together, and hovering on There Will Be Blood, relationship doesn’t follow family for two years. under warm blankets and Day-Lewis has said conventional plot struc- Besides brief narration at together on cold nights. this is his final film perfor- ture. It’s like a real rela- the beginning and the Those remnants of mance. It’s a high note. tionship, with ebbs and end, Derki is silent. The innocence, however, are The period piece tells flows, one trying to get camera speaks as it not to be preserved, as the fictional story of the attention of the other. captures moments Abu Osama sends his 1950s British fashion Through Reynolds, between the children and two oldest sons to Sharia designer Reynolds Anderson gets at that their father, Abu Osama. school where they learn Woodcock (Daniel Day- relentless inner voice Abu Osama is a to be jihadists. He Lewis), a fastidious man that says we aren’t worth passionate member of declares the war in Syria who contends that he is anything if we aren’t al-Nusra, a Syrian arm of will be a long one, and the so given to the creative always doing something. al-Qaeda. He is also a film leaves audiences feel- process that he must Without naming it, he passionate family man ing that if children raised remain a bachelor. His sis- gets at the concept of the who spends his days dis- like his are the future of ter Cyril (Lesley Manville) Sabbath: the importance arming landmines and Syria, he may be right. enforces his fastidious- of stopping all of your shooting Coalition —by SARAH SCHWEINSBERG ness, breaking up with his “important” work. The girlfriends and managing work will fade for a his life. Enter Alma (Vicky moment so you can see Krieps), a waitress who the value of other things. comes tripping and falling What will linger with into Reynolds’ manicured you from Phantom Thread empire. The film is rated is the sensory experience, R for a handful of curse and especially the words. sounds: scissors cutting The story unfolds rich fabric, the swoosh of from Alma’s perspective, dresses, Alma buttering so we see how it is to be toast, Alma pouring tea in a relationship with a loudly. Isn’t that sensory “great man” who is experience why we go to demanding and uninter- the movies, instead of ested in the problems of staying home to read a the humans around him. “I book? —by EMILY BELZ OF FATHERS AND SONS: BASIS BERLIN FILMPRODUKTION • PHANTOM THREAD: LAURIE SPARHAM/FOCUS FEATURES

See all our movie reviews at wng.org/movies February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 19 CULTURE Books

companies and preferred supported lynchings, advertised them acquirers of their prisoners. in advance, “or even forecast them like Latter-day Arrests surged and fell, not the weather (‘Prospects Good for a as acts of crime increased or Lynching, and Indications Are That receded, but in tandem to When It Comes It Will Be Wholesale’).” slave trade the varying needs of the Lynchings weren’t even the worst: buyers of labor. … The span The Jackson Clarion-Ledger in 1902 RECOGNIZING POST–CIVIL of time from arrest to ran this banner headline about an event WAR SLAVERY by Marvin Olasky conviction and judg- witnessed by 5,000: “BURNED ment to delivery at a AT THE STAKE.” Pastors did slave mine or mill not talk about the gruesome A 10-year-old book that I missed was often no more than 72 events: Oshinsky notes that R back then makes for stimulating hours.” “white ministers avoided the reading during Black History Month. A Supreme Court ruling in subject because it made their Historian Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery 1883 made civil rights a local, congregations ‘uncomfortable.’” by Another Name (Random House, not a federal, issue and made In essence, the United States 2008) mentions the familiar tragedy of life for some African-Americans had a form of Shariah law: Delta Ku Klux Klan intimidation and lynch- even worse than other slavery: attorney S.F. Davis said, ings, but then relates well a largely “Slaves of the earlier era were at “Judges, lawyers, and jurors all untold story: “Wholesaling and retail- least minimally insulated from physical know that some of our laws are to be ing of slaves regenerated itself harm by their intrinsic financial enforced against everyone, while others around convict leasing in the value,” but under the new order of our laws are to be enforced only 1870s and 1880s.” the death of a physically abused against the white people, and others … Blackmon shows how convict produced no financial only against the Negroes.” African-Americans who seemed penalty. Neo-slavery continued African-American women who were “uppity” were often arrested on into the 20th century, and the raped had little recourse. An African- flimsy charges and forced to result was “cycle upon cycle of American man, when arrested, could work in mines or on farms. At malevolent defeat” and repeated rarely afford a lawyer, so a judge assigned least 100,000 went through “tsunamis of violence and him one whose primary function was capture and imprisonment for obliterated opportunities.” not to serve his client but to eliminate violating laws specificallywritten to I also missed David the time and expense of a public trial. intimidate blacks, such as changing Oshinsky’s Worse Than Slavery: Clients, even if innocent, generally plea- employers without permission or Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of bargained so as to get two rather than engaging in loud talk. Jim Crow Justice (Free Press, 1996), 10 years in the state prison, Parchman Blackmon describes how “the job of which shows how journalists and Farm, where a superintendent lived in a county sheriff became a heady enter- pastors were complicit in injustice: a mansion and functioned as the equiv- prise, often more akin to the business of “Most newspapers either ignored mob alent of an antebellum master. trading in mules than law enforcement. killings or hid them on the bottom of Oshinsky, with solid historical Sheriffs and their local judges devel- an inside page (‘Four Negroes Lynched research, shows that life for African- oped special relationships with local in Grenada’).” Other newspapers Americans not in prison wasn’t all that different from pre–Civil War existence. Most were sharecroppers who bought supplies at the company store. Planters kept workers perpetually in debt and often cheated them. According to

Mississippi law, it was illegal for a HISTORICAL/SHUTTERSTOCK BY EVERETT tenant to break his contract after taking an advance, no matter how small, so “debt servitude—a form of latter-day slavery—flourished.” Following the Civil War other states Prisoners from South Carolina to Texas set up labor in similar “Black Codes.” Some whites Oglethorpe saw unfairness, but others lorded over County, Ga., those who faced prison if they pushed in 1941. back. A

20 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN’S LIVES reviewed by Susan Olasky

EDEN’S OUTCASTS: THE STORY OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT AND HER FATHER John Matteson Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott was a Platonist, dietary crank, and utopian dreamer. His long-suffering wife and children bore the cost of his quests and eccentricities. Matteson’s excellent and readable biography tells this story, gives its New England transcendentalist context, and shows how Alcott affected his family—especially novelist Louisa May, whose personality was too lively for him. Matteson doesn’t approach this compelling story from a Biblical perspective, but his specific detail shows how AFTERWORD Transcendentalism interacted with perfectionism: The result was an Gabrielle Zevin’s novel austere gospel of self-denial and self-worship. Young Jane Young (Algonquin, 2017) displays inconsistent storytelling, MARMEE & LOUISA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF mostly predictable feminism, LOUISA MAY ALCOTT AND HER MOTHER Eve LaPlante and some R-rated language— but it also offers a glimpse Abigail May Alcott was born in 1800 and lived until 1877—a time into the uneven and con- when women were usually supporting players in men’s lives. tinuing effect of sex scandals Because her famous husband, Bronson, and daughter Louisa May in the internet age. Part 1, a destroyed most of Abigail’s diaries after her death, we don’t know mother’s funny but crude as much about her influence on Louisa as we know about Bronson’s. account of her daughter LaPlante, a descendant of Abigail’s brother, tries to remedy that. By Aviva’s affair with a married relying on secondary sources and letters Abigail wrote to her congressman, shows how brother and others, LaPlante is able to show Abigail’s commitment Aviva’s anonymous to women’s equality, the close bonds she had with her daughters, blog makes the and her steady worries about money and her husband’s unwillingness to work. scandal worse. Part 2 shifts to TRULY MADLY GUILTY Liane Moriarty Maine, where Moriarty seems in tune with modern female sensibilities. The wedding planner Australian has written a string of edgy novels—one is now an HBO Jane Young is series—that explore the lives of middle-class, suburban women. raising a preco- Here she focuses on three couples who have a spur-of-the-moment cious 8-year-old backyard barbecue at which something awful that happens causes daughter and each of the couples to recalibrate. Moriarty chooses to hide what developing a repu- happened, dribbling out the detail chapter by chapter—but that feels tation for empathy and manipulative. This book wrestles with the concept of guilt, which it secret-keeping. Part 3 con- portrays as a psychological feeling rather than a moral reality. Some sists of increasingly angry characters have foul mouths and questionable backgrounds. emails daughter Ruby sends to her Indonesian FITNESS JUNKIE Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza pen pal when she learns In this novel, the talented co-owner of a high-end wedding dress her mom, “Jane Young,” is business lives in Manhattan while going through a costly (to her) actually Aviva Grossman. divorce. Her business partner forces her to take an extended leave In Part 4, the congress- because she’s gained weight, which is unacceptable in NYC. That man’s wife meets Ruby leads to a deep dive into New York’s expensive fitness scene, when she shows up to meet exploring topless yoga and fitness studios where young trainers the man she thinks is her earn big tips by verbally abusing their clients. It’s hard to know if this father. Part 5 is the infa- bears any relationship to reality. If it does, you have to pity the mous blog, presented as a young women who subject themselves to the plentiful F-bombs “choose your own adven-

HANDOUT and craziness. ture” story. —S.O.

To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 21 CULTURE Children’s Books SKILL When worlds collide ADVENTURE BOOKS FOR MIDDLE-GRADE READERS COMPASSION reviewed by Lynde Langdon THE ENEMY ABOVE Michael P. Spradlin OPPORTUNITY Anton, a 12-year-old Jewish boy, is forced to grow up overnight when Nazis invade his Ukrainian village in 1942. With his grandmother, or “Bubbe” in Yiddish, he takes refuge in a cave with other Jews—but a vengeful Gestapo officer is hunting them, and Anton must decide whether to run, hide, or fight. The fast-paced thriller sprinkles in historical people and places such as the Priest’s Grotto, a Ukrainian cave that housed Jewish families during the Holocaust. Bubbe teaches Anton not just to fight for his life, but to protect what’s worth preserving: integrity, family, justice, and love. (Ages 8-12) AFTERWORD Rick Riordan THE SHIP OF THE DEAD In The Hate U Give Magnus Chase faces yet another seemingly impossible quest to (HarperCollins), the young thwart the Norse villain Loki, who now has a ship of zombies ready adult sensation of 2017, to destroy the universe. In the third adventure from popular author author Angie Thomas takes Riordan’s Gods of Asgard series, the demigod Chase and six of his readers deep inside an friends travel the Nine Worlds battling giants, monsters, and drag- impoverished slum where ons. The group brings a hodgepodge of worldviews on the journey, none of which is remotely Judeo-Christian. (Chase is an avowed young African-Americans atheist who develops feelings for his gender-fluid friend.) The struggle to figure relationship drama between the characters turns the story into out whether more of a teen soap opera than an epic adventure. (Ages 10-14) their lives matter. After 16-year-old Starr WINGS OF FIRE—THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: Carter sees a Tui T. Sutherland THE DRAGONET PROPHECY police officer kill The best-selling dragon adventure series Wings of Fire debuts in her childhood graphic novel format with The Dragonet Prophecy. Cartoonist friend, she relies Mike Holmes’ drawings help chronicle a chain of daring escapes on her family’s and battles between a group of young dragons and the elders faith, forgiveness, For decades BJU has been whose expectations have weighed them down. The dragonets, and support to figure out especially natural leader Clay, must choose whether to use their preparing graduates for what to do next. gifts to help themselves or to bring peace to the warring king- success in the health care dom. The simplified comic format leaves less room for character Cautions: The critically acclaimed novel includes field. Now we're taking it development, but the story still has much to offer fans of the one step further. In the fall series and younger readers who might find a 300-plus-page violence, profanity, sexual chapter book daunting. (Ages 8-12) innuendo, discussion of of 2018 we're launching the drugs, and anti-police School of Health Professions messages. The novel’s cen- MINECRAFT: THE ISLAND Max Brooks to bring together seven tral family doesn’t embrace high-quality programs—and Minecraft: The Island probably won’t engage kids who have those things (well, maybe already spent hours stacking blocks in the most successful video the profanity) yet can’t continue to meet the needs game since Tetris. But the novel, a walk-through of Minecraft escape them, either. The of the fast-growing health from the point of view of its main character, makes a great primer book may be misplaced in care field.

for parents struggling to understand what makes the visually dull, PHOTOGRAPHY ANISSA low-action game so alluring. Brooks, author of the adult zombie the young adult section, but tale World War Z, uncovers the puzzles and perils of the world it does raise questions about as a new player would. Though many gamers now collaborate relations of police and minority young adults for

in Minecraft on multiplayer servers, the book’s main character the basis on All reserved. rights discriminate BJU does not University. ©2018 Bob Jones status. veteran or disability protected origin, sex, national age, color, race, of tackles challenges alone and learns valuable lessons about whom Starr’s story depicts Find out more at survival and stewardship. (Ages 8-12) everyday life. —L.L.

(21009) 1/18 bju.edu/health 22 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 To see more book news and reviews, go to wng.org/books SKILL COMPASSION OPPORTUNITY

For decades BJU has been preparing graduates for success in the health care field. Now we're taking it one step further. In the fall of 2018 we're launching the School of Health Professions to bring together seven high-quality programs—and continue to meet the needs of the fast-growing health care field.

©2018 Bob Jones University. All rights reserved. BJU does not discriminate on the basis on All reserved. rights discriminate BJU does not University. ©2018 Bob Jones status. veteran or disability protected origin, sex, national age, color, race, of Find out more at

(21009) 1/18 bju.edu/health CULTURE Music

musical ideas more refined than those usually found in pop, rock, or jazz. “I think the clarinet has Promoting matured more,” Caravan observes, “but then it’s had sonic more years to do it. The saxophone’s not quite 180 years old, the classical saxophone not growth yet a century. Except for a few LONGTIME DUO things like Debussy’s Rhapsody for Orchestra and Saxophone, TRIES TO HELP it really didn’t get going until BRING THE SAXOPHONE [Sigurd] Raschèr and, in TO MUSICAL MATURITY France, [Marcel] Mule started by Arsenio Orteza really being active pre–World War II and beyond.” Caravan likes to describe the mature clarinet sound as a combination of the French It isn’t every musician who inspect, for instance, Weber’s virtuosic (“shrill”) and the German (“dark”). It’s R records eight albums’ worth of Grand Duo Concertante (Volume 1), a sound to which he has given a great first-rate performances then releases Ernst Krenek’s 12-tone Suite for deal of thought over the years, even them all simultaneously. In fact, it might Clarinet and Strings (Volume 6), Paule going so far as to market his own line only be one: Dr. Ronald L. Caravan. Maurice’s programmatic Tableaux de of symphonic-clarinet and classical- Well, technically, it’s two. On all Provence (Volume 5), or Caravan’s own saxophone mouthpieces, mouthpieces eight volumes of the Naxos-distributed extended-technique “Sketch” (Volume that he has designed specifically to Single Reed Expressions (Mark), the 2) from having to purchase the entire facilitate the reproduction of his ideal pianist Sar-Shalom Strong accompanies set in one fell swoop. French-German blend. And it’s the Caravan. Together, they’ve created a The project’s other, more ambitious sound that characterizes the fluid fairly comprehensive overview of the goal was to demonstrate the sonic lyricism of his playing throughout best-known and the should-be-better- destination at which Caravan believes Single Reed Expressions’ 43 alto or known compositions for the woodwind the saxophone must arrive if it’s ever to soprano saxophone performances. instruments specified in the discs’ take its place alongside the clarinet and It’s also a sound, he believes, toward collective subtitle: A Clarinet & the double-reed woodwinds as an which serious saxophonists are finding

Saxophone Recital Series. instrument capable of articulating themselves increasingly drawn. SAXOPHONIST: MARTIN BARRAUD/CAIAIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES • CARAVAN: HANDOUT The two met in the late 1990s at “Something is making it go in that Syracuse University, where Caravan direction,” he says, “and it’s more than Caravan was a professor and Strong a master’s just Eugene Rousseau’s mouthpiece student. “He ended up accompanying a being maybe a better version of the lot of my students for their juries,” French mouthpiece than what preceded Caravan recalls, “and I ended up having it. I’d like to think it’s an overall musical him do my faculty recital with me. I momentum. I mean, I heard Kenneth could tell early on that we were kindred Fischer a few years before he died, and spirits.” he sounded darker than I’d ever heard They began recording in 1999 with him before. So something’s happening. two main goals. One was to provide And I hope these recordings are just clarinetists and alto and soprano one small contribution to pointing the saxophonists with a high-quality, saxophone that way.” one-stop repository of trustworthy Not that Caravan would mind their renditions of repertoire-worthy works making a big contribution. for their respective instruments. “I just think,” he says, “that the To that end, each volume of beauty of the sound is an essential Single Reed Expressions can be element of the musicianship. It took me purchased separately, sparing a lot of years to get there, but I can’t musicians who only want to rationalize bad sounds anymore.” A

24 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018  [email protected]  @ArsenioOrteza NEW OR RECENT RELEASES reviewed by Arsenio Orteza

NO GLORY The Eagle Rock Gospel Singers These youthful rootsmongers sing, play, and write— about the gospel, in case their name isn’t clear enough—with energy and conviction, achieving freshness by shuffling musical and verbal tropes like ENCORE veterans. They also shuffle lead singers, spelling a The title of The Essential guy (or guys) who wouldn’t sound out of place Pointer Sisters, which RCA/ leading worship at a Sunday-evening seeker service Legacy snuck out just with a gal (or gals) who wouldn’t sound out of place before Christmas, is, like fronting a jug band. Would that they’d shuffle that of many albums in The another fast song or two into this program’s second Essential series, a misno- half. It drags a little. mer. How essential can a collection be when it HOME COUNTIES Saint Etienne excludes its subjects’ first Listen closely and you’ll notice a level of attention to and second Top 20 hits studio trickery on par with anything available on albums (“Yes We Can Can” and selling a million or more copies. The difference is that “How Long [Betcha Got a Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, and Pete Wiggs deploy Chick on the Side]” respec- their studio tricks in the service of something more tively)? In other words, than going platinum. On this album, that “something” despite spreading 36 cuts includes wistfully sweet melodies and cinematic segues across two discs and deployed in the service of lyrics that embody the unearthing some interesting consciousness streams of British suburbanites at a obscurities along the way, level of pop sophistication that grows rarer by the day. this collection still misses the Pointers’ essence. REVIVAL Third Day More than any other female hit machine of the Kudos to these Southern gospel-rockers not only for pre-disco, disco, and post- celebrating their 25th anniversary with new material disco (i.e., MTV) eras, the but also for putting their hearts into it. The upfront Sisters made going with the lyrics are as simple as the romping-stomping rhythms, flow seem both possible and which are as simple as Mark Lee’s and Trevor Morgan’s desirable if not always in chunky electric-guitar riffs, Scotty Wilbanks’ fat organ that order. No matter how fills, and Mac Powell’s husky baritone singing. And just one remembers them now, when it seems that “no surprises” must’ve been 12 years after June’s death stenciled on the studio walls, up pop the Oak Ridge quashed any comeback Boys to help take Paul Simon to church. hopes, their essential recordings remain worth preserv- BIG THINGS AND LITTLE THINGS ing. As things stand, at least Truckstop Honeymoon several of the Pointers’ 13 Other than the song wherein they posit their moral other compilations do the superiority to Sam Brownback, this husband-and-wife job more efficiently.—A.O. duo get by on their hillbilly vibe and their droll snapshots of life lived in or near “The Ugly Part of Town” (a title). At their most fetching, the cleverness morphs into laughs, at least for listeners old enough to remember record players and to get “Got a seven-year-old daughter just picked up a guitar, / played me something by the White Stripes. / I don’t

POINTER SISTERS: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES even know who they are.”

To see more music news and reviews, go to wng.org/music February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 25 VOICES Mindy Belz WISE support from his predecessor, Obama-appointed Ambassador David Saperstein, and human rights like Solomon activist Katrina Lantos Swett, both Democrats. Further, he has the weight of urgency. In Myanmar 700,000 Muslims have been forced to flee military oppression. In post-ISIS Iraq, COURAGEOUS thousands of Yazidis and Christians are still missing, plus questions about U.S. aid still loom. like Stephen Politically correct These are life-and-death issues—not state benefits issues—and Brownback told me those situations will be his top priorities. persecution Overall, both the State Department and the AUDACIOUS SENATE DEMOCRATS TURN THEIR BACKS ON watchdog group Open Doors reported serious declines for religious freedom worldwide in 2017. like David RELIGIOUS VICTIMS OVER LGBT CAUSES Open Doors documented more than 2,200 sep- arate cases of sexual harassment, rape, or forced Send your You really have to feel sorry for Kansas marriage of Christian women—six per day. On R state employees. In 2015 Gov. Sam the day of the Brownback vote, I learned of an student to a Brownback rescinded an executive order that Iraqi Christian captured by ISIS militants, sold had granted them legal protection based on eight times, and raped repeatedly. Her rescuers Worldview Academy gender identity or sexual orientation. Never have provided her safe haven in Syria. That’s Leadership Camp. mind that the governor reiterated overarching right, the war-zone, terror-plagued Syria. You civil rights protections for race, religion, gen- don’t need Pew Research to tell you religious der, age, or country of national origin. Or that freedom is under fire or the Freedom House to President Barack Obama already had provided say democracy is in crisis, as national security He’ll come back legal precedence for special protection with an and religious freedom issues are merging. executive order barring discrimination on the But for Senate Democrats, all that is nothing with life-long friends, basis of sexual orientation or gender identity at compared with Brownback going against LGBT an unstoppable faith, the federal level. Or that unemployment in ‘There is a lot groups. For that, Human Rights Campaign sent Kansas generally fluctuates between 3 and 4 to do and an a letter to every senator protesting his nomina- and the percent—suggesting, should all else fail, good tion. At his confirmation hearing last year, Sen. jobs on the worst of days aren’t hard to find. administra- Tim Kaine, D-Va., ambushed Brownback with audacity The supposed hard plight Brownback forced tion that domestic LGBT-directed questions, even though to live boldly on Kansas state employees became the basis for wants to do it.’ he had acknowledged the Kansan “was suited” a Democratic shutout last month to confirm for the ambassador’s role. Brownback told me he for Christ. Brownback as U.S. ambassador-at-large for —Sam Brownback tried to get a private meeting with Kaine but international religious freedom, a post unre- could not. He said he met several times with Sen. lated to his views on LGBT causes, views he’s Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate entitled to anyway. A 49-49 tie vote on Jan. 24 Foreign Relations Committee, who didn’t raise forced Vice President Mike Pence to make an the LGBT issues. Cardin was the only Democrat unscheduled trip to Capitol Hill, only the to meet with Brownback, and the two served second time in U.S. history a vice president was together on the Helsinki Commission. But in forced to break a tie over a confirmation. the end Cardin, too, voted against him. Brownback told me in an interview that After the vote, LGBT activists continued to week he hadn’t seen it coming. “This should be a rant. A Daily Beast column warned against nonpartisan issue. When it blew up and became Brownback “weaponizing the State Department straight party lines, I was surprised,” he said. against Muslims, women, LGBT people, and That’s understandable, given that he worked human rights activists.” for 15 years across the aisles as a U.S. senator him- Some at the State Department told me self. The Kansas lawmaker with support from they are worried about the partisan divide on Democrats (including first lady Hillary Clinton) religious freedom, a policy area that’s brought ORLIN WAGNER/AP ORLIN led passage of the first major law combating inter- Republicans and Democrats together. But Camps where students national sex trafficking in 2000. He worked with Brownback believes moving forward and get- Democrats to pass the law creating the position ting to work will be the best way to respond to become bold leaders in truth and grace. he is about to assume covering international reli- his critics. “There is a lot to do and an adminis- gious freedom. For the ambassadorship, he’s had tration that wants to do it,” he said. A www.worldview.org • 800.241.1123

26 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018  [email protected]  @mcbelz

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Find more information at: samaritanministries.org 2018 CHILDREN’S BOOKS

KRIEG BARRIE KRIEG OF THE YEAR

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 29 CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR OFF THE PAGES, INTO THE HEART PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR: WORLD’s 2018 Children’s Books of the Year section begins with a psalm- inspired story of classmate reconciliation BY SUSAN OLASKY

We publish in each issue one the hills.” Poets call that the “golden all bad, but mixed. I try not to 3 page of children’s book reviews, shovel,” and it’s a form that flows care, but the and we feature each year a special throughout the book as Grimes tells Lord pokes me with his Word, section spotlighting what our review- the story of the bullied boy Jordan, mentions the moon ers believe are the previous year’s who cries out to God in his misery, Tanya and I both sleep under, most attention-worthy kids’ books in and the class bully, Tanya, who’s also dream by. the fiction, nonfiction, and picture miserable. Her story begins with God loves us the same, tucks us book categories. Of all the books pub- these words: both in at night. lished in 2017, our WORLD Picture Wish I was some other Who, living Illustrator Collier chooses somber Book of the Year is The Watcher where colors. His illustrations have both a (Eerdmans). Author Nikki Grimes stutterers aren’t treated like spit. gritty and dreamlike quality. He and illustrator Bryan Collier developed Does explained to the Reading Rockets it for an audience older—8 and up— that place even exist? No. So I website why he likes collage: “A col- than typical picture book users. It switch offmy lage is like this wonderful metaphor begins with the text of Psalm 121 laid hearing when Grandma says to ask for life. … Every moment of our life is out above a collage cityscape. We meet you for help. like a piece of a puzzle, and has its Jordan, a schoolboy who is miserable The story shows reconciliation own unique shape and size to it. And at school. Then his story begins: beginning as Jordan sees Tanya in we don’t really know what it means Some days, even the ant towers relationship to God. until later on.” BOOK PHOTOS BY JEFF WALES • GRIMES: HANDOUTT • GRIMES: WALES BY JEFF PHOTOS BOOK over me, and I People are puzzles, even Tanya— The Watcher deals thoughtfully cower in a forest of grass, wait- not all good, nor with heavy subjects—bullying, loneli- ing for the fear to lift ness, love for the like fog, so I can be brave, rise up. Note the words in boldface at the end of each line. They all come from the first verse of the psalm, “I lift up my eyes to Grimes

30 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 imagining adventures we could have title—God—and it in the clouds, Now ends on a hopeful note. that I’m still enough to notice, I outcast, doing the Tanya gets the last word: feel the Lord here and— hard thing, putting to Jordan and I stretch out in the no lie—he whispers, “I’m with you death pride. But its focus is in the forest of grass, both now and forevermore.” A

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 31 RUNNERS-UP: PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY SUSAN OLASKY

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, ANYWHERE FARM BLUE SKY WHITE STARS THE TREASURE BOX KING BABY Phyllis Root Sarvinder Naberhaus Margaret Wild Sally Lloyd-Jones 3 Root’s cheerful rhym- 3 This visually stunning 3 “When the enemy 3 The big sister narrator ing text is immediately tribute to the actual bombed the library, of this delightful book accessible. “For an any- Stars and Stripes con- everything burned.” describes herself as where farm, here’s all tains few words and big That’s how this melan- “the most beautifulest, that you need: soil and ideas. On one two-page choly picture book cleverest, ever-so-kindest sunshine, some water, a spread the words “Old begins. Paper cutout Princess with long, seed.” G. Brian Karas’ Glory” appear twice. On illustrations show a town flowing, wondrous hair.” fresh multimedia illus- the left-hand page the in ruins, and snippets of (Illustrations have her trations pair well with words accompany a text float through the air. wearing a pair of blond the text and show the picture of the Grand Only one book survived— pantyhose on her head simple beauty even the Canyon. On the right, Peter’s father had bor- throughout the book.) smallest seed can pro- they accompany a fire- rowed it. So when father According to the narrator, duce. The book’s subtler works display. Another and son flee their town, “They all lived happily message about the differ- two-page spread shows a they carry this treasure together in the Land, ence individuals can young girl hand stitching with them: “This is a where there was always make in their own back- an early flag with the book about our people, time for stories, plenty of yards is itself a good seed words “Sew together / about us. … It is rarer than room on your mom’s lap, to plant in young minds: Won nation.” The facing rubies, more splendid and absolutely NEVER “With your farm in a page shows faces of than silver, greater than any screaming.” But Baby basket, and mine on a every age, tribe, and gold.” Peter’s father dies, changes all that—for the chair, with soil and tongue with the words, but the boy promises to worse. Then, at Baby’s sunshine and water and “So together / One keep the treasure safe. first birthday party, Baby care,” one day all the nation.” The book is This beautiful elegiac throws a temper tan- “anywhere farms” could aspirational, using words book deals sensitively trum—and only big sister become “an everywhere and text to point to the with loss and sacrifice can save the day by mak- farm—everywhere.” nation’s underlying before ending on a hope- ing him happy. (Ages 4-8) (Ages 2-5) values. (Ages 4-8) ful note. (Ages 5-8)

style make this a book that will bear Lee Burton (Houghton Mifflin ATTENTION GETTERS repeat readings, inspire persever- Harcourt) will carry readers back Our committee of five mothers ance under difficulty, and whet to the 1930s, when Burton’s Mike chose the four books above and appetites for Tolkien’s writings. One Mulligan was first published.Big two picture biographies as well. of our committee members said the Machines captures the creative Children and parents will relish the book “carried all of my kids’ atten- process: Illustrations imagine the many wonderfully drawn dragons in tion (from a 14-year-old Tolkien fan artist creating something out of Caroline McAlister’s John Ronald’s to a 2-year-old enthralled with the ideas in her head. The book Dragons: The Story of J.R.R. dragons).” celebrates Burton and shows her Tolkien (Roaring Brook). McAlister’s Sherri Duskey Rinker’s Big family inspiring her creativity. well-done endnotes and engaging Machines: The Story of Virginia —S.O.

32 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018  [email protected]  @susanolasky CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR DISSOLVING IDENTITIES Gender fluidity for preschoolers BY JANIE B. CHEANEY

A British newspaper head- Education reminding the public that More to come: The protagonist 3 line from last summer (1) children don’t think as adults do, of About Chris (2015) is a girl who explains a lot—sort of: “Mother and (2) questions about gender at feels like a boy. Tiny, of Are You a writes children’s book about Tilly the kindergarten level are more Boy or Are You a Girl? (2017), could the transgender teddy bear after likely to confuse than enlighten. be either. Though “they” are con- being inspired by her father who But Britain’s secretary of state for tinually asked about their gender on transitioned into a woman.” The education enthusiastically backs an the playground, they aren’t telling. Daily Mail article reported that initiative called Educate and The hero of Red: A Crayon’s Story Jessica Walton of Melbourne, Celebrate, specifically for “trans- (2015) is really—and obviously—a Australia, was raising money to forming schools and organizations blue crayon in a red wrapper, who publish a picture book that would into LGBT-friendly places.” Picture can’t meet society’s expectations help her baby son relate to his new books are a gateway to that goal. for coloring strawberries and fire- “grandma.” Walton reached her In the United States, LGBT edu- trucks. It’s assumed that a 4-year- Kickstarter goal and Introducing cational initiatives are more often old will absorb the underlying Teddy made its appearance last year. local than national, but influential message of learning to act like your There’s not much to the plot: organizations like the American true self (even though most 4-year- Thomas the Teddy is moping until Library Association highlight olds understand that crayons are his friend Errol (a human boy) asks “diversity and inclusion” in their androgynous). what’s wrong. Thomas hesitates: mission statements. One means to Young children tend to be con- “If I tell you, you might not be my that end is picture books like I Am crete in their thinking about the friend anymore.” But finally he Jazz (2014), introducing “Jazz” outside world, but Parent Power admits that in his heart, he’s always (formerly Jared) Jennings, now a fears that “children are becoming known that he is a girl instead of a transgender teen and reality TV instruments of gender-fluid boy. Transitioning means wearing a star. I Am Jazz was a ground- ideology, as the social landscapes pink bow and changing “her” name breaker and is now a staple in around them dissolve into a mir- (and pronoun). school libraries. roring fluidity.” The stated purpose One might protest that the anat- of most of these books is to help omy of a stuffed children accept transgender bear doesn’t need classmates or relatives. But changing, and ano- questioning their own gender dyne stories like identity may come first. Introducing Teddy A survey released in don’t begin to December by the UCLA Center address the complex for Health Policy Research clas- issues surrounding sifies a whopping 27 percent of gender transition in California youth (ages 12-17) as a human being. “gender non-conforming.” The Pushback against designation includes 182,466 picture-book pro- teens who identified as the motions of trans- opposite gender and 613,449 genderism began in who reported feeling equally the U.K. almost masculine and feminine. More immediately, with research is needed, but “fluid- groups such as Parent ity” may be washing away cer- Power and the tainty about the most basic Campaign for Real factors of human nature. A

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 33 CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR HOME IS WHERE THE LOVE IS NOVEL OF THE YEAR: From all the children’s fiction published in 2017, our committee chose a New York story about a family in Harlem and a misanthropic landlord BY JANIE B. CHEANEY

The Vanderbeeker family lives pointing results. Christmas is looking to further adventures on 141st Street. 3 in a century-old brownstone in grim until a kind of miracle occurs. Debut author Karina Glaser grew the heart of Harlem: Papa and Mama In spite of our culture’s incessant up as Karina Yan in California, where (who are called Papa and Mama), tampering with it, and our own ten- she read continually and developed a 12-year-old twins Jessie and Isa, 9- dency to spoil it, the family structure taste for classic fiction likeAnne of year-old Oliver, 6-year-old Hyacinth, God created both endures and Green Gables. Stories like The and 4¾-year-old Laney, along with endears. In The Vanderbeekers of 141st Saturdays and All-of-a-Kind Family an assortment of furry four-footed Street (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) a planted daydreams about raising a family members. As their story opens, biracial family united by blood, spirit, family in an urban setting. The dream Papa announces he has good news and emotion grows up together in eventually came true as she first and bad news. First the good: “You neighborly surroundings. In the day- moved to New York to attend college, kids all know how much Mama and I to-day business of growing up, they and finally settled in Harlem with her love you, right?” not only tease, irritate, and (some- husband and two daughters. This leads the older ones to sus- times) fight with each other: They’re The Harlem of the Vanderbeekers, pect a divorce in their future. But also learning together. Close, not- despite the presence of smartphones (thankfully) no—the bad news is that always-voluntary proximity pushes us and internet searches, will remind their landlord Mr. Beiderman, who to learn lessons such as tolerance, some readers of the 1950s. It exists lives on the top floor, is not renewing patience, and (most of all) loving each today for Karina Glaser: “My kids their lease. With only five days until other and our neighbors. love visiting their favorite neighbors Christmas, the incipient lump of coal There’s a name for this: home, and have an ongoing game of tag with in their stocking is a 30-days’ notice. with “the crack in the shape of the building superintendent. … It’s a Not just to move out of the building, Eastern Europe on the ceiling” and lovely place to raise a family, and I but most likely to say goodbye to the “the whistling of pipes in the walls.” wanted to capture that feeling of neighborhood, where Papa has lived The challenge to stay home may wrap community in The Vanderbeekers of since he was a boy. up too neatly, but the Vanderbeekers 141st Street.” BOOK: JEFF WALES • GLASER: HANDOUT • GLASER: WALES JEFF BOOK: This cannot stand. The have faced New York City with its brown- kids must find a way to real diffi- stone canyons and numbered streets ingratiate themselves with Glaser culties going up to three digits may seem like the reclusive, misanthropic with real a foreign setting to youngsters in sub- Mr. Beiderman so he’ll tenacity urbia, but they’ll bond with the ram- change his mind. Hence a and bunctious good humor of this family. series of schemes that even plenty of That would please the author, who a gregarious philanthrope laughs. hopes “the themes of empathy, could see are bad ideas. We look compassion, and kindness come to Hijinks ensue, with disap- forward mind” amid their enjoyment. A

34 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 RUNNERS-UP: NOVEL OF THE YEAR BY JANIE B. CHEANEY

ALMOST PARADISE HENRY AND THE JASPER AND THE RIDDLE TUMBLE & BLUE Corabel Shofner CHALK DRAGON OF RILEY’S MINE Cassie Beasley Jennifer Trafton Caroline Starr Rose 3 Ruby Clyde Henderson’s 3 Blue Montgomery is life changes when Carl, 3 Henry is in trouble at 3 When Jasper’s teenage saddled with a family her mother’s feckless school, not for misbehavior brother Melvin lights out curse, confirmed when his boyfriend, yanks her out but for nonconformity. for the gold fields of Alaska, distracted father dumps of bed in North Carolina, In honor of National the enterprising 10-year-old him at his grandmother’s crams her in a car, and Vegetable Week, all his follows with a knapsack house for an indefinite heads for Texas with classmates are drawing and a washboard. Melvin stay. One dubious benefit is Ruby’s mom. But that’s bunnies and carrots, but would rather not have little overeager Lily (aka nothing to what hap- Henry would rather draw brother tagging along, but Tumble) Wilson, who is pens when Carl holds up anything else—and does the boys are soon grateful determined to help Blue a convenience store and draw everything else in his for each other’s company snap out of his “loser” Mom, though innocent, sketchbook, which he when facing treacherous funk. The curse proves ends up in jail. Ruby has refuses to show. But when terrain and perfidious hard to lift, as its roots go no place to go but the chalk dragon he cre- prospectors. Early on, deep into the Okefenokee Paradise Ranch, a dismal ated peels off his black- Jasper acquires a clue to Swamp, where lurks the plot in central Texas board-door and follows finding an abandoned mine legendary gator known as presided over by her him to school, Henry can and rumored treasure—and Munch. Meanwhile Blue’s aunt, an Episcopal nun. no longer hide his artwork. less honorable parties are extended family converges “Sister Eleanor” is far This lighthearted fantasy also searching. One desper- on the ancestral home from warm, but in the is a treat for the eye and ate strait follows another, hoping to claim a final hour of Ruby’s greatest ear with its imaginative but help always arrives, blessing from the matri- need she embodies a pictures and clever word- sometimes in the form of arch. Quirky characters clear picture of redemp- play. It also shows how our Christian missionaries. and supernatural tion in the name of God-given talents are for Jasper’s good humor and “Southern Gothic” Christ. (Ages 10-14) sharing, not hiding in lively voice engage readers elements make this a fasci- sketchbooks. (Ages 8-12) throughout this Yukon nating read with echoes adventure. (Ages 10-14) of Eden. (Ages 10-14)

(Running Press Kids) by Beth Vrabel Wishtree (Feiwel & Friends) by HONORABLE MENTIONS pairs a boy struggling with cystic Katherine Applegate, the narrator is a Our children’s fiction committee fibrosis with a girl overcompensating wise old red oak who overcomes believes five other novels merit recog- for a neglectful parent. Sherri neighborhood discord with sympathy. nition. Beyond the Bright Sea (Dutton Winston’s The Sweetest Sound Darcy Miller debuts with Roll Books) by Lauren Wolk shows a girl, (Little, Brown and Company) intro- (HarperCollins), in which a displaced growing up on the Maine coast with duces Cadence, a painfully shy boy and troubled girl bond over the her foster father, who learns of her African-American girl who hides her fascinating sport of training roller mysterious origins. Caleb and Kit singing talent under a bushel. In pigeons. —J.B.C.

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 35 CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR AGE OF OUTRAGE Have diversity police created a culture of censorship? BY JANIE B. CHEANEY

In No Good Deed, a novel for recommendations. “For me,” said one not the author, who was express- 3 and about teens, author Goldy buyer, “diverse books are not only ing these views, but Sinyard’s Moldavsky offers a rare satiric view of books that include the presence of audience appeared to miss that political correctness through the eyes people of color, Latino, Native distinction. of a guileless youth attending a sum- American, immigrant, disabled, or Harlequin Teen, the pub- mer camp for social justice warriors. QUILTBAG characters.” She was lisher, endured a twitter storm At Camp Save the also looking for context “within the of irate readers (the vast major- World, campers broader culture of racism, sexism, ity of whom had not read the identify them- homo- and transphobia, [and] class novel) demanding that The selves by their pet ism, without lapsing into stereotypes Black Witch be heavily revised causes, such as or generalizations.” or canceled altogether. Neither Feed the Children, That seems like a tall order, and it of those things happened, and Feminism, Men’s indicates the very danger that diver- The Black Witch debuted at No. 1 Rights, and sity-for-its-own-sake represents. All in Amazon’s “Teen and YA QUILTBAG. good literature broadens experience, Wizards Fantasy” division— QUILTBAG? whether it takes the reader to the proving either that there’s no Is that a thing? Russian steppes, apartheid-era South such thing as bad publicity or Yes: Queer/questioning, Undecided, Africa, or Regency England. A dog- that Twitter storms produce Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender, matic insistence on a particular more heat than light. Bisexual, Asexual, Gay. As a term to context pits cultures against each The second inci- cover all varieties of sexual experience, other. It also creates a class of dent attracted even it probably gets the job done. But the literary cops who patrol the more attention. current quest for diversity in books pages of upcoming releases and Advance copies of for the young doesn’t stop there. blow the whistle on “incorrect” American Heart, a In 2015, dissatisfaction with the content. novel published by prominence of white male authors at The trend is especially pro- HarperTeen, were a young adult book conference led to nounced in young adult (YA) making the rounds of the creation of We Need Diverse publishing. Two well-publicized review journals and had Books (see “A good book is a good cases from 2017 demonstrate won a coveted starred book,” WORLD, Sept. 5, 2015). It was how far it can go. The Black Witch, a review from Kirkus. The a movement whose time had come. YA fantasy novel, was trailing a string novel pictures a dystopian America Though the publishing world had for of enthusiastic blurbs toward its May 1 where Muslims have been ordered years expressed its intention to publishing date, when the into “safety zones”—i.e., internment become more “inclusive” influential blogger Shauna camps. Sarah Mary, the white (both in personnel and in Sinyard blasted it as “the Christian protagonist, approves of the product), WNDB focused most dangerous, offensive order until she encounters a Muslim efforts and demanded results. book I’ve ever read.” In a woman on the run. In spite of ethnic Results came quickly, from 9,000-word review, Sinyard and religious differences, the two all segments of the industry. detailed every instance of manage to bond, and Sarah becomes a Publishers Weekly visited sexism, racism, and latter-day underground railroad independent booksellers to ask homophobia. It was the conductor to get her friend safely to buyers and clerks about their white female protagonist, Canada.

36 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 KRIEG BARRIE nist, whoclingstoherprejudices far lematic anonymous reviewer, theword appeared again,revised by thesame review forreconsideration. Whenit resistance not acaseofcultural appropriation? Wasallowed tospeakforherself? this Why wasn’t theMuslim character “white savior,” according tocritics. narrator andmaincharacter: aclassic approve, except fortheprotagonist/ text anindependentbookseller would kind of“broader-culture racism” con Outrage grew, andafteratoken The plotsoundsexactly like the was attachedtotheprotago  Kirkus [email protected] pulleditsstarred  prob @jbcheaney - - - too long. Andthestar was taken away— reader websites BookRiotand passed muster atallstages. Still, the successor. the originalstarred review andits “Muslim hadwritten woman ofcolor” weighed in. ers” ofsimilarbackground had the editingprocess, “sensitivityread protested thatatmany pointsduring manuscript forfalsenotes. HarperTeen Muslim friendshadcritiquedher American Heart book reviewing. a first for Laura Moriarty, theauthorof Kirkus American Heart Kirkus , protested thatseveral in its long history of initslonghistory of protested thata had had - never seethelightofday? Finn fessionals. Whatfuture a fearshared by otherindustry pro what booksaren’t beingreleased.” It’s “I dowonder, inthisenvironment, from thefracas over quotes Laura Moriarty, still reeling Books, orCensorship?”Thearticle Sensitivity Readers Result inBetter “In anEra ofOnlineOutrage, Do Times comes inforadrubbing. author whofailstomeettheirstandard lar advocacy orethnicgroup, andan The headlineofarecent or article states a major concern: articlestates amajorconcern: To Kill aMockingbird what we have toendure toget incredibly important. If thisis dialogue, theawareness, is they didnotearn,but“the been blindsidedby criticism authors sherepresents have edged thatsomeofthe agent Jill Grinberg acknowl ference inDecember, literary a children’s publishingcon is puttingonitsgameface. At these outbreaks, theindustry chance toread it. late January, fewhada was noteven publisheduntil apparently. Sincethebook for theprincipleofthing, Goodreads savaged thenovel— standard-bearers ofaparticu critics have madethemselves appropriation. Some ofthese representation orcultural pounced onanincorrect bloggers—who independent cops”—mostly “culture but feared thehandful of sitivity wasn’t goodforfiction ted thatthislevel ofhypersen her real name. Therest admit would offercommentunder reported thatonly oneauthor Toxic Drama onYA Twitter”), Witch long articleaboutthe Journalist KatRosenfield,a in editors are not so sanguine. to abetterplace, sobeit.” February 17, 2018 February Though nervous about Other authors, agents, and controversy (“The American Heart Huckleberry • WORLD Magazine WORLD A New York Black will will - - -

: - - - 37 CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR MIND BUILDERS A five-book selection of outstanding nonfiction BY JANIE B. CHEANEY

Our nonfiction selection committee information. Imaginative specula- perspective on the chose five books published in 2017, in tion pictured a ring of ice surround- Civil War. Though four categories: Real Lives, Real ing a temperate sea: We know better the Battle of Adventure, Real Heart (a tie), and now because of courageous adven- Fredericksburg Science and Stewardship. turers like Lt. Cmdr. George De Long serves as a set piece, most of the and his crew of explorers. Sadly, only narrative takes place in camp Real Lives a few members of the expedition among men longing for home. survived their two-year ordeal, but Stylized illustrations and winsome IRENAEUS Simonetta Carr De Long’s careful record-keeping text deliver emotional impact along Carr introduces young readers to supplies the main source material with a surprising amount of infor- the quiet, second-century scholar for this gripping saga. (Ages 10-14) mation. The appendix includes the who became a vital Runner-up: Higher, Steeper, words and music to “Home Sweet voice for truth in Faster: The Daredevils Who Home.” (Ages 6-10) the early church. Conquered the Skies by Lawrence Only two genera- Goldstone Science and Stewardship tions removed AMAZON ADVENTURE: HOW TINY from Christ, Real Heart Irenaeus survived FISH ARE SAVING THE WORLD’S periods of persecu- ONE LAST WORD: WISDOM FROM LARGEST RAINFOREST tion while battling THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE Sy Montgomery challenges to orthodoxy. Against Nikki Grimes The author tags along with marine Heresy, his best-known work, not Using poems from the Harlem biologists from Boston’s New only exposed false teaching but also Renaissance as a springboard, England Aquarium as they monitor helped establish sound doctrine. Grimes employs the natural habitat of the small, shy This biography is engagingly the “golden piaba fish, better known as tetra. A written and beautifully produced, shovel” tech- once-thriving industry in the with numerous quotations from nique for this Brazilian rainforest supported the Irenaeus himself. (Ages 8-12) portrait of fishermen who supported the fish, Runners-up: Alexander modern-day but artificial hatching threatens Hamilton by Teri Kanefield;Elon African- both human livelihoods and native Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Americans. habitats. That’s Future by Ashlee Vance Each word from where “Project the model poem Piaba” comes in, a Real Adventure becomes the last partnership word of each line in the new poem. between scientists BOUND BY ICE: A TRUE NORTH Besides illuminating the struggles, and fishermen POLE SURVIVAL STORY faith, and ambitions of African- meant to benefit Sandra Neil Wallace & Rich Wallace Americans, One Last Word intro- both. Written in In 1879 an duces readers to a literary form an engaging style and American expe- they may want to try. (Ages 10-14) threaded with “fun facts,” Amazon dition set off for Adventure demonstrates responsible the North Pole SOLDIER SONG: A TRUE STORY OF stewardship in action. (Ages 10-14) with adequate THE CIVIL WAR Debbie Levy Runner-up: Exploring Space: equipment but Soldier Song also uses a literary From Galileo to the Mars Rover inaccurate form—popular ballad—for its and Beyond by Martin Jenkins A

38 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 HANDOUT 3 CATHEDRALS ANDVALLEYS book—not thatRaneeisbased atallonmy mother. went through asimilararc asMa inthe generations afterimmigrating. My mother to show how afamilychangesthrough the Distant Near you totellsomuch of a parent’s perspective, sowhat inspired about herwork andfaith. pastors a Presbyterian church. Iasked her sheltering my own.” “I finallyfeelthescarred handsofanunseenLiberator character Sonia, wholikewise meetsChrist in acathedral, and humansufferingintersected.Inthe words ofher her untilsherecognized theplacewhere aloving God cathedral andmuseum. Themanonthecross haunted in Europe sheencountered imagesofChrist inevery impersonal godwas shaken. killed oneofherfriends, Perkins’ beliefinabenign, and theNarnia series. But whenadrunkdriver children’s bookssheloved— and shedidn’t realize Christian faithsaturated the family atage11.Christianity was faroffher radar, Calcutta, moved totheUnited States withher and realistic picture ofChristian conversion. Mitali Perkins subtlyenfoldsonemore: amoving justice. Theseare alltypicalYA themes, butauthor coming ofage, fallinginlove, crusadingforsocial themes emerge: familyconflict,cultural clashes, then thefatherdiesinabicycle accident.Several Queens, N.Y., hopingtomake abetterlife—and story ofanimmigrant familythatcomesto a familysagaspanningthree generations. It’s the Discovering‘the scarred handsofanunseenLiberator’ him somuch,every day, every hour. Ihadtogoona who diedatage90eightmonths ago. I’mstill missing own father? your books. Whatwas yourrelationship with your Fathers are strong andsympathetic characters in The story seemedtodemandit.Iwanted Children’s booksdon’t usually include Perkins lives inSan Francisco, where herhusband Perkins hadnousefortheBible, butwhilestudying Of course, it’s noaccident.Perkins, bornin All thefathersinmy booksare my beloved Daddy,

widely praised young adultnovels of2017, is You Bring theDistantNear BY JANIE CHEANEY B. through themother? You Bringthe Heidi , one of the most , oneofthemost , Little Women , thank you. about her. I like my privacy, so no memoir from me, like beinginsidemy head—butImadeupalotofstuff closer toJesus. ment, thetearscame. visiting Whatkindofmiddle-aged Daddy,” Ifinallyanswered. Andthen,to my embarrass lump inmy throat. “Iwrote thebookbefore losingmy the Dad die?”he asked. “Iloved thatDad.” for questions, aboy’s handshotup. “Why didyou make aloud toallofthembefore my visit.Whenitwas time know was thattheirEnglishteacherhadread my book most students lack privilegeandpower. WhatIdidn’t Mich., Ispoke to100eighth-graders inaschoolwhere author breaks down duringaschool visit? Ilooked My husbandsays reading hersectionswas strangely How much of youis inSonia? I couldn’t answer rightaway: There was suddenlya around, fightingto regain my composure, andtook ity ofGod—theseare allavenues formetodraw and musicthatreflect themagnificenceand creativ God. Excellence inpaintings, stories, architecture, Christ? God’s mercy inthevalley. ness ofGod’s presence. That’s just oneexample of sionate Iwas immediatelyfloodedwithan aware in thesightof10014-year-old facessocompas Beauty isimportanttome, asIbelieve itisto What role didartplay inleading youto A Perkins February 17, 2018 February revealing His pilgrimage by my traveling intoa asked Godtoturn mourning, andsoI early monthsof Near Bring theDistant book tourfor in needofHislove. when we’re really least ofthese” like touse“the ful. He seemsto Jesus was sofaith presence with me. In Kalamazoo, during the duringthe • WORLD Magazine WORLD

You - - - - - 39 FEATURES Kisses of regret The influential courtship manifestoI Kissed Dating Goodbye turns 21 this year, but some former fans of the book aren’t celebrating. What went wrong? by Sophia Lee ¿ illustration by Krieg Barrie

40 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 HANDOUT K came timetokissthebride, Ly wedding day, andwhenit finally Katie didn’t kissuntil their courtship forguidance. He and before askingher out.He involved theparents intheir God gave thenasked himtheOK, forherfather’s permission prayed before pursuingKatie, waiting three years untilhe felt principles: He didn’t courtuntilhewas ready formarriage. He marriage. emphasized spiritual,physical, andemotionalpuritybefore became aniconofthe1990spuritymovement, which Kissed DatingGoodbye and offered “courtship” asaBiblicallysuperioralternative. that challengedthemodernworld’s Harris approach todating says, by he asked hertomarryhim. Yes, shesaid.Aboutfourmonthslater, shesaidyes againwhen seemed clear, heasked Katie, “Can Iputmy armaround you?” her.“emotionally manipulating” Finally, whenthecoast scary scene, sothathecouldtouchher withoutdangerof for therightmomentwhenmovie didn’t have asador sexual, theyassured him. pursue herphysically—some physical affectionneednotbe touch her. Thenthree oldermenseparately advisedhimto courting Katieforaboutfive months, but still hadn’t dared itching toslideacross hisgirlfriend’s shoulders. Ly hadbeen movie.the It was onhisarm,whichwas down by hissidebut Thousands ofreaders like Ly abidedby thebook’s Ly’s conservative approach toromance was influenced,he So there hewas, internallysweating onthecouch,waiting watching ENNETH LY I Kissed DatingGoodbye Courageous sat on the couch with his girlfriend, satonthecouchwithhisgirlfriend, soldmore than 1.2millioncopiesand withher, buthismindwasn’t on , a1997bookby Joshua on their wedding day Kenneth andKatie Ly I D and better. messy experiences forsomethingtheyhopedwould bebigger rulesofthecourtshipmovement avoidedno-dating those their virginity, broke hearts. Thosewhoadhered tothe boyfriend orgirlfriendinschool.Kidsbroke love vows, lost trembling over theirfirst kissandparading theirfirst official by raging hormonesanddating experiments, whenpeerswere readers were intheirteenageyears—a stage typicallymarked fear intimacyofany kindwiththeoppositesex. into marryingthefirst persontheydated,andcausedthemto a culture ofjudgmentalism,pressured andclaimit“ruinedlives.”at itsfinest” Somesay itengendered disappointment andregret. Some have calledthebook who followed thebook’s ideasandnow, years later, voice with hiswife. But that’s notthestory ofmany otherreaders married at23andwrote afollow-up bookabouthiscourtship many others. It worked tooforauthorJoshua Harris, who have two blond froze. He was 26andshe27whentheymarried.Today they By then,shewas 30andstill single. was abletodisentanglefrom thosedeeplyingrained thoughts. shut herdown. It took about10years, Ross said,before she initiated aconversation, orsmiledtoomuchwithaman,guilt fornication.” Anytime shemade prolonged eye contact, for solongshehadassociatedthat with“emotional because know how toexpress orreciprocate interest inaman, life partnerby graduation, shequicklyrealized shedidn’t during hercollegeyears. Thoughshehadhopedtofindher abided by these rules, God will bless me with the perfect man.” against casual dating, gave herenormousrelief: “IthoughtifI rejection? didn’t work out?How would shedealwiththatgallows of her: Whatifshenever gotpicked? Whatiftherelationship happen toheroranyone else. Theideaofdatingalsoterrified one would gettheirhearts broken.” heaven. Ithoughtifeveryone was doingthissamething, no everyone toseethisvisionofabeautifulcommunity, of Goodbye was cute!”).She boughtextra copiesof tacked aposter ofhisfaceuponherbedroom wall (“What,he book tours, bought thecassettetapesofhisspeeches, even As ahomeschooledteenagerinFlorida,Ross attendedHarris’ it didthemmore harmthangood. story—some willtoutthebenefits. But many otherswillclaim Ididforthis shaped theirviewsondatingandmarriage—as Goodbye have negative feelingsabouttheimpactof through themeans ofcourtship. Othershave marriedyet now ready formarriage,they’re yet have beenunabletofindamate season inlife,paying theirown whenthey’re bills. Some say Now most oftheseindividualsare intheir30s—adifferent Back whenthebooktoppedbestseller list, many ofits I Kissed DatingGoodbye But Ross started questioning Ross’ parents were divorced, andshedidn’t want thatto ONNA ROSS’ dog-eared andmarked withhighlightsandannotations. andpassedthemouttoherfriends:“Iwanted . If you askyoung Christians toexplain how thebook I Kissed DatingGoodbye daughters, ages2and4. copy of I Kissed DatingGoodbye worked forLy, anditworked for February 17, 2018 February I Kissed DatingGoodbye , with its admonitions , withitsadmonitions inexperienced people I Kissed Dating I Kissed Dating • WORLD Magazine WORLD is is “legalism “legalism

41 HANDOUT affected them. I Kissed Dating I Kissed for homeschoolers. for homeschoolers. , is not sinful in itself but is New Attitude New I Kissed Dating Goodbye I Kissed one woman tagged Joshua Harris in a tweet that in a tweet Harris tagged Joshua one woman I Kissed Dating Goodbye I Kissed , waiting for her “man in shining armor”, waiting to find her One of them was Jessica Van Der Wyngaard, a 31-year-old a 31-year-old Der Wyngaard, Van Jessica One of them was At the time, Harris was fresh out of his first serious out of his first fresh was Harris the time, At at evangelicalism conservative of His book shook the world very “I was says: now Harris too simple and safe, Perhaps Harris in Maryland, serving as a senior pastor After 11 years Deep down, Breneman still desires a fairy-tale-like a fairy-tale-like desires still Breneman Deep down, as a living room kneeling in his parents’ remembers Harris N 2016, Harris a weapon.” like me used against book was said, “Your moved his family to Canada, where he began graduate school he began graduate family to Canada, where his moved 42, British Columbia. Now in Vancouver, University at Regent but a student leader “with all the answers” no longer a church who told him students has met fellow Harris with questions, romantic life—or affected their his book had negatively how lack thereof. for once an “evangelist” who was Australian Goodbye change the world.” He was, in his own words, “religiously “religiously words, in his own was, He change the world.” also the was He ambitious.” certain, and restlessly zealous, handsome, the young, perfect face for the purity movement: and Sono Gregg charismatic son of homeschooling celebrities had a 17-year-old gifted leader who as a naturally Harris, and at conferences speaking a niche of his own, carved already publishing a magazine called of his at the loose morals and frustrated relationship what a God-pleasing romantic wondered He generation. and “date sex” have “don’t just beyond like looked relationship he had the answer: believed age 21, Harris At only Christians.” and when you’re for marriage, ready date until you’re Don’t he Dating, court with the intentionality for marriage. ready, in wrote self-gratification, sin: lust, that encourages “part of the problem” emotional manipulation, and spiritual distraction. revolution sexual the perfect time: As the consequences of the to modern the demand for a Biblical alternative became dire, title and appealing cover, its catchy hot. With dating was that seemed solutions countercultural book presented Harris’ and radical. romantic simple and safe, and I came up with experience, own limited in my very young, complex.” when life is very simple solutions, very longer wants to wait around. She tried online dating but dating tried online She around. to wait wants longer anxieties too-raw dates that unearthed three after stopped she had experienced she wishes curves inside her—learning school. back in high with a clean guy virgin a nice Christian, where courtship, of women. a crowd picks her out from prayerfully dating slate in their single women beautiful, godly, When she sees other not to out, she struggles asked get don’t 30s and 40s who also that book. read never wishes she had and really lose hope, Another self-identified an apology. with on Twitter responded married, never “37, back that she was “IKDG victim” tweeted Set bar too high cause of ur book. Many infertile. and now to readers later invited apologized. He Harris Again, regrets!” about how send stories letters to him, some thankful, wrote than 500 people More some critical, some blistering. me write a book that will let “God, and praying, 20-year-old I I Kissed Dating I Kissed Now 29, still single and dateless in a single still 29, Now to flirt back, so men who initially had off. crushes on her backed no Breneman full of singles, church February 2018 17, • seemed to explain so clearly and persuasively seemed to explain She was a college freshman when she realized that her when she realized a college freshman She was She made her convictions clear to friends, even posting on posting even clear to friends, She made her convictions As Breneman struggled with the normal but uncomfortable, but uncomfortable, with the normal struggled As Breneman Ross wasn’t alone in her confusion. in her alone wasn’t Ross put a purity ring on 13 when her father was Breneman Jodi WORLD Magazine

Ross on her on her Ross day wedding to a proposal. She was friendly with men, but didn’t know how how know friendly with men, but didn’t She was to a proposal. away from those ideas, but they were so ingrained that they so ingrained but they were those ideas, from away her out, she felt a guy asked Whenever popped out instinctively: tantamount almost was because in her mind the request terror, dealing with a pride issue. anti-dating no longer cool. In fact, they now rules were She tried to break embarrassing. silly and sounded downright And He loves me because of that.” She felt sure God would God would She felt sure of that.” me because loves And He Despite a soulmate. her dedication with the perfect reward she was realizes now to please God, Breneman genuine desire her Facebook profile, “Thanks for asking, but I don’t date.” date.” but I don’t “Thanks for asking, profile, her Facebook of purity for setting an example her When others praised she around, sleeping friends were while her Christian do that. never so much, I would Jesus I love thought, “Yup, principles were the “highest level of purity and righteousness” level the “highest principles were to them 100 percent. adhere she would one could reach, flitter-flutter emotions of her teenage years, years, emotions of her teenage flitter-flutter Goodbye She decided that if the book’s feeling. she was everything of her church congregation. Breneman loved the ring—it was the ring—it loved Breneman congregation. of her church pride it with wore she and a heart—and a cross bearing silver, school. high through all the way her finger and watched her make an abstinence vow in front in front vow an abstinence watched her make and her finger 42 VAN DER WYNGAARD: WHITNEY L. BUCKNER/I SURVIVED I KISSED DATING GOODBYE • LATTERELL: HANDOUT T daughter and his Latterell relationships just aren’t possible. heartache, many ofthemhave concludedthatpain-free despite thebook’s goalofsaving itsreaders from relational the bookhasshapedChristian viewsondatingandmarriage. IKissedI Survived DatingGoodbye partnering onacrowd-funded documentaryfilmproject called never beenonadate. Van DerWyngaard andHarris are now until, oneday, sherealized shewas 27, still single, and had Josh Latterell, forexample, read thebookwhilegrowing what have itsformeradvocates learned?For onething, WENTY-ONE YEARS 

[email protected] everything right:He asked hisgirlfriend’s entered hisfirst relationship andtriedtodo that believed datingwas worldly. At age23he up inaMinnesotahomeschoolingcommunity

 after

@sophialeehyun I Kissed DatingGoodbye , whichwillexamine how , grace—for themselves, andeven forHarris. maybe, outofthosevoices, peoplewill findhealingand he won’t offeraquickanswer, butwillsimplylisten. And his book(see“Hindsightandhope,” p. 44).Thistime, hesays, so their stories will be that way too, whether they loved or hated and relationships are complicated,nuanced,andunique—and to repeat hisprevious mistake: He recognizes thatlife, people, the bookhascontributedtomany readers, buthedoesn’t want weapon. love God,tolove others—thebookturnsintoalegalistic counsel, strive tohonorGod. person, beseriousabouthow you pursue romance, seekwise six girlsatatimesaying you’re just “exploring.” Respect the say “Ilove you” just becauseyou’re feelinggiddy. Don’t date commitment must gotogether,” hetellstheseteenagers:Don’t him withrelationship angst andwoes. “Intimacyand points from too quicklydismissthegoodideasinbook. Goodbye says hemay have taken someprinciples in for thebook.AshelooksbacktohiscourtshipwithKatie, he believes heprobably would never have marriedhiswifeifnot from theprinciples of daughter.16-month-old deal withheartbreak. Today sheismarriedandhasa of it,becauseittaughtherhow tocommunicatewithmenand dating inherearly30s. But shesays shewouldn’t changeany heartbreak after sheabandonedhercourtshiprulesandbegan open uptothepossibilitiesofbeinghurt.” relationship: “To trulylove, you have tobevulnerable and heart intherightplaceisaguarantee ofapain-free, risk-free Harris says hisdocumentaryproject won’t undothepainthat Ly says thatwhenpeoplelosesightofthebigpicture—to Now servingasayouth pastor, Ly still preaches themain It’s nottosay thatsomerelationships haven’t benefited Donna Ross experienced herown relationship hurtand totheextreme, buthealsoworries thatpeoplewill I Kissed DatingGoodbye I Kissed DatingGoodbye February 17, 2018 February longer believes thathaving his every nightonthephone. He no 8-year-old daughterhetalksto 39-year-old church elderwithan factors intheirdivorce. Latterell believes laterbecame recognizing red flagsthat married, theydidsowithout and onhertoo.” Whenthey put somuchpressure onmyself, almost pre-marriage,” hesays. “I seriously thatinmy minditwas with marriageinmind. girlfriend’s handanddatedher time before heheldhis relationship. He waited along prayed and Wyngaard Van Der Today Latterell isa “I tooktherelationship so to the kids who come to tothekidswhocome journaled about the journaled aboutthe I Kissed Dating A • WORLD Magazine WORLD pursue her. He to permission father for . Kenneth Ly

43 WHITNEY BUCKNER - He was He trouble yourself and what you’re looking for and what you’re yourself He was a very young man asking young a very was He ? concerned about AIDS. Plus, my book my Plus, concerned about AIDS. IKDG complex. I thought I saw all these things so clearly, all these things so clearly, I thought I saw complex. What do you think the young Josh Harris missed? Looking back, how do you view the 21-year-old Josh I came up with simple solutions when Looking back now, walk with Jesus and have your heart broken. You can save can save You heart broken. your and have with Jesus walk a terrible marriage. for marriage and have yourself the same back shares everyone in assuming that simplistic have I didn’t example, For and personality. ground but a lot of people need to with the opposite sex, interacting in healthy with the opposite sex to interact date to learn how about to learn more ways, factor that in. The book didn’t in a partner. when people were still still when people were title. had a catchy Harris who wrote to call my God. I wanted to honor and wanting questions because frustrated I was to higher standards. generation pushing was group youth (including me) in my everyone need to I thought: We boundaries in relationships. physical part of our life. pursue purity and honor God in every life is very lead to certain it would a certain way, lived that if people just can you is, Truth not what the Bible teaches. that’s but results, - I

listened tolistened

valentines homeschooling , which will follow , which will follow I used to think the idea . IKDG working on a documentary project on a documentary project working Valentine’s Day, and the Christian Day, Valentine’s SophiaLee . Twenty-one years later, Harris is Harris later, years . Twenty-one by February 2018 17, • legitimate problems in modern dating. legitimate problems decades after the after decades courtship revolution courtship One, One, Lessons learned two two learned Lessons

I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye I Survived I Kissed Q&A with Joshua Harris Q&A with

EBRUARY BRINGS BRINGS EBRUARY ago left lots of writer whose advice 21 years Why? My parents and other homeschooling parents were already were and other homeschooling parents parents My You were 21You when you wrote I asked Harris why he’s making the film, how he feels and making the film, how he’s why Harris I asked

Joshua Harris—author, former senior pastor of Covenant of Covenant former senior pastor Harris—author, Joshua and hope WORLD Magazine

frustrated with the lack of specific guidelines. Two, parents Two, with the lack of specific guidelines. frustrated for something different wanted revolution the sexual from the book came out during the late 1990s, Three, their kids. where I wrote an article on dating and courtship. The response an article on dating and courtship. I wrote where wildfire. a book that caught on like so I wrote huge, was ethics felt Biblical sexual trying to uphold Christians talking about the problems of modern dating, and I of modern dating, talking about the problems Joel Belz, I became After meeting time. them for the first Christians, magazine for young own to publish my inspired make out with girls. Then when I broke up a two-year rela up a two-year Then when I broke out with girls. make I I felt I felt regret, tionship in high school, I felt convicted, this girl. had mistreated our conversation. to a teenager and wanted I was ridiculous. of courtship was Harris as he and his readers reflect on the impact of his book. on reflect as he and his readers Harris his recommend and whether he’d thinks about his book now, of edited excerpts are Here book to his teenage children. own Kissed Dating Goodbye Kissed the subject by revisiting called Life Church, and the firstborn of Christian of Christian and the firstborn Life Church, famous for most still and Sono Harris—is pioneers Gregg book, best-selling a wrote something he did at age 21: He unsent has revised his thinking. unsent has revised

F Hindsight 44 WHITNEY L. BUCKNER/I SURVIVED I KISSED DATING GOODBYE intentionality canbetaken toofar, towhere peoplecanputthe relationships, especiallyinthemodernworld. Ilearnedthat the puritymovement? my book’s role init.Whatare thestrengths andweaknesses of evangelicalism hasapproached datingandrelationships, and The ideawas to process whathashappenedsince dating. (Oneof themwas the letters, reread I asked a over 500letters. website asked for used asaweapon against me.” Iapologized,andlateronmy affected them.A woman wrote on Twitter, “Your book was There, me tolisten andnotfeellike Ihave tohave alltheanswers. attend Regent CollegeinVancouver, whichcreated aspacefor started afamily, pastored achurch for17years. I gottired ofbeingtheguywhowrote identity—it was themost successfulthingI’d ever done. Then received positive feedback.It becameabigpartofmy book. Iwas proud andexcited thatitreached peopleand gone through different stages of my relationship withthat community and recognize there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.’ there’s one-size-fits-all no recognize and community thinking Idon’t issue, want this to fall Irevisit Even into as now of trap the ‘ People latch promises. and on for to simple movements answers What did you learn? you did What Reading through thoseletterswas emotionallyexhausting. Two years ago, Idecidedtostep down from pastoring and Why? this. about adocumentary on working You’re fellow students toldmehow my bookhadnegatively professor toturnthisintoaguidedstudy. Iread all this personal stories about IKDG is the real the answer. is We need to go to humbly a God as Ifeltthe , andread various bookson True LoveDates complexity ofdating IKDG IKDG —I like thatbook.) . Imoved on, ’s impact.Igot IKDG modern modern Dale Kuehne for Jessica Van Der Wyngaard films Harris (center) and , how I’ve I Survived IKissed Dating Goodbye fix thingsandit’s toolateinmany ways, butIthinkit’s the responsibility is tolisten andhonoreachstory. Iknow itcan’t back andforthbetween beingcrushedanddefensive. say my bookhasharmedthem,Ifeelalotofsadness. Iswing and bad.It’s beenanemotionalroller coaster. Whenpeople long toseelong-term consequencesofthebook,bothgood comprehend theimpactofbookuntilnow. It’s taken this and recognize there’s approach. noone-size-fits-all real answer. We needtogoGodhumblyasa issue, Idon’t want tofallintothetrap ofthinking for simpleanswers andpromises. Even now asIrevisit this don’t dowell withcomplexity. People latchontomovements higher standard. We thinkifit’s radical, it’s gottabegood.We Christians toahigherstandard. It’s hard toargue against a environment, away from publicscrutiny. single peopletogetknow otherpeopleinamore relaxed when therelationship doesn’t work out.It makes ithard for to marry? With suchtremendous pressure, it’s devastating relationship underamicroscope: Is thisthepersonI’mgoing healthy way? Ihopeitwillbringsomemeasure ofclosure for how dowe Christians acknowledge thatandprocess thatina churches: Obviously we are goingtokeep makingmistakes, so right thingtodo,sparkconversations inour andIhopeit’ll How do you think this documentary will help? will documentary this think you do How readers. old of alot to talking You’ve been IKDG was popularbecauseitwas radical andcalledyoung February 17, 2018 February .

that needstobefixed. good thing, notacurse tionship. Singlenessisa or notyou’re inarela a humanbeing, whether that you’re completeas loving othersselflessly, your relationships, of putting Christ first in IKDG dating. Istill like in intentional about that atsomepointbe would still tellthem and know themselves. I them toknow others relationships thatallow to have healthy dating own kids, Iwant them cutter model.With my that it’s notacookie- but we recognize now we did.It worked forus, to courtexactly theway wouldn’t adviseourkids wife andIprobably kids? your teenage recommend hurt by my book. grieve thatpeoplewere me. But I’llalways Would you the principle of theprincipleof • WORLD Magazine WORLD community community I didn’t this Part ofmy IKDG is the isthe to to My My - A

45 FEATURES This is the second story in a series about Christians born in the 1980s and ’90s in Chengdu, China, and how their faith influences their lives and livelihoods. I visited four of the millennials mentioned in “Taking the narrow path” (April 1, 2017) seven months after our original interview to see how they were doing now and added a new character, Zheng Xianghuang (the seminarian). The believers all attend Early Rain Reformed Church and represent the next generation of leaders in the Chinese urban church.

THE PRO-LIFER Slices of pork, straw mushroom, and fish balls swim in a bubbling pot of Sichuan peppercorn and hot chili oil at the center of our table, as I chat with Jonny Fan and his wife, Xiang Meng. As we use chopsticks to fish out the cooked meats and vegetables, the newlyweds discuss the joys and struggles of their 5-month-old marriage as well as Fan’s work in pro-life ministry. For the past five years, Fan has led one of the country’s first grassroots pro-life ministries at Early Rain, handing out flyers on Children’s Day urging pregnant women not to abort, holding signs outside local hospitals (where abortions typically happen), penning a denominationwide statement affirming the sanctity of life, and helping women dealing with unplanned pregnancies. Lately more good news: The ministry is working with a government-run project called Post-Abortion Care (PAC), which works in hospitals to educate abortion-minded women about their other options before entering the operating room. If a woman decides to go through with the procedure, PAC teaches her how to prevent future pregnancies. Created in 2011, PAC reflects the government’s desire to decrease the number of abortions in order to prevent a demographic crisis. Yet few doctors take part in the project because they don’t make money from the counseling. This provides an opening for Fan and his pro-life team to step into the hospital and volunteer. Fan and the other group members all have full-time jobs and devote free time to pro-life work, but Fan has started raising money to create a pro-life organization that would provide resources for churches to start their own pro-life ministries and create a safe house for mothers. Once his contract at Early Rain ends in February, he wants to devote all his time to the Jonny Fan and his organization, which would not be registered due to the sensitive wife, Xiang Meng nature of religious groups. Chinese Christian millennials are living out the challenges and opportunities of Christian life in

the communist country by JUNE CHENG | photos by Jiang Zhongming STILL TAKING THE NARROW PATH

46 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 Fan admits he doesn’t have experience starting a nonprofit The cross demolitions in his hometown were ultimately but sees this as the necessary next step. “We are unique in that good for the church, Zheng says, because they revealed the we didn’t first have the organization and then start working,” government’s true intentions. Without the cross demolitions, Fan said. “This NGO didn’t start out with professionals, but house churches might have acceded to attempts to get them to grew up from the ground up with ordinary Christians passion- register with the government. But now, he said, “even ate about this issue.” Three-Self churches know working with the government is a Fan wants to raise $20,000 to pay for his salary, administra- bad thing, it’s selling out Christ.” He’s talked to many Three-Self tive costs, and translated materials. And if he can’t reach that pastors in Wenzhou who plan to leave the government system. amount by February? “Then I’ll have to find other work,” he Attending Early Rain, Zheng is constantly amazed at how said. much freedom house churches currently have compared with other countries in the world: He’s currently attending the THE SEMINARIAN I sat nervously at a hipster coffee shop Chengdu presbytery’s unregistered seminary and mentoring as 23-year-old Zheng Xianghuang spoke openly about taboo the first class of college students at its new unregistered liberal subjects: The Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese arts college. Communist Party brainwashing its citizens, and the possible crackdown coming for house churches. Although we sat in a private room, I kept glancing around, afraid someone would Zheng Xianghuang overhear our conversation over the whir of the coffee grinder. While most young people in China try to stay away from the topic of politics, Zheng is an anomaly. The apathy of his peers traces back to the tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square in 1989, silencing the student democracy movement with gunfire, Zheng noted. The result: An entire generation conditioned to keep its head down and focus on earning money, and parents passed that fear down to their children. Zheng’s family was no different. He grew up in Wenzhou, the most Christian city in China with more than 1 million believers. Zheng is a sixth-generation Christian, yet the persecution of the Cultural Revolution weakened his grandparents’ faith, and his parents did not attend church. Zheng professed Christ after a friend brought him to Sunday school in middle school, and he found the Bible so compelling that he returned week after week. Still, it wasn’t until he left the government-sanctioned Three-Self church, moved to Chengdu, and heard Pastor Wang Yi preach that he realized Christianity affected all aspects of his life, his country, and the world. Zheng felt convicted about the Chinese government’s encroachment on religion, believing “our soul is God’s … this is something that the secular government should not have control over.” And when the government tries to take control of the church “we need to follow our faith and tell the government where their limit is.” Zheng experienced this firsthand in 2015, when Wenzhou officials traveled more than 1,000 miles to his front door in Chengdu after a picture he posted of Christians protesting cross demolitions in Wenzhou went viral on WeChat. Netizens shared his post more than a thousand times before government censors wiped it off the site and disabled his account. At his apartment, officials asked him to promise not to post any more sensitive photos, yet Zheng countered that he would do what- ever his faith required him to do. STILL TAKING THE NARROW PATH

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 47 THE TEACHER The past year has been one of uncertainty closed those doors, she realized that God wanted her to stay and for Grace Guo, as she contemplated how best to pursue her goal face the problems at hand. of becoming an English teacher. She considered studying “It shattered the idol that I had turned my church into in my Christian education overseas, took classes at the presbytery’s heart,” Guo said. She says that while she’s hurt, she’s “learning graduate program, and applied to local Christian schools. Yet not to follow people but to follow God.” She’s found herself none of the options panned out until a church friend recom- viewing the church more objectively, more cognizant of the sin mended she apply to a job as a one-on-one Chinese tutor for in church leaders, congregants, and herself. This is one positive foreigners. Although she had no experience teaching Chinese, that the split has brought, Guo noted: greater spiritual maturity she agreed and was accepted. within this young church. What she didn’t realize was that most of the staff at the In asking what advice she’d give to a fellow believer going tutoring center are Christians, and many of the students are through this type of situation, Guo responded, “I would tell foreigners pursuing ministry in China. Guo started her job a them to lean on Christ and pray to Him. … Fix your eyes on week before our meeting and excitedly told me that by teaching Christ, not on man. If you fix your eyes on man, you will be her students Chinese, she was also helping them reach the disappointed.” Chinese with the gospel. Spiritually, things have been difficult for Guo. Since she first THE PHOTOGRAPHER Jiang Zhongming admits the church started attending Early Rain in 2012, her life revolved around split hurt his faith: “It’s like when parents get a divorce: The ones her church. Yet in the past year, the church went through a most affected are the children.” Rather than choose between messy split over differences in personality and vision that the two congregations, he’s attending church less frequently as resulted in two church branches, one led by Pastor Wang Yi and his work has become more demanding. The college Bible study another by Pastor Wang Huasheng (no relation). Accusations that used to meet in his office moved elsewhere as Jiang doesn’t flew, friendships ended, and congregants had to choose sides. regularly attend its branch of the church. “At first, I couldn’t accept it because I thought the church I met Jiang in his office, where he had spent the night in a was a family,” Guo said. “It happened out of the blue and I felt built-in bedroom in the loft. A tabby wandered around the helpless and alarmed—I didn’t know what to do.” Many room, jumping onto the kitchen bar where we drank cups of congregants, who had first heard the gospel at Early Rain, felt green tea. Since our last meeting, the cat had grown bigger and similar shock: How could this happen when the church had the so had Jiang’s family photography business, Family Diary. More right doctrine and one of the most well-known pastors in Chinese people are getting interested in authentic family China? Guo wanted to run away rather than deal with the split, photography taken in the home, which Family Diary specializes so she tried to continue her education overseas. But when God in, a stark contrast to the typical posed photos. Family Diary

Grace Guo Jiang Zhongming

48 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 PHOTOS BY JIANG ZHONGMING  said. “Theworldview heexpresses isabsurdist, nihilistic, that recently committed suicideafterstruggling withdepression. tions, are wildlypopular. Ren was thesameageasJiang and Ren Hang, whichdepictnudebodiesplacedininhumanforma photographs or dark,hollow ones. For instance, thephotosof Chinese society. Young peopleeitherwant shallow, pretty considering gettingtraining asacounselorhimself. Christian counselorshecouldrefer thesecouplestoandiseven enter intostrangers’ homes. He’s lookingforsomeprofessional wants todomore, asherealizes he’s inauniquepositionto Eggerichs’ either GaryChapman’s growing upinthistypeofenvironment. around andwondered how thingswould turnoutforhim every singleday. Jiang looked attheir adorable toddlerrunning client were alone, sheconfidedinhimconsidersdivorce with herandtheir2-year-old son.LaterwhenJiang andthe family, yet atherhomehusbandrefused tobeinthephotos disheartening. Recently aclientasked Jiang tophotograph her fakeness.” is fake,” Jiang said.“So I’malready fedupwiththattypeof up inwas very fake: Ourhistory isfake, everything we encounter members. family photosandcapture therelationship between family also trains bothprofessionals andamateurstotake theirown [email protected] Looking atthephotos, “thefeelingisuncomfortable,” Jiang Jiang believes thetrends heseesreflect an emptinessin After eachsession,Jiang gives hisclientsaChristian book, Yet whatheseeswhenwalks intothesehomesisoften “I don’t like thefakeness becausetheenvironment we grew Love andRespect  The Five LoveLanguages @WORLD_mag tohelptheirmarriage. Yet Jiang or Emerson orEmerson Li Xiaolan - faith, asfewofhercompany’s 250employees are Christians. CEO down tothejanitor. Thegiftsleadtoconversations about verses, plates, andsoforth—toeveryone inthecompany from the Christian gifts—plastic cross keychains, calendarswithBible shares thegospelatwork. Every Christmas, shegives small evangelism. Thensheperksup, talkingnonstop abouthow she they start toaskquestions.” anytime besidesSunday because I’llbeinchurch then.’ Then someone abusinesscard andtellthem,‘You cancallme plastic stools outsidealocaleatery. “All you needtodoisgive co-workers, andbosses. saleswoman, seesthisevery day assheinteracts withclients, Chinese citizenmore interested inChristianity. LiXiaolan,a focused onmaterialwealth alsoseemstomake theaverage young peoplelike.” man asvalued andhonored.” man canbedeconstructed. Ontheotherhand,Christians see that auditorium.”that “This was probably thefirst time hymns were played inside allowing metodothisforHiskingdom,” Lisaid.Shelaughed: the entire process Ifeltvery peaceful … Ibelieve Godwas play, more thanforany otherperformancethatnight.“During heard thecrowd eruptinginapplausefour timesthroughout the wondering how itwould bereceived. To heramazement, she night. off thoughtit would turn outtobethebest performanceofthe excited abouttheplay. Theemceewhohadearlierwrittenher included three hymns, andtheactorsstarted gettingmore performance. At dress rehearsal, Liaddedinthemusic,which didn’t show upforrehearsal untiltwo days before the “The First Love Letter,” was ontheprogram. friends withLiurged them toincludeit,andtheplay, titled think it’d beentertainingenough.Yet amanager whowas Originally, theevent organizers rejected Li’s play, astheydidn’t company, butwithaddedmusic,props, andbackdrops. later, sheleftthecompany afterrefusing topay bribes. God fortheopportunitytoshare theBiblestory. But months directing aplay, herco-workers were moved, andLithanked had heard before. Even thoughitwas Li’s first timewritingand account andAdam andEve’s fall,stories fewinhercompany year, 15co-workers tookthestage actingoutthecreation the company’s annualChineseNew Year celebration. Thefirst by puttingon10-minute skitsdepictingGenesis1to3during reading theBible. co-worker still sendsLiselfiesofherselfdoingafacialand could alsohave aBible. Even afterleaving thecompany, the co-worker asked abouttheencounterandthenasked ifshe encouraging him tofindtheanswers inthetext.a Later She pulledacopy oftheBiblefrom herpurseandgave ittohim, hall andbeganpepperingherwithquestions aboutChristianity. THE SALESWOMAN Once, thechairmanofhercompany foundherinthe dining Li issoft-spoken andquietuntilthetopicturnsto “Evangelism iseasy,” Litoldmeaswe satonuncomfortable Jiang paused,thenadded:“Yet theseare thephotosthat The nightoftheshow, Listood backstage, nervously But then theco-workers whohadagreed toactintheskit This year shedecided toputonthesameplay forhernew For thepast two years, she’s madeherfaitheven more public A

The hollowness created by asociety February 17, 2018 February • WORLD Magazine WORLD 49 FEATURES

Mississippi turning A new civil rights museum reflects a state grappling with a history of violent racism by KIM HENDERSON

n a dog day of summer in iconic images that helped awaken America from 1955, Chicago native Emmett its civil rights stupor. Till walked into Bryant’s Rousing Mississippi took longer. The new Grocery, a simple mom-andmuseum provides proof of that, not only in the pop storefront similar to a timeline of painful events it depicts, but also in its hundred others dotting the difficult road toward construction. Although state South at that time. But residents tried for years to establish a civil rights Bryant’s would not remain obscure. Till’s fateful museum, money was always a problem. When Oencounter there put a small, deep-Delta town state officials became convinced that telling the called Money on the map and Mississippi in the tragic history was necessary and could also attract international spotlight. tourist dollars, the ball finally got rolling. As news of the young African-American’s bru- Haley Barbour was governor in 2011 when tal murder spread, a movement galvanized. The Mississippi lawmakers approved the first bonds Hospitality State became ground zero for much of (eventually totaling more than $90 million) for its activities, garnering a reputation for racial the civil rights museum and a twin state history strife that became the stuff of Hollywood movies museum. Together they cover a space the size of like Mississippi Burning and A Time to Kill. 3½ football fields. Barbour believes the action Now, six decades later, Mississippi has opened represented a seismic shift in attitude: “It said our the nation’s only state-operated civil rights political leadership—overwhelmingly Republican museum. Inside, Gallery Four focuses on Till’s when most of this money was approved—thought story. It features the worn doors from Bryant’s it was important that our history be studied, and Grocery as well as photographs—blown up larger that it’s important for us to expose our children than life—from the 14-year-old’s funeral. Their and grandchildren to it.” sepia tones stretch from eye level to soaring ceiling, On a local level, supervisors in Tallahatchie allowing visitors no escape from the sight of Till’s County reached a similar conclusion. While childish face or his mother’s anguished one, brainstorming ways to increase revenue, someone

50 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 Mississippi turning Mississippi grappling withahistory ofviolentracism A new civilrights museum reflects astate

TOM BECK/MISSISSIPPI CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM house thatlooks muchasitdidinthe1950s. string ofDeltabusinesses. of thetrial,theirfamilieshadclosed orsoldtheir for Bryant andMilamevaporated. Within ayear made nullby doublejeopardy conditions. Support magazine publishedtheirjarring confessions, acquitted them.Just fourmonthslater, five days oftestimony, anall-white, all-male jury ing hisbodyintheTallahatchie River. Following weighed down withacottonginfanbefore dump with murdering Till,whomtheybeat,shot,and charged Roy Bryant andJ.W. Milam,bothwhite, licized 1955trialinSumner, isugly. Prosecutors “racial reconciliation beginsby tellingthetruth.” formal apology, includingadeclaration that community leadersoffereda theTillfamily the courthousewalls. Duringa2007ceremony, silence concerningwhathadhappenedwithin community ofSumner broke ahalf-century courthouse restoration began,butnotbefore the courthouse.two-story Soonafterthatmeeting, a Emmett Till’s accusedmurderers tookplaceinits tourism potential:Thetrialandacquittalof suggested thetown ofSumner (pop. 316) had Today, visitors toSumner can touracourt Truth telling, whenitcomestothehighlypub Look

- - - seven hours ofbatterylife, whichis more thanI along Broadway Street, shejokes thevehicle “has global electricmotorcar. Drivingthenovelty business sheoperates from thevinyl seatsofa rarely heard the slave sideofthecity’s story. on theMississippiRiver. Until recently, they draped Natchez, theoldest continuoussettlement spend more than$110 millioninSpanish-moss- palatable pagesofhistory. Tourists eachyear community isalsolearningtobankonitsless forged anequalpartnership toopenthebusiness. tion owner andablackfemalerestaurant manager beleaguered town toprosper. A whitemaleplanta as proof thatrebuilt trust isallowing theonce- civil rightsmovement.” He citestheSumner Grille stand that thetragedy led tothebeginningof think aboutEmmettTill.We want themtounder perspectives: “The ideaistoreframe how people Director Patrick Weems says thegoalischanged the street helpsvisitorsprocess whattheysee. in anearby shed. Anewinterpretive center across swiveling juryseats, andoriginalwindows found meticulously restored thebannister railing, 12 Using newsreel footageforreference, craftsmen Sally Durkinowns OpenAirTours, aNatchez Two hundred milessouthofSumner, another February 17, 2018 February - - (above) Emmett Tillexhibit Rights Museum (left); Mississippi Civil the heart of the with natural lightin A soaring space filled • WORLD Magazine WORLD 51 can say for myself.” That type of candor is good for also drives his van across town to the old Forks in business, and it doesn’t hurt that Durkin’s lineage the Road Slave Market, a spot most other guides runs six generations deep in Natchez soil. The neglect. 45-minute script she recites for customers is more It’s easy to miss. Without markers, the grassy than just local lore. Even so, she says most tourists knoll that once housed the second-largest slave aren’t surprised when they stop at the home of market in the then-Southwest could easily fade William Johnson, a freed slave who later owned into anonymity beside its modern neighbors, slaves of his own: “People who come to Natchez Solar Eclipse Window Tinting and a Kingdom usually have some sort of history buff hidden in Hall of Jehovah Witnesses. According to Houston, antebellum mansion Monmouth, in plain view across the street, keeps things in focus: “Customers have mixed emotions at the Forks. I take them to the three-way point into the city of Natchez, then we walk the path where enslaved people—some carrying babies—walked in chains. I tell them what went on here. I explain that the motto was ‘Buy more negroes to raise more cotton to buy more negroes.’” The experience sells. Houston says European tourists, as well as those from Australia, “love it.” Other guides have since followed Houston’s lead, adding an African-American heritage angle to their packages. But some Mississippians question the push to rebrand past struggles as tourism products. Radio talk show host Kim Wade, who is black, believes such a focus tends to profit Ellie Dahmer (right), them, so they already know a lot. They still want some at the expense of others: “Civil rights is an wife of slain civil rights to hear about fluttering fans and rustling silks, industry here just like the blues industry or the leader Vernon Dahmer, though. How the wealth was acquired has, in the catfish industry. There seems to be a concerted visits the Mississippi past, not often been mentioned or discussed.” effort by some type of invisible hand to constantly Civil Rights Museum. But that attitude is changing. While planning revisit the physical harm and degradation of the for the city’s tricentennial in 2016, Natchez officials Jim Crow and slavery eras. Not to discount it and embraced what Durkin describes as a developing say it didn’t happen, but dwelling on it keeps peo- dimension of the city’s overall tourism product: ple angry and unable to move to the next level.” African-American heritage. Wade understands anger. During his 1979 Slavery swelled during Mississippi’s territorial graduation from Morehouse College, he fell cap- period, and by the time President James Monroe tive to the words of the commencement speaker, provided the pen strokes necessary for statehood Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Wade in 1817, slaves made up more than a third of the population. By 1860, the numbers for Natchez were even higher: 71 percent. “It’s important that the stories ‘It’s important that the stories of people of African descent be told by people who look like me. of people of I give my customers truth, not African descent myth,” says Jeremy Houston, 30, co-owner of Miss Lou Heritage be told by people Group and Tours. His Natchez tour includes Zion Chapel A.M.E. who look like me.’ Church, where Hiram Revels, the —Jeremy Houston first black man to serve in the U.S. Congress, ministered. Houston

52 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 DAHMER: ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP • HOUSTON: HANDOUT • JENNINGS: KIM HENDERSON  The Washington Post And thenthere isthenewcivilrightsmuseum elects more blackofficialsthan any other state. assassinated activist Medger Evers. Mississippi Jackson hasrenamed itsairportinmemoryof James Vardaman K. gets69mentions. rides don’t rate amention.Segregationist Gov. dated socialstudies textbooks inwhichfreedom all ofthestate’s 148 schooldistricts rely onout Hechinger Report andReveal shows thatnearly been sluggish.Research conductedby the the meansnecessarytoreach thosestandards has education standards foritsschools, butproviding of thefirst inthenationtoinstitute civilrights teaches itshistory. In2011,thestate becameone rights sagamay ultimatelyhingeonhow it says Wade. for itforever. There shouldbeanendgamehere,” were injustices, butnobodyshouldbeheldhostage whip puttotheirbacks. Theinjustices ofthepast haven’t picked onepieceofcotton orhadone the faceofallthisopportunity, even thoughthey what needstohappentoday. Ourkidsare angryin focus onhisopportunities, notanger. “That’s Roots faith ofhisfamily. table ofhate”before returning totheChristian says hespenthisnext years “dining atthebanquet everyone isourneighbor.” a different legacy: “We are doingourbest to love Godwithallourhearts and to love ourneighbors asourselves. We believe that believe prejudice hasnoplace inthat.” Jamaican, Chinese, Peruvian, Thai,Indonesian.That’s because themessage conveyed inourpulpitisthegospel isfor everyone. We to thearea hesays was once predominantly white: “We haven’t always hadamulticultural church, butwe donow—white, black, a suburban church located less than2milesfrom hischildhoodhome.Inrecent years alarge medicalpresence hasbrought diversity who isdifferent from me.” worship style.We need to have theattitude that even ifit’s not my preference, Iwant to joininworship withmy brother orsister list.” Still, hesees theworth ofintentional outreach. “Thehiccup inMississippi oranywhere isanatural proclivity toward acertain moved to Mississippi in2014: “For me,it’s not so muchaboutethnicity asitisaboutdoctrine.That was thenumberonethingonour Hispanic inaheartbeat, butwe aren’t going to change ourstructure to prove something isnot anissue,” says Steelman. Brown, Inolonger view thevoluntary segregation ofpeople onSunday morningasunhealthy. Ourchurch willaccept anAngloora [email protected] Changing attitudes, though,are evident. Reaching anendgameinMississippi’s civil He tellsofwatching thetelevision miniseries Ham thinksMississippi’s civilrights history makes thestate aneasy target for those who want to pointfingers. Hehopes to leave For some congregations, physical setting isabig factor intheintegration equation. Kiley Hamserves onstaff at Colonial Heights, Although Jennings enjoyed beingpart ofamulticultural church inSeattle, hisfamily didn’t purposefully seek oneoutwhenthey withhisgrandmother andheradviceto calls“a gamechanger.”  @WORLD_mag —K.H. racism. slow pace ofintegration inMississippi churches ismore aboutworship andpreaching stylesthan 11,000-member church. ship at Southaven’s Brown Missionary Baptist Church. Steelman istheonlywhite minister at the former Seattle Seahawks cornerback, isblack. Hiscongregation isprimarilywhite. preached at Providence Baptist Church inClinton, Miss., where heserves asanelder. Jennings, a The day Mississippi officiallymarked 200 years asa state wasa Sunday, and No place for prejudice “People have traditions andpreferences that have nothing to dowithhate. After beingat Both Jennings andSteelman acknowledge theirsituations aren’t typical,butthey believe the At theopposite endofthestate, Stephen Steelman was fulfilling his role as pastor ofdisciple - want himtobeapartofthenew Mississippi.” When shespoke, she hadnotrace of adrawl. “We the blanket covering son,Guider. her18-month-old raise himhere,” Gray said,bending to straighten ribbon cuttingtobegin.“We consciouslychoseto back andforthasshetoowaited forthemuseum’s young motherCatherineGray rocked astroller racists firebombed thefamilyhome. Vernon’s 1958Ford F100pickup, burnedwhen museum exhibits: bullet-ridden piecesof widow contributedsomething significantto rights leaderVernon Dahmer. Thelongtime Dahmer said,referring toherhusband,slaincivil ceremony.three hoursearlyfortheribbon-cutting tennial celebration—looming behindher. Shewas ums—the centerpieceofMississippi’s 2017bicen in apatchofsunlight,theoutlinenewmuse surprise snow fell.ThatmorningEllieDahmer sat the day themuseumsopenedafter6inchesof or anyone elseapassonthisBiblicalcommand.” to forgive. Injustices ofthepast never give blacks admonishes usaboutholdinggrudgesandfailing “We allhave sininourhearts, andScripture determine whetherthepartiesinvolved are sincere: believes thekey toresolving lingeringissuesisto tensions? Is itenoughtofinallyquellthe state’s racial Not farfrom Dahmer’s spot inthesunlight, “I’m emotional,butIhadtocomeforhim,” In arare twist, thelandofcottonwas whiteon Kim Wade says that’s nottherightquestion. He February 17, 2018 February A - - Kelly Jennings • WORLD Magazine WORLD

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Lifestyle The one-stop wedding shop TAIWAN’S HUNSHA WEDDING SHOPS PROVIDE GORGEOUS DRESSES— PLUS EVERYTHING ELSE by Angela Lu in Taipei, Taiwan

On a sweltering obeying the direction of the The street is host to rows of vendors, hours of scanning R summer day with a photographer. hunsha stores, comprehen- Pinterest for do-it-yourself heat index of 110 degrees Shan-Chih Hall, a replica sive wedding photo shops ideas, and purchases of Fahrenheit, a man and a of the Rotunda at the that include dress rentals, expensive dresses the bride woman in formal attire University of Virginia, is a hair and makeup artists, and bridesmaids will wear posed on the steps of popular spot for engage- and even wedding favors. only once, couples in Shan-Chih Hall in Tatung ment photos here in Taipei. While planning a wedding Taiwan need only choose a University. The train of the That’s not only because of in America typically package at a local hunsha young woman’s blue gown its Roman columns and requires a hunt for multiple shop and find a venue. The fanned behind her as her domed top, but because of rest is taken care of. fiancé—perhaps near heat its close proximity to Yet today hunsha stores A couple poses for wedding exhaustion in his three- “wedding shop street” on photos at Yangmingshan face a shrinking customer

HUANG XIAOYONG/XINHUA HUANG piece suit—held her waist, Zhongshan North Road. Park in Taipei. base due to demographic

Visit WORLD Digital: wng.org February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 55 NOTEBOOK Lifestyle

realities: The average marrying age in Taiwan is 29.7 for women and 32 for men, nearly three years older than American couples. With older couples less likely to have multiple children, and some having none at all, Taiwan has the world’s third-lowest fertility rate—1.1 births per woman. Meanwhile, traditional hunsha stores face new competition from boutiques and freelancers who stress customization. All along Zhongshan North Road’s wedding shop street, mannequins show off rhinestone-studded wedding dresses in display windows, as photo albums Staff of a wedding shop assist She made additional and also opened a four-story propped open on stands on a photo shoot in Taipei. trips to Grace Wedding to photography studio nearby. outside entice passersby to pick bridesmaid dresses, a Only You faces fierce take a peek at the photog- tuxedo for Daniel, and flower girl dress, and her competition from other rapher’s style. The photos three gowns and a wedding own wedding dress and hunsha stores, and from typically fall into two dress for Eline. gown for the reception. newcomers: Many studios camps—soft, ethereal shots The day of the shoot, The day of the wedding, now focus exclusively on of the couple surrounded Pun arrived at 6 a.m. to the hunsha shop provided a taking photos, without all by nature or dramatic, prepare her hair and makeup and hair stylist and the offerings of a hunsha highly saturated shots of makeup, then hired a cab a bouquet for the bride. shop. This gives clients the the bride in a ball gown, to transport everyone, Total cost: $2,300. flexibility to pick and veil whipping in the including the photographer But while hunsha choose what they like about (man-made) wind. and a hair stylist (who packages may sound like a several different vendors, Eline Pun, an English changed the bride’s look blessing for weary rather than buying the teacher who got married in for each outfit), to each American fiancées, as I more rigid—though December 2016, bought her location. After a long day of walk past these shops, most convenient—packages. wedding package from posing, they returned to look largely empty. Some In order to stay Grace Wedding, a small the studio at 6 p.m. are boarded up with graffiti competitive, Feng said Only shop tucked into a nearby “The whole day was on the walls, the color You has started to unbundle side alley. The arrangement dedicated to making fading from ads featuring its products to give its involved multiple visits: memories,” said Pun. “You happy couples. Rising rents customers the ability to First she and her then- get to go to places that and a declining customer customize. It’s also catering fiancé, Daniel, discussed mean a lot to you and you base seem largely to blame. to local tastes: The new with the photographer the get to try on different “The low birthrate is a four-story indoor studio locations for their wedding outfits, so it was really fun.” problem,” said Mei Feng, has backdrops of a Great photo shoot—six different The couple’s package a manager at Only You Gatsby–style living room, a locations meaningful to included 30 edited photos, Studios. “Now women Victorian-style parlor, and

their relationship, such as a photo album, a scroll for don’t feel the need to get a flower-covered wall. SAM YEH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES the café where Daniel wedding guests to sign, a married.” The result: Only “It’s just a matter of proposed, plus an indoor framed photo, and cards for You sits next to six vacant what portion of the market studio. (In Taiwan, wedding guests to take home. Pun storefronts. Despite a share you can get,” Feng photos are taken months noted the photographer also decline in business, Feng said in the upbeat tone of a before the actual wedding.) touched up their pictures said her store was doing seasoned saleswoman. They then picked out their to get rid of blemishes and well overall. It recently “There’ll always be people photo shoot outfits—a trim their figures. moved into a larger space getting married.” A

56 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 Give the gift of clarity: wng.org/giftofclarity NOTEBOOK Science

company headquartered in New York City, could assist in the design Home-grown of cancer-fighting viruses. They said it could also aid development of a safer and more effective smallpox vaccine smallpox? to protect the public in the event of DISEASE EXPERTS WORRY a bioterrorist attack. But those answers didn’t satisfy critics, who NEWLY PUBLISHED RESEARCH countered that safe smallpox vaccines WILL SPARK THE GROWTH OF already exist. BIOTERRORISM by Julie Borg PLOS One said a journal committee unanimously agreed that the benefits of publishing the study outweighed The advent of the World Wide Health Assembly declared eradicated the risks. But Inglesby said that such R Web nearly 30 years ago opened in 1980. The new microbe even repro- research should require approval from the door to a whole new world of infor- duced and infected cells, according to national and global health authorities. mation. That information included a study the scientists published Jan. 19 Currently, no such requirement exists: instructions for just about every do-it- in the journal PLOS One. “This ought to be a wake-up call for yourself project you can imagine. The research has alarmed experts science agencies and governments.” Today, people can even obtain DNA around the world who fear that pub- Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense sequences online and use them to lishing the study gives terrorists a do- expert at George Mason University in build viruses. Two virologists at the it-yourself manual to reconstruct the Arlington, Va., told Science the University of Alberta in Canada did smallpox virus. “The world is now research does not pose an immediate just that. They ordered bits of DNA more vulnerable to smallpox,” Tom threat because the horsepox virus from a virus that causes horsepox in Inglesby, director of the Center for does not sicken humans. But, he horses and used them to create a Health Security at Johns Hopkins warned, eventually other labs will microorganism akin to the one that University, told Science magazine. adopt the researchers’ technique and causes smallpox, the life-threatening The researchers said their work, learn how to recreate smallpox, posing infectious disease that the World funded by Tonix, a pharmaceutical “a huge vulnerability.”

AGAINST GRAVITY Researchers at the University of Bristol have devel- MATTERS OF SECURITY oped sound wave technology that could make it The Pentagon released a National Defense Strategy in possible to levitate large objects. Engineers already January that, for the first time in 10 years, does not list man- use twisting tractor beams of sound waves to levi- made global warming as a security threat and avoids the tate and control solids, liquids, and even small term “climate change.” insects. But until now scientists could levitate only In 2008 the Bush administration added global warming objects smaller than the sound beam’s wavelength: to the defense strategy, and the Obama administration sub- Larger objects spin out of control and eventually sequently ratcheted the issue to top priority. But President eject from the beam. Donald Trump’s administration has taken a different In a study published in Physical Review Letters on perspective: His National Security Strategy, released in Jan. 22, researchers discovered that by rapidly December, acknowledged that the developing world will changing the twisting require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to direction of the power their economies and lift people out of poverty. —J.B. sound waves, they could increase the size of the tractor beam’s core, allowing it to hold objects up to four times larger than previously possible. The discovery may make it possible to manipulate drug cap- sules or microsurgical implements within

SMALLPOX: EVERETT BY HISTORICA/SHUTTERSTOCK • POWER PLANT: FREDER/ISTOCK • TRACTOR BEAMS: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL the body. —J.B.

February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 57 NOTEBOOK Sports

Fletcher Nordic combined: Cancer survivor Bryan Fletcher is a sentimental favorite in this sport that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing. Pushing him will be his younger brother Taylor, a two-time Olympian. Women’s hockey: Gigi Marvin, a Christian who is outspoken about her faith (see “Competing with a smile,” May 17, 2014), is among several returning U.S. players who settled for silver in the past two Olympic finals. The 2014 loss especially hurt: Team USA blew a two-goal lead before losing to Canada— winner of the past four gold medals—in overtime. Team USA expects another grudge match against its powerhouse northern neighbor in this year’s final. Figure skating: Favorites and In ladies’ singles, Karen Chen,

Mirai Nagasu, IMAGES EHRMANN/GETTY MIKE • MARVIN: LOCHER/AP JOHN • JACKSON: IMAGES STOCKMAN/GETTY MATTHEW FLETCHER: underdogs and Bradie A PREVIEW OF THE WINTER OLYMPICS by Ray Hacke Tennell aim to end a U.S. medal drought that has Here’s a look at some of the ath- spending just four months training on spanned two R letes, events, and storylines ice. Jackson could make history again Olympics, which worth watching at this year’s Winter by claiming a medal in the women’s hasn’t happened Olympics in Pyeongchang, 500-meter final on Feb. 18. since the 1936 South Korea. The games Bobsled: This sport is fertile and 1948 will begin on Feb. 8 and ground for feel-good underdog stories. Games. On the continue through Feb. 25. Following in the sled trails of the 1988 men’s side, Marvin Alpine skiing: Lindsey Jamaican men’s team, which inspired Nathan Chen and Vonn, who has more World the hit Disney movie Cool Runnings, Vincent Zhou are vying to win a Cup victories (78) than any are three women from singles medal. Chris Knierim and his female skier in history, sparked Nigeria: Driver Seun wife, Alexa, will represent the United controversy in December when Adigun and brake- States in pairs. she told CNN that “I hope to rep- women Akuoma Men’s hockey: For the first time resent the people of the United Omeoga and Ngozi since 1994, the National Hockey States, not the president,” at the Onwumere will League is not suspending its season so games. Vonn injured her back dur- become the first players can represent their countries ing a Super-G race in Switzerland bobsledders to at the Olympics. A team of college shortly thereafter, but she will still represent an players, minor leaguers, and vie for her first gold medal since she African Americans who play professionally won the downhill at the 2010 nation when abroad will thus attempt to become Olympics in Vancouver. they com- the first U.S. squad to win gold on Speed skating: Erin Jackson has pete on foreign soil. Even if this team of NHL already made history, becoming the Feb. 19. prospects and rejects doesn’t win gold first African-American woman to on Feb. 25, it could still be fun to qualify in a long-track race despite Jackson watch. A

58 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018 NOTEBOOK Religion Helping little ones learn A BIBLE FOR TODDLERS OFFERS AGE-SPECIFIC, SOUND THEOLOGY by Janie B. Cheaney

Christian parents listeners. The promise R looking to introduce motif works well: Kids toddlers to the Bible should know the value of a look at The Beginner’s promise. A parent’s Gospel Story Bible (New commitment to go out Growth Press, 2017). It for ice cream inspires grew out of family pastor hope. Disappointment Jared Kennedy’s desire to reigns when the shop “help toddlers and early closes early. Broken prom- making. God said, ‘I will robe!). On the very last preschoolers hear the good ises can bring tears. Unlike cover the world with water. page, though, He appears news of God’s love for them human parents, our good I’ll start over with one not only in white garments clearly expressed in ways and all-powerful God family.’ God chose Noah but on a white horse (see that will speak to their always keeps His word and his family.” There’s Revelation 5) with a sword young hearts.” In 52 stories, (Numbers 23:19). total depravity, righteous to smite the devilish equally divided between Kennedy’s wording is and sovereign choice, in dragon. By that point, both Old and New Testaments, conversational and age- terms little ones can under- you and your kids should Kennedy uses the theme of specific, while remaining stand and build on. feel like cheering! “Promises Made” and theologically sound. Here, Mahoney’s illustrations The 52 stories, each “Promises Kept” to lay a for example, is the beginning are simple, with basic single- four to six pages long, can sound theological of the Flood story: “Adam tone colors and friendly be read or reread at the foundation. and Eve had children, and faces. Some might find rate of one per week. They Each brief story includes their children had children. them childish; I find them include Scripture refer- Scripture references and a Instead of doing what God childlike. Most of the New ences (all OT stories have simple application question. said was right, all those chil- Testament stories picture at least one NT reference), Illustrations by Trish dren did what they wanted Jesus, but not in shining end with a simple applica- Mahoney employ basic all the time. Now the whole white (an itinerant first- tion question, and include shapes, smiling faces, world was in trouble. God century preacher does not attention grabbers like this comparisons, and counting was sad because of all the trudge the dusty roads of fact about John the Baptist: games to enchant little bad choices people were Galilee in a spotless “He ate bugs!”

THE RETURN OF ADAM RACCOON Christian parents Cartoon character Adam Raccoon ences: It crashed. Then he can bring in their gave 1990s parents and children (3 learned to follow King own. Keane, who has to 8 years old) some fun stories Aren’s directions. been an illustrator laced with subtle Bible teaching. Now, author Glen Keane with Disney, has Adam learned life lessons the hard has teamed up with a new comics in his DNA: way, landing in constant trouble— publisher, Green Egg Media, His late father, Bil but King Aren, representing Jesus, to offer the titles in a Keane, did the came to the rescue every time. For slightly revised format. Family Circus car- example, Adam in Adam Raccoon and Maps offer more detail on toons in newspapers the Flying Machine tried to build an Adam’s territory, but the for many years. airplane based on personal prefer- Bible verses are gone, so —by Russ Pulliam TOP: COURTESY OF THE WESTMINSTER BOOKSTORE

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Stay in NYC: $1,950 | Commuter: $1,000 Need-based and merit-based scholarships are available. VOICES Mailbag ‘2017 Deaths’ DEC. 30 It was well worth reading through these names and reflecting on our transient stay on earth. How do I want to be remembered? What am I living for today? —STEVE SHIVE on wng.org

‘A great sexual reckoning’ defend the best Christian candidates DEC. 30 Mindy Belz articulated so well in November? how single women need to be able to —JOEL VANDERZEE on wng.org interact with married men in churches It is a lame excuse to say that your and the workforce with respect and Moore’s loss in Alabama will not make disbelief in God derives from your within reasonable boundaries. As a false accusations go away in the 2018 parents “lying” to you about Santa 44-year-old single, my heart was sing- elections; it will make them more Claus, and the idea that children ing when I read her reminder that prevalent. would conflate a fantasy about a gift- Genesis through Revelation is a story —CHARLES HODGES on wng.org giving magic man with the omnipotent of love and redemption. Creator is absurd. —JENNIFER L. WILSON / San Antonio, Texas If Moore truly is a righteous man —DANIEL FISHER on wng.org unjustly persecuted, it would have Thank you for an excellent article. I helped bolster his tarnished image if I figured out that there is no Santa at a would disagree only with your take on he had lost graciously. Contrary to very early age. We were very poor, and the “Pence rule.” My husband is a pas- President Trump, it takes more guts better-off families got more “stuff,” tor and is very cautious. An innocent to be a good loser than to be a and of course the delivery of presents “I saw the pastor at Starbucks with winner. was impossible. Christians should not Sue” can turn deadly down the line. —WAYNE ASBURY on wng.org help further that crazy myth. —JO ANN SHUGERT on wng.org —PAT JACOBS / Snohomish, Wash. My parents ran off a 20-year-old who Although God blessed me in many ways wanted to date me at 13. I believe the In our home Santa bowed before as an engineer in nuclear power plants women who accused Moore; they had Jesus, as it should be, considering that from 1976 to 2012, as a single woman I nothing to gain and everything to lose. the true Nicholas at Nicaea was a still faced challenges, including sexual —ROSA EDWARDS on wng.org staunch defender of the Trinity. Now harassment. I coped, but saying “no” with my four children we use Santa affected my advancement. I wish I had This somewhat hysterical witch-hunt decorations to talk about church his- found more support in church. atmosphere in which people are fired tory, the supremacy of Christ, and how —CYNTHIA TULLY on wng.org based on allegations instead of facts is loving Jesus creates an outflow of very concerning. It will be interesting generosity in His name. Knowing that we are all made in the to see how this all works out. —RICK WITMER on wng.org image of God, and that Christ-followers —DOUG WALLACE on wng.org are brothers and sisters instead of ‘Young conservatism’s “potential romantic partners,” must ‘Santa stops here’ firebrand’ change the way we interact with each DEC. 30 I agree that many children can DEC. 30 I’m impressed with Ben other. be confused about Jesus when con- Shapiro, especially that he recognizes —KIRK FRAMBES on wng.org fronted with Santa. Jesus should be the difference between Judaism and the center of Christmas, and it is very Christianity. I would add that a ‘Fewer is Moore’ hard, in the mind of a child, for a baby Christianity that is “largely” grace- DEC. 30 Without Roy Moore in the in a manger to compete with a jolly based isn’t true Christianity at all. As Senate, Democrats can still force the magic man who brings gifts in a Jonathan Edwards wrote, “You con- GOP to defend Trump. If Christians flying sled. tribute nothing to salvation except the are unwilling to defend Moore even if —SUSAN McKENNEY JARVIS / sin that made it necessary.” he is falsely accused, how will they Ocean Springs, Miss. —LIZA ZAJAC WHITEHEAD on Facebook

Visit WORLD Digital: wng.org February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 61 VOICES Mailbag

Shapiro stated, “God does not take ‘Finding Jesus after the it’s very difficult here to find a dentist human form.” That question is settled Summer of Love’ who will accept Medicaid patients. by the resurrection. If Jesus rose from DEC. 9 I think back to the early 1970s —JIM CRAIG / Richland Center, Wis. the dead, He was God; if He didn’t, He and am still amazed at what God did was not. in our lives, and also in the lives of Corrections —JAMES (JAMIE) ORR / Grove City, Pa. those many hitchhikers who passed Kevin Durant was the MVP of the through our small mountain town. We 2017 NBA Finals (“2017 News of the I learned of Shapiro from my 16-year- can never underestimate the power of Year,” Dec. 30, p. 56). old son. It’s encouraging to see his God’s Word and grace poured out on Parents at Hasedera Temple in appeal to teens and young adults. us during that exciting time. Japan pay 3,000 to 80,000 yen ($30 to —JEANNINE LIEBMANN / Eureka, Mo. —RICK MERRIAM / Arcadia, Okla. $800) for a mizuko-jizo statue (“Guilt offerings,” Jan. 20, p. 48). ‘Minute by minute’ ‘Not invisible’ Moody Radio fired Julie Roys on DEC. 30 This column reminds me of DEC. 9 I truly appreciate Medicaid for Jan. 8 (“Moody blues,” Feb. 3, p. 34). when my husband was in the cancer its coverage of my mother-in-law’s ward. I would get up each morning nursing home and my autistic son’s and put my “cosmos” in order, never needs, but I am embarrassed that LETTERS and COMMENTS knowing where the day would end. Medicare and Medicaid cover only a Email: [email protected] But God is reminding me that life fraction of what the services cost. My Mail: WORLD Mailbag, PO Box 20002, is finite. I still get up and put my son’s dental office tearfully notified us Asheville, NC 28802-9998 world in order, but not with the one evening that due to Obamacare Website: wng.org same urgency. and Medicaid regulations they would Facebook: facebook.com/WORLD.magazine —JODY FAYMAN / Lincoln, Neb. have to terminate my son’s care, and Twitter: @WORLD_mag

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to a crowd of strangers and declared: “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:46-50). It is the time in history to bring out this portion of the Word of God because the last days are upon us for which these words were written. The demonic temptation of “family first Family knots do-or-die” is all the stronger for its similitude to virtue. It is universally deemed unnatural not to SOMETIMES CHRISTIANS MUST OVERCOME put family first. It is the one area where we make THE STRONG AND NATURAL TIES OF BLOOD exceptions to our scruples, siding with the vulgar

There are things God commands us to do Yousef Qureshi R that it seems He can’t possibly mean literally, until we encounter a person who has actually done them. Praise God for such individuals! This is the power of testimony. Testimonies are a sermon plus. They convey God’s will but also flesh it out in ways unambiguous and inescapable for the rest of us. One such command is to love God more than family. In the course of teaching His disciples on the cost of living for truth, Jesus The demonic brother over the upright nonrelative, excusing a said, “Whoever loves father or mother more person whom we would rightly disdain if there than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves temptation of were no blood tie. Some people I know who son or daughter more than me is not worthy of ‘family first think themselves tough-minded and clear-eyed me” (Matthew 10:37). do-or-die’ are blind when it comes to the faults of their Like most Christians, I have heard these siblings. Dare point out an inconsistency and words many times and domesticated them to a is all the their sense of honor will flare up and devour you. treacly, toothless sweetness: You conjure all the stronger for The better to show the uncompromising sentiments you have amassed toward your its similitude earnestness of His command (as Bonhoeffer said, parents, and claim to feel even more for God. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and Most times there is no conflict between the to virtue. die.”), God has raised up in our own times men two allegiances. “Now who is there to harm you who have chosen God over family at the supreme if you are zealous for what is good?” says Peter sacrifice. The late Nabeel Qureshi, who sought (1 Peter 3:13). But while this is true enough Allah and found Jesus (Seeking Allah, Finding under ordinary circumstances, the apostle Jesus), was not your average Muslim but the must immediately temper it with a less irenic grandson of Muslim missionaries to Indonesia. possibility: “But even if you should suffer for He would fain have chosen family first if there righteousness’ sake you will be blessed. Have were any way to do it, and in his last gasps of no fear of them, nor be troubled” (v. 14). Islamic religion he could be found in the mosque Thus he hints at what the Lord elsewhere pleading desperately for Allah to reveal himself. makes plain: “I have come to set a man against Mosab Hassan Yousef was the Ramallah-born his father, and a daughter against her mother, and son of important Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Yousef, with all the automatic privilege in And a person’s enemies will be those of his own community that that entailed. When he household” (Matthew 10:35-36). repudiated Hamas, he was not one of those Has any of you felt this yet? Palestinian paupers who had nothing to lose by Because we might, in our natural selves, find changing sides. He had everything to lose. it monstrous to prefer God to our parents, With such a cloud of witnesses you and I children, and siblings, when push comes to can feel strengthened when parents or siblings shove, Jesus saw fit to model it Himself. When or children reject us and speak ill of us for our His own mother and brothers were putting faith. Even as we grieve and continue to pray themselves at odds with God’s plan, He chose for those we love, we are free, praise God, and

YOUSEF: REX FEATURES VIA AP • QURESHI: HANDOUT not to go with them. He stretched out His hands experience a joy the world knows nothing of. A

 [email protected] February 17, 2018 • WORLD Magazine 63 VOICES Marvin Olasky INTEGRATING Youngman’s major worry concerned money, and he was always eager to trade humor for cash. Film reviewer Roger Ebert told of being with Youngman in Chicago on an elevator that stopped at a floor where a wedding was underway. Youngman got off, asked to meet the father of the bride, and said, “I’m Henny Youngman. I’ll do 10 FAITH AND minutes for $100.” Here’s one of those minutes: Take Henny I’ve got all the money I ever need, if I die by 4 o’clock. Youngman, please You have the Midas touch. Everything you touch turns to a muffler. LEARNING REMEMBERING THE KING OF THE ONE-LINERS What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money. This is a combination Valentine’s Day, My wife will buy anything marked down. Last R anniversary-date, and topically edgy year she bought an escalator. column. It commemorates a comedian, Henny The paramedic asks a man hit by a car, “Are Youngman, “king of the one-liners,” who died you comfortable?” The man says, “I make a good 20 Februaries ago at age 91. His marriage with living.” his wife, Sadie Cohen, lasted 59 years, and from Youngman in 1974 set the record for people the accounts I’ve read was happy. calling Dial-A-Joke in New York City: 3 million That’s important to note because people in one month to hear 30 seconds of his male-female relations these days are full of humor. In that astoundingly diverse city he suspicion and bitterness, but satisfied couples became an equal opportunity offender by can laugh together. Susan and I have been joking about various ethnic groups in ways that married 41 years, and she laughed at all the ‘I’ve got all would not be acceptable today (you can fill in Youngman jokes that follow, such as: the money the blanks): Some people ask the secret of our long A ______terrorist was sent to blow up a car. marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two I ever need, He burned his mouth on the exhaust pipe! times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft if I die by Two ______men on the day after Halloween music, dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. 4 o’clock.’ had burned faces. What happened? They were She was at the beauty shop for two hours. bobbing for french fries. —Henny Youngman That was only for the estimate. A ______bought a zebra for a pet. What does One of Youngman’s lines that’s entered he call the zebra? Spot! American culture began when he took Sadie to a I asked a ______, “Do you know where Michigan radio show he was doing and asked a stagehand Avenue is?” He said “Yes” and walked away. What we have here at Union is the unusual combination of to show her a seat: Take my wife, please. The Youngman’s rapid-fire joke-telling, like a fast “high octane intellectual challenge with, at the same time, a deep, stagehand broke up, but Youngman’s marriage break in basketball, depended on misdirection— abiding and robust commitment to intellectual discipleship. did not. During Sadie’s last illness Youngman a first sentence suggesting where he was going, had an ICU built in their bedroom so she could then a quick reversal: My grandmother is over We strive to be disciples of Christ who love God with not only our have home care. Hospitals frightened 80 and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out bodies, our souls and our strength, but also with our minds. her, so Youngman told doctor jokes: of the bottle. ” “Doctor, my leg hurts. What can I I read about the evils of drinking. So I SCOTT HUELIN, PH.D. do?” The doctor says, “Limp!” gave up reading. Director of the Honors Community “Doctor, I have a ringing in my My wife is the sweetest, most tolerant, Faculty Member of the Year ears.” “Don’t answer!” most beautiful woman in the world. This is a A man goes to a psychiatrist. The paid political announcement. doctor says, “You’re crazy.” The man I leave you with two jokes Henny Youngman In a friendly, close-knit learning community, our students are says, “I want a second opinion!” thought were funny. He didn’t realize they were challenged to grow intellectually and integrate their faith in every “OK, you’re ugly too!” prophecies. First, given the new biology: There

CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES GETTY VIA CBS program of study. Our alumni excel in top graduate schools I told the doctor I broke my leg in were three kids in my family. One of each sex. and in careers around the world. two places. He told me to quit going Second, in our new world of medicine: National University to those places. Doctor says to a man, “You’re pregnant!” The Programs Student to by U.S.News & When I told my doctor I couldn’t man says, “How does a man get pregnant?” 1OO+ of Study 1O:1 Faculty Ratio TOP TIER World Report afford an operation, he offered to touch Doctor: “The usual way, a little wine, a little Founded in 1823 | Jackson, Tennessee LEARN MORE AT uu.edu up my X-rays. dinner.” A

| | | 64 WORLD Magazine • February 17, 2018  [email protected]  @MarvinOlasky EXCELLENCE-DRIVEN CHRIST-CENTERED PEOPLE-FOCUSED FUTURE-DIRECTED INTEGRATING FAITH AND LEARNING

What we have here at Union is the unusual combination of “high octane intellectual challenge with, at the same time, a deep, abiding and robust commitment to intellectual discipleship. We strive to be disciples of Christ who love God with not only our bodies, our souls and our strength, but also with our minds.” SCOTT HUELIN, PH.D. Director of the Honors Community Faculty Member of the Year

In a friendly, close-knit learning community, our students are challenged to grow intellectually and integrate their faith in every program of study. Our alumni excel in top graduate schools and in careers around the world.

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EXCELLENCE-DRIVEN | CHRIST-CENTERED | PEOPLE-FOCUSED | FUTURE-DIRECTED