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April 3, 2007

Volume 124, Issue #7
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Features

Feature

People's revolt: Political repression in Oaxaca

For the past 10 months, the people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca have been waging a campaign to remove their governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who was narrowly elected in 2004 amid allegations of fraud. A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI), he has been accused of corruption and political repression since taking office. After Ruiz’s heavy-handed attempt to quell a teachers strike last spring, the teachers and their allies ran his government out of town and created the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).

by Maureen Kelleher
Feature

A way forward? Changing the conversation on homosexuality: Changing the conversation on homosexuality

Unable to reach consensus regarding the ordination of gays, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), like many other denominations, found itself embroiled for years in a series of winner-take-all battles with no end in sight. In 2001 a wearied General Assembly appointed the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church to help to break the stalemate. The task force consisted of 20 Presbyterians from across the theological spectrum; members of the group strongly disagreed about church policy regarding gays.

by William Stacy Johnson
Feature

Out of silence: The practice of congregational discernment

I had agreed, along with 11 other people from my congregation, to attend a program on congregational discernment, but I was not looking forward to it. I was skeptical of the diocese’s ability to teach a nonbureaucratic method of reaching decisions, and I was also skeptical about our group’s ability to discern anything. Few of us could have defined the word discernment, and none of us had any idea what we were in for.

by Amy Frykholm
Music

Sound alternatives

Those who discovered Joanna Newsom’s full-length debut The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City, 2004) fell without exception into two camps: either they ran screaming from her Betty-Boop-on-helium voice and tales of bridges, balloons and beans or found themselves enchanted and amazed. Here was a young woman playing the harp—the harp!—making pop music so original and magical that it sounded as if it emerged from the cracks in C. S. Lewis’s fabled wardrobe.

By Louis R. Carlozo
Film

Walled in

The winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, The Lives of Others, looks at a political system kept in power by a police agency that has absolute power to keep any citizen under constant surveillance.

By Steve A. Vineberg

Books

A New Song for an Old World

What can the early Christians teach us about music?...
reviewed by Eleanor Kreider

BookMarks

In this fascinating book Larry W....

Missing men

Where are the men on Sunday morning? The men are out seeking adventure, risk and challenge, while the women rule the pews within a dull but safe feminized church. So argues David Murrow, director of Church for Men, an organization aimed at “restoring a healthy masculine spirit in Christian congregations.” What of 2,000 years of male dominance in church leadership, from the first disciples to today’s clergy?

By Lillian Daniel

What consumes us

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Winston Churchill said to Parliament in 1943 after Naz...
By Daniel T. Spencer

Monastic boot camp

In our noisy and technologically correct secular society, ...
By W. Paul Jones

In the Light of Christ

Great works in the Western literary tradition are incomprehensible apart from Christianity....
reviewed by David Heim

Departments

From the Editors

The Bible in first person: The Bible as it stands or as we understand it?

Many Christians like to think that they take the Bible as it stands, but in reality they take the Bible as they understand it. What we get out of the Bible often has as much to do with what we bring to the text as with the text itself....
Faith Matters

Something about Jesus: Jesus is terrible at meeting people's expectations

Most Christians are stubbornly fixed on being like Jesus. He is the gold standard for what it means to be fully human, in full union with the Divine. They tell me what it costs to love unconditionally, to forgive 70-times-seven, to show compassion for the poor—all essential hallmarks of Jesus’ ministry. What I hear less about is what it costs to oppose the traditions of the elders, to upset pious expectations of what a child of God should say or do, to subvert religious certainty, and to make people responsible for their own lives. Yet all of these are present in his example too.
by Barbara Brown Taylor
M.E.M.O.

Going Bunco: The Age of Innocence

Draw up your chairs, younger ones, and I will describe a moment in the Age of Innocence, back in late-medieval time of 1945-1949. Bring your chairs in close so you can be sure you are hearing right....
by Martin E. Marty
Editor's Desk

Sound of Easter: News that is richer than words to describe it

Some ideas are bigger than our intellectual capacity to deal with them. Some news is richer than the words we have to describe it. When that happens, we turn gratefully to art and music and works of the imagination....
by John Buchanan

News

Pope: Teachings are nonnegotiable: Benedict holds the line

Pope Benedict XVI has reaffirmed church teachings on divorce and priestly celibacy, and told Catholic politicians they must follow church doctrine on abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage....

Lawsuit filed against Southwestern Baptist: Sex discrimination charged

Sheri Klouda, a former Hebrew professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who claims she was denied tenure because of her sex, has filed a federal lawsuit against the seminary and its president, Paige Patterson....

College settles with transgender teacher: EEOC mediation yields agreement

Spring Arbor University in Michigan reached a financial settlement last month with fired transgender professor Julie Nemecek, who had filed a discrimination suit....

Briefly noted

The Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery says that reconciliation efforts have failed to convince its second-largest congregation to remain in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)....
Century Marks

Century Marks

Flat (and cool) earth society: In response to recent warnings by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the consequences of greenhouse-gas emissions, the conservative American Enterprise Institute is offering a $10,000 prize to scientists and economists who write articles which call attention to weaknesses of the IPCC report. In reporting this news, the Chronicle of Higher Education (March 2) said it is eagerly awaiting a patron who will offer “a reward for papers that discredit the spherical-earth theories that have been circulating for the past millennium or so.”

Christians protest the war: Under the peace witness banner

Rick Ufford-Chase, a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was arrested last September in Washington, D.C., while demonstrating against the Iraq war along with four other Presbyterian ministers....

NAE rebuffs critics, affirming Cizik and a wider agenda: Caring for the environment, condemning torture

The National Association of Evangelicals has affirmed its stance on caring for the environment—indirectly rebuffing complaints that its vice president for governmental affairs is too engaged in environmental issues—and endorsed a statement condemn...

Charles Taylor wins Templeton Prize: Philosopher addresses spirituality, violence and culture

Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher whose work has touched on questions of spirituality, violence and culture, has been named the 2007 Templeton Prize winner....

Representative Stark, an open 'nontheist' First openly nontheistic member of Congress: First openly nontheistic member of Congress

Representative Fortney “Pete” Stark (D., Calif.) is the first openly “nontheistic” member of Congress, the Secular Coalition for America has announced....

Mohler would favor altering 'gay' fetus: A modest proposal

Aprominent Southern Baptist said he would support medical treatment, if it were available, to change the sexual orientation of a fetus inside its mother’s womb from homosexual to heterosexual....

Lutheran growth is in Asia, Africa: Steady decline in the West

Lutheran church membership soared in Africa and Asia between 2005 and 2006 but continued its steady decline in the West, according to the Lutheran World Federation, whose total constituency rose .71 percent to just under 66.7 million....

Methodists decry Japanese stance on 'comfort women' A WWII-era denial: A WWII-era denial

Asian American United Methodists, including those with Japanese ancestry, are strongly criticizing recent denials by the prime minister of Japan regarding that country’s coercion of “comfort women” during World War II, according to United Methodis...

Lectionary

Never-ending story: Acts 5:27-32; John 20:19-31

"We are witnesses to these things," said Peter. Yet as the gospel for the second Sunday of Easter opens, "these things" do not include Jesus' resurrection. That morning Peter had seen an empty tomb with some scattered linens. He had witnessed absence, not resurrection. At that point, he had not even witnessed Jesus' death—he had missed his chance. Yet soon Peter becomes one of the boldest and most powerful of witnesses to Jesus' message, death and resurrection. Clearly something happened.
by Sarah Dylan Breuer

Unlimited good: Acts 9:1-20; John 21:1-19

My mother’s generation of women was raised to expect that families would depend financially on the husband’s income. My mother is lively and creative, and as a child she wanted to be a doctor—but women just didn’t do that. When her husband left her, her creativity and energy were channeled into supporting three children on the small income from a job initially intended to supplement the family’s welfare and provide a personal challenge.
by Sarah Dylan Breuer

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