Cover Story

For generations residents of San Diego and Tijuana have gathered at Friendship Park to visit with family and friends through the border fence. In coming months the Department of Homeland Security will erect a secondary fence across the park, eliminating public access to this historic meeting place. Until then, I will serve Communion at Friendship Park each Sunday afternoon, distributing the elements through the border fence.

Hammarby Sjostad used to be an industrial brownfield, toxic and unpopulated. It was slated to become part of the Olympic Village in 2004; the bid failed, but the momentum for a new neighborhood was enormous, and a town was built. It was designed to be an ecological gem, a place where the average person would live half again as lightly as the average Swede, who is already among the most ecologically minded citizens of the developed world.

Tables were set for the third annual interfaith Passover Seder meal, a "bring your own wine" event at University Congregational Church in Seattle. There were place settings for 300, fresh flowers, two kinds of charoset (a blend of fruit and nuts), two kinds of horseradish and baskets of matzo. The participants at this event came not only from University Congregational, led by pastor Don McKenzie, but also from Bet Alef, a “meditative synagogue” led by Rabbi Ted Falcon, and from an experimental congregation known as the Interfaith Community Church, led by Sufi Muslim teacher Jamal Rahman.

One of the teenagers killed in Colorado’s Columbine High School shootings in 1999 was Cassie Bernall. Soon after her murder, reports emerged about how one of the shooters had found Bernall under a table, pointed a gun at her head and asked, “Do you believe in God?” She said yes and was promptly shot.Within weeks of that event I heard a sermon at an Episcopal church praising Bernall’s witness and urging Christians to imitate her faithfulness. Prognosticators predicted another Great Awakening in American life sparked by Bernall’s martyrdom.

A few decades ago Qatar was a tribal society with an economy based largely on fishing, pearl harvesting and camel and horse breeding. In 1995 a bloodless coup set the stage for the modernization of the country’s oil and gas industries. Qatar’s economy grew 24 percent in 2006 alone, and its per capita income that year was $61,540. Today Qatar is on track to become the wealthiest nation (on a per capita basis) in the world.

Why would any relief agency reject U.S. food aid? Beginning in 2009, CARE will do just that, forgoing $45 million a year in U.S. food aid because of its disagreement with monetization, the process of selling U.S. food abroad in order to raise needed cash for development projects and administrative costs. CARE maintains that the sale of U.S. food in the fragile markets of recipient countries competes with the sale of food produced by local farmers, causing prices to drop and lowering farmers’ income.

A breakfast frequently served at my son’s school—where over half the children receive government-supported meals—consists of commercially produced French toast sticks and syrup. The list of ingredients on the package for this meal is as long as this paragraph. It includes not only partially hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup, but also more mystifying additives like gelatinized wheat starch, calcium caseinate, lecithin, guar gum and cellulose gum. The story of how these items arrive at a school cafeteria and are designated as food is a long and complicated one involving the interaction of farmers, government policy makers and the food industry. The modern story of why we eat what we eat begins in the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt faced the challenges of the Depression. He saw that many farmers were poor and that one in every five people in the country was undernourished. Farmers and other Americans were too vulnerable, he believed, to the cycles of boom and bust.

The bride wore a white dress with pearls, a veil and a big red nose. The groom had a rainbow wig, and instead of patent leather shoes, floppy brogues as big as boats, which were coming apart at the toes. All around them a raucous band of clowns held forth on tubas and big bass drums. “Do you, Gilbert, take Glenna to be your wife?” “I sure do.” “Do you, Glenna, take this clown to be your husband?” “I do,” she smiled, and someone honked a horn.

For many years I taught a course titled "The Problem of God." I believed that students should be exposed to the most erudite of the unbelievers, and that any commitment that they might make to a religious faith should be critically tested by the very best opponents. Richard Dawkins, Samuel Harris and Christopher Hitchens would never have made the required reading list. Their tirades reinforce ignorance—not only of religion—but also of atheism.

The "young earth” creationists behind the new $27 million Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, insist that creation took place in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago. The “old earth” creationists, who argue that a “day” in Genesis could be a symbol for millions of years, are considered theological wimps. And advocates of intelligent design? They aren’t even worth a mention.

An image of salvation