Black Friday Cyber Deal!

Today only if you order two books via my web site (www.aspire2.com), I will send you a copy of the newest book, Chai with Malachi for free. If you any of them "signed by the author" to give as a gift, simply indicate that in the comments section of your order.

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Is Peter Insulting Women? (Part 1)

My Tapestry post for the week:

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Was the apostle Peter a misogynist? In response to this question one writer said, “99% of people in his culture were—so sure.” If we take Peter’s words at face value, we might think so. In his first epistle he writes some instruction that can trip up the twenty-first-century reader. After telling slaves how to deal with unjust masters, he adds this word to the wives:

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. And let not your adornment be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear (1 Peter 3:1–6).

It seems like Peter believes wives should be seen, not heard. And he seems to teach they should wear fashions as appealing as gunny sacks. And what’s that stuff about calling him “lord”?

To understand Peter’s meaning, as well as apply his instruction to our lives, we must imagine our way back to first-century life in the Roman Empire.

The Householder’s World

In Peter’s day a wife was considered property, could not speak for herself in a court of law, and was expected to worship the same god(s) as the householder. The paterfamilias was a bit like Thomas Jefferson at Monticello or Lord Grantham at Downton Abbey—only with the latter owning slaves instead of employing servants.  

Recall that servants lived with their masters as part of one household. And back then, the householder’s god ruled. We get a glimmer of this when we read about the conversion of Lydia of Philippi. When she believed, she and “her household were baptized” (Acts 16:15). A similar situation occurs with the Philippian jailer and his household (v. 34). The paterfamilias—usually male, though clearly not always—chose the household god. And this god was usually honored daily in the home.  

So imagine a wife in that context believing in Christ and no longer able, in good conscience, to worship her husband’s god. Peter describes the husband in question as “disobedient to the word”—that is, an unbeliever. Imagine what could happen if his wife got cocky and trash-talked Apollo or Hecate. Even Paul when speaking of Artemis in Ephesus did not “blaspheme the goddess” (19:37). No, the wise believer would earn respect by remaining quiet about it while also being loyal to Jesus “without being frightened by any fear” (1 Pet. 3:6).

Inner Adornment

As for adornment, to understand Peter’s meaning when it comes to braids, jewelry, and dresses, it helps to bear in mind that the honorable upper-class wife wore the signs of her social status on her person. In contemporary settings when we hear exhortations for women to be “modest,” we tend to think only of sexual modesty. But Peter probably had class in mind when mentioning braids, jewelry, and dresses.

In his day, every diamond and pearl was real. This reality is foreign to those of us for whom an enormous clear gem is probably cubic zirconia and a fat pearl might be fake. Back then, a wife wore her signs of status for all to see.

A woman whose hair was covered with braids made the class statement that she had time for leisure and the budget to pay someone to pamper her. Indeed, gold and braids and pearls were signs of wealth, so that by her very adornment such a wife announced her social status. And wearing her status was the opposite of what Paul elsewhere said he wanted Christian wives to do when the church gathered. Over in that apostle’s first epistle to Timothy (2:9–10), we read that Paul told wives their dress should be “with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God” (2:9–10).

Notice the contrast between Paul’s and Peter’s advice? Paul told wives not to adorn themselves with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothes. Their dress was to be devoid of anything that might pose a threat to unity.

But Peter seems to assume that the wife in question would have no choice but to wear such emblems of class. Thus he stresses that the women in such situations were to adorn themselves in a way that was not “external only.” Indeed, unlike Paul’s audience where both husband and wife were told to be “filled with the Spirit,” Peter’s reader might be married to a “disobedient” man. If so, she was to add something to her wardrobe—the internal apparel of a gentle, quiet spirit that is so pleasing in the sight of God.

And she was to be courageous in her silent witness. Recall that Peter was writing in a context in which a woman could not call a hotline that would guarantee shelter if her husband threatened or hurt her. She had to do her best both to keep from setting him off and to gain his respect while retaining her loyalty to Christ. Doing so would require great courage. Perhaps this is why Peter urges her not to be “frightened by any fear.”

(Next time we’ll talk about what it means that woman is the “weaker vessel.” Stay tuned!)

A Week in the Life of Corinth

Rewind back to the time of Paul when he lived in Corinth andmade tents alongside Priscilla and Aquila. In that day, a master expectedaccess to his slaves’ bodies in every way, adoption was mostly aboutinheritance, and the oral slant of the culture meant rhetoric ruled.

Into this world New Testament scholar and multi-published author Ben Witherington III introducesthe character Nicanor and his patron Erastos in A Week in the Life of Corinth (IVP Academic). Weaving a plot abouttheir lives, the scholar provides a glimpse into the world of the earliestChristians.

The fact that an academic publisher has produced the bookmakes obvious that which becomes even clearer from the back cover copy: thatthe plot serves the content rather than vice versa. Flipping through the pages, readers find black-and-white photos as well as non-fiction text boxes providing information that further exegetes the culture,explaining background information that corresponds to theplot. Clearly, Witherington has set out to educate, and he has done so in the formof a story. Here content trumps plot, characterization, and setting.

Many in the fiction-writing world consider this sort of“edutainment” a no-no, arguing that the information must serve the story andnot vice versa. But Pilgrim’s Progress hasn’tdone too badly, and John Bunyan did the same thing—okay, less overtly. But heck, DanBrown did it too, though also less overtly, with TheDaVinci Code.

Brown, however, is a far better fiction writer. In this work, theplot is predictable and characters suffer from underdevelopment. They talk instiff dialogue, often telling each other what they would already know so thereader can learn. Their content-filled speech along with overlong dialogue tagscould benefit from the effective use of beats.  

As for style, the author selects a rather uninteresting rangeof verbs and nouns, using “was” and “were” and “is” far too often, along withoverusing "had" and "has." Long sentences at times serve as entireparagraphs—acceptable in Paul’s day when writing material was expensive andscarce, but not in 2013.

The total effect is the mirror of what happens when fictionwriters don’t know about biblical backgrounds, so they write the Esther storyas a romance. Here a biblical scholar has not mastered the art of writtenstorytelling. And we need both excellent storytelling and good background expertise.(Ben-Hur is an example of a work thatweds the two fields in a way that gives readers a story for the ages.)  

Nevertheless, I recommend this book. Highly. It won’t getnominated for the National Book Award. But it does capture the imagination much morethan would a textbook on first-century backgrounds. Witherington has given readers a primeron first-century backgrounds that delivers some of his vast knowledge in anaccessible form. Those who read his book will better understand the New Testament and thus make better correlations between the biblical text and our lives. How many novels can make that claim?

Paul would have been familiar with the "bema" or judgment seat in Corinth.

Magazine Readership Rises

Despite a small decline in  magazinecirculation in the first half of 2013, the number of magazine readers in theU.S. is actually up slightly, according to the latest Survey of the AmericanConsumer, which tracks print and digital magazine readership.

Total magazine readership across print and digital editions increasedabout 1.6 percent from fall 2012 to fall 2013, while that of print aloneincreased 1.1 percent. Digital readership grew a healthy 49 percent.

ETS: Adventures in Baltimore

I just returned from a four-day trip to Baltimore, where Imostly attended the annual Evangelical Theological Society's (ETS) national meeting. Iused to go annually, but I have skipped the past few years to focus onwriting/editing/finishing my dissertation.

This year I had the joy of staying with my niece and herfamily in their new-to-them home in accommodations that overlooked a treeablaze with red leaves. She and her husband, a faculty member at Loyola, havethree small boys who loved scaring and tackling “Aunt Sandi.” The family iscommitted to going car-free as much as possible, so I used publictransportation every morning to get to the convention center, and I took cabshome at night. All in all, I spent about 1/3 of what I would have done on arental car, and I avoided the hassles of traffic and convention-center parking.My relatives also had a delightful houseguest who’s a don at Cambridge, so our little Anglican-Episcopalian-evangelical group spent the last night at their dining table spread with Girl Scout cookies andhome-brewed ale discussing everything from the new pope to the filioque clause to salted caramel icecream to sweater-knitting. What a lovely family we have, and I mean that inboth senses.

ETS itself, which requires a minimum ThM to join, iscomprised of 7% women. I’m told that only 1% of the presenters this year were female. One man asked me where my husband was. Another,upon seeing a few of us females returning from dinner one night, joked, “I’m going to tellyour husbands you were out picking up men.” Never mind that one, in hersixties, has never been married.  

I came away wondering this: If we believe in the complementary relationship of men andwomen, why don’t we see more men and women partnering to do theology? I pickedup a brochure from an organization that claims to emphasize this very thing.Yet the photos of their board indicated it was comprised of all “pale males.”An organization that has in its very name the word “womanhood” has no women onthe board?

If women were in the minority, it seemed that ethnicminorities were even more scarce. Considering that the future of Christianityis in the southern hemisphere, this struck me as a serious divide.#roomforimprovement   

Despite these deficiencies, I heard some greatpresentations, including one that traced how Luke in his Gospel contrasted menand women to make a point. One speaker looked at whether the quote about Jesusas a worker of miracles was original to Josephus. Another considered how wechange our hermeneutic to accommodate science, sometimes forgetting thatscience can be subjective, too (Freud’s theories on women came to mind). Onelooked at how Christians can grow in our interaction with art beyond critiquingthe worldview behind each piece. And one looked at the strengths and weaknessesof online education and how to compensate for the lack of embodiment (amongother things, require a local in-the-flesh mentor).

A former student, Caroline, looked at radical feminism andProcess Theology. She started late in the academic world because she raised herkids first. This came up during her Q/A time afterward, when a woman in theaudience went off about how we should be emphasizing to women to raise theirkids and focus on the home. Caroline graciously pointed out that she, too,valued children, which is why she waited to complete her education—but thatchildrearing is only a season of life, and that for a limited number of women. The anti-woman-in-education bias comes from both sexes. 

I attended a number of other presentations on gender. Onewas from a psychologist who studied 50,000 (!) marriages. His team concludedthat partnerships in which both spouses feel they both “speak up,” (husband feels thatboth he and wife do so and wife feels that both he and she do so) were most“satisfying” by quite a high margin as compared to more traditionalmarriages. (If a husband is dominant, both she and he were less satisfied.)

In a talk on gender differences, it was noted that as Barbie’swaist measurement has shrunk, Ken’s biceps have increased. This is the sort of importantinfo we get at theology conferences. Ha! (The workshop was actually quitegood.)

DTS had a big alumni breakfast one morning, and I had funreconnecting with old college connections. I tried to attend as many DTS faculty and student presentations as possible, but I was also staying up past midnight talking with my niece.

Lunches and dinners with colleagues, male and female, were ahighlight. Over Maryland crab soup and Puerto Rican rice, we enjoyed about ayear’s worth of relationship-building in three days. In a workshop onmentoring, I learned that in Southern California (where people are crazy busy),the best times for mentoring are said to be in the car, over coffee, and overdinner. That is true of fellowship, too, don’t you think?

Yesterday morning, I blew off academics (I attended ETS at my own expense), saw the harbor, and toured the BaltimoreAquarium with my niece and the boys. We ended our time with a Pot Belly’s lunchand a romp in the park before I went off to hear about whether an embryo has personhood and "The Future of Women inETS," while they caught their bus. 

When I arrived back in Dallas, I told my husband to expect word that I was outpicking up men. He said he looked forward to the call.

Join in Helping Transform Dallas

A movement is taking place in the Dallas Christian community to bring about measurable change against the greatest spiritual, social and humanitarian challenges of our time. On January 23, 2014 more than 1,500 leaders from the marketplace, church, and community will gather for Greater Dallas Movement Day (GDMD), a one-day event that will include leaders in business, education, healthcare, nonprofits, government, and the church from a diverse array of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Speakers for GDMD include Mayor Mike Rawlings, Dr. Tim Keller, Pastor Brian Carter of Concord Baptist Church, and Dr. Albert Reyes of Buckner International with emcee Froswa Booker-Drew, the National Community Engagement Director for World Vision. The scope of GDMD extends beyond sharing information and motivation. It¹s about results. Participants will choose one of ten afternoon sessions covering a range of issues affecting Greater Dallas with the goal of crafting five-year plans to mobilize the faith community.

An initiative of the New York City Leadership Center, Greater Dallas Movement Day replicates the successful model of Movement Day in New York City, an annual event that has been linked to a 300% increase in the Christian population of Manhattan. From 2010–2014, nearly five thousand leaders from 360 cities worldwide have gathered to learn best practices in urban ministry and to cast a fresh vision for their own cities.

Movement Day is directed by Dr. Mac Pier, CEO and Founder of The New York City Leadership Center. Pier believes the Dallas faith community is poised to foster such a movement. Poverty. Hunger. Crime. Child Neglect. A Broken Education System. The problems can seem insurmountable, but each grim statistic also offers an opportunity to transform individuals and communities with the love of Jesus Christ.

³The Greater Dallas area is at a crossroads. Given the growing racial, social, and spiritual diversity, it is urgent to bring a critical mass of the Dallas Christian community together to foster visible unity, hear the same research, and co-create and further best practices that will impact the city. We believe that the Movement Day model that catalyzed such remarkable growth in Manhattan will bring similar results in Greater Dallas.   —Mac Pier

Why does Dallas need a gospel movement? The facts and statistics speak for themselves:

• 90 % of Dallas ISD graduates are not college ready
• The number of North Texans seeking help from food pantries or soup kitchens each week has risen 80 % since 2006.
• 29.3% of children in Dallas County, more than 190,000 children total, live in families below the federal income poverty level.
• 44% of the residents in DFW are first- or second-generation immigrants in need of church connection.
• 25% of all international human trafficking victims in America are in Texas.
• Dallas is home to the largest refugee population in the U.S.

Greater Dallas Movement Day will be held at the Dallas Convention Center on January 23, 2014 from 9 AM to 5 PM.

For more information, a complete list of afternoon sessions, and to register for GDMD, visit www.greaterdallasmovementday.com.

Interview with Faith Village

My pal Kelley Mathews over at Faithvillage.com interviewed me about my latest book, Chai with Malachi. Head on over and leave a comment.

Typhoon Survivor: "Tell My Family I'm Alive"

Street scene in destroyed Tacloban. "I've never seen such a violentforce that destroyed everything in its path. It's really large scale. It'simmense," said Aaron Aspi, WV Philippines Emergency CommunicationsSpecialist.  Photo by Mai Zamora.

LEYTE, PHILIPPINES (ANS) -- Survivors ofTyphoon Haiyan are sharing their desperate need for food and medicine afterlosing everything in the storm.

According to a story by Britain's Sky News, one woman, eight months pregnant, described through tears how her 11 family members vanished in the storm—which devastated parts of the Philippines—including two daughters.

"I can't think right now. I am overwhelmed," she said.

Erika Mae Karakot, a survivor on Leyte island, said "Please tellmy family I'm alive. We need water and medicine because a lot of the people weare with are wounded. Some are suffering from diarrhoea and dehydration due toshortage of food and water."

Sky News reported another woman said, "I have no house, I have noclothes. I don't know how I will restart my life. I am so confused. I don'tknow what happened to us. We are appealing for help. Whoever has a good heart,I appeal to you." Aid agencies have warned that many of the 480,000people whose homes have been destroyed by the bludgeoning force of the cycloneface a desperate battle to survive.

"Everything is gone. Our house is like a skeleton and we arerunning out of food and wate r. We are looking for food everywhere," saidJenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte.

The birth of a baby girl amid the devastation of the typhoon hasprovided a rare moment of joy for survivors.

Sky News said Bea Joy Sagales was born at the airport in Tacloban, thecity where officials fear at least 10,000 people have perished. Her motherEmily Ortega, 21, was in a shelter when the storm flooded the city. Sheclung to a post to survive and managed to reach the relative safety of theairport, where a military doctor assisted with the birth. Cheers broke outin the terminal when it became clear the birth—described as "nearmiraculous" by officials—had been a success.

In Tacloban, survivors have been scavenging for food and looting shopsin order to stay alive, witnesses say.

"Tacloban is totally destroyed. Some people are losing theirminds from hunger or from losing their families," high school teacherAndrew Pomeda, 36, said as he warned of the increasing desperation ofsurvivors.

"People are becoming violent. They are looting businessestablishments, the malls, just to find food, rice and milk. I am afraid thatin one week, people will be killing from hunger."

Sky News said witnesses described how survivors are forming long linesat aid stations, waiting desperately for handouts of rice and water.

Some sit and stare, covering their faces with rags to keep out thesmell of the dead. Lieutenant Colonel Fermin Carangan, of the Philippine Air Force, saidhe and 41 officers were sheltering in their airport office when "suddenlythe sea water and the waves destroyed the walls and I saw my men being swept bywaters one by one."

He was swept away from the building and clung to a coconut tree with aseven-year-old boy.

Carangan added, "In the next five hours we were in the seabuffeted by wind and strong rain. I kept on talking to the boy and giving him apep talk because the boy was telling me he was tired and he wanted to sleep."

He finally saw land and swam with the boy to a beach strewn with deadbodies. Sky News reported Carangan said, "I think the boy saved my lifebecause I found strength so that he can survive."

Assistance

Reporting a story for Presbyterian News Service (PNS), Jerry L. VanMarter said Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is consulting with its ecumenicalpartners on how best to begin relief efforts.

Communications were out throughout the weekend in the Philippines andimmediate relief efforts are being hampered by the sheer extent of thedestruction.

Local sources and international news agencies report severedestruction with damaged roads and buildings, downed power lines andtelecommunications and flooded villages.

PNS said damage to airports and roads is severely limiting access tothe hardest-hit areas. A report from the United Nations Office for theCoordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that roundtrip travel on theonly cleared road which connects the airport to the Tacloban currently takesabout six hours.

PNS said the initialresponse will include the provision of non-food items, material resources,drinking water, emergency shelter kits and cash-for-work programs.

Jesus Feminist, by Sarah Bessey

For a lot of folks inside the church and out, the word "feminist" is the other "f" word. The very thought of putting it next to the name of Jesus, as Sarah Bessey has done in the title of her new book, Jesus Feminist, will drop jaws. Or cause them to clench. Some might make negative assumptions about the author's agenda.

If so, they would be wrong.

In the same way that John Piper calls himself a Christian hedonist and then defines the phrase as he is using it, Bessey uses and defines being a "Jesus Feminist."

Jesus took women seriously; he taught women; he talked to women even when it scandalized the disciples; he accepted financial support from women; he entrusted the core facts of the faith, on which all our doctrines are built, to women…  That's the kind of feminist Bessey aspires to be and wants her readers to be. In a world in which females across the world are raped, trafficked, abused, aborted based on their sex, prohibited from getting an education—into that world, she calls men and women to advance the kingdom of Christ, shoulder to shoulder, on behalf of "the least of these."

This book is so not for those seeking a fight about women's rights, especially in the church. Bessey writes, "We are among the disciples who are simply going outside, to freedom, together, intent on following Jesus; we love him so. We're finding each other out here, and it's beautiful and crazy and churchy and holy. We are simply getting on with it, with the work of justice and mercy, the glorious labor of reconciliation and redemption, the mess of friendship and community, the guts of walking on the water, and the big-sky dreaming of the Kingdom of God."

Bessey's tone is loving, affirming, encouraging, and courageous. Of her own journey, she writes, "I won't desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won't confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. I will breathe fresh air while I learn, all over again, grace freely given and wisdom honored."

And to that I say, "Amen, sister!"

She Can Teach, by Dr. Jackie Roese

Dr. Jackie Roese (pronounced “Reese”) has been teachingwomen for a long time. And doing it well. Reallywell. The woman can preach. She’s even trained lots of others to do thesame.

And she has a key concern: those women who are mostcommitted to the biblical text are the least likely to receive formal training inhomiletics. The few among us who actually do get formal training end up readingbooks by men that speak to a male audience and include all-male examples. He,he, he. Not funny. So She Can Teach (Wipf& Stock, 2013) is by a woman for women, and it is designed to capitalize onwomen’s unique perspectives.

Roese acknowledges that the minute we talk about trainingwomen to teach/preach, people bring up the debate about whether women canpreach to men. But that topic, while important, she says, is for someone elseto address. She Can Teach focusesentirely on training women to preach to women. 

The work begins with an exploration of historical influencesthat have led to the current state of affairs in women’s Bible teaching. Roese challengeswomen with the gift of teaching that we are not only called but expected toteach God’s word. And she wants readers to use our female voices andperspectives to full advantage. In doingso, she does not take sides on the gender debate about whether male/femaledifferences are innate or learned, though she does lean toward CarolGilligan’s theory (1982) as well as Deborah Tannen’s (1990).

The book is not about how to study the Bible as part of thepreparation process. Other works tell how to do observation, interpretation,and application. Surprisingly, it also does not include the exegetical/ theological/ homileticalprocess—that is, how to explore the text’s original audience, determine what inthe text is timeless, and craft a message for today’s audience. But she doescover how to analyze one’s audience, come up with the central proposition,craft an outline, provide supporting material, find an interesting hook, and providea strong conclusion. She also gives excellent suggestions for creativebrainstorming in community.

I followed her advice just this week, and I think it improvedwhat I taught. And I also came away with some good ideas for where to go fromhere thanks to an appendix of examples from her own group’s idea-swap. A few ofthe suggestions could have benefited from a parenthetical explanation, butmostly they were quite helpful. 

Roese has an easy-to-follow writing style that comes through as humble and personable. And she draws on a broad range of quotes and examples. Her personalstories and insights add to the quality of the resource. Brava!

A word about the author: Today Jackie is the president ofthe Marcella Project, a ministry committed to empowering (my word, not hers)women through the teaching of God’s word. She has a MA/CE from DTS and a DMinin Preaching from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Prior to founding theMarcella Project, she was the Teaching Pastor to Women at a Dallas megachurch.

CSNTM: Preserving Biblical Manuscripts

From Dublin, the latest…

PCPC in Dallas to Kick Off Arts Festival

This year's PCPC Arts Festival kicks off with the Amazing Grace concert and Artists' Reception onFriday, November 8, 6:30 pm, in the PCPC Sanctuary, after which the Festival gallery will open for the first time. The festival and concert theme is Justice and Mercy, based on Micah 6:8: Live Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly with Your God. Doors are open daily, November 9-17, 10:00 am-6:00 pm.

WRR Radio Spot

00:00/01:00

Justice and Mercy (Micah 6:8)Three themes:Live JustlyLove MercyWalk Humbly with your God

Are we just making things — or making things just?

A Symposium Conversation on Justice and Mercy
Friday, September 6, 7:00 – 9:00 pm

Part One

00:03/69:24

Part Two - Q&A

00:00/00:00

Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing

Every other year, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hosts the Festival of Faith and Writing. It is fantastico! Def my favorite conference. And we're coming up on another one, April 10-12, 2014. Online registration will open later this month. The early registration rate–in effect through January 31, 2014—is $185. After that, the regular registration rate of $200 takes effect. The student registration rate is $85.

Okay, on to the good stuff. Today I received lots of news about books and authors along with Festival announcements:  

--The list of featured speakers, recommended reading, book club resources, and lots more is now available on the Festival of Faith and Writing's web site.

--Recent additions to the speaker list include New York Times columnist Verlyn Klinkenborg, journalist Jeff Chu, novelist Suzanne Woods Fisher, poet Sean Hill, pop-culture writer Donna Bowman, novelist Okey Ndibe, young adult author Swati Avasthi, and fiction/nonfiction writer Peter Orner. Follow the link to read more about all of them —and the rest of the Calvin speakers on the speakers'  section of the web site.  

  

--Over the coming months, the Festival site will showcase several excellent books by Festival 2014 authors in a section called Festival Favorites. The goal of this section is to shine light on some good books that perhaps aren't (yet) on our bookshelves. November's featured book is Janisse Ray’s The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food, an exploration of what we lose when plant-seed varieties become extinct, and what ordinary farmers across the country are doing to save these seeds. Go to Calvin's Festival Favorites section to read more about this book, including an excerpt. 

  

--The list of finalists for the National Book Award has been announced, and two of the authors are featured Festival speakers. In the young adult literature category, graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang has been nominated for a second time for his two-volume work Boxers and Saints. (His first nomination, —and the first ever for a graphic novel, —was for American Born Chinese.) Follow this link to read a Boxers and Saints excerpt. 

Nominated in the poetry category is Mary Szybist’s's Incarnadine. Her first volume, Granted, was a finalist for another award, the National Book Critics Circle Award. Listen to an interview with Szybist, in which she reads poems from Incarnadine.

--Festival speaker Christopher Beha’s's Twitter conversation with author and blogger Jennifer Weiner about the fiction preferences of the New York Times Book Review (she bemoans, he congratulates) led to a post on his blog, which led to its reprint in Slate. It’'s a long but thoughtful read in which Beha delineates commercially successful fiction from “holy crap fiction.” 

--G. Willow Wilson’s book, Alif the Unseen, won a 2013 World Fantasy Award in the novel category this month. The novel tells the tale of a young Arab-Indian hacker who finds himself on the run from the state’'s electronic security force, lost in the secret world of the jinn. Check out the New York Times review. 

--Swati Avasthi recently published her second young adult novel, Chasing Shadows. Told in prose with images by Craig Phillips, it was chosen as a Junior Library Guild Selection and to date has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, the School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews, which called it “haunting, mesmerizing, and intense.” 

Yummy! 

Bioethics in the News

Skills matter.  Research has confirmedwhat patients have long suspected and trainees have long known –the dexterity of a surgeon’s handscan account for much of the differences in how well patients do. (New York Times)

Belgium considering kids’ euthanasialaw. In Belgium, where euthanasia is now legal for peopleover the age of 18, the government is considering extending it to children and adultswith early dementia. Imagine a teen with angst being allowed to get help tocommit suicide. Right. (ABC News)

How much does a patient invegetative state know? An analysis of brainactivity in 21 patients and eight healthy volunteers showed one of the patientscould pick out individual sounds. (BBC)

Fertility: Race matters. Maternal ethnicity is a significant determinant of successfuloutcomes after fertility treatment.  (Medical Xpress)

Too many, too young.
One in every five girls (about 19%) gives birth before sheturns 18 in developing countries. Of the 7.3 million girls who give birth everyyear, 2 million of them are under the age of 14. (CNN)

Progress with breast cancer.
A test that identifies seven classes of breast cancer could beavailable within two years. (BBC)

Curbing drug-induced abortion.
 If a U.S. court decides to hear an appeal in a case aboutdrug-induced abortion, it could clarify how far states can go in restrictingabortions. (The Wall StreetJournal)

Syria polio cases confirmed by WHO.Ten polio cases have been confirmed in Syria, the first confirmed outbreak there in 14years. (The Guardian)

DNA and full disclosure.
A recommendation earlier this year that people who have theirDNA sequenced should be told of certain risk factors, regardless of whetherthey want to know, has sparked an ongoing debate among physicians and ethicists.(Boston Globe)

4 babies, 2 surrogates, 1 set oftwiblings.
A British couple are to becomeparents of two sets of twin babies carried by two Indian surrogate women theyhave never met. Experts say twiblings, or children born to separate surrogatesbut created from the same batch of embryos, are common in India. The four babiesare the result of a commercial surrogacy agreement with a clinic in Mumbai. (BBC)

Wordless Wednesday

How the Church Can Better Serve Victims of Relationship Violence

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. So today I’m happy to have as my guest, my student RaynaPittman with Virtuous Communications, Inc. talking on this subject.    

I answered the phone at work to find myself in aconversation with a distraught woman. She desperately needed to share the recentevents of her life with somebody. Sheexplained her husband’s abusive history—most recently, how he locked herteenage daughter out of the house. I heard the helplessness in her voice, butwhat could I do?

As I listened, I thought of my coworkers who criticize the church.They would argue that such an abusive situation justifies abandoning marriage. Theysay the church clouds the issue of abuse with doctrines about male headship andsubmission. And sadly, the church’s commitment to marriage often does come atthe expense of a lifetime of spousal abuse. I recently heard of a churchdisciplining a woman for calling the police out of fear that her husband wouldbang down the door, her only shield against his rage! A woman is beaten every nine secondsin the United States, and often the church stutters. Yet, it courageouslydefends marriage in a culture that devalues lifetime commitment. More than 40%of marriages in the United States end in divorce, and the culture shrugs. How couldI shape my response to encourage this woman’s safety and still honor thesanctity of marriage?

As I searched for words of encouragement, I thought aboutJesus and the woman at the well (John 4). Jesus demonstrates that women aretruly valuable to God, contrary to the religious establishment’s norm at the time. The churchshould follow Jesus’ example. The church can make a victim of relationshipviolence feel valued by doing the following:

. observing Domestic Violence Awareness Month.Have survivors of relationship violence share     

   their testimonies.

. having a safe place available where victims can escape while they rebound. 

. allocating resources. Lack of resources is oneof the main reasons a victim stays with her 

  abuser.

. offering support groups that meet in a privatelocation, because many victims feel ashamed.

As Jesus talks with the woman at the well, helooks through her relationship issues and delves deeper into her spiritualhealth. Likewise the church canconcentrate on people’s spiritual health in an effort to heal relationshipissues by doing the following:

. holding abusers accountable for their sinful behavior.

. genuinely caring, doing the hard work of gettinginvolved. Involvement says we care about 

. spiritual health, not just an image ofwellness.

. continuing to resist the culture on behalf ofthe sanctity of marriage.

The church as the body of Christ has the ability to give thesame living water Jesus offered the woman at the well. The culture lacks thisability, so its fix is at best incomplete. With the church fully engaged in thefight to end relationship violence, I could confidently say to my caller, “No onehas the right to violate you. The church can provide you with the safetyand the living water you need.”

The Sojourn

I just finishedreading The Sojourn, by Andrew Krivak. The book was a finalistfor the 2011 National Book Award and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prizeand inaugural Chautauqua Prize. The debut novel by this author, The Sojourn reminded me in places ofCather’s My Antonía.

The coming-of-age story follows Jozef Vinich, a boy uprootedin his infancy from a Colorado mining town upon the death of his mother. Jozefand his father return to live as poor shepherds in rural Austria-Hungary. Thework is set in an era when Slovaks, Austrians, Germans, and Czechs fought onthe same side.

At the beginning of WWI, Jozef joins his adopted brother asa sharpshooter in the German army and survives a trek across the Alps in Italyonly to be captured by an enemy that wins. The author’s own family history (heis the grandson of Slovak immigrants) serves as inspiration for this tale ofbrotherhood and survival.

I love how Krivak shows the passage of time in places usingelements from the church calendar. For example, the soldiers—who have beentraversing the Alps since October—enter a chapel and see an advent wreath. Atthis point, the reader deduces that it’s December and knows two months havepassed.  I also enjoyed reading of LakeGarda and Padua, the latter of which I plan to visit in mid-December. 

The author does love long sentences. In several places asingle one would fill an entire multi-line paragraph. But mostly the proseflows smoothly and demonstrates Krivak’s mastery of simile. And his wisdom. Heclearly understands the dynamics between fathers and sons and the prejudices immigrantshave faced. And he handles pacing well, as well as having deep insight into thehuman condition.

I heard about thisbook from the folks putting together Calvin College’s biannual Festival ofFaith and Writing. Krivak is on the docket to speak at the April 2014conference, which I plan to attend and highly recommend. Krivak has alsowritten A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, a memoirabout his eight years in the Jesuit Order. He served as editor for TheLetters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902–1912,which received the Louis L. Martz Prize. 

Mark the Date: 3 November

The second half of the twentieth century was an era of amazing progress in Christian mission and church growth. In 1960, about 80 percent of the Church was white, Western, and middle class. By 2000, about 80 percent of the Church was non-white, non-Western, and poor. This has not been due a decline in the West, where the percentage of Christians has remained fairly constant. Rather, it has been due to phenomenal church growth in the non-West where Christian radio, the Jesus film and an explosion of indigenous ministries have seen multitudes turn to Jesus Christ.

But...church growth will always trigger a backlash, a spiritual counter offensive.

In November 1998, in an effort to address the problem of escalating religious persecution—particularly the escalating persecution of religious minorities outside the West—the U.S. enacted its International Religious Freedom Act which tied foreign policy to international religious freedom by mandating that severe violators be sanctioned. In response to this Act, dictators around the world reigned in hostile elements and tinkered with reform for the sake of aid and trade. But when the U.S. housing bubble burst in Aug-Sept 2008 and the U.S. lost its economic leverage, the Act lost its teeth and persecution immediately escalated. Today, Christians around the world are facing not just hostility, but displacements and massacres on a scale not seen in a century. We have entered an era of great persecution the likes of which has not been seen in our lifetime.

In Galatians 6:2 the Apostle Paul exhorts us to "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" [i.e. the law of love]. We must speak out and extend aid. Above all, we must get serious about the serious business of intercessory prayer, which is advocacy in the courts of heaven.

The International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the persecuted church will be observed this year on 3 November 2013. On that day, people around the world will pray in solidarity for the persecuted church.

Maybe We Can Meet?

Here's my travel and speaking schedule for the next six months. Maybe we can meet up?

2013

Oct 23 "Liberating Your Ministry from the Busyness Syndrome," Rural Home Missionary Association (RHMA) Conference, Lakeview Camp and Conference Center, Waxahachie, Texas

Nov 2 McGregory Literary Marketing Seminar, Chicago O'Hare Embassy Suites (attending)

Nov 11 7 PM "Marriage According to Eph 5:21ff," women of Christ Chapel Plano, Texas

Nov 13 "Writing for Publication: For the Church and Community," Biola/Talbot, La Mirada, California (via Skype)

Nov 19–22 Evangelical Society National Meeting (attending), Baltimore, Maryland

Dec 10–18 Northern Italy (based in Vicenza) – PWOC event TBA

2014

Feb 19–22 Presenting, Writing Research Across Borders Conference, Paris, France

Feb 28 Poiema Arts Conference, sponsored by the Center for the Study of NT Manuscripts (CSNTM), The Hope Center, Plano, Texas

April 10–12 Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, Grand Rapids, Michigan (attending)

April 14 Chapel, Corban University, Salem, Oregon

May 4–6 Evangelical Press Association, Anahem, California