Page 1789 – Christianity Today (2024)

The complexity of the human central nervous system is astounding. A typical human brain has at least 10 to the 11th power neurons, 10 to the 12th-10 to the 13th glial cells, and 10 to the 15th synapses (Changeux and Ricoeur 2000). For the most part, the development of the nervous system is a well-documented process with distinct and recognizable milestones (Tau and Peterson 2010), with multiple genetic and environmental factors that tweak and refine (or disrupt) these stereotypic events (Rubenstein 2011). Given the vast opportunity for things to go wrong, it is amazing that humans end up with functioning nervous systems that detect (sense) and interpret (perceive) stimuli, much less respond. Furthermore, the majority of humans appear to have similar responses to similar sensations.

According to Hsu (2007) and Chown (2009), randomness following the Big Bang was required to provide the vast amount of information currently present in our universe. While this may be the case, the actual application of this randomness results in a limited number of responses from systems upon which the randomness acts. For example, any number of injuries (stroke, concussion, tumor, inflammation, blunt force, etc.) to the occipital lobe (the most posterior lobe of the brain that receives and interprets visual information) could result in blindness or damage to the visual system. Since the occipital lobe is responsible for vision, and not motor (movement), processing, it can only respond within the limits of its physiology. The literature is rife with examples of unique responses to varying brain trauma, particularly in the areas related to memory and the role of the thalamus and hippocampus (Squire, et al. 1989, Corkin 1984, Zola-Morgan, Squire and Amaral 1986)

It is also our exposure to random events that provides our unique personalities and development of the prefrontal cortex, among other regions. Thus, stimulation during embryonic, perinatal, and adolescent development (proceeding even throughout adulthood) continually shapes our neural circuitry, in turn fine-tuning the immense variety of our responses and our ability to be molded by further events. One might argue that without the inherent randomness of experiences, our world would be devoid of the extraordinary diversity found among the human population.

It is outside the ability of scientific tools to prove or disprove the existence of a Divine Being (just as it is difficult, if not impossible, for philosophical tools to prove or disprove basics of cellular structure). But, this does not mean that the two disciplines can’t (or shouldn’t) complement each other. Belief in a Creator (God) that orchestrated the exponential increase of information following a rapid inflation period (Chown 2009) does not negate the importance of the Creator’s influence. Just as a poet has the ability to work within or outside of the constraints of grammatical conventions, God should be granted the ability to work within or outside the apparent constraints of the laws of physics. One could hypothesize that it is trivial to create purpose and order out of a priori purpose and order. Through faith, we acknowledge the power of God to bring order and purpose out of apparent randomness and chaos.

Vanessa A. Fitsanakis is assistant professor of biology at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.

Works Cited

Changeux, JP, and P Ricoeur. What Makes Us Think? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Chown, M. The Matchbox That Ate a Forty Ton Truck: What Everyday Things Tell Us about the Universe. New York: Faber and Faber, 2009.

Corkin, S. “Lasting Consdquences of Bilateral Medial Temporal Lobectomy: Clinical Course and Experimental Findings in HM.” Seminar in Neurology, 1984: 249-59.

Hsu, SDH. “Information, Information Processing and Gravity.” International Journal of Modern Physics, 2007: 2895-2908.

Rubenstein, JL. “Annual Research Review: Development of the Cerebral Cortex: Implications for Neurodevelopmental Disorders.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2011): 339-55.

Squire, LR, DG Amaral, SM Zola-Morgan, M Kritchevsky, and G Press. “Description of Brain Injury in the Amnesic Patient NA based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” Experimental Neurology, 1989: 23-35.

Tau, GZ, and BS Peterson. “Normal Development of Brain Circuits.” Neuropsychopharmacology 35, no. 1 (2010): 147-68.

Zola-Morgan, S, LR Squire, and D Amaral. “Human Amnesia and the Medial Temporal Region: Enduring Memory Impairment Following a Bilateral Lesion to the CA1 Field of the Hippocampus.” Journal of Neuroscience, 1986: 2950-67.

Copyright © 2012 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

Mentored and influenced by two of Poland’s greatest filmmakers—Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski—it’s not surprising that Agnieszka Holland would also become known not just as one of her nation’s finest, but one of the world’s best.

Holland, 63, recently received even further critical acclaim when her latest project, In Darkness, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. The film opens in limited release this week, and will go wider in the coming weeks.

It is not Holland’s first Oscar nomination; she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for 1992’s Europa Europa, which she also directed. (She lost out to Ted Tally, writer of The Silence of the Lambs, that year.) The veteran filmmaker is also known for such movies as Copying Beethoven (2006) and The Secret Garden (1993), and numerous TV series, including episodes of The Killing, The Wire, and Cold Case.

Christianity Today recently interviewed Holland in Los Angeles to discuss her career in general, and In Darkness in particular. She is diminutive, but has presence. Her wise gaze, her stolid demeanor and her salt-and-pepper, bobbed hair testify to a fierce intellect, strong personality, and deep wisdom.

In Darkness centers on sewer worker and petty thief Leopold Socha, who hides his stolen loot in the sewers beneath the Polish city of Łódź during World War II. When the Nazis invade, Socha stumbles upon some Jews who are hiding in the sewer. Will he turn them over to the Germans, or will he take their own offers of money to keep them hidden?

Socha tells his wife he is tempted to turn in the Jews, justifying himself with the statement that Jews killed Jesus. When his wife informs him that in fact Jesus himself was Jewish, Socha is surprised. Holland says the scene reminds her of a childhood memory of an illiterate nanny who told her “in secret that Jesus was a Jew.” Holland tells the story with smiling eyes, mimicking her nanny by putting her hand up to her mouth, not wanting the scandal of Jesus’ true ethnicity to reach the wrong ears.

In the film, one character says that God will punish Socha for hiding the Jews, but Holland gets the last word as the end credits roll, beginning with this phrase: “As if we need God to punish each other.” Fade to black.

Holland reminds us how the 20th century showed that even without God we can wreak as much havoc, destruction and death as we did (and still do) when burning with religious passion. But instead of thinking about God as peripheral to this story, his absence from the dialogue puts the audience in the shoes of the characters, who hear only God’s silence, and who may have felt that God had abandoned them.

“This is much more a people’s story than the ones I have told with the metaphysical direction,” Holland says. “It has to more do with chance or fate. What was interesting to me was to describe how thin the line is between good and evil, represented by Socha. He can slip either way at any moment. I don’t know if you can look at this in religious terms. People survive by caprice in my films—the caprice of God, if you believe in God. But chance plays such a big part that you must ask yourself if it has meaning or is meaningless.”

Holland believes the Holocaust holds many more untold stories that can still teach us today. “The biggest challenge to humanity is the fact that the Holocaust is meaningless,” she says. “Some recent movies and books try to give the Holocaust meaning, a moral. I do not agree with this. This is why it is such an important experience to explore, because you cannot give it meaning.”

Europa Europa deals with the true story of a young man during WWII who must hide his Jewish identity (including his lack of a foreskin), even while he is made to join the Hitler Youth. Her follow-up, Olivier Olivier, features a boy who vanishes in youth to return home as a teenager, but he is changed, different enough to raise the question in his parents’ mind about if this is truly their son or an impostor.

Similar in approach to her friend and fellow Polish director Kieślowski, Holland is interested in the topic of faith, but primarily as just another human trait, similar to issues of identity, sexuality, and morality. Characters wrestle with their faith in films like To Kill a Priest, Angry Harvest, Julie Walking Home, and The Third Miracle, which features a priest as the main character.

Holland often wonders what Kieślowski would say about her current work if he were still alive. “I have never been able to find someone like him in the film world,” she says. “He was my closest friend.” (Kieślowski died in 1996 at the age of 54.)

Born in 1948, Holland does not categorize easily. In addition to being a female director in an overwhelmingly male world (though decidedly not a feminist), she is also a Polish director who has worked most of her career in other countries, partly in exile from Communism. But it is her mixed faith that has given her a personal struggle with identity: her father was Jewish and her mother was Catholic.

“My mother presented my Jewish-ness as something to be proud of, because the Jews were so oppressed, were martyred,” she says. “Her vision was that they had been unjustly slaughtered and that we must try to repair it in some way. She not only hid a Jewish family when she was a young girl, but made a pact with a friend that they would marry Jews when they grew up and have Jewish children. And they did.” Holland leans forward, with an intent stare: “But it was a very Christian vision, because it was the sacrifice that made the Jews better, their martyrdom. This is a vision I had to change: it’s not enough to identify with martyrdom. I identify with the destiny of Holocaust victims, and I have strong feelings of their culture and religion. It’s part of me, but it’s not something that made me who I am.

“My main subject is identity, and how much choice we have as human beings, freedom of will, and chance,” she says. “The religious dimension comes in on the side. [In the film], Socha and his wife’s religion is very basic, traditional; popular Polish religion is like that—which means they don’t understand doctrine very well. They have some code of right and wrong, but their personal code can be quite different from that of the church.”

In her 2002 film Julie Walking Home, one character says that you always take on the religion of the mother. Holland, whose mother was Catholic, was baptized at age 11—in secret, because Poland was under communist occupation at the time. She says she learned about the faith through her nanny and friends.

“At first, all my friends were religious, and I started to read the New Testament,” she says. “I just loved it. The Old Testament was too much like fairy tales, but the story of Jesus, which I read as the story of a rebel, spoke to me because of my Marxist education. I stole a book from my father with great Renaissance and Gothic paintings that inspired me. I did not want to spend eternity in limbo, and asked to be baptized. The priest would not do it, so my friend baptized me, so we aren’t sure if it counts!”

In her films, Holland says the moral and psychological dimensions of a character intrigue her more than the religious: “My relationship to my faith is reflected in some of my films,” she says. “But it varies with my faith. I had a period when I was sure I was a believer; then I had a longer period when I don’t think I was. It is a question in my life that is always present. People who are struggling to have deep faith are interesting to me. I am not looking at them from the perspective of the church, but from the perspective of the person. I am intrigued by anyone who makes a decision to follow something that is more important than life or happiness.”

Eric David is account and project manager for TakePart.com, the digital division of Participant Media. He has written several profiles for our Filmmakers of Faith series.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

On the last episode of the wildly popular PBS drama Downton Abbey, one character tells another: "You've broken the rules, my girl, and it's no use pretending they're easily mended."

The popular British import, set in World War I, portrays the aristocratic Crawley family and the cadre of cooks, maids, and butlers who tend to them, in all their relational and class-based drama. The show is all about rules, whether bowing to class structure or honoring commitments from the past. The rules present the extraordinary obstacles in this show … except that they're not so extraordinary, really, and that's one of the many reasons this show works.

Downton's surprise success is often chalked up to an unrealistic sense of nostalgia over an intriguing and lavish lifestyle at the turn of the 20th century, borne out by the inevitable market surge of "inspired by" books, clothes, food, and jewelry. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's easy to understand why this show is considered a soap opera that appeals mainly to women.)

But my favorite aspect of Downton is its emphasis on humans' agency and accountability despite social and economic barriers. The characters are never excused for their choices by circ*mstance, class, gender, time period, or even the unfairness of the rules to which they so tightly cling.

Part of Downton's popularity is its resonance with Jane Austen's books and the movies inspired by them. As in most Austen adaptations, the lives of the heroines in Downton—women dress for dinner and idle away the day—demand improvement. The daughters cannot inherit their family's estate (a common theme of Austen's), and society demands that they aspire to marry money because they cannot make their own and must preserve their family's station.

But in many ways, a more apt comparison for the show might be the popular sitcom The Office (now in its eighth season), which nevertheless portrays the choices of characters who are resigned to work within a frustrating system rather than determined to rail against it. The world of Downton revolves around the stewardship of the Earl of Grantham, much like the corporate office, where the boss dictates the environment.

On Downton, both "upstairs" (titled) and "downstairs" (servant) characters' responses—to circ*mstances, to others—dictate their situations more than the obstacles or the attitude of the supervisors (particularly the earl but also the butler and housekeeper), who wield great power over the lives of other characters.

For example, one of the earl's daughters, Edith, turns bitter and unsympathetic as she rehearses her tightly held record of suffered slights and limitations. And the maid O'Brien, so certain in her expectations of mistreatment and indifference, is ruthless in her determination to do unto others before they do unto her. The earl's eldest daughter, Mary, makes a mistake so shocking (proving that after all, she is no Austen heroine!) in raging against her social structure that it looms over her attempts to find happiness throughout the second season.

Downton might be a melodrama, but it is one where the characters are allowed to truly stumble.

In the second episode of season 2, which began airing in the United States last month, the earl's youngest and most proactive daughter Sybil tells Edith, "There's something you do better than the rest of us. Find out what it is and do it. It's doing nothing that is the enemy."

It is a rallying call for personal agency.

Until that point, Edith had accepted that her circ*mstances, or the comparison between herself and her sisters (Edith is "the other one," as Saturday Night Live put it in a recent skit), defined who she would be; she effectively chose apathy. But similarly, Mary, who knows what she wants, feared losing it and so dithered from fear and lost it anyway.

These mistakes provide simple lessons, though hardly trite since many women today are facing them. Many of us feel locked into situations where we are unhappy, either at work, in romance, in our family structures, or in our churches. We rage against "the system," perhaps, against the attitudes of people around us, the opinions of those whom we care about, or against our own wants and fears. But our circ*mstances matter less than our attitude: our response to the obstacles we encounter. Whether we work inside the home or out of it, whether we are married or single, surveys and stories deal with the fact that women (and men) call themselves "unhappy" or "unsatisfied" with life.

Surprisingly, for me, Downton is a timely, and perhaps refreshingly down to earth, reminder that apathy is also itself a choice, and it's just another name for indifference. The Bible has some choice things to say about indifference: the quality between hot and cold that God spits out. Jesus died to ensure our right to choose—mainly to choose life in him—and that is an inheritance (in Downton it would be called an entail) that we are given each and every day.

Watching (okay, greedily consuming) the first season of Downton, I frequently compared myself to the characters and concluded which ones I did not want to be. The undesireable characters were not the servants or the lovelorn, but those who faced with difficulty became spiteful or caustic.

Sometimes the only choice left when faced with obstacles is to continue holding fast to our faith. That's defined as an act of patience in the Bible: a choice, not a code word for passivity.

Fortunately, God's promises are not just a riveting storyline. (One of my favorites: where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.) There is much more security to our faith in them than in believing Mary and Matthew will find their way back together.

Though I totally believe they will, and I can't wait to watch.

Last year Rob Bell made waves with his book Love Wins which he describes as “a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who has ever lived.” The waves became a tsunami when John Piper tweeted “Farewell, Rob Bell” and dismissed him as a heretic. Agree or disagree with his point of view, Bell knows how to stir conversation. And there is one thing about Love Wins we cannot dismiss- how we think about the future shapes how we live in the present.

I’ve had the benefit of interviewing Bell a number of times and have always found him thoughtful, gracious, and genuine in his pursuit of Christ. He was kind enough to talk to me once again–this time about his decision to leave his church, the lost theology of vocation, and how our view of the end of the world impacts the way we think about our work today.

Skye: Apart from ministry, Christians talk very little about “callings.” What do you attribute this to?

Rob: The problem goes back to how you read the Bible. A lot of Christians have been taught a story that begins in chapter 3 of Genesis, instead of chapter 1. If your story doesn’t begin in the beginning, but begins in chapter 3, then it starts with sin, and so the story becomes about dealing with the sin problem. So Jesus is seen as primarily dealing with our sins. Which is all true, but it isn’t the whole story and it can lead people into all kinds of despair when it comes to understanding just why we’re here.

The Bible begins in Genesis 1 not with sin but with blessing, not with toil and despair but with life, and creativity, and vibrant participation with God in the ongoing creation of the world–which involves art, and law, and medicine, and education, and parenting, and justice, and learning, and thousands of other pursuits; callings that are holy and sacred in and of themselves. It’s all part of flourishing in God’s good world, which is our home. Here, on earth, is where the story begins and where it ends, and so our work here, in whatever way we co-create with God, is our vocation.

Secondly, we have to embrace our desires. For many, desire is a bad word, something we’re supposed to “give up for God.” That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves. What Jesus does is something far more radical. He insists that we can be transformed in such a way that our desires and God’s desires for us become the same thing. Incredible. What do you love to do that brings more and more heaven into God’s good world? What is it that makes your soul soar? What is it that you do, that your friends and community affirm, that taps you in to who you are made to be?

Describe how you discerned God’s calling to leave Mars Hill to pursue new ideas?

It was a vast array of factors, beginning deep in the heart with the awareness that Jesus was calling, inviting, tugging, doing that thing he does when it’s time to take a leap into the unknown.

Can you share more about where your energies are currently focused, and why you believe it is an important calling?

Nope. Haha. It’s better to do the work and wait until it’s ready to be released into the world. But it involves resurrection, of course, and the new world that’s bursting forth right here in the midst of this one.

What/who has influenced your theology of calling and work?

Dallas Willard, and U2, and Steven Pressfield, and Dorothy Sayers. Do what you do with every ounce of energy and passion you have, give it everything you’ve got, put in the hours and pour out the sweat and blood and don’t hold anything back. That’s an act of worship, it is holy in itself.

Don’t make grand claims about what it is, don’t tell people what they’re supposed to think about it, it will speak for itself. Let the Spirit do what the Spirit will with it. And most of all, enjoy the work. And while you’re at it, relinquish the need to label everything “Christian” or “not Christian.” Be a Christian. People can figure the rest out. It’s a noun, after all.

Reformation theologians took “vocation,” a word previously only applied to the clergy, and applied it to all believers. They promoted the idea that all work was God’s work. What can we do to reclaim this belief in our communities?

Stop using the word ‘missionary’ and stop sending people out to the ‘mission field.’ Or keep the word, but also commission public school teachers, and dentists, and CPA’s, and construction workers, and those people who take your money at the toll booth. We’re all disciples, all ground is holy, every interaction and conversation is loaded with divine potential, anytime, anywhere. Ordain everyone, call everyone a minister, invite the whole church to be on staff.

You’ve obviously gotten a lot of attention for your thoughts about eschatology in the last year. How does one’s vision of the future impact their work in the present?

The gospel is an embodied announcement about this world: it is good, and we’re home, and the word took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. Heaven and earth are, in fact, coming together. We’re home. Soil is good, and so is wine, and sex, and music, and muscle, and arranging things, and building things, and getting hungry people the food they need, and jobs that empower people to make better lives for themselves.

What you believe about where the story is headed deeply impacts how you live now and what you believe matters, now. We’re not trying to help people evacuate. That’s a denial of the gospel truth that Jesus is reclaiming everything.

Amy Sherman, in her recent book Kingdom Calling, argues that popular eschatology has eroded the Christian understanding of vocation. She writes, “If we (mistakenly) believe that at the end, the earth will be completely destroyed and that just our souls will live on forever, it’s a bit hard to imaging being passionate for such things as environmental stewardship or cultural reformation…. If it’s all going to be burned up, isn’t our labor here on earth in vain?” How do you respond to Christians holding this view?

The truth is, people who hold these escapist views usually throw crap parties, because they’re essentially waiting for things to end so they can go somewhere else. Jesus shows up at the party, turns water into wine, and then essentially says “Oh we are just getting started…”

If a 20 year old told you she was entering full-time ministry because she wanted to serve God and make a difference in the world, what questions would you have for her? How would you respond?

I would ask her if she’s a Christian. If she said “yes,” I would say “Too late! You’re already in full-time ministry! The real question is: what are you going to do with your God-given passions and energies? Who are you going to help? What are you going to make? Where are you going to serve? Go do that, and release yourself from the need to give it labels.

Last month, we noted that filmmaker Tim Hudson was hoping to secure funding to move forward with Bleed into One, his documentary on the history of Christian rock.

Unfortunately, the project is looking less like it’s going to happen. Hudson had hoped to raise $60,000 on Kickstarter to finish the project, but fell far short of that goal, raising less than $5,000. Bummer, because it looks like Hudson had done a lot of good research on the project. Here’s hoping that someday this film does see the light of day.

A federal appeals court ruled that California’s Proposition 8 defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is unconstitutional. A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit ruled that California’s state constitutional amendment violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 2-1 decision is likely to be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the majority. The opinion rejected arguments that the proposition advanced the state’s interests in child-rearing, procreation, education, or religious freedom.

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins (appointed by President Clinton) agreed with Reinhardt’s opinion.

Judge Randy Smith (appointed by President George W. Bush) dissented, at least in part, to the majority decision. Smith said that Proposition 8 is “rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest” because it “preserves the fundamental and historical purposes of marriage.” However, Smith disagreed with proponents who said the state had an interest in promoting child-rearing by opposite-sex couples as the best family structure for children.

National Organization for Marriage (NOM) president Brian Brown said the decision “was as predictable as the outcome of a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition game.”

“We have anticipated this outcome since the moment San Francisco Judge Vaughn Walker’s first hearing in the case. Now we have the field cleared to take this issue to the US Supreme Court, where we have every confidence we will prevail,” Brown said.

According to the panel, one of the key issues was that Proposition 8 rescinded the right to marry. The Court said that because same-sex couples were able to marry and then were prohibited from doing so, the purpose of Proposition 8 was to take away a right, which is different from not allowing same-sex marriage in the first place.

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst at Focus on the Family, said in a statement, “Opponents of Prop 8 insist on changing the definition of marriage for everyone, including children who deserve the opportunity to grow up in a home with their own married mother and father.”

The panel, including Smith, unanimously rejected the legal argument that families should have a mother and a father.

“Plantiffs argue that the optimal parenting rationale cannot be a legitimate governmental interest because same-sex couples in domestic partnerships have all the substantive parenting rights opposite-sex couples in marriage enjoy. Additionally, California family law does not give any official preferences to opposite-sex parenting,” wrote Smith. “Proposition 8 does not change this factual situation.”

Smith agreed with the other two judges on one key point. The panel unanimously denied a motion to have the original opinion vacated. Judges rejected the argument from proponents of the proposition who asked that the original decision be vacated because Chief Judge Walker is gay and had a conflict of interest because he could now marry his partner.

Proponents of Proposition 8 can now appeal to either the full 9th Circuit or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is widely expected that they will choose the quicker route and appeal directly to the high court.

Previous coverage of Proposition 8 and the courts include:

Why the Proposition 8 Decision Matters | That Judge Walker’s ruling is not a surprise does not make it any less of a landmark. (Al Mohler, August 5, 2010)

What Is the Gospel Response to the Prop. 8 Decision? (August 9, 2010)

Prop. 8 Ruled Unconstitutional (August 4, 2010)

A day after embattled New York pastors who use public school buildings to hold off-hours worship services complained that they had little support from the city’s megachurches, Redeemer Presbysterian lead pastor Tim Keller issued an op-ed-style letter, saying:

I am grieved that New York City is planning to take the unwise step of removing 68 churches from the spaces that they rent in public schools. It is my conviction that those churches housed in schools are invaluable assets to the neighborhoods that they serve. Churches have long been seen as positive additions to communities. Family stability, resources for those in need, and compassion for the marginalized are all positive influences that neighborhood churches provide.

There are many with first-hand experience who will claim that the presence of churches in a neighborhood can lead to a drop in crime. The great diversity of our city means that we will never all agree completely on anything. And we cherish our city’s reputation for tolerance of differing opinions and beliefs. Therefore, we should all mourn if disagreement with certain beliefs of the church is allowed to unduly influence the formation of just policy and practice. I disagree with the opinion written by Judge Pierre Leval that: “A worship service is an act of organized religion that consecrates the place in which it is performed, making it a church.” This is an erroneous theological judgment; I know of no Christian church or denomination that believes that merely holding a service in a building somehow “consecrates” it, setting it apart from all common or profane use. To base a legal opinion on such a superstitious view is surely invalid. Conversely, we concur with Judge John Walker’s dissenting opinion that this ban constitutes viewpoint discrimination and raises no legitimate Establishment Clause concerns.

Yesterday, in an online news piece, Bill Devlin, pastor of Manhattan Bible Church, complained about the lack of megachurch support.

Pastor Bill Devlin of Manhattan Bible Church has helped lead the Right to Worship protests since the beginning. He told The Christian Post that a steering committee made up of 10 pastors affected by the ban came to him and asked, “Where are these pastors who have these huge churches? They have been absolutely silent.” Devlin said they have tried contacting large churches that have their own buildings, and the “major response we’ve gotten from big dog churches and pastors is, ‘We’ll pray for you.'”

For the full report in the Christian Post, click here.

Trevor and Marlene Janzen's first miracle took nine months. To the Saskatchewan, Canada, couple, that seemed a natural time to wait for a baby. They adopted their first son, Eyob, from Ethiopia in 2005.

Although they had been through the process once before, their second adoption took twice as long. After waiting 18 months, the Janzens welcomed little Sofoniyas home in 2007.

Soon, they were ready to bring a third child into their family.

"We thought it might take two years," Marlene said. "And we waited and waited."

In May 2011, they returned to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to pick up their second daughter, Biruktawit. The "roller coaster" process took four years.

Long considered one of the easiest nations from which to adopt, Ethiopia is in the midst of dramatic changes that are making the adoption process tougher, longer, and more expensive. Government officials say the shift will ensure the legitimacy of such adoptions. But critics, including many adoptive parents, argue the new policies are punishing young children who need families by slowing down a process that can already take years to complete.

For some, it has stopped things entirely. Since it began facilitating adoptions in Ethiopia, Oregon-based Holt International has placed more than 500 orphans with American families. This fall, the organization stopped taking applications from families wanting to adopt from Ethiopia.

"It's not fair to families to say, 'Sure, come on in and begin the process,' and then have them wait and wait and wait," said Susan Soon-keum Cox, Holt's vice president for public policy and external affairs. "We already have families waiting longer than we feel they should." Such complications have caused the number of international adoptions by Americans to fall to their lowest since 1994.

Restricted Access

As an orphan in 1956, Cox was one of the first children adopted from overseas when her adoptive family brought her to the United States from South Korea. Since then, American parents have adopted a quarter-million children internationally.

Over the years, the most common "sender" nations have shifted with social and economic winds. As China and Russia began to emerge as new economic powers in the mid-2000s, the number of international adoptions from those nations fell.

As that happened, adoption officials in Ethiopia filled the gap. The second most populous nation in Africa, Ethiopia sent about 850 orphans to other countries in 2004. By 2007, the number had more than tripled to an estimated 3,000. American families alone adopted 1,727 children in 2011 from Ethiopia, and hundreds more orphans went to families in Canada, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.

Some believe the rapid increase of adoptions out of Ethiopia—and the tens of thousands of dollars in agency fees involved in each case—invited corruption and set the stage for the current decline. Investigators exposed cases in which biological families were paid, lied to, and conned into relinquishing their children. Several Christian-based adoption agencies were implicated in illegal and unethical actions.

Early last year, Ethiopia's Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) decided to put on the brakes. It announced a 90 percent reduction in the number of cases it would review—bottlenecking the process in the small agency, which must sign off on all adoptions before someone takes a child out of the country.

New regulations dictate all orphaned and abandoned children go first to a government-sponsored home instead of any of the scores of private orphanages scattered throughout the nation and concentrated in Addis Ababa. At least 26 nongovernmental orphanages have been closed, and insiders say 20 more may be shut down in coming months. Many of those private orphanages used to maintain direct relationships with adoption agencies across the Western world.

Cox said, "Sometimes a slowdown is necessary to reassure everyone that there will never come a day when you look at your child and have any doubt whatsoever that when they say, 'Why was I adopted?' you can say, 'Because there wasn't a family in Ethiopia that could care for you.'"

Nonetheless, Cox would like to resume taking applications from prospective parents. And she'd like to speed up the process for those whose cases have stalled.

In recent weeks, the ministry has given some people reason to hope things might get better. In the spring and summer, ministry officials were reviewing just five cases a day. Now, on some days, it is up to forty.

It is unclear, though, whether the ministry is resuming a pace that would return Ethiopia to its status as one of the top sending nations in the world—or if it is simply trying to alleviate the backlog caused during the initial slowdown.

Abusing the System

An adoption official from MOWA (who spoke on the condition that she not be identified) said the government isn't interested in shutting down international adoptions. But she said sending children out of the country "is not our preferred solution."

One American couple recalled a different government official telling them he was "uncomfortable" signing off on paperwork that would send an infant girl to the States to be a slave. He approved the adoption despite his reservations.

But the MOWA official said there are good grounds for suspicion. She argued there is "proof" that Westerners have adopted children to work as household help—though she couldn't produce such reports of child exploitation.

It is not hard, however, to find cases in which caregivers have horribly abused Ethiopian adoptees. In September, police arrested Larry and Carri Williams in connection with the death of their 13-year-old adopted Ethiopian daughter. The girl died outside their home in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, shortly after midnight in near-freezing temperatures. Prosecutors alleged the couple forced her to sleep outdoors, provided her inadequate food, and often locked her in a closet for days at a time with a tape recording of the Bible.

In Utah last year, Lon Kennard pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of children he had adopted. Kennard, who also helped found the Village of Hope orphanage in the small Ethiopian town of Kersa Illala, will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Such cases are rare, but headline-generating situations contribute to a belief "that American people do that all the time," said Gail Gorfe, who has arranged hundreds of placements in 15 years through Adoption Advocates International.

Instead of international adoption, the MOWA official explained that the state prefers to place orphans with extended family members. However, family members often refuse to take custody because they simply cannot afford to feed and clothe an additional person.

She said the government also encourages domestic adoption. But there are very few Ethiopian families able to adopt. The demand far outstrips the number of available families. Lastly, the official said, the government wants to refocus its orphanages on long-term care. Many thousands of orphans in reality will need to stay in a group home until early adulthood.

All of these goals sound good to Matthew Jennings, an adoptive father from Virginia. But until the Ethiopian government is able to deliver on them, Jennings wonders about the wisdom of slowing down the process that brings orphans into loving families in the United States and other developed nations.

It took two and a half years for Jennings and his wife to move through the adoption process, including an "absolutely terrible" six-month period in which the Christian couple had won Ethiopian court approval to adopt their daughter, Ajabi, but could not get the ministry to sign off.

"We really had no idea what was going on," Jennings said. "We felt that our time with our daughter was being stolen from us."

Their case isn't unique. World Association for Children and Parents president Lillian Thogersen said her agency is serving five American families who completed the adoption process but are unable to contact their children. Officials moved the children out of orphanages that the government closed.

"We know where they are, but we've been unable to get in to see them," she said.

Thogersen said she supports a more transparent and legitimate process. But she is concerned that these parents—and worse, their legally adopted children—have been caught in the middle.

Enormous Need

The United Nations estimates that as many as five million children in Ethiopia have lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS, malaria, or other diseases. Many others are born into families too destitute to care for a child. Hundreds of thousands of children live alone on the streets.

The United Nations estimates that as many as five million children in Ethiopia have lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS, malaria, or other diseases.

Adoption coordinator Gorfe is quick to acknowledge that international adoption isn't a long-term solution for Ethiopia's orphan crisis. The rapid increase in adoptions over the past 10 years has spawned "a lot of orphanages that aren't really orphanages" but holding houses reserved for children—mostly infants—who are expected to be easily adoptable, Gorfe said.

"That goes against what an orphanage is supposed to be," she said. "Many kids are ending up in the streets because they're not being taken by these orphanages."

At the Kidane Mehret Children's Home in Addis Ababa, Sister Lutgarda Camilleri said the new regulations add to their work, yet she supports the government's objectives to ensure confidence in the system.

But the changes have had unintended effects on her orphanage, which cares for 150 children, many considered "unadoptable" due to age or health conditions.

The new government rules have resulted in Kidane Mehret receiving fewer infants, which means less attention from would-be parents across the globe since infants are much more easily placed. And that means less support for the majority of aging orphans who won't be adopted.

"When we had babies, people came here and when they came, they would sponsor these older children," Camilleri said. "Right now we have three children who are siblings; they are 8, 13, and 15. They have to be adopted together. But tell me: Who is going to take a 15-year-old with AIDS?"

At the heart of the nun's lament is a simple fact about the limits of adoption in Ethiopia: It barely scratches the surface of the problem.

Matthew D. LaPlante is an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous articles on adoption include:

Adoption: A Long and Winding Journey | Like our adoption into God's family, earthly adoption can be complex and costly. (Her.meneutics, November 1, 2011)

The Adoption Crusade | What a misleading article in the 'The Nation' can teach evangelicals. (April 27, 2011)

The Hard Realities of International Adoption | Torry Hansen's story and the ensuing Russian adoption freeze might make some families reconsider. (Her.meneutics, April 27, 2010)

Strong on Zeal, Thin in Knowledge | Lessons from Haiti's arrest of American Christians trying to take children out of the country. (February 3, 2010)

Matthew D. LaPlante's previous reports from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia include:

Growing in the Word | What the Ethiopian Orthodox have learned from the expansion of evangelicals. (September 16, 2011)

Ethiopia's River of Death | A handful of tribal Christians are fighting child sacrifice. (August 17, 2011)

CT also has more news stories on our website.

One dark night in 2003, a vivid dream woke Leymah Gbowee with a start. Leymah immediately called a meeting of the women in her small Liberian church. Together they formed the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative to protest the civil war ripping apart their country. In weeks, the Initiative grew to become the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which now draws thousands of Christian and Muslim women.

From illiterate villager to government employee, they had husbands, sons, and brothers on either side of the conflict. They had children who did not have enough to eat and daughters who were rape victims. After years of living in conflict, these women were fed up. Led by the dream God gave Leymah, they came together to peacefully protest and to pray and fast for the end of the bloodshed. When the going got tough, they determined to boycott sexual relations until a ceasefire could be reached. Their husbands became motivated allies in prayer and fasting, and the pace of the peace process picked up.

Gbowee, a young mother without special leadership experience, had faith that Jesus was leading her. Due to her and the initiative’s efforts, and against all odds, a peace accord was signed in the summer of 2003. Tyrant President Charles Taylor’s regime was successfully dismantled, and in its place a democratic government was born. The women had literally helped save their country. Leymah Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

War zones are certainly not the only places women are bringing unprecedented change to their communities. A recent Atlantic Cities article featured trailblazer Jane Jacobs, who changed the face of contemporary urban planning in the late 20th century. Jacobs, a housewife without a college degree, was a seemingly unlikely candidate in a field dominated by men. In fact, she became influential almost by accident when she, at the last minute, was forced to fill in for her boss at a conference and won admiration for her novel perspective.

Jacobs was a keen observer of “things close to home—street, neighborhood and community,” which informed her grassroots approach to urban planning. A male colleague once pronounced: “Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” Jane’s response captured the spirit of her work: “Funny, big plans never stirred women’s blood. Women have always been willing to consider little plans.” The longevity of Jacobs’s work demonstrates that “little plans” executed with care make a big difference.

Reflecting on Jacobs’ legacy, Roberta Brandes Gratz writes:It is one thing to dwell in the world of ideas, another to actively engage in the transformations we need in our world today. Any dogged observer of American cities of the 20th and 21st centuries can’t escape the discovery that women have been in the forefront of saving and regenerating American cities.

I am encouraged by these women. Some are dear friends, others are new acquaintances. All are an inspiration.

Hannah Lieder lives in the 9th Ward in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the most racially diverse neighborhood in the state, with 94 languages spoken. 9th Ward is home to the highest per-capita number of immigrants in the country and to a large Native American housing project. Nearly all (98 percent) of children are non-white and are on the subsidized lunch program. For 12 years Hannah and her husband have called this neighborhood home.

Several years ago, Hannah began to take groups of neighborhood children on afterschool outings. They went for hikes—some had never seen the Mississippi River which runs through the city of Minneapolis—roasted marshmallows, and went swimming. None of the children knew how to swim. Years ago, many urban public pools chose to shut down rather than to integrate, leaving the urban poor without a place to learn to swim. From 2000-2005, Minnesota had the highest minority drowning rate in the country, and 2011 was a near-record drowning rate for the state. Hannah, a swimmer and outdoorswoman, was horrified to learn all this. And when Hannah is horrified, she takes action. In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, every child should know how to swim.

In the past three years, Hannah has pulled the neighborhood together around resurrecting an abandoned indoor swimming pool and creating an inner-city swim and training center. With $300 in the bank, a fierce sense of purpose, and a lot love for the children of the 9th Ward, “Minneapolis Swims” has come to life. Hannah built a grassroots team of other Christian friends and of neighbors, lobbied the legislature, engaged Lakota Sioux, Somali, and African American neighbors to feel empowered in the political process and to know their voices matter. She wrote bond proposals and, with hours to spare, prevented the local pool from being filled with concrete. With approval from the Parks Bureau and a growing cadre of government supporters, she now has the go-ahead to take this project forward to a major fundraising campaign, with the goal of improving lives of the 9th Ward’s youth. Like Leymah and Jane, Hannah is motivated by things close to home; she has no special training for her community engagement. She is motivated by heart and call; she says, “As a woman I am patient, nurturing, and strong. These kids need that kind of love and relationship for the long haul.” Hannah was just recognized as the 9th Ward Leader of the Year.

Several years ago the Ford Foundation released a study on women and community development, concluding that if women care deeply about a cause, they will often work regardless of pay or without pay. Love for swimming and kids led Hannah to something much bigger than herself. Another friend, Tamara Bryan, began to pull her BBQ grill onto the sidewalk in front of her Portland, Oregon, house once a week in the summer. She now hosts a neighborhood potluck and grill that attracts neighbors and allows them to build community. Majora Carter stumbled upon her calling to environmental and urban renewal when she discovered a neglected riverfront while walking her dog in the South Bronx. When a business venture and sense of calling took Jennifer Jukanovich and her family to Rwanda, they choose not to live in a gated community separated from poor neighbors. As her neighbors talked with her, they formed a dream together, and Jennifer invited her American friends to join. This international group of women has now teamed with more than a dozen Rwandan ladies to help them complete tailoring school and start a small sewing cooperative. Although it isn’t always easy in another culture, Jennifer cared enough to slow down, listen, and learn before taking action. Her neighbors are now on the way to becoming independent small business owners who will be able to feed their children and send them to school.

Each of these neighborhoods has been renewed and enlivened because Hannah, Tamara, Majora, and Jennifer paid attention, considered “little plans,” and acted on their dreams, thus transforming their cities and neighborhoods. Some of the stories seem extraordinary, and others quite ordinary. In either case, “little plans”—walking the dog, listening carefully, taking a child swimming, moving the backyard BBQ to the front sidewalk, bringing other women together in a church or a living room to talk about what needs to change—do matter. Jesus, who has conquered death and redeems all things, calls and empowers us to bring new life to our communities in these ways. When women who care about their cities follow Jesus in “little plans” and invite others to join in, the little plans can lead to big change in cities and entire countries.

Leymah Gbowee’s “crazy dream to get the women of the church together …” was a dream worth dreaming and still is. What will happen in your city in 2012 as women who follow Jesus dream his dreams, get the women of the church together to consider “little plans,” and then take action?

Kelly Bean is cultivator of Third Saturday and co-planter of Urban Abbey. A pastor, speaker, writer, mentor, activist and artist, Kelly is passionate about creating environments that seed deep community with diverse groups. She is writing a book with Baker about church communities.

And Gramma makes three.

Almost.

Over a year ago, my mother and father moved across the country to live with my husband and me. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was supposed to come with them. But Gramma fell and broke her hip just before the move. She has not recovered enough to continue being cared for at home, as she had been before the fall. This meant being left behind by my parents when they relocated, much to my mother’s despair. But finally, months after my parents arrived, we were able to bring Gramma here—just not in accordance with our original plans. Instead of moving her to the room designed for her in the little home my husband built for my parents, we moved her to a nursing facility.

These events—waiting months for a space to open in the nursing home, followed by the nightmare of transporting across the country a frail 97-year-old woman in need of an airline-approved oxygen tank, an accompanying nurse, and proper identification documents (apparently, government agencies are not very sympathetic to the ways of the world a century ago, and those ways do not include the ubiquitous and standardized paperwork of today)—have given me a glimpse into recent headlines in my community predicting a shortage in services for the growing population of the elderly.

But more important, having my grandmother so near, within walking distance, also means that for the first time in my life, I have an up-close view of aging, death, and dying. Because my immediate and extended family members have always been spread out across the country, I’ve never really witnessed these things.

And to be honest, it really scares me.

It scares me to see this person—someone who once milked cows, churned butter, dug hands into soil, grew vegetables, hayed fields, stacked wood, raised hens, trekked two miles and back to church each Sunday (before she and my grandfather owned an automobile), and accompanied my grandfather’s trombone with the piano—now confined in her last days to a quiet, air-conditioned space with beige carpeting and peach-colored paint and wallpaper.

It scares me to help whittle down all of my grandmother’s worldly possessions—which once included a farmhouse, 140 acres, a tractor, a pond, a dozen Guernsey cows, a hog or two, a henhouse, goats, barn cats, a Boston Terrier, a piano, a station wagon, and decades-worth of accumulation that only those who lived through the Great Depression can understand—to just what fits into a 3′ by 5′ particle board closet, a bedside table, and a bulletin board.

It scares me to watch someone who loves animals, and who built an entire life around them express such visible, mute pleasure at the little stuffed dog in her room, the only animal she can have now.

It scares me to witness a once-feisty, robust woman—with whom “conversing” meant simply hearing impassioned, opinionated monologues punctuated by table slaps and boisterous cackles—become a quiet, docile listener who smiles and nods a lot.

It scares me to know that this strong woman—whose greatest outrage has always been that the card she was dealt from the deck of life was being a woman in a man’s world—has, finally, become like a child.

It scares me to see, every time I visit her, not only my grandmother, but room after room, row after row, of people like her, wheeling, in slow motion, ever-diminishing, toward death.

It scares me, in short, to see the process of decay and dying so close.

Yet I recognize that my fear and pain are not only about my grandmother, although they are certainly that. This fear and pain are also very much about someone else I love: me.

It scares me, whose clothes and shoes and books occupy rooms, to think of funneling all my earthly possessions into a portable closet; whose every moment at home is surrounded by dogs who never leave my side, to think of a life bereft of animals; who has labored with my husband in the years-long restoration of our beloved old farmhouse, to think of a life confined to half a room and a hallway; who runs 35-40 miles every week, to think of spending each day in a wheelchair; who was born a woman in a woman’s world and is glad of it, to think of losing my independence; who finds so much of God in the life of the mind and the body, to think of the erasure of both.

Yes, as I witness my grandmother’s journey toward her savior and mine, I am filled with fear—for myself, mainly.

But I know that watching her, being near her, offering merely my presence to her, is a gift—more so to me than to her. For I know that in witnessing the end of her life, I can learn how better to live my life. In watching my grandmother’s slow surrender of her life to death, I realize that only by surrenderingall now can I be joyful and content when it is no longer mine to surrender.