Page 3091 – Christianity Today (2024)

Seeker churches, emerging churches, ancient-future churches, mega-churches, house churches, Boomer churches, Gen-X churches. There is a debate occurring in American evangelicalism about the future of Christianity and what form the church should take within our culture. But is it possible that these divergent philosophies of ministry actually originated from the same source? In the coming days Angie Ward will be sharing multiple reports about the emergence of youth culture, and youth ministry, in recent American history and how this phenomenon gave rise to both the seeker movement and later the emerging church.

The end of World War II ushered in the beginning of the baby boom: 76 million American babies born between 1946 and 1964. As these baby boomers grew up, they gave birth to their own youth culture. The advent of youth culture gave rise to a new profession: youth ministry.

Fast forward nearly 40 years. Some of those youth leaders have become some of the nation’s most influential pastors. Meanwhile, many of their former students have themselves gone into ministry, not without their own adolescent rebellion in the form of a movement toward ecclesiological deconstruction. And now a third generation of youth, the millennials, is just beginning to make their mark on the church.

Youth ministry has significantly altered the course of American church history. The youth group of today is the church, and its leaders, of tomorrow. How did this shift occur, and what can we infer about the future of the church based on current trends in youth ministry?

By the mid-1950s, the first wave of baby boomers was nearing adolescence. In 1955, Warner Bros. Pictures released Rebel Without a Cause, the landmark film featuring misunderstood teenager Jim Stark, played by James Dean. If Rebel launched the youth culture, Elvis Presley solidified it a year later when “Heartbreak Hotel” sold 300,000 records in its first week.

Meanwhile, innovative Christian leaders were expanding the boundaries of traditional ministry through the inception of organizations which sought to reach teenagers outside the walls of the church. In 1938, a young seminary student in Texas named Jim Rayburn began a weekly club for high school students who had no interest in church. Three years later, Young Life was born.

Rayburn is perhaps best remembered for his assertion, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.” Young Life club meetings featured singing, a skit or two, and a simple message about Jesus Christ. The idea was that faith could be life-changing and fun.

Over the next three decades, dozens of para-church ministries sprang up across the country. Christian camps emphasized the adventure of the Christian life. Radio ministries took advantage of the technology’s expanded popularity to spread the gospel over the airwaves. Saturday night evangelistic rallies challenged young people to commit their lives to Christ. These rallies then spawned local youth clubs, which provided regular spiritual follow-up and encouragement. Preachers such as Billy Graham (Youth for Christ), Jack Wyrtzen (Word of Life), and Percy Crawford (Young People’s Church of the Air, Pinebrook Camp) became household names to Christian teenagers of the era.

Yet while these para-church organizations flourished from 1935 to 1967, the church was not ready for the shift toward a youth-driven culture. “The post-war baby boom caught the church without a strategy for dealing with the sudden influx of people whom the media began to call ?teenagers,'” writes Mark Senter in his book, The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry. And when the church finally did begin to change, it was through the influence of para-church leaders.

In the late 1960s, two Youth for Christ youth workers, Jim Burns and Mike Yaconelli, realized the tremendous untapped potential of churches to reach teenagers for Christ. Burns and Yaconelli borrowed money from their relatives and self-published their first Ideas book for youth workers. In addition to selling the books, they began holding seminars to show leaders how to use them. Youth Specialties was born in 1969.

At the time, only a few large and usually urban churches even hired youth directors. At best, youth ministry in the church was seen as a stepping stone to “real” pastoral ministry, usually a senior pastorate and one’s own pulpit.

The founders of Youth Specialties worked to convince church boards and senior pastors that youth ministry was vital to the health and future of the church. As a result, over the last 38 years Youth Specialties has been almost singularly responsible for the professionalization of the field of youth ministry in the church.

Tic Long, Youth Specialties’ President of Events, has been with the ministry since its early days and remembers its first National Youth Workers Convention in 1970. “When youth workers used to get together before then, it was always at camps. When we did the first convention, we said, ?Let’s go to a hotel, let youth workers get a mint on their pillow, and tell them, you are in a profession that is not just a stepping stone.'”

In the early days, Long remembers, Youth Specialties’ focus was youth programming: “How do you develop a program, how do you get people resources, how do you run a meeting, how do you lead discussions and do special events?” Long said.

The efforts of youth ministry pioneers like Yaconelli, Burns, and Long began to bear fruit in the local church as youth ministry rose in importance in many churches. But the first generation of church youth workers also began to have a noticeable impact on the Church at large, as they began to take their innovative approaches beyond the walls of the youth room and into the sanctuary.

Angie Ward is a pastor’s spouse, leadership coach, and founder of Forward Leadership. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina.

To my eye Nairobi, Kenya's capital, looks good, leafed out in tropical vegetation. After three years of drought, rains came in May 2006. And the government shows signs of doing its job. The streets are cleaner than they have been in years. Shops and supermarkets are full of food. It's hard to believe that the drought has pushed Kenya into a food emergency. Yet 3.5 million people survive on emergency food aid in Kenya, part of the 6 million people who suffer likewise in the Horn of Africa, a vast region sweeping north from Kenya into Ethiopia and Somalia. You have probably heard about this crisis. And you have probably forgotten. It is easy to forget when this emergency feels like just one more in a never-ending series of African crises.

Why do food emergencies repeat again and again in this part of the world? To try to answer that question, I ride a tiny Missionary Aviation Fellowship aircraft north from Nairobi for three and a half hours. Under the plane's nose, the rough terrain of the Rift Valley turns gradually from green to pink to tan to gray as we descend into a desert of barren, rock-creased mountains rising from empty wastes. Turkana is Kenya's northwest neck, reaching up to the Sudan border. It is a hard land without margins. If you left me out here, I could survive maybe three days.

Startlingly, a wide muddy river, the Turkwel, slashes across the plain under our wings. Tin roofs twinkle in the harsh sun. We land on a dirt runway in Lodwar, a Wild West town of wide, sandy streets and low, spreading buildings. Go half a mile in any direction, and you will be in the wild.

Desolate as it feels to me, hundreds of thousands of people consider this region home. The nomadic Turkana people herd goats and camels in a land where a few tabletop thorn trees and bits of scrub punctuate ground as bare of grass as a Manhattan street. Apart from the Turkwel there is no water, only dry washes where a temporary well dug deep in the sand will reach muddy water. The Turkana build their homes out of palm fronds and sticks, making egg-shaped baskets they can easily dismantle and move to new pastures. They live on their animals' milk. Since their animals died in the drought, many are going hungry. World Vision and Oxfam are the lead agencies here, feeding 288,000.

Rain Is with God

My World Vision hosts take me by Land Cruiser to one of the feeding stations. We stop to talk to a group of four women who look like pictures in an old National Geographic: bead necklaces stacked at least six inches high around their necks, heads shaved except for a top thatch of tiny braids. Exotic as they look to me, they converse as friendly women and mothers. Their men have left to follow the camels, which cover vast distances in their search for grazing. All of these families have been on food aid for two years. Their children, some of whom flock around and cling to the women's legs, have no milk. A nearby school is the only building for miles, but the children only attend when food is provided. That rarely happens.

I ask, through a translator, if the women would prefer to be given replacement goats instead of food aid. An older woman gives her name as Margaret Lore Nabwel. She says goats would just die under these conditions.

This is the worst drought she can remember, and the May rains did not last long enough to break it. "We still have hope that the rain will come," she says. "But that is with God." She tells me that hunger this year claimed one of her children, a 10-year-old son. Looking more closely at her weathered face, I realize that she has probably lived fewer years than my 56.

Food emergencies due to drought are not like tsunamis or earthquakes or wars. They develop silently and slowly, over vast regions. People in these arid places have developed coping mechanisms over generations. Though skillful at finding water and surviving on leaves and roots, the Turkana live precariously close to starvation. In the old days, children, pregnant women, and the elderly would weaken and slip away. Few in the outside world knew. Those who knew could offer little help.

Times have changed. We know. We have the resources to respond. In America, half a world away, we know. If you started now, you could be here in 24 hours, staring into the eyes of a desert child.

The Turkana do not like depending on food aid. It offends their sense of dignity, grounded in their ability to cope. Yet in this seemingly empty location—I see only handfuls of basket houses—World Vision has registered 955 people to receive food. Peterson Erus, World Vision's field coordinator, shows me the hut they built to hold the food when it comes monthly by truck. People assemble and respond when their names are called to receive a food basket, calculated to provide 70 percent of their food needs for the month.

It's a textbook case of emergency response, the modern world helping the pre-modern avert disaster. While not exactly clockwork, the process is a long way from the panicky, uncoordinated, too-little-too-late response that could happen if not for experienced nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations, and government agencies. They monitor potential disasters. They have carefully developed protocols for determining when a true food emergency has begun. They mobilize compassion in the developed world, communicating needs and channeling help. They know how to work with local communities to identify the people most in need of food aid. Their formulas determine how much food should be delivered, and how often, and what kinds. They complete systematic follow-up evaluations.

Organizations like World Vision have warehouses stocked with materials, ready to go. They know how to hire airplanes, boats, and trucks in any one of a hundred countries where you or I would spend the first month just learning what permits were needed. So NGOs, in cooperation with national governments (if there is one—a benefit that countries like Somalia cannot claim), the World Food Program of the United Nations, and donors around the world are feeding 6 million people in this one corner of Africa.

People in the Western world have shown time and again their compassion for the needy on the other side of the world. They are showing it now by feeding these people. However, our attention tends to be fitful. The May rains temporarily stopped animal deaths. That is a mixed blessing. Now there are no dramatic pictures to show the desperate need. And without pictures of desperation, the outside world gets distracted. In Turkana, people in need are supposed to get a monthly distribution of corn meal, beans, and vegetable oil. Last month, only corn came down the column.

I visit a World Vision farming project where people are learning to irrigate on the verge of the Turkwel. The project is going well; hundreds of families feed themselves. But teaching nomads to farm is difficult, and the opportunities are limited—only one river in a vast territory. The Turkana need to learn other skills, develop new means of providing for themselves, and adjust their way of life to new conditions. The government has neglected this area: It has few schools, few roads, and terrible problems with bandits. Change is difficult for this fiercely traditional people.

Some Turkana will change their way of life, when opportunity pulls or necessity pushes. Some can sell animals and save for hard times—if they have a market. Some can send their children to school so they can eventually get jobs in town—if they have a school. Some can practice agriculture by the river—if they have help learning agricultural skills. Some can raise and sell honey; some can make and sell baskets. Ecotourism is possible.

Opening up such possibilities requires long-term, coordinated work with NGOs and the government. For the last 30 years, places like Turkana have been ignored or exploited by the government. Only NGOs have offered anything tangible—water, medicine, and development schemes—to help people.

Offers Without Takers

I travel to Kitui, because it presents a different face of the famine. In Kitui, a stony area to the east of Mt. Kenya, farmers have not harvested their main crop, corn, in five years. Here, too, food aid is widespread. Distributors have registered 186,000 mouths to feed—about one of every three residents. These are not nomads but dirt farmers, who live by the rhythm of planting and harvesting on their small subsistence farms.

I drive east from Nairobi with Haron Wachira, an old friend who serves as chairman of the water board for the Tana River basin. He tells me that when he was first appointed chairman, he visited every regional water office in his district. He found most water systems had deteriorated due to poor maintenance. Among hundreds of water wells dug by the government and charities, most had quit working. Wachira attacked the problem by making an issue of squeaky doors. When he found—as he inevitably did—a squeaky hinge in a regional water office, he would demand that it be oiled on the spot. This upset everything. Engineers and supervisors scurried to find some oil to put on the hinge. Then Wachira would make his point: If an office filled with professional engineers can put up with a squeaky door day after day, how can they maintain a complex water system?

His point reveals a problem bedeviling much of Africa. Many educated people know their work from a technical point of view, but they are not necessarily identified with it. Innovation, problem solving, and attention to squeaky hinges are not in the job description, so they don't get done. Today, Wachira will make the same point when a Ministry of Agriculture official explains that they no longer have sufficient staff to go out in the field to visit farmers. Instead, he says, just as doctors let the sick come to them, agricultural officers wait in their offices for farmers to come with their problems.

"If the farmers know they are sick," Wachira says.

Most of the men in the room understand the inference. Wachira has convened a group of government officials from the water and agricultural ministries, plus officers from several prominent NGOs in the area, including the Catholic diocese and the Seventh-day Adventists. They know too well the problems of people in their area, which they describe to me, along with the solutions they are trying to implement. I learn about issues different from those I saw in Turkana. For example, farmers continue to plant corn even though it requires more rain than they typically receive. Cassava, pigeon peas, and sorghum are better suited to dry-land farming, and those who plant them are harvesting plentifully right now. Still, farmers prefer the taste of corn, so they keep planting it even though they do not harvest. It is a simple but profound issue: How do you get people to change their diet?

Tito Mwamati, an Adventist water officer, tells me the basic problem is not really drought, which "is merely cyclical." He says environmental degradation poses the greater challenge. Even an inexperienced eye like mine can see that most soil here is sandy and hillsides are steep. Crucial practices like soil and water conservation need consistent investments of time and work. Instead, many farmers overgraze their pastures, neglect terracing on hillsides, and cut down trees for firewood or charcoal to sell.

The particulars may be different from those I saw in Turkana. But broadly speaking, the root problems are the same. People in both places need to adjust their way of life, but they find that very difficult to do. On another day, Wachira and I visit the farm of Matthew Musau in a nearby district. Musau has retired from his graphic design business in Nairobi and devoted himself to farming. He farms on steep, stony hills, but his land looks like a well-watered haven. He is harvesting abundant crops, raising bees for honey, and keeping a dairy herd of 30 cows. When you look across his fences at his neighbors' farms, you can hardly believe the contrast.

We stop to talk to one such neighbor, David, who tells us that he has not harvested corn in three years. We ask what he sees as the difference between his farm and Musau's. David says Musau plants at the right time and terraces his land scientifically. "If we were taught," he says, "I am sure we would harvest enough."

But how to teach him? Musau spent his adult life in the city. He knew very little about farming, but he has learned how to do new things. He is an educated, modern man, which is to say, he knows how to change. He offers to help his neighbors. But so far he has no followers. People stick to what they know, especially in traditional societies. Musau's example may rub off, but only in bits and pieces over time. Perhaps David's children will farm like Musau.

Solving the Chronic Problem

Hunger is an old story. It was hunger that drove Jacob's children into Egypt. Until recently, lack of transportation meant that one region might be starving while a hundred miles away food was plentiful. In extreme cases—which came often enough, in places like Turkana and Kitui—the weak died.

Today, the world can feed everyone. And to a large extent, we do. We solve immediate hunger crises through emergency food distribution, but we do not solve the chronic problem.

The problem lies with those who have not or cannot join the modern economy—those in poverty-stricken urban slums, whose labor will not earn enough money to buy food, or those in remote places pursuing traditional lifestyles that are subject to natural disasters. The number of such traditionalists has grown, even as their ability to feed themselves has declined. Their land has been restricted (by war, land grabs, or borders) or degraded (often by overgrazing or poor farming techniques). Crime and war and bad government have kept them isolated from education and business, forces that could change their lives. They are more vulnerable than ever.

When I talk to people in relief and development organizations, I find them frustrated by these realities. They want to make a lasting difference but, by and large, they cannot. By feeding people, they are putting off problems to another day. Drought will come again. Donors will groan and ante up again—we hope.

To make a lasting difference, they must help people change their lives. They know it can happen. They see it happening here and there. But the work is slow, unspectacular, and difficult to fund. As John Kisimir of World Vision tells me, "It is hard to interest the media when no one is dying." Donors say, "Show me the pictures," according to Beatrice Mwangi of World Vision Kenya. These communities require a coordinated plan, not piecemeal efforts. If the government can't provide security, for example, building a school, drilling a well, or offering a micro-loan won't help much. All the pieces need to work together, and they need to work together for a generation.

For the foreseeable future, we will continue to feed hungry people, because they are our neighbors. Yet somehow we have to go beyond the cycle of disaster and short-term response—a mode that is appropriate for tsunamis or earthquakes but not for food emergencies or chronic epidemics like AIDS. We must go on to long-term engagement. Organizations like World Vision, Oxfam, and Compassion are ready to do just that. They have the people and the programs. Mechanisms like child sponsorship help to humanize our connection. The volume, though, needs to grow dramatically. There is just not enough money for programs that require patience and long-term, hands-on involvement.

Traditional Africa is crashing at tectonic speed into the modern world. At the edges, where Africa strikes modernity, societies crumble. Urban slums, AIDS, food emergencies, corrupt governments, wars: All reflect the disruption of colliding unevenly with global realities.

We think of global economics, climate, and disease as the prime realities. But there is also global compassion. It provides food, but it should go on to open up dead ends and offer people the possibility of finding a new way to live. That kind of compassion takes in-depth commitment—as it should. If the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us anything, it is that true neighbors go the distance.

Postscript

Massive amounts of rain fell on Kenya in November and December of 2006. "There will be enough food in Kitui and neighboring districts," Haron Wachira wrote.

"In Turkana," John Kisimir wrote, "floods literally swept off farming communities along the River Turkwel. The rains have not subsided yet. Feeding is still going on."

Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

World Vision and the BBC's section on famine in Africa have resources on famine and aid to famine-prone regions.

USAID keeps track of what countries are experiencing or at risk for food shortages.

Other Christianity Today articles on famine include:

On the Edge of Famine | Politics hinders aid to 11 million East Africans. (June1, 2006)

'I Never Thought I'd See Anything Like that Again' | A famine worse than that of 1984 threatens Ethiopia (May 1, 2003)

Redeeming Sudan's Slaves | Americans are becoming instant abolitionists. But is the movement backfiring? (August 9, 1999)

See Also

Alumni of Georgia Northwestern Technical College: class of 2009-2011Alumni of Georgia Northwestern Technical College: class of 2004-2008

Famine Toll Exceeds 1 Million | More than a million people have died in North Korea during three years of floods and drought. (October 26, 1998)

Editorial: North Korea's Hidden Famine | The poor and the weak should not have to starve due to the policies of their government. (May 19, 1997)

Chris "Kazi" Rolle was a homeless teenager struggling at a "last chance" New York City high school when he found Art Start, an innovative program designed to reach at-risk kids through the arts. Art Start gave Rolle a chance to voice his anger and pain, as well as his hopes and ambitions, through rap music.

After several years of involvement (and personal evolution) in the program, Rolle established his own branch of Art Start, first known as Word.Life and eventually called The Hip Hop Project. The Hip Hop Project movie documents the efforts of Rolle and the project's participants to write, produce and release their first collaborative album.

Early in the film, Rolle admits that the leaders of Art Start took a chance when they let a young man with a troubled past head up a new endeavor. "Pressure either busts pipes or makes diamonds," he says, with a charismatic grin that hints at which way it turned out. The Hip Hop Project is, fittingly, the story of diamonds in the rough; it takes an inspiring look at the ways a group of disadvantaged but talented adolescents turns pain into art, and need into community.

First time director Matt Ruskin has a great but rather unwieldy story to tell. Many films have mined this sort of teens-redeemed-through-constructive-outlets-and-a-caring-mentor territory (Freedom Writers, Coach Carter, and Take the Lead come to mind). But unlike those fictionalized dramas, The Hip Hop Project must follow unscripted, unpredictable, and sometimes unsavory twists and turns in the lives of its participants. The director faces the daunting task of documenting both the group's creative struggle (over a period of several years), and the individuals' compelling but sprawling back-stories.

Ruskin is not always up to the task. The film's chronology is confusing at best, and some of the peripheral players are never really defined or contextualized. Early in the film, Ruskin seems to substitute reenactments and montages for in-the-moment documentation. Although his use of stylish color saturation and various motion effects is eye-catching, it creates an odd slickness that keeps the viewer one degree removed from the story. Fortunately, as the film develops, Ruskin wisely begins to focus on a few key individuals, and the documentary finds a more raw and immediate tone better suited to its subject matter.

One of those individuals is Christopher "Cannon" Mapp, an intelligent, expressive teen (he is 14 when he joins the group) coping with his mother's MS-related decline and eventual death. His masterpiece is "Once Had It All," a gut-wrenching rap that describes with brutal honesty the ravages of his mother's disease and its effect on him. The lyrics give graphic details of his mother's condition ("She couldn't do something as simple as go to the toilet to remove her bowels/To me—That's … foul"), and yet convey the young man's sense of injustice with poignant restraint ("I felt God acted inconsiderately").

The film documents Cannon's legal battle with an unethical landlord for the right to continue renting his mother's apartment, where he lives with his grandmother and toddler-aged niece. We get our best sense of the young man in scenes shot inside the apartment, where he argues politely with his grandmother over his poor grades, declaring with male adolescent bravado that his inevitable success in music will make an education unnecessary. As grandmother and grandson each make their case to the cameraman, the audience gets to enter the kitchen—and the lives—of these very real people in a very authentic way.

Another rapper featured in the film in Diana "Princess" Lemon. Princess is also 14 when she joins the project; by the film's end she is in her first year of college. She lives the four intervening years under the weight of two heavy burdens. The first is her father's incarceration for drug trafficking, and her fear that he will receive longer jail time or get deported. The second is her angst over an abortion, and the film returns several times to her piece "A Mother's Cry." Although it's doubtful the filmmakers would identify themselves with the pro-life cause, Princess' lyrics (and her pain) are a powerful treatise for the sanctity of life:

Laying on the table while the doctor flashing the light
I feel an injection and they robbed my baby like a thief in the night
I woke I seen the crooks they left without a trace
And the evidence they left was a puddle of blood
I felt bad even though I co-conspired the crime
Sometimes I wish it was me instead of my baby that died

The third individual featured in The Hip Hop Project is Rolle himself, who is so passionate and irresistibly likeable he lights up every frame he's in. When he takes a trip to his native Bahamas, the film begins to fill in the blanks of his past. Abandoned by his mother at six months old, young Chris ended up in a children's hostel and eventually foster care. A failed reunion with his mother left him homeless in New York City at 15. Rolle acknowledges that, for all the progress he's made in his life, his unreconciled relationship with his birth mother continues to hold him back. "I can't rise if I got weight on me, you know?" he admits, just before he journeys to his mother's house in one of the movie's most powerful scenes. She seems incapable of giving her son the connection he needs—it's hard to say whether it is the awkwardness of being filmed or simply an emotional stunted-ness that holds her back—but Rolle is able to forgive and ask for forgiveness in an astonishing display of grace.

The Hip Hop Project is of course also about the music business. Def Jam Records founder Russel Simmons becomes a financial backer for the project and challenges the participants to avoid the misogyny, violence and materialism of gangsta rap and offer something fresh. (The fact that he's made millions of dollars on the kind of music he derides makes his input ironic, yet strangely credible.) Simmons also brings Bruce Willis into the picture, and the two men provide the cash-strapped project with a recording studio. (Willis eventually executive produced the film, along with Queen Latifah.) '80s rap icon Doug E. Fresh, Rolle's own mentor, appears briefly. So does MTV personality Sway, who enjoys some of the film's lighter moments providing media coaching and trading attitudes with the kids.

By far the most eloquent representative of the music industry is Robin "Kheperah" Kearse, a former employee of Def Jam and Arista who becomes The Hip Hop Project's champion and Rolle's girlfriend. Kearse is able to articulate the power of hip hop (both as a cultural movement for an entire generation, and as a form of healing for the subjects of the film) in an amazingly lucid way, and her commentary is an invaluable contribution to the film. She is also, as the woman who loves Rolle, an important part of our protagonist's evolution.

The Hip Hop Project makes forceful statements about art and urban decay, the music industry, abortion, parental abandonment, culture wars, and individual perseverance over obstacles. But perhaps its most compelling message is about the importance and power of community. Rolle claims the project's participants spent the first two years primarily learning to trust each other, and the film's audience is privileged to watch his group of scrappy orphans pray and cuss and fight and stay together. Long before the participants could become recording artists, they needed to become family. "We all get into emotional ruts, into quicksand," Rolle tells his protégés. "You need people to pull you up."

The Hip Hop Project, for all its technical challenges and flaws, triumphs in shouting that message.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. The members of The Hip Hop Project are, for better or worse, incredibly real with one another. Do you have a community (or even a single friend) you can be completely authentic with? If not, what steps could you take to find that sort of relationship? Would you want to? Should you want to?
2. The participants who succeed in The Hip Hop Project are the ones who use their admiration and envy for each other's work to push themselves on. When you are around someone who is excellent at what they do, does it shut you down or motivate you? Is there at least one person in your life that helps you strive for more, as "iron sharpens iron" (Proverbs 27:17)?
3. "The criminal mind is a creative mind," says Rolle. "It's all where you put that energy." Are there criminal or delinquent minds—particularly young ones—in your community who could benefit from an opportunity to redirect their energies? How could you be a part of the solution?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Hip Hop Project was originally rated R for language. There are 17 occurrences of the "f" word, and an R rating is usually given when there are more than two usages of the word. Ruskin (the director) and Rolle (the "star") appealed the rating, mainly "to allow teenagers access to see this film because they are the ones who need it most," said Rolle. "After years of working with teens, I know you have to reach them when they are young. Just as I didn't have a parent to take me to the movies when I was a teenager, many of the young people who would benefit most from this film would have been denied access if the R rating stood." They won the appeal, on the basis that the "positive images and inspiring message" of the film justified exposing young people to its content—and it is now rated PG-13. Other than the language (which also includes frequent use of the "n" word and other profanity, mostly in the context of song lyrics), there is no violence or sex in the movie, and the film does present many redemptive themes and storylines.

Photos © Copyright THINKFilm

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

What other Christian critics are saying:

• Past the Popcorn

First, I have to set something straight: Georgia Rule is not a comedy. There are several funny moments and a couple funny characters. But if you’ve seen the three smiling faces on the movie poster or watched the countless previews that make this look like this month’s Because I Said So, an intergenerational female giggle and schmaltz fest, be forewarned. This is a family drama with some serious themes.

We start the movie with Rachel (Lindsey Lohan) getting her brat on in the middle of lonely Idaho highway. She and her mom, Lilly (Felicity Huffman), are having words—loud words. Rachel insists on walking the rest of the way to her grandma’s house, where she’ll be spending her summer. After walking a while, she takes a quick nap in the shade of a Welcome to Idaho billboard, where she’s found by Harlan (Garrett Hedlund), the local young hunk, and Simon (Dermot Mulroney), the town vet. Rachel opts for the latter for a drive into down, climbing into his convertible while practically purring her sexual come-ons.

In the meantime, Lilly arrives at her mom Georgia’s (Jane Fonda) house, where the two exchange awkward greetings and can’t say goodbye fast enough. Rachel eventually arrives, and we learn that she’s been sent to live with grandma for the summer because she’s so out of control—drinking, smoking, running around with men. A “sentence” with her drill-sergeant-like grandma is her mom and stepdad’s last resort before Rachel heads off to college in the fall.

Rachel and Georgia are like oil and water. Rachel’s incredulous that Georgia got her a job for the summer. Georgia won’t tolerate Rachel taking the Lord’s name in vain—even makes her suck on a bar of soap for doing so. Rachel marches to the office where Georgia got her the summer job, prepared to quit—until she recognizes Simon as the vet for whom she’ll be a receptionist. Another chance to seduce this man who’s the age of her father, and who lost his wife and son in a car accident a few years prior. Rachel also goes after Harlan, especially when she realizes this teen Mormon is a virgin.

Much of the rest of the movie is Rachel’s wranglings with Georgia and seducings of Simon and Harlan. We get a curveball when the reason for Rachel’s wild behavior is revealed, though throughout much of the movie we don’t know whether to believe her. The allegations bring Lilly back to grandma’s house, where the three women finally have it out.

All three generations of women in this movie turn in strong performances, though predictably Jane Fonda trumps the other two. Whether she’s playing gin with the young neighbor boys, sheepishly buying booze for her alcoholic daughter, or talking about her need for her countless “Georgia Rules,” she brings an extra level of realism and depth. Lohan plays a rebellious, messed up teenager quite well, but then we expect her to. I would have liked to see a bit more pain and woundedness in scenes dealing with her serious family issues; just one or two peeks beneath the party-girl-next-door veneer would have been enough. Huffman gets the least screen time of the three and has some of the trickier scenes to pull off—being drunk, enraged at a family member, torn between conflicting stories and loves. Sometimes she veers into campy territory, but for the most part she makes us believe and care.

One major plot flaw kept nagging at me: Why would Georgia, she of the regiment and rules, allow her granddaughter, the one who’d been acting out sexually, spend so much time with Harlan and Simon? Rachel spends entire days fishing alone with Harlan and sleeps overnight at Simon’s apartment when the three generations of women can’t get along at Georgia’s. This seems so obviously like a recipe for disaster—and out of character for a woman who insists her granddaughter get a job and not swear.

It’s refreshing that Georgia Rule isn’t just another bratty teen movie, that it delves into the intriguing and heartbreaking reasons behind the brattiness. Too few teen-oriented movies get to that important question of why. That said, once the tough family issues are out, they’re handled rather cavalierly at times. Rachel talks about these serious family issues, the ones she’s kept from her mom for years, to people she’s just met, delivering gut-wrenching details like she’s talking about a routine day at school. And the otherwise responsible adults in her life don’t speak into that void of emotion, save for one great scene with Simon. Dermot Mulroney turns in a nicely nuanced performance as a grieving, upstanding man.

Like this intergenerational family, Georgia Rule is messy. There are odd Mormon schoolgirl side plots, random neighbor boys who pop up a couple times, and an odd menagerie of pets brought in to Simon the Vet (really? a pet pig, a big Toucan Sam-type parrot, and a giant lizard—all in one tiny Idaho town?). With a few scenes cut out and others cleaned up, it could have been a great movie. As is, it’s a good family drama—definitely not a comedy—and a nice change of pace from all the big, loud summer blockbusters.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What issues do each of these three women have with one another? What admission or communication would have helped their relationships? In what ways do we see them hurt one another—and in what ways do we see them sacrifice for one other?
2. Which of these female characters do you relate to most? Why?
3. Why do you think Georgia has so many rules? What’s she trying to accomplish?
4. Describing his Mormon faith, Harlan says, “I choose to believe it’s true. You’ve gotta believe in something.” What do you think of this description of belief?
5. Throughout much of the movie, Lilly is conflicted about what and whom to believe. What would you have done in her shoes?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Georgia Rule is rated R for sexual content and some language. Though there’s no nudity or actual sex scenes, the sexual situations implied and talked about are serious. This is not a flick for young Lindsay Lohan fans. Her character, Rachel, tries to seduce grown men and has oral sex with a teen boy. And though she’s not nude, she’s pretty scantily clad throughout much of the movie. Take the R rating seriously.

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

What other Christian critics are saying:

• Plugged In
• Crosswalk
• Catholic News Service
• Past the Popcorn

The Evangelical Press Association (EPA) announced the winners of its annual journalism contest at a May 2-4 conference in Colorado Springs. More than 300 publications, 10 from Christianity Today International, are members of the EPA. The EPA designates two kinds of awards: “Awards of Excellence” for a magazine as a whole, and “Higher Goals” awards for issues, articles, columns, design, and other categories. The organization honored Christianity Today with 11 awards this year, including an award of merit in the general category for magazines. The winners are listed below.

Biblical exposition, First PlaceNothing But the BloodMore and more evangelicals believe Christ’s atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination. Really? (Mark Dever, May 1, 2006)

Editorial, Second PlaceA Faith Tailored Just for YouThe hoopla over the Gospel of Judas is both absurd and revealing.A Christianity Today editorial (June 1, 2006)

Reporting, Fourth PlaceDeliver Us from KonyWhy the children of Uganda are killing one another in the name of the Lord. (J. Carter Johnson in Kitgum, Uganda, January 1, 2006)

Standing column, First Place“Taste and See” by Agnieszka Tennant

2006 columns include:

Dating Jesus | When ‘lover of my soul’ language goes too far. (December 6, 2006)

To Russia with Fury | Sometimes charity means anger. (October 9, 2006)

What (Not All) Women Want | The finicky femininity of Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. (Aug. 10, 2006)

A Velveteen Apologetic | How two creatures dig a rabbit hole in my disbelief. (April 10, 2006)

What Would Jesus Buy? | Saving the world one cashmere sweater at a time. (Jan. 31, 2006)

Single-theme section/issue, First PlaceEvangelicalsHow we’ve moved from cultural curiosities to the ‘new internationalists’. (October 2006, 50th Anniversary Edition)

Cover, First Place“Little Soldier Boys” by Andy SewellJanuary 2006 issue

Single photo/candid, Fourth Place“The God Who Lives and Works and Plays in Russia” by Gary GnidovicThe photo that won ran on page 32 and 33 of “The God Who Lives and Works and Plays in Russia” in the November 2006 issue.

Single photo/controlled setting, Fourth Place“A Divine Conspirator: Dallas Willard” by Greg SchneiderThe photo appears in the article “A Divine Conspirator” on page 44 of the November 2006 issue.

Typography and lettering, Fourth Place“Why Jesus Used the ‘S’ Word” by Alecia SharpThe lettering is on page 36 in “Why Jesus used the ‘S’ Word,” an excerpt from Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Jay Swartzendruber, editor of CCM, says, “We’re going to start mixing indie and general market Christians such as The Fray, Mary J. Blige and Sufjan Stevens in with artists with traditional Christian label affiliation. Rather than define ?Christian music’ just by its label or distribution, we’re now defining it as Christian worldview music.”

As if the genre weren’t confused enough, this is going to clarify things?

Next, the press release touting the new CCM says:

As the grassroots contemporary Christian music scene mushroomed into a billion dollar industry, “Christian music” became widely regarded as an actual genre, even though it included rock, pop, hip-hop, punk, hardcore metal and other styles of music. As a result, many artists of faith who are reluctant to have their music defined by the Christian market have chosen to bypass it altogether. With this expanded view of “Christian music,” CCM Magazine now celebrates the full spectrum of faith-fueled music and musicians.

I always thought that bands avoided the CCM label because some people think most CCM music is not worth listening to. With this expanded view of CCM, won’t bands made of Christians who want to avoid the CCM scene only work harder to avoid it?

The New York Times reports that former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will offer an explanation of his views on abortion.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights. …

The campaign’s approach would be a sharp departure from the traditional route to the Republican nomination in the last 20 years, in which Republicans have highlighted their antiabortion views.

42%

American evangelicals who say school boards should have the right to fire homosexual teachers.

73%

American evangelicals who said this in 1987.

60%

American evangelicals in 1987 who said AIDS might be a punishment for immoral sexual behavior

38%

American evangelicals who believe this today.

20%

American evangelicals in 1987 who “completely disagree” that women should return to their traditional roles in society.

42%

American evangelicals who “completely disagree” today.

Visits to religious websites in the U.S. are declining rapidly. They dropped over 30% within the last year, down 35% the last two years.

2%

Weblogs that focus on religion, spirituality, or faith

64%

Internet users who have done things online that related to religious or spiritual matters

1429%

Growth in web pages dealing with God, religion, and churches between 1999 and 2004.

Sources: Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, Pew Internet & American Life Project: Faith Online, Pew Internet & American Life Project: Bloggers, Time, and The Washington Post

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

See our earlier Go Figure postings from May 2007, April 2007, March 2007, February 2007, January 2007, December 2006, November 2006, October 2006, and earlier issues.

Theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens, authors whose books are already part of a larger debate on whether religion is pernicious, agreed to discuss their views on whether Christianity itself has benefited the world. Below is their exchange, one in a series that will appear on our website over the course of this month.

Douglas Wilson is author of Letter from a Christian Citizen, senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College, and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. His Blog and Mablog site inevitably makes for provocative reading.

Christopher Hitchens wrote, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books). Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,”Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters. He was named, to his own amusement, number five on a list of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy and Britain’s Prospect.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

From: Christopher Hitchens To: Douglas WilsonSubject: Is Christianity Good for the World?

This is mildly amusing casuistry which—aside from its recommendation of Wodehouse—contains nothing that distinguishes it from Islam or Hinduism or indeed humanism. Were I a Christian, I would be highly unsettled by the huge number of concessions that Wilson makes. Since I am not a Christian, I mutter a mild “thank you” for his admission that morality has nothing at all to do with the supernatural. My book argues that religious belief has now become purely optional and cannot be mandated by anything revealed or anything divine. It is one among an infinite number of private “faiths,” which do not disturb me in the least as long as its adherents agree to leave me alone.

Since Wilson does not even attempt to persuade me that Christ died for my sins (and can yet vicariously forgive them) or that I am the object of a divine design or that any of the events described in the two Testaments actually occurred or that extreme penalties will attend any disagreement with his view, I am happy to leave our disagreement exactly where it is: as one of the decreasingly interesting disputes between those who cling so tentatively to man-made “Holy Writ” and those who have no need to consult such texts in pursuit of truth or beauty or an ethical life. The existence or otherwise of an indifferent cosmos (the overwhelmingly probable state of the case) would no more reduce our mutual human obligations than would the quite weird theory of a celestial dictatorship,whether Aztec or Muslim or (as you seem to insist) Christian. The sole difference is that we would be acting out of obligation toward others out of mutual interest and sympathy but without the impulse of terrifying punishment or selfish reward. Some of us can handle this thought and some, evidently, cannot. I have a slight suspicion as to which is more moral.

On a recent visit to Arkansas, I ran into a huge billboard near the Little Rock airport which simply said “JESUS.” This struck me as saying too much as well as too little, and I had almost forgotten it until Wilson’s evasions brought it back to mind.

— Christopher Hitchens

From: Douglas WilsonTo: Christopher HitchensRe: Is Christianity Good for the World?Part 2

I am glad that you found my response mildly amusing. I am also grateful we share an appreciation for Wodehouse. And I am extremely glad that you would like me to begin talking about the death of Christ for sin—which I fully intend to do. But the pattern the New Testament gives us is to address the need for repentance first and then to talk about the need for faith in Christ as Savior. Within the boundaries of our discussion, repentance would be necessary because you have embraced the internal contradictions of atheism, all for the sake of avoiding God (Rom. 1:21; Ps. 14:1-2). So we will get to the gospel, but I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to hold your horses.

So, back to the business at hand, the business of intellectual repentance. Dismissing something as casuistry is not the same thing as a demonstration of casuistry, and refusing to answer questions because the other guy is being evasive is quite a neat trick … if you can pull it off.

I am afraid you misconstrued my acknowledgement that—with regard to public civic life—atheists can certainly behave in a moral manner. My acknowledgement was not that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural, as you represented, but rather that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural if you want to be an inconsistent atheist. Here is that point again, couched another way and tied into our topic of debate.

Among many other reasons, Christianity is good for the world because it makes hypocrisy a coherent concept. The Christian faith certainly condemns hypocrisy as such, but because there is a fixed standard, this makes it possible for sinners to fail to meet it or for flaming hypocrites to pretend that they are meeting it when they have no intention of doing so. Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way. In order to prove me wrong here, you must do more than employ words like “casuistry” or “evasions”—you simply need to provide that rational account. Given atheism, objective morality follows … how?

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

— Douglas Wilson

Back to Hitchen’s response

Back to Wilson’s response

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,”Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters; and Wilson’s Letter from a Christian Citizen, Reforming Marriage, and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking are available from Amazon.com and other retailers.

Wilson’s Blog and Mablog has posts in response to God is Not Great, as well as other topics.

Hitchensweb.com has links to Hitchens’ online articles.

Stan Guthrie commented in CT Liveblog about Christian-athiest debates.

Hitchens debated Al Sharpton on May 7.

Books & Culture articles about Hitchens and Wilson include:

Can You Reason with Christians? | A response to Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation. (May 7, 2007)

Christopher Hitchens Explains It All for You | Move over, Sam Harris; another atheist wants the pulpit. (Books & Culture, April 30, 2007)

Book of the Week: Strange Bedfellows | Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Caldwell collaborate on a collection of political writing. Has the millennium arrived unnoticed? (Books & Culture, January 27, 2003)

Uncompromising Positions | Hitchens and Orwell (Books & Culture, November 1, 2002)

Mr. Wilson’s Bookshelf | “Wayfaring Stranger” (Books & Culture, November 17, 2006)

The headlines were so predictable I almost didn’t read the stories: “Pope Opens Trip with Remarks Against Abortion” (New York Times) and “Pope Stresses Opposition to Abortion” (Associated Press).

Is the Pope Catholic?

But there seems to be some news here. On his flight to Brazil, the Pope made some remarks that seemed to condemn not only women who have abortions and the doctors who provide them, but also the polticians who vote for legalization of abortion–as they did recently in Mexico, providing for legal abortions up to 12 weeks gestation.

Papal spokesman (when it’s the Vatican, you can use the gender-specific term) Federico Lombardi immediately tried to soften the possible implication of the Pope’s words. But then, well, I’ll let the New York Times tell the story:

The pope’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, quickly issued a clarification that played down his words, but then issued a statement approved by the pope that seemed to confirm a new gravity on politicians who allow abortion.

“Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist,” the statement said, and politicians who vote that way should “exclude themselves from communion.”

So, this turns the clock back to the 2004 election controversy over St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke telling pro-choice Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry that he should not receive communion when campaigning on Burke’s turf. If memory serves, Washington’s Cardinal Theodore McCarrick tried to soften the potential impact of Burke’s statements. But now that Benedict has spoken, it looks like Burke may have been right.

The automatic self-excommunication that applies to women who have abortions and their doctors also applies to legislators. This doesn’t mean that priests are supposed to become the Communion police, but it does mean that the Church considers it a pretty grievous thing for a Catholic politician who has voted to legalize abortion to present him or herself to receive Communion.

Christianity Today’s June 2004 editorial on the dispute between Burke and Kerry can be read in the CT Library (paid archive).