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Alien Justice

APRIL 2012: AS WE SEE IT by Jack R. Van Der Slik What may be loosely called American immigration policy confounds a number of distressing issues. It is difficult to judge the justice or injustice of the policy because it is an inconsistent patchwork of requirements. Even where substantive aspects of the policy are clear, its enforcement is inconsistent in ways that seem inequitable. Fair-minded citizens become dubious of governmental legitimacy when the consequences of enforcement produce irregularities of both…
Jack R. Van Der Slik
October 30, 2014
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Let’s Have (a) Sex (Talk)

MARCH 2012: REVIEW by Theresa Latini Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses Donna Freitas Oxford University Press, 2008 (paperback 2010) $16.95 335 pages. Editors' note: This month's review is the second in a set focusing on recent books we believe are essential reading for those who work with young people. In a forthcoming issue, we will also be reviewing Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood by Christian Smith et…
October 30, 2014
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On the Brink of Niagara

MARCH 2012: POETRY by D. S. Martin You & I have stood on the brink of Niagara many times & so we know  like Coleridge  a waterfall can be sublime not merely pretty & of all the waterfalls on earth some are more majestic  more picturesque & grand  more worth the praise  more deserving of the description  We've worn raincoats within reach of the descending water's spray  & on the boat Maid of the Mist  & kissed  as if to…
D.S. Martin
October 30, 2014
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A Church for the City: Present Realities and Future Challenges

MARCH 2012: ESSAY by Chuck DeGroat and Rachael Butler How do you view the city? Terms of derision abound: Crime-ridden. Busy. Scary. Drug-infested. Liberal. Over-crowded. Hopeless. And the caricatures are as old as scripture. It was Cain, the first citybuilder, who killed Abel, the brother who tended the flocks. And there was David, the great warrior in the wilderness who became a great sinner when he moved to the city. And, of course, Jesus was born in a stable, but…
Chuck DeGroat and Rachael Butler
October 30, 2014
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More Me to Me, More God to God

MARCH 2012: AS WE SEE IT by Bart Garrett Imagine this scene. You are sitting at a coffee shop enjoying your favorite fairtrade, shade-grown, single-origin-bean, vacuum-pressed cup of caffeine when you glance out the window only to see a man walking by wearing nothing but a pink tutu. In your next glance, you see another man walking by carrying a Bible. The guy sitting beside you sees both passersby and then turns toward you and asks, "Was he carrying a…
Bart Garrett
October 30, 2014
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Meeting Calvin in Rittenhouse Square

MARCH 2012: AS WE SEE IT by Jared Ayers In the summer of 2008, my wife Monica and I crammed the contents of our house on Eleventh Street in Holland, Michigan, our two-year-old son, and our dog into a Budget Rental truck and made our way 739 miles east, to downtown Philadelphia. We had agreed to be guinea pigs for a new initiative in the Reformed Church in America called the "Classis of the City": an ecclesial structure that would…
Jared Ayers
October 30, 2014
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Eulogy

FEBRUARY 2012: INSIDE OUT by Thom Fiet "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48 Trudy Brower prayed for us in English, and then she prayed again for us in German, the assumption being that prayers spoken in German are superior to those spoken in any other language. Trudy was precise, like a micrometer. She expected perfection from those in her family and social circles. She expected it of her pastor, heaven help him. And…
Thom Fiet
October 30, 2014
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A Call to Consequential Faith

FEBRUARY 2012: REVIEW by Terri Martinson Elton Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church Kenda Creasy Dean Oxford University Press, 2010 $24.95. 264 pages. Don't judge this book by its cover, at least not completely. It might seem like a book about teenagers, and in many ways, it is. It offers as its starting point high-level insights and personal stories from the findings of the massive 2003–2005 National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR),…
Terri Martinson Elton
October 30, 2014
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What’s Left

FEBRUARY 2012: POETRY by Kristina Erny Due to the formatting needs of this month's poem, it is available as a PDF. Familiar with being an outsider from her childhood in South Korea, Kristina Erny became interested in dialect, storytelling, language acquisition, spirituality, and community (insiders vs. outsiders) more deeply after spending four months in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 2008. It was here, in this place still suffering from the aftermath of civil war, that she was first introduced to the…
Kristina Erny
October 30, 2014