The Future of Sanctuary

Extra ecclesiam nulla salus has been central to Catholic understandings of salvation for centuries, but precisely what that means with regard to people of other Christian denominations, other faiths, and people of no faith, has been subject to reinterpretation. This article argues that in the words and deeds of Pope Francis, he has suggested that people of any faith and none can and should be viewed as “valued allies” to the Catholic Church, especially where anyone is willing to work cooperatively for the common good of all. I propose that this way of thinking about people outside of the Catholic Church constitutes a rethinking of the ancient mantra that recognizes the necessity of churches, people of other faiths, and no faith, being willing to work together to realize the common goals of equality, peace, and justice.

In Chaim Potok’s novel The Book of Lights, a young rabbi from Brooklyn, on leave from his post in Korea during the Korean War, travels for the first time in Japan. One afternoon he stands with a Jewish friend before what is perhaps a Shinto shrine with a clear mirror in the sanctum or perhaps a Buddhist shrine with an image of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. We are not told which, and it really does not matter. The altar is lit by the soft light of a tall lamp. Sunlight streams in the door. The two young men observe with fascination a man standing before the altar, his hands pressed together before him, his eyes closed. He is rocking slightly. He is clearly engaged in what we would call prayer. The rabbi turns to his companion and says,Is ‘‘our God’’ listening to the prayers of people of other faiths? If not, why not? What kind of God would that be? Would the one we Christians and Jews speak of as maker of heaven and earth not give ear to the prayer of a man so earnestly, so deeply in prayer? On the other hand, if God is listening, what are we all about? Who are we as a people who cherish our own special relationship with God? If we conclude that ‘‘our God’’ is not listening, then we had better ask how we are to speak of God at all as people of faith in a world of many faiths. But if we suspect that ‘‘our God’’ is listening, then how are we to speak of ourselves as people of faith among other peoples of faith? Is our God listening? It is a disarmingly simple question, a Sunday schoolquestion, not the sort most proper academic theologians would care to pursue. But this simple question leads us into the most profound theological, social, and political issues of our time. We all know that this is not solely a question about God’s ears, the capacity of God to listen, or the destiny of our prayers. It is a question about the destiny of our human community and our capacity to listen with openness and empathy to people of faith very different fromourselves. It is a question about how we, whoever we are, understand the religious faith of others. The question of religious difference elicits a variety of responses. A collectionof Gandhi’s writings on religion is published under the title All Religions are True (1962), and that assertion is certainly one way of responding to difference. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those that assert that all religions are false and are fundamentally misguided – look at the wars and violence, the atrocities perpetrated in the name of God. A third option is to insist that one religion is true and the rest are false. Or one might claim that one religion is true and the others are partially true. Most of us have operative ideas about the diversity of religious traditions that fall somewhere along this spectrum. We carry these ideas along with us as we encounter people whose religious faith is different from ours. Even those who consider themselves quite secular employ some such set of evaluative ideas about religions in order to interpret the meaning of religion and of religious difference. We also carry with us notions of what it means for something to be true – literally true, metaphorically true, true for us, universally true. While the interpretation of religious difference and plurality has long been aquestion, the close proximity of people of many races, cultures, and religions in urban environments has decisively shaped our response to this question today. In 1966, Harvey Cox began The Secular City with the observation that ‘‘the rise of urban civilization and the collapse of traditional religion are the two main hallmarks of our era and are closely related’’ (1966: 1). In the urban environment from which the gods have fled, he argued, secularism was the dominant world-view, relativising and bypassing religion, rendering it irrelevant and a private affair. In 1985, Harvey Cox noted ‘‘the return of religion’’ with Religion in the Secular City. The demise of religion had been prematurely announced. Suddenly there were Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority; one in five adults in the United States weighed in with the Gallup Poll as an Evangelical or Pentecostal Christian. In the ‘‘secular city’’ of the 1990s, we would have to report the rise ofreligions, in the plural. We just might be tempted to turn Cox’s sentence wholly around and postulate that today the collapse of urban civilization and the rise of traditional religions are the two main hallmarks of our era. It is not that secularism is now no longer an issue, for the privatisation and relativisation of religion is still a reality to contend with. The challenge today, however, is not so much secularism, but pluralism. If one of the great issues of the secular city was anonymity, the great issue of the multi-cultural city is identity – ethnic, racial, and religious identity, African-American, Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, Buddhist, Muslim. In both the urban and global contexts we rub up against the new textures ofreligious diversity with increasing frequency. The question ‘‘Is our God listening?’’ poses, in a blunt way, the challenge of our encounter with real difference. Responses to this question take theological, social, and political forms. There are many types of responses, but we will explore just three possibilities, indicative of the range of interpretation within almost every religious tradition.

Reviewed by: A Bridge Across the Ocean: The United States and the Holy See Between the Two World Wars by Luca Castagna Agnes de Dreuzy (bio) Luca Castagna, A Bridge Across the Ocean: The United States and the Holy See Between the Two World Wars (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014). 224pages. On January 10, 1984 the Holy See established full diplomatic relations with the United States for the first time since 1867 when the U.S. Congress had cut funding for the American pontifical mission in Rome, resulting in its closure. The appointment by President Ronald Reagan of the first ambassador to the Vatican was the culmination of 117 years during which relations between the two governments endured a lengthy, but slow maturation. In his book A Bridge Across the Ocean, Luca Castagna, professor at the University of Salerno, reconstructs these complicated relations between 1914 and 1939. Originally published in 2011 in his native Italian, Castagna’s work is an informative and insightful account of the gradual but uneven and uneasy thawing of the relations between the Holy See and the American government during these two crucial decades. He sheds light on the intricate diplomatic interplay between the Holy See, the U.S. government, and the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, against a political and social background, highlighting “the disturbing international scenario of the twenties and thirties” (xv). Castagna shrewdly navigates between the primary sources he uses from the Vatican and the United States and analyzes them with the existing literature on the topic. The narrative that emerges from his study is a page-turner. The year 1917 arguably represents the lowest point in the chaotic relations between the papacy and the American government. Two recognized [End Page 133] moral authorities collided. President Woodrow Wilson, a staunch Protestant, offered a polite but firm fin de non recevoir to Pope Benedict XV’s Peace Note of August 1, 1917. The long history of American anti-Catholic bigotry is not enough to explain this rejection. A deep ingrained sense of the separation of church and state led Wilson to not only oppose the papal attempt at mediation but also to support Italy with its refusal of the Holy See’s participation in the Versailles Peace Conference as stipulated in article 15 of the secret treaty of London, an article inserted to avoid a much-feared internationalization of the “Roman Question”—the issue of the pope’s temporal rights to the Papal States after the Italian unification movement. Although this story is already well documented, Castagna places it within the broader American context of revived anti-Catholic nativism which is balanced against cautious support from the American Catholic hierarchy represented by the elderly Cardinal James Gibbons. The meeting between Wilson and Benedict XV on January 9, 1919, the first of its kind, did not provide any reason for the Holy See to celebrate. Castagna vividly describes the post-war years and convincingly argues that the relations between the Holy See and America did not improve until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to the presidency in 1932. Most interesting is Castagna’s explanation that, in an apparent paradox, it is under the anti-Catholic Republican administrations (1921–1933) that the Catholic Church in the U.S. organized itself at the national level and became a unified and structured force on the political and social scene, after “reflect(ing) on their role within the troubled American society of the 1920s” (70). The National Catholic War Council (NCWC) was to be the privileged instrument for this new role. Castagna retraces its origins and development, weaving an intricate scholarly fabric of the maneuvering of the cardinal of Boston, William Henry O’ Connell in his attempt to have the NCWC suppressed by Pius XI and the pained reaction of the American bishops through a petition drafted by the Board of the Catholic University of America. The order was eventually retracted and the NCWC became “an effective instrument of pressure on the federal government” (82). The signing of the Lateran Treaties between Pius XI and Mussolini in 1929 signaled what Castagna calls “a new era for Vatican diplomacy, as it was for relations with the United...

It is a pleasure to respond to Melendez and LaSala's (2006) critique of my article Epistemological Frameworks, Homosexuality, and Religion: How People of Faith Understand the Intersection between Homosexuality and Religion (Hodge, 2005a). Over the course of our profession's history, we have expanded our understanding of diversity to include characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation Both writers have contributed to this evolving understanding. Melendez has added to the andragogy knowledge base (Garcia & Melendez, 1997), and LaSala (2001, 2004) has enhanced our ability to provide culturally competent services to gay and lesbian clients. The evolutionary process, however, has not always been smooth (Guzzetta, 1996; Sue & Sue, 2003). With each iteration of diversity, misunderstandings occurred as existing groups struggled to deal with previously unheard voices. Given the often problematic task of interpreting text (Derrida, 1976), misunderstandings occurred when existing definitions and tools were applied in new ways. At present, the profession is beginning to grapple with the issue of spiritual diversity. Consequently, it is perhaps unsurprising that Melendez and LaSala seem to have misunderstood some of the content of my article, including its primary point. CENTRAL POINT OF THE ARTICLE AND OTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS As Melendez and LaSala underscore, social work has an ethical mandate to serve all with respect and dignity (p. 376). As a result of changing immigration patterns--stemming in part from the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act (P.L. 89-236) in 1965--spiritual diversity in the United States has increased dramatically (Smith, 2002; Smith & Seokho, 2005). The nation's existing spiritual diversity has been supplemented by growing numbers of Korean Presbyterians, Soviet Jews, Indian Hindus Latino Pentecostals, Punjabi Sikhs, Asian Muslims, and Hispanic Catholics. Many of these individuals affirm the historic, mainstream tenets of their respective faith traditions. Called orthodox by some, they often self-identify as of faith. The creation of this rich, colorful, spiritual mosaic has resulted in the United States becoming perhaps the most spiritually diverse nation on the planet (Eck, 2001). In addition to providing services to all, the National Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics (NASW, 2000) calls on us to pay particular attention to the needs of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. As implied earlier, individuals have multiple identities (Wambach & Van Soest, 1997). Although spiritual identity plays a predominant role for many people of faith, other identities also shape their status in society. Orthodox believers are disproportionately likely to be African American, Latino, Native American, female, working class, or poor (Davis & Robinson, 1997; Hodge, 2002b; McAdams, 1987;Wilcox, 2004). To fulfill our ethical mandates with people of faith (or any other group), we must understand how they tend to construct reality (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; Wambach & Van Soest, 1997). It is here, perhaps, that Melendez and LaSala's central misunderstanding occurred. The key point of my article was to expand our understanding of diverse reality constructions. Toward this end, I attempted to set aside my own beliefs, enter the worldview of people of faith using traditional Christians as a proxy, and tell a story that reflects how members of the group tend to view the world. As I argued (for example, p. 213), it is not a one-way street. Social workers also need to understand common reality constructions among gay and lesbian clients. As the NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice (NASW, 2001) states, we do not have to agree with the values of the groups that make up society. We do, however, need to understand how members of these groups tend to construct reality so that we can provide culturally competent services. …

Black Catholicism

One of the most difficult puzzles of contemporary international relations is how to balance the human rights of freedom of opinion, religion, and expression that are set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with calls for criminalization of blasphemy (defamation of God, religion, religious dogmas, personalities, scriptures, and artifacts) on the part of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the League of Arab States, Iran, and other Muslim countries, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, publication of Danish and French cartoons that satirized Prophet Mohammad and equated Islam with terrorism, and the Islamist terrorist attack against the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in January 2015. The question is how to strike a balance between freedom of expression, which includes non-verbal symbolic speech and legal expressive conduct, with calls for respect for religion (in word and deed), as well as the installation of a global, anti-blasphemy regime under international law. Calls for international criminalization of blasphemy and enactment of global anti-blasphemy laws that would globalize respect for religion under international law began in 1988, when Salman Rushdie, a British-Indian novelist, published the Satanic Verses, an unorthodox narrative of the life of Prophet Mohammad and of Islamic dogma. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini promptly issued a fatwa (religious decree) pronouncing the death sentence on Rushdie. In 2001, Buddhists, art historians, and scholars around the world were horrified when the Taliban destroyed the 1,700-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan. From 2013–2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (the Islamic State) went on a rampage, destroying ancient, pre-Islamic, Greco-Roman, Christian, and other monuments in Iraq and Syria. The actions of the Ayatollah, the Taliban, and the Islamic State represent a deployment of the argument of force and coercion rather than the force of argument and dialogue to impose acceptance of religious dogmas, personalities, and narratives. People of all religious faiths condemned the death sentence passed on Salman Rushdie, as well as the destructive actions of the Taliban and the Islamic State, drawing a distinction between modes of expression—books, cartoons, news reports, and the like—that criticize religion and illegal actions such as religiously motivated intimidation and violence. However, historically, the major religions—Christianity (specifically, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church), Islam, certain strands of Buddhism, Hinduism, and others—have not made a distinction between protected speech that is critical of religion and illegal actions directed at believers. They have not distinguished between their religion’s beliefs as philosophical worldviews and individual believers as human persons subject to criticism. In Islam, criticism or satirical cartoons of Prophet Mohammad or of Islam, as well as desecration of the Qur’an, are considered offensive actions that constitute insults against all Muslims. Most member countries of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation interpret national and international law as criminalizing all anti-Islamic expressions and call for a global anti-blasphemy regulatory regime. This would be tantamount to a universal, anti-humanist posture that places religious rites and sentiments over human rights. The question is whether putting religion and other metaphysical worldviews beyond the reach of critical examination and scholarly interrogation is consistent with the libertarian values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Legal interpretations of the human right of freedom of expression and of the politico-theological concept of blasphemy are grounded in specific national, religious, historical, and politico-cultural contexts. These different national and cultural postures toward freedom of expression and blasphemy can be explained by the concept of “establishmentality,” a neologism that describes different politico-cultural mentalities or logics with respect to the role and place of religion in the life of the state, the law, and the public sphere. In Muslim countries with constitutional or statutory state religions—Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Maldives, and others—the penalty for blasphemy is death. Blasphemy is also criminalized in the rest of the Middle East. In Western countries with established (state) religions—the United Kingdom and Scandinavia—blasphemy laws have either been repealed or are not being enforced. By way of contrast, the United States has an anti-establishmentarian constitutional regime. The First Amendment is a charter of negative rights that forbids the establishment of religion (creation of a state religion). In the last few years, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League have put pressure on the United Nations to ban blasphemy and institute a regime that puts region and religious sentiments above criticism. The danger is that the establishment of a universal anti-blasphemy right grounded in the theological concept of respect for religion would be clearly at variance with the freedom of opinion, religion, and expression provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Despite enormous changes in the global circumstances that impinge on American government and despite a growing recognition that the undergraduate curriculum must be internationalized, relatively little has been done to incorporate a global perspective in the one place where political science teachers can reach very large numbers of undergraduate students—the introductory American national government course. The internationalization of the American economy, the developing interdependence between the United States and other countries, the growth of local-international links—these phenomena have scarcely touched the bedrock political science course.Textbooks for the introductory American government course reflect this neglect of the international dimension. They typically allude to the international factor briefly in the context of the president's powers in conducting foreign relations and discuss it more extensively in a chapter on “Foreign Policy” or “Foreign and Defense Policy.” As a practical matter, however, this chapter is usually near or at the very end of the book, which many teachers and students probably never reach. A perusal of various current textbooks confirms the conclusion made by a 1981 survey of 50 leading textbooks that very few of the books recognize the interdependence phenomenon or the importance of global circumstances. Apart from textbooks, learning packages designed for the American government course on such topics are rare.To expose students to the international dimension of American national government, the writer conducted a special project in two sections of his American national government course during the spring 1988 semester. The following instruction sheet was given to the students.

Introduction My United States history and American government survey classes at Berkeley High School are quite heterogeneous in both ability and ethnic background. Approximately 25 percent of my students are African American. Another 25 percent are likely to be Asian or Latino. I am constantly seeking ways to make the survey course relevant to their past so as to engage them more fully in their study of American history and government. A continuing problem has been a tendency on the part of many texts to portray minorities merely as victims, a process that inevitably leads to a not so subtle dehumanization of their role in history and makes more difficult explanation of the sudden outburst of minority protest movements in the mid-twentieth century. As part of my effort to counteract this trend, I introduce my students to two federal court cases involving Asian immigrants' efforts to guarantee their rights. I begin with a brief look at a remarkable case involving Chinese Americans, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886). I follow this with a contrasting lesson on one Japanese American's use of the federal courts in his struggle for citizenship, using the case of Takao Ozawa. Unlike the Chinese and African American model of successfully using the courts to assert constitu tional rights in cases such as Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) or Brown v. Board(l 954), Takao Ozawa's case was hindered by the Court's basing its decision on a strict interpretation of a federal statute rather than broad interpretation of language in the United States Constitution. The Takao Ozawa lesson is designed to explore this distinction. As such, the lesson could also be useful in American government courses. Besides reviewing and illustrating the functions of the Supreme Court in interpreting federal statutes as opposed to the Constitution, it also reveals methods of judicial interpretation such as the doctrine of Original Intent, literalism, and stare decisis. Finally the lesson points to the vital interplay between Congress and the federal judiciary in the making of law. Prior to using either Yick Wo or the Ozawa documents, I discuss the structure of state and federal courts, as well as the process by which the Supreme Court makes its decisions. An indispensable teaching reference for this task is Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker's Constitutional Law For A Changing America: A Short Course. While most useful in their present form for Advanced Placement or honors courses, both lessons entail a personal quest for justice and so should pique interest in regular classes as well. With adequate vocabulary cues and encouragement in the use of primary documents as detective work, the documents can be successfully adapted for use in heterogeneous American history or government classes. An inspiring teaching reference for making this effort is James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle's Alter the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection.

STRAINED NEUTRALITY: IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA THOMAS J. ROWLAND the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 caught Irish-American Catholics at a pivotal point of transition in their assimilation into American society. Great Britain’s participation in World War I fueled conXicting sentiments towards Irish freedom among many Irish Americans. For some, the war revived hopes for the complete separation of Ireland from British dominion . For others, the majority, it renewed aspirations for dialogue with the British government aimed at achieving expanded Irish autonomy within the British Empire. More importantly, however, the outbreak of war heightened tensions within the community itself. Irish Americans found that the war revived, more explicitly than ever before, suspicions about their loyalty as Roman Catholics to the United States. Their adherence to Catholicism had long been the source of their exclusion from mainstream American society, and the war, with all its conXicting pulls on their loyalties , forced Irish Americans to declare their allegiances. The fervor that had marked Fenianism in the years following the American Civil War had lain dormant since the turn of the century. It had for many years no longer suited the needs of the Irish-American Catholic community, as energies had been directed to pursuing an equal footing in American society to the neglect of Irish nationalism. “Twisting the Lion’s tail,” the sport of Irish America in the years following the Civil War, had lost the American government’s toleration. Since the waning years of the nineteenth century, political leaders of the United States had been nurturing a rapprochement with the British Empire that enabled each government to fulWll its imperial dreams without serious objection by the other.1 IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA 58 1 For a full discussion of the emerging Anglo-American cooperation at the turn of the century, see Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement (New York: Atheneum Press, 1968). The Clan-na-Gael inherited the mantle of Fenianism in the late nineteenth century. It languished in the years leading up to World War I. Parnell ’s Land League program had lent a conservative bent to the course of Irish nationalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the image of Irish-American nationalists as violence-prone had undermined widespread support among the majority of the community, and the Roman Catholic church’s condemnation of secret societies further tarnished the appeal of the Clan-na-Gael. Consequently, ardent nationalists vainly railed against any and all attempts by the American government to concede to British policy. Despite their rhetoric, either shrill or eloquent, the dreaded rapprochement of American and British interests moved inexorably forward and augured poorly for the advancement of Irish liberation.2 Clan fortunes continued to decline when John Redmond’s Home Rule initiative moved toward passage in the English Parliament on the eve of World War I. In many ways, the eruption of hostilities rescued the cause of Irish nationalism from the brink of obsolescence. Moderate and conservative Irish-American Catholics sought conciliatory and compromising solutions to the nationalist issue and were more apt to support Redmond’s Home Rule program as the most promising step in Ireland’s freedom. Moreover, Irish-American concerns for promoting an image of respectability within their adopted homeland forced a restructuring of Irish-American nationalist goals. The career of Patrick Ford, founder of the Irish World, underscores this concern. Formerly a supporter of both Fenianism and radical social policies in the United States, Ford came to reject this course of action, and directed his own life and energies in the Irish World to generate a “sense of dignity and self respect . . . [and] encourage the poor Irishmen’s identiWcation with America.” For Ford, the editor of the most popular Irish-American newspaper, the ideal Irishman was “respectable, well-to-do, cultured and devoutly religious.” The best Irish-Americans, according to Ford, “were notably patriotic, democratic and intensely loyal to American institutions.”3 IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA 59 2 Numerous examples of Irish-American discontent with the rapproachement between London and Washington can be found in Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations , 1899–1921...

The theory of biological evolution is the central organizing principle of modern biology. In 1973, the eminent evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously asserted that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Evolution provides a scientific explanation for why there are so many different kinds of organisms on Earth and gives an account of their similarities and differences (morphological, physiological, and genetic). Science has demonstrated again and again, beyond reasonable doubt, that living organisms evolve and diversify over time, and that their features have come about by natural selection, a process that accounts for their design. Yet, there are many people of faith in the United States and elsewhere who think that science, particularly the theory of evolution, is contrary to the teachings of the Bible and to religious beliefs, such as creation by God. Well before the formulation of the theory of evolution, religious authors over the centuries used the “argument-from-design” to demonstrate rationally, without reference to faith or divine revelation, the existence of God, as the author of the design of organisms. The argument from design has two parts. In one familiar form it asserts, first, that organisms evince to have been designed; second, that only God could account for the design. The argument from design was advanced, in a variety of forms, in Classical Greece and early Christianity. Its most extensive formulation is due to William Paley in his Natural Theology (Natural theology, or evidences of the existence and attributes of the deity collected from the appearances of nature. American Tract Society, New York, 1802). The eye—as well as all sorts of organs, organisms, and their interactions—manifests to be the outcome of design and not of chance, thus it shows to have been created by God. In the 1990s, the design argument was revived in the United States by several authors. The flagellum used by bacteria for swimming and the immune system of mammals, as well as some improbability calculations, were advanced as evidence of “intelligent design,” on the grounds that chance processes could not account for the phenomena to be explained. In The Origin of Species, Darwin (On the origin of species by means of natural selection. John Murray, London, 1859) advanced a scientific explanation of the design of organisms. The adaptations of organisms are outcomes not of chance, but of a process that, over time, causes the gradual accumulation of features beneficial to organisms, whenever these features increase the organisms’ chances of surviving and reproducing. There is design in the living world: eyes are designed for seeing, wings for flying, and kidneys for regulating the composition of the blood. The design of organisms comes about not by intelligent design, but by a natural process, which is creative through the interaction of chance and necessity. Organisms are pervaded by imperfections, dysfunctions, cruelties, and even sadism. The theory of evolution accounts for these mishaps by natural selection, as outcomes of natural processes, so that they need not be attributed to God’s explicit design. The theory of evolution perceived by some people of faith as contrary to religion, may thus be acknowledged as their “disguised friend.” The theory of evolution accounts for the design of organisms, but also for the dysfunctions, oddities, cruelty, and sadism that pervade the world of life, so that these deficiencies need not be attributed to specific agency by the Creator, which might implicitly amount to blasphemy. The foregoing considerations are important both for understanding and for accepting evolution as a fact of life, and should be taken into account by science educators and teachers.

The Pope's grievous errors

In the early 1990s, a grassroots coalition of churches in Baltimore, Maryland helped launch what would become a national movement. Joining forces with labor and low-wage worker organizations, they passed the first municipal living wage ordinance. Since then, over one hundred and forty-four municipalities and counties as well as numerous universities and local businesses in the United States have enacted such ordinances. Although religious persons and organizations have been important both in the origins of the living wage movement and in its continuing success, they are often ignored or under analyzed. Drawing on participant observation in multiple cities, this book analyzes and evaluates the contributions of religious activists to the movement. The book explores the ways that religious organizations do this work in concert with low-wage workers, the challenges religious activists face, and how people of faith might better nurture moral agency in relation to the political economy. Ultimately, it provides clarity on how to continue to cultivate, renew, and expand religious resources dedicated to the moral agency of low-wage workers and their allies.

Each town along the road running out of Fen Cho fu, China, paid to avoid having foreigners murdered within its boundaries.' No one wanted the difficulties likely to arise from having a group of foreign missionaries beheaded in his or her village. Therefore the party of eight missionaries, including Eva Jane Price, the missionaries' children, a few Chinese Christians, and the government soldiers sent along to protect them managed to get through quite a number of villages before the inevitable happened. The government soldiers, who were actually under the orders of the society of Boxers, were unable to squeeze money from a village. Thirteen men, women, and children were murdered, and their bodies were left along the roadside. One of their Chinese Christian servants escaped, and his is the only voice to tell of what finally happened to Eva Jane Price and her party. China Journal 1889-1~oo: An American Missionary Family During the Boxer Rebellion is a volume of letters from Eva Price to her family and friends in the United States with occasional notes written by her husband and children, and an appendix containing an account of the Prices written by Fei Ch'i-hao (Fei Qi Hao), their Chinese servant.2 This collection of letters chronicles the experience of the Prices from their voyage out of Iowa to their final destination in Shansi (Shanxi), a central province of China where they performed mission work. In this paper I examine these letters for insights into the construction of a complex compound: Price's understanding of her own role as a woman and as a missionary in China. Her representations of these roles are predicated upon compound walls both ideological and actual. In representing her experiences in China as essentially within or beyond the walls of her home and her imagination, Price provides metaphoric imagery that is rich with potential to deconstruct what

The Reverend Nicolau Costa, a Roman Catholic priest in Kuito, Angola, is featured on the cover this month for his unrelenting work as an unofficial and unpaid investigator of human rights violations by government soldiers and police officers. “As a priest I go everywhere, mostly by foot, but the population is traumatized to such an extent that many people don't complain anymore,” explained Father Costa. “But it's hard for me to keep quiet. I speak what I feel, what I see. What I see is horrible.” In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has become one of the most important independent voices in Angola, where government corruption and violence have claimed more than 30 000 lives in Kuito and devastated the physical and mental health of countless others since the country gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. In her essay “Where Are the Women?” published in the October 21, 2001, issue of The Nation, Katha Pollit asks, “Are there any people on earth more wretched than the women of Afghanistan? As if poverty, hunger, disease, drought, ruined cities and a huge refugee crisis weren't bad enough, under Taliban rule they can't work, they can't go to school, they have virtually no health care, they can't leave their houses without a male escort, they are beaten in the streets if they lift the mandatory burqua even to relieve a coughing fit.” In combination with the stricture requiring the windows in Afghan houses to be painted over to prevent men passing by from glimpsing women, the burqua has resulted in an outbreak of osteomalicia, a bone disease caused by malnutrition and lack of sunlight. A human rights perspective is vital for all public health workers, not just those in such places as Angola and Afghanistan. Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA, director of International Health and Human Rights at the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, recently joined the Journal's editorial staff as an associate editor for health and human rights. Her thoughtful article featured herein, “Understanding and Responding to Youth Substance Use: The Contribution of a Health and Human Rights Framework” (p 1954), not only reorients thinking about the worldwide epidemic of substance use among young people, it also provides a solid approach for improving their lives. Other papers on health and human rights published in this issue include an editorial by Cheryl E. Easley, Stephen Marks, and Russell Morgan entitled “The Challenge and Place of International Human Rights in Public Health” (p 1922) and a research article by Vincent Iacopino and colleagues entitled “A Population-Based Assessment of Human Rights Abuses Committed Against Ethnic Albanian Refugees From Kosovo” (p 2013). Fred Halliday, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, wrote in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11: “The chances of a discussion on the uses of violence is [sic] contradicted by talk of a clash of civilisations and of incompatibilty of Western and Islamic values. … The argument will not be settled by invoking cultural clashes or trawling around in holy texts for quotes for and against violence and resistance. All religions have, if people chose to dig them out, texts and precedents which legitimise violence, terror, and senseless sacrifice by individuals. … The framework for addressing these issues, of conflict between states and of differences within them, is not cultural or civilisational at all, but universal, based on international law and the principles of the United Nations” (The Guardian, September 16, 2001). Accordingly, we welcome Professor Gruskin to the editorial staff and, in doing so, seek with her to—as she writes—“[broaden] the dialogue on new ways to promote and protect the health of [all] that are effective, as well as—or precisely because they are—consistent with human rights principles.”

Tapping Masculinity: Labor Recruitment to the Brazilian Amazon during World War II