Who says Muslims and Christians can't work together? Aleppo, Syria (photo) is a city of four and a half million people -- about the size of Los Angeles. Within this city are two low-income neighborhoods -- Sheikh Khodr and Hadariyah -- with 80,000 residents. Fifty percent are less than 18 years old. Only two percent have a regular income. Child labor is growing alarmingly. Into this breach steps Questscope, a Christian organization whose motto is "Putting the Last First." Questscope was founded by Curt Rhodes, a friend of mine whose wife was at one time my administrative assistant.
          The City Council of Aleppo recently launched a partnership with Questscope to establish urban development centers in Sheikh Khodr and Hadariyah, after having utilized Questscope's "participatory rapid appraisal" methodology. The study recommended a special focus on restorative education and vocational training skills for youth. The Aleppo City Council hopes to create a national team for urban planning, based on this pilot project. Although Questscope is headquartered in Amman, Jordan, you can participate in this project by making a donation to their U. S. office: Questscope, P. O. Box 88572, Carol Stream, IL 60188.
         

          My college years were spent in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes pioneered by Scandinavians. But America's increasing religious pluralism is exemplified by the fact that 25,000 Hindus live and work in Minnesota today. Yesterday they dedicated a huge new temple (left), 42,000 square feet with a 65-foot tower. It cost the Hindu community 9.5 million dollars. The new temple presently has a membership of four thousand families but expects to eventually serve seven thousand. Hindus come from every part of India and in turn favor a variety of dieties. A unique feature of the new temple is that it actually incorporates into its architecture 21 mini-temples that replicate their originals in India.

          I want to briefly follow up on yesterday's blog about the Kentucky gun-toting pastor and the Iranian ayatollah, both of whom operate on the assumption that God is committed to violence as a solution for societal problems. Unfortunately, many Christians make the same assumption. God's justice, they believe, is centered on punishment -- the deliberate infliction of pain for wrongdoing -- and this in spite of the fact that Jesus rarely if ever spoke of punishing people, but centered his relationships with others in compassion and mercy and forgiveness and healing. This is because his knowledge of God's character differed radically from those of his contemporaries.
          Today many of our pastors share the ayatollah's belief, and therefore preach about God in ways that justify violence (though not many go so far as to advocate bringing guns into the sanctuary as a way of celebrating freedom). Not only foreign lands, but Christian lands, are filled with violence, and the history of Christianity from Constantine onward has been replete with Christians inflicting pain on others. The idea of punishing people for wrong-doing is based largely on the misguided concept of "desert." He or she deserves to suffer pain or enjoy well-being, we say. But this idea is contrary to New Testament teaching. According to the Apostle Paul, none of us deserves, or merits, what we have gained or suffered: "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"
          The idea of justice exemplified by Jesus and exegeted by St. Paul is not based on desert but on restoring broken fellowship. God's justice is revealed not in his determination to punish but in his readiness to forgive sinners and make them at-one with himself. This is restorative justice, and this is what we Christians -- and indeed peoples of all religious commitments -- should be aiming at.
          All this has immediate and practical consequences. A young boy, just entering adolescence and fired by testosterone, touches a girl inappropriately. The girl's parents, both devout Christians, say they will forgive the boy -- but only after he has been punished severely. Where did they get such an idea? Not from Jesus! The parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8) refutes this notion decisively. 
         

          Ayatollah Khatami, in his Friday sermon in Tehran, declared that the leaders of the protest movement should be cruelly punished and then executed. Here in the United States, we have Pastor Ken Pagano (photo) inviting his congregation to bring their firearms into the sanctuary tomorrow to "celebrate our rights as Americans." "God and guns were part of the foundation of this country," he declaimed.
          Both the ayatollah and the pastor badly comingle religion with nationalism, in my opinion. Worse, they do so because of their perverted perception of God. Both understand violence as integral to God's character. Therefore it permissible, even necessary, to employ violence to maintain cohesion in society. Hence the persistance of the death penalty in the U.S. From this angle, Islam and Christianity have much in common.
         

          Alec Anderson points out that I was mistaken in describing Thriller, the Michael Jackson album, as being the largest-selling of all time. True, 28 million-plus have been sold. But The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-75 has sold 29 million.

     ...or so they say. I've never been into American pop culture -- probably because of having lived so much of my life overseas --but it's not often that two celebraties die within hours of each other. Of the two, Jackson is undoubtedly the most important, as evidenced by the amount of media coverage devoted to him last night. But Fawcett had her own claim to fame as well. Michael Jackson's Thiller album was the greatest of all time, while Farrah Fawcett's cover photo was the most reproduced ever. Farrah's death at age 62, after a three year battle with cancer, conveyed nobility. Michael's death at age 50 was totally unexpected. Michael's life was wildly successful, but far from noble. It was rather sad, actually, as he himself confessed. How and why he re-scultured his face mystified many. In the final resurrection of the dead that Christians believe in, Michael's body will be restored to its prime, and Farrah's body will no longer bear the ravages of disease.

          The current crackdown in Iran, led by its Supreme Leader, the Shi'a Ayatollah Khamenie, provokes interest in the differences between Sunni and Shi'a versions of Islam.
          Islam is diverse, yet major differences exist, dating back to the religion's beginnings. From Muhammad's death onwards Muslims divided over the issue of authentic leadership. Sunnis, who became the majority wing of Islam, argued that the authentic leader (Caliph) should be selected by a council of elders. Shi'as, the minority wing, maintained that the leader (whom they designate Imam) must be a descendent of Muhammad.
          Shi'a tradition holds that Muhammad prophecied that there would be only 12 Imams, after which the Mahdi (Savior) would come. As it happened, the 12th Imam disappeared without a trace. Thus he must be the promised Mahdi who will bring peace, justice, and Islam to the whole world. Though he has not yet returned, his hidden presence and wisdom is available through study and insight to the Ayatollahs. Their task is to develp a combined religious/political system in harmony with the wishes of the Mahdi. When the Muslim community, led by Shi'ism, approaches perfection, the Mahdi will return.
          An interesting facet of Shi'a Islam is the belief that the return of the Mahdi will be preceded by the return of Jesus, who will defer to the Mahdi's leadership and work with him to prepare humankind for the final judgment and the end of this age. This explains President Ahmadinejad's question to President Bush in his letter of May 8, 2006: "Will we [Iran and the U.S.] be given a role to play in the promised world, where justice will become universal and Jesus Christ will be present?"
    

          A good friend asked me today why I haven't been talking about our impending move to Lynchburg, Virginia. The answer is that it is somewhat premature. I have been packing up some stuff in the garage, and I've packed up some stuff from my office, but Georgia has not yet begun to pack anything. For we are waiting to see if the prospective buyer is going to be able to get his financing in order. His target date is July 8th or thereabout, and until we know whether he is successful, we really don't know whether we have a firm sale -- so there is no point is packing up everthing.
          The picture above is from the blog of a young lady named Amy. I selected it because -- in contrast to Georgia and me -- my daughter Melody and her daughter, Canary, have had to pack up everything in two days flat and move out of their house which has developed a serious black mold problem. They are staying temporarily in a motel while they are looking for another house. This is no easy task in Boulder, Colorado, where the housing market is tight, and expensive.

         
          400 years after the Galileo affair, the Vatican, to the surprise of many, is a leading player in the field of astronomy.  One of its two major observatories is the one at Castel Gandolfo (photo), the pope's summer residence. The other is at Mount Graham, Arizona.          
          During the past two decades a collaboration between Nancey Murphy, R. J. Russell, and William Stoeger, has resulted in several books integrating science and faith -- the most recent being Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil. (Readers of this blog are familiar with my interest in this problem.) Murphy is a professor at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary; Russel is a mainline Protestant theologian; and Stoeger is a Jesuit priest who works at Castel Gondalfo.
          One example of natural evil is the presence of black mold in households. Granted, this is a minor example in the grand scheme of things, but it can be devastaing to those who have encountered it. As has my daughter, Melody, who has a Down's Syndrome child for whom black mold can be deadly. Melody and her daughter, Canary, spent the past two days packing up everything in their home (a gigantic task in itself), moving to temporary quarters, and searching for a new house. I am impressed.
          Of course, neither Melody nor Canary have wasted this time pondering the meanng of natural evil. They simply cope with it. Still, questions persist: Why does  this pestilence exist?  Are the actions of human beings responsible in any way, or is this a purely natural phenomenon? Why does God allow it to inflict harm on innocent children? (This is the historic conundrum of theodicy: how to justify God's goodness and power in the face of natural evil.) Many people find such questions quite troubling; and some of us cannot resist tackling them seriously, hoping to illumine the Gospel in the process. 

          You will be forgiven if the occasion passed you by, but yesterday Greenlanders ushered in a new era of self-governance that will eventuate in full independence from Denmark, hopefully in the near future. Denmark has ruled Greenland since 1721. Under the new arrangements, the Inuit/Danish people of Greenland will take responsibility for criminal justice and oil exploration.
          Greenland (officially known as Naalakkersuisut) is located up by the Arctic Sea. Global warming is slowly melting the glacer icecap that covers most of the island. Greenland is the largest island in the world that is not deemed a continent (as Australia is). But it has a population of fewer than 60,000 people. It's capital, Nuuk, on its western coast, boasts one-quarter of that number. It also has the country's only two traffic lights. 
          According to reporter Sarah Lyall, who visited Greenland recently, the country is rife with social problems: alcoholism, unemployment, domestic violence. There are no roads connecting towns. People travel by boat or plane. But they are buoyed by the prospect of exploiting vast reserves of oil and minerals beneath the surface of the icecap and in the seas that surround the nation.

          This old grainy snapshot, taken back in the mid-1950's, is the final photo taken of my family. Left to right: Dad, Jimmy, Mom, Jerry, David, and me. Dad and Mom have passed on, of course. I have lost track of Jimmy and Jerry. It is likely that Jerry, too, has died. Only David and I are in touch today. I visited him in San Francisco last month. We had a great time.
          Dad's death at age 53 was premature; he was accidentally killed when a locomotive ran over him while he was working as a foreman in the Missouri Pacific rail yards in Omaha. What I remember most about him was that he was a hard-working man, devoted to providing for our family. (Mom was a full time homemaker, as was the custom in those days.) During the Great Depression, while many men were unemployed, Dad often was working two shifts a day. He was also a fervent student, always spending his spare hours studying at our dining room table. He enrolled in a variety of courses from the International Correspondence School based in Chicago. (It would be interesting to know if ICS is still functioning.) I suspect I owe my own capacity for sustained work and study to Dad's example. This makes me wonder what my own children have inherited from me by genes or example.

          I'll give you a break from the Iranian news that has preoccupied me this past week. As I write, it is about 8:00 PM in Teheran and still too early to determine whether the Supreme Leader's threats of yesterday have scared off the protestors.
          The only other news of real significance is the heavy rain we are experiencing -- not record-setting as yet (that was back in 2003) but close. This means the U.S. Open golf tournament over on Long Island is behind schedule. The public favorite, Paul Michelson, and my own favorite,Tiger Woods, have fallen way behind. But there's plenty of time for them to make up lost ground.

          Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei (black turban) led the regular Friday prayer service at the mosque on the campus of Teheran University. In it, he asserted that the recent elections were honest and valid, strongly supported President Ahmadinejad, and warned against further protests in the streets. The opposition, nevertheless, led by Mir Hussein Moussavi, has called for more street marches tomorrow. It is hard to see how violence can be avoided, violence that will eventuate either in the overthrow of the present government, or a merciless Tianmanen-type crackdown. In either case thousands of lives -- perhaps tens of thousands -- will be lost. 
          Late last night on CNN a professor from Stanford University noted that Ahmadinejad supporters were being bussed into Teheran from all parts of the country. This would seem to support my opinion that Ahmadinejad indeed has strong support in the interior of Iran, although that same professor claimed that street protests were being held in major cities of the interior, cities such as Isfahan, Shiraz, Meshad, and Qom.

         

          During the past several days I have checked the major TV newscasts to see if, in their reporting on the Iranian elections, there is any reporting beyond Teheran. The day before yesterday there was none. Today again there was none.  Yesterday there was one and only one very brief mention, in passing, about people taking to the streets in Isfahan, a major city in southwest Iran (and where my longtime friend, Nate Mirza, lived for a while). So we still don't really know whether we are seeing a national uprising in Iran, or merely a local one in Teheran. Of course, there is always the possibility that Iran is different that the U.S., and that what goes on in the capital city of Teheran, is the only thing that counts. Tomorrow is slated to be a quiet day in Teheran, but Mir Hussein Moussavi is calling for more protests in the streets on Saturday. We shall see.

          Ordinarily I like CNN. But over the past few days I have been disappointed in the way it is reporting Iran's presidential election outcome. CNN reporters seem to take it for granted that Mir Hussein Moussavi, left, won the election. They further assume that he has been cheated of the prize because the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
          The reason for this bias is not only because Ahmadinejad has a bad reputation in the United States, but because CNN's reporters are based in the capital city, Teheran, where Moussavi indeed prevailed. Consequently they are ignorant of the attitudes of the vast majority of Iran's population who live outside of Teheran. Teheran has 8 million people; Iran as a whole has 70 million. Teheran's population does not mirror Iran's, no more than voting patterns in Washington, DC mirror America's south and midwest. I would guess that Ahmadinejad actually won the contest, though perhaps not by as large a margin as announced.
          CNN is not alone in the way it is reporting this story. I have seen little or no reporting from any of the news organizations that reflects what is going on in the outlying areas of Iran where most of the people live, and where attitudes are far more conservative than in Teheran. So for the moment I distrust media reports. Of course, things may change. What is happening on the streets of Teheran may reverberate across the land, and the mullahs in charge may be forced to back down. But I doubt it.

          President Obama spoke at the annual conference of the American Medical Association yesterday, outlining his vision for universal health care. I watched the event on CNN, for as a very senior citizen I have great interest in the subject. Obama did a good job, as usual, winning applause at numerous points from a somewhat hostile audience. He has no problem with rhetoric; it is the devilish details that sometimes strain credibility. 
        I for one favor the president's plan. But I share the concern of others that if government-sponsored medical insurance (such as the present Medicare program) is provided as an alternative to private insurance, employers are likely not to offer insurance to their employees, assuming that the latter can be insured by the government, thereby switching responsibility from the companies to taxpayers at large. 
          The President says this won't happen because employers who cancel insurance will be fined. This doesn't impress me; the fines are not going to cost the employer as much as the insurance policies. There are other questionable aspects about health care as presented by Obama. But there are also multiple benefits, so for me the need for serious and long-overdue reform greatly outweighs the possible dangers. We need to take a chance and back the President on this issue.

          Virtually all persons knowledgeable about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict agree that a "two state" solution is the only viable one.  All persons, that is, except Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) who has consistently argued against it. This weekend he appears to have reversed his position and has now announced that he supports it.
         But the reversal is actually meaningless because of the caveats attached to his support. He says, for instance, that he favors a two-state solution only if the Palestinians completely disarm themselves militarily. And why is this a non-starter? Because Israel would maintain its own military, including its stock of atom bombs! Obviously such an unbalanced situation would be unacceptable not only to Palestinians but to all other interested parties.
         For me, this speaks volumes. Netanyahu has changed his public stance under pressure from the Obama administration, but privately nothing at all has changed. This is confirmed by the fact that Netanyahu's other caveat is that the expansion of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank must be allowed to continue. How can this contribute to a peaceful conclusion?
          Former Senator George Mitchell is Obama's point man in this conflict. He has his work cut out for him, and it's difficult to see how he can possibly succeed in the face of Netanyahu's belligerance and (sad to say) Palestinians' inability to get their own act together.

         Before Georgia and I shove off for Lynchburg, Virginia this morning (apartment hunting) I will tell you about an interesting man: Mitro Repo.  He is a Finn. The dominant church in Finland is Lutheran, but Repo is an Orthodox priest. He is also an accomplished artist, speaks English fluently, and is a deputy to the European Parliament. His bishop superiors do not like the latter and have forbidden him to wear the robe, sport the pectoral cross, or perform any priestly duties in public. Reportedly a very jolly man with ruddy cheeks and a deep laugh, he has long been a public figure in Finland, specializing in mental health causes (his older brother committed suicide).
          Discussing his vocation with reporter John Tagliabue, Repo asserts, "It is not normal spirituality to say, 'I am a Christian only in my interior life' Parliaments are discussing morality and ethics, and I think I can have a spirituality as a representative of Eastern European countries and cultures."

           

          The American Medical Association came out yesterday in opposition to the Obama administration's intention to introduce a public health insurance plan. It is worth mentioning a couple of points in this connection. First, the AMA is a mere trade association; most physicians are not members of it. Second, it has for decades opposed any government involvement in health care, including Medicare. Neither Georgia or I can afford private health insurance, so she has none (at least for the next two years while she waits for Medicare eligibility, and I have only Medicare. While minimal, Medicare is essential to seniors like us and I am grateful for it. Third, the AMA claims that a national health care system will limit the consumer's choice. On the contrary, it will give my wife, for instance, a real choice. The AMA has put forward no plan for such people as my wife and me. If they have nothing to propose, let them be silent.

         

          Yesterday I noted the upcoming world evangelization congress, Lausanne III, slated to convene in Cape Town, South Africa (photo) in October 2010. South Africa is a good choice, for several reasons, for it has a vibrant Christian population, and Africa south of the Sahara is where Christianity is growing more rapidly than any place in the world. At the same time, the new post-apartheid South Africa is experiencing difficult growing pains. It's new president, Jacob Zuma, has a very checkered past, and the country itself has an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent, many of whom have never held a job. More than a quarter of the population receives welfare payments. As for the proposed evangelization congress itself, all the documents I've seen to date indicate that Africans themselves will not be very influential. Most of the main committees are still led by North Americans, Europeans and Asians. The head of the host committe is, of course, an African, but the position is largely ceremonial. 

          The two men in white shirts are Doug Birdsall, left, and Geoff Tunnicliffe. Tunnicliffe currently leads the World Evangelical Alliance, the organization I led a quarter-century ago. Birdsall is the executive chairman of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. The two have just announced plans for Lausanne III, an international congress on mission and evangelism to be held in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2010. Several of my former, and younger, colleagues -- Jim Chew, Jerry White, and Samuel Escobar, among others -- are prominently engaged in the planning process.
          Four thousand evangelicals from every part of the world will be participating. Archbishopbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda will serve as the conference host. Lausanne I was held in 1974 and Lausanne II in 1989. The year 2010 was chosen for Lausanne III in order to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the famed Edinburgh world missionary conference. Cape Town was selected because it is the site that the father of Protestant missions, William Carey, proposed for the first international missionary conference in 1810, two hundred years ago, a conference that never actually materialized, but which inspired the Edinburg event.

          A week or so ago I mentioned that during my trek on Amtrak, as we crossed the featureless plains of the Midwest, I finished reading A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith by John Rawls (photo). I realize this subject will not be of great interest to some of you. Nevertheless, I want to get my impression of the book on record, for it was the most intriguing book I read on my trip, and one I find myself thinking about a lot.
          The book is fascinating, first of all, because it was written by a 19-year-old  Princeton University student as his senior thesis just before he set off to serve in the army during World War II. The fact that Rawls was a senior at age 19 already indicates something of his potential. (His faculty "readers" gave the thesis a score of 98 out of a possible 100.) Rawls was destined to become the foremost American philosopher of the second half of the 20th century.
          Second, I find it intriguing that a thesis on the meaning of sin and faith could be taken so seriously in the year 1943 at an Ivy League school.  After all, it was only a few year later that William F. Buckley, Jr. would write his famous God and Man at Yale, describing the decline of religion in the Ivy League and, in the process, reviving conservative politics in America. Rawls, on the other hand, would be writing his seminal A Theory of Justice and equally important Political Liberalism.
           Third, within two years after leaving Princeton, John Rawls had abandoned his traditional faith altogether. Although he continued to belive in God, he no longer identified himself as an orthodox Christian. What caused such a 180-degree life change? Answer: the War. Rawls fought in the Philippines and his personal experiences there, combined with reading about the horrors of the Holocaust, led him to question whether prayer was actually efficacious, or that history could be interpreted in any way as expressing God's will.
          I think the turnabout can be best explained in terms of Rawls' youth.  He was only 20-21 years old when he was slogging through Philippine jungles, trying to justify to himself why his best friend, and not himself, was killed, or why he should bother praying for those he cared about when God could not, or would not, prevent the slaughter of millions of Jews. At that age I would not have been able to cope with the age-old problem of theodicy either! But during the course of a long life I have been able to integrate into my worldview a number of problems I previously considered irreconcilable. Rawls might have, too, for he lived to be 80, but his course was already set and he went on to wrestle with other, more secular issues. Had Rawls gone to war at age 40 instead of 20, he might not have lost his faith.
          Fourth, Rawls' senior thesis, now published posthumously by Harvard Press as a book, intrigues me because Rawls defines both sin and faith in terms of community and personal relations. And the ultimate community he has in mind is "the heavenly community," or Jesus' "kingdom of Heaven." As one reads the book, it becomes clear that this community is identical with what, in my The Renewal of All Things, I call "the eternal community of mutual love."
          I have suggested that God created the universe precisely in order to produce, via the long process of evolution, an entity which we now recognize as the human race, an entity which would ultimately comprise this community.
I had thought that this concept was more or less orginal with me, for I had not read it described in those terms before -- but then along comes John Rawls who wrote of it 65 years ago! There is nothing new under the sun.
          In spite of the fact that Rawls finally rejected the understanding of the gospel presented in his thesis, the thesis is still defendable today. Several sections, in fact -- those on egoism and egotism, on barriers to faith, on conversion, and on the nature of God's "wrath" and judgments, for example -- I found very insightful.

          The elections in Lebanon, held yesterday, and in which I take great interest, appear to have resulted in an unexpected setback for the Hizbullah party and its partner, the Christian group led by General Aoun. So the incumbent pro-West party, with its allies, including the Druze sect, appears to have retained its small majority. It seems to me that this outcome will guarantee continued division and turmoil within Lebanon. Meanwhile I note with satisfaction that the American University of Beirut is experiencing a strong revival, which bodes well for the region, for the academic standards of AUB are both strong and visionary.
          On a totally unrelated topic, we are trying to sell our house and move down to Lynchburg, Virginia. Over the past couple of days a dozen couples have looked through the house, and three have made offers. All the offers were disappointingly low, from our perspective, but that's the way the housing market is nowadays and we will likely end up having to settle for much less than we would like. Our situation is reminding us that all over the U.S. many other families are experiencing far more difficulties than we are. We pray for them and try to maintain a robust sense of thankfulness at our end.

          At left, the cathedral of Hermosillo, in Sonora State, Mexico, about 165 south of the U.S. border. Hermosillo is a city of 650,000 people. Yesterday a fire at the ABC child care center there killed 36 children, including infants and toddlers, and injured many more. Such an event is virtually unimaginable to Georgia, who has spent the past 25 years providing early learning to pre-schoolers here in Paterson.
          First of all, she wonders, why only 6 staff members for 170 children? That's almost 30 children per staff member. For infants and toddlers the required ratio in Paterson is one staff member for every three children. And why only one exit available for so many? (A second exit is reported to have been padlocked.) And finally, the groan of a policeman helping out in the rescue: Where is God?
          Does He not care about children? Why were some children spared and not others? Is it possible that God leaves the management of society entirely up to humans? Was this horrific event, as some say, God's punishment for the sins of Hermosillo? Such questions bedevil all religions and Christianity is no exception. How do you answer such questions? (My own answer has been suggested in a variety of past blogs.)

          Alyssa Stanton, left, a 45-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio will become the first African-American woman to be ordained as a rabbi by a mainstream Jewish seminary. Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, will ordain her today. According to Ellenson, her ordination "offers a ray of hope that the world can become a better place." Ms. Stanton will assume leadership of Beit Shalom, a mostly-white congregation in Greenville, North Carolina.
          Stanton's road to the rabbinate was not easy.  "Most of my Christian friends thought I'd grown horns," she remarked to Christopher Maag, who interviewed her. "Many of my african-American friends thought I'd sold out. And the Jewish community was less than welcoming.  It still hurts a bit." Over time, however, the American Jewish community has grown more diverse. Today about 20 percent of Jews in the United States (more than a million people) are from non-European racial and ethnic backgrounds.

          President Obama's speech at Cairo University was of great interest to me, as it was to most Middle Easterners, for I spent formative years in that part of the world. As I listened to the speech I was attuned to the cycle of applause and silence emanating from the audience. When Obama declared that Americans should reject stereotypes of Muslims, the audience applauded; when he followed that up by suggesting that Muslims should abandon stereotypes of Americans, the president waited for comparable applause, but it didn't come.
         As important as the speech may have been, and as important as the Palestine-Israel conflict may be, I think it is essential that Mr. Obama not forget that the majority of Muslims in the world today do not live in the Middle East. Nor are they Arabs. Indonesia, with 233 million people, is the world's largest Muslim nation, with 23 times the population of Israel and Palestine combined. Pakistan and Bangladesh together number 300 million. The president and his advisors would do well to get more intimately acquainted with all three countries. The only one of the three that has his attention now is Pakistan.
          As far as the Palestine-Israel conflict is concerned, Obama's speech offered nothing beyond platitudes. Of course, Israel should stop expanding its settlements and accept Palestine as an independent state -- but who or what will force them to do so? Of course, Hamas should recognize the right of Israel to exist as a state -- but Hamas blatantly insists it will not, and who can force them to do otherwise? Mr. Obama is unquestionably correct in trying to change the tone of discussion between America and Muslims.  But effective policies and plans are also essential, and these do not seem to be on the table.

          There seems to be a furor underway regarding Judge Sonia Sotomayor's comment a decade ago that a wise old Latina judge might make a better decision that a wise old white male. One has to assume that she was thinking that "in certain instances" that would be the case. So what is all the fuss about? Every judge, whether a black Thomas or a white Alito or a Jewish Ginsberg or a Latina Sotomayor is going to bring the accumulated experience of a lifetime when he or she move onto the Supreme Court.  To think otherwise is simply naive.
          At the same time, we also assume that an individual judge, of whatever stripe, will be able to transcend his or her personal experience and decide a case on the basis of the Constitution and the applicable law. Yet that does not settle the question, for every law must be interpreted and there is no such thing as a purely objective interpretation. Hence we have left-leaning judges, such as the one Sotomayor may be replacing, and as she herself is likely to be) and right-leaning judges such as Scalio and Thomas. That has always been the case throughout American history, and American presidents have generally appointed judges who share their own views of the Constitution and the law. The only legitimate objection to Ms. Sotomayor would have to be that she is demonstrably unqualified in terms of her legal prowess, and that doesn't appear to be the case.


         

          Writing a book is hard work, but enjoyable, because it's so creative.  Preparing the book for publication is also hard work, but tedious, because it consists mostly of making scores of minor corrections, and hours spent on the Internet confirming the paragraph or line number of a particular citation.  That's what I'm doing now that I am home from my cross country trip. I'll be glad when the editing is completed.
         President Obama leaves today for the Middle East. It's good to see him involved in the peace process there. But I am doubtful that he can do much to push things forward. The new Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, appears inflexible, and the Palestinians (Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza) cannot present a united front.
         Here in New Jersey the governor's race is heating up.  The present governor, Corzine, a Democrat, is an enormously rich Wall Street type, who came into office a few years back with high intentions, but has since become mired in a host of problems.  His opponent, Christie, is a high-profile prosecuter who has sent many New Jersey politicians to jail during the past four years. I'll probably be voting for Corzine, though reluctantly.

          Fifty-year marriages are rightly celebrated, but what about a marriage that has endured for 70 years, and still counting? That's the case with my good friend, Vernon Grounds, and his wife -- both of whom are also celebrating their 95th birthdays this summer. Vernon is the former president of Denver Seminary. We collaborated frequently during the period when I was leading the World Evangelical Alliance. Although retired, he is still active, showing up at his office on the Denver campus several mornings each week. 
          On a sadder note, I must mention the recent death of Ralph Winter, the distinguished missiologist I wrote about a few weeks back -- one of the most creative minds I have encountered, always innovating. Perhaps he will now set about reforming Heaven.
          During my three-week cross-country trip I spent a lot of time on trains, and got a lot of reading done in the process.  I finally got around to reading On the Road, Jack Kerouac's classic depiction of the Beat Generation. Another stimulating book was Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson's autobiography. Dyson was one of the great scientists of the 20th century. He is in his mid-80s now. Also very stimulating was a book by John Rawls, the foremost American philosopher of the past 50 years. His most famous book is A Theory of Justice. The book I read on the train was A Brief Introduction to the Meaning of Sin and Faith.