Magazine /

Oct 03, 2012

Volume 129, Issue #20

Features

Tender ministry

Finally, Mom put the phone down. She took a large basin and placed our nicest guest towels in it. "Carol!" she yelled. "Let's go!"

by Carol Howard Merritt

Music

It’s All True, by Sylvie Lewis

This singer-songwriter with a breathy tenor-alto takes a successful chance on the opening track, “Dylan’s Arms.” As spare guitar meets lush, multilayered vocals, Lewis offers a starry-eyed ode to the master songwriter (“He talks to everyone, but he sings to me, to me, to me”). “Kindness” gains an alluring gilding from ukulele and reverb-drenched slide guitar, and the ukulele appears again on the life-is-too-short shuffle “Give Me the Roses Now.”

reviewed by Louis R. Carlozo

Feature

The good grain: Restoring wild rice in the North

Wild rice is like maple syrup or morel mushrooms: producers need customers who know the real thing and are willing to pay more for it.

by Jon Magnuson

Feature

Soup night at the bar: The rules are simple

Staring down the barrel of another Chicago winter at age 40, I was a little freaked. Then I started to serve soup.

by Martha Bayne

Music

I’m Just Dead I’m Not Gone, by James Luther Dickinson and the North Mississippi Allstars

In his storied career, Jim Dickinson produced some of rock’s greatest acts (Big Star, the Replacements). Here his sons Luther and Cody, who gained fame as the North Mississippi Allstars, accompany him in a live gig recorded three years before his death in 2009.

reviewed by Louis R. Carlozo

Cover Story

Worship without walls

Public ritual might be construed as a benign relic, as imperialism, or as marketing. Or it might be seen as a form of pilgrimage.

by Benjamin M. Stewart

Music

That’s Why God Made the Radio, by The Beach Boys

The new Beach Boys record doesn't always work, but when it does it dials in the group's age of innocence, filtered through years of experience.

reviewed by Louis R. Carlozo

Feature

Providers as employers

Ted Goins, president and CEO of Lutheran Services Carolinas, spends a lot of time focused on the Affordable Care Act’s regulations for providers of nursing care. But the health-care reform law also affects LSC is another way: as an employer.

by Robert D. Francis

Feature

Health care up close: What else the Affordable Care Act does

Most people know only about the ACA's consumer-focused elements. Faith-based care providers are preparing for the law's other provisions as well.

by Robert D. Francis

Music

Long Lost Ghosts, by Emily Hurd

Working with producer John Abbey (who has played with Daniel Lanois and Ray Davies), Emily Hurd turns in a soulful, tender album that recalls the best of Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin.

reviewed by Louis R. Carlozo

Feature

Church, state and punk: The Pussy Riot protest

Pussy Riot became a cause célèbre for the Russian opposition and its Western supporters. Many Russian Orthodox believers saw things differently.

by John P. Burgess

Music

Elephant King, by Trace Bundy

Named “Most Promising New Talent” of 2008 by Acoustic Guitar magazine, Trace Bundy has been impressing audiences with his playing, which will please fans of Phil Keaggy, Michael Hedges and Laurence Juber.

reviewed by Louis R. Carlozo

Voices

Philip Jenkins

Patriarchs of Babylon

In the ninth century, Timothy I was a global statesman. In the 20th, Raphael Bidawid led a tiny denomination in the paranoid Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

Carol Zaleski

Synthetic immortality

Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth is opposed to death, and he thinks he has a solution.

Books

Questing for Understanding, by David B. Burrell

Burrell’s memoir is driven by Jung’s observation that the story of our lives is the story of our times, and it is our task to see how that is the case.

Noise level

"Noise is not the most important problem in the world," Garret Keizer begins. But he makes a robust case for noise's far-reaching effects.

by Barbara Melosh

The New Religious Intolerance, by Martha C. Nussbaum

In The Clash Within, Martha Nussbaum explored the capacity to entertain the other as key to a democratic society. Now she considers angry resistance to the other, bringing her usual erudite analysis and intense moral passion.

reviewed by Walter Brueggemann

Beyond Our Means, by Sheldon Garon

Sheldon Garon contends that Americans lack moral teaching on wealth, public policies that encourage saving, and a cultural ethos that nurtures thrift.

reviewed by James Halteman

Turn Here Sweet Corn, by Atina Diffley

Atina Diffley and her husband are organic farmers in Minnesota. Her book contains three stories in one.

Departments

Patriarchs of Babylon

In the ninth century, Timothy I was a global statesman. In the 20th, Raphael Bidawid led a tiny denomination in the paranoid Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

by Philip Jenkins

On Art

Courage 3.0 and King

In the paintings of Tim Okamura, a Canadian artist working in Brooklyn, the hip-hop urban landscape becomes part of a contemporary icon. An urban setting that seems neglected, empty, disruptive or marginal frames the “sainting” of people....

reviewed by Lil Copan

On Media

Breaking Bad

Each time Walter White gets away with something, I can't help cheering him on—while also shuddering at his depravity and my own complicity.

reviewed by Kathryn Reklis

Faith Matters

Synthetic immortality

Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth is opposed to death, and he thinks he has a solution.

by Carol Zaleski

From the Editors

Presidential fixation

The primary problem with American political culture is that almost all of our scrutiny goes to the human beings running for president.

News

Priest quits TV show after comments on sex abuse

Benedict Groeschel, a well-known Catholic author and television personality, has given up his longtime spot on the conservative cable network EWTN following comments in which he appeared to defend clergy who abuse children and also to blame some o...

Now official: Mormons may drink Coke, Pepsi

Perhaps reporters, bloggers, outsiders and even many Mormons will now acknowledge that the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not forbid drinking cola....

by Peggy Fletcher Stack

‘God talk’ and the Democrats

God was out and now God is in. And Jerusalem wasn’t the capital of Israel and now it is. The accusations that God had been “purged” from the Democrats’ national platform seemed too much for the party to bear....

by Lauren Markoe

Released: Pastor in Iran, teen in Pakistan

Religious rights activists are hailing the release of an Iranian pastor accused of apostasy and a Pakistani girl who was charged with blasphemy....

by Adelle M. Banks

Leader of Nuns on the Bus calls GOP budget immoral

Sister Simone Campbell, who led the summertime Nuns on the Bus tour for social justice, called the GOP budget plan “immoral” in a spirited speech at the Democratic National Convention....

by David Gibson

Bishop: Church credibility on sexual abuse ‘shredded’

The U.S....

by David Gibson

Democrats add support for gay marriage to platform

On the night the Democrats became the first major U.S. political party to endorse gay marriage, some convention delegates remembered how it used to be—back in the days when, as one said, “you’re scared because it’s not OK to be who you are.”...

by Rick Hampson