City of Julie

resource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/china/learningenglish/story/2008/05/080514_wenchuan_earthquake.shtml

Like many people in the UK, the team at BBC Learning English have been shocked and saddened by news of the earthquake in Sichuan province. We would like to extend our condolences to those affected by this terrible natural disaster. Below is a special report on the earthquake and the rescue operations taking place.

和在英国的很多人一样，BBC 英语教学组的全体成员对五月十二号发生在四川省的地震消息感到震惊和悲痛。在这里我们对受害者表示最深切的哀悼，向那些受地震影响的人们深表同情。下面是对这次地震和地震营救行动的一篇特别报道。

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Rescue efforts are underway in China’s Sichuan province following Monday’s devastating earthquake 灾难性的地震, which measured 7.9 on the Richter Scale 里氏震级.

According to Xinhua news agency, nearly 15,000 people have died in the disaster, with as many as 24,000 more trapped under rubble 碎石，碎砖 from collapsing buildings and another 14,000 declared missing 申报失踪.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has visited the area to personally oversee relief work （抗震）救灾工作, and is flying to the epicentre 震中 of the earthquake today.

Chinese troops have been mobilised 调动 to carry out rescue operations and emergency aid 紧急救护 has been air-dropped 空降 into areas that have been cut off by the disaster.

Bad weather has hampered 阻碍 relief efforts and in some cases rescuers have had to trek into the disaster area 受灾地区 by foot and search for trapped survivors 生还者 by hand as roads have been blocked by debris 瓦砾碎片.

Some residents of the provincial capital 首府 Chengdu have chosen to sleep in tents and government shelters for fear of aftershocks 余震 causing more damage.

One witness in Chengdu told the BBC the city’s population is helping the relief work by donating 捐献 food and water for those affected in the surrounding countryside.

Financial aid 经济救助 has been pouring in 大量涌进 from all over China, with the Chinese government pledging hundreds of millions of dollars. Substantial donations from other countries and humanitarian organisations have also been pledged 承诺，给予（援助）.

Although full casualty figures 伤亡数字 are not yet certain, it is clear that Monday’s earthquake is the worst to strike China since the Tangshan earthquake of 1976.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is visiting the area

 

清明时节雨纷纷，
路上行人欲断魂，
……

清明时节，想到的人自然是阿爷，上周末全家人去上坟，我还是没能参加，即便我去了，也是个alien，上香拜拜烧纸贡祭都与我无干。我倒愿意哪一天自己一个人去，只带一束雏菊，坐在阿爷坟前和他说话，不受礼式辖制、世俗侵扰。

天上人间，阿爷，我真的好想再见你一面

关于阿爷的去世，从来都不让自己去想，因为知道自己胜不过：直到现在都是自我麻醉，感觉好像他在上海，只因为年迈耳聋，所以不和我通电话；眼花手颤，所以不给我写信…好好的，安详的，平静的，满足的……

06年底回家奔丧，自我麻醉和克制，把自己的魂魄游离在丧事之外，克制自己只可以不出声地流泪……葬礼上有人失控如表演，有人表演如失控……我只听到哀乐声声，生生敲碎我的心。教会那首歌是这样唱的：再相会，再相会……我什么都想不动，头脑停止运作，只机械回放着这三个字，反反复复……

回到北京，把一切包袱都留在上海，觉得那个失去亲人的家不是我的家，去世的那个人，也不是我的亲人……我只是不能高兴起来，感觉漂浮在一种不知名的介质里，慢慢等待失丧的阴影离我远去……

葬礼之后的第10天，我站在海淀医院手术室门口等待一个很青春的女孩子，手术室门口的拥挤让我吃了一惊！说不清楚在哪一个时刻，顿时感觉心如刀割，我多么愿意我最爱的阿爷永远不要离开人世，而她们、他们、她、他、这些人！却活活地要除却已经在子宫中孕育的骨肉！那一刻在我心中的恨，可以把人间一切美好焚烧成灰烬。

我是胜不过，阿爷的逝世我真的没有勇气去面对，对谁也没说，小心地藏起来，自己也不去碰，最好哪一天自己就忘记藏在了那个角落。可总有那么一些时刻，不经意的就触痛，疼到弯下腰来依然强忍不住——

——那天暮色已深，我经过华堂边上的“中石化”，ipod里面突然响起Jacqueline Du Pre演奏的Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85 (composed by Sir Edward Elgar)，心里的突然被拉开一条口子，伤痛就想潮水一样突然卷涌起来，将我埋葬，不留一丝气息地，甚至都不容我回过神来地，我已经泪流满面……那个时候，距离阿爷去世，已经整整一年。

我不敢让自己回忆，有阿爷呵护的日子，我的童年，很安心很严谨，好像天色常蓝，高薄云天，鸟语花香，很自得很骄傲的公主，不用在意外面的一切。我从来都没有仔细去总结过阿爷的为人，究竟是可贵于何处，直到去年年末的时候，《人物周刊》里一篇缅怀刚刚逝世的老艺术家孙道临先生的文章，让我逐字读着，胸口压抑，就哭起来，忍不住还要再看一遍，再看一遍……阿爷身上的品质，在他这一代人身上共有的那种特质，字字句句都描述得真实，这种熟悉感、共鸣感，找了朋友分享，也是不能明白。

以下是原文的一些摘抄——
“他们那一辈人，从来不（向公家）伸手的。”
“都市的、儒雅的、知识阶层的”
“谈到电影《家》时，孙道临说，‘觉新生活在那个年代，我很熟悉。’黄蜀芹说‘他就像那个年代的人。这样的男演员，现在再也找不到了。’”
“52年后，90岁的张瑞芳不忍回忆。就在2007年10月，孙道临身体稍好一点，曾经走到她的公寓，爬楼梯，进门，跟张瑞芳说，他想拍戏……”
“那一辈人，做事做人极其认真：孙道临当年，哪怕是一个小朋友要求合影，也要把扣子一粒一粒整齐了再照……”
“看得出，他想努力追上这个时代、小心地、顽强地想做事情。但他是忠厚老实的人，那样一个恶性竞争的环境，他肯定不会如鱼得水。”
“对于这样一个骨子里‘很贵气’地人，身体上的病痛或力不从心是另一种负担。年纪大了，洗澡需要别人帮扶，但是他不想给别人添麻烦，……”
“难道现在人民全变了吗？”
“一代人有一代人的‘信’与‘执’……”

那一期《人物周刊》的封面是帅得不得了的蒋介石曾孙……现在的媒体，关注贵族家庭的轶事多过对时代社会的思考和揭露，环视周围，有多少人依然有“家国心”和“使命感”？省视自己，又是走着怎样虚浮的道路！什么狗屁接受高等教育，阿爷那个时代的知识分子才真正能够算是有学养——

 

 

 

It’s drawing near to the year end. Again. Inevitably.

I’ve been thinking about write something to review. It took me one week to look back, and reflect upon myself. The old (although not very much) stories flashed across my mind. And I found them ever clear and simple. 2007 is the best year I’ve ever had, so far.

 

Records,

 

1.       About university study,

    I was thinking cancel the item for the humiliation of my being deprived of scholarship this year. Due to the change of officer in charge of scholarship management, the game rules are changed this year. I with other several candidates lost our scholarship. Administrators’ game in power or whatever, it’s a totally bad news for me. However, when I think it over after 2 days, I can see myself haven’t made enough efforts to the studies. Suppose I was on the top of the award list, by no means I could lose the scholarship. If I have to find someone to take responsibility for the loss, it could only be myself.

    Anyway, shool studies are basically going well. I picked up a little French and forgot them all after exams. Besides all the rest courses are concerning with English. English essay reading might be the most challenging one. However, it’s worthy. Essays are carefully selected, through which I get to know the ideas in the world’s biggest brains. The course broadens my horrizon in terms of literature, philosophy, linguistics and subjects in the sphere of culture. And it reminds me that I should…think, and… reflect from time to time, to form a perspective of my own, in the end. Some of the articles are really wonderful, that give me pretty much enlightenment. I feel being led along a mysterious path, the further I go, the clearer a picture I have. Now I open the textbook, and on the first page I can see a sentence I’ve put down the other day: My understanding towards the essays in this book is based on a Christian’s perspective. Believe it or not, I found theories to serve as the doctrines of my faith, or, my Christianity belief is solidified through my study into the texts which seem to be with no connection of Christianity. It’s God’s guiding.

    Other courses include public speech, business translation, science article translation, pragmatics, literature traslation and even law documents translation. They are delievered by great professors. I am deeply impressed by them. I feel sorry because I have never been a disciple-type student.

 

 

2. Family

    2007 wouldn’t be not too much different with 2006 or 2005 if grandpa still lived. Grandpa passed away in the end of 2006. Till now I haven’t let myself accept the fact, or I can say, I dare not leave myself truly feel the loss. Fortunately, I live basically in Beijing, far away from home. I regard grandpa still living, in Shanghai. But sometimes, the self-deception doesn’t work. I remember the other evening, when I was walking alone in the streets, iPod started to play Adagio-Moderato by Jaqueline Du Pre, I was drowned in sadness. And tears kept going out of my eyes.

    To grandma and auntie, they suffer too much in the past year. I cannot inmagine how they get through the hard time.

    As to my relationship with parents, I should say it keeps going in a unique way. Sweet and torturing, love with pressure. It caused too much agony to both sides. And we have been wasting too much tears. I guess they love me too much and want to protect me from any possible hurt. Like all the parents in the world, they try to steer my to a secure future which I found inconvenient with my dream. But it is obviously unrealistic. In a word, traditional parents vs. post-80 daughter, typical conflicts.

 

3. L’amour

    Falling in and out of love, either records once.

 

4. Health Condition

    At Christmas Eve, I tried hard to recall what I was doing the same time last year. I found out in the end that I spent a high-fever night. 3 o’clock in the morning, vomitting at the hospital emergency…What a special Christmas for 2006. And for 2007, almost the same time, I was ill. So Christmas Eve was a sleeping night. Truly peaceful.

    As a vision for the whole year. Health condition is fine. Compared to the first one or two years of university life, more or less I have some progress. Maybe it’s because of the good mental condition.

    There’s problem with my right knee. It has to be fixed in the coming year. Operation is an option. I escaped it 5 years ago. But as I can see from the recent condition, it’s only problem of time. Sooner or later, I have to. God! It’s terrible!

 

5. Faith/Spiritual Life

    I think I know Christ more in this year. Through good and bad experience, I learned lessons of love, share, and forgiveness. I might not be a religious one, but God preserves me and guides me along the way. Praise the Lord.

     I understand in 2007 that the realities are hard to face, while the truth is hard to figure out. Life is full of ups and downs, turns and twists. When I look back to what I’ve been through for the years, I thank the Lord. Without those hard time or wrong paths, I wouldn’t have known what is of Christ. Chasing the wind is seeking in vain. Jesus is of my faith as the truth and the path.

     Besides, I am very happy to see what happened around me in this year. I witness God’s almighty and God’s love. Miracles as the outsiders may think, it’s the proof of “Jesus, he lives.”

     I changed place for Sunday worship in deep autumn. The new place is composed of basically university students who are from various universities in Beijing. I witness the work God is doing among the young generation in China. Large number of Chinese Christians’ prayer I heard before for the nation peace and prosper, for the young generation’s faith now became a real picture in front of my eyes. Praise the Lord. At Easter and Christmas Celebration, I saw it by my own eyes that Christ the Savior makes his plan realized at his pace. The girl I took there first knew what Christians are. She was surprised at our songs for praising the Lord. She said, “hey, you guys are so rock!” Yes, knowing Jesus Christ does rock!

     The last Sunday, Emmanuel Church’s UIBE students sperated from students of other universities delivered Sunday worship for the first time. It marks the establishment of UIBE LC. Due to the number of  UIBE students Chiristians getting larger, the development realized God’s schedule.

     I want to mention George, who teaches Graduation Thesis Composing. Although many classmates might think he is giving too much preachments, I admire his courage and confidence to give spiritual wisdom to the students. As a scholor specializing in enterprise management training, his knowledge, business sense and thoughs in his mind are…crazy, only this word gives the closest description. In US, he had opportunities to work for White House as Chinese expert. For Christ’s good news’ sake, he teaches in our university as a guest lecturer. Power and faith from God being inside, he shows how a real Christian keeps in line with God’s will, following God’s guide, and undertaking God’s mission.

     My neighbour dormmate as well as classmate got baptized in 2007. I never realized from which exact moment, she started to speaking of God’s good news. I just thank God in heart that Jesus the Christ makes more and more people know Him, which is the Way, the Truth, the Life.

     Xin my highschool classmate. Once upon a time I regarded him as the last one who could accept Christianity belief. Now he is almost my closest friend in Christ. We have lots of same understanding of God. Now when we looked back to our dark time, which we’ve been through together or respectively, we can truly take it easy. I thank God in my prayer for my dear friend. When he knows God’s words, God’s love, and especially His mission on him, he becomes a person live with full energy and kindness inside giving off frangrance to people around him. And whoever is in Christ will know, it’s true. Because, we all do. I pray to God that he becomes a very fine Christian for God’s use.

     This year’s headline of faith is from Kenda. She is the forever lengend for SIS female football team. 2006 is her last year of university. We fought to the final play, although we failed to get the championship, SIS football girls carried forward the glorious history of female football. That was the beginning of story between Kenda and I. When Kenda talked about Christianity with me on QQ, I never realized she would be what she is today. Even when I took her to the church I belonged to, I had no idea what’s God’s plan on her. That was her last 3 or 4 weeks in Beijing, she was about to graduate. When she told me after her first prayer (for years) to God, she received the offering letter from her dreaming university in HK to have graduate study, I took it for granted. How could I know that is the turning point of her spiritual life? I have no idea what God has done to her in that past year, but when she left message to me on QQ the other day and told me that she had devoted to God’s work for full-time service, it was really a surprise. I cannot tell the appreciation and praise I have to God. If someone asks me why. I’ll tell him/her, Kenda used to be the last-could-believe type, from men’s eyes but not eyes of God.

     At the concert held by Emmanuel church, when the music started, when thousands of young people sang in the same faith, “One Way, Jesus. Lord you’re the only reason for my life.” I said in heart, Lord, I wish I can know you more, I wish I could love you more.

 

 

6. C’est La Vie

    I’ve said at the very beginning that 2007 has been the best year I’ve ever had so far. It doesn’t mean it’s a tranquil year without difficulties. To the contrary, it’s a stormy year. Good and bad things happened one after another, as a friend judged— dramatic.

    In Spring, SIS female football team got into year’s Final Play, once again. And struke the second rank in the end. We made too much efforts for the whole season. The stories happened along the whole process I don’t want to look back. That’s the best time. And the peak of triumph. Things changed right after the game, inevitably and doomed. My friends know it is my hardest time for the year. Desperation fights with expectation day and night. Sister said, pray, Julie, pray to the Lord. At those days, I was completely caught by dark power. I was hardly able to speak. Only the Holy Spirit signed for me in front of Lord. To a lesser or greater extent, I am so lucky to put everything behind and start all over again.

    On the one hand, because of I had experienced the tortures, I could understand others in sufferings more than before. On the other hand, when I was in depression, I got the support from sisters and friends. I learned how precious love is. It is the greatest power to better the world.

     My stay in Turkey should be a strong stroke for 2007. I’ve been thinking of recording the heavenly days in a well-composed article. Those people I met in Turkey show the great hospitality to me. They make me believe however different we might be with each other, love and understanding lying inside are the common treasure we have, which is given by God the Creator, the One, and the Only. I’ll keep the memory of Marmara, Aegean and Mediteranean for good. In the last days of my stay, the melody of La Isla Bonita lingered in my mind, that is because I found myself in it. I love Turkey, and Turkish people. Hope one day I can go back to the great land.

 

 

 

Ending

    When it came to the exciting moment of cross-year point, sisters had a toast in the dormitory. The fourth new year we’ve had since we knew each other. And the next year, we just don’t know where or with whom we might be. Like the past 2004, 2005 and 2006, 2007 is another year of victory. Cheers for what? Maybe, for another year of survival. Only the friends of heart know how it tastes for each other. A Farewell to Year 2007, with joy with tears.

 

 

 

Passage 1.

With the sixteenth century the movement in Europe which we call the Renaissance, the “rebirth,” was developing rapidly in England. “Rebirth” is not a very exact word, not nearly so exact as it was supposed to have been when it became attached to the period. The Middle Ages were anything but dead; even philosophy and the arts were not dead; even the classics were not dead. Nothing was dead, although for a time our understanding of the Middle Ages was closer to being moribund than was the Middle Ages itself. The knowledge of Mediterranean culture, however, the knowledge especially of Latin and Greek, classical though, art, and study— all of which had been filtering west and north for centuries—was now greatly augmented. In a growing degree, classical rhetoric became rhetoric, classical grammar became grammar, classical vocabulary became an ideal, at least with the more learned individuals. Of course there were sensible folk who scoffed at “inkhorn terms,” and other sensible people who just ignored them, but the acceleration of learning and study during the Renaissance meant in part an acceleration in the borrowing of and influence from Latin.

Our debts to Latin in this way are incalculable. Many terms we borrowed; they can be traced. Other classical influences can only be guessed at. Latin was the core of the growing school system, and it was the ideal of cultured people. If a man knew Latin, everyone knew that he must be a man of parts. If a man of pretensions did not know Latin, he took pains at least to be well ticketed and branded with Latin tags from the choice authors. Thus, Latin seeped into the language in all sorts of invisible ways.

 

Passage 2.

To the man who appreciates clear thinking and well-constructed argument, Hobbes’ account of sovereignty and his apology for it appear more admirable even than Bodin’s . Hobbes will always be a favourite among intellectuals. He is a robust, bold, resourceful, and at times close reasoner; he used his arguments with the assurance of an all-seeing general winning a complete victory in a large and intricate battle; he is the most pungent of political philosophers, and has a sharp wit, though he is not bitter or waspish. He is a remedy for dullness; to read him is to be put in a better humour. From a certain point of view, he made the best of all cases for absolute authority. But he did not make a case likely to attract the unsophisticated. He has had, no doubt, a great and a long influence; he has had a distinguished intellectual posterity. Many have borrowed from him, including the two most famous among the champions of absolute monarchy by divine right, Filmer and Bossuet. Yet he has been more admired thean persuasive; those best able to appreciate his merits, the intellectuals, have also been the best equipped to take from him what they needed without swallowing his arguments whole.

 

 Passage 3.

What Will I Live For

 

Three passions, from and toward one Governor Jesus Christ will be my life engine: the pursuit of truth, the seeking for love, and the undeniable burden of proclaiming the good news. These passions will become a spring of water encouraging me to march on in the path that God has ordered to me.

 

I will pursue truth, first because it reveals all the nature facts and scientific regulations that were created by God. Among 100 most outstanding scientists of 20^th century, 8 are Christians. They hold the same view that the Creator game men the dominion over the world, for what reason men should research the secrets of natural world so as to be better controllers. I will pursue it, next, because it covers the facts from the very inner emotions to the unlimited out space. Those very facts will bring ecstasy, ecstasy so great that I would excitedly get down on my knees to the Creator of all these elegant and marvelous beauty. I will pursue it, finally because Jesus once said “I am the truth.” To pursue the truth is to pursue God Himself. I press on toward the goal to get close to my Lord in response to the heavenly call. This is what I will pursue, and though it is sure to be a tough journey, this is what—I will take trough.

 

With equal passion I will seek love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthian 13:4-8) Love contains all. Its amazing nature worth a life-long seeking. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16) And because Jesus loves the world and He requires those who are willing to follow Him love others as He does. Love makes me lay aside sins, it encourages me to consider for people’s need, and it ensures me dwelling in the house of the Lord for my life long.

 

Truth and love, so far as they are God Himself, are leading me to be the salt and light on earth for his name’s sake. But always the peace and joy in Jesus Christ urge me to proclaim the good news. That is “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Echoes of cries of sinners tortured by Satan reverberate in my heart. Children in wars find no dwelling for body and soul, desperate youngsters haunted by addiction, exhausted people chasing fame and fortune but thirsty in spirit, all need to come to the Christ. Yet few I have achieved, and I do suffer.

 

God is truth, God is love, and Jesus Christ is that very good news. This will be my life, be it ever so weird and different from others, whoever asks me about what I will live for will surely get my answer of “whom” I am living for. From the moment I embraced the faith of Christianity, I’ve already determined to live for Jesus Christ.

By Garry Wills

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

by Jimmy Carter

Simon and Schuster, 212 pp., $25.00

In 1972, I was asked by New York magazine to survey Southern reactions to the attempted assassination of George Wallace. On my list of people to call was Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. When I called his press secretary, Jody Powell (a name I had never heard before), I was told it would be better for me to come to Atlanta than to talk on the phone. (Powell was drumming up attention for his man, with a view to his running for president.) When I arrived there, Powell had arranged for me to fly with Carter in his little state prop plane to Tifton, a small South Georgia town where there was a meeting with local sheriffs. The sheriffs were unhappy with Carter's liberal racial policies, and Powell obviously thought it would be good for his reputation nationally to be seen as standing up against regional prejudice.

Carter used all his local ties to defang the critics—the sheriffs did not openly turn against him—and I was impressed. On the flight back, he said he wanted to drop off in the town of Plains and see how his peanut business was doing—a homey touch the press would be treated to ad nauseam over the next two years. I do not remember any mention of his local church while we were in Plains. In fact, I cannot recall that religion was brought up in all our hours together. Perhaps he thought that was not something New York magazine readers would respond to. At any rate, I was surprised when, four years later, so much was made of his religion as he ran for president. It began when he was asked, while visiting Baptist friends, if he thought of himself as "born again." He answered yes—not surprisingly, since the Gospel of John (3:5) says that one must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Saint Paul says that baptism is being reborn into Christ (Romans 6:4). Reporters did not know this as a basic belief of Christians—they treated it as an odd cult claim.

That led to his second-most-famous remark of the 1976 campaign. Carter was asked in a Playboy interview if he thought he was a holier-than-thou person because he was born again. He answered that, no, in fact he had committed lust in his heart—again quoting the New Testament (Matthew 5:28). That did it. For much of the Carter presidency, the line of some in the press (and, as I know well, in the academy) was that he was a religious nut. I followed him in the 1976 race and heard a reporter ask Carter why he constantly brought up religion. He replied that he had made a determination never to bring up religion in the campaign. But the reporters kept asking him about it, and he had to answer them or be criticized for dodging the issue.

His attendance at church was not announced; we reporters had to ferret that out by ourselves. Carter is an old-fashioned Baptist, the kind that follows the lead of the great Baptist Roger Williams—that is, he is the firmest of believers in the separation of church and state. Unlike most if not all modern presidents, he never had a prayer service in the White House. His problem, back then, was not that he paraded his belief but that he believed. All this can seem quaint now when professing religion is practically a political necessity, whether one believes or not. There is now an inverse proportion between religiosity and sincerity.

Carter rightly says in Our Endangered Values that the norms of religion and politics are different. His religion, at any rate, places its greatest priority on love, of God and one's neighbor, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But a president cannot make his nation sacrifice itself—that would be dereliction of duty. The priority of politics is justice, and love goes beyond that. But love can help one find out what is just, without equating the two. That is why none of us, even those who believe in the separation of church and state, professes a separation of morality and politics. Insofar as believers—the great majority of Americans—derive many if not most of their moral insights from their beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the two.

In his new book, Carter addresses religion and politics together in a way that he has not done before, because he thinks that some Americans, and especially his fellow Baptists, have equated the two in a way that contradicts traditional Baptist beliefs in the autonomy of local churches, in the opposition to domination by religious leaders, and in the fellowship of love without reliance on compulsion, political or otherwise. In 2000, these tenets were expressly renounced by the largest Baptist body, the Southern Baptist Convention, which removed a former commitment to belief that "the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the Holy Scriptures." What was being substituted, Carter writes, was "domination by all-male pastors." As a leading spokesman, W.A. Criswell, put it: "Lay leadership of the church is unbiblical when it weakens the pastor's authority as ruler of the church." The Southern Baptists, Carter laments, have become as authoritarian as their former antitype, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Southern Baptist Convention has severed its ancient ties with the Baptist World Alliance.

The marks of this new fundamentalism, according to Carter, are rigidity, self-righteousness, and an eagerness to use compulsion (including political compulsion). Its spokesmen are contemptuous of all who do not agree with them one hundred percent. Pat Robertson, on his 700 Club, typified the new "popes" when he proclaimed: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Carter got a firsthand taste of such intolerance when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention visited him in the White House to tell him, "We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion."

Such attitudes are far from the ones recommended by Jesus in the gospels as Carter has studied and taught them through the decades, and their proponents have brought similar attitudes into the political world, where a matching political fundamentalism has taken over much of the electoral process. Such dictatorial attitudes defeat the stated goals of the fundamentalists themselves. On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a "pro-life" dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy "brought about by a combination of human errors." But the "pro-life" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.

Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the "pro-life" movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:

Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.

The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:

In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

A New York Times article that came out after Carter's book appeared further confirms what he is saying: "Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions."^[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.

By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named "pro-life" movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, "life" is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).

Carter finds the same rigid and self-righteous—and self-defeating—policies at work across the current political spectrum. The pro-life forces have no problem with a gun industry and capital punishment legislation that are, in fact, provably pro-death. Carter, a lifelong hunter, does not want to outlaw guns and he knows that Americans would never do that. But timorous politicians, cowering before the NRA, defeat even the most sensible limitations on weapons useful neither for hunting nor for personal self-defense (AK-47s, AR-15s, Uzis), even though, as Carter shows, more than 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs told Congress that these weapons are obstacles to law enforcement. The NRA opposed background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists and illegals, and then insisted that background checks, if they were imposed, had to be destroyed within twenty-four hours. The result of such pro-death measures, Carter writes, is grimly evident: "American children are sixteen times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from firearms accidents." Where are the friends of the fetus when children are dying in such numbers?

Carter observes that "the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research reports that the rate of firearms homicide in the United States is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined" (emphasis added). In the most recent year for which figures are available, these are the numbers for firearms homicides:

 Ireland 54
 Japan  83
 Sweden  183
 Great Britain  197
 Australia 334
 Canada 1,034
 United States 30,419
  [emphasis added]

Once again, Carter finds no support for the policies that make such a result possible in the US, in terms of either a loving religion or a just society.

Capital punishment is also a pro-death program. It does not protect life. It aligns us with authoritarian regimes: "Ninety percent of all known executions are carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and the United States" (emphasis added). Execution does not deter, as many studies have proved. In states that abolished it, Carter writes, capital crimes did not increase:

The homicide rate is at least five times greater in the United States than in any European country, none of which authorizes the death penalty. The Southern states carry out over 80 percent of the executions but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has by far the most executions, but its homicide rate is twice that of Wisconsin, the first state to abolish the death penalty. It is not a matter of geography or ethnicity, as is indicated by similar and adjacent states: the number of capital crimes is higher, respectively, in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia (all with the death sentence) than in the adjacent states of North Dakota, Massachusetts, and West Virginia (without the death penalty).

How can a loving religion or a just state support such a culture of death? Only a self-righteous and punitive fundamentalism, not an ethos of the gospels, can explain this.

It is in foreign affairs that Carter finds the most self-righteous, rigid, and self-defeating effects of a religio-political fundamentalism. It is the gap between rich and poor in the world that presents the main threat to our future, yet American policies increase that gap, at home and abroad. We give proportionally less money in foreign aid than do other developed countries, and our ability to give is being decreased by our growing deficit, incurred to reward our own wealthy families with disproportionate tax cuts. Carter points out that much of the aid announced or authorized never reaches its targets. This reflects a general smugness about America's privileged position. We are dismissive of other countries' concern with the world environment, with nuclear containment, and with international law. Carter gives specifics gathered from his world travels and from the experts' forums he regularly assembles at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

We have, for example, declared our right to first use of nuclear weapons. We have used aid money to bribe people against holding us accountable to international law. We have run secret detention centers where hundreds of people are held without formal charges or legal representation. We have rewarded with high office men who, like Alberto Gonzales, say that the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners are "obsolete" or even "quaint," or who, like John Bolton, say that it is "a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so."

The result, as Carter writes, has been to turn a vast fund of international good will accruing to us after September 11 into fear of and contempt for America unparalleled in modern times. We undermine the inspection teams of the UN and the IAEA with the result that we blunder into Iraq on bad information gathered from self-serving hacks buttering up our officialdom. On the eve of our attack on Iraq, Carter published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times arguing in terms of the just war tradition that a preemptive and unilateral invasion was unjustified. Going to war was not a last resort (inspections could have continued to contain Saddam until the proof of WMDs, or the lack of them, could be established). War was not authorized by international authorities for eliminating nuclear weapons, but was an opportunity seized in order "to achieve regime change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region." It did not promise proportional violence with a clear hope of providing better conditions than the ones it was remedying. Carter's was a calm and moral judgment about the war, which most Americans now believe was the right one. In retrospect, a majority think the war was a mistake. We should have listened to Carter.

We pretend we are against nuclear proliferation, yet we spur it on when others see our disregard for the very international agreements that promote it:

The end of America's "no first use" nuclear weapons policy has aroused a somewhat predictable response in other nations. Chinese major general Zhu Chenghu announced in July 2005 that China's government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy: "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."

We attack terrorism not by cooperation with other countries' security teams, which often have better information on worldwide terrorist activities than we do, but with unilateral and preemptive uses of force that just increase terrorism. This is a new culture of death: "The US National Counterterrorism Center," Carter writes, "reported that the number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled in 2004. 'Significant' attacks grew to more than 650, up from the previous record of 175 in 2003."

We claim to be spreading democracy in the Middle East, but a Zogby international poll in 2005 showed that an overwhelming majority of Arabs did not believe that US policy in Iraq was motivated by the spread of democracy in the region, and believed that the Middle East had become less democratic after the Iraq war. The approval rating of America plummeted at the very time we were supposedly bringing the blessings of freedom there—it stood, Carter notes, at "2 percent in Egypt, 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, 11 percent in Morocco, 14 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 15 percent in Jordan, with a high of only 20 percent in [our friend] Lebanon." These developments have taken place as America enacted a retreat from earlier commitments, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, that parallels what Carter describes as the retreat of evangelicals from earlier fidelity to gospel values such as life, compassion, tolerance, and inclusiveness.

Carter is a patriot. He lists all the things that Americans have to be proud of. That is why he is so concerned that we are squandering our treasures, moral even more than economic. He has come to the defense of our national values, which he finds endangered. He proves that a devout Christian does not need to be a fundamentalist or fanatic, any more than a patriotic American has to be punitive, narrow, and self-righteous. He defends the separation of church and state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith, morality, politics, and pragmatism. That is a combination that once was not rare, but is becoming more so. We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this quiet voice strikes just the right notes.

Notes

^[*] Juan Forero, "Latin American Women Mount Campaign to Legalize Abortion," The New York Times, December 3, 2005, page A8.

 

Our great Gatsby “lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.” His single dream is Daisy, a rich, worldly woman. After reading this great novel, I felt a bit of familiar with her voice, which is full of money.

Daisy was born in a “nice” family, around by many “nice” people; consequently, she is such a “nice” girl with “excitingly desirable” character to the poor Gatsby. How deeply Gatsby is in love with her. How deeply he believes the only barrier lying between was his poverty. So in the latter years, he struggles to seek fortune. He believes one day, when he has got enough money, his “perfect” Daisy shall come back to him. He feels “married to her, while she vanishes into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving him—nothing.” Daisy marries to Tom, so naturally, and smoothly. They lead a rich, “nice” life. The peace is not only on the surface, though Tom has girls outside marriage and Daisy feels “cynical about everything”, neither of them have ever think of changes. Daisy leaves her old dream behind at her marriage, yet her dream is recalled by Gatsby, who comes back with fortune, and fame, and his let-gone single dream. Gatsby is quite sure that Daisy, who shows her still-deep love to him, will leave her husband to marry him. But he is just too naïve. Love could be little excitement in Daisy’s life, but it could never be important enough to let her make any change to her “nice”, and “peaceful” life. So after that terrible accident, in which dies Tom’s girl, she could easily with her husband put all the vital consequences on Gatsby and could vanishes after Gatsby’s death, without a single word. How cruel! Gatsby dies, lonely, leaving that green light on, and his unrealized dream.

Daisy doesn’t ever love Gatsby? Maybe once she does. If not she may not tangle at her marriage. But people in her class are used to be “rational” and easy to let old dreams go. She is one among them. Gatsby to her is just a passer-by. She could easily leave him behind and to look forward. She is used to the “full” life, full of money. She has got used to thinking of life in that “nice” way but could not imagine life of other shape. She married Tom, has a daughter. She knows her husband’s affairs out of marriage. She just appears cool. She feels cynical; she is, in her logic, in her life pattern. At least, she has a secure life. Does she love Tom? She certainly does. Only this sort of love is not from heart, but is from reasoning. In another word, she could do this to anyone, only when this man could meet her requirement for a secure and nice life. Tom, as a man, is with the same theory. What a perfect the couple.

Everyone is Daisy, once used to the secure and stable life, we’re not likely to change. In today’s society, our life is full, even over-full. We could easily persuade ourselves to love something or someone, someone/something that meets our needs. Everyone has several choices and more substitutes. When we talk about life, or dream, or future, our voices are full of money. A secure future and a stable life is all what we want. To prevent the security, killing some old dreams (which is totally from the bottom of our heart), ignoring some loving ones are all of common, and worth. We are all getting cooler and meanwhile crueler. Even there’s someone like Gatsby appears in our dream, he will just be a sweet cookie to life, and we could easily throw him away; the possible tangle is getting shorter and less painful. Is there a green light in our heart? Is there a single one still standing there? Is there anyone among us who still believe in the green light? “The orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”