Charles Strohmer
articles, essays, interviews, other writings
International Relations & Foreign Policy
(See Interviews or All Other Writings, below, for other topics.)
American Evangelicals: They May Surprise You
Column.
Many prominent Evangelicals have begun to decry publicly the rigid,
sectarian fundamentalism of the religious right and to call for
profoundly increased interfaith dialogue and wiser approaches to
U.S.-Mideast relations. (First published in the Turkish Daily News, July 7, 2008.) To read.
The Murder of Benazir Bhutto:
What Pakistan, If Not the World, Lost
Editorial. Two months
before she returned to her homeland I had the opportunity to hear
Benazir Bhutto address a group at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Twice a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, she struck me not so much as
politician but, with her clear, bold message, as a leader. To read.
Ethical Realism as a U.S. Strategy in
the Struggle with Terrorism
A review of Antol Lieven's and John Hulsman's compelling Ethical Realism: A Vision for America in Today's World.
"Most Americans," the authors write, "are aware that something has gone
very wrong with U.S. foreign policy, but neither Democrats nor
Republicans are offering new strategies." (This review originally
appeared in shorter form in The Christian Century, March 20, 2007.) To read.
Conversation with Journalist Rami Khouri
Middle East Religion and Politics: Insight for Americans
Rami
Khouri, a Palestinian-Jordanian, has some wise words for Americans who
are trying to come to grips with the Middle East. Khouri is a prominent
Middle East journalist and internationally syndicated columnist,
well-respected among his peers, academics, and the media. He was
editor-in-chief of The Jordan Times and is now editor-at-large of the Beirut, Lebanon- based The Daily Star, the largest English language newspaper in the Middle East.
A
U.S. citizen who received degrees from Syracuse University, Khouri
spent the 2001-2002 academic year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard
University and is now director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public
Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
His columns on Middle Eastern culture, religion, and politics have
appeared in The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post,
and he has been a guest on the BBC, CNN, and NPR. Khouri also carries a
long list of affiliations. Among them: Brookings Institution Task Force
on U.S. Relations in the Islamic World; Fellow of the Palestinian
Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem);
member of the leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity
School; senior associate at the Program on the Analysis and Resolution
of Conflict at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
(Syracuse University); board member of the East-West Institute the
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and the
Jordan National Museum.
He
travels frequently in the States and has recently lectured in
Tennessee, California, and New York. He will be at North Park
University in Chicago, end of January 2007. I caught up with Rami
Khouri in-person and later by phone (October 2006) as he was settling in to a month-long
fellowship at Stanford University. We talked about Christian-Muslim
relations, President Bush, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the region's
understanding of religion and politics, a relationship that may
surprise some readers. (A shortened and differently emphasized version of this interview, "The Christian Message in Lebanon," appeared in Christianity Today, August 2007.) To Read the Interview.
The Pneumopathology of Modern Terrorism
A short review of Barry Cooper’s exceptional book, New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism. To read.
Democracy in Afghanistan?
Column. In January, 2004, President Bush said, "A democratic
Afghanistan will serve the interests of all the Afghan people," their
"new constitution marks an historic step forward," one that will help
the nation "build a free and prosperous future." Since then Americans
have come to understand from Afghanistan and Iraq that democracy
building in Muslim lands may give rise not to Western-style liberal
democracies but to Islamic democracies. (This column was first
published in Sojourners Online,
3-29-06, the day that Abdul Rahman received asylum from Italy. Since
then, the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, which dealt with Rahman's
controversial case, remains at the heart of contentious issues that
must be resolved if the country's experiment with Western-style
democratic institutions is to succeed in the long run.) To read.
Is President Bush finding wisdom for the Middle East?
Keep your eye on Iran for the answer.
Column. Part One of a short three part series on President Bush, U.S. foreign policy, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas. To read.
Why UNSC Resolution 1701 will not end the fighting in the Middle East
It does not touch the root problem
Column. Part Two of a short three part series on President Bush, U.S. foreign policy, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas. To read.
The rearming of Hezbollah
Islamic Fundamentalist thinking behind a hudna
Column. Part Three of a short three part series on President Bush, U.S. foreign policy, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas. To read.
The Blast is Back
Essay. The
Blast is back. The demon is loose. The cover-up is on. Possibilities
for human brilliance die daily in the flow of tears and blood that has
run from New York City to Baghdad, from Madrid to London to Amman. The
children watch, listen, think, learn absurdity. And from whom? To read.
Change Agents: The Voices of Muslim Reformers
Feature
essay of selected ideas surrounding five reformed-minded books by
Muslim authors. First published in The Christian Century (Aug. 9,
2005). Published online at Middle East Window. Revised and updated in
the debut issue of the Muslim Public Affairs Journal (January 2006). To read.
Wise Foreign Relations
Article.
The Jewish and Christian scriptures invite us into the stories and
intrigue surrounding the statesmen and foreign ministers of the ancient
Middle East. This neglected old-world narrative and its wisdom
tradition provides a source of ideas and possibilities for U.S. foreign
policy in today’s Middle East. Published in the Baylor University
journal Christian Reflection (“Christianity and Islam”
issue, 2005). To read.
Changing Tough Hearts and Minds
Column. Is rational dialogue with a terrorist possible? More
significantly, can the mind of a person committed to terrorism be
changed? (Shortened version from Openings 21;
Jul-Oct, 05.) To read.
Muslim Women on Islamic Reform
A
short review of Irshad Manji’s provocative book The Trouble with
Islam and Why I am a Muslim by Asma Gull Hasan. (Published in
Sojourners Magazine; Oct. 2004.) To read.
The Kindness of Strangers
The
full essay of Charles Strohmer’s moving experience the morning of
9/11 and the days immediately following. Four hours out of London, flying uneventfully through
florescent blue sky six miles above the Atlantic, the passengers
aboard Delta Flight 59 were digesting their meals, quietly absorbed in
laptops, reading novels, or drowsily captive to that vespertine
atmosphere created on planes when the movies are running. Other than
departing Gatwick 45 minutes late, so far the only bother could now be
heard in hushed buzz asking air hostesses why all the video screens had
suddenly gone blank. (Previously published in considerably
shortened versions in Third Way, Sept.,
2002, and Crosspoint, Fall 2002, for the first anniversary of 9/11.) To read.
Conversation with Michael Schluter
The R Man
Interview. In
a time when human relationships between the West, especially America,
and the Arab-Muslim world is fast bottoming out, is there any hope of
repairing "enemy relations?" Michael Schluter knows that there's no
magic wand, but he also believes that if we put the relationships back
into foreign relations, we'll have made a significant beginning.
Michael's
has been working in this area for more than twenty years and his
accumulated wisdom couldn't be more timely. After getting his Ph.D.
from Cornell, Michael (he's a Brit) worked as a consultant economist
for the International Food Policy Research Institute and the World Bank
in East Africa. His vision for relationships was formally set in motion
when in 1982 he established the Jubilee Centre (Cambridge, England) to
explore biblical social teaching that focused on the Old Testament
model and on New Testament teaching such as Matthew 22:34-40, with its
emphasis is on love of God and loving your neighbor as your self. He is
also founding chairman of the Relationships Foundation (Cambridge,
England) and is now the research director of Concordis International,
which has been active since 1987 as an international initiative of
Relationships Foundation.
The
Concordis International team has a strong track record in South Africa,
Rwanda, Sudan, and Afghanistan, where they have been seeing long-term
transformation of relationships across conflict boundaries. Keys for
Michael and the team are in finding and building on common interest
contexts for engaging all constituencies of a country through
systematic and well- researched discussions that move beyond lines of
confrontation. Concordis International has worked with US, UK, and EU
governments and charitable donors, and it maintains political
relationships with key other partners. Rather than becoming involved in
official peace negotiations, it aims to build relationships that pave
the way for peace or for post-conflict nation building.
Michael
Schluter, co-author of two books with David Lee, believes that
relationships hold the key not only for people in everyday life but for
those wrestling with the larger, more complex problems of
intercommunity and international relations. I asked him to impart some
his wisdom to us. To read the interview.
Interviews
Read the Openings Interviews
Intelligent Design
Conversation with author Nancy Pearcey
Intelligent Design, Creationism, Evolution
Abstract. Last
year in the States, that perennial quarrel between members of religious
and scientific communities turned into a blistering courtroom battle
that captured the nation's attention for many weeks. The context was
education. The news media had camped out for weeks in Dover,
Pennsylvania, where the school board, in October 2004, had passed a
resolution: students were to be made aware of gaps and problems in
Darwin's theory. This would commence in January, 2005, when teachers in
Dover's public high school would be required to read a disclaimer to
students in the ninth grade biology class. The brief statement
explained that Darwin's theory was not a fact, that intelligent design
"is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's
view," and students should "keep an open mind" with respect to any
theory. A lawsuit was filed against this, and the amped up news
coverage of the ensuing legal téte-ŕ-téte in Judge
Jones's courtroom reached such a pitch that some days it actually
displaced the carnage being imaged out of Iraq.
The
judge's landmark decision (December 2005) against the school board
favored the godlike control that "the separation of church and
state" exerts over American jurisprudence. It also resonated with Dover
voters, who had defeated at the pools all eight members of the school
board seeking reelection. The case stimulated a national awareness of
intelligent design (ID). It takes more than news sound bites, however,
to understand ID, whose proponents argue that "certain features of the
universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent
cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" (from the
Discovery Institute website, which is a strong proponent of ID). As a
scientific theory, however, ID has critics screaming, "Foul!"
So
it seemed timely for an Openings conversation with Nancy Pearcey. A
Christian apologist and ID advocate, Pearcey is a senior fellow at the
Discovery Institute, where she focuses on the cultural and
philosophical implications of the evolution controversy. She has been
writing and teaching on science and Christian worldview for more than
20 years. Pearcey, who paid her way through college on music
scholarships by playing violin in orchestras, became a Christian at the
Swiss L'Abri Center, run by Dr. Francis Schaeffer. "I studied there
during my college years," she told me, "and it still gives shape to my
thinking today. It helped me to think of Christianity as a complete
worldview, instead of seeing it as a secular-sacred split, where
Christianity is your devotional and worship life, but that's all."
One
can appreciate the attempt of Christians and sympathetic others who
seek a viable alternative to the belief in our origins that has been
fostered for decades in American classrooms through the theory of
evolution. (Its atheistic base being as much an ultimate faith
assumption as ID is theistic.) But many argue that intelligent design
is not a theory capable of competing with Darwin in the classroom or
the lab. With the release of her recent book, Total Truth: Liberating
Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity," Pearcey has been in demand
as an Evangelical spokesperson for Intelligent Design, a topic she
covers in her book. Our initial conversation took place by phone in
January 2006 and was tweaked via email correspondence in May. Some of
her views my surprise you. To read the interview.
The Arts
Conversation with Paul Patton
Actor, Playwright, Teacher of the Performing Arts
Abstract. One
Saturday evening a few years ago I blithely attended a local theater
company’s production of Henry Miller’s The Crucible. I left
numb. I can’t tell you whether it was the story itself or if that
night’s production simply fell under particularly auspicious
planetary indications that made all the actors stars; but, to date,
that play produced in me the most moving experience I’ve ever had
with theater. The performance gripped me and pulled me in. A mere play
about the Salem Witch Trials? No way. Afterward, while the actors and
director were milling about chatting up the audience in the foyer, I
remained seated, unable to talk. Eventually I moved to leave, nodding a
quick word of amazement to one of the actors at the door as I walked
quietly out.
This
is good performance art, the power of a good story well told. It
invites you into an imaginary world and says relax, have an experience,
check out this vision. It may be trivial or earth-shattering. Often
it’s mid-range. But because it’s not propaganda or
preaching, it leaves you alone in its make-believe world to make your
discoveries. For Christians who are performance artists, it becomes a
means whereby others can be offered to taste something of what life
under God is like. But here’s the rub. How do you do that? For
this is a profession that many find has to be negotiated as if one were
on a walkabout through a minefield. Award-winning playwright, actor,
and director Paul Patton braved a conversation with Openings about
these hazards. The founder of Trinity House Theatre in Livonia,
Michigan, Dr. Patton taught the Fine and Performing Arts at Hampton
University and is now Associate Professor of Communication and Theater
at Spring Arbor University, in Michigan. To read the interview.
Conversation with Karen L. Mulder
Inside the Visual Arts
Abstract. It
is one of Christianity’s strangest ironies that though its
followers serve the One who can rightly be called the Artist of
creation, art itself remains an unopened, even unwanted, gift to many
believers. Art, it seems, lies outside the purview of God, ignored as
that which cannot broaden or enrich one’s life. Fortunately that
attitude is changing, however slowly. As British philosopher and
theologian John Peck has said, “Art is a kind of necessary
luxury.” Many Christians are moving beyond questions about the
arts’ justification to ask about how to enjoy art or how to do
art in the school of the Artist. Others would like to enjoy art more,
and more of it too, but they may not know the “secrets” of
art appreciation.
Art
historian, critic, and collector Karen L. Mulder has a passion to see
the arts made accessible to people and I asked her to initiate us, to
move us around inside the visual arts in particular, that we might
imagine. A former arts editor for Christianity Today and arts
director at Crossway Books, Karen was Menil Scholar of Visual Arts at
Yale and is a board member of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) and
of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. In 2000, Karen’s academic
environment shifted from Union University, where she was an assistant
professor of art history and photography, to the University of
Virginia, where she is currently finishing her dissertation in
architectural history and shifting ecclesiastic symbols during
Germany’s postwar reconstruction. “Architectural
historians,” she notes, “see every building as a type of
structurated meaning. There’s a rationale for why buildings, all
kinds throughout history, are this way; or there’s a stated
aversion to a rationale. So we’re trying to construct meaning out
of buildings.”
Dorothy
Sayers wrote that the church as a body has never made up its mind about
the arts. That can’t be said of Karen Mulder, who’s had
twenty-five years in the arts scene to make her mind up about a good
many things. With visual image dominating the cultural landscape today,
conveying its messages of sin or grace, I asked Karen to reveal a bit
of her mind to us. To read the interview.
Muslim-Christian Relations
Conversation with Lynn Green
A Christian Reconciliation Walk among Muslims
Abstract. Nine-hundred
years ago, in what must be history’s most stunning reversal of
what it means to follow Jesus, Christianity held high the cross of
Christ to justify the Crusades, which continued off and on in five
major campaigns for more than two centuries. Although Christians today
have disowned the Crusades as a dark chapter of their history, not a
few Muslims and Jews harbor ill-will toward Christianity because of
those campaigns.
For
three years in the Middle East, however, and very much behind the
scenes, a dramatic but quiet Evangelical-led initiative changed the
hearts and minds of many Muslims and Jews as a diverse group of
Christians apologized face-to-face to Muslim and Jews for the Crusades.
The formal apology stated that the Crusaders “betrayed the name
of Christ by conducting themselves in a manner contrary to his wishes
and character.” By lifting the cross “they corrupted its
true meaning of reconciliation, forgiveness, and selfless love.”
The messengers “deeply regret the atrocities committed in the
name of Christ by our predecessors.”
The
Reconciliation Walk was an independent initiative led by Lynn Green, an
American who has been living in England for 25 years. About 3,000
walkers participated over the 3-year period, with people coming and
going in small groups, from many different denominations and nations.
It began in the spring of 1996, as teams of walkers entered Cologne,
Germany, where the Crusades were launched in March-April 1096, led by
Peter the Hermit. The 2,000-mile three-year walk across Europe and
through the Balkans, Turkey, and Syria ended in Jerusalem on July 15,
1999, the nine-hundredth anniversary of a Crusade massacre of Jews and
Arabs.
This fascinating interview from Openings
(#3, Apr-Jun, 1999) is a composite of conversations I had with Lynn
Green while catching up with him in London and afterward near the end
of the Walk by phone and Email. The stories are remarkable and moving.
Although it was considered controversial in some Christian circles, the
Walk stood out for its compassionate message. It moved Muslims and,
nearer home, taught the messengers of Christ’s compassion.
(Edited for the Web.)
To read the interview.
Education
Conversation with Dr. Pamela MacKenzie
Christianity and Wholistc Education
Abstract. Are
Christian schools really all that Christian? What influence can
Christian teachers have in secular classrooms? Why are the Western
educational models that have been exported into non-Western nations
failing? How are issues like justice, economics, and relationships tied
to education? Is it possible to have Jesus Christ as the center of
every subject of the curriculum? These and many other topics came up in
the following conversation with Dr. Pamela MacKenzie, author, teacher,
and cross-cultural educational consultant. Her frank and enlightening
answers may surprise you.
Dr.
MacKenzie is the founder of the International Network for Development
(InfD), and has had years of experience working in Yemen, Lesotho,
Ghana, Bangladesh, and Norway, and in England, her home. One of her
interests is to develop education programs for children at risk in
impoverished areas of the world, with a focus on primary, literacy,
health, and multilingual education. She also works in education
research and training with both U.K.-based and international government
and non-government organizations (NGOs). She is also the author of the
ground-breaking, major book Entry Points for Christian Reflection in Education (with Alison Farnell, Ann Holt, and David Smith). Entry Points
is an irenic approach to thinking Christianly about a wide variety of
school subjects. It draws from a vast amount of research and its wealth
of examples in each subject are laid out in kind of workbook format.
Dr.
MacKenzie has been working for many years in India with InfD, alongside
state and national governments, academic institutions, and NGOs on
numerous projects, including a multilingual education program in tribal
areas. This entails scripting the languages, developing culturally
relevant curriculum, teacher training, workshops, and more. The program
has recently received the backing of UNESCO, UNICEF, and other NGOs.
Despite
her successes, Dr. MacKenzie is a realist about the educational
possibilities of schools in our pluralistic world today, and she is
aware of the ambiguities, paradoxes, and even contradictions that
Christian teachers and parents must live with. She has a passion to
play a part in seeing the field of education redeemed, which, she says,
is not just about having more money, or the right kind of buildings, or
the latest classroom technology, or home schooling, or even calling the
schools “Christian.” “These approaches,”
MacKenzie told me, “may do nothing other than sustain inadequate
Western educational ideologies. Much more is needed. We need a
different way of reasoning about education.” (Dr. MacKenzie spoke
to Charles Strohmer by phone from London for the following interview
for Openings #6, Jan-Mar, 2000. Edited for the Web.) To read the interview.
All Other Writings
Rambo and Stallone on War
Here's a thought: "Wisdom is better."
Sylvester Stallone, the monosyllabic but well-paid Hollywood actor, is
an interesting guy. Listening to him rap about war and the new Rambo
revived a thought I’ve had buried: why did so many Americans
who now admit that they should have known better endorse the war about
Iraq in the first place? Never having been to war, they are personally
unacquainted with the pathology of war, and so they give their blessing
to a war out of naivety. Is this wise?
To read.
Christopher Hitchens: Man of Faith
Essay. Is the outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens also a man of faith? In his controversial best-seller god is not Great,
Hitchens employs the lowercase g for God throughout the book as an apt
symbol for his fierce atheism. He is no fan of any religion. And he is
equally fearless about declaring what he does believe, in lieu of
religious belief, about the ultimate nature and meaning of life. But
isn't that also a faith? To read.
Am I a Liberal? Confessions of An Irenic Iconoclast
Essay. Three
times that I know of last year I got caught in the
crossfire of America’s so-called culture war by people who think
they much know me better than I know myself. Three people responded to
pieces I’d written be labeling me ‘liberal’—end
of discussion. The epithet shut down any further thinking on their
part about what I had been arguing for or against, like dragsters
braking hard at the end of a quarter-mile run. (Edited online
version from Openings 21; Jul-Oct, 05. Published also online at OldSpeak.) To read.
The Power of a Good Story Well Told
Essay. After the meal we shifted to the den and comfortable sofas around coffees and
desserts and were soon well into that venerable tradition of solving
the world's problems. The second intifada in the Holy Land, recently
begun, had been daily in the headlines and a feisty woman who had been
editorializing about it gazed in my direction. "What do you think can
be done about it?" she asked. The room quieted. (The guest speaker is
always supposed to know.) To read.
Snow, a Novel
A
short review of the novel Snow by Orhan Pamuk. The book takes us into the play of religion and
secularism in a way that many nonfiction ‘issue’ books
about Islam and the West cannot possibly do. (Published in The
Christian Century; Mar. 22, 2005.) To read.
Hard to Swallow
Article
on genetically modified foods. The world today is on the cusp of a revolution in food, as
genetic technology promises to open up vast new opportunities in the
food industry. But there are many unknowns, many controversies. As with
all potentially sweeping technologies, this can be taken as either good
or bad, giving the question “What’s for dinner?” new
weight and urgency. This article is short primer on genetically
modified (gm) foods, including its most controversial aspect, and some
ethical thoughts about their use and regulation. (Edited version
published in re:generation quarterly, 6.4; 2000.) To read.
A World Needing a Map
Column.
The world today seems increasingly destination-challenged with each
passing year. Familiar and durable old grids of established
geopolitical ties have buckled and bowed out of shape. Old addresses
are gone, as are the avenues leading to them. To read.
