Good News From Afar

An e-mail came from my friends who are missionaries, but not Presbyterian, in South East Asia the same day that Michael Kruse posted Our Presbyterian Witness in Asia, on his web site which was about the new web site of Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the GAC. She is traveling to Asia to visit the various Presbyterian missionaries there. Her web site is Our Presbyterian Witness: A Faith Journal from my Journey.

This got me to thinking how much I would like to post the e-mails from my friends on my blog. Now I have their permission. However, because of some of the places they travel and because of the wonderful Christians they minister to, who live in suffering places, I cannot post their names. But this will give others a chance to read the wonderful stories they send and to pray for another part of the Church. So following is the first of what I hope will be interesting messages from friends far away.

"We wanted to thank you for praying for the new constitution and upcoming elections in Thailand. When you see other messes in other countries, we sure do appreciate prayers as motivated by our Father.

I was wanting to relate a story to you about Buddhist religion seeking to be declared the state religion of Thailand in the new constitution. Many were praying and it turned out that the Queen of Thailand was staying in Chiangmai when one of her project leaders, who was a Christian went to be with the Lord. So she graciously attended the funeral service at the First Church here in town. One of the songs in that service is a lovely song asking God to protect, prosper and Bless the Thai nation. After the meeting, the Queen was heard to comment that the Christians really love the Thai nation. A couple of days later she wrote a front page article for her birthday and asked that Buddhism not be declared the state religion in the new constitution because she did not want to see religion associated with politics in that way. Two days after that the major lobbying/action group pushing for this took itself out of business. Three days after that the constitutional referendum, without the religion clause, passed with about 60% approval. God does answer prayer.

Please keep praying as elections are scheduled before the new year. They maybe moved a little bit datewise which is okay but just this last week the coup leader resigned as Armed Forces Chief and now has been appointed deputy Prime Minister. Interestingly the Thai economy has not suffered much yet from all this. In fact the US dollar has dropped more than 20% against the Thai baht in the last two years.

Since I was scheduled to be in .... at this time, we wanted to say that the unrest and discontent is usually just below the surface in the population at all times. (much worse atrocities than you have seen on TV happen everyday in all the borderlands of ....) But the population seldom flares up like this as they know they are very unlikely to effect this government even with armed insurrection. The civil war that has raged 60 years now resulting in the 120,000 refugees and up to 300,000 internally displaced people has been a rear guard guerilla war of attrition for forty of those years. Only the prayers and cries of God's people will bring the changes that are needed.

This year is the first year that regular refugees have been allowed to leave the camps along the Thai Burma border. WE hear that 2-3,000 of these 10,000 have this year immigrated to Tennessee. That is most interesting, since three of the Pastors of the churches I spent last week with in the Hills three hours south of here have been invited by a partnering Baptist church to come for three weeks to Tennessee. I am not sure that the church is yet aware of this immigration but it would be amazing to have Pastors that are really moving ahead and experiencing 100% growth this year being able to minister to ethnic Karen refugees just getting started in a strange land as newly arrived refugees and aliens.

The district that I was in last week has had a strong move to God in the last seven years. The Worship and Prayer aspects have risen dramatically. The church there is growing up to the point that today more than 30 percent of the 60,000 people in the district are Born again Christians. There is no other place in Thailand that has that kind of statistic. The general population of Thailand is still looking for the first 1 percent to be evangelical Christians.
The only other places in SE Asia that I know have a similar percentage are in two provinces in tribal Burma and three provinces in tribal NE India.

You know the thing that impressed me the most was not the big new church buildings (one that can seat (on the floor) 1500 people) but it was the pastor and cell group leaders that are beating paths in the rainy season to small villages with brand new small Christian groups gathering. This is a real movement happening and it has been primarily among the Pwo Karen which have been the resistant ones in the last 180 years.

So we are much encouraged and it is always wonderful to bring a good report from afar."

A Cryptic Poem Because They Left Today

Someone recently wrote, “Earth would be better off without Revelation.” But it all seems to fit. Its metaphors are beautiful. Its promises complete.

Because this is the day they left.

You who read the Left Behind books,
This is how it really feels.
They are leaving today,
the soft, but steady strong ones,
the faithful and nurturing ones,
they who nurtured new pastors,
and stood before the Presbytery
and pleaded for His righteousness.

Not a secret rapture, but,
this is how it feels
this is what left behind means.
Facing the anti-Jesus, the ones
who give gifts and celebrate
and say “It will be a day just like all others when schismatics …
finally exit the denomination in a self-righteous huff.”

You who read the Left Behind books.
and believe them, more than the holy text,
Wait!
Look, there are three gathered, two in another place
and four around the altar in prayer,
and still a multitude singing praise,
with the Lamb in the midst.
Look! The red winged dragon is slinking out the back door,
his hat on crooked.

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Rev. 3:5-6)


All quotes except Scripture are taken from “Shuck and Jive” at Friday Fivin' With My GalPals, and letters to the Editor on the Presbyterian Layman, “The PCUSA is moving ahead” by John Shuck.

Three Prayer Poems with Hope

Scrubbing:

Maybe He is taking
a clean white brush
and scrubbing me all over
down to a thin peeled
core--with only the truth
left around me.

I seem to keep
falling in the scrapings
however--

Does anyone have a wash
cloth for my feet!



A Female Tiger:

Like a female tiger crawling in the tall unsteady grass,
hunting, malevolent, wanting to snarl and bite,
failing that peace I shudder down in some murky foreign soil.
It is not home.
But deep within,
all around, over and below is the strength of Judah,
gentle Lamb,
the forgiving place in God,
home of homes.

Insult is the lightening across my sky,
but weak gods threw it, their fingers shaking.
They will not last; they were canceled in the darkness
as his cross drew blood.
High King of Heaven the Anglo-Saxons called him.
He will not bruise or bend the tall unsteady grass,
but thunder home words that only a beast like I can hear.


A Spider's Prayer:

I am a spider, falling softly to the ground
On a thin unsteady string,
and when it breaks I cannot spin it back again.
Catch me oh my God and understand

I am a luna moth, all green and beautiful, but torn,
walking when I really long to fly.
Keep me yours my God,
and cushion me within your hand.

I am a creature running wounded from a fall,
within a land all full of swamp and sea,
without retreat or bridges to the sky.
Gather me my Lord and set me where you stand.

Rosa and Other Children of Mexico: A Story and A Poem

Rosa was an orphan left alone in the hills of Baja...

-

When my children were small we traveled to Baja California to an orphanage. The story of how the orphanage began is full of both God's tender care and human evil.

I once traveled to the orphanage with the lady who was the founder and she told me the story. The lady lives in North Hollywood and her husband was a fireman. She read in the newspaper of an old theatre in Baja and felt the Lord telling her that she should go and find it. So soon with her husband and another couple, she set off on a quest.

-

They had all kinds of problems including getting lost and running out of gas, but finally they found the theatre. There was an American women living there and she and her son were supposedly taking care of some orphaned children. I write supposedly because in reality that was not what they were doing.

-

The lady from North Hollywood along with her church, started helping this woman and the children, finally bringing the children to a church camp in the United States.

And then, because the children were with adults at the camp who could speak Spanish, the terrible truth emerged. The American woman who with her son was supposedly taking care of the children, was selling the little girls to the army camp close by.

The Lady telling me this story, said she foolishly went back to Baja and told off the woman and then left intending to come back and take care of the problem. But when she came back the woman had loaded all of the children in the back of her pickup and dropped them off one at a time in the hills of Baja.

They never found all the children. But they did find some of them including Rosa; she was living in a chicken coop. I could never tell this story without breaking down in tears. So I wrote a poem for Rosa and all of the other children. Before I post it I should say that in that place of darkness the Lord provided a home for many children with many caretakers. The last I heard about Rosa she was working for the telephone company and finally married and had her own family.

Some will find this a strange poem, but I was taking a class in Mexican History at the time so that I could better understand the people I visited with in Mexico.

Rosa and Other Children of Mexico.

Winds of the mountains blowing,

Like whispers through the caverns of your eyes.

Drained like the waters of Baja,

the genes of Montezuma are flowing away.

Cortez descending the pyramids of hell

has carried your vision below.

Encircled by a Madonna,

surrounded by Huitzilopoti,

while carried with anger by myriads of patriots,

you stand now deserted in the wasteland of man.

Better a chicken coop than altars of stone?

The feeding tables of gods all lacquered

with blood and the human condition,

unknown terror of children replacing

unknown terror of children.

Returning no more to containers of refuge,

valleys of darkness, or mountains of fear,

you gather about the hole of the asp,

waiting for the peace of the wolf and the cow.

Quetzalcoatl will come,

and the Kingdom of God, which is His, the lamb's;

but, it is given to you, the children.

(Poet News Sacramento's Literary Review February, 1990)

Blogs, Web Sites and Family

I planned on adding more blogs and web sites to my blog, but I tried to put them under several categories and couldn't figure out how. Since there may not be a way to do that I thought I would list them on the side anyway and then write a couple of posts explaining them.

So the first post will be about my family's blogs and web sites:

Speaking of this World belongs to my daughter Jenny McHenry. She has some wonderful posts on nature and the environment, great pictures too! She and Derek, her husband are the parents of six of my grandchildren. They attend Peace Presbyterian Church in Elk Grove, California.


Libellus Stellatus belongs to one of my Granddaughters. She is the oldest daughter of Jenny and Derek. Melissa is married to Spencer. She is an artist and writer and he is an actor; they were married in the summer of 2006. Here is a wonderful post she wrote about Jesus Christ . If you explore her blog you can find some of her art work. Such as this one. Melissa writes that she created this picture, with some anger, after reading about starving people.


You can also find some great pictures of Spencer swimming from Alcatraz to San Fransisco: The Previous Weekend In Photos The picture below is Melissa with her friend Kelly. They were modeling their wedding dresses for me in my living room.















Another family blog is a nephew's. Wesley's two blogs are Mary Worth and Me and Wanders In the Mary Worth one he uses pictures from the comic strip to express himself! I think I may hear about this.!

One of my sisters, Mary Kion, who is both an artist and a writer has several web sites. She is very interested in Western history including the history of trains. One of her web sites is dedicated to our Grandmother, Viola Butler Trotter. You can reach it here: Women Of The West. Mary also writes for Suite 101. You can find her profile there and the many stories she writes. One of her featured stories is about Johnny Cash and my father. Here is a picture of both my father and my mother: As you can see from the top of the picture it was taken in Bethany Missouri.


I also have a web site besides this blog. My web site is Naming the Grace. I write a lot on feminism and Wicca. I also have written quite a lot on various racists groups. One article I haven't listed anywhere else is: "Conversations On the Immense Journey: A Fictional Conversation on Evolution, Mysticism, Pantheism and God." I wrote this conversation between several mystics, including St John of the Cross and Loren Eiseley, (whom I really don't consider a mystic), for a class on Christian Mysticism. The teacher was into Teilhard de Chardin and she asked us to use him and Eiseley's article along with two other mystics. Since she also considered C.S. Lewis a mystic, I, of course, also used Lewis. I have changed the story a bit from the original one I wrote for class.


I am adding this late. Melissa's sister, Liz is a fantastic poet, with a lot of angst! But liveliness too. Her blog, which she hasn't written on for a while, is You Don't Even Know. Here is the picture off of it which is one of my favorite pictures. She is also a wonderful artist.

An Apology and Letters

In one of my three articles on Presbyterians and Marxism, Presbyterians Dancing With Karl Marx! Part 2 , I made a very bad, but un-intended mistake, concerning Sherry Flyr and a statement attributed to her. For that reason I am apologizing. I am posting here a letter I sent to Ms. Ann Ferguson, Presbyterian Women Program Coordinator, asking her several questions. Her reply to me, in which she pointed out the error I had made. And finally the apology I wrote to Sherry Flyr.

My Letter to Ms. Ann Ferguson:

Ms Ann Ferguson
Program Coordinator,
Presbyterian Women,

Dear Ann,

I am not sure you will remember who I am. I write for Voices of Orthodox Women and well over a year ago spoke with you on the phone about being a part of NNCPW’s leadership conference which included older women. I did attend and found the meetings generally comfortable and helpful.

I am writing you today because of a series of articles I have posted on my new blog, www.naminghisgrace.blogspot.com. The series is entitled “Presbyterians Dancing with Karl Marx,” and goes well beyond matters connected to Presbyterian Women. However, this series did raise some questions related to Presbyterian Women. Since I will write a smaller and hopefully less complicated article for VOW, I do have some questions.

There are three main areas where I have mentioned PW in my articles. The first, under “Affiliations,” your site states, “Presbyterian Women works in partnership with various secular and faith-based organizations on issues of faith and social justice.”

The group Agricultural Missions is one of those affiliations. This particular group supports many rural groups. However they seem to be focusing on several groups which are either rooted in or have strong ties to Marxist groups including the World Social Forum and the United States Social Forum.

Additionally they state that they are supported by, among other religious and service groups, the Presbyterian Church USA, with PW listed along side Presbyterian Hunger Project. I searched your budget and giving projects and found no record of such giving. Can you point out where that is listed and the amount given?

The second concern is Ms Sherry Flyr who is both a board member of Agricultural Missions and Vice Moderator of Missions Relationships for Presbyterian Women. Is Ms Flyr's relationship with PW and Agricultural Missions a conflict of interest?

Here are a couple of examples that raise some concern about Ms Flyr serving these two organizations in a leadership capacity. Ms Flyr was one of the representatives AMI sent to the United States Social Forum to present seminars. As I have shown in my articles, this USSF is a decidedly far left Socialist group. The organization, World Social Forum, and its offshoot USSF does not promote PW’s goals, “to support the mission of the church worldwide,” or “to work for justice and peace.” That is, justice and peace are not attributes of Marxism, and surely neither is the mission of the Church.

In one other instance Ms Flyr is seemingly out of step with the mission of the Church. When describing the various workshops presented at the United States Social Forum she in her description of capitalism described that economic viewpoint as “Homophobic Patriarchical Violent Capitalism.”

This may be Ms Flyr’s own personal viewpoint; however, she holds a position on the National Coordinating Team of Presbyterian Women. In order “to build an inclusive caring community of women that strengthens the Presbyterian Church (USA) …,” I think it would be wise not to alienate the National Leadership of PW from women in the Pew who believe capitalism is certainly not perfect, but is a solid economic system.

In the same manner, in a Church which upholds the biblical standard of marriage between a woman and man, Ms Flyr’s use of the word “homophobic” as a descriptive word is alienating.

The final concern is with the promotion of the Brazilian Landless Workers Group (MST). As you undoubtedly know, the Editors of Horizons in their March/April 2006 edition featured three articles on MST. As you will see, from my articles, the first article, “Promised Land: The Landless Rural Worker’s Movement (MST) and Democracy in Brazil,” written by Miguel Carter, was taken from a much larger article in which Carter was defending MST from its critics who believe it to be a Marxists organization. The Editor’s of Horizons seemingly chose not to tell their readers of this conflict. Can you explain the reason for that decision?

I am inserting the three postings I have written so that you will be better able to understand some of the questions I have asked.

Presbyterians Dancing With Karl Marx! Part 1 .Presbyterians Dancing With Karl Marx! Part 2 .Presbyterians Dancing with Karl Marx Part 3 .

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and answer the questions I am asking.

Sincerely in Christ,
Viola Larson
Board of Directors,
Voices of Orthodox Women

Ms. Ann Ferguson's letter to me:

Ms.Viola Larson
Board of Directors, Voices of Orthodox Women
October 4, 2007

Dear Viola,

I have pasted below your letter to me to ensure that those copied on this response have your complete communication. If any of this email communication appears on your weblog or on Voices of Orthodox Women's website, I expect to see the entire communication and not excerpts from it.

I do remember our conversation about your desire to be part of the NNPCW leadership conference held in conjunction with the 2006 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. I'm glad you were able to be a part of the intergenerational event and found it comfortable and helpful.

In your letter, you raise three areas of concern. My response to each concern follows.

Presbyterian Women’s (PW) Support of Agricultural Missions, Inc. (AMI)
Agricultural Missions, Inc. is an ecumenical organization supported by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Presbyterian Women supports the mission of the PC(USA) and participates in those ecumenical bodies with which the PC(USA) relates. You do not find a budgeted item for AMI in the PW triennial budget because no funds are allocated to its support nor has it received either a Birthday or Thank Offering grant. To date, the only PW-based monetary contribution to AMI has been a portion of the 2006 Churchwide Gathering offering. Interpretation for the offering was provided prior to and during the Gathering. Gathering participants contributed as they felt called to give.

AMI Board Participation
AMI invited Presbyterian Women to send a representative to serve a board term. The Churchwide Coordinating Team assigned Ms. Sherry Flyr, vice moderator for mission relationships, to the task as part of her duties and is fully aware of her role there. There is no conflict of interest.

Magazine Editorial Decisions
The editors asked Miguel Carter, an expert in the landless movement in Brazil, to provide an article about the movement. The article he provided was accepted.

My Concern
Viola, you mention that you intend to write a short article for Voices of Orthodox Women (VOW). I have copied Ms. Sylvia Dooling with VOW. Though our opinions may differ at times, I have come to know Sylvia as a woman concerned about the veracity of the facts in VOW’s publications. In reading the series of blog postings to which you referred me, and your September 26, 2007, email letter to me, I find that both your blog and your letter contain serious factual errors. It concerns me that you would make public allegations about someone without verifying your statements. Out of respect for ethical journalism, I strongly encourage you to check your sources and verify your statements before submitting the article for publication by VOW.

In your September 26 communication that you find copied below in its entirety, you attribute to Ms. Sherry Flyr statements made by others, not by her. The Agricultural Missions newsletter article about the U.S. Social Forum from which you draw your information was written by Stephen Bartett. In the article, he lists Sherry Flyr as a member of a panel in a workshop during the U.S. Social Forum entitled "Migration and Racism in the Domincan Republic." Sherry’s contribution to the workshop was to read the definitions of the terms "race," "prejudice," "social power" and "racism" that are used in PC(USA) antiracism training.

You question the phrase "Homophobic Patriarchical Violent Capitalism." That phrase appears in the writer of the article's listing of plenary sessions during the U.S. Social Forum. The words are not Sherry’s.

In my experience, I have found that agreeing on definitions for emotion-packed words like racism and racist, or Marxism and Marxist opens the way for dialogue. Describing the verbal and nonverbal behaviors generally associated with a particular concept avoids hurtful labeling that may lead others to draw inappropriate conclusions. These descriptors allow civil and respectful discussion of highly charged topics.

In service to Christ,
Ann

Ann Ferguson
Presbyterian Women Program Coordinator
100 Witherspoon St.
Louisville, KY 40202

My Apology to Sherry Flyr:

Ms. Sherry Flyr
Vice Moderator for Missions Relationships
Presbyterian Women

Dear Ms. Flyr,

I wish to apologize for giving out unintended false information about you in the article I wrote, “Presbyterians Dancing with Karl Marx.” I mistook this sentence, “Yours truly, Sherry Flyr, and Luckner Millien of the Farm Worker Association of Florida were the panelists to get the ball rolling:…,” to mean that the “yours truly” was you and so I attributed the following quote to you: “At the US Social Forum there were major plenaries on Katrina, the War, Gender and the struggle against Homophobic Patriarchical Violent Capitalism, Immigration Rights, Worker Justice and Indigenous Peoples and their Prophetic Struggles and Cosmovision.” I certainly should have written and asked you if you had actually written those words. I will change that part of my article.

I agree with Ms. Ann Ferguson that this was a factual error and I need to remedy it. I will post this apology on my blog. Please do forgive me.

Viola Larson

Cc Ms. Ann Ferguson
The Rev. Dr. Rhashell Hunter
Dr. Susan Jackson-Dowd
Ms. Sylvia Dooling

Christian Reading

I received the Presbyterian Women's little catalog, "Best Books for Presbyterian Women," this week. There are some good books offered. For instance N.T. Wright's series, "For Everyone" is very good and easy reading. And although I haven' read it I Want To Live These Days With You: A Year of Daily Devotions, taken from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, should be very devotional without being sentimental.

But such books as Jack Rogers' Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality, and Douglas F. Ottati's Theology for Liberal Presbyterians and Other Endangered Species, were offered without counter arguments. These are books for some Presbyterian women without alternative books for other Presbyterian woman.

A Multitude of Blessings: A Christian Approach to Religious Diversity by Cynthia Campbell, which pushes pluralism, is listed under "Support the Mission of the Church Worldwide ."

Reading through this list I thought of a lot of books I would like to recommend to women and men in the Presbyterian Church USA. So here is the first "Naming His Grace," list of books.

PW's list begins with, "Nurture Faith through Prayer and Bible Study," and I will begin there also. And I will begin with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Sylvia Dooling, President of Voices of Orthodox Women recommended this book to me.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons. Editor, Edwin Robertson, Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2005.

This book gleams with devotional care in the midst of crisis. The sermons are placed in a sequence according to the years and the events happening in Bonhoeffer's life. There is also historical and theological value here because any time an orthodox believer addresses an issue in the midst of a crisis the reader often will experience deep clarity on issues.

For instance, on the coming of Christ, you have this passage written sometime between 1938-40. It was a time when the confessing seminary had been closed by the Nazis and sermons were written down and passed around. Bonhoeffer wrote of the fearfulness of those who rejected Christ at his coming and then he wrote:

"They [The congregation of Christ's people], know he comes to redeem them. They are like miners who have been trapped in the depths of the mine, who have suffered long, shut up in the dark, who hear the knocking and the breaking down of the walls coming closer. Is it the final caving-in of the mine or is the rescuer coming? 'lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near.' For Christians this world is like a fetter, it is too narrow for them. 'Dearest Lord Jesus, why do you wait so long? Come, Lord! Here on earth, I am so frightened.' The earth, its suffering and temptation makes us anxious, but Christ makes us glad, he brings redemption."(133)

• High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality. Benedicta Ward. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications 1999.

There are a lot of Celtic Spirituality books being published. Some of them promote an alternative spirituality. This one is a bit dated but good for two reasons. It deals with history which clarifies the issues, but it is also devotional in that it lifts up the true aspects of early English Spirituality.

Ward writing in the chapter "Anglo-Saxon Prayer," looks at some of the writings of Alcuin (735-804) on the psalter. Her quote:

"In the psalter to the end of your life you have material for reading, scrutinizing and teaching; in it you find the prophets, the evangelists, the apostles and all the divine books spiritually and intellectually treated and described and the first and second coming of the Lord in prophecy. You will find both the incarnation and the passion, resurrection and ascension of the Lord and all the power of divine words in the psalms if you peruse them with the intent of the mind and you will come by the grace of God to the marrow of intellectual understanding."

• Ecstasy and Intimacy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit. Edith M. Humphrey. Forward by Eugene H. Peterson. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing 2006.

This is a trustworthy book on spirituality in the midst of other books which confuse the human spirit and human experience with the Holy Spirit and God's revelation.

My next listing moves away from the PW's list. I want to recomend a book that deals in an orthodox manner with Reformed Faith.

• Encountering God: Christian Faith in Turbulent Times. Andrew Purves and Charles Partee. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 2000.

Andrew Purves and Charles Partee are both professors at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, as is Dr. Humphrey above. One of the joys of this book is that both Dr. Purves and Dr. Partee each share their experence of the Lord.

Then they go on to write about issues of faith such as "The Lordship of Christ," and "The Fatherhood of God."

Under "A Mid-Course Reflection," they write:

"The ferocious fights over doctrine that mark so much of the church's history were conducted not for the sake of a rigid orthodoxy, but for the sake of the needful discipline of true faith for the people of God. All doctrinal theology is eventually and inevitably pastoral theology. We are called, then, to doctrinal and theological commitments. Dangerous shoals reside on both sides of the ark of salvation. Conservatives, who ship out under colors of confessionalism, can easily sail into unlovely legalism. Liberals, who steam along with a passion for justice and ethics, may quickly veer off into antinomianism." (61)

Some of the books listed in the PW's catalog are on justice and economic issues. And they do not offer any alternatives pointing away from the extreme liberal viewpoint. I will offer a couple of alternatives.

I have not read the book yet, I have a pile of tomes ahead of the book, but Michael Kruse of Kruse Kronicle recommended this so I could hopefully understand economics a little better.

• Bulls, Bears & Golden Calves: Applying Christian Ethics in Economics. John E. Stapleford. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Also I will recommend a very ancient book by a church father, St. John Chrysostom.

• On Wealth and Poverty, St John Chrysostom.

For two good lists of books and even movies go to my web site, Naming The Grace at Books and Movies I Recommend, and to VOW's at VOW's List of Recommended Reading.