France's Purple Magazine Taunts America on Freedom of Speech and Wins Big
/It appears that American Christians are playing right into the hands of French media.
We have 10 American missionaries awaiting their fate in Haiti, for trying to do God’s work, taking kids out of the country without proper documents. After being advised not to even attempt the illegal move by a top official in the Dominican Republic, at least group leader Laura Silsby proceeded anyway.
Missionaries and church groups have a global track record of taking care of the poor. I am not condemning or criticizing this generosity. But as The Daily Beast asked this week: who ‘manages’ these people? Who insures that these kids are ending up in safe hands? It seems that the answer is: God is in charge.
This weekend’s NYTimes magazine is devoted to this discussion of religion and the state. I haven’t read the article yet, but here you go: How Christian Were the Founders?
I’m not defending the taste or lack of it in Lindsay Lohan’s current Purple Magazine cover. But the fact that it’s the lead story in myYahoo email box places the Lindsay Lohan cover in the Haiti missionary controversy in my mind.
What sends shudders up my spine — as someone who stood in Berlin, staring down into the monument of Nazi Germany’s book-burning campaign on April 6, 1933 — is that America plays right into the stereotype we have in the world.
We have almost no records of an incredibly sophisticated Mayan culture because all the documents were burned by the Spanish wanting to convert the population to Catholicism.
