I mentioned the other day research by Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks into the causes of happiness among Americans. In his new book Gross National Happiness (Basic), he shows that self-ratings of happiness are statistically reliable, and then writes about “three basic things that make people happy: meaning in their lives, control over their environment, and success in creating value in the world. And the way people get these things is not with money, or power, or fame—it is with their values. People who are serious about healthy values in their lives, families, and communities are much happier than others.”

WOW: You examine “the politics of happiness” and come to some conclusions about liberals and conservatives that would surprise our academic colleagues who stereotype conservatives as emotionally rigid, insecure, and angry…

ACB: I look at strange data results all day, but the evidence on liberals and conservatives surprised even me. People who say they are conservative or very conservative are nearly twice as likely to say they are “very happy,” than are people who called themselves liberal or very liberal. Conservatives are much less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their futures. A 2007 survey even found that 58 percent of Republicans rated their mental health as “excellent,” versus just 38 percent of Democrats.

WOW: What is the relationship between economic inequality and unhappiness?

ACB: We hear from a lot of politicians these days that income inequality makes us unhappy. This is not correct. What makes people unhappy is the belief that they do not have opportunities to get ahead in life. What they often complain about, however, is income inequality. Studies show that when people feel economically mobile, they actually like income inequality even if they have less than others because it shows them what they can achieve. The irony is that when politicians fight income inequality they often lower economic mobility by wrecking the rewards to hard work. And this makes the real problem worse, not better.

WOW: The mantra of this year’s election campaign so far is “change,” with partisans evidently feeling a spurt of joy every time a candidate mentions the word. Why does that word have that effect?

ACB: This is due to what psychologists call the “Principle of Adaptation.” We get used to life’s status quo very quickly, and crave improvement as a source of happiness. This is why we get the most pleasure from a pay raise not when it shows up in our paychecks, but rather when we find out we’re going to get it. Lots of people forget that we are the most prosperous, free nation in the world. Americans are accustomed to feeling safe in their homes, being able to express their political opinions without being arrested, and finding food in the supermarket. Some politicians can and do degrade the importance of these things and convince us that we are unhappy—and only significant change will make things right.

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That headline is a cliché, but a Syracuse University faculty member who crunches poll numbers is backing up that assumption with data. I asked Professor Arthur C. Brooks whether people who say they’re happy really are, and he backs up that belief with reports on brainwaves and such, If he’s right, what’s in his new book, Gross National Happiness (Basic), is important.

WOW: What do you mean by writing that “Happiness is a gift from above”?

ACB: Faith is an incredible predictor–and cause–of happiness. Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier than secularists, on average. In 2004, 43 percent of those who attended a house of worship at least once a week said they were “very happy” with their lives, versus 23 percent of those who attended seldom or never.

WOW: Later, you ask, “Does money buy happiness?” and arrive at some conclusions based on U.S. data but also comparisons between people in France and Mexico…

ACB: It probably isn’t too surprising to learn that money does not buy happiness. This is true as long as people are above the level of basic subsistence, which is true of virtually 100% of Americans. That’s one reason why America’s astounding economic prosperity, which is a wonderful thing and something I believe we should be deeply grateful for, hasn’t raised our happiness levels much over the past decades, on average. It also explains why a country like Mexico, which is a lot poorer than, say, France, can also be happier: In Mexico, 63 percent of adults said they were very happy or completely happy. In France, only 35 percent gave one of these responses.

WOW: According to your chapter on “the secret to buying happiness,” is it better to give or receive?

ACB: As a researcher, I always go where the data lead me. But I will confess to rejoicing a little every time I find that the data back up the Scriptures. Such is the case for charity. It is abundantly clear that when people give to others, they get happier, healthier, and even more financially prosperous.

WOW: Theologian Francis Schaeffer criticized Christians who make “personal peace and affluence” their goal. Keeping in mind the lives of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, what kind of happiness should be our goal?

ACB: I can’t stress enough that according to all the evidence, shooting for affluence or material comforts as a source of happiness is an error. As we see in the life and teachings of Christ and the prophets, happiness comes from an exercise of our good values, including a focus on service to others. Proper values are what bring a happy, well-ordered life. These things also bring prosperity. But to try to get personal happiness from material affluence is like trying to build a tall skyscraper by starting with the top floor.

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The April 5 issue of WORLD includes an interview with Udo Middelmann, president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation and the author of many books including one new one, The Innocence of God (Paternoster, 2007). Here are some more of Middelmann’s thoughts from that interview.

WORLD: Is all the world a stage?

UM: I describe reality as that stage or set of stages, the seen and the unseen, where there are multiple actors. There’s God acting continuously to limit, to oppose, to repair the damage that sin has produced. There are human beings who either go along with it or delay the completion, as the older generation did when they came out of Egypt and wouldn’t believe what God had promised them. Plus, there isn’t only God acting and human beings acting, there’s the whole angelic and demonic entity…

WORLD: So the openness theologian says that God doesn’t know what’s going to happen one minute from now, and you’re saying that God does know, but you criticize the view that for God all time is the present.

UM: Yes. My proposition is based on the realization that much of the Christian church has adopted a Greek view or Hellenistic view of time, of perfection, of knowledge, instead of the Jewish, biblical view… that while God knows the end from the beginning, not everything that God knows has happened, nor would it necessarily happen.

For instance, I refer to that little incident in 1 Samuel 23 when David is talking, hiding from Saul who pursues him in a city called Keilah, he asks God “when Saul comes to the city gates will the people hand me over?” and God says “Yes, they will hand you over.” Like any man in his right mind David runs away and Saul hears about it and never gets to the city. So, the God of the Bible knows all kinds of things, including the things that will only be if certain conditions are met, or may never be.

Before creation God — the Holy Trinity – discusses, ‘What kind of world should we make?’ What kind of bushes, apple trees, people, animals? He had, I’m sure, a lot of things in mind that he decided not to make. If we can think of unicorns, he could have. He decided not to concoct them. So, not everything that God knows in his mind by necessity becomes real.

WORLD: How can true prophets prophecy accurately if the future is indeterminate?

UM: They can because our God knows the end from the beginning. But there are all kinds of things that God does not prophecy about and in these areas there is genuine creativity both for good and for evil, and thus the course of history can be affected by that.

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Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (Doubleday, 2008) opposes embryonic stem cell research – and now that scientists have opened up an alternative that uses pluripotent stem cells but leaves tiny humans alone, the book’s ethical argument is not politically dead on arrival. The Jan. 26 issue of WORLD, now online at www.worldmag.com, includes an interview with authors Robert George and Chris Tollefsen, professors at Princeton and the University of South Carolina; here are some additional questions and answers.

WORLD: Why do you begin Embryo with the story of Noah escaping the Katrina flood on a flat-bottomed boat?

RG/CT: Early in his life, Noah was a cryo-preserved embryo in a fertility clinic in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, he was rescued and subsequently implanted into his mother’s womb. He’s now a young boy, and doing fine. It’s a great story, and the point of it is this: it was Noah that was rescued in New Orleans. It wasn’t a blob of tissue that later became Noah, and we doubt he will ever think that he came into being later in the story. When Noah thinks about his life he’ll think “I was rescued that day in New Orleans.” And he will be right—not merely as a matter of theological teaching but as a fact of science.

The story is important as well for its obvious Biblical overtones. In the Old Testament, the story of Noah is, above all, a story of hope in God’s promises. God enters into a covenant with Noah, and it is a covenant of life: God will never again destroy, but will protect human life, and He asks Noah and his descendents to bring forth new life. From a Christian perspective, that covenant requires that we give very small human beings the same respect we give to mature persons. And the fact that the New Orleans rescuers thought Noah’s life important enough to save gives us hope that we might see that respect more widely shown in the future.

WORLD: Until the breakthrough with non-embryonic stem cells late last year, those who favor killing embryos to obtain stem cells seemed to be winning politically. If a scientific breakthrough enables prolifers to win this ethical battle, should we be thankful for, and awed by, God’s providence — or should we be worried that reason by itself was unable to prevail?

RG/CT: This is a difficult question. There is indeed something disturbing, for example, in the willingness of some scientists to embrace the new stem cell technology as offering an ethically superior alternative even though they were willing to proceed with the ethically inferior procedure when it seemed necessary. It would certainly be better – at least for these scientists – if they had been willing to do the right thing for the right reason.

The worry is not unique to this problem, of course. Bad moral choices are frequently self-destructive; virtues often have the welcome side-effect of making us healthier and better off in other non-moral ways. And perhaps this is best seen as an element of God’s providence. Just as the law sometimes leads us to do the right thing from fear or hope of benefit, and not only for the right reason, so has God given us divine guides, in the order of things, to lead us in the direction of virtue.

Unlike the law, however, which is satisfied when external compliance is achieved, God continues to call each of us to a conversion of heart so that we can love Him ever more deeply and our neighbor as ourselves. This option is still available to us, as it will always be, in the ethics of human life. Will we only protect human life if and when it is convenient to do so, or will we love life, and love one another as He has loved us? That is and will always be a choice for.

WORLD: As you dive into the philosophical bases of the new proposals, you criticize various kinds of “dualism.” What are the major variants, and what effect do they have on the debate about embryos?

RG/CT: We talk about two kinds of dualism, which we call “metaphysical” and “moral.” Metaphysical dualism holds that we – you and us, and all human persons — are something other than the biological organisms we see when we look in the mirror: we are consciousnesses, or spirits, or perhaps brains making use of that body. If you think that, then you might also think that we were never embryos ourselves; and if that is true, then the destruction of human embryos will not be the destruction of human persons – in other words, those embryos will not be deserving of full moral respect.

Moral dualism holds that human beings only become worthy of moral respect because of some achievement, and not because of what they are—members of the human family. So human beings need to become conscious, or self-conscious, or intelligent before they are owed moral respect. So even if we were once human embryos, we were not at that time human persons – beings owed full moral respect.

We make three contrary claims in our book, and give many arguments for them. First, we are human animals, individual members of the species Homo sapiens. Second, in the vast majority of cases, human beings begin to exist at fertilization, when sperm penetrates egg, and a new being, genetically and functionally distinct from either mother or father, begins the self-initiated and self-directed processes of growth and development characteristic of human beings (identical twins are an exception to this).

Third, human beings, unlike the other animals, are possessed of the literally awesome (one might even say God-like) capacities of reason and free will by their nature. It is because they have these capacities that they are due full moral respect. But since these capacities are natural, humans have them from the time that they exist and for as long as they exist, even if an individual is not capable of exercising those capacities (because of disease, impairment, or stage of development). From the earliest embryonic stage, therefore, all human beings are deserving of full moral respect: they are human persons.

WORLD: You also point out the problems of “consequentialism.” What is it, and why does it lead to justifications for cruel and unusual punishment in relation to embryos?

RG/CT: Consequentialism—the best known version of which is known as utilitarianism—is one of the most influential moral theories of the secular world. It holds that all moral choices are to be judged on the basis of whether they are likely to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Consequentialists willingly embrace the maxim of Caiaphas: It is better for one person to suffer than an entire people. So for utilitarians and other consequentialists, there are no absolute rights, no absolute moral norms.

What this means in practice is that even if human embryos are the same sort of being as you and I, and even if they are entitled to full moral respect, still they may be sacrificed for the “greater good.” We see a purely consequentialist argument made in the case of “spare” human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. If they are going to die anyway, shouldn’t we use them to achieve some good? But many people are going to die anyway (all of us, in fact!). Inevitable death does not do away with the absolute right of innocent human beings not to be destroyed and used for the purposes of others. So we argue against and reject consequentialism in our book as a deeply misguided approach to questions of embryo ethics.

WORLD: What’s needed to bring before our eyes the humanity of the embryo?

RG/CT: Awareness and knowledge (often made possible by television and other media) have helped to diminish the disadvantages of distance and numbers concerning, for example, the crisis in Darfur. Awareness and knowledge can diminish these disadvantages for embryos. Basic embryological knowledge can help embryos seem much less different and distant from ourselves. And embryo adoption is a practice that brings willing couples into the personal relationship with “spare” embryos that makes their plight an emotional reality.

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WORLD on the Web interviews Dinesh D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About Christianity.

WORLD on the Web: You call your new book the first comprehensive answer to people such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Did you draw from many Christian apologists, past and present, when researching, and if so, which ones?

D’Souza: Not particularly. There are some good apologists out there, but they tend to inhabit the church subculture. What I mean is that you’ve got guys like Lee Strobel and Ravi Zacharias. But have you seen Ravi Zacharias on Larry King? Have you seen them debate the leading atheists? I want to emulate C.S. Lewis: someone who has good academic credentials but writes for a mainstream audience.

WoW: Do you think What’s So Great About Christianity will have the effect of Lewis’ Mere Christianity for the 21st century?

It’s certainly written with that intention. I’m trying not only to inspire Christians but to engage the seeker. I love the idea of raising the difficult questions; not just refuting someone by saying, “you’re wrong because …” but also saying, “is it true that you believe…” Let’s be skeptical together … the Socratic approach.

WoW: You devote a lot of your time in the book to Darwinism and its effect on society. What is your opinion of forms of theistic evolution?

My main thought is that whatever you think about the subject, Christians should not feel that their faith is at stake. Christians are very defensive when it comes to the universe. We live in a designed universe, and it doesn’t really matter whether the dog and the wolf share a common ancestor.

WoW: You say that Christianity is growing and flourishing in the rural areas of America and in second- and third-world countries. What do you think is the future of cities like New York and Los Angeles?

I think that urban life is built on distraction. It tends to be a little bit hostile to traditional religious morality. However, as people enjoy the benefits of modernity, education, the cities, the thought that pops into the mind is, “is this all there is?” The feeling itself is a product of modernity. A lot of academics have thought that as a society becomes more modern, religion will wane. Just the opposite; (seeking) starts out with a real interest and a desire to know more. The real enemy of religion is not the atheist, but the one who is indifferent.

WoW: If there’s one aspect of the culture that you could see transformed or revived, what would you want that to be and why?

If I could transform one institution, I would probably start with education and schools.

WoW: What are some specific ways that you feel Christians have become apathetic or fallen short of their callings in recent times?

The Bible calls on all of us to be missionaries, contenders for the faith. Many Christians don’t have the right secular language to do that. If you’re talking to an atheist, he’s going to say, “I don’t care what the Bible says.” The point of reason is to remove the obstacles to faith. For many people, reason is a block. I’m not advocating reason as a substitute for faith, but as a prelude or preamble to faith.

WoW: What can the church be doing to transform the culture?

I would like to see the church be more explicit in providing debate and apologetics training. This wuld prepare people to not only be better Christians in the church, but also better Christians in the world. The church should train Christians to present their views in a secular culture.

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A reader asks: “I’m trying to get started as a novelist. Could you recommend something about fiction writing by a Christian writer?” Easy answer: Read Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners, available in paperback (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), an exceptionally clear book that reads almost as if the author were answering questions.

O’Connor wrote two novels—Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960)—and 31 published stories before dying in 1964 at age 39 of complications from lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. Had she lived she would now be 82 and WORLD would want to interview her. So let’s do it anyway, using Mystery and Manners.

O’Connor wrote two novels—Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960)—and 31 published stories before dying in 1964 at age 39 of complications from lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. Had she lived she would now be 82 and WORLD would want to interview her. So let’s do it anyway, using Mystery and Manners.

All the words of the answers are O’Connor’s own, with the exception of a few connecting and explanatory words in brackets. Readers will see that she was acerbic toward what passed as “religious fiction,” but Christian novel-writing has changed over the decades, so her critique from over 40 years ago should not necessarily be applied to current efforts.

WORLD: What’s the difference between a Christian novelist and a naturalistic (or materialistic) one?

O’CONNOR: The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn’t mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.

WORLD: Do you think some Christian writers are willing to do a slapdash portrayal of the natural because they want to emphasize the crucial evangelistic message?

O’CONNOR: Fiction operates through the senses. . . . No reader who doesn’t actually experience, who isn’t made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him.

WORLD: Why do you call lots of religious novels “sorry”?

O’CONNOR: The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns . . . by beginning with Christian principles and finding the life that will illustrate them. . . . The result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous.

WORLD: Some Christians object to showing evil and violence on the grounds that the good must be emphasized because the good is the ultimate reality?

O’CONNOR: The ultimate reality has been weakened in human beings as a result of the Fall, and it is this weakened life that we see.

WORLD: Some of our readers who don’t like writing about adultery or murder quote the admonition in Philippians 4 to think about what is good. Should novelists avert their eyes from what is bad?

O’CONNOR: The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. . . . What he sees at all times is fallen man perverted by false philosophies. Is he to reproduce this? Or is he to change what he sees and make it, instead of what it is, what in the light of faith he thinks it ought to be . . . to ‘tidy up reality’?

WORLD: I think I know how you answer those questions . . .

O’CONNOR: [The Christian fiction writer] is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create a new universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exactly what he sees. He feels no need to apologize for the ways of God to man or to avoid looking at the ways of man to God. For him, to ‘tidy up reality’ is certainly to succumb to the sin of pride.

WORLD: Is tidied-up writing also weak writing?

O’CONNOR: The fiction writer has to make a whole world believable by making every part and aspect of it believable. [He has to be concerned] with the evil, and not only with the evil, but also with that aspect which appears neither good nor evil, which is not yet Christianized.

WORLD: But there are dangers in this.

O’CONNOR: It is very possible that what is vision and truth to the writer is temptation and sin to the reader. There is every danger that in writing what he sees, the novelist will be corrupting some ‘little one,’ and better a millstone were tied around his neck. . . . This is no superficial problem, [but] to force this kind of total responsibility on the novelist is to burden him with the business that belongs only to God.

WORLD: So what do good writers do when they see the need to describe but want to minimize the anger of corruption?

O’CONNOR: [The good writer should] take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to the central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses.

WORLD: Should readers have obligations as well?

O’CONNOR: [Some readers] open a novel and, discovering the presence of an arm or a leg, piously close the book. We are always demanding that the writer be less explicit in regard to natural matters or the concrete particulars of sin. [Such readers] are over-conscious of what they consider to be obscenity in modern fiction for the very simple reason that in reading a book, they have nothing else to look for. They are totally unconscious of the design, the tone, the intention, the meaning, or even the truth of what they have in hand. They don’t see the book in a perspective that would reduce every part of it to its proper place in the whole.

WORLD: Where do beginning writers often go wrong?

O’CONNOR: [They] are apt to be reformers and to want to write because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth.

WORLD: You emphasize that “in most good stories it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story.” Where do beginning writers often fall short?

O’CONNOR: [Some] don’t go very far inside a character, don’t reveal very much of the character. I don’t mean that they don’t enter the character’s mind, but they simply don’t show that he has a personality. . . . In most of these stories, I feel that the writer has thought of some action and then scrounged up a character to perform it.

WORLD: Are you overly hard on some Christian writers? Can’t even poorly written religious novels with pious characters be edifying?

O’CONNOR: Poorly written novels —no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters —are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

WORLD: But can’t God use them for good?

O’CONNOR: We have plenty of examples in this world of poor things being used for good purposes. God can make any indifferent thing, as well as evil itself, an instrument for good; but I submit that to do this is the business of God and not of any human being.

(This interview first appeared in the <a href=http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13099 >June 30, 2007</a> issue of World Magazine.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.— John Kennedy in 1960 and John Kerry in 2004 both pledged not to let their Catholic standing affect their policy decisions. Reporters this year are pushing Mitt Romney regarding his Mormon beliefs. But Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor who now seeks the GOP presidential nomination, says he is “appalled” when candidates separate their religion from their policy positions.

“At the heart of my governing is my faith,” Huckabee told WORLD on Jan. 26, the morning before he announced on Meet the Press that he was setting up a committee for a run to the White House. And what of those who say beliefs do not affect governing? “That says to me a person’s faith is so inconsequential that [he] can marginalize and compartmentalize it.”

Huckabee has not compartmentalized. Now 51 years old, he graduated from Ouachita Baptist University, pastored two churches in Arkansas, became president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and governed his state for 10 years beginning in 1996. He said during our interview three blocks from the White House that moving from pastor to politician was the “easiest transition possible.” He even rolled through the similarities in four-point alliteration usable in a sermon outline: “It all starts with message . . . you have to motivate people . . . use all kinds of media . . . and it takes money.”

National reporters have largely refrained from zeroing in on Huckabee’s theology so far, but he has received hefty publicity for becoming born-again physically. Diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2003 and told his abundant heft threatened his heart, Huckabee lost 110 pounds and became so fit that he ran and completed the Little Rock, Marine Corps, and New York Marathons in 2005 and 2006. His own story is now part of his political pitch: Individuals can eat less, exercise more, and in the process reduce health-care costs that are threatening personal and national budgets.

But the tools of his governing style, Huckabee says, never were a knife and a fork. They were and are the words of Jesus: “I govern with two pillars: ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’ and ‘as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Politicians often quote such gospel words but rarely apply them. Huckabee, asked to apply these principles to three of the most divisive issues of the day, offered pointed parables:

On immigration, he told how he had just flown to Washington from the Little Rock airport where the security guards know who he is—but he still had to take the coins from his pocket and the shoes from his feet “as if I was wearing a turban on my head and went by the name of Abdul.” Huckabee said he and other Americans don’t object to that process, and they want immigrants to be required also to enter through an orderly process rather than a porous border: That’s why a border barrier is essential. When that’s in place a reasoned debate about entry can begin, because it’s clear that we “only have so many seats on the airplane.”

Huckabee wants those already in the United States illegally to go through a process that provides opportunity but also contains some sort of penalty for illegal activity: His religious analogy is that “one needs to confess his sin, repent, and make restitution.” He said he supports something like the guest worker system President Bush has proposed, but he’s wary of the guest worker term because people are equating it with an amnesty for illegals, and “I’m not for amnesty.”

On foreign affairs, he told a folksy story about how every neighborhood has a kid who’s the strongest, the fastest, the best—but if he acts like he knows it, he reminds others of what they aren’t, and they long for the day when he fails. If that kid, though, pats others on the back and doesn’t lord it over them, “everyone in the neighborhood loves that kid.” Huckabee’s point again is “do unto others . . . humility goes a long way. The stronger a person or a country is, the more care needs to be taken.” It’s “critically important never to humiliate someone else,” but other countries now see the United States as the arrogant big kid.

That can readily sound like Peanuts foreign policy, but Huckabee went on to speak about the need to involve in an Iraq settlement predominantly Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt with a vested interest in the region’s stability. He emphasized the need for realism that sometimes forces the United States to work with the unsavory: “Russia was not our natural ally during World War II, but better to have them on our side than on the enemy’s.” He was also emphatic in his support for Israel on public policy rather than eschatological grounds: “Israel is our most significant ally in the Middle East . . . [with a] shared sense of democracy.”

On abortion, Huckabee is on the record as wanting Roe v. Wade to be overturned, but he also talked about a three-part process by which public views on smoking, littering, drunk driving, and wearing seat belts have changed. First is attitudinal change, when a previously accepted activity gradually is seen as undesirable. Second is a change in atmosphere—for example, people cast angry stares at someone who litters. Third is the “action phase” when government codifies what already has occurred socially.

Huckabee spoke of abortion proceeding down that path to infrequency, with pro-lifers fighting the evil but also showing the belief that “life begins at conception and it does not end at birth.” He stated that “we can’t call ourselves pro-lifers if we’re unconcerned with education,” so he has “total support for giving parents the empowerment to make decisions for their kids.” He’s skittish about the word vouchers, preferring school choice, and speaks of “kid-focused” rather than “school-focused” education. He asks about any proposed option, “Does it truly empower the parent to make a choice?”

Huckabee will need to show that he has substance on immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and other tough issues, because he’ll do fine in the Charm Derby, as did one of his predecessors, Bill Clinton. Many observers already have noticed the similarities: Both are from Hope, Ark.; both are past Boy’s State members who went on to chair the National Governors Association; both are musically inclined, with Clinton offering glissandos and growls on the saxophone and Huckabee playing bass guitar in the band Capitol Offense; both are Southern Baptists (with strikingly different theologies).

Their biggest commonality is their humble origin, which leads Huckabee to say of his background, “Some of us know what it’s like to start at the bottom of the ladder.” He readily describes the sins of economic and political elites: “the greed of Wall Street, the corruption of K Street.” He talks about what America means for those like himself who grew up where there “wasn’t a lot of money, wasn’t a lot of pedigree”—but instead of descending into class warfare, Huckabee finishes his populist pitch by saying “where you finish is up to you.”

Huckabee is also the anti-Clinton in that reporters feel no need to do a bimbo watch with him: Huckabee and his wife Janet apparently have a strong marriage. State-level criticism of the Huckabees peaked in 2002 when Mrs. Huckabee unsuccessfully ran for the position of Arkansas secretary of state: one couple, two state offices? Huckabee also garnered criticism for supporting the parole eligibility of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who after his release sexually assaulted and murdered a Missouri woman. A teapot tempest arose last November concerning gifts the Huckabees received in connection with a housewarming for a $525,000 home they purchased in Little Rock.

The national opposition cuts deeper. The anti-tax CATO Institute gave Huckabee an “F” for spending and tax policy in 2006. He responded, “I give them an F for their research: [Cato] hit me on spending” such as court-ordered educational funding. But another free enterprise think tank, the Club for Growth, also dinged him as a “tax hiker” for, among other things, raising gas taxes. Huckabee says he did it to make desperately needed highway improvements that 80 percent of Arkansans demanded.

That populist impulse could make or break the Huckabee candidacy. He has stepped outside of standard conservatism enough for Time magazine to name him one of America’s “top five governors” and for Washington Post liberal columnist E.J. Dionne to praise him. Yet Huckabee also emphasizes his compassionate conservatism by noting that after Hurricane Katrina hit neighboring Louisiana “we didn’t wait for FEMA” but welcomed evacuees and “provided what government can’t give, dignity and respect. We called them by name, looked in their eyes.”

He has won praise for starting Smart Start and Smart Step, intensive math and reading programs for K-8 students, and ARKids First, a health insurance program for low-income and minority families that helped to cut in half the state’s welfare rolls. But he has garnered liberal criticism for saying that students “should be given exposure to the theories not only of evolution but to . . . creationism.”

Christian conservatives generally say that Huckabee would be excellent on crucial issues such as marriage, abortion, and support for effective compassion both at home and in Africa. But his most important selling point may be his ability to turn treacherous questions into cheerful riffs on popular programs like The Daily Show. Last month host Jon Stewart told him, “You are a self-described conservative, evangelical Republican. Those strike fear into the heart of the blue state foundation.” Huckabee responded with classic stereotype-affirming-while-countering “buts”: “I’m a conservative, but I’m not mad at everybody. . . . I’m pro-life, but we have to be concerned . . . about a child’s entire life.”

Stewart has humiliated humorless conservatives yet Huckabee matched him yuk for yuk, even saying that if he had worked in partisan ways with an overwhelming Democratic legislature, “we couldn’t have passed gas in the House chamber.” Stewart, who lunches on double-entendres, said in his overly solemn, self-mocking way, “I don’t care for that type of humor,” and Huckabee responded with a grin, “I noticed.” By the end of the interview Stewart was (and perhaps some moderate and younger voters were) practically eating out of the pastor-governor’s hand.

Huckabee is far behind better-known Republican contenders—John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney—in the money race, but he insists that “the message has to come before money”—and his message is that “America needs to revive its national optimism.” Huckabee is patriotic in his populism: “Thank God we’re in a country that people are trying to break into rather than break out of.” He is strong in explaining the need to fight terrorists: “We in this country celebrate life. They celebrate the deaths of their own children. . . . This war cannot be lost. . . . They’re not interested in the decline of America . . . they want our deaths.” He sounds Reaganesque themes: “Our best days are not behind us. They’re still ahead.”

He’s a long shot, but don’t count him out. He’ll be fighting for the conservative Republican vote against another attractive candidate, Sen. Sam Brownback (”Cellblock campaign,” Dec. 23, 2006), and others. And if Huckabee falls short in his presidential quest, he could serve as a ticket balancer on a slate headed by, say, a Giuliani.

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Zev Chafets, born and raised in Michigan, moved to Israel in 1967 and became director of Israel’s Government Press Office, then returned to the United States in 2000. He is the author of A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (HarperCollins, 2007).

Although he is an agnostic, Chafets told the Los Angeles Times recently that in the war against terror, “I’d rather be in a bomb shelter—or a foxhole—with Jerry Falwell than with Jerry Seinfeld.” With the death of one of Israel’s major Christian backers, how is the Israel-evangelical relationship likely to develop in the post-Falwell era?

WORLD: I’ve met your wife Lisa Beyer, a non-Jewish Time editor who was the chief of that magazine’s Jerusalem Bureau, so I have a sense of why you’d want to explore an alliance that you call (in your new book’s subtitle) the “weird and wonderful” Jewish-Protestant alliance. Could you explain a bit about your background?

CHAFETS: There weren’t many Jews where I grew up. I took it for granted that America was a Christian country; certainly in its culture, history, and general outlook. I was fascinated by Christians, especially “exotic” types (the Reform temple I was raised in wasn’t very different from mainline Protestant churches). When I was in college, I spent my junior year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and I discovered I liked being in the majority. It was liberating; Israel is the only country in the world where Jews can be gentiles. I worked for Prime Minister Menachem Begin near the start of the evangelical-Israeli relationship. I never felt threatened by it—on the contrary, I very much appreciated the support. After more than 30 years in Israel, I returned to the United States with my wife, Lisa. Back among liberal American Jews, I was shocked by how deeply they disapproved of evangelical Christians, especially George W. Bush. Their bigotry made me curious; I wanted to see for myself.

WORLD: I like your description of going to Lisa’s home town, Lafayette, La., and meeting her born-again father: “As we settled down in his living room I pointed to a picture of the Western Wall in Jerusalem . . .” What’s the rest of the story?

CHAFETS: Lisa’s dad didn’t know she and I were thinking about getting married. In fact, this meeting was designed to break the news. So, looking for some common ground, I pointed to the picture and said, “Jerusalem. That’s my home town.” Lisa’s dad said, “Am I right in thinking you’re a Jewish fella?” I paused a second, thinking about all the movies I had seen in which evangelical Southerners are xenophobes and Jew-haters. Finally I said, “Yes sir, I’m Jewish.” He looked at me and said. “It is my belief that the Jewish people are God’s chosen people.”
And I replied: “In that case, I’ve got some good news for you about your future grandchildren.”

WORLD: The historical background you provide is fascinating: You contend that “a lot of evangelicals were more clear-sighted” than “mainstream Jewish leaders” in 1939 concerning the need for “the U.S. government to take special measures to save the Jews of Europe.” How so?

CHAFETS: Some evangelical Christians saw Hitler very clearly as a manifestation of evil, and understood that he intended to murder the Jews of Europe. Articles predicting this appeared in evangelical magazines, and there were some efforts to mobilize on behalf of the Jews. Not all evangelicals were engaged in this way. But they stand out because of the deep denial of the Jewish intelligentsia and the Jewish community. The New York Times, owned by the German Jewish Sulzberger family, made a conscious editorial decision to play down the “Jewish” aspect of Hitler’s regime, and barely mentioned the Holocaust during World War II. Most “leaders” of the Jewish community also stayed silent; they didn’t want to rock the boat, or to embarrass President Roosevelt, whom they overwhelmingly supported.

WORLD: You note that “in the real world, Muslim fascists, not evangelical Christians, are the enemy” of Jews. You also point out that Israelis generally are happy for evangelical support, but many American Jews would rather “go it alone” than rely on conservative Christians. Why, and what are some of the consequences of that thinking?

CHAFETS: Israelis, both on the Jewish right and the secular left, are overwhelmingly happy to have evangelical support. Much of the world—for reasons of Islamic solidarity, traditional European dislike of Jews, or “progressive” political correctness— is hostile to Israel. Nowhere is that clearer than in the UN, which is obsessed with the crimes—real and imagined—of the Jewish state. Evangelical Zionists are unconditional allies. They aren’t vulnerable to charges, often made against American Jewish Zionists (especially “neo-cons”), of “dual loyalty.” Many support Israel because they feel God commands it. They will support Israel until the End of Time. You’d have to be nuts not to welcome wartime allies like that.

WORLD: Why do American Jews generally “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans,” and why is George W. Bush—despite his strong support for Israel—so unpopular among American Jews?

CHAFETS: American Jews arrived as socialists; Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate, won a plurality of the Jewish vote in 1920. FDR was the first American president to welcome Jews into his inner circle, and made Jews members in good standing of the Democratic coalition. This kind of inclusion, especially in the ’30s, an era of anti-Semitism in America, was a great relief to Jews. Starting in the ’60s, barriers fell for Jews in America. Before that, there were restrictive quotas in Ivy League schools and many industries and institutions. Baby boom Jews grabbed their chance to join the elite and made the most of it. A lot of boomers, whose greatest lifetime achievement was getting into Yale or Harvard, feel mocked by Bush’s rejection of the Ivy League dream.

WORLD: I can understand that. He’s saying that Ivy League folks aren’t so smart, at a time when Jews are taking leadership positions in what was a Protestant stronghold. And then there’s Texas . . .

CHAFETS: A lot of Jews don’t like Bush’s macho Texas style. But the main thing is, Bush is a Republican and American Jews are, overwhelmingly, Democrats. The ideology and attitudes of the party are shaped primarily by Jews. They took Bush’s defeat of Gore and Kerry as a rejection of “Jewish” (i.e., liberal) values.

WORLD: The relationship of African-Americans and Jews has been close but sometimes difficult. Regarding support of Jewish causes, how did the attitudes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson differ?

CHAFETS: Martin Luther King was a Zionist for reasons of morality and pragmatism. In the post-Holocaust, pre-Six Day War period, King—like many liberal Christians—understood the justice of allowing Jews self-determination and a safe haven. But King also understood that northern Jews were the most reliable white allies he had in the civil-rights movement. Jews moved the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in King’s direction. They contributed a great deal of money and manpower to the cause. Some studies say that more than half of all the white freedom riders and civil-rights volunteers in the segregated South were Jews. King was a great coalition-builder, and support for Israel was an obvious means of coalition-building with the Jewish community.
Jesse Jackson belongs to a different era. He rose to prominence in a period of black power, in which Jews weren’t especially welcomed in the ranks of the black struggle. He is a believer in “liberation theology,” which tends to see Israel as a white, colonialist country. Jackson, more than any single figure except, perhaps, Louis Farrakhan, has hurt Israel’s image in the black community—and the black community’s relations with American Jews.

WORLD: You did an interview earlier this year with Terry Gross of NPR; she seemed shocked that you had kind things to say about people who believe in the Second Coming and oppose homosexuality. Do you get that reaction a lot from liberals, and how do you respond?

CHAFETS: Sure, I get it all the time. I tell them that I am a social liberal myself; I disagree with a lot of the domestic evangelical (and Orthodox Jewish) social agenda. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t cooperate on common issues—especially in wartime. The same people who can’t imagine making a pro-Israel alliance with Falwell against Ahmadinejad were glad to join hands with Stalin to defeat Hitler. I don’t think Jews need to become Christians, or even Republicans. They (we) simply have to stop being so hostile, superior, and harsh to people who are extending a hand of friendship. A lot of Jews don’t know that Jews, too, can be bigots.

WORLD: What would you recommend to evangelicals who want to discuss religious questions with Jews?

CHAFETS: Evangelicals have tried, from time to time, to save me. Frankly, I appreciate the effort—I wouldn’t want to belong to the only category of nonbelievers who don’t merit a shot at salvation. Here’s a confession: I like going to church, especially black gospel churches. There’s a good feeling there, the music is great, and you meet nice people. For me it’s like visiting a very cool foreign country. But I have never been tempted to become a Christian. It seems to me that a lot of Jews who feel threatened by proselytizers are really unsure of their own identity and beliefs—their own essential Jewishness.

WORLD: You’ve written five non-fiction books but also five novels. How for you is the writing of fiction different from the writing of nonfiction—and if readers want to sample your novel-writing, which book do you recommend as a starting point?

CHAFETS: Writing fiction is less work and more fun. I once wrote an entire novel that took place in Michigan while sitting in my study in Tel Aviv. I think your readers might like The Project and Hang Time, both of which have a connection to evangelical Christianity and Islamic radicalism. Warning: They are ironic and impious. Novel writing has shaken my own agnosticism. When you make up a story you are creating a world, breathing life into people, watching them grow from afar, occasionally intervening. I once killed a character, changed my mind and brought him back to life. It’s hard not to believe in God when you’ve had the opportunity to play God.
A taste of Israeli thinking. The two novels of his that Chafets recommends, The Project and Hang Time, are indeed ironic and impious, but they will also give readers a taste of Israeli thinking that’s harder to get from either official pronouncements or standard journalistic accounts. The Project, a Chafets novel that came out a decade ago, is set in the year 2000, when accidental deaths of the president and vice president make Speaker of the House Dewey Goldberg America’s first Jewish president. Goldberg, a Democrat, is nominated by his party for election to a full term, but Israel’s prime minister is supporting a conservative Republican who also has backing from a Pentecostal preacher with a huge following that expects Armageddon in 2001.

It turns out that the Israeli leader, with the support of the Republican candidate and the reverend, is preparing to take out Iran’s nuclear sites as well as other enemy bases—and less hawkish Israelis, along with Goldberg and an influential journalist, are out to stop the risky effort. The plot, along with witty comments on subjects ranging from American politics to gefilte fish, will pull many readers along.

So will the plot of Hang Time, published in 1996: It has less politics but more action than The Project (and also some trash-talking basketball obscenities). In it a Muslim physician-terrorist goes up against an American president who sees glory and political gain in hawkishness: Neither blinks as violence escalates. We come to care about three men: a Detroit Pistons forward-turned-hostage; his big brother (a former tough cop) who pledges to rescue him despite the willingness of Israeli and American leaders to let him die; and the son of the terrorist, torn between hatred of America and love of American basketball.

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J.B. Cheaney, who writes frequently in the pages of WORLD, also writes books for children. In her most recent novel, The Middle of Somewhere, a precocious 12-year-old girl and her hyperactive little brother set out on a road trip through Kansas in a brand new RV with their reluctant, wind-prospecting grandfather. Veronica (Ronnie) hopes the trip will usher in a new, more exciting chapter in her life, but she finds that keeping her rambunctious brother from driving their grumpy granddad nuts takes all her energy and creativity. The result: unexpected lessons.

N.D. Wilson, son of pastor Doug Wilson, also writes novels for young readers. In his new novel, Leepike Ridge, 11-year-old Tom floats down a river on a piece of foam from a refrigerator box. When a part of the river flows underground, it carries Tom with it. Above ground, his widowed mother won’t give up hope that he’s still alive, even in the face of creepy suitors and treasure hunters who try to convince her otherwise. Meanwhile, Tom needs courage, optimism, and ingenuity to survive in a spooky underworld.

WORLD: You two seem to have a lot of things in common. For instance, you both use initials instead of first names. Why?

CHEANEY: If your name were Janie Cheaney, wouldn’t you think that J.B. sounds more . . . professional?

WILSON: From elementary school on, my favorite authors all wrote under initials—C.S. Lewis, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton. Very early on, I decided that when I was published, I wanted to use initials as a sort of hat-tip, an acknowledgment of my sources (and my debt to them).

WORLD: You’re also both Christians who write fiction. How do those two parts of your identity fit together?

WILSON: They can’t be separated. Christianity is a story, the arc of reality. Good stories aren’t made up, they’re found, discovered from elements already in the world (fall, redemption, triumph through death and sacrifice, etc.) and rewoven back into a convincing sub-reality. Leepike Ridge is entirely built around those themes.

CHEANEY: The author emerges from the Christian: We all have our calling. Once I’m well into a work of fiction, the Christian emerges from the author. I don’t know the theme of the story when I start writing it, but theme will eventually reveal itself, and reflect some part of Christian truth. For instance, one of the characters in The Middle of Somewhere is a wind prospector. As I wrote, wind became a recurring image of the book, culminating in an actual reference to John 3:8.

WORLD: You both write about characters whose dads have died. Why?

CHEANEY: In real life, good parents help kids solve their problems, which is as it should be. But in literature, the kids have to solve their own problems as much as possible. Adults can help, but to have mom or dad step in and fix it is the equivalent of a deus ex machina. Unless their intervention is part of the problem. In all my novels so far, the father is either dead or absent. The significance being . . . search me.

WILSON: Fatherlessness or father-hunger (through any number of causes) is a very real and very relatable thing for any number of kids today. A lot of them struggle with variations of that lack themselves. In Leepike Ridge, the absence of my character’s father drives him to do more than just survive, or defeat the villains. He struggles to fill that father-shaped void in his own life, and come into his own.

WORLD: What kind of child are you writing for?

CHEANEY: I think every children’s author writes for the child in himself.

WILSON: Those who are eager to see magic in the world around them. Or those who aren’t. I hope I’m writing for every kind of kid, even those Peter Pans out there who might have kids or grandkids of their own, but have managed to keep their imaginations young.

WORLD: What kinds of books did you like to read as kids? If you were still a kid, why would you want to read your book?

WILSON: I read anything that could grip, that presented me with believable, motivated characters and surprised me with tension that made me itch. As to reading my own book, well, I wrote it because it gripped me, because I had a character in my head dragged down into caves, grappling with death. I needed to get him out, so I kept filling pages. A younger me would keep turning pages for the same reason.

CHEANEY: I loved biography, historical and realistic fiction, fairy tales. Since my books are all realistic and historical (except the last one, which isn’t historical—whether it’s realistic or not is up to the reader), I would have gobbled them up as a kid.

WORLD: Describe your writing process?

CHEANEY: I start with a setting (time and place), a handful of characters, and a very vague idea of where I want to end up. The first draft is excruciating; it’s like bulldozing a field of rocks uphill. Once the story is in place, I can look back and see a loamy plowed slope, ready to revise. Oh, joy! It’s all downhill from there.

WILSON: I have an idea. I chew on it a lot (picture a cow with its cud), mentally changing action or characters, flavor or setting. Then I mess around with a first chapter, trying to match what’s in my head. Once that feels right, writing becomes a sprint. I start pounding, usually at night, until I have scratched my own itchy story-grip and a first draft is born. Then the grind begins—editing, slashing, burning, reworking.

WORLD: Kids always ask me how I get my ideas. So what inspired your stories?

CHEANEY: I like to say that I don’t get ideas; ideas get me. Which is a cute turn of phrase, but also mostly true.

WILSON: They start with anything—a phrase, a character, a texture. The opening line for Leepike came while I was brushing my teeth. I wrote it down and it brought a paragraph along to keep it company. And then a page. And then a chapter. The content is often shaped by reading I did as a kid. I really enjoy borrowing (stealing) from the classics. The Odyssey and Tom Sawyer both contributed heavily to Leepike.

WORLD: What’s the most frustrating thing about being a writer?

WILSON: Not being able to turn the page to find out what happens next. That and the long wait between finishing the book and having it hit shelves.

CHEANEY: Once that idea gets me, I have to decide what to do with it. This world just teems with plot elements, characters, and themes; I’m terrified I’ll pick the wrong ones, or head off in the wrong direction. My five unpublished manuscripts testify that this is no idle fear.

WORLD: What about writing brings you the most satisfaction?

CHEANEY: The final page.

WILSON: I think the best part is watching readers fall in love with characters and then take them away from me, making them part of their own imaginations. Once the book is out there, I have no ownership. The characters are wandering around in the minds of readers and I get left behind. I love that.

WORLD: If you had to give one piece of advice to an aspiring writer, what would it be?

CHEANEY: Writers tend to be passive observers, so take advantage of that rather unappealing trait. Look around you. Take notes. Incorporate real people, real details, real stuff into your stories. I tell conference attendees that they can’t improve on God. His teeming creation, that frustrates and delights me so much, far exceeds anything I could make up.

WILSON: How about one package of advice? Love words. Love people and life. Read. Write (you’d think that would be obvious, but it’s not). Copy what you see. And remember that it’s not about you. You’re trying to make something for other people to taste and own and enjoy. It’s like cooking for a crowd.

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