Watch and listen to it all.

The United States Department of State designated North Korea in 2019 as one of the world’s worst perpetrators of human trafficking for the nineteenth consecutive year. Those who desire to escape from forced labor and human trafficking in North Korea mostly head to China.

When they flee North Korea, they have high hopes to reach freedom only to be captured by human traffickers who lie in wait, in some cases right across the border. An estimated 74.6 percent of North Korean defectors become victims of human trafficking in China.

The situation is worse for female defectors, who are a majority of the defector population in South Korea and China. After getting married, North Korean women are usually not required to work in formal government-mandated employment, which makes running away easier. Consequently, more women than men defect and are subsequently trafficked.

China’s flourishing sex trade is a major reason why women fall prey to trafficking.

Read it all.

Deceived and Sold: How China Treats North Korean Female Defectors https://t.co/LeutvmEpOP via @ProvMagazine @EugeneK83804531

— Jihoon Lim (@JihoonLim1) October 2, 2019

Over the course of the nation’s history, there has been a slow but steady decrease in the size of the average U.S. household – from 5.79 people per household in 1790 to 2.58 in 2010. But this decade will likely be the first since the one that began in 1850 to break this long-running trend, according to newly released Census Bureau data. In 2018 there were 2.63 people per household.

Households are increasing in size mathematically because the growth in the number of households is trailing population growth. The newly released data indicates that the population residing in households has grown 6% since 2010 (the smallest population growth since the 1930s), while the number of households has grown at a slower rate (4%, from 116.7 million in 2010 to 121.5 million in 2018).

The increase in household size is significant because it could have implications for national economic growth. Rising household size reduces the demand for housing, resulting in less residential construction and less demand for home appliances and furniture. In general, it leads to a less vigorous housing sector – fewer apartment leases and home purchases, as well as less spending related to housing, such as cable company subscriptions and home accessories suppliers.

Read it all.

NEW: Household size is increasing in the U.S. for the first time in more than 160 years – a development that could have implications for national economic growth. https://t.co/kSyvXdAX5q

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) October 1, 2019

Lyrics:

1. Hallelujah, praise Jehovah,
O my soul, Jehovah praise;
I will sing the glorious praises
Of my God through all my days.
Put no confidence in princes,
Nor for help on man depend;
He shall die, to dust returning,
And his purposes shall end.

2. Happy is the man that chooses
Israel’s God to be his aid;
He is blest whose hope of blessing
On the Lord his God is stayed.
Heaven and earth the Lord created,
Seas and all that they contain;
He delivers from oppression,
Righteousness He will maintain.

3. Food He daily gives the hungry,
Sets the mourning prisoner free,
Raises those bowed down with anguish,
Makes the sightless eyes to see,
Well Jehovah loves the righteous,
And the stranger He befriends,
Helps the fatherless and widow,
Judgment on the wicked sends.

4. Hallelujah, praise Jehovah,
O my soul, Jehovah praise;
I will sing the glorious praises
Of my God through all my days.
Over all God reigns forever,
Through all ages He is King;
Unto Him, thy God, O Zion,
Joyful hallelujahs sing.

The book’s subtitle indicates more specifically the terrain that is being explored here: Evil and the devil in liturgy. But this is far from a book for liturgy geeks: its thorough analysis and conclusions would repay the attention of all engaged in preparing candidates for baptism and confirmation, and in ministry to the sick and to those who are overwhelmed with a sense of gnawing negativity.

Tom Clammer is to be congratulated on recasting thesis into a book that maintains scholarly rigour and yet is both readable and engaging. There are eight chapters divided into three parts. The first part lays the groundwork and methodology; the second deals with the scriptural and liturgical texts authorised by the Church of England for Christian initiation, healing, and wholeness, and deliverance. The third sets out extensive conclusions that marshal the deficiencies and inconsistencies in the way in which the Church of England presents its understanding of sin and evil in its historic formularies, and authorised worship texts and lectionary provision.

Read it all.

Book review: Fight Valiantly: Evil and the devil in liturgy, by Tom Clammer

“Tom Clammer is to be congratulated on recasting thesis into a book that maintains scholarly rigour and yet is both readable and engaging.”https://t.co/W21WirmVNF

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 2, 2019

In recent years, the doctrine of total depravity has caught my imagination. It’s the first tenet of the notorious “TULIP” acronym, which came into popular use among Calvinists around the time of my great-grandfather’s retirement as a way to summarize the five main points of the faith. If you’ve never heard the term before, “total depravity” might sound like a joke or the name of a high school metal band. It is, in fact, an astoundingly dire theology. Total depravity frames humans not as good people who sometimes mess up but as messed-up people who, with God’s help, can do some good things—but nothing completely free of selfishness or error. We are unable to make a choice that is unquestionably, entirely good. None of our actions, loves, or thoughts can be truly without sin.

I find a surprising grace in the bleak, unflinching outlook of my Calvinist heritage. Total depravity matches the sin-sized hole in my belly in a way that “all people are basically good” never could. Of course the world is full of evil and suffering. Of course people are unjust and cruel to one another. Of course I feel like a completely inadequate Christian. Of course it’s hard to avoid living as a complicit consumer, pollution enabler, and ineffective activist. Of course I feel paralyzed by despair. It’s because of total depravity.

Total depravity speaks to sin in our personal lives. More importantly for me, it also gives theological definition to corporate and societal sins. It’s not just that I am unable to love everyone I meet or to live a life that is plastics-free. I have also found it impossible to untangle my individual life from systems of injustice—institutionalized racism, pollution of the air and land and water, cheap clothing and food supplies that depend on the exploitation of laborers, banks and corporations that bend the economy toward their profit. A contemporary Episcopal prayer of confession includes this line: “We repent of . . . the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” There is a lot of suffering and a lot of evil in this world, and I find I cannot consider myself entirely innocent of it.

Read it all.

“I have not felt theologically equipped to handle the enormous weight of evil I see in the world. After all, I was raised to believe humans are capable of stopping it.” From @HeidiHaverkamp. https://t.co/wf380e7VDx

— theChristianCentury (@ChristianCent) October 2, 2019

O God, who hast given us the good news in thy Son Jesus Christ: So fill our hearts with thankfulness, that we may tell abroad the glad tidings which we have received; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him.

–1 Corinthians 8:2-3