Islamophobia by the numbers

by Steve Thorngate

According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 54 percent of New York State voters agree "that because of American freedom of religion, Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero." That strikes me as a shockingly small minority—almost half don’t feel that “religious freedom” by definition applies to all religions, even when the question’s put that way?—but hey, glad to hear of majority support for basic American principles, right?

Well, not quite. Fifty-three percent of the same group agree that “because of the sensitivities of 9/11 relatives, Muslims should not be allowed to build the mosque near Ground Zero.” So a majority thinks that Muslims have the same rights as everyone else, and a similar majority thinks that in this case, those rights somehow shouldn’t apply. The 7 percent or so who flipped between these two questions are doing some remarkable hairsplitting: it’s not that people don’t have rights, it’s that they don’t have them right now.

That 71 percent agree “that because of the opposition of Ground Zero relatives, the Muslim group should voluntarily build the mosque somewhere else” doesn’t alarm me. I think that people should voluntarily refrain from doing all kinds of things they have every right to do. Most of the time they go ahead and do them. So what?

In other bizarre-Islamophobia-related-statistics news, apparently 24 percent (pdf) of Americans now think the president is a Muslim (yet another way, as Jonathan Zimmerman points out, in which Obama’s presidency recalls Lincoln’s). I’m guessing the first family might soon experience a change of heart about their decision not to join and regularly attend a church.

Legal standing

by David Heim

A fascinating legal question has emerged in the aftermath of Judge Vaughn Walker’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California: Who has standing to appeal the decision? Amy Davidson spells this out in the New Yorker, and this summary from the San Jose Mercury News includes comments from leading scholars on court precedent on the matter.

The question boils down to who can show that they are harmed by gay marriage. It isn’t enough, in other words, just to be a citizen or group of citizens opposed to gay marriage. To have standing in court, you have to be in a position to show how it has caused you actual injury. Can anybody do that?

Perhaps the larger question, only touched on in these stories, is whether it is good for the country, and the cause of gay marriage, for the issue to be settled by the courts rather than legislatures. Are we priming for a culture war like the one prompted by Roe v. Wade? Perhaps not, says Ruth Marcus, in an interesting exchange with Michael Gerson.

Counting the cost

by David Heim

“War is not healthy for children and other living things.” That consciously obvious claim—a favored bumper sticker in the 1960s—came to mind while reading a report in USA Today saying that one in four soldiers at the nation’s largest army post have been in counseling during the past year.

The number would probably be even higher if the mental health services at Fort Hood, Texas, could keep up with all the requests for help. The number of demands overwhelm the counselors—and that’s despite the fact that acknowledging a need for counseling still carries a stigma in the military.

Depression and post-traumatic stress are common problems, especially among those who have gone through several deployments in war zones.

"I don't think we fully understand the total effect of nine years of continuous conflict on a force this size," said Peter Chiarelli, an army chief of staff. Don’t understand that waging war is not healthy for human beings?

Blogging toward Sunday: Fearful and wonderful and ordinary

15th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 18)
Psalm 139

by Patrick J. Willson

Here in Tidewater, Virginia, we make our way from city to city via a series of tunnels. As we approach each tunnel a series of signs warn us: “No HAZMATS” and “HAZMATS must exit here.” Trucks carrying hazardous materials of one sort or another provide a danger anywhere, but in tunnels the risk is magnified.

But although we're aware of hazardous truck cargo, we are usually oblivious to hazardous materials that are traveling through the tunnels of our bodies. Only occasionally do circumstances make us aware of this other threat.

As I stood alongside a hospital bed, a parishioner shyly asked me, “Would be it okay to pray for a bowel movement?” After a horrendous round of surgeries and repairs to surgeries, the bowel had been successfully resectioned, but there had been no evidence of that success. In worship a lay reader invites worshipers to pray together the “prayer for illumination” before reading the scriptures. That sometimes sounds like “prayer for elimination,” which is funny only until you are like this patient, hoping for a return to health.

Is it acceptable to call the attention of the high and holy one to a necessity as ordinary or even profane as defecation? The Lord God had knit together that bowel and the surgeon had sewn it back together, and what was needed that afternoon was the daring to trust in the creator’s continuing interest.

Although the psalter attributes the 139th psalm to David, biblical scholars regard it as an anonymous composition. We may be quite certain, however, that certain people did not write it. It was not that fellow modeling Calvin Klein underwear in the billboard that towers above Times Square, and it was not one of the sprites from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

This psalmist who is “fearfully and wonderfully made” inhabits an ordinary body that is inevitably aging, balding, graying, sagging, sometimes limping, sometimes aching, sometimes desperately ill and almost always healing from some strain or wound. Our quotidian physical existence provides occasion to exult: “I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

St. Augustine shook his head in bewilderment that people “go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.” In our day we delight in and heap praise upon our iPod or iPhone or iPad, and ignore the astonishing person who's pushing the keys. Fascinating as the computer circuitry may be, it is vastly less complex than the mind that conjures the words that express the images that are signified by individual keystrokes.

We human creatures created such tools because we are “fearfully and wonderfully” created.

Patrick J. Willson is pastor of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. Additional lectionary columns by Willson appear in the August 24 issue of the Century—click here to subscribe.

What's a "top college"?

by Steve Thorngate

Maybe it’s because I need easily digestible print reading for my train commute. Maybe it’s my inevitable post-20s loss of hipster cred. Whatever the reason, I seem to be reading a lot less of the humor writing at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and a lot more of Joel Stein’s Time column.

I don’t often agree with Stein’s take on the world, but I enjoy his breezy prose and his punchlines, equal parts smart-aleck and goofball. He took some heat for a July column that came off as xenophobic, but it’s this week’s entry that has me irked. Stein is defending elitism, specifically the Ivy-to-power-elite track that dominates the resumés of most big-time journalists and the people they cover. He begins:

I went to a better college than you did. That does not make me a better person than you. It does, however, make me smarter, more knowledgeable, more curious and more ambitious. So, in a lot of ways, better.

He’s being funny, of course, in an I-actually-mean-this-but-want-to-play-it-as-a-joke kind of way. He goes on to criticize the “cancer” of anti-elitism and the culture’s affection for inclusive mediocrity. Yeah, yeah. We all saw The Incredibles, which at least was more entertaining than Stein at his best, to say nothing of Stein here.

The whole piece is irritating, but I’ll focus on “I went to a better college than you did.” That’s probably true—I liked Wheaton well enough, but unlike some chapel speakers, I’m not eager to argue that it’s superior to Stanford, Stein’s alma mater. But Stein is assuming a lot in that statement, namely that the concept of a “better college” is built around solid evidence and consensus.

He takes this for granted, anticipating many objections to his argument but not this one: our American system of understanding which schools are the best is based largely on two mutually reinforcing factors—the opinions of the elites who go to these schools and the rankings put out by U.S. News & World Report.

U.S. News's main considerations include the assessments of peer administrators, the proportion of applicants accepted, per-student spending and alumni giving rate. If you think this sounds like an easily manipulated formula for self-perpetuating elitism, education expert Kevin Carey agrees.

While Carey and others were writing their white papers, the Washington Monthly began in 2006 publishing an alternative set of annual college rankings—a great example of hybrid advocacy/service journalism. Here are the magazine’s three criteria:

• community service: participation in ROTC, alumni in the Peace Corps, work-study money channeled toward service projects


• research: production of research in the sciences and humanities


• social mobility: the matriculation and graduation of lower-income students

In short, schools are ranked as to how well they promote the common good. The fact that this sounds radical is part of the problem.

WaMo’s new rankings are out, and Stanford ranks fourth among national universities—but it’s the only school to crack each publication’s top five. Yes, Stein went to a great school by any standard; but there are multiple standards with very different aims and results. It’s a shame that for many, “top school” is an uncritical euphemism for “school that trades in carefully preserved elitism.” Good for the Washington Monthly for working to correct this.

On the shelf: Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

by Debra Bendis

“Today, we live with this illusion that we know the world," says William Dalrymple. "The reality, of course, is. . .that there's huge parts of the world which we know absolutely nothing about, particularly in areas of religion and philosophy." For most of us, India is one of those places. With the third largest population in the world, and an economy that’s growing almost as fast as China’s, one can understand why old ways are being snuffed out.

But Dalyrmple sought out “places suspended between modernity and tradition” where religion is in “a state of fascinating and unpredictable flux.”

In villages or small towns, he interviewed people whose religions are expressed in what seem—to Westerners at least—rash, dangerous and peculiar ways. Here are some of the people he found:

• In a lifelong effort to become unencumbered and reach for “liberation,” a 38-year-old Jain monk renounces nearly everything: hair, relationship attachments, meat and all but one meal a day.


• For most of the year, Hari Das is scorned as an untouchable member of the Dalit caste, but for three months every year he dons makeup and heavy headdresses and becomes a respected Hindi theyyam dancer, who performs elaborate dances when he is possessed by the god God Vishnu. For those three months, he is worshiped by Brahmins who scorn him during the rest of the year.


• In the northernmost tip of India, an old Tibetan tells of how he gave up his Buddhist monastic vows to fight the invading Chinese. Overwhelmed by the enemy, he fled to Dharamsala, where he took up his vows and is spending his last days anxiously repenting of his participation in war.

Dalyrmple is a keen observer, reporting on what he’s seen and heard, then adding religious context to help the reader place each person's story into the larger story of India. I was intrigued by these snapshots, even though I realized I'd had only a glimpse of this vast, complex, crowded and enigmatic country.

My Neopagan pen pal

by Bob Cornwall

I thought that interfaith dialogue had its limits—until I started talking with a Wiccan.

For many, paganism generally and Wicca in particular are synonymous with the occult, even Satanism. The presence of Wiccans at the groundbreaking for an interfaith chapel at a Disciples of Christ-related university brought streams of protests and a flurry of questions from the faithful. People asked/demanded: Why were they present?

This was the same sort of worry that led some Christians to raise concerns about the Harry Potter books and movies. They denounced the series because they feared that exposing children to magic—as if Disney movies hadn’t already done that a generation earlier—might lead them into witchcraft. The concern was that Harry made witchcraft look too good.

While Neopaganism and Wicca have exploded onto the religious scene in recent years—bookstores have shelves of books on these new-old religions—their popularity seems to derive not from an embrace of evil but from their noninstitutionalized character. They’re also popular for an emphasis on communing with nature, in a time when we face the prospects of global warming, overpopulation, urban sprawl and pollution. (Critics of environmentalism have thus equated that movement with the occult.)

I had never seriously considered engaging in conversation with a Neopagan or Wiccan until I wrote about Harry Potter in the local paper and received e-mails from Wiccans and Neopagans who thanked me for offering kind words about Harry Potter. My article was posted on Wiccan sites, where respondents expressed surprise that a Christian pastor could have an open mind and compassionate spirit toward Wiccans. Many said they've experienced persecution and discrimination from Christians. They feel that their religion has been mischaracterized.

In series of e-mails with a Neopagan, I got to know a man who is married, has adult children, a job and endeavors to live in peace with his neighbors. I think he’s fairly representative—although he admitted that, like anything else, Neopaganism has its oddballs.

One e-mail from my pen pal raised the issue of the Veteran’s Administration’s refusal to allow Wiccans to use the pentacle on VA-sponsored memorials. (The VA doesn’t recognize Wicca as a religion.) I don't understand why we would allow someone to die serving his country but not recognize his or her religious affiliation.

Of course, people of other religions experience similar discrimination. In Tennessee the candidate for lieutenant governor has suggested that Muslims don’t deserve to be covered by the constitutional provisions of religious freedom, because in his mind, Islam isn’t a religion.

Those of us who are members of the religious majority have a responsibility to speak up for those whose religious identities are mischaracterized and smeared. If we had a few more conversations with those who are different from us, life would be better for all of us.

Bob Cornwall is pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Troy, Michigan, and editor of Sharing the Practice (Academy of Parish Clergy). He blogs at Ponderings on a Faith Journey, part of the CCblogs network.

Blogging toward Sunday: Discerning the body

14th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 17)
Luke 14:1, 7-14

by Patrick J. Willson

“When you give a banquet,” Jesus said, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” but he didn’t say anything about atheists. Jesus apparently did not run into many atheists, but we certainly do. What happens when an atheist is among those who “come from east and west, from north and south,” to “eat in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29)?

Improbable though it may sound, Texas Presbyterians have been dealing with this very problem. A self-professed atheist joined St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin. Christ and his community this man found utterly appealing; the logic of theism, less so. The oddness of this affiliation generated publicity, and other Presbyterians protested. Evidently enthusiasm for evangelism has its limits.

Christ’s calling disrupts the church’s desire to get everything in order. According to the Westminster Confession this calling operates by “God’s free and special grace alone” and “not from anything at all foreseen” in us. All qualifications are disqualified. Christ calls, “Friend, come up higher,” and hearing that call is sufficient.

For some years my own congregation has welcomed members who are unable to make a profession of faith. Once upon a time they could, but now they come in the care of their spouses or children. Alzheimer’s and other damnable dementias do their work of erasing memory and personality, but the church remembers its calling and tries to preserve its character as a place of Christ’s hospitality. We break the bread and share the cup of his feast. What this action may mean in the clouded consciousness of these women and men we cannot know, but we can recognize the unmistakable grace of Christ’s invitation.

The contours of this banquet welcoming “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” are extravagantly described in the July-December 2009 special issue of the Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, edited by William C. Gaventa. This mixture of thoughtful articles and occasional anecdotes is a treasure trove for pastors and churches wishing to explore the extravagance of Christ’s generosity.

In one astonishing piece Richard Sparrow remembers a worship service in which a somber-looking, three-piece-suited deacon serving communion noticed a woman in her wheelchair with her companion guide dog. Sizing up the situation theologically, the deacon served the woman and then bent down to give a piece of bread to the dog.

Many years ago Charles M. Nielsen wrote a parody about serving communion to dogs called “Abendmahl für Hunde.” But in this case it could be argued that the deacon was going about “discerning the body” (1 Cor. 11:29) and recognized that this dog was not merely a pet but an irreplaceable part of the body. The one presiding in the liturgy is supposed to “bound the table,” but Jesus’ invitation leaps the bounds of our imagination.

Patrick J. Willson is pastor of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. Additional lectionary columns by Willson appear in the August 24 issue of the Century—click here to subscribe.

Richard Land spins the golden rule

by Steve Thorngate

Brian Beutler highlights the irony that top Southern Baptist Convention lobbyist Richard Land is both a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and an outspoken opponent of Park51, aka Cordoba House, aka the “Ground Zero mosque.”

Beutler mostly lets Land do the talking—always a colorful event:

"I think that interfaith cooperation is greatly enhanced by doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and that involves being sensitive to other people's feelings, and engaging in what my mother would call 'good manners,'" Land insisted. "For nine years now we've had a lot of calls for American people who are not Muslims to be sensitive to concerns of American Muslims and not in any way make them feel like they're not wanted. I think that America has done a pretty good job of responding to that [and] I think now is the time for Muslim Americans to be sensitive to the concerns of their fellow Americans."

In other words, following the golden rule, like taking public transit, benefits me most when other people do it so I don’t have to. Another name for this might be “the opposite-of-golden rule.” (Then there’s the claim that Americans have treated American Muslims pretty well in recent years, which I won’t get into here.)

Later Land switches from “Muslims should be sensitive” to an implied “Congress should do something about this”:

One of the wonderful things about America is if we don't like what our elected officials do, we can show our opposition [during the next election].

Perhaps he means we should unseat everyone who’s been in Congress since 2000, the year in which both houses passed, by unanimous consent, a law prohibiting government from land use restrictions aimed at religious groups. There’s an exception for cases of “compelling state interest,” but political pressure definitely does not qualify as such an interest. In fact, this is a big part of the point of the law, as Don Byrd pointed out a while back.

Congress has already spoken—unanimously!—so the Park51 controversy isn’t a legislative issue. It shouldn’t be a political one either.

On the shelf: What Was Lost by Elise Erikson Barrett

by Amy Frykholm

One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. But as United Methodist pastor Elise Erikson Barrett points out, we don’t much like to talk about miscarriage. She offers her new book to women who have experienced miscarriage, to pastors who help couples grapple with it and to anyone who has helped a friend, spouse or relative grieve. Barrett tries to answer the question of “what was lost."

The book tells Barrett’s story, but this doesn’t serve a distracting or self-indulgent function. We get a glimpse into the powerful ideology of pregnancy, especially when it is embedded in Christian contexts. For some, the meaning of being pregnant is so overwhelming that when a pregnancy is lost, a great deal of meaning goes with it. Yet often women do not talk about their pain. If they do, they may be met with unsatisfying responses like “you can have another” and “God had a reason.”

Barrett describes the long waits in hospitals. The painful ironies of being sent to Labor and Delivery as the place to acknowledge the death of your child. The naming of your hope as “tissue.” She includes the voices of other women and men who've been through the experience, and she does not try to resolve their experiences into a set of principles.

This book is powerful and unique because Barrett grapples with the issues of miscarriage theologically. She really wants to know what her tradition would say about miscarriage. She skillfully engages abortion literature, knowing that the answers she seeks may or may not be found there, searches the Bible and turns finally to the possibility that personhood is a mystery known in community grounded in the love of God.

The conclusion is shockingly nonideological. Barrett doesn’t make a final statement about the personhood of the fetus, or about abortion, or about what miscarriage means or doesn’t mean. Instead, she redirects the conversation. Her book provides the framework for a discussion of miscarriage and its aftermath.

New to the CCblogs network

by Steve Thorngate

There are a number of new bloggers in the CCblogs network. Drop by and check them out:

Nancy Janish, a former veterinarian, blogs about science and religion, among other things. So does Thomas Jay Oord, a Church of the Nazarene theologian.

Steven Demmler writes about theology while studying it as a graduate student. Kurt Willems blogs as a Mennonite Brethren pastor and a seminarian. Joshua Pedersen writes about the Bible from the perspective of a literature Ph.D.

Married couple Daniel Ott (a theologian) and Teri McDowell Ott (a pastor) blog in conversation with each other. Teacher and consultant Margaret Marcuson blogs about church leadership.

Phil Heinze writes a devotion for each of the Revised Common Lectionary’s daily readings.

David Warkentin, a pastor in British Columbia, blogs on community and culture. Massachusetts Methodist pastor John Nash offers “random thoughts on life, religion and sports.”

James Sledge, a former corporate pilot, is a Presbyterian pastor in suburban Columbus. Massachusetts Episcopal priest Rich Simpson teaches Bible to undergraduates.

Alan Rudnick is a Baptist pastor in upstate New York. Robert McDowell is a Methodist pastor in western Ohio. Danny Bradfield blogs at Field of Dandelions.

Gawain de Leeuw is an Episcopal priest in White Plains, NY. His “heresy of choice is semi-Pelagianism.” Jon Fogle is “attentive to the scripture, a theological moderate, and a social liberal (just like Jesus).”

Joey Aszterbaum blogs as the Charismanglican, which means exactly what it looks like.

Blogging toward Sunday: Saying is believing

13th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 16)
Jeremiah 1:4-10

by Martin B. Copenhaver

One of the things I most appreciate about the call stories in the Bible is that there is no single template. When Peter, Andrew, James and John are summoned by Jesus to leave their nets to follow him, “immediately” they do just that (Luke 4:18-22). When God calls Jonah to go to Ninevah, he also gets going immediately—but in the exact opposite direction (Jonah 1:1-3).

In this week's Old Testament passage, Jeremiah at first protests God's call, in part for the same reason Moses does (Ex. 4:10)—because he is not a good speaker. Then there is the rich young ruler who, when called by Jesus to sell his possessions and follow him, responds only with sadness (Luke 18:22-23). We hear nothing more about him, presumably because he simply walked away.

The stunning variety of these call stories testifies both to the ingenuity of God, who has more than one means of working in our lives, and to human freedom, which allows for more than one possible response.

It is important to remember that these accounts are all written in retrospect. Jeremiah, writing as a grown man, traces his call to an experience as a 14-year-old. Whether the full meaning and import of that experience was known fully when he was only 14 may be another matter.

This should not be surprising. In my tradition today, candidates for ordination are asked to tell the story of their own call to ministry, often over and over again, both on paper and verbally before different church bodies. In recent years I have had occasion to hear candidates give the story of their calls at different junctures in ordination process. Often the story changes with each telling, usually becoming sharper and more focused, accompanied by an extra measure of certainty.

There are different ways to interpret this evolution. The cynical interpretation would be that, as candidates proceed through the ordination process, they learn more about what various ecclesiastical bodies want to hear and simply deliver it to them. But most often, I don't think that this is the case. Another possible interpretation might be that candidates just get better at telling their stories with the continual retelling. I am sure this is a partial explanation in many instances.

But there is a third possibility—that a candidate for ordination, by retelling his or her story of call, actually sees with greater clarity what God was up to at certain junctures. Sometimes you don’t see something until you say it. And sometimes saying is believing.

Martin B. Copenhaver is senior pastor of Wellesley Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Massachusetts. Additional lectionary columns by Copenhaver appear in the August 10 issue of the Century—click here to subscribe.

Visitor anxiety

by Celeste Kennel-Shank

I’m always a little on edge when I spot visitors at church, especially truly new people who are checking out our congregation for the first or second time.

I become more aware of elements of the service. Did the worship leader have to pick that song today? Did the preacher have to tell that story? Little things I see as the usual quirks in a congregation become causes for concern.

I was in charge of planning worship one Sunday when we were expecting a group of visitors—not people looking for a church home but, more anxiety-producing for me, pastors from our denomination and leaders of national organizations who had been attending meetings in the church building.

I spent extra time preparing. Would “Veni Sancte Spiritus” fit as the first hymn, or would visitors find it strange for Mennonites to be singing in Latin? Which members would read scripture most eloquently?

At some point I stopped and reminded myself that I can't change our church members, nor do I want to. The church can’t be ironed out, dressed up and plastered with makeup to look pretty on picture day. It is an imperfect reflection of God's love for us through broken people.

We haven't necessarily failed if the visitors don't come back, or if they take reports of our eccentricities back to their congregations. We can pray they saw some of the good, too.

If I love my congregation, warts and all, then I should be glad to have visitors get to know us as we are. Perhaps that odd song or awkward story is a blessing after all.

Celeste Kennel-Shank is council chair and a lay worship leader and preacher at Chicago Community Mennonite Church.

On the shelf: Balthasar by Rodney A. Howsare

by David Heim

The problem with liberal theology, Protestant or Catholic, says Rodney A. Howsare in Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed, is that Christ comes too late into the picture. “If Christ is just the highest example of humanity transcending itself toward God,” then he’s not really essential to faith. Furthermore, if Christ is just the highest example of humanity, then why, wonders Howsare, was he “so offensive to the most philosophically astute (the Romans) and religiously astute (the officials of the Judaism of Jesus’ day)?”

The usual counters to liberal theology run into their own problems, however. If one chooses to stress, as Karl Barth did, the unbridgeable gap between human striving after God and the divine revelation in Christ, then it’s hard to explain why human beings would respond to Christ. And if humans without Christ are totally cut off from contact with the divine, how could Jesus have found a serviceable language ready at hand when he came to reveal God? “It seems,” observes Howsare, “that Jesus presupposed the natural religiosity of his listeners, even if he challenged that religiosity in significant ways.”

These are somewhat passing comments Howsare makes in the course of explaining the vast theological writings of the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, but they indicate why Howsare’s book is so valuable: it is in steady conversation with central theological questions. The book is not only a guide (more accessible than most) for those perplexed by Balthasar but a guide for those perplexed by modern theology.

Balthasar, in Howsare’s reading, offers a way through the dilemmas of 20th-century theology by way of a Christ-centered affirmation of creation, reason and the philosophical tradition. For Balthasar, says Howsare, “there are no human beings who are not created precisely in Christ” and therefore the movement of human beings toward God “is always undertaken within God’s movement toward them in Jesus Christ.”