March 9, 2010

Somehow my shaking fingers kept pushing the buttons on the phone. All I could think as a voice answered was, “God help me.”

“Hello,” I said. “This is Eric Swenson. Is Reverend Greene there?” Maybe there was still a chance that I could leave a message.

“This is Lloyd Greene,” came the deep and resonant reply. My heart sank. I had no choice but to go forward.

Mark A. Potok heads up the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project and is editor of Intelligence Report magazine. The SPLC, founded as a law firm specializing in protecting civil rights, is one of the chief monitors of race-based hate groups and other extremist activities. Before coming to the SPLC in 1997, Potok spent almost 20 years as an award-winning reporter.

Anthony Siracusa came to First Congregational UCC in Memphis in 2002. A legally emancipated 17-year-old and a high-school dropout, he came with sadness and anger but also with ideas and hope. He was living in an anarchist commune and working as an apprentice at a local bike shop. He had heard that First Congregational had space to share.

Few things are more humbling for a professor than to hear your classroom assertions parroted back to you. In the student’s puerile response you hear an echo of your own pronouncement—but on undergraduate lips the thought sounds unbearably stupid.

I’ve come to feel a bit that way upon rereading Resident Aliens. While I still believe just about everything Stanley Hauerwas and I said in that book, I’ve come to have a few regrets.

The Young Victoria, a chronicle of Queen Victoria’s early days on the English throne, avoids all the historical-epic pitfalls. It’s a trim, robust film whose period-piece trappings—sumptuous production and costume design—never threaten to overwhelm the human interaction or muddy the dramatic arc.