A few articles from over the weekend:
Charlotte Hays on NOW’s 40th anniversary celebration:
For me, the most memorable session was the one entitled "Feminist Media Reform." Although two NOW employees spoke, along with Kathy Bonk, a well-known feminist media specialist, the star of the session was Bree Williamson, who plays Jessica on the ABC daytime soap opera "One Life to Live." (She has also guest-starred on a Toronto-based show called "Mutant X.") Ms. Williamson, who went all pouty-face when somebody noted that TV heroines tend to be blue-eyed blondes, had a message: Write letters to producers telling them what you want to see. Talk about empowerment! If viewers of "One Life" start to see Jessica battling the patriarchy, they’ll know why. But one panelist implicitly questioned the effectiveness of such campaigns, lamenting that NOW failed to save Geena Davis’s series "Commander in Chief." I don’t know what it means that I heard more about an imaginary female president than about Hillary during the course of the weekend.
In Colombia, Mr. Castellanos’s wife, Claudia, who is also a pastor, has expanded her influence beyond the church. She thinks that the G-12 model should change not only lives but nations as well. In 1991, Ms. Castellanos became the first Christian senator in her country, and she has been a staunch opponent of abortion and euthanasia in Colombia ever since. Pastors from G-12 churches in Peru, Argentina, Mexico and Canada are already following her footsteps by taking on active careers in politics. Ms. Castellanos is also promoting an entrepreneurial network, under G-12 principles, to foster small-business creation.
In the U.S., the G-12 system is largely concentrated among Hispanic populations, especially immigrants. According to Tony Carnes, the director of the International Research Institute on Values Changes in New York, smaller groups that allow for one-to-one interaction appeal to the Hispanic sense of family. They also help newly arrived immigrants to feel a sense of belonging in a strange land. Arlene Sanchez Walsh, the author of "Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Society, and Self," explains that the structured environment provided by G-12 facilitates integration into society, because it "allows followers to travel the ranks of leadership, learn about organizations and become aware of how management structures are run in the U.S."
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