The Napalm Girl's Testimony | Two Reports from Trump Country

The Napalm Girl's Testimony | Two Reports from Trump Country | [View online]( [Give Now]( Advertisement [CT Books Newsletter]( [Home]( [Reviews]( [Subscribe]( Tuesday, May 8, 2018 The ‘Napalm Girl’ Comes to Christ In 1972, during the Vietnam War, an Associated Press photographer captured a disturbing [image](: a small girl, flanked by several other children, running naked down a road in obvious agony after a South Vietnamese napalm attack had destroyed her village and covered her body with severe burns. The girl in that picture, just nine years old at the time, is Kim Phuc Phan Thi, sometimes nicknamed the “Napalm Girl.” Today, she heads up a foundation to assist child victims of war and serves as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. Kim Phuc’s physical suffering was immense. But even worse, in her telling, was “the crippling weight of anger, bitterness, and resentment toward those who caused it.” In her [testimony]( for the May issue of CT (based on her memoir [Fire Road: The Napalm Girl’s Journey through the Horrors of War to Faith, Forgiveness, and Peace](), she recalls how Christ’s own suffering made the claims of Scripture all the more credible and compelling. “Despite all that I had learned,” she writes “through [the Vietnamese religion of] Cao Dai—that there were many gods, that there were many paths to holiness, that the burden of ‘success’ in religion rested atop my own weary, slumped shoulders—Jesus presented himself as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). His entire ministry, it seemed, pointed to one straightforward claim: ‘I am the way you get to God; there is no other way but me.’ Second, this Jesus had suffered in defense of his claim. He had been mocked, tortured, and killed. Why would he endure these things, I wondered, if he were not, in fact, God? “I had never been exposed to this side of Jesus—the wounded one, the one who bore scars. I turned over this new information in my mind as a gem in my hand, relishing the light that was cast from all sides. The more I read, the more I came to believe that he really was who he said he was, that he really had done what he said he had done, and that—most important to me—he really would do all that he had promised in his Word. “Perhaps he could help me make sense of my pain and at last come to terms with my scars.” Two Reports from Trump Country Robert Wuthnow writes about rural America from the perspective of an outside researcher. Mark Phillips, on the other hand, writes about rural America from the perspective of one who has lived his whole life there. But both authors (Wuthnow’s most recent book is [The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America](sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519855480&sr=8-1&keywords=robert+wuthnow); Phillips’s is [Love and Hate in the Heartland: Dispatches from Forgotten America]() are grappling with a similar phenomenon. Anne Carlson Kennedy, [reviewing]( both books for CT, sums it up like this: They are “trying to make sense of why anybody, but especially residents of rural America, could have voted for [Donald] Trump. Their efforts invite the reader to examine the tangled American psyche, to peer over the deep divisions of political ideology and consider the places, communities, and people themselves.” Both Wuthnow (a sociologist and prolific author from Princeton University) and Phillips (a writer and beekeeper in upstate New York) aimed to give a sympathetic portrayal of a population so often scorned in elite circles. Yet in different ways, concludes Kennedy, they each succumb to self-righteousness, “fall[ing] into the same pit they set out so valiantly to avoid.” [Matt Reynolds] [Matt Reynolds] [Matt Reynolds](mailto:ctbooks@christianitytoday.com) Associate Editor, Books [‘These Bombs Led Me to Christ’]( [Testimony]( | [CT Magazine]( [‘These Bombs Led Me to Christ’]( The “Napalm Girl” from a famous Vietnam War photo tells her story of coming to faith. Kim Phuc Phan Thi [Read More]( [Taking the Measure of Trump Country]( [Taking the Measure of Trump Country]( A writer and a scholar attempt sympathetic portrayals of the president’s rural supporters, but their sympathy only extends so far. Anne Carlson Kennedy [Read More]( Advertisement In the Magazine [May]( [Cover Story]( [The Ministry of the Disabled]( How Christians with intellectual disabilities are serving churches (not just being served by them). 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