Sharon Bemis's Page

Just a quick post to remind people that the documentary Call + Response about human trafficking is in Grand Rapids this week! My apologies to those of you who don't happen to be around Grand Rapids, but hopefully you can find it somewhere near you too!

Critics and viewers alike are giving it extremely high ratings.

I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment, but I'm going tomorrow!

While living in Romania I had a chance to see something rather incredible happen. There was an evangelical festival (BucurestiFest) hosted by the evangelical churches in Bucharest. It was one of those events that maybe don't mean much, and maybe mean a whole lot, depending on how you look at them. There were numerous presentations of the gospel and people were asked to pray to start a life in Christ. Over the space of a week, over 1500 people prayed. One of the speakers said, "This isn't about R… Continue

This is it, folks. The last post in this series. I hope you understand Romania a little more thoroughly now. I hope you can appreciate some of the challenges of working in a "country in transition." The social issues I've talked about are pretty negative and I didn't add to much encouraging news to any of them. So let me encourage you.

Twenty years ago, this country was in communism. People really were starving. Some were arrested and even killed for what they believed or for saying something t… Continue

Looking back through these recent posts, I realized that social problems can be good excuses for doing nothing or making some lousy decisions. Especially as a sociologist, it's easy to look at society and see the roots causes for lots of things and to stop there, stuck in my research. As a Christian sociologist, I can't stop there. Studying sociology as a Christian means that I see a lot of root causes but have a reason to go forward and seeks answers for those challenges.

I understand somethin… Continue

I don't really like economics, and I don't like the arbitrary importance given to pieces of paper (or cloth or plastic), known as "money". That being said, let's talk about money.

Romanians talk about money a lot. Mostly because there doesn't seem to be enough to go around, or because a certain few people have the majority of it, or because the landlord just raised the rent, and that new house all of a sudden costs double what it did or because food prices have skyrocketed.

While half of Roman… Continue