Catching a wave

Immigration | Iowa town revives under the influx of Hasidic, Hispanic, and animal-rights newcomers | Marvin Olasky

Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa. Is this civil war? No, it's life, jarring but prosperous and interesting, in ethnically tense and ideologically divided 21st-century America.

Twenty years ago Postville, 64 miles north of the Field of Dreams baseball diamond and cornfield that seemed heavenly to one young ballplayer, was a heavily Protestant town with lots of empty storefronts. A grocery store, a clothing store, and the local hospital had all closed. Most residents went to a Lutheran Church, a Catholic church, or the Community Presbyterian Church, formed (oddly enough) by a merger of the Methodist and Congregational churches.

The city's one famous son was John Mott, a founder of both the World Student Christian Federation and the World Council of Churches, but he died seven years after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948. By the 1980s ecumenism was fading and so were Postville's population (sinking below 1,500) and property values.