The news this afternoon from Myanmar/Burma is not good. A recent AP story said that

Soldiers clubbed and dragged away activists while firing tear gas and warning shots to break up demonstrations Friday before they could grow, and the government cut Internet access, raising fears that a deadly crackdown was set to intensify.

The government said 10 people have been killed since the violence began earlier this week, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he believed the loss of life in Myanmar was "far greater" than is being reported. Dissident groups have put the number as high as 200, although that number could not be verified.

The world is reacting with outrage. President Bush has toughened sanctions to focus on specific individuals for the first time, including a ban on travel visas. A U.N. special envoy is en route. Many other world leaders have spoken out.

Gene Stoltzfus is a friend who worked in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 70s, and then became director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, a program of Brethren, Mennonite and Friends churches and other affiliated organizations that places teams in high conflict zones to emphasize human rights protection, nonviolent action, and peacemaking campaigns. On his blog, he comments on the religious roots of nonviolence for the Buddhist monks leading the demonstrations against the military junta.

Two groups with countrywide power and influence in modern Burma are now facing each other across potholes in the streets. The military with Chinese-supplied weapons, is determined to retain the grip it has had on the nation since 1962. The Buddhist movement, with an institutional life going back more than 1000 years, is led by monks armed with spiritual disciplines and a commitment to an ethical system that combines practical living with a deep sensitivity to all of creation. The Buddhist way is nonviolence empowered by love, honed by teaching and meditation. However, this does not mean that monks are not tough, persistent, and even militant.

He ends:

In response to the world wide call of Free Burma groups we have a sign in our window, THE WORLD IS WATCHING, FREE BURMA, with a candle below the sign.

When I got an invitation to attend the launch of New York Faith & Justice (www.nyfaithjustice.org), their mission statement caught my eye. Simply stated, their goals are: Following Christ, uniting the church, and ending poverty in New York through spiritual formation, education, and direct advocacy. Grounded in the words of Isaiah 61, this movement envisions a city where New Yorkers are released from the oppression of poverty and the poverty of riches.

I can hear the naysayers now: "Here we go again. Another PC peace and justice group that's all talk and no action. They might spout a bit of scripture but in the end, they're really just a front for the Democratic Party. Been there. Done that. Next."

I understand this kind of cynicism. I've covered too many "religious" justice-oriented gatherings that were full of sound and fury but in the end signified nothing. The power of prayer and preaching about the Risen Christ seemed to take a back seat because God forbid we talk about Jesus and offend our secular counterparts. Also, after satirizing the antics of the Religious Right for more than 12 years, the last thing I want to see is the creation of a Progressive Left counterpart.

So when I read that this group was "ecumenical," I was skeptical at first. While religious leaders whose backgrounds ranged from PCA to ECUSA were invited to participate, would they actually show up? In a post-9/11 New York City, one seldom sees Orthodox, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Pentecostals willing to set aside their differences and come together in the name of Jesus.

However, this movement showed all the spiritual signs of being Bible-based and truly nonpartisan from the get-go. You know something is up when 15 students from Intervarsity Fellowship and Union Theological Seminary carry a wooden cross -- literally -- for 5.3 miles, trekking from Trinity Baptist Church, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, over to the Bronx.

This broad-based ecumenical spirit carried on throughout the evening with prayers offered by ministers representing a broad swath of the Christian faith. Liturgies, worship songs, spoken-word poetry, and visual art were intertwined with speeches by Lolita Jackson from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office; Rachel Anderson, director of Boston Faith and Justice Network; Dale Irvin, president of New York Theological Seminary; Lisa Sharon Harper, executive director of NY Faith & Justice; and Jim Wallis. If you read the backgrounds of these spiritual seekers, you'll see that these are not cookie-cutter Christians all molded from the same batch of devotional dough.

Unlike some gatherings that talk around poverty issues without offering any concrete solutions, Harper noted how their programs are structured around the three mission points: Following Christ, Uniting the Church, and Ending Poverty. Right now, the program is far too early in its infancy to assess if these points can be sharpened into actual tools for social change. But based on what I saw this evening, I left the launch wondering if perhaps Shane Claiborne is indeed right -- that "Another world is possible." Will this ecumenical momentum continue? One can pray and hope.

Becky Garrison's upcoming book Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church (Seabury Books, October 2007) explores what it means to be the church in the 21st century.

It's intriguing how many current films address questions of revenge and justice. Like all cinematic epidemics, this is a mixed bag, from Quentin Tarantino's alternately boring and horrifying car-crash fest Death Proof, just released on DVD, to the slasher-style terror of Death Sentence starring Kevin Bacon, to the mature and moving reflection on justice and fatherhood in 3:10 to Yuma, to the ostensibly more thoughtful treatment of vengeance in Jodie Foster's new film The Brave One.

The Brave One begins with a murder that the filmmakers show in subtle but horrendous detail. We really feel the loss of human life that occurs when her character's boyfriend is beaten to death in front of her. Her subsequent fear and desire for revenge are presented as entirely natural responses; in this regard, the film is intelligent and humane. Far too many representations of the aftermath of violence in popular culture refuse to treat it with respect. But when she actually starts killing people, despite the fact that her victims are all portrayed as evil, the movie becomes something other than the serious exploration of how to deal with violence that it purports to be. The victim becomes a perpetrator, and the audience is made complicit.

Throughout its two-hour running time, I hoped the film would suggest that the revenge Foster's character takes does her more harm than good, and certainly does not end or even come close to challenging the spiral of violence in the world. My hope was unfounded, for the film not only presents its protagonist as doing what is normal, but ultimately endorses her violence as the only way to resist evil. In a world where finding alternatives to conflict-as-usual may be our greatest challenge, we desperately need more nuanced investigations of how to respond to violent threats and injustices than this.

What's surprising is that both Jodie Foster and her director, Neil Jordan, know better than this, having between them made smarter films such as The Accused and The Crying Game. But in producing The Brave One, a film that appears to co-opt the values of the war on terror into the domestic life of a character who works for an NPR-style radio station, they have created what The New York Times has called "a pro-lynching film that even liberals can love." Of course, doing nothing in response to injustice will not make the world a less violent place, but neither will suggesting that the only thing we can do is to use the same tactics as our opponents.

Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

- Romans 15:13-13

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Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here.

- Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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Dear Mr. President,

When I first heard that you were vowing to veto a bipartisan bill to expand child health care, my immediate thought was more personal than political: What has happened to you?

I vividly remember a call at the office, only one day after your election had been secured. It was an invitation to come to Austin to meet you and to discuss with a small group of religious leaders your vision for "faith-based initiatives" and your passion for doing something on poverty. I had not voted for you (which was no secret or surprise to your staff or to you), but you were reaching out to many of us in the faith community across the political spectrum who cared about poverty. I was impressed by that, and by the topic of the Austin meeting.

We all filed into a little Sunday school classroom at First Baptist, Austin. I had actually preached there before, and the pastor told me how puzzled he was that his "progressive" church was chosen for this meeting. You were reaching out. About 25 of us were sitting together chatting, not knowing what to expect, when you simply walked in without any great introduction. You sat down and told us you just wanted to listen to our concerns and ideas of how to really deal with poverty in America.

And you did listen, more than presidents often do. You asked us questions. One was, "How do I speak to the soul of America?" I remember answering that one by saying to focus on the children. Their plight is our shame and their promise is our future. Reach them and you reach our soul. You nodded in agreement. The conversation was rich and deep for an hour and a half.

Then when we officially broke, you moved around the room and talked with us one-on-one or in small groups for another hour. I could see your staff was anxious to whisk you away (you were in the middle of making cabinet appointments that week and there were key departments yet to fill). Yet you lingered and kept asking questions. I remember you asking me, Jim, I don't understand poor people. I've never lived with poor people or been around poor people much. I don't understand what they think and feel about a lot of things. I'm just a white Republican guy who doesn't get it. How do I get it? I still recall the intense and sincere look on your face as you looked me right in the eyes and asked your heartfelt question. It was a moment of humility and candor that, frankly, we don't often see with presidents.

I responded by saying that you had to listen to poor people themselves and pay attention to those who do live and work with the poor. It was a simple answer, but again you were nodding your head. I told my wife, Joy, also a clergyperson, about our conversation. Weeks later, we listened to your first inaugural address. When you said,

America, at its best, is compassionate. In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise. And whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault ... many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do,

But that was a long time ago. We don't hear much about that office or initiative anymore. Most of my friends have long left. I don't hear about meetings now. And nobody speaks anymore about this new concept you named "compassionate conservatism." And now, you promise to veto a strongly bipartisan measure to expand health insurance for low-income children. Most of your expressed objections to the bill have been vigorously refuted by Republican senators who helped craft the bill and support it passionately. They vow to try and override your veto. During your first campaign, you chided conservative House Republicans for tax and spending cuts accomplished on the backs of the poor. Now Congressional Republicans are chiding you.

What happened to you, Mr. President? The money needed for expanding health care to poor children in America is far less than the money that has been lost and wasted on corruption in Iraq. How have your priorities stayed so far from those children, whom you once agreed were so central to the soul of the nation? What do they need to do to get your attention again? You will be literally barraged by the religious community across the political spectrum this week, imploring you not to veto children's health care. I would just ask you to take your mind back to a little meeting in a Baptist Sunday school classroom, not far away from where you grew up. Remember that day, what we all talked about, what was on your heart, and how much hope there was in the room. Mr. President, recall that day, take a breath, and say a prayer before you decide to turn away from the children who are so important to our nation's soul and to yours.

God bless you,

Jim Wallis

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Give counsel, grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; hide the outcasts, do not betray the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab settle among you; be a refuge to them from the destroyer.

- Isaiah 16:3-4

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Let them vie in giving one another honor. Let them patiently bear everyone’s weaknesses of body and behavior. Let them compete in obeying one another.... Let them prefer nothing to Christ. May Christ lead us together to eternal life.

- Rule of Benedict

Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.

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To everyone who took action and emailed the Bureau of Prisons, thank you! On Sept. 14, Sojourners helped break the story that the federal government had created a list of acceptable religious books and purged all other books from the religious libraries. Often these stories fade away and are quickly replaced by the latest crisis, but because of our readers' dedication and persistence (demonstrated by sending over 21,000 emails in just over a week), the Bureau of Prisons has reversed its policy!
 
According to their statement provided to NPR yesterday:

In response to concerns expressed by members of several religious communities, the Bureau of Prisons has decided to alter its planned course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project. The Bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate.

I received a note today from a friend who works with prison inmates that I would like to share with all of you. It states, "On behalf of all federal inmates and chaplains, I thank you for your crucial part in accomplishing this." This is not just a thank you to Sojourners, but this is a thank you to each and every one of you who took action.

Kevin Lum is the congregational network coordinator for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

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Before it began, many evangelicals were strong supporters of a war with Iraq. As the death and destruction have continued, some are rethinking that view and coming to oppose the war. David Gushee, professor at Mercer University, has an important piece – Our Teachable Moment - on Christianity Today online. Gushee writes:

Such deep public distress about the war makes this a teachable moment for all of us, as Christians and as Americans. It's not enough to find a way out of this war honorably and soon. We have an opportunity to learn some deeper lessons so that we won't repeat our mistakes.

For evangelicals, one of the groups that strongly supported the war initially, one lesson is clear: We must become more discerning when our nation's leaders advocate a military solution. We have biblical resources for doing so, if we will draw upon them.

He concludes:

For me, the next time I am asked to support a war, my default setting will be no rather than yes. As a follower of Christ, I will have to be persuaded that the particular confluence of circumstances is so grave as to require a military solution. Before Christians sign off on another war, we must do our best to figure out whether the government has done everything possible to make peace.

How do we live out God's call to prophetic witness in an apathetic and disempowered society? How can we learn from others who have remained faithful to Jesus' radical call in the midst of failure?

These don't sound like the questions you'd expect to be hearing from a van full of exhausted young adults on a 12-hour drive back from Washington, D.C.

But last March, that's exactly what happened to a group of us from Living Water Community and Reba Place Church in Chicago on our way back from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.

Our epiphany was not in National Cathedral or during the bone-numbing walk to the White House. Instead, it happened the following morning during a humble gathering of Mennonites in the basement of a Methodist church lit by fluorescent lights and filled with orange and red plastic chairs. We were eating bagels and juice and listening to Peter Dula, the Mennonite Central Committee coordinator for Iraq from 2004 to 2006.

Dula spoke simply and honestly about the caustic combination of guilt and disempowerment that attacks those of us living in the United States. We are complicit in horrific acts of destruction, but our leaders have largely abandoned the rusty apparatus of democracy -- a trend accelerated by Bush and company. Our protests begin to feel like empty rituals. Politicians have taken advantage of our culture's apathy and nihilism to shed the last vestiges of accountability. As Dula put it, "We are no longer enough of a democracy that the people feel empowered, but still enough of one that people feel responsible."

We left D.C immediately after Dula's talk and discovered that each of us had been electrified by what he had said. For those of us who have come of age in the Bush administration, there is the knowledge that something is deeply wrong with our country, but we remain caught beneath a crust of cynicism that permeates every corner of our mental and spiritual space.

On the van ride home to Chicago we talked about how important it is for our generation to talk honestly about our disillusionment and learn from our failure and that of those who have gone before us. As we discussed what to do next, a surprisingly concrete idea emerged. We wanted to invite Dula and others to Chicago to continue the conversation. We even came up with a title for our gathering - Cynicism and Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Post-Democratic Society.

I've had epiphanies on protest road trips before, but never with so many people so committed to doing something about it. If you feel the same way, come join us in Chicago on November 2 and 3 (one year before the 2008 elections): http://www.cynicismandhope.org/

Tim Nafziger is a Web developer, activist, and writer. He helped found the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog, is a regular blogger for The Mennonite, and is a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition.... What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.

- Philippians 1:15-18

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Repent and believe in the gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.

- Frederick Buechner
from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

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Columbia University students got it right. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's bombastic president, told the packed university auditorium that there were no homosexuals in Iran, the student crowd burst into laughter. Humor and satire have always been good weapons against political stupidity and tyranny. The eager-to-be-provocative Iranian president said a number of stupid things yesterday, as he often does—for example, repeating that the Holocaust should be treated as a theory and not a fact—all of which were worthy of ridicule.

Instead, a growing group of political and media figures, mostly on the Right, are doing their best to use Ahmadinejad's provocations to help stoke the argument and prepare the context for U.S. military conflict with Iran. Fox News just loves Ahmadinejad.

Iran's serious human rights violations (including allegations that teenage boys were hanged for being gay), support for terrorism in conflicts around the world, support for insurgents in Iraq who are killing Iraqi civilians and American soldiers, and—most alarmingly—its development of a nuclear capacity that could easily translate into weapons, are serious problems the rest of the world is rightly concerned with.

But there are no military solutions to those problems, and potential military strikes against Iran by the United States or Israel will only make the above problems worse. A dear friend of mine, an influential rabbi, once told me that if there was a way that a surgical air strike against Iran could remove their nuclear threat, he would support it as a just use of force. But because there is no way that such a military strike could accomplish those goals, he is against such an American action. Nothing short of an American invasion and occupation of Iran might assure the destruction of Iran's nuclear program; and a second occupation in the region is hardly a practical or political—let alone moral—option.

What Fox News doesn't tell us is that President Ahmadinejad is not the supreme leader of Iran—the religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei is. The role of president in Iran is only one of many figures with political power, and not the most important one in the country's complicated political and religious system. And Ahmadinejad's clear immaturity as a leader, combined with his failure to deliver things that he has promised, has placed him in serious political trouble in his own country.

Nothing would serve the political career and purposes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad better than to be able to provoke a military confrontation with the United States which would, almost certainly, unite all the competing factions in Iran around him in a nation under attack. And that is exactly why this irresponsible and self-aggrandizing politician is being so deliberately provocative. Ahmadinejad and Dick Cheney ultimately want the same thing—another confrontation. What does that tell you?

So don't give him what he wants by bombing his country. Then take all the problems above very seriously. Enter into real negotiations with Iran, using a variety of carrots and sticks, and especially reach out to the forces of democratic reform in that country (which we would only help crush with a U.S. military confrontation). In the meantime, laugh at Ahmadinejad.

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

- Isaiah 32:17-17

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[Those] courageous in disposition and strong in will, live with the weak and share their lives in their desire to save them. And, to be sure, they are censured by people on the outside and mocked by those who see them spending their lives with people less disciplined. [Their behavior] is like the Lord’s for the Lord ate with tax collectors and sinners. Their attitude is characterized by brotherly love rather than self-love for they regard those who sin as houses on fire; giving no thought to their own interests, they apply their efforts to save what belongs to others…. Good people have placed their own possessions second to the salvation of others. This is the sign of genuine love. These people are the custodians of pure love.

- Life of Syncletica
Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.

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I recently posted about the purging of religious books from prison libraries across the country. Since that post and a follow-up action alert, there has been a groundswell of outrage from across the religious and political spectrum against the government's attempt to purge religious libraries. Thank you to everyone who took action. The response has been so overwhelming that The New York Times even took notice:

The bureau is hearing criticism from a broad array of religious groups and leaders. Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group based in Washington, sent an alert to its members, who within 48 hours sent the bureau more than 15,000 e-mail messages urging it to scrap the policy.

Since that article, a total of some 18,000 emails have now been sent to Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin, demanding that the federal government not be in the business of providing citizens with a list of acceptable reading material.

The outrage is growing, but the Bureau of Prisons has not yet changed its policy. If you have not taken action, please email Director Lappin now and forward it to everyone you know. Let's make our voice heard.

View the Government Approved Reading Lists:

Protestant

Catholic

Judaism

Islam

Kevin Lum is the congregational network coordinator for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

In his Saturday radio address, The Washington Post reports that

President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program. "Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed," Bush said of the measure.

So, one may wonder, just who are these irresponsible Democrats who are pushing the expansion of SCHIP?

"This legislation will get the Children's Health Insurance Program back on track and reclaim precious resources for low-income kids," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa.

Another Republican, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, called the agreement "an honest compromise that improves a program that works for America's low-income children." Asked whether he would vote to override a veto, Sen. Hatch, a staunch conservative, said, "You bet your sweet bippy I will."

"I am proud to support this important bill, which will provide health insurance coverage to approximately 4 million more children who would otherwise be uninsured. I'm glad my colleagues and I were able to put politics aside and do what is right for these children," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kans.

"I'm very, very disappointed," said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. "I'm going to be voting for it."

"I am so pleased that the Senate has passed legislation to extend and strengthen this important program. Our bill, which passed with strong bipartisan support, increases funding for SCHIP by $35 billion over the next five years, a level which is sufficient to maintain coverage for all 6.6 million children currently enrolled, and also allows the program to expand to cover an additional 3.3 million low-income children," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

There is strong bipartisan support for expanding the children's health insurance program in the Congress. But President Bush promises to veto this vital program for children's health. So, who is being irresponsible?

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

- Philippians 2:1-2

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How do we learn to love our enemy? By seeing him as a brother who is tempted as we are, and attacked by the same real enemy which is the spirit of hatred and of "Antichrist." This same enemy seeks to destroy us both by pitting us against one another.

- Thomas Merton
from Passion For Peace

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In honor of the publication 100 years ago of Christianity and the Social Crisis, the classic book by social gospel founder Walter Rauschenbusch, his great-grandson Paul Raushenbush published Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st century, the text of the original book with a contemporary response to each chapter. This week on Beliefnet, Raushenbush debates the issues his great-grandfather raised with Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church.

Yet this isn't a debate. It's a lovely dialogue between two people who show the significant new convergence occurring between traditions that have been at war for too long—the evangelical and the social gospel. I know both Bill Hybels and Paul Raushenbush and they are breaking out of the old dualisms. God is personal, but never private. The gospel is both personal and social. Without the personal, a life of faith and commitment to social justice is very difficult to sustain, as some streams of the social gospel eventually demonstrated. And without the social, a personal gospel becomes completely private and loses its integrity, as modern evangelicalism has too often shown. But many Christians, like Bill and Paul, are refusing to make those false choices anymore. Bill Hybels talks constantly about social justice, the urgency of racial reconciliation, and the message of peace. Lynne Hybels spoke at the Sojourners Pentecost conference this past spring, and she impressed us all with her passion for justice.

Usually within months of a person's salvation experience, there is both a sincere desire to pass on the message of Christ to any and all, and an equally intense desire to do whatever is necessary in the name of Christ to eradicate injustice, relieve oppression, and alleviate suffering of any kind. Selfless service of this sort isn't normal according to human nature; purely and simply, the desires are born out of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul Raushenbush speaks of the need for a vibrant personal faith to undergird the social gospel his great-grandfather espoused so eloquently. And both are critical of those in their respective traditions who are still stuck in the old separations. As he puts it:

Rauschenbusch in his time, and I today, feel that actions taken to carry out Jesus' commandments in this life are equally important as faith statements accepting Jesus. That is, we should try to realize the promise of the kingdom of God in this world as much as we proclaim Jesus as our personal savior for the forgiveness of our individual sins. It is through concrete action in this life that we most clearly experience the salvation that Jesus offers both right now and eternally.

I find their coming together in this dialogue very encouraging indeed. My essay in the book says it this way:

I still like his clarity in linking personal and social religion. "In personal religion," he says, "the first requirement is to repent and believe the gospel." But then, "Social religion, too, demands repentance and faith: repentance for our social sins." Faith requires, he said, "a revaluation of social values." He says there are "two great entities in human life—the human soul and the human race—and religion is to save both."

About a decade ago, I wrote a newspaper column offering a theological critique of Promise Keepers, the then-massive Christian men's movement. Within a few days, negative mail (remember letters?) swamped my office. One missive proved especially memorable: "Dear Diana, Promise Keepers is all about love, you b----!"

When I became a writer, perhaps nothing surprised me as much as such attacks. Public figures—reporters, writers, politicians, pastors, and yes, military generals—are on the receiving end of negative criticism on an almost daily basis. Although it isn't fun, it is part of the job. Some of my friends say I have tough skin. Not really. I've learned that Jesus has something important to say about the rough-and-tumble of public exchange: Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.

Nobody ever suggested that the city council pass a resolution condemning the letter-writers—including the less-than-flattering letters that appeared in the local newspaper. No, I was left with my own spiritual resources to forgive those who attacked me.

I imagine that General Petraeus is a nice Christian gentleman, as are most of the military officers I know. And I also suspect that he has survived public and private criticism worse than the recent MoveOn.org ad. He did not need a Senate resolution to defend his honor or his achievements, as such things speak for themselves. And, if he is anything like other Christians who are leaders, he has long since learned the wisdom of Jesus' dictum to turn the other cheek. Maybe he even prays for his enemies. I bet he can spiritually and morally stand up for himself.

This week's Senate resolution was raw politics, as raw as the MoveOn ad itself, as they deftly moved the issue away from the war to a political ad sponsored by private citizens. Coming from the Senate, a body that depicts itself as above the fray, it proved particularly tasteless—and more than a little shocking—that the senators took time away from important issues to criticize the free speech rights of a political organization, no matter how unseemly the fashion by which those rights were exercised.

During the same week that the Senate passed a resolution to condemn an ad attacking a man who is clearly capable of defending himself, they failed to pass three separate resolutions with plans to end the war in Iraq. The Senate needs to stop playing politics and get the job done for which we elected them: to work on issues of health care, poverty, environmentalism, and to end the war. Senators, let us turn our own cheeks. As for you, it is time for you to move on with America's business.

Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) is a regular God’s Politics blogger and the author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (HarperOne, 2006).

After a year of scandals in which celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Don Imus, and Isaiah Washington have reminded us that fame does not cancel out bigotry, Kathy Griffin last week became the latest public figure to make such headlines with her Creative Arts Emmy acceptance speech. Referring to the tendency of some of her colleagues to invoke divine sanction for their success, she said, among other things, that "no one had less to do with this award than Jesus." Her remarks were censored on the telecast, and at least one Christian public figure has since implied on CNN that her words were more offensive than Imus' racist comments about the Rutgers basketball players, or Washington’s homophobic remarks about Grey’s Anatomy co-star T.R. Knight. The questionable logic that led to this assertion is that "85% of Americans believe in Jesus," while only a minority are black, and a much smaller number are gay.

First of all, the suggestion that only the groups who are targeted in dehumanising rhetoric should be offended by them is absurd -- of course you don't have to be the victim of prejudice to be offended by it. It's understandable that people get offended when the names of religious figures are used in a derogatory fashion. It is also true to say that today it is more publicly acceptable to criticize Christianity than most other faiths. And sometimes it may be appropriate to protest this.

In the West, however, members of most other faiths and minority ethnic groups have had to put up with a disproportionate share of public insults for far too long. In a healthy society, we should be able to cope with the free exchange of views, including the possibility of upsetting each other. The suggestion that a comedian should be punished for religious mockery is disturbing and bears echoes of Christian imperialism. The point is sharpened by the fact that Griffin was making a commentary that many thinking Christians would agree with: a critique of the superficial celebrity spirituality that claims divine sanction for entertainment awards victories. It is, of course, entirely legitimate to be thankful to God for the blessings of a lifetime; this column is unlikely to win any awards, but if one came my way I'm sure I'd aim my gratitude in the same direction. But to suggest that Jesus is invested in who wins the Emmys is another indicator of a kind of spiritual decadence, akin to when boxers or football teams bow the knee mid-match, suggesting that they think God prefers them over their opponent.

It's striking also that the outcry over Mel Gibson, Don Imus, and Isaiah Washington's dehumanising and bigoted comments was not led by the church, but Griffin's remark at an awards ceremony has been met with the full opprobrium of some religious leaders. I think this indicates something troubling about the priorities of much public discourse by Christians -- and also the hamstrung picture of Jesus offered by much of the church. It seems that we believe in a Jesus who both needs us to defend him, and who couldn't handle a joke at his own expense. It is disturbing also that Mel Gibson's anti-semitic comments, made while drunk, did not really spark a debate about how to reconcile people from different religious traditions. Instead, the church was largely silent about (ostensibly) one of its own.

Griffin's comments were a veiled criticism of a culture of superficiality, in which God is constructed as a wealth-affirming, competition-endorsing elitist who likes to go to the Oscars. It was also a joke. We don't have to like it, but we should be able to take it.

Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com

I wrote earlier this week about the importance of Christian identity in sorting out questions of war and peace. I suggested that our membership in the body of Christ should be more determinative of our position on the wars of our government than our identity as American citizens. One story that hasn’t made the news is the impact of the war in Iraq on the body of Christ there. This insightful piece highlights that issue and assesses how the evangelical community in the U.S. is beginning to rethink its support for the war because of the damage and pain it has inflicted on their Christian brothers and sisters in Iraq. Take a look at Christians in the Crossfire:

Oddly, the American evangelical leadership that campaigned for war has paid little attention to the catastrophe enveloping Iraq’s Christians. Few notables acknowledge any need to rethink the war.

By justice a king gives stability to the land, but one who makes heavy exactions ruins it.
- Proverbs 29:4-4

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We feel it is the duty of Christians to create the kingdom of God on Earth among our brothers. This kingdom will exist only when we all have enough to eat, when our children, brothers, parents don’t have to die from hunger and malnutrition. That will be the "Glory," a Kingdom for we who have never known it.

- Rigoberta Menchu
from I, Rigoberta: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

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Lydia Bean's post today, Jena is America, is a strong statement -- and a truthful one. I’m always fascinated by frequent comments that racism is now much more subtle in America today. Well, one place racism is definitely not subtle is in the criminal justice system. Overt and very stark racial disparities are a matter of daily occurrence when it comes to law enforcement, the judicial process, and the prison system. And almost anyone who actually works with those systems is acutely aware of that fact. Lydia Bean knows that firsthand from her experience in Texas, and her organization had a key role on bringing the Jena situation to national attention. We should thank Friends of Justice for that.

One last thing: The biblical bias toward the poor suggests that the truth about any society is better seen at the bottom of the social order than at the top. How the most weak and vulnerable are treated is the best measure of a society’s righteousness according to the prophets. And most of those involved with the criminal justice system are, indeed, at the bottom of the society. So yes, Jena is America.

Today, Sept. 20, over 10,000 people will converge on Jena, Louisiana, to call for justice for the "Jena 6." Thousands more will hold vigils in cities across America. As reported previously on this blog, it all started on Sept. 1, 2006, when a black student at the high school asked an administrator if he could sit underneath a tree in the courtyard where traditionally only white students sat. The administrator told him that he could sit wherever he wanted. The next morning, there were three nooses hanging in that tree. The school dismissed this hate crime as a prank. When black students protested, the local district attorney threatened that he could take their life away with a "stroke of my pen." Then, white students provoked a series of incidents with black students.

In one altercation, a white graduate of the high school threatened three black students with a shotgun. The black youth wrestled the gun out of his hands, but incredibly were charged with theft of the weapon, ignoring the fact that they were defending themselves! Then, a group of white youth attacked a single black youth at a party -- and the police took no serious action. Finally, a black youth named Mychall Bell struck a white youth who had taunted him with racial slurs, and several of his friends joined the fray. The white youth went to the hospital, but was released that day and went to a party that night. The six black students were charged with attempted murder. After a national outcry, the charges were reduced to conspiracy and battery. This month, a Louisiana court of appeals vacated the charges against Bell, ruling that the prosecutor was wrong to charge him as an adult instead of a juvenile -- but he is still sitting in jail instead of moving forward with his education.

When I was in college, I was part of a faith-based movement called Friends of Justice. We emerged as an interracial alliance after a drug sting that arrested 60 percent of my town's young black men all in one fell swoop. Friends of Justice came together across racial lines to say this wasn't right, and we started praying, singing, and reading the Bible together. Now, Friends of Justice organizes across Texas and Louisiana to fight cases of civil rights violations and prosecutorial misconduct. In January, we got a call from a desperate mother in Jena, Louisiana, and so we sent out our executive director, Alan Bean, to do an investigation. After we generated international media attention, the cause of the Jena 6 attracted support from a host of civil rights organizations and celebrities.

America is shocked by the naked bigotry they see in Jena, Louisiana. Why aren't Jena's white residents equally protective of all their town's children? By only intervening to protect whites, Jena's white establishment bears the responsibility for letting conflict escalate between black and white youth.

It would be tempting to dismiss the Jena story as representing the vestiges of bigotry in small-town Louisiana -- but Jena is America.

Judging from some of the comments I hear from white Americans, many are stuck in an "us vs. them" mentality, where justice becomes a zero-sum-game: "there they go again, breaking the law and then playing the race card to escape responsibility!" Since we don't think of black youth as "our" youth, we resent it when someone stands up for their rights as citizens. It grieves me to say this, but too many white Americans see black youth only as potential threats that must be contained by all available means. Many protest that the problem lies only within "troublemaking black youth" -- rather than our broken criminal justice system.

There is no quick fix for America's distorted moral imagination. We can only move forward as a nation when our hearts and minds are transformed by the gospel. Lord, gives us eyes to see and ears to hear.

Lydia Bean is a founding member of Friends of Justice and a doctoral candidate in sociology at Harvard University. To get involved, you can visit the Friends of Justice blog, make a donation, and sign up for Action Updates. Hear a song about Jena, "Sitting on the Wall," performed by Alan and Lydia Bean at the Pentecost 2007 conference. (Refresh your browser if the song doesn't load correctly.)

This fall, for the fifth year, I’m teaching a course at Harvard. I spent Monday, the first day of the semester, in Cambridge. This year’s course, based at the divinity school, is titled “Faith and Politics: Should They Mix and How?” These undergraduate and graduate students come from the divinity school, but also from other schools -- the Kennedy School of Government, business school, law school, and other universities and seminaries in the Boston area.

I enjoy these days at Harvard. The class is large, but the discussions are always very stimulating. I learn a lot from these students who come from every religious, racial, and national background. My final lecture each year always focuses on the crucial difference between career and vocation, and over the years, I’ve taught many young people who then act on their faith by going into various occupations -- teaching, pastoral ministry, law, medicine, business, journalism, starting or serving nonprofit organizations, community organizing, or politics. (Some are running for Congress!) Many have become friends who I stay in touch with years later, and a couple are now part of our senior staff here at Sojourners. We’ve also gotten some great interns and volunteers from my classes.

It’s a lot of work and time preparing for each week’s lecture (you can’t just do your stump speech for 12 weeks to students as bright as these), commuting there and back on Mondays, meeting with many of the students one-on-one or in small groups, and, of course, reading and grading papers. But I have found it to be well worth it. I love the great events we have around the country, like we had in Iowa last week where we drew 1200 people on a weekday night in Iowa City -- more than the candidates are getting these days. But I also love drilling down deeper with a group of 100 smart, eager, critical, (and becoming) committed young people.

Here is the description of this year’s course:

The role of religion and values in public life has always been important in American history, but is now a major political issue. There are those who would restrict religion to the private sphere, those who narrow it to only a few “moral” issues, and those who believe it applies to a broad agenda of issues that affect all of human life and society. For years, the debate has been dominated by the Religious Right, but it is now becoming broader and deeper as other voices are heard. On some of the biggest issues of our time, it now seems possible that faith can be used as a bridge to bring us together on common ground rather than a wedge to divide us.

This course will explore the connection between spiritual renewal and social justice, and how the revival of faith can change society. We will look at that both historically and in our present context. We’ll also look at it in relation to different faith traditions. When politics fails to resolve or even address the great moral issues of the day, social movements often rise up to change politics and meet the challenge. And the best social movements seem to have spiritual foundations.

We will examine these questions from political, theological, spiritual, historical, and practical perspectives. We’ll explore movements past and movements now possible. Given the fall 2007 context, we will discuss how faith and politics was discussed in the last two elections of 2004 and 2006, how it is changing substantially, and why the 2008 election could be very different, on matters of faith and politics, than any campaign in recent years. The agenda of the religious community is changing significantly, and Time magazine reports the “leveling of the praying field” between the two parties.

We will also discuss how the new focus of faith communities on issues like global poverty, climate change, terrorism and war, pandemic diseases, human trafficking, human rights, and genocide could provide the “tipping point” in finding elusive solutions. We will discuss what new movements around those questions would look like and how they are already are emerging. All this will be placed in the historic context and categories of religious engagement with society. We will look again at how H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic typologies might apply today.

This course is for anyone who wants to further explore the relationship between religion and public life, and the only prerequisite is interest. Whatever one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), the course is planned to help us better understand how the relationship between faith, politics, and society can be healthy, dynamic, and respectful of the First Amendment. The course can also inform people in public life who want to act consistently and appropriately as people of faith.

For God is a God not of disorder but of peace.

- 1 Corinthians 14:33-33

We should never neglect to listen to any discourse that supports piety, virtues, and good behavior, for it is a way by which the salvation of God is manifested…. If you are not only moved to compunction by the conversation, but even converted totally to the Lord, swearing and promising to keep the judgment of [God’s] justice, you will also know that [God] is already present, especially if you feel yourself burning with [God’s] love.

- Bernard of Clairvaux
from "On the Song of Songs," Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.

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Here's the word from the physical world: On Sept. 10, scientists studying satellite images of the Arctic reported that sea ice covered 4.32 million square kilometers of the north. The old record, set two years before: 5.34 million square kilometers. Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said, "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. At the moment, an area of ice the size of the United Kingdom melts each week.

Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience about global warming, The End of Nature, way back in 1989. His new book is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future .

Let them direct to God the works that they do, because human work that is directed to God will shine in the heavens…. For God created human beings and placed other creatures under them so that they might act on other creatures in such a way that God’s good works would not be destroyed.

- Hildegard of Bingen
from "Book of Life’s Merits" quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.

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I got a LOT of responses to my post at the end of last week, in which I said the war in Iraq presents the American churches with an issue of Christian identity. Nobody really denied the fact that the worldwide body of Christ is overwhelmingly against the war and the whole thrust of American foreign policy in the post-9/11 era. And that fact remains true even for evangelical Christians around the world. The global body of Christ has no deep trust in the political motivations or geopolitical interests of the U.S., nor do they welcome American hegemony in their regions of the world. Some of my responders have no real concern that their perspective as American Christians in support of their government's war policy puts them in a distinct minority among believers around the world. But many others, like me, are worried by the American Christians who are more allied with their own government than they are with their brothers and sisters across the globe, especially when our nation is the world's military and economic superpower. One of those e-mails came from my own pastor, Scott Garber of Washington Community Fellowship. Scott said:

I just wanted you to know that I especially appreciated your emphasis on Christian opinion outside the US. Very well put. Your question about whether American Christians know things that others don't really gets at the hubris of our ethnocentrism. Though most American Christians have never even seriously considered this question, that further bit of ignorance is no excuse. And the matter of misplaced loyalties and kingdom confusion is a serious one. In fact, it was the subject of my July 4 sermon this year.

I also read a moving piece by Andrew Sullivan, an articulate conservative who supported the war but now has no heart for it. I share his reflections with you in A Humbled President.

The case was so weak, the argument so thin, the evidence for optimism so obviously strained, that one wondered whom he thought he was persuading. And the way he framed his case was still divorced from the reality we see in front of our nose.

And my Beliefnet colleague, Rod Dreher, had this to say in his post The Absurd Bush Speech.

I found myself watching the president's speech tonight astonished and infuriated that he had the nerve to say the things he was saying. I don't know if it's worse to imagine that he's cynically saying things he doesn't believe, or that he really believes such nonsense. Whatever the case, it was a deeply dishonest speech.

In an encouraging shift away from the status quo, many Christian groups are taking a more focused look at stewarding God's creation. A few notable references to biblical environmentalism have been popping up in the news lately. On the recently aired CNN series "God's Warriors," Richard Cizik explains "creation care," a conservative evangelical approach to being a greener church. Two weeks ago, the pope took to a stage in Italy in green vestments to declare Sept. 2, "Save Creation Day," and beseech Roman Catholics to make "courageous decisions" to spare the earth from destructive and irresponsible development trends.

Theologically, the Torah provides plenty of fuel to go green. In fact, humanity is bound to the earth in ways that we may never fully appreciate.

• Genesis 2:7 tells us that God formed us from the very earth we inhabit (man = earth + breath).
• The Hebrew word "adam" (Strongs # 121 and # 122) is the root of the word for earth; Adamah (# 127), tying the reddish hue of dust to the color of blood.
• Through the sabbatical system (Shemitta in the Jewish tradition), both man and creation are entitled rest at a six to one ratio (Leviticus 25).

We can also learn from the Hebrew Bible rich applications of social uplift through proper stewardship of the earth in the form of the Jewish tradition of Peah. In Leviticus (19:9-10, and 23:22) the Israelites were told to leave the edges of all their fields and the fallen fruits "for the poor and the stranger (JPS)." Additionally, the socially engaging agri-practice of the Ma'aser Ani (the 'poor tithe' in the Jewish tradition) was a tenth of a landowner's crop set aside for the less fortunate during the third and sixth years of the seven-year sabbatical cycle.

The increasing trend of environmental awareness in the Christian faith is both hopeful and historically rooted. Wendell Berry, a modern prophet who speaks boldly of our responsibilities to the Creator's handiwork, recognizes that creation includes both the world around us and the people who live upon it. He writes, "Creation is not in any sense independent from the Creator, the result of a primal act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God (Christianity and the Survival of Creation, 1992)." As the central achievement of God's design, we have both the honor and responsibility to protect the rest of creation, and to return to a green orthodoxy.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian peacemaker teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance... But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.

- Thomas Merton
from Passion For Peace

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For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

- Romans 14:17

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One of the best debates I have seen about the events of last week and the future of American policy in Iraq was Sunday’s Meet the Press debate between senators John Kerry and John McCain, two Vietnam veterans who, although friends, maintain profound and passionate disagreements about the war and what policy makes the most sense for American safety and international security.

Take a look.

This latest contribution to The Washington Post/Newsweek On Faith online discussion responds to the question: To what extent are problems in the Middle East about religion, and to what extent are they about politics? Does it matter?

Well that’s complicated. The chief motivator for American foreign policy in the Middle East is clearly geopolitical, with a primary emphasis on oil. But for a vocal constituency in a segment of the American evangelical community, an unquestioning and unequivocal support for the Israeli government’s policies is clearly a religious conviction. And that religious conviction of a key political constituency (especially for the Bush administration) bolsters the demonstrably uneven U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The completely one-sided support for Israel from some conservative evangelicals rests on two things: one, a very dubious interpretation (I’m being generous here) of biblical prophecy and eschatology (the theology of the “end times”) in which the modern state of Israel is still equated with the Old Testament notion of “God’s chosen people;” and two, a complete denial of the very existence of Palestinian Christians.

I had dinner two weeks ago with one of those beleaguered Palestinian Christian leaders who carries feelings of profound sadness and abandonment by other members of the body of Christ. The number of Christians in Palestine continues to decline dramatically as they are caught between Islamic fundamentalism and American fundamentalism. I have always believed that if most American Christians could see the daily and constant humiliation of all Palestinians at Israeli check points in the West Bank they would think such behavior is wrong -- but they never see it or even hear about it in the American press. For any serious debate about Israeli governmental policy you must turn to the BBC, international press, or to the press in Israel itself, which regularly features a far more evenhanded and robust discussion than can be found anywhere in the U.S. media.

One of the most hopeful signs, however, was a recent letter to President Bush by evangelical leaders who clearly dissented from the militant perspective of their Christian Zionist brothers. It said: “We also write to correct a serious misperception among some people, including some U.S. policymakers, that all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution and creation of a new Palestinian state that includes the vast majority of the West Bank. Nothing could be further from the truth. We, who sign this letter, represent large numbers of evangelicals throughout the U.S. who support justice for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

These evangelical leaders are clearly committed to the existence of the state of Israel, to its real security, and its protection from horrendous terrorist attacks -- but also for justice and self-determination for the Palestinian people and their protection from the continual assaults of the Israeli Defense Forces. They are committed to a viable two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and call the United States to take a much more even handed role in resolving it. Last week, their representatives were visiting the State Department.

I include myself in that new evangelical group and hope and pray our number will grow. I can tell you that one Palestinian Christian leader was enormously heartenedby this new evangelical initiative . Let’s hope this religious conviction can help lead to a better political direction.

Ask anyone -- slavery is illegal. Every country has passed laws stating that it is unlawful to own another human being and to exercise total control over that person’s life, work, and family. Therefore, it is shocking to discover that slavery persists in many countries around the world, including the United States. Over 27 million men, women, and children are held in slavery at this moment; whether through debt bondage in South Asia or the U.S., forced child soldiering in Central Africa, contract slavery in Brazil, classical “chattel” slavery in North Africa, or sex slavery in Thailand. In the U.S. alone, nearly 200,000 people live in slavery, and an additional 17,500 are trafficked across the border every year. Some of the most horrific stories come from the sex trafficking industry, where an estimated 2 million children are raped daily by paying customers. These women and children are typically tricked, coerced, or outright abducted into this growing criminal enterprise. The enslavement of people across the world generates almost $32 billion per year, approaching the revenues from the drug and arms trades, and rapidly becoming the most lucrative criminal enterprise in the world.

Modern and historical slavery share the characteristics of control and violence on the part of the slave-holder over the person in bondage, and a lack of payment for work performed. However, modern slavery also differs in significant ways from the slavery of the past. People seeking to enslave others find that it is relatively simple to do so as they discover an apparently limitless supply of victims who are vulnerable to enslavement. Governmental corruption largely contributes to placing victims in this state, which is furthered by a lack of social capital, poverty, education, and law enforcement. Slaves are also cheaper than ever before, and young girls and boys can be purchased for $800 to $2,000 (in contrast, a typical field slave during the height of the African slave trade sold for the modern equivalent of $50,000 to $100,000). In addition, instead of race being the determining factor of enslavement, modern slavery is linked to differences in economic and social power. These discrepancies may be related to race in one country, but to gender, caste, age, or religion in another.

The United States is not immune to the problems of modern slavery. Each year, 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. Unfortunately, law enforcement, aid and social service workers, and the medical community are often not aware of human trafficking and slavery. This often results in the victims being treated as criminals themselves. Slavery is also typically considered a federal or immigration problem, which minimizes the attention it gets from local law enforcement.

As people of a risen Christ, who in his own words came to “set the oppressed free,” it is impossible for us to stay quiet on this issue any longer. There are thousands of people around the world working to end slavery. We invite you to attend the Liberation! Conference on Modern Slavery happening September 21 in Delaware, Ohio, where you can learn more about modern slavery and how you, your church or organization, and community can become engaged to stop it. Please visit www.liberationconference.com to learn more.

Jeremy Scott is a seminarian at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.

To practice hospitality in our world, it may be necessary to evaluate all the laws and all the promotions and all the invitation lists of corporate and political society from the point of view of the people who never make the lists. Then hospitality may demand that we work to change things.

- Joan Chittister
from Wisdom Distilled from the Daily

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[God] frustrates the devices of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success. [God] takes the wise in their own craftiness; and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end. They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope at noonday as in the night. But [God] saves the needy from the sword of their mouth, from the hand of the mighty. So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts its mouth.

- Job 5:12-16

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Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop chain and supporter of fair trade, died on Sept. 10 at age 64 after a major brain hemorrhage brought on by complications of hepatitis C. Roddick, who was raised Catholic but had deep suspicion of organized religion, gained a new appreciation for Christianity at the UK-based Greenbelt Christian Arts Festival in 2004.

"What's wonderful about being my age is having to face your prejudices," Roddick told the Church Times. "I had no idea how big Greenbelt was. I had no idea how organized it was; how free it was; how joyful it was. And I had no idea that there was such a strong activist, trade justice plank in its platform. It's really hard, when you have had your antennae up for most of these movements, to have completely ignored it. I have fallen for the zeitgeist that says anybody who has a religious inclination has no sense of rationale or intellectual understanding and therefore should be dismissed. I am cheering the Greenbelt festival from the top of every bloody mountain ... for me, it's like a heartbeat. And it's youth. I'm ashamed of my bloody prejudices, but I'm delighted to be a convert."

On March 27, 1976, Roddick opened the first Body Shop in Brighton, England. When she decided to franchise the store, Roddick reached out particularly to women and trained countless of them in operating socially responsible businesses. In 2006, she sold the Body Shop empire, more than 2,000 shops worldwide, to L'Oreal for roughly £130 million. "Not content to simply run a globally successful, environmentally friendly business," reports the CBC's "As It Happens," "Dame Anita founded Children on the Edge in 1990, which focused the world's attention on the disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe. She campaigned tirelessly for environmental issues, and, as an entrepreneur and mother, became a model for businesswomen everywhere." In 2005, Roddick announced that she would be giving away her entire fortune. "I don't want to die rich," she said.

Sojourners was pleased to interview Roddick in 2003. She had just published two books A Revolution in Kindness (as editor) and Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits: A Spiritual Activists Handbook (with Brooke Shelby Biggs). Sojourners' David Batstone interviewed Roddick in San Francisco.

Batstone: What motivated you to write about kindness?

Roddick: It was the result of something that happened to me in America. I had written a book about corporate globalization, and it was released the week of the 9/11 tragedy. On the front cover of the book I had included a tagline, "globalization and how to fight back." So we stopped the release and shredded the cover. In its place, I wrote that we had to move toward a revolutionary kindness.

Batstone: You describe one of your books as a spiritual activists' handbook. Do you have a religious background?

Roddick: Yes, Catholic.

Batstone: Is your faith still relevant to you?

Roddick: Absolutely. I'm in awe of liberation theology; that is where my heart is. I follow the great spiritual leaders like Jesus and Buddha who actually get their hands dirty. I do feel ashamed of the church at times. All that gold they stole from native peoples in the Americas, for instance. I think they should give it back. But that doesn't make me cynical. I'm moved by individuals that can polish their feelings of outrage over wrongdoing and do something positive about it. Many of us talk about kindness at great length but don't do anything. Our kindness has to be fierce.

Batstone: What does fierce kindness look like?

Roddick: It has to be bigger than the personal, and more than random acts. It is not satisfied unless human rights and social justice are present.

Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor of Sojourners. Click here to read Sojourners' complete interview with Anita Roddick.

Before coming to Sojourners to serve as the congregational coordinator, I had the unique opportunity to teach Protestant faith formation classes at Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas. Leavenworth was experimenting with a program called Life Connections that allowed Muslims, Christians, and adherents of a variety of faith traditions the opportunity to live together in community and participate in spiritual formation. Participants had the opportunity to deepen their own faith and, at the same time, build trust and friendships with people from other faiths.

I will never forget arriving at the "Big House" for the first time. I approached the ominous guard tower, announced myself, and ascended the long staircase toward the prison entrance. There is something unsettling about the first time you hear the door click behind you. Yet the biggest surprise was not the unsettling confinement, but the students I was about to meet. I had great plans for imparting my superior knowledge of Christian faith and its life implications to the program participants. But when I arrived, I realized that the awaiting class would not only be students, but they would be fellow dialogue partners on the Christian journey. In particular, I was impressed by their knowledge of church history, theology, and the ability of one student to quote Thomas à Kempis.

The participants, who would soon become friends, had amassed an incredible knowledge of the Christian faith and its history from an extensive religious library in the prison. I was a little jealous of their selection. That's why I am outraged this week to read the following in The New York Times:

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The Bureau of Prisons has created a list of acceptable religious books from various faiths and excluded all others. In the name of cleansing the library of radical beliefs, some of the greatest Christian authors have been removed. Who are some of the purged authors? Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, just to name a few. Additionally, the Bureau of Prisons has refused to pay for re-stocking the libraries after the purge, leaving many religious libraries near empty.

In our world and especially in a prison system, where religious faith often seems to divide, my friends in Life Connections, assisted by their extensive religious library, deepened not only their faith but had a profound and positive impact upon Leavenworth federal prison. The purging of religious books from a federal institution hampers not only the discipleship of prisoners, but it should cause us to pause and ask ourselves how this happened in the name of freedom and safety.

Kevin Lum is the congregational network coordinator for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

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God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.

- Job 34:12-12

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But if anger or indignation should suddenly move or provoke you, or you feel bitterness toward anyone, take care not to give in to this wicked impulse, but reprove, soften, and extinguish it as much as you can. Regret that your heart is still so bitter. Humble yourself and ask God’s help. Once [God] has bountifully poured the sweetness of charity into you, you will no longer be bitter. Often God allows chosen friends to be prone to anger, so that they may know themselves more deeply and stand fast more firmly in humility.

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From my blogs this week, readers can rightly conclude that I believe Gen. Petraeus' claims of modest security gains in certain sectors of Iraq do not justify extending the U.S occupation, especially when four years of occupation of Iraq have not produced the political reconciliation that would be necessary for real security and stability. The fragile security improvements are not sustainable without a political solution, which is simply not forthcoming. And without a clear path to political progress, the realization that what Petraeus proposes, and President Bush will likely endorse tonight, is simply more of the same failed strategy, and a scenario of American occupation in the midst of bloody sectarian warfare with absolutely no end in sight.

And contrary to some comments on this site, I have suggested several times an alternative strategy that would have to involve serious international intervention and regional engagement to secure Iraqi security and stability -- the kind of bold, strong, and creative multilateral strategy that is completely obstructed by the ongoing unilateral American occupation. Permanent U.S. military bases and unique American claims to future oil revenues and contracts for Iraqi reconstruction are among the U.S. prerogatives that would have to be sacrificed for such international solutions to be possible -- along with a massive American financial commitment to rebuild the shattered country that our war has broken. But exercising American responsibility without U.S. control is not likely to occur on the Bush watch. So we can only look and hope for a future change of direction.

But let's turn from politics to theology and ecclesiology. The vitriol against Christian Iraq war dissenters from the handful of neocon war promoters who regularly clog the comments to this site forget both. Both the teachings of Jesus (remember, "blessed are the peacemakers" and "love your enemies") and the rigorous criteria of the "just war" from Augustine and others in the Christian tradition clearly leave believers with at least a presumption against war. And the ignominious origins and now-disputed rationales for this war in particular, along with its enormous human cost, clearly put the burden of proof on the war's supporters much more than its critics -- that is, if we are to be Christians about all this, and not just American nationalists or neoconservative apologists for American hegemony in the world.

That brings me to a second point -- about the body of Christ and our loyalty to the global Christian community. Outside the borders of the United States of America, a vast, vast majority of the world's people are steadfastly against the American war in Iraq and the foreign policies of the U.S. in general. Take out all the non-Christians from that global population sample and among the people of God the opposition remains the same. Even reduce that number to only evangelical Christians worldwide and you are still left with an overwhelming majority of born-again, Bible-believing Christians who are against American policy in Iraq and, indeed, the entire Middle East region.

Because of my work and transatlantic family ties, I travel extensively around the world, frequently talk to others who do, regularly read the international press, frequently host international Christian leaders, and often attend international Christian gatherings. Last week, I wrote on this site about my recent journey to Singapore to join 500 leaders of World Vision from 100 countries. And I will tell you that, once again, the great majority of those evangelical believers, especially from the global South, but also including Europeans, Australians, and even many Americans who work globally, are now completely opposed to the Iraq war, to U.S. policy in the region, and to the way the United States conducts its "war on terrorism." In other words, my experience convinces me that the body of Christ, internationally, is against the U.S. war in Iraq and the whole direction of current U.S. foreign policy. Many Christians I've spoken to go further and say that America's aggressive role in the world today has hurt the cause of Christ globally, especially when an American president dangerously conflates America's role with God's purposes. And if you don't know that perspective, you simply haven't had much experience with Christians outside of the United States.

So if the international body of Christ generally doesn't support America's war in Iraq, or U.S. foreign policy generally, what do some American Christians know that the rest of the global Christian community doesn't? Is the rest of the church just wrong? Do we have access to information that they don't have? (Actually, they have much more access to information and different perspectives than most Americans have, which is a big part of the problem.) What don't they understand that we do? Or, from the perspective of the Christian warriors who try to dominate the commentary section of this blog, what do they know that world Christianity has yet to learn?

Personally, to be frank, I think it is because far too many American Christians are simply Americans first and Christians second. The statement that got the most enthusiastic response in Singapore was not about politics but ecclesiology: "We are to be Christians first, and members of nations or tribes second." That simple affirmation, if ever applied, would utterly transform the relationship of American Christians to the policies of their own government.

For all the vitriolic debate about politics this week in relationship to the war in Iraq, I think the real issue is our theology and ecclesiology. Many American Christians are simply more loyal to a version of American nationalism than they are to the body of Christ. I want to suggest that the two are now in conflict, and we must decide to whom to we ultimately belong. That's the real issue.

Nearly a month ago, seven active-duty U.S. Army soldiers in Iraq wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled, "The War as We Saw It." Their conclusions were starkly different from those we've heard this week.

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political, and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the ''battle space'' remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

This morning's Times brought the news that two of the authors of the piece were killed this week. Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora, along with six other soldiers and two detainees, died in a truck accident in Baghdad.

The op-ed piece ended by saying, "We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through." Staff Sgt. Gray and Sgt. Mora have seen their mission through. Our prayers are with their families.

Duane Shank is senior policy adviser for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

On Sunday evening, Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language network, aired what I believe is the first Spanish-language presidential candidates' debate. The University of Miami became the locale for this historic event that has many political implications. The courting of Latino voters is no surprise to many, as projections by the Pew Hispanic Center are that 10 percent of the U.S. electorate will be Hispanic in the 2008 election. Both Democrats and Republicans have made some efforts in the last decade to appeal to Latino/a voters. In 2004, 40 percent of Hispanics voted Republican. In the 2006 midterm elections, 30 percent of Hispanics voted Republican. In recent presidential history, both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations made concerted efforts to reach out to Latino voters.

Many polls and pundits seek to understand and measure the influence of the Hispanic vote in such swing states as New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Ohio. While some people see a presidential debate that is translated into Spanish (the candidates all spoke in English) as an ominous, threatening act to "American culture," may I suggest a different interpretation? When candidates, be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent, choose to speak in a language other than English (Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, Italian, etc.) they are embracing a fundamental motto of U.S. self-understanding, namely, "e pluribus unum -- out of many, one."

The powerful vision behind democracy is that it allows for diversity while holding to unity. Still, it would be a critical mistake to understand unity as uniformity. Addressing the multiple concerns of U.S. Latinos (such as U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, educational and housing challenges, immigration reform, and the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan) means that one holds a fundamental appreciation for the principles of genuine democracy, namely, a plurality of voices. These concerns are not just Latino concerns; they have implications for the whole country. For me the question continues to be, how do we as a country continue to hear the concerns and promise of all no matter what language they speak?

Politics in Spanish is a model of what "democracy in America" (to borrow a phrase from Tocqueville) could be. Politics in Spanish/Korean/Italian/English, etc. (speaking metaphorically), may be a small step to moving beyond a national debate that demonizes the other into a civil discourse where people disagree respectfully. I learned something when services in my local congregation were translated from English to Spanish and Mandarin. You must allow time for people to hear, digest, and respond. Perhaps this small case study can help the country move beyond polarizing rhetoric that dehumanizes Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or nonvoters. Perhaps the practice of listening to others may allow us to be more civil to one another. We are at a great juncture in our political history where we can choose the road of civil discourse or go down the path of escalating, hurtful rhetoric. I believe our faith calls us to be prophetic and priestly simultaneously. May this be the model we leave for our children and the next generation. May my own words challenge me first.

Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a board member for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

To attain the promises of God, we need above all continuous exercise in the virtues; for however firm one's commitment to some good may be, if it is not renewed daily, it quickly dies out.

- John Trithemius

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Those who despise their neighbors are sinners, but happy are those who are kind to the poor.

- Proverbs 14:21

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Gen. Petraeus faced much tougher questions in the U.S. Senate on his second day of testimony, Tuesday, than he did before the House committees on Monday. The senators, many quite experienced in foreign policy matters, were far less impressed by the general's reports of modest tactical success on the security front when there was no evidence of political reconciliation. This became more and more apparent as the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, was confronted with a bipartisan grilling. On its own expressed terms of making a political solution in Iraq possible, the "surge" is a failed policy, despite minor (and still disputable) security gains. And Gen. Petraeus' suggestion to simply stay the course is nothing more than an open-ended commitment to an American occupation in the middle of an Iraqi civil war with no end in sight.

Democratic Senator Joe Biden bluntly stated that the goal of an Iraqi central government that united the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions is simply not possible and that it is "time to turn the corner" on U.S. strategy. Republican Senator (and Vietnam War veteran) Chuck Hagel cited many bleak reports of Iraq by other independent and nonpartisan groups, telling Petraeus, "We've got too many disconnects here, General, way too many disconnects." Hagel demanded an answer to the most basic question about Iraq: "Where is this going?" He pressed Petraeus, "Are we going to continue to invest American blood and treasure at the same rate we're doing now? For what?"

But the most stunning exchange of the day came on a question from Republican John Warner, one of the Senate's elder statesmen on military matters. The Chicago Tribune reported:

Warner concluded with a question: "Are you able to say at this time, if we continue what you have laid before the Congress here as a strategy, do you feel that that is making America safer?"

Petraeus said the strategy was the best course for achieving U.S. objectives in Iraq.

"Does that make America safer?" pushed Warner.

Said Petraeus, "Sir, I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted it out in my own mind."

Petraeus' response to one of the most fundamental questions for the American people about the war in Iraq—does this war make us safer?—was "I don't know." Every day, young Americans are being asked to risk and give their lives for a policy that the commanding general can't say is making America safer. Extraordinary.

Recent discussion on Jews and Israel reminds me of a joke we used to hear as youngsters. The joke begins with a person, who, looking for direction in life, decides to go to the Bible. Opening the New Testament and randomly searching for a verse, he gets the verse of Judas, where, after his treason, it says he went and hanged himself. Not happy with what he got, he returns to the Bible for direction, hoping that this time he will be satisfied. Then the person randomly opens the pages again and gets the verse that says, "Go and do likewise."

It is perfectly appropriate to love Jews in the same manner as God wants us to support women's equal rights, fight poverty, and love the poor. But it is very difficult to look at the Bible on such a pick-and-choose basis. You can't look at the verses about the Jews, women, or the poor without also looking at the verse that says in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, no man or woman, no lord or slave (Galatians 3:28). If we don't look holistically at the general ethos of the Bible we miss out on what is of extreme importance in our Christian life. Prophetic interpretation cannot, and should not, be done in such a manner. As Christians, we must defend life that is created in the image of God. We also must look for justice and fight against cruelty and injustice. That, rather than today's headlines, or the warped interpretation of the Bible based on a particular theological point of view, should be the barometer for us.

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist, professor at Princeton University, and founder of the Arab world's first internet radio station, Ammannet. His e-mail is info@daoudkuttab.com.

A few weeks ago we looked at the calendar and saw that Sept. 11 is now officially titled "Patriot Day." We started thinking of what would be an appropriate way to celebrate and remember this day, especially for those of us who have caught a little of the ex-patriot spirit of a new kingdom… you know, an "in the world but not of it" sort of thing. Then we heard that the film The Camden 28 was going to debut nationally on PBS, and with suspiciously brilliant timing -- on Patriot Day.

My Sept. 11 was surreal, heart wrenching, and with a little mystical dazzle. We'll get to the film in a minute.

I had originally hoped to post this yesterday morning (Sept. 11), partly to give a little shout-out about the film, yada yada, but then came the drama. As I was writing my original little ditty, "Reflections of an Ex-patriot," from my room here in north Philly, a fight broke out among some of the kids on our block. Then their parents came out and the fight grew louder and louder, until our whole block was a chaotic brawl. It's actually been a while since we've had a fight like this one. It just kept building and building, consuming our neighborhood, reminding me of the inferno a few weeks back. Ugliness. Ugliness I can hear out my window and see in Iraq.

I thought of how quickly revenge escalates from a couple of kids to a block filled with rage. I thought of Sept. 11, of Iraq. Obviously, I couldn't just keep writing about peace while a war raged on my street. So, out I went (hence the tardiness and change of the title on this piece).

I remember hearing a definition of idolatry as "something you would sacrifice your children for." There is nothing we fight more passionately for than flag and countries, biology, and nation. And so the fire rages on. But I am thankful for days where we pause to mourn, to honor life, and to cry together. I cried with a few neighbors yesterday about how people hurt each other, and I cried with a church last night over a world that can't stop hitting back. Before the showing of The Camden 28, we celebrated Mass in Camden. We prayed that God would heal the brokenness of our world, our cities, and our hearts. The scripture for Mass was Romans 8, which describes all of creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Today is a day for groaning. And yet we were reminded that these are the pains of birth -- not death -- but birth. There is still hope, even on a day marked by death, and death after death. In the end the world is pregnant with hope, the hope of a kingdom other than Rome or America. And we were reminded that we are the midwives of that kingdom. We are to help give birth to the new world.

After Mass we viewed the film. It is an award-winning documentary about a group of 28 of our friends here in Philly/Camden who entered a federal building during the Vietnam War and destroyed the draft cards. I'm going to do my best not to give away all the best moments in the film in case you didn't get a chance to see it (if you don't want to hear any more skip this paragraph), but there is one moment in the film that is unbelievably redemptive. One of the 28 had become an informant to the FBI, but during the course of things his son was in a tragic accident and died. Our priest here in Camden, Michael Doyle (also one of the 28), was asked to do the funeral. I thought to myself, scandalous, but what is even more scandalous is that brother Michael DID IT! He tells the story of how the funeral was filled with FBI agents and peace activists, and how the little group of activists surrounded their Judas with love and friendship. At the funeral Michael's message was reconciliation and grace.

The evening ended last night as the filmmaker joined us in Camden. Members of the Camden 28 presented him with the clock from the courtroom here in Camden where the trial took place. It is now permanently set for 2:30 p.m., the time where these prophets heard those beautiful two words: "not guilty."

The only thing that could have made the day more perfect would have been another little trip to the federal building ... maybe next year.

Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Check local listings for future broadcasts of The Camden 28.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love

- Henry Ward Beecher
Quoted in How Shall We Live by Joan Chittister, OSB.

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If a king judges the poor with equity, his throne will be established forever.

Proverbs 29:14-14

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It was a big day for a general on Capitol Hill yesterday, as Gen. David Petraeus made his long-awaited "progress report" to a joint House committee. But one congressman remembered the last time a general's testimony drew such public attention. It was on April 1967 that Gen. William Westmoreland made his speech to Congress about how much progress we were making in Vietnam. Later, in November 1967, the general spoke to the National Press Club saying, "With 1968, a new phase is starting ... we have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view." It was in that speech where we heard the historic phrase about the "light at the end of the tunnel." Then, January 1968 saw the Tet Offensive and the beginning of the painful end of Vietnam.

U.S. deaths in the war from 1956 to 1967 totaled 19,560. But after 1968, there were 38,633 more (including those who died from wounds after the war ended with the ignominious departure of U.S. troops in 1973). More than twice as many of the names on the black wall that is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial came after it had become clear that the war strategy had failed.

There were lots of "facts" offered up yesterday by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. While the security situation is mixed, said the general, the Bush "surge" is working and things are getting better. He recommended that the increased force levels be maintained through next spring and into the summer (give or take a brigade or two). Crocker, while admitting the political situation is "difficult" and "will take time," suggested that a unified and democratic central government in Iraq is "attainable."

Of course, independent and nonpartisan assessments of the levels of violence, the continuing sectarian conflict, and the success of the Iraqi government are quite different. According to The Washington Post, Comptroller Gen. David M. Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), painted a far bleaker picture of Iraqi progress last week, issuing a report that said the Baghdad government has failed to meet 11 of the 18 political benchmarks established by the U.S. Congress. And despite the U.S. troop surge, the report concluded that it is "unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased." In his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Walker and the GAO labeled the Iraqi government "dysfunctional" and reported that "overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billon in reconstruction funds."

The Post also reported on a second independent report ordered by Congress, which called the national police "dysfunctional" and riddled with sectarianism and corruption. The 20-member commission, headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones Jr., said Iraq's security forces will not be able to fulfill its obligations for at least 12 to 18 months. The report called for a "strategic shift" in Iraq, with U.S. forces reducing their massive "footprint" in the country where we have the clear perception as "occupiers."

President Bush said the "surge" was to create "breathing space" for political reconciliation among Iraq's warring factions. And that has clearly not happened, despite the reports of mild security improvements in some areas. In fact, on Sunday's Meet the Press, Gen. Jones said the opposite was true -- that real security in Iraq was not possible without political reconciliation. And because there has been no political reconciliation because of the surge, it is so far a policy failure. Despite the surge, sectarian violence still reigns in Iraq, young Americans remain caught in the crosshairs of a civil war, and the bloody insurgency/counter-insurgency continues the kill each week.

But the general with four stars on his shoulders and a chest full of medals says we should soldier on, which is what we all knew the president had already decided to do. When was the last time you saw a general saying he was losing a war?

Where there has been real progress on security, like in Anbar province, it is because of tribal leaders (other Muslims) getting tired of the religious extremism of al Qaeda terrorists -- it is not because of the surge. In addition, because the area is virtually all Sunni, the promise of Sunni/Shiite reconciliation is low. But in the undermining of support for Islamic radicalism among other Sunni Muslims, there are clearly lessons to learn about strategy -- but more than military strategies.

Yet the Bush administration still refuses to learn any lessons from the 9/11 anniversary other than military responses and, indeed with Iraq, in a misguided and disastrous military response. Iraq was not the central theater of the "war on terrorism" until the U.S. intervention turned it into a terrorist training camp and recruiting ground for a new generation of suicide bombers.

The Iraq debacle reveals military solutions to be among the least effective in the battle against terrorism. Bin Laden's latest video reminds us that he is still out there. Does anybody really think we are safer than we were before 9/11 or that Iraq has made us more secure?

And the Bush administration has not even begun to learn the biggest lesson of 9/11 -- that unilateral strategies are the most ineffective response to the real threats of global terrorism. But the new and creative multilateral strategies we most need to undermine and defeat religious extremism and political terrorism are blocked from emerging in the kind of unipolar world that the U.S. still wants to dominate.

For example, any serious opponent of the war in Iraq knows that having so disastrously intervened, the U.S. is indeed responsible for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq in ways that protect against the potential post-war bloodletting that the White House continually warns us about. But how we best do that is the critical question. A real argument for international involvement and multilateral solutions can be made for that very task, one that includes a primary focus on regional diplomacy to prevent more destabilization in the Middle East. But it is, in fact, the continued U.S. occupation that most obstructs the possible international interventions that could save Iraq and the region.

In the meantime, it is the human cost of the continuing war that is most painful. Every week more Americans will die, along with an untold number of Iraqis. And there is no end to the killing in sight with President Bush's intransigence and Gen. Petraeus' promises. After today's testimonies on Capitol Hill, it's clear that the next war is already being prepared -- a war with Iran. A state of permanent warfare is now the U.S. strategy for defeating terrorism, which will only make it worse.

John McCain keeps talking about "honor" and hopes the surge will help his wilting presidential campaign to surge again. But there is no honor in a war that was fought on false pretenses, that sends young Americans on hopeless missions only to die, that slaughters the innocents in even greater numbers and doesn't even bother to count the dead, and learns nothing from its mistake of relying on military solutions instead of political ones. Because George Bush now compares Iraq to Vietnam, I will too. The endless killing of my generation in Vietnam was justified by one changing rationale after another, but the last justification for continuing the killing was reduced to "bringing our boys home with their heads high." We're hearing that again now in talk about "winning" and "credibility" and "honor." Well, the Vietnam boys came home with their heads disillusioned, their bodies broken, and their hearts sickened.

We probably won't end this strategy of destruction and defeat until fathers (like me) and mothers decide that their sons and daughters won't participate in it anymore. So last night, I talked to my 9- and 4-year-old sons and told them I never want them to fight in America's misbegotten wars.

As Christians, we have understood that being a Christian means refusing to accept all the injustices which are committed against our people, refusing to accept the discrimination committed against a humble people who barely know what eating meat is but who are treated worse than horses.

- Rigoberta Menchu
I, Rigoberta: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

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Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 

 John 14:27-27

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On Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007, six of us were found guilty in federal court in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by a federal judge for trying to visit the office of our senator. We will be sentenced in a few weeks.

It all started one year ago on Sept. 26, 2006. That day nine of us entered the Federal Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and tried to take the elevator to the third floor to the office of Sen. Pete Domenici to present him with a copy of the "Declaration of Peace," a national petition campaign aimed at stopping the U.S. war on Iraq, bringing our troops home, and pursuing nonviolent alternatives and reparations. More than 375 similar actions took place across the nation that week.

The senator's office manager came downstairs and said she would only allow three of us upstairs. After 45 minutes of waiting and negotiations all nine of us decided to go upstairs, figuring we had a right as a group of constituents to deliver our petition to the senator's office.

As we stepped onto the elevator a policeman put his foot in the door, and the next thing we knew, the power was turned off.

Every time you pick up a piece of trash along the road, say to yourself, "Holy, holy, holy is the house of God."

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Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

- John 14:27-27

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One of the high points of the recent World Vision Triennial Council meeting in Singapore was a remarkable address by Jan Egeland, former U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. Egeland has been deeply involved in the resolution of intractable conflicts in places such as northern Uganda and the eastern Congo, and was one of the early voices to bring Darfur to the world’s attention.

He reported progress in poverty reduction in many places, but he said we still need to convince the 2 billion richest people in the world that they have the responsibility to “lift up” the 1 billion still suffering from extreme poverty. And while we now have 50% fewer wars and conflicts than in 1989—when the Berlin Wall fell—the answer to the question of whether we are doing enough to resolve the toughest and most deadly conflicts “on our watch” is, “no, we’re not.”

Egeland listed 10 challenges for organizations like World Vision, which I believe are helpful to any organization or group seeking to relieve human pain and suffering:

1. To succeed, we have to promise ourselves to speak the truth of what the situation is. If we don’t speak the truth, who will? We are not there to please powerful donors and sponsors.

2. We are not there to administer a crisis, or to manage it and enable people just to survive. Egeland quoted a woman living in a Ugandan refugee camp who said, “You keep us alive, but you haven’t given us life.”

3. We are there to change things, not just to keep people alive. Humanitarian aid cannot become an alibi for moral and political change.

4. After the “watershed” 2005 Millennium +5 U.N. Summit, the international community can and must now intervene when sovereign nations are not protecting their own people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

5. We must offer special protection for women and children who are the worst victims of poverty and conflict. He said women are now being abused more than ever.

6. Our energy and advocacy must be focused on the most neglected and forgotten places of the world.

7. We have to raise more resources, especially from the wealthy nations. Most people in the developed world think their levels of aid are much higher than they really are.

8. We must be conscious of the quality of our humanitarian work. The vulnerable need to be protected from our incompetence. This work is no place for amateurs.

9. We have to confront the proliferation of small arms around the world that fuel the conflicts and cause such human destruction.

10. Climate change is also a justice issue. It is primarily caused by the world’s wealthiest people, but it will first impact the world’s poorest people.

All Egeland’s remarks were informative and provocative. For more on the World Vision Triennial, see my earlier post, A World of Hope.

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I’m very grateful to all these organizations in the United States, especially the private and religious organizations. I appreciate the food and clothing they send. I thank them sincerely for their willingness to help, and I know they do it with great love. But I’d also like to say that this realationshipo—where we’re dependent on the goodwill of outsiders—isn’t the kind of relationship we’d like to have.... We’re not going to solve our problem through handouts. Because our problem is a social one. And until we change this system, all the charity in the world won’t take us out of poverty.
- Elvia Alvarado
Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart

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Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals— they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way...

- Amos 2:6-7

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The great fall debate on Iraq has begun. Several much-anticipated reports on the success of the war (or lack thereof) have started to arrive in the nation’s capital, which will be followed by the most contentious of congressional debates. This week, a GAO (Government Accountability Office) report suggested that daily attacks against civilians in Iraq have remained “about the same” since the Bush administration began its troop “surge” that added 20,000 more combat troops on the ground. It painted a bleak political and security portrait of the situation in Iraq by concluding that Iraq has met only three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress.

Another report, by an independent commission, is due out today, and according to news reports, it will say that the Iraqi police are “incapable” of protecting neighborhoods and that it will be at least 12-18 months before the Iraqi army can maintain the country’s security. Anticipating an epic showdown with Congress, President Bush made an unanticipated visit to Iraq this week to herald the progress he claims his surge had made in places like Anbar province.

Next week, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on the progress of the troop "surge" and the war effort in general. That report promises to catalyze an intense national debate on the floor of the U.S Congress, in the media, and across the nation. Is it time to end the war? If so, how? Or should we persevere until we “win” the war? And what would that mean?

It will be a great debate on what is clearly a life-and-death issue for both Americans and Iraqis. It is a debate in which much is at stake. All next week, this blog will be focusing on Iraq and the future of this war, which has become such a disaster.

But as people of faith, we believe the place to start is prayer. Only prayer can soften hearts and open the way to peace and reconciliation. So, as General Petraeus testifies, we're planning to match his surge with one of our own – 20,000 prayers for Congress to bring an end to this war.

While the Bush administration has frequently abused the language of religion to justify this disastrous war, a growing number of Christians from across the theological and political spectrum are coming together to oppose it.

Last March, to commemorate the fourth anniversary of this disastrous war, Christians filled Washington National Cathedral to witness to their faith, in opposition to this war. On that occasion, I said:

“I believe it will take faith to end this war. It will take prayer to end it. It will take a mobilization of the faith community to end it – to change the political climate, to change the wind. It will take a revolution of love to end it, because this endless war in Iraq is based ultimately on fear, and the Bible tells us that only perfect love will cast out fear. And to cast out that fear, we must act in faith, in prayer, in love, and in hope – so we might help to heal the fears that keep this war going....

“All of this must be wrapped in the power of prayer. Because we believe that God can still work miracles in and through our prayers – and that prayer followed by action can turn valleys of despair into mountains of hope. God has acted before in history and we believe that God will act again through us.”

So we would like to begin this great debate with prayer. Prayers for peace and prayers for the wisdom and courage to end this war in the ways that are most protective of human life, especially of the innocent. Our nation's political leaders are listening to the faith community as never before. We've spoken to several members of Congress who are considering reading a selection of your prayers for peace into the Congressional Record.

Like many of you, I've opposed this war from the start, and together we've raised a prophetic voice against it–marching in the streets, writing letters, and much more.

We'll continue to do all of that, but I believe it will also take faith to end this war. It will take prayer to end it. So this week, as we prepare for the debate, we want to offer our prayers to Congress, prayers to members of Congress who even disagree about the war, prayers for wisdom to know and courage to do the right thing.

Will you be a part of this surge of prayer for peace? Click here to let your senators and representatives know that you're praying for them.

In times such as these, we ought to remember the words of the apostle Paul:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

The Rev. Dr. D. James Kennedy, the Christian Right leader Rolling Stone magazine described as “the most influential evangelical you’ve never heard of,” died yesterday in Florida of complications from a heart attack. His passing, only months after the death of Jerry Falwell, signals the generational shift of leadership now occurring in evangelical Christian circles.

Unlike most people, I had heard of D. James Kennedy. In the early 1970s, he created the popular program “Evangelism Explosion International” to encourage churchgoers to be more assertive in witnessing to their neighbors. My then-congregation in Scottsdale, Arizona, used the program to great success. Kennedy was a hero to us—helping us all to be grassroots Billy Grahams and to double the size of our small church.

In 1979, Kennedy’s interests took a turn. As a founding board member of Falwell’s Moral Majority, he increasingly directed his preaching toward politics. His opinions on individual issues did not differ from other Religious Right leaders. His strongest contribution to the movement was his passionate belief that America was founded as a Christian nation and developing media to carry that message across the globe. “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ,” he proclaimed, “whatever the cost.” His preaching, politics, and public ministry flowed from this central idea: to restore Christian America.

And it is at that very point—the idea of a Christian America—that evangelicalism, along with American Protestantism more generally, is changing.

Born in 1930, Kennedy lived in a world so distant from our own that it may well have been possible to believe in a Christian America. Churches stood on every public square; members of the clergy shaped public opinion on every issue; schoolchildren uttered Protestant prayers and read Protestant scriptures daily. Many people from Kennedy’s generation remember—or imagine they remember—a vanished Christian world, an ordered society with Protestant faith at the center. Much of the Religious Right’s energy derives from a desire to restore that world, or to “reclaim America for Christ.” To that end, Kennedy mixed evangelicalism with classical Reformed theology and a kind of soft Christian Reconstruction, creating the spiritual fuel for a right-wing political and media empire that meshed with the longings of a certain age.

While Kennedy’s generation was ascendant, new Christian voices began questioning such nostalgia. “Sometime between 1960 and 1980,” wrote Methodist leaders Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, “an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began.” They recounted “the end of Christendom” in Greenville, South Carolina (the home of Bob Jones University), when the local Fox Theater opened—for the first time ever—on a Sunday in 1963. “The gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding ‘Christian’ culture to prop it up and mold its young, is not a death to lament,” they claimed. “It is an opportunity to celebrate.”

The contrast between Kennedy and Hauerwas and Willimon is dramatic. Kennedy believed in Christendom, an American Christian nation divinely designed as the leader of a global spiritual empire, and in creating a Christian politics toward that end. Hauerwas and Willimon believe that Christendom, the ideal of a Christian nation, was historically wrongheaded from the start. “The church,” they argue, “doesn’t have a social strategy; the church is a social strategy.”

The contrast defines the generational shift regarding attitudes toward Christendom. Older evangelical leaders, for the most part, want Christendom back. Emerging leaders, influenced by theologians such as Hauerwas and Willimon, are less interested in “reclaiming” Christendom and more interested in strengthening a confessing church based on the model of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s alternative community in Hitler’s Germany. For younger Christians—evangelicals and progressives alike—Kennedy’s nostalgic world bears no resemblance to their own. The vision of a post-Christendom church, a community of pilgrims joined together in practices of faith and justice, energizes their hope for the future. As the Christendom generation passes away, a post-Christendom faith will, most probably, take its place. That may take some time, but it will eventually recreate Christian political theology in America.

D. James Kennedy, RIP. And while we are at it, let us bury American Christendom, too.

Diana Butler Bass is the author of the award-winning Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper One). She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University—where Hauerwas and Willimon taught—in American religious history.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.

- Matthew 23:23-23

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One is not absolutely alone, one cannot live and die for oneself alone. My life and my death are not purely and simply my own business. I live by and for others, and my death involves others.

- Thomas Merton

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

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The words of Jesus are unambiguous when it comes to expressing how we
are to love each other--we are to love others as we love ourselves. In
fact, the paradigmatic, the normative test case for Christian love is love
of enemy. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus tells us that we
are to love our enemies and to do good to them. Surely we can agree that it
is exceptionally difficult to see how one can genuinely love the other who
is enemy to us at the same time that one is engaged in their torture. In
addition, experts tell us that torture is a very unreliable means of
gathering data. One wonders, then, why so many have allowed fear to drive
them into embracing what surely is a great threat to our own humanity.

I am glad to announce that the National Religious Campaign Against
Torture is making available, free of charge, the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib to
the first 1,000 churches that are willing to screen the movie in their
community during the week of Oct. 21 to 28. The film, made by HBO, is a masterful
examination of one of the great moral issues of the 21st century.

You can get a copy for your congregation by clicking here. Please forward this link to as many of your friends as you think might be interested. I would be delighted to hear from any of you who decide to show this important movie.

Chuck Gutenson is chief operating officer of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

Last week I had the great blessing of participating in World Vision’s Triennial Council held in Singapore. It drew together almost 500 people—World Vision’s country directors and many staff, board chairs, and members from every region of the world, as well as the international board of directors who will guide and govern what has become the largest relief and development organization in the world. World Vision has grown enormously, especially in the last several years, and is seeking to determine its future direction. The organization serves 100 million people in almost 100 countries, with 23,000 staff members and an annual budget of $2 billion. It was indeed a privilege to deliver the opening and closing addresses and to have many opportunities to interact with this extraordinary and significant group of people each day of the conference.

I saw an organization in the dynamic process of moving from alleviation to transformation. I felt the passion of an international community of humanitarian faith-based workers who care deeply about the poorest children of the world, and who clearly yearn to embrace a God of justice, not merely a God of charity. That was the call they responded to in Singapore. The response was especially powerful from those from the global South, where the churches are growing dramatically and the conditions of life for so many have forced the people of God to address the issues of global justice.

The response of World Vision to the Asian tsunami was especially impressive, along with so many other places where natural disasters and human conflicts have caused so much suffering over the last three years. But we talked about how the greatest “disaster” in the world today is the very structure of the global order itself, and how disasters such as the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina only serve to reveal these underlying injustices. If we are to be faithful to the biblical vision, we must judge those global structures to be unjust.

Organizations such as World Vision have the choice of merely being the beneficiaries of the guilt of the developed world in serving the victims of an unjust global order, or they can serve the poor in a way that shines a spotlight on global injustice and the moral imperative for transformation. It is more and more clear that World Vision desires to make the second choice. Many from the global South told me they had never heard an American speak this way, but the Americans at Singapore were also clearly in sync with the need for World Vision’s prophetic vocation.

We must be Christians first, the World Vision delegates strongly affirmed, and citizens of nations and members of tribes second. Today, globalization seems to have an inevitable logic, but no comparable ethic. But international bodies such as World Vision, which know no geopolitical boundaries, could help create the ethics and values that globalization now lacks.

World Vision now has three organizational pillars: relief, development, and advocacy. Advocacy is the newest and most controversial pillar, but the imperative to deal with the root causes of human suffering, with the injustice that leads to disaster for so many, and with the policies of nations and international organizations that obstruct real solutions to poverty, has developed a real momentum within the organization. And rather than just becoming another lobby group, their deepest response was to the vocation of “changing the wind” of international politics and priorities.

“World Vision changed this week,” many people said to me as I departed. We could all feel it. It seemed that what has been growing within the organization for some time took a great leap forward during those days in Singapore, and there is no turning back. World Vision will not just be a collector of a guilty, affluent world’s donations to sponsor poor children, but rather a catalyst to help build a global movement for spiritual and social transformation. World Vision’s size, influence, and credibility positions the organization very well to be a prophetic leader in that movement for justice on the global stage that speaks truth to power—not just as a service provider when disaster strikes.

On the last day we spoke about a biblical theology of hope in a world of pain, and how hope, backed by faith, was the key to bringing about the global sea changes we desperately need. The choice today is less between belief and secularism, but between hope and cynicism. The theme of the final day was “A World of Hope,” and what I saw and felt at World Vision’s Singapore Triennial Council made me very hopeful indeed.

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When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.

- Deuteronomy 24:20-22

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In whatever work that you do, you should say to yourself at every moment: "If God looks at me, what does [God] see?" Then see how you answer yourself. If you condemn yourself, leave immediately. Stop the work that you were doing and take up something else in order to be sure to reach your destination. For it is necessary that the traveler be always ready to continue on the journey.

- Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

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Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.

I couldn't sleep after watching last month's Republican presidential forum on August 5. I was especially disturbed by the intersection of two statements made by Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo. Perhaps because he is not in the top tier of Republican candidates, it was easy to consider his statements marginal and negligible, but I believe – completely apart from his presidential aspirations – that his statements should get us thinking, especially those of us who are, like Rep. Tancredo, known as evangelical Christians.

The representative said that as president he will tell Muslim extremists that if they attack the United States with nuclear weapons, he will respond by bombing Medina and Mecca.

Although the State Department has called his statement "reprehensible" and "crazy," a few days later Tancredo offered what seemed to be further justification for his statement. He explained, according to Iowapolitics.com, that a promise to destroy Muslim holy sites "is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong, fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent, or you will find an attack."

Although none of the other candidates in the forum seemed to agree with Tancredo, they all seemed eager to prove themselves most ready to keep nuclear weapons "on the table" and to present themselves as "strong on national defense," which now may turn out to mean "committed to pre-emptive war theory over just war theory."

Tancredo's threat was all the more disturbing to me in light of something he said later in the same forum when asked about his most significant mistake. He replied, "… it took me probably 30 years before I realized that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior."

Of course, this confluence of aggressive rhetoric with professions of evangelical faith is not unique to Tancredo. For example, a recent editorial by a popular and award-winning religious broadcasting personality had a similar theo-combative tone. Christiane Amanpour's recent "God's Warriors" series on CNN brought a number of other similar voices to our attention.

Democratic candidates are certainly not immune to this impulse to flex their combat credentials, evidenced by recent sparring between leading candidates. We can hope, in the midst of a heated campaign season, that responsible theologians and religious leaders will acknowledge the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and engage in a needed public conversation about faith, politics, and war. This life-and-death conversation can't be left to politicians and media pundits alone. A recent New York Times article by Mark Lilla raises some key issues to be addressed in this needed dialogue.

A few evangelical voices have spoken out strongly against this ongoing inflation in aggressive rhetoric, but in my mind, remarkably few. Some, no doubt, do not want to dignify extreme statements with a reply. A surprising number, though – readily searchable in the blogosphere – are actually saying "amen."

As I mull all this over in the middle of the night – running the bases from angst to depression to prayer and hope - I can't help but think of the oft-heard complaint regarding moderate Muslims: Why don't they stand up and speak out more vociferously against the violent rhetoric of Muslim extremists? If their religion truly is peaceful, why don't they speak up for peace more passionately? This may now become a "plank and splinter" issue (Matthew 7:3-5) for evangelical Christians – not to mention Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestants, and others -- raising questions like these:

At what point does the rhetoric of fellow evangelicals (or Roman Catholics, etc.) become extreme enough to elicit from evangelical leaders the kind of loud and public response we wish moderate Muslims had been giving regarding Muslim extremists? Which leaders are speaking out, and which aren't?

Does Rep. Tancredo's recent statement qualify as excessive? Why or why not? If not, what would push it over the line?

How can evangelicals in particular and Christians in general who don't agree with this kind of rhetoric respond constructively - and in ways that will be heard as widely as the original statements?

How do thoughtful Christian theologians respond to this kind of rhetoric? On what basis do they justify or reject this kind of rhetoric and the biblical interpretation used to defend it? Where and how can concerned seminary professors and other scholars speak up and be heard?

What will be the predictable effects of this kind of rhetoric on the public perception of "evangelical" and "Christian" – among younger Christians in America? Among non-Christians? Among Muslims here and around the world?

What forms of deterrence can be explored that are more in line with the life and teachings of Jesus? In other words, if we reject both Rep. Tancredo's approach and the opposite approach of passivity, what could a creative, nonviolent, responsible third way look like?

How can we learn from leaders like Dr. King and Desmond Tutu to stir people to be as passionate about active peace-making as a solution to war as others are about war-making as a solution to war?

If "holy war" rhetoric is indeed escalating in a vicious cycle among Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others, what will be the predictable outcome? How can concerned religious leaders work for a new kind of dialogue and in so doing help chart a more peaceable course for their faith communities?

How can American evangelicals, and Christians in general, escape our echo chamber and begin to listen to the wise voices and concerns of their brothers and sisters around the globe – as Ryan Rodrick Beiler's recent posting invited us to do?

These questions are worth raising, because in the election year ahead, I expect there will be a lot more of this kind of "God's warriors" rhetoric to respond to. Maybe Rep. Tancredo's proposal can serve the constructive purpose of provoking some mature and constructive reflection – some evangelical ijtihad, to borrow a theme from Irshad Manji.

I do not in any way want to vilify Rep. Tancredo. The fact is, he cares about something worth caring about: how to stop the vicious cycle of terrorism that seems to be escalating each day. Even if his proposal is as dangerous and misguided as I believe it is, the candidate is to be commended for seeking a solution to this very real danger. I hope that more and more of us will become motivated – and resourced by our faith – not simply to complain about violent solutions to the problem of violence, but instead to make better proposals, because this one, I believe, is a recipe for disaster. To continue living by the sword, according to a reputable authority, is not a sustainable long-term strategy for living at all.

Brian McLaren is board chair for Sojourners/Call to Renewal. His new book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, will be released October 2 and explores these issues in more depth and detail.

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People say, "What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will
vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.
- Dorothy Day
from Loaves and Fishes

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Whatever house you enter, first say, "Peace to this house!" And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

- Luke 10:5-6

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See what no eye can see, go where no foot can go, choose that which is no choice–then you may hear what makes no sound–God’s voice.

- Angelus SilsiusQuoted in How Shall We Live by Joan Chittister, OSB

For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to their death. He loved to curse; let curses come on him. He did not like blessing; may it be far from him. He clothed himself with cursing as his coat, may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones.

- Psalms 109:16-18

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