In Arizona it is clear that the immigration issue is more than just a political debate; human lives hang in the balance. Families we have come to love are finding themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances. For us the question to the church seems clear: "Who will speak for those denied a voice?" Locally the rhetoric has become intolerable as families - families in our churches, ministries, and neighborhoods - are described in angry, hateful, even subhuman terms. As Christians, regardless of our position on the issue, we will not accept this type of language and we must call our political leaders to a higher standard whether during national presidential contests or inside of committee hearings in our state houses.  That's why we're speaking out, as these Arizona pastors recently did:

As ministry leaders and pastors of churches in this county, we do not ask people of faith to prove their legal status before they can participate in fellowship.

In the process, we have watched the lives of immigrants become increasingly intertwined into the lives of our congregations.

This has given us an up-close and personal look at the human toll borne by the men, women and children caught in the crosshairs of politicians who use a broken immigration system as an opportunity to build personal political capital.
Instead of solutions, we are offered slogans from soapboxes. Worse still, we are offered poor uses of our state and county's limited resources that cannot begin to solve this clearly federal issue.

Local posturing is sure to only drive families further into the shadows - families we care deeply about.
When families in our fellowships are afraid to send their kids to school, go to the grocery store, talk to the police during an emergency or even answer a knock at the door, regardless of the nature of their immigration status, we must speak up.

The acidic level of fear created by a few opportunistic politicians is intolerable and putting all of us at greater risk.
A divided, polarized and frightened community works in complete contrast to the message of love and reconciliation we strive to communicate to our world.

I encourage you to read their entire statement. Solutions not slogans are what is needed right now and above all a call to remembrance that at the center of this issue sit human beings - human beings that are very important to us.

Ian Danley is a youth pastor with Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona.

First, the very good news: a deal appears to be in sight to demobilize the murderous LRA of Uganda, which has abducted tens of thousands of children and been responsible for killings and mutilations. There are reports that

Although many internally displaced people are still sleeping in the camps they've called home for about a decade now, they're beginning to move furniture and farming tools back to their village homes.

Human rights activists warn that follow-through will make or break any agreement.

Now, the bad news: the regime in Khartoum, which is trying to weasel out of its 2005 peace agreement with southern Sudan, is likely trying to keep the LRA around to attack southern Sudan:

The [Khartoum] regime has provided military backing to the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army, infamous for brainwashing kidnapped children to become cold killers. Now Sudan prepares once again to rescue the LRA from near-oblivion, as Khartoum will use the LRA's child soldiers in its efforts to disrupt Uganda's own peace process. Recently, reports emerged of a vicious LRA attack on civilians in southern Sudan. Yet again, no consequences.

After that was written, the LRA attacked civilians again.

(There are also rumors that Khartoum may offer LRA leader Joseph Kony, one of the world's most openly evil people, refuge among the Janjaweed in Darfur).

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor for Sojourners.

My parents had an agreement: If my father could name his children, then my mother could raise us in the church. So I was given a full Muslim name, but I was baptized as a Christian. Growing up I never really liked my name very much - Omar. For a little kid in Texas, a foreign sounding, deeply ethnic name was a nuisance. It stood out too much. It made a scene. In classrooms full of Mikes and Peters and Amys and Stephanies, Omar felt like the person who wore jeans to a wedding while everyone else was in suits. Very out of place. I always wanted to be a David.

Over the years, in classrooms and sanctuaries, as different Middle Eastern dictators and terrorist groups made headlines, my name was the butt of many jokes, varied translations, and stupid questions (imagine the fun in junior high when "Moammar Gadhafi" sounded too much like "Omar Rikabi").

Not too long ago, I was given the opportunity to preach in a Baptist church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before the service started I was introduced to the senior pastor. "Hello," I told him, "my name is Omar and I'll be doing the preaching tonight." As he shook my hand, he pulled me close and asked loudly with his southern drawl, "Omar? You're not a terrorist are you?"

I have to admit that this was not the first time my Muslim name was taken as a suggestion that I was "one of them." By "them" I mean "the enemy." The politics and preaching of fear saturates us. Representative Keith Ellison, the Muslim congressman from Minnesota, had to endure talk show host Glenn Beck's ridiculous questions about his loyalty to "the enemy." And now Senator Barack Obama is under attack because his middle name is Hussein.

But here is my question: What if Obama were a Muslim? So what? I resent the idea that just because my family is Muslim, or that I have a Muslim name, we are somehow part of "the enemy" who cannot be trusted. I know scores of Muslims in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Europe, and the U.S. who do not hate Christians, Jews, the U.S., or "our freedoms." But sadly, at a time when tensions are high and we should be working for peace, too many politicians and pastors seem all too willing to fuel the fire of war with proclamations and sermons of ignorance and fear.

What stings even more with the Obama situation is the implied notion that being a Muslim, or having a Muslim or Middle Eastern name, means that you are not as qualified for a position that anyone else with a "normal" background or name could have. Does the fact that my first name is Omar, my middle name is Hamid, and I have an Iraqi last name mean that I cannot be a good pastor? Or that my dad cannot be a good father? Or that my cousin cannot be a good surgeon?

No one ever claimed that Ted Kennedy could not be a senator because Irish-Catholics were involved in violence in Belfast. Or imagine the outrage if talk show hosts attacked Senator Joe Liberman simply because he was Jewish. They would quickly be recognized as anti-Semitic and taken off the airwaves. But when it comes to Muslims and the Middle East, we seem to be operating with a different set of rules.

It does not matter that the e-mail rumors about Senator Obama being a Muslim are false. For those who are all too ready to click the "forward" button have exposed their real thoughts and convictions of bigotry and mis-placed fear toward the Muslim world.

And for those of us who claim that we say and do what we do "in the name of Jesus", we should remember that "name" also means "nature." So then, are we saying and doing what we do in the very nature of Christ, who had a radically different nature when it came to enemies and foreigners?

We must remember that the enemies of the U.S. are not always the enemies of God. The world may have radical enemies who happen to be Muslim, but Muslims are not the enemy. The real enemy is the ignorance and fear we see being trumpeted over Obama's name. And in the end the only testament left will be the further alienation of millions of people who will continue to wonder why the West seems to hate the Muslim world.

We can do so much better.

I love my name.

Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at www.firstbornstories.com

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

- Ecclestiastics 2:10-11

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The Global Christian Forum is a new phenomenon bringing together Christian churches from throughout the globe and the different parts of the Christian community - from Pentecostal to Catholic, historic Protestant to Orthodox. In the March issue of Sojourners, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson describes the Forum's historic gathering last November of 245 Christian leaders in Limuru, Kenya, "where God's Spirit began erasing the excuses that have kept Christians judging one another and apart from one another." Below, he gives an update.

Last week about 18 of us from throughout the world, representing the full spectrum of the Christian community, were in Geneva to help figure out what happens next with the Global Christian Forum. The committee, which has guided the GCF process, gathered at a small hotel and, for the first morning, simply shared our impressions and experiences since the Limuru meeting.

Rev. Nicta Lubaale, general secretary of the Organization of African Instituted Churches, spoke of how there was not a bureaucracy filled with "power games," but a genuine place of fresh fellowship that must continue. Prince Guneratnum, who is pastor of a 5,000 member Pentecostal congregation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, reflected on what a blessing this was to the churches. Several of us kept pointing to how we were not centered around structures, or arguments around particular doctrines, but had put our focus on getting to know one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, and that this is the model that the wider church needs.

We agreed that the Limuru gathering, as the culminating meeting of a nearly 10-year process of exploration and preparation, had found a "spiritual entry point," and something new had emerged. Our Vatican representative said that this has become a place where we can tap into God's energies and become a source of light. And Metropolitan Mar Gregorios from Syria said that for the 21^st Century, we need something new like this. Those like him who have been in WCC circles said that its approach, emphasizing the search for theological common ground in groups like Faith and Order, had its place and role. But the Global Christian Forum had discovered a different starting point—what one Lutheran member called a "lived ecclesiology"—and we must keep our focus here.

All this underscored our pattern of beginning with the sharing of our spiritual journeys. This testimonial approach, across such vast differences of theology, culture, geography, and tradition, was the unique gift that made so much else possible. Nicta put it this way: The Global Christian Forum gave us a picture of "the imagined church."

So what now?

We came up with clear ideas and commitments. First, communicating the vision and experience of the GCF will be a priority. We've got about 1,500 people on an e-mail list who have had some contact with the Forum over the past decade, and about 245 who were at Limuru last November. They have to be the ones to carry this vision, so we'll focus our communication with them.

A couple of independent groups will also do a thorough evaluation done of the whole process since 1998. Those results will be brought to a gathering of about 30 to 40 people in November, meeting in New Delhi, to plan for the next three to five years. Also, since we haven't had a regional meeting in the Middle East (prior to Limuru we held regional meetings in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe), we scheduled this, to be hosted at the end of September by the Syrian Orthodox Church.

Our vision is expansive. The response is so affirming. Our infrastructure and budget are minimal. It's a new paradigm, and we're convinced that God's Spirit is creating a new thing. Huge questions remain ahead, but the journey is as exciting as any ecumenical experience I've ever known.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelsonis general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, a member of the steering committee of the Global Christian Forum (www.globalchristianforum.org), and vice-chair of Sojourners' board of directors.

Our freedom in the gospel, however, does not mean license; it means opportunity.

- Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline

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I don't endorse political candidates, but I will defend them when it becomes necessary. On this, I agree with my friend, Richard Land, the conservative Southern Baptist leader who is often identified with the Religious Right. Richard and I agree that faith has a place in politics and, when we agree on fundamental moral questions, have worked together. Richard says, "I have defended various candidates from time to time when I've felt that they have been unfairly or inaccurately criticized. At other times, I have been asked by the media for my assessment of a particular candidate's chances or weaknesses and strengths. Neither defense nor assessment should be confused with endorsement. As a matter of policy, I have not endorsed, do not endorse and will not endorse candidates."

So I am going to defend my friend, Barack Obama, from an increasing number of ridiculous and scurrilous attacks on the Internet and in the media. The latest incident occurred when a loud-mouth radio talk show host in Cincinnati let loose with a barrage of disparaging remarks against Senator Obama and kept using his middle name—Barack HUSSEIN Obama—over and over, seemingly to tie into the Internet accusations that Obama is really a Muslim who, as a child, attended a Muslim "madrassa" school in Indonesia that taught Islamic fundamentalism, etc. As a Chicago Tribune blog piece commented, "Anyone who uses Obama's middle name repeatedly, like Cincinnati radio host Bill Cunningham the other day, knows what he or she is doing and what feelings they are trying to evoke. There's simply nothing innocent about it."

The occasion for the shock jock's diatribe was his introduction of Senator John McCain at a rally. To his great credit, McCain denounced the remarks when he heard about them, disassociated himself from this kind of attack, and reaffirmed that his campaign would be conducted on higher ground. Good for you, John McCain. So of course, the local loud-mouth, Bill Cunningham, quickly withdrew his support from McCain and now is denouncing him too; which, of course, was quickly picked up by his mentor, the national radio loud-mouth Rush Limbaugh (whom the local Cunningham seems to desperately "wannabe"). And, of course, Rush is now denouncing both Obama and McCain.

I watched last night as other cable news shows told this story and subtly tried to add more fuel to the fire. Lou Dobbs downplayed the Cincinnati outburst as unimportant and suggested it was no different that telling the world that John McCain's middle name is "Sydney." Sure Lou; and it was interesting that Dobbs followed with more innuendos and rolled eyes over the moment in the Tuesday Democratic debate when Obama was asked about Louis Farrakhan, about suspicions that Barack's home Trinity Church on the south side of Chicago was "black nationalist," and about why Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, wouldn't come on Lou's show to discuss his alleged sympathies for Farrakhan, etc. It is certainly no mystery why Pastor Wright didn't cancel his retirement celebrations and drop everything to come on Lou's show. Would anyone?

An Associated Press story titled " Obama Fights False Links to Islam" commented on the new flare-up, "For Barack Obama, it is an ember that he has doused time and again, only to see it flicker anew: links to Islam fanned by false rumors, innuendo, and association."

During the Democratic debate, Obama again "denounced and rejected" the ugly anti-Semitic comments that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has often made, as he had done many times before. Farrakhan hadn't actually endorsed Obama, but recently said, "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better." Asked on Tuesday night about whether he would accept Farrakhan's support, Obama said: "I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I've been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him."

So let's set the record straight. I have known Barack Obama for more than 10 years, and we have been talking about his Christian faith for a decade. Like me and many other Christians, he agrees with the need to reach out to Muslims around the world, especially if we are ever to defeat Islamic fundamentalism. But he is not a Muslim, never has been, never attended a Muslim madrassa, and does not attend a black "separatist" church. Rather, he has told me the story of his coming from an agnostic household, becoming a community organizer on Chicago's South Side who worked with the churches, and how he began attending one of them. Trinity Church is one of the most prominent and respected churches in Chicago and the nation, and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is one of the leading revival preachers in the black church. Ebony magazine once named him one of America's 15 best Black preachers. The church says it is "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian," like any good black church would, but is decidedly not "separatist," as its white members and friends would attest.

And one Sunday, as Obama has related to me and written in his book The Audacity of Hope, the young community organizer walked down the aisle and gave his life to Christ in a very personal and very real Christian conversion experience. We have talked about our faith and its relationship to politics many times since. And after Obama gave his speech at a Sojourners/Call to Renewal conference in June 2006, E.J. Dionne said that it may have been "the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican."

Like his politics or not, support his candidacy or not - but don't disparage Barack Obama's faith, his church, his minister, or his credibility as an eloquent Christian layman who feels a vocation in politics. Those falsehoods are simply vicious lies and should be denounced by people of faith from across the political spectrum.

I work in one of the largest slums in Africa - Kibera - located in Nairobi, Kenya. Some years ago, I started St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School to educate young people who have lost either both parents to the AIDS-pandemic, or one parent and the remaining parent is infected. I am proud to say we now have 265 students, and we are supporting another 50 graduates to go on to college.

Kenya and several other countries have made real progress in fighting AIDS with US support. On his recent trip to Africa, President Bush rightly received recognition for getting the ball rolling on expanding access to AIDS services in our region of the world, especially treatment and care for the sick and orphaned.

But, quite frankly, I am alarmed at how far removed from African reality his proposal is for the next five years of the program. Since Congress is now debating what direction to take this program, along with programs to address many health and development issues related to AIDS, I want to share what I have seen in Kibera and make a plea for realism.

We have learned a great deal about AIDS since 2003, when the U.S. first began its emergency response to the crisis in Africa. Anyone visiting us in Kibera would see that the AIDS issue cannot be viewed in isolation. My students, teachers, and their extended families face interrelated problems rooted in poverty, issues of gender, and a broken-down health system. A smart U.S. response must address this context, including the dearth of qualified medical personnel and community health workers. And to be effective, it would confront tuberculosis head on, since, as we have seen in Kibera, TB is what actually kills most people living with AIDS.

But the Bush approach, now taken up by the Republican leadership in the House, ignores these lessons. It does not seriously address any of these related issues and, worst of all, freezes funding at the current level for the next five years, even as the world is racing to meet the goal of universal access to all AIDS services by 2010.

This funding freeze would have a devastating impact on programs that serve the children I work with every day. So far, the U.S. AIDS initiative has provided crucial funding for programs that provide care for children - including school feeding programs, which have a broad impact. Yet, the president and his allies in the Congress would have these programs frozen in place instead of expanding them to meet the growing need.

Fortunately, an alternative is available. Congressman Tom Lantos, as chairman of the Committee responsible for AIDS programming in the House, understood that significantly greater funds were needed to fight AIDS and address basic capacity issues. One of the last things he did before he died of cancer was to propose five-year legislation which would update the U.S. response and provide $50 billion - not only for AIDS, but also for children's programs, TB, and malaria.

The Lantos proposal would also better meet the needs of women and girls. It would allow voluntary family planning services to women who are HIV positive and who do not wish to become pregnant. We can agree or disagree about the morality of contraception, but the truth is that helping women who may be weak and ill to avoid a dangerous pregnancy is about saving lives; and it would not promote abortion, as some pro-life groups have inaccurately stated.

The Lantos approach also eliminates the requirement that one-third of all HIV prevention dollars be spent on abstinence and fidelity. This funding restriction has been shown to not be workable on the ground. As someone profoundly committed to promoting abstinence and fidelity, my experience is that I can do my job most effectively when young people have the freedom to make moral choices. I am glad to see the Lantos bill still requires the U.S. to promote abstinence and fidelity as a part of a comprehensive approach.

Working in Kenya, I see people suffering and dying all too often from a disease that can be prevented. It is crucial that this program not become a political football, and I hope members of Congress of goodwill, from both sides of the aisle, can find a way to work together for the sake of Africa. Unless the U.S. AIDS program goes forward, together with programs that address the broader context of the epidemic, the ones who suffer the most will be the children I work with every day.

Father Terry Charlton, S.J. is the Jesuit vocation eirector for Kenya, the national chaplain of Christian Life Community, and co-founder and chaplain of the St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School in Kibera.

In recent weeks, we've been watching Senator Obama and Senator Clinton try to disagree honestly without being too nasty in the process. This week, we saw Senator McCain come to the defense of Senator Obama when a warm-up speaker stooped to some low political rhetoric. Maybe the stale air of partisanship and "gotcha" politics can be replaced by some clean, fresh cooperative air ... for a while at least?

In that spirit, I think we all - Democrats, Republicans, and others - should stop what we're doing to honor President Bush for his ongoing commitment to Africa. I think Bono recently summed up what many of us feel regarding our president's concern for AIDS treatment, malaria prevention, education, and multifaceted economic development:

President Bush has every reason to be proud of what he and so many others have accomplished in Africa. From AIDS treatment once thought impossible, to millions of bednets to keep kids from dying of a mosquito bite, to new African jobs created with trade policy, to billions in old debts erased. And back in Washington, a political shift has taken place with Democrats and Republicans working shoulder to shoulder to partner with people of Africa as they work to lift their continent out of poverty, putting 29 million children in school in the last five years, with the help of debt cancellation.

Some will quickly say that more could and should be done. Yes - in fact, you'll hear from one of those voices today on the blog. But we should also acknowledge that much less could have been done. We should celebrate whenever good and beautiful things happen in this world, and President Bush has done some good and beautiful things for Africa. Kudos to him, and to all members of Congress of both parties - and to all Americans who can feel good that a portion of our taxes are being invested in this way.

Bono added,

These are accomplishments the next president must build on. ... I hope that the next president, whoever that is, will get to experience firsthand this beautiful and entrepreneurial continent that is rising to all of the challenges being sent its way.

Let's also pause a minute to pray that our next president and Congress will continue and expand what's being done. The pain and need in Africa are so great that it will take governments, businesses, churches, NGO's, individuals, and intergovernmental agencies, all doing their best - assisted by the powers of heaven - to make substantial and ongoing progress. Thanks be to God for the good that has begun to be done. God bless Africa.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He is in the middle of an eleven-city speaking tour you can learn about at deepshift.org.

In the past year, political expediency, xenophobia, and extremism defeated reason, compromise, and reconciliation in the immigration debate. The level of animosity directed towards the immigrant community, particularly the Latino community, stands at an all time high. We cannot stay silent.

The world once again bears witness to the actions taken, not just by our Congress, but by the people of the U.S. Will apathy, nativism, and xenophobia silence the voices of reason, compromise, family values, Judeo-Christian ethos, and border protection? It is time for reasonable U.S. citizens and for the faith community to rise up and clearly state that while we all desire to protect our borders and apply the rule of law, we will not embrace the nativist and discriminatory rhetoric articulated under the guise of border protection. We can stop illegal immigration, protect our borders, protect our values, and simultaneously protect the American dream only if we work within the framework of our Judeo-Christian heritage and repudiate all discriminatory and bigoted threads.

On a personal note, I am a U.S. citizen born in New Jersey; a Generation X-er who never would of believed that in my lifetime I would see the resurrection of bigoted, nativist, and discriminatory elements in our society. We must understand that time is of the essence. The time has come for the U.S., and particularly the U.S. faith community, to comprehend that at the border and in our communities, we have the poor, suffering, seekers, Samaritans, and strangers. Yet, above all, in vast majority, what we have at the borders and in the field, in our cities and in our farms, are our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr. is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of Hispanic evangelicals. Watch his recent conversation with Bill Moyers.

A few weeks ago, as I was reading David Kinnaman's book unChristian—a look at the way late teens to 30-year-olds perceive Christianity—I found myself nodding in agreement. Not only did I fully understand this younger generation's negative attitudes, I've also harbored many of those same opinions over the years. And today, in no arena of life is this more evident than in the political sphere, where partisanship in the church has repelled younger people and compelled me to leave more than one faith community.

I am so far outside the book's demographic, and that of a recent Pew Research Center poll on younger evangelicals, that I might be tempted to feel like a loner, an isolated, older evangelical and the bane of every partisan politician—an independent voter. But I know better. I am not isolated. I am not alone. There are plenty of evangelicals in nearly every age group who cannot in good conscience embrace either major party, and for that reason they have become independents. And their numbers are growing.

I know this because I have spent the last 18 months researching and writing about independent voters, including those whose faith informs their politics. I had been a closet independent in a semi-evangelical world, and once I went public, I became something of a magnet for evangelicals who felt they couldn't admit to their independent status in their GOP-saturated congregations (and the stray mainliners who felt the same way in Democratic churches). There were more of us than I realized. From early conversations with independent evangelicals that prompted the research, to personal encounters at independent voter events and phone interviews with political activists, to e-mails and comments on my independent voter blog, I've found a great many kindred spirits.

It's difficult to find accurate data on the percentage of Christians, evangelical or otherwise, who are independent; although last year a Barna Group survey indicated that born-again Christians represent one-third of all independent voters. Therefore, depending on which statistics you believe—estimates of the number of independent voters nationwide range from 32 to 43 percent—born-again independents make up roughly 10 to 14 percent of the electorate.

Given those percentages, it's clear that it's not just young people who have abandoned partisan politics. Many of us who are over 30, and way beyond, have done the same. Going independent is a matter of conscience—not age.

Marcia Ford, author of We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter, maintains an independent voter blog at marciaford.blogspot.com.

In most turning points in life, God’s grace is made known to us not through an intentional relationship with a spiritual guide but through the working of everyday relationships that are a means of grace we might not recognize if we did not ask: How was God at work in this relationship?

- Sondra Higgins Matthaei
Faith Matters

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In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

- Matthew 7:12

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In what has been described as the largest cross-border attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Turkish military is now into its 6th day of a ground offensive inside the Kurdish region in Iraq. Turkey says the attack is limited to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets, but the ramifications go much farther.

Turkey has been fighting the PKK for more than three decades. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S., and the European Union. The PKK claims to be a liberation group fighting for the recognition and rights of Kurds. Until recently, the fighting had been contained to the mountains along the Turkish Iraqi border - as the PKK are based deep inside caves within the mountains.

Beginning in December 2007, the Turks began a series of air attacks beyond the mountains inside Iraq. These attacks resulted in civilian deaths, injuries, and extensive property destruction. Thousands of villagers fled to surrounding towns and cities to live as internally displaced people (IDP’S), relying on the UN and the ICRC for basic provisions.

Even though flyovers by Turkish surveillance planes were a daily occurrence, some of the villagers returned home to check on their property and livestock. By day, they repaired damaged structures or fed their remaining animals. By night, they slept in caves which offered just a bit more protection.

By January 2008, more villagers were being encouraged to return home as it looked as though the threat of attacks might de-escalate. But in February, tensions heightened, and once again the ones that returned to their villages had to flee for safety. Children have been uprooted, and it is often impossible for them to continue in school as IDP’s. Although there have been no civilian casualties reported with this latest grand-scale attack, the psychological damage and the disruption of lives remains devastating.

The Iraqi Kurds have not been this close to autonomy since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. They have made many strides towards independence and they believe that Turkey is not very happy about it. The Kurds feel this invasion has little to do with the PKK and more to do with pushing the development of Kurdistan backwards.

Iraqi Kurds believed that they could count on the U.S. for support and protection. With the green light given to Turkey to attack inside Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds once again feel betrayed. They have appealed to the U.S. and the EU to back up their demands that Turkey pull out its troops immediately. They have asked for the U.S. to force Turkey to the diplomatic table to work this out peacefully. So far, their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

The Kurdish people have survived numerous genocidal attacks over the centuries. They are strong, resilient, proud, and accomplished people - and they will not go down without a fight. The U.S. could do much do stop the bloodshed. If this fight continues to escalate, one of the few relatively stable and peaceful regions in Iraq will soon be lost.

Michele Naar-Obed, lives in Duluth, Minnesota, and is a member of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker Community providing temporary housing to homeless families and individuals. She is a part time volunteer with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), has gone to Iraq five times with CPT, and is currently in Iraqi Kurdistan. Michele blogs at: duluthcpt.net

This is an important year for studies on religious life in the U.S. From Kinnaman and Lyon's UnChristian, to David T. Olson's The American Church in Crisis, data is accumulating that business/ministry as usual is not a great strategy for most U.S. denominations and nondenominations.

The new Pew study highlights the fluidity of commitment among the American people of faith, and it raises important questions for church leaders in at least three areas.

1. If congregations and denominations are not connecting with people's questions, needs, and desires - people are moving on. Old-fashioned denominational loyalty is gone. Church leaders can complain about it, but they'd also better acknowledge it. Now this fact could be used to advocate increased religious pandering ... a "give 'em what they want" approach that turns church leaders into "purveyors of religious goods and services" (a damning turn of phrase from the missional church folk) who are competing for share of the religious market.

But it could also have a much more positive effect: by convincing church leaders that blindly maintaining the status quo is a losing strategy, the data can liberate them to ask deeper questions like ... Why are churches here? What is our mission? What is our core message? Does Christ's church have a mission, or does Christ's mission have a church? How much can, and should, change in our churches? What shifts in church history can guide us as we face this sea-change in our religious environment? In other words, the new data could challenge leaders to ask, not simply, "What do the customers want?" but, "What does God want?" ... and not just "What do members need from their church?" but "What does the world need our churches to become, be, and do so that God's will can be done on earth as it is in heaven?"

2. People are dropping out of church altogether. The fastest-growing religious segment - especially among the young - continues to be the unaffiliated. If the "church growth" question of the 90's was, "How are we going to attract baby boomers to come back to church services on Sunday?" the "church mission" question in coming years might be, "How can our churches inspire younger generations to live a new way of life as disciples each day of the week?"

3. Old categories are blurring and old identities are diversifying and fragmenting. The study highlights the simultaneous growth and diversification of the old evangelical base, for example. As older generations pass from the scene and the alliances they created lose strength, who will help catalyze new movements and alliances? What will their priorities and ethos be?

In light of the accumulating data, it's become increasingly clear: we don't just need new answers to old questions, but we need new questions as well.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He is in the middle of an eleven-city speaking tour you can learn about at deepshift.org.