Middle East

Becky Garrison 12-15-2008
Thanks to the folks at Alternatives for Simple Living, I've been refocusing how I celebrate the Christmas holidays.
A plea from Christians in the Middle East.
Lynne Hybels 11-20-2008
In October I spent a week in Amman, Jordan, listening to Arab Christians from Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt.
11-12-2008
A curious thing has happened as Americans were choosing their first black president. Democracy suddenly ceased to be a bad word for many genuine democrats in the Middle East.

Tony Campolo 10-17-2008
In a recent conversation I had about the coming election, a friend reiterated the campaign rhetoric that the "surge" in Iraq has worked, and that Barack Obama ought to admit that John McCain was ri
Philip Rizk 7-30-2008

On March 19, Israeli forces rounded up Assad Salach and his sons, Fahmi and Salach, and Assad's brother Sa'id and his son Ghassan -- along with more than 300 men age 16 and above -- along its northern border with the Gaza Strip. It is not the first time Israel has arrested the male members of the Salach family.

These days when militants launch homemade Qassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, they are usually launched from within the cities, not these border areas. Thus, [...]

Mark Russell 7-11-2008

Recently, I had the unique opportunity of meeting with four Iraqi evangelicals at a conference in a country near Iraq. They were young church leaders. Despite the circumstances in their country, they were upbeat and gracious. Having never been to Iraq, nor having personally met an Iraqi, I was eager to hear their perspectives on current events. My conversations with them helped me understand to a greater degree the true complexity of war.

One of them was a church planter in a large [...]

Andrew Wilkes 7-08-2008

Recently, I participated in a conference call based on a report from The Task Force For A Responsible Withdrawal From Iraq. The report argued that the United States can and should do the following: quickly withdraw American military forces from Iraq, "carefully pursue diplomatic remedies for the Iraq crisis," and "generously give to help rebuild Iraq in the long run." For the policy wonks, the report offers

Philip Rizk 6-25-2008

I arrived in the West Bank the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, and hit the ground running. The next morning we starting filming for a film on Palestinian nonviolent resistance I am working on this summer. That Sunday, we did a long interview with Daoud Nassar, whose family owns a plot of land in the Palestinian village of Nahalin, just a few [...]

Tony Campolo 6-05-2008

Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and the author of The Clash of Civilizations, contends that unless things change, we are facing an era marked by religious wars.

Just about every military struggle between 1945 and 1995 was over political-economic ideologies. This was true of revolutions in Latin America and Southeast Asia led by Leninists and Maoists trying to establish Communist regimes, or by the CIA endeavoring to overthrow governments that [...]

Gareth Higgins 5-19-2008

President Bush's remarks, made last week in Israel, suggesting that anyone who wishes to talk with a violent enemy is the contemporary equivalent of a Hitler appeaser, are so wide of the mark, patronizing, and simply untrue that they must be challenged.

The fact that he used the emotive context of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations as the background for these comments is an abuse of an already misused people. And implying that Sen. Obama wishes to appease terrorism is not [...]

Jim Wallis 5-14-2008

I recently joined many prominent Christian leaders in signing a joint declaration on Israel's 60th anniversary. The signers are too many to list here but they include church leaders, theologians, and the heads of international missions agencies who have an intimate knowledge of the region's history, theological significance, and present reality. (To name just a sampling: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director/CEO, [...]

Rachel Barenblat 5-12-2008

Dear Israel,

Wow, you're turning 60. Incredible. Happy birthday to you!

I feel a little bit like I'm showing up at your birthday party without a gift. The truth is, you and I don't really know each other. I know we're related, but we don't have much of a relationship. That's been my choice, I realize. I wasn't sure how to feel about you, so I turned my attention elsewhere for a while.

I get frustrated sometimes by how much attention we lavish on you. I [...]

4-23-2008

When approaching a conflict, any world statesperson would consider trying to break up the logjam. A Christian leader who has always stood for justice and human rights and who takes the issue of the sancity of life seriously has no choice but to try and see what he or she can do to stop the bloodshed. In a protracted conflict, adding new ideas from a high-profile figure can help shake up the status quo. While it is unlikely for an ex-president to be able to extract major concessions, what [...]

Jim Rice 4-01-2008
Christian-Muslim dialogue raises hope - and suspicion.
Barbara Slavin 4-01-2008

How many of your friends and neighbors know, as Barbara Slavin writes in Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, that during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini vetoed the use o

Jim Rice 3-26-2008

In the Washington Post and throughout the blogosphere, debates rage about the recent spate of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, each side condemning with righteous indignation the sins of the other and proclaiming their own side's innocence. In a recent Post letters section, for example, Yaffa Klugerman wrote, "I was shocked to read [the] assertion that the [...]

Cris Toffolo 3-21-2008

The Cost of War

We are told the war in Iraq is a necessary part of the "War on Terror" (WOT), and its goal is to bring democracy to the Middle East. Despite this rhetoric it is blatantly clear the US is pursuing its own interests at the cost of democracy in the region. This raises the level of [...]

Rich Nathan 1-14-2008

In November our friend Pastor Rich Nathan sent us this compelling sermon and we've been looking for a good time to post it ever since. The occasion of Bush's trip to the Middle East seems to be a good time for Christians to reflect on their relationship with the modern nation of Israel. You can click to read [...]

Rose Marie Berger 1-11-2008

Archbishop Elias Chacour, an Eastern-rite Palestinian Catholic bishop in the region of Galilee, is escorting President Bush on a tour of the Mount of the Beatitudes in Israel on Friday, Jan. 11. This date also marks the sixth year since the arrival of the first prisoners to the