bombs
A view shows the deserted area outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Oct. 11, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
At a vigil for peace in Washington, D.C., this Tuesday, Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac spoke about the approaching Christmas season in his home of Bethlehem in the West Bank.
“How can we celebrate when we feel this war — this genocide — that is taking place could resume at any moment?” he said.
Image via RNS/Order of Preachers, via Facebook
We write to you on All Saints Day to update you on the situation in Iraq. Remembering the Christians who were killed in 2009 while attending Mass at Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad. That was the beginning of harder times to all Christians in Iraq.
It has been two years and four months since we left Nineveh Plain. It has been long time of displacement, of humiliation, of exile. However, people always lived in hope of God’s mercy to return and go back home. We believed that God will not fail us.
View of Stone Town, Zanzibar, with the Zanzibar flag in the foreground. Photo courtesy Fanny Schertzer, via WikimediaCommons/RNS
After months of calm in Zanzibar, two homemade bombs exploded Monday near St. Monica Anglican Cathedral and the Mercury restaurant, a popular hangout for tourists visiting the Indian Ocean archipelago.
No one was hurt, but one day earlier, four people were injured in another explosion, targeting an Assemblies of God church.
The attacks are blamed on the secessionist Uamsho, a religious group pressing for the full autonomy of the archipelago. Uamsho, which means “awakening” in Swahili, is also known as the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation.
IT CAME TO pass in the summer of ’72 that many young people gathered in Dallas for Explo, a week of training for Christian witness sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. ... And among those present in Dallas were some messengers of peace—some post-Americans calling themselves the People’s Christian Coalition, and a few sons of Menno sent by the Mennonite Central Committee, who had also come to witness for their Lord.
The messengers of peace set up their booths along with many others and distributed their literature. And many people came by. Some looked and smiled; some looked and frowned. Some said “right on” and “we need that” in response to posters saying “blessed are the peacemakers” and “swords into plowshares”; but others said “praise the Lord, God will take care of wars, all we need is to win people to Christ.”
The United States has surpassed all records in global arms sales — a whopping $66.3 billion in armaments sold last year.
Most of the weapons went to Persian Gulf nations, although India also bought more than $4 billion in military equipment. U.S. arms sales in 2011 were triple the previous year’s level and the highest annual total ever recorded.
The U.S. is once again the world’s number-one arms proliferator, accounting for 75 percent of global arms sales. Word of this dubious distinction comes as our leaders claim to support and have been working at the United Nations to negotiate a global Arms Trade Treaty.
The report makes a mockery of the UN negotiations and our government’s presumed commitment to control the arms trade.