Nigeria
In the last month, many Westerners watched in horror as Uganda, and then Nigeria, enacted laws that are brutally repressive to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
The fate of a bill passed by the Ugandan parliament remains uncertain after President Yoweri Museveni refused to sign it, but news reports from Nigeria indicate that there have been mass arrests of gay men following President Goodluck Jonathan’s signing of the National Assembly’s anti-gay bill.
World leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have expressed their dismay. Many Christian leaders around the world, regrettably, have been largely unwilling to criticize Christian leaders in Africa who cheered the passage of these punitive laws.
Ongoing violence in Nigeria has exacerbated tensions between the country's Muslims and Christians. Nigeria has equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, and 92 percent of the country's population says they pray every day, according to a 2010 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Hundreds of Christians and Muslims have died this year alone, including scores killed last weekend (July 7-8) when Muslim militants attacked Christian villages in the nation’s central plateau, where the mostly Muslim north and the mostly Christian south meet.
Read five things you should know about the violence in Nigeria inside the blog...
Agence France-Presse report on the lastest incidents of Christian-Muslim fighting in Nigeria:
"The streets of Nigeria's Kaduna city were mostly empty Monday a day after suicide blasts on three churches carried out by Boko Haram Islamists and subsequent rioting killed at least 52 people.
Kenyan churches are tightening security after a lone attacker exploded a grenade inside an evangelical church in Nairobi on Sunday (April 29), killing one person and injuring 15.
Meanwhile, a string of bombings in Nigeria during Sunday morning worship services killed at least four people in Maiduguri and 15 in Kano, with many others injured.
The Kenya attacks at the God's House of Miracles International Church occurred days after the U.S. embassy warned of an impending attack by al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group in neighboring Somalia.
Obama To Take On Economic Anxiety In Election-Year State Of The Union, Amid GOP Attacks; Black, Latino Students Perform At Levels Of 30 Years Ago; Obama Offends The Catholic Left; Evangelicals And Romney: Should Theology Matter?; What’s Up With The Arab League?; "Self Deportation": It's A Real Thing, And It Isn't Pretty; Who Are Boko Haram and Why Are They Terrorizing Nigerian Christians?; 2011 Annual Letter From Bill Gates; Florida GOP Debate: Immigration Proposals Anger Protesters; An Occupy Prayer Breakfast: There Is Enough For Everyone!; Violence Spikes In Key Afghan Regions.
While we'd love to think we inspired Oprah to choose Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them as her current book club pick, we are glad his collection of stories is getting lots of new readers. Last year we asked Sojourners contributing writer Kimberly Burge to profile this important writer -- probably the first Nigerian Jesuit priest ever to have two stories published in The New Yorker. Burge writes about Akpan's double calling as a priest and writer, his early training in religious formation as well as the craft of writing. "More and more," Akpan says, "I'm beginning to believe that Christ was both a priest and a poet."