Christianity Today has a short Q&A with Frank Wolf, who recently helped to form the House of Representatives' Caucus on Religious Minorities in the Middle East.  Christianity is a minority in the Middle East, but that does not mean it is not well represented in the region, especially in major areas of conflict like Iraq and Lebanon.

As Christians, we need to be first concerned about our kingdom, the children of God who form the nation without borders: the kingdom of God.  When people like Wolf voice that there are "currently an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and another 600,000 in Jordan, a significant number of whom are Christians—and these figures are probably growing," it makes me wonder why so many Christians don't put the survival of the kingdom first.  As Wolf elaborates, "these refugees don't have food, housing, or health care. They can't work or get an education for their children," which means that the minority of a foothold the kingdom had in the Middle East has been ripped apart socially, educationally, religiously, and demographically by the war in Iraq.  And what's more, this does not include the devastation caused to the Marionite Christian population of Lebanon that is around 30% of the Lebanese citizenry.

Many Christian proponents for the wars in Iraq and Lebanon have been adamant that freedom and democracy are better for the church than persecution.  A case needs to be made that war is far worse for the communities of the Kingdom than persecution is.  One of the oldest sources of edification in the Church is the martyr's tale.  The Church grows by the blood of the martyrs.  When we are persecuted in the darkest of times the kingdom of God shines brighter.  War, on the other hand, is an arbiter of misplacement, pain, and fear.  It is far scarier than persecution, which is specifically directed at a religion, but instead is a persecution of our very humanity itself.  It is a consuming fire that destroys not just culture but the very ground beneath our feet.

We cannot continue to see how the kingdom of God is effected by the atrocities of war and continue to accept it as a trade-off for freedom and democracy.  Freedom only comes from God, and he has seen fit that in the last days freedom be not by democracy but by a King reigning over his kingdom.

May it be so. ... more

[This was written four days ago for my personal blog (xanga.com/meaganpeters). When I refer to ''you'' in this post I am referring specifically to the members of my church and the friends who have known of my pursuit of some kind of missions in Alaska, and I refer also to previous posts on my xanga site. But I think these two references can easily be applied to the general readership of this blog, and some of my previous posts here as well. Thanks for reading.]

In the January 10, 2007 edition of the Denver Catholic Register, Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote a fantastic editorial on (illegal) immigration. In this editorial, Bishop Chaput shared the following email he received from a parishioner following a local arrest of illegal immigrants:

Sorry Bishop: No sympathy (from me) for the illegal alien criminals arrested by ICE. In fact, I hope their offspring starve to death. I do not pray for illegal aliens. I pray for their victims. I have no problem with God, and He has no problem with me. I hope their families starve to death, and it's crap like this that drives Catholics away from the Church.

The Bishop went on to make the following challenge to his readers:

How we treat the weak, the infirm, the elderly, the unborn child and the foreigner reflects on our own humanity. We become what we do, for good or for evil. The Catholic Church respects the law, including immigration law. We respect those men and women who have the difficult job of enforcing it. We do not encourage or help anyone to break the law. We believe Americans have a right to solvent public institutions, secure borders and orderly regulation of immigration.

But we won't ignore people in need, and we won't be quiet about laws that don't work -- or that, in their ''working,'' create impossible contradictions and suffering. Despite all of the heated public argument over the past year, Americans still find themselves stuck with an immigration system that adequately serves no one. We urgently need the kind of immigration reform that will address our economic and security needs, but also regularize the status of the many decent undocumented immigrants who help our society to grow. A new Congress sits in Washington. Its members have an extraordinary opportunity to act quickly and justly to solve this problem. If they don't, the responsibility for failure will be on them and on all of us who elected them.

The year is young; 2007 is just beginning. The slate is clean. We become what we do, for good or for evil. If we act and speak like bigots, that's what we become. If we act with justice, intelligence, common sense and mercy, then we become something quite different. We become the people and the nation God intended us to be. Our country's immigration crisis is a test of our humanity. Whether we pass it is entirely up to us.

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Garrison Kiellor, in one of his oft rambling ''News From Lake Wobegon'' segments on his popular radio show The Prairie Home Companion offers a thought provoking and compelling look at Christmas traditions from the perspective of Japanese tourists stranded in a middle-of-nowhere Minnesota town.

I recently read End of the Spear by Steve Saint, in which he shares the story of how the Waodani people of Ecuador came to be God-followers, as well as his own story, which is intimately bound up with the Waodani. In this true story, Steve takes his family to the jungles of Ecuador to live among the people who speared his father to death when he was just a boy...most of you probably know the story. What struck me was that Steve Saint constantly battles the ''cause'' mentality he knows all outsiders and even he himself is prone to.

We live in a society that thrives on divisiveness. We are labeled and categorized according to our thoughts, beliefs, and values and then pitted against those who sit on the opposite side of the aisle. There is no opportunity for unity, bipartisanship, or reconciliation except in the most dire of circumstances (i.e., a national tragedy like 9/11).

It was in the news today that an archbishop said he would deny communion to Rudy Guiliani.  I am not nuanced in the specifics of Roman Catholic doctrines concerning the priestly blessing and administration of the Eucharist, so I will delve into somethng more general.  Pretend for a minute you are an archbishop, elder, deacon, priest, presbyter, cardinal, any position you hold in church authority: what would someone have to do or be associated with for you to refuse communion to him or her?

My attention was drawn this morning to a passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 9. The Teacher is discussing the wisdom of the poor man and how little attention is given to it because of its source. He then goes on to say in verse 17:

''Words of the wise, spoken quietly, should be heard / Rather than the shout of a ruler of fools.'' (NKJV)

''The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.'' (NASB)

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Karl Barth, like the nun in The Blues Brothers, beats me into submission with his chastisement of book collectors and veracious readers.  I am ashamed...

Barth, writing in fluent English, enscribes:

After watching Jesus Camp, my wife asked me what I would label myself now that we were quite sure we were neither liberals nor evangelicals.  It is hard to define oneself when you are think of yourself as a Christian first, and all other things secondary.  My answer, in the style of Brian McLaren, was an answer that espoused the hope of my heart, the breathe of the Spirit inside me, and the fanciful ramblings of my mind: