My brother was 15 and I was 18 when our father died Dec. 4, 1971 — 20 days short of his 46th birthday. Initially it was thought he died of a heart attack; he’d been sick all that previous year….
Concerns over escalating Ethiopian conflict trigger memories of past wars in Africa and the need for warlords to embrace peace
As government and rebel forces in Ethiopia advance toward each other and continue to beat the drums of war, concerns continue to pour in from people around the world about the escalating violence and humanitarian disaster in the East African…
Negative emotions increased worldwide in 2020, and not just because of COVID
New research shows that 2020 gave much of the world’s population a whole lot more to frown about, and not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 Gallup “Global Emotions” survey, which tracks negative and positive experiences, reports that…
What if we spent $9 billion on diplomacy?
It’s hard to know how to leave when you shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The Afghanistan debacle is all the news these days, and for good reason. The humanitarian crisis created by the sudden departure of American…
Uganda opens its doors to welcome 2,000 Afghan refugees
As concerns mount across the world over what to do about the increasing number of people fleeing Afghanistan after the country’s government was toppled by the Taliban, the East African nation of Uganda has offered to accommodate 2,000 refugees. This…
Afghanistan and America: Bloodlust and the failure of prophetic imagination
It is hard to be dispassionate when people have died fighting for a cause. Objectivity seems especially hard when it comes to the outcome after 20 years of United States-led war in Afghanistan. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after Al Qaeda…
Afghanistan: A tragic example of an unjust war
I was born in the waning years of the Vietnam War. I don’t recall the war itself, but one of my earliest childhood memories dates to about 1970 and, for some reason, it is remarkably vivid. I had tagged along…
On this anniversary of the atomic bomb, how shall Christians think about U.S. foreign policy?
I write this post on Aug. 6, the 76th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which destroyed that city and killed 70,000 to 80,000 people. Today, Aug. 9, is the anniversary of the day the U.S. bombed Nagasaki,…
Despite cease-fire in Tigray, concerns persist about how to tackle the humanitarian problem in the region
With the cessation of hostilities in Tigray, Ethiopia, the attention of many observers now shifts to the humanitarian crisis created by the conflict within and outside the East African country. Eight months of fighting and violence in the multi-lingual and…