Liberal U.S. religious groups launched “40 Days of Health Reform” on Monday.

You can see our coverage here and a video of their nationwide TV spot below.

The campaign aims to energize efforts by President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party to overhaul America’s healthcare system.

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting about healthcare at the Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Virginia July 29, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

Robert Duncan, installed on Wednesday night as the first archbishop of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), struck a decidedly evangelical tone in the sermon he delivered at his installation service. (You can see our coverage of the ACNA’s initial assembly here and here.)

The ACNA is mostly composed of conservative dissidents who have left the Episcopal Church — the main U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion — over thorny issues like gay clergy. It says it has 100,000 followers in 700 churches in Canada and the United States.

Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church — which is estimated to have more than 2 million members — has been shrinking while evangelical Protestant churches often have seen explosive growth (though some like the Southern Baptist Convention are also facing decline. We blogged on that issue earlier today). The ACNA seems to be in some ways emulating the evangelical movement by sticking to conservative principles (it would argue this means scriptural authority) and by stressing a renewed drive of evangelism.

Duncan at times certainly came across as something of a Southern evangelical (which some reserved Episcopal or Anglican audiences might find a bit jarring) but one wrapped in colorful Anglican robes. He called on his flock to “plant a thousand new churches in five years,” which will mark the end of his term in office. He talked about reaching the unchurched, relating the story of a recovering alcoholic whom he met on a plane and tried to introduce to Jesus. He also talked about the need to memorize scripture to live it.  

His take on Islam echoed the more strident tone of conservative U.S. evangelicals and not those who have called for “inter-faith dialogue” with Muslims. 

“We’ve got to be about the business of engaging Islam … secularism, and materialism, but especially Islam. Because there is only one way to the Father, it’s the only way. It’s a matter of life and death,” he said to warm applause.

On another note,  he evoked the Church of England’s founding father Henry VIII — crowned King of England 500 years ago – and held him up as an example of ”a ruler in the end gone astray, confiscating the property of a church in an almost contemporary way.”

This comparison of the legal battles between dissident dioceses and the Episcopal Church over property to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries was probably meant in a light-hearted way. But it could also be taken as a jab from a new alliance that wants to come out swinging.

(Photo: Archbishop Robert Duncan, courtesy of the ACNA)

When Pope Benedict visited Bethlehem, in the West Bank, last week, he was less than 100 km (60 miles) away from Gaza. But for the 4,000 Christians in this crowded Palestinian territory along the Mediterranean Sea , he might as well have been on the moon. Like nearly all Gazans, they are barred from leaving the Gaza Strip by Israeli restrictions. An Israeli embargo on supplying many essential goods to them has left the impoverished area unable to repair buildings destroyed or damaged by an Israeli offensive in January. Added to all that, the tiny Christian minority has been living since June 2007 under the Islamist rule of Hamas. Faced with conditions like that, attending a papal mass is a luxury few would even dream of.

(Photos: Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church, Gaza, 17 May 2009/Suhaib Salem)

Behind the altar at Holy Family Church in Gaza, paintings depict Gospel scenes that all took place within a few hours’ drive. There’s the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Nativity in Bethlehem, Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River and the Last Supper in Jerusalem — all places that Benedict visited. But the only place the Gazan Catholic faithful at Sunday Mass here could hope to visit anytime soon would be the route of the Flight to Egypt. Joseph and Mary would probably have brought Jesus through the Gaza region while fleeing Herod’s plan to kill all newborn boys in Bethlehem. The rest are all unreachable for them.

I made a quick visit to the Christian community in Gaza on Sunday to gauge the mood following the pope’s visit to Israel and the West Bank. My colleague and I had only a few hours until the border closed in mid-afternoon, so there was only enough time for some impressions and short conversations at the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and with a Hamas government minister.

There were about 70-80 Catholics attending Mass when we arrived at Holy Family Church in the old city centre of Gaza. After Mass, several parishioners talked about the pope and about life in the isolated territory. “For us, his visit didn’t mean anything,” Salama Saba, a 60-year-old unemployed electrical engineer, said when we asked about the pope. “He should come here to Gaza to see the destruction My son was killed. My home was destroyed. There is nothing for us.”

Rami Tarazi, an unemployed 31-year-old, said he would have loved to go see the pope, but it was not possible to get a permit to leave Gaza for Bethlehem. “You had to be over 40 to qualify, and then they only chose some people. We don’t know who did the choosing.” Several people said only about 90 of Gaza’s 4,000 Christians were allowed to leave to go see Pope Benedict.

Life under Hamas is a delicate topic. “We don’t have any problem with them,” Saba said carefully. A 21-year-old student, who asked not to be named, said Hamas didn’t do anything specific against Christians but didn’t protect them when they came under attack from Islamist extremists. Over at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrous, a parishioner there who also asked not to be named said Christians were concerned about Hamas although he gave no details.

Husam al-Taweel, a Christian member of the Palestinian Legislative Council elected with Hamas support, gave a fuller view of the situation for Christians in Gaza. “I won’t say there are no problems and we are living in heaven,” he said in an office at the Greek Orthodox church, where he is secretary general of the board. “But there is no discrimination against Christians in particular. We don’t see ourselves as a minority, but as part of the Arab majority.”

Taweel said 90 percent of Gaza’s 4,000 Christians were Greek Orthodox, the rest being Roman Catholic and a few Baptists. The Christian community has dwindled because of migration, he said, but added: “This is not a problem only for Christians. This is a problem for the Palestinian community in general. They’re all looking for a job, a better future.”

The rise to power of Hamas had not changed life much for Christians, he said. “Nobody asks my sister to put on a veil,” he said, “I will not allow anyone to interfere in my life as a Christian.” But there had been attacks on Christians, such as some who sold liquor or on a YMCA library, and the culprits were never found. One man, Rami Ayyad, was abducted and killed, apparently as a result of his work at the Protestant Holy Bible Society. Taweel spoke at length about the need to apply Palestinian law, implying that this wasn’t done equally.

Asked about sales of alcohol, which is no longer available in Gaza, Taweel said drink was a luxury that Gazans couldn’t even think of anymore. “We can’t even find clean water. Even bottled mineral water here has to be boiled before you can drink it — although you usually don’t have enough gas, and if you use electricity, the power is often cut off. So alcohol is a luxury we don’t expect to find here anyway.”

With only a short time left, we paid a quick visit to Dr. Basem Naim, minister of health in the Hamas government in Gaza. With his fluent English and German, Naim often meets foreign journalists to explain Hamas policy. When I asked what had changed in terms of religion since Hamas took over in Gaza from Fatah, the rival, secular Palestinian party that still governs in the West Bank. He started by saying that Hamas, for all its Islamist agenda, was first and foremost a Palestinian resistance movement and it saw Christians as part of Palestinian society. If there were tensions between Muslims and Christians now, he said, they were more due to efforts by evangelical Christians to convert Muslims than any policy of Hamas. He said evangelical Christians with U.S. support had been working among Palestinians for the past 15 years. According to Naim, several leaders of established churches in Gaza had asked the government to ban this missionary activity.

(Photo: Greek Orthodox church with “Hamas” spraypainted on front wall, 17 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

“If we stop these people, there are many in Europe and the United States who are just waiting for such a move to start talking about Hamas as a religious regime,” he said. But Hamas was primarily a political organisation, he insisted. “We have not decided yet about the final model of Palestinian society,” he said. “We cannot impose things by force.”

Naim presented Hamas as being in “the middle ground” in the Islamic world. “What is allowed here would be banned in Saudi Arabia,” he said, citing the right for women to drive as an example. “There are extremists to the right of us, who cannot understand that Christians can come here and talk about Christianity. But they are not only against Christians. They would also be against Muslims who shake hands with a lady. They could attack a wedding party if they’re playing music. They could attack internet cafes because people can see sex films there.”

Short though the visit was, I got the impression that Hamas had much bigger problems on its hands right now than to start Islamising what is already a traditional Muslim society. The police arrest people for possessing drugs, but not alcohol, which is simply confiscated, residents said. It was never especially common, even before Hamas took over. Women wear headscarves, but beards are not noticibly more frequent than in other Arab societies. Other residents said what was most noticable since Hamas took over was a kind of self-censorship that people practisced themselves. There were probably more women wearing headscarves and young men were more careful about playing loudly secular music in their cars.

(Photo: Dr. Basem Naim, 17 May 2009/Suhaib Salem)

On the way out, we saw one scene that showed it was still an Islamist administration. Hamas border guards searching the bags of two women aid workers driving into Gaza were in the process of confiscating a bottle of white wine they’d found in one suitcase and were searching elsewhere in their car for more.

Americans who are so inclined are marking their National Day of Prayer on Thursday — and, as with any event that evokes church and state in this country, it is not without controvesy.

President Barack Obama, who is a practicing Christian, signed a proclamation to declare the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, but unlike his predecessor George W. Bush did not hold an official service at the White House.

This has predicatably angered and disappointed some of the country’s leading conservative Christians.

“While there is a long history of Presidents praying and calling the nation to prayer (dating all the way back to George Washington), a de-emphasis on prayer in this administration should not come as a surprise. What can we expect of an administration whose policies cheapen human life, increase dependence upon government and threaten religious freedoms?” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential conservative advocacy group with strong evangelical ties.

Under Bush the White House event — held on the first Thursday of May — was seen among other things as a way to shore up the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base, whose ranks included some of his most ardent supporters.

Obama opted for private prayer but by European standards his proclamation would hardly be viewed as lurch to secularism.

In his proclamation, Obama said:

“Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill. Our world grows smaller by the day, and our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife; and to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.”

He also said: “I call upon Americans to pray in thanksgiving for our freedoms and blessings and to ask for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection for this land that we love.”

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama bows his head in prayer during the dedication of Abraham Lincoln Hall at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington March 12, 2009. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES)

(Photo: Bethany baptismal pool with ruins of ancient basilicas in rear, a staircase to the water and, at right, two of the four massive pillars that used to hold a church above the baptism site, 6 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

In John’s Gospel, verse 1:28, it says that John the Baptist used to baptise people in “Bethany beyond the Jordan” and Jesus went there for his own baptism. Seen from the perspective of Jerusalem, “beyond the Jordan” means on the river’s east bank, in present-day Jordan. Those words were added to distinguish that Bethany from the village near Jerusalem where Jesus was said to have raised Lazarus from the dead. Despite that, pilgrims have long visited a spot on the river’s west bank, now in an Israeli military zone in the Palestinian territories, and considered it the true site where Jesus was baptised.

For about a decade or so, Jordan has been contesting that claim with excavations at a site on the river’s east bank that it argues must be the real place. Following John’s Gospel (the others only speak of the river itself) and descriptions from pilgrims dating back to the fourth to twelfth centuries, Jordanian archeologists have uncovered ruins of five ancient churches and a wide array of other remains and artifacts pointing to the area’s use as a pilgrimage site.

(Photo: Israeli flag on west bank across Jordan River and Greek Orthodox church on the east bank Bethany site, 6 May 2009//Jamal Saidi)

Pope John Paul’s visit to Bethany in 2000 was a coup for Jordan, which is keen to establish its site as a major centre for Christian pilgrims. But he also slipped in a quick visit to Qasr al Yahud, the west bank site across the river, to avoid any impression of partiality. Pope Benedict doesn’t seem to have the same concern — he’s coming to Bethany only and not planning any stop at the rival site. See our news story on this here.

If you ever visit the site and have a stroke of luck, as a group of English pilgrims did when I toured the area on Wednesday, you’ll come across a bundle of energy named Rustom Mkhjian who explains the site’s claim to authenticity with nothing short of missionary zeal. Mkhjian, a Jordanian engineer and Armenian Orthodox Christian, is assistant director of the Baptism Site Commission. For the past 12 years, he has been working at the site unearthing the foundations of ancient churches and matching passages from the Bible to facts on the ground. He was showing me around when the English group came up to the baptismal pool and their Jordanian guide introduced him as the real expert to tell the story.

With that, Mkhjian, a wiry man of 49 who studied civil engineering in Britain and monument restoration in Rome, launched into a short presentation quoting the gospels of John and Luke and the main testimonies from pilgrims down the ages. This historical background is well explained on the informative Baptism Site website. The site also shows plans for the new churches being built a short walk from the baptismal site and a gallery of photos of VIP visitors to date.

For the issue of the rivalry with Qasr al Yahud, the pages under “authentication” are the most interesting. Over the past few years, several Christian denominations have written letters backing Bethany’s claim (and thanking Jordan for permission to build churches there). The latest was star U.S. evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who praised “the opening of this authentic site where Jesus (Peace be upon him) was baptized.” Editorial comment: that PBUH — a regular addition in Muslim countries for the Prophet Mohammad — seems like a translation from the Arabic. Warren must have written something positive, but I didn’t use this quote in my news story because it didn’t sound right.

(Photo: Tourists visit Bethany baptism site, 6 May 2009/Jamal Saidi)

Qasr al Yahud, which is still in an Israeli military zone and open only occasionally to Christian pilgrims, enjoys none of this promotion and apparently little or no similar evidence amassed to support its claim. In the original draft of my story, I wrote that Israel seemed to have lost interest in promoting it. But our Jerusalem bureau intervened to say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just announced some economic aid programs for the Palestinian territories that included Qasr al Yahud. We inserted that into the story but still don’t have many details of what he plans.

The English pilgrimage group that borrowed Mkhjian from me for 10 minutes included some who had been here three years ago, when the pool was but a small puddle because the water table was lower at that part of the year. Wondering why it was now much bigger, one joked that it might have been filled up for the pope’s visit on Sunday. “You can’t bring a pope all this way just to see a puddle,” he quipped. As soon as I identified myself as a reporter and asked if I could quote him, the man seemed to think he’d said something sacrilegious and nervoslsy asked not to be named!

My photo on the  right shows the not-very-impressive Jordan River near the baptism site. Todays’s Jordan River is only about 10 metres (yards) wide and lies low in a riverbed lined by tamarinds and reeds. The baptism site is off to the right, on a flood plain about seven metres (yards) higher than the river. The Jordan used to be wider, but dams upstream have diverted much of its former flow for agricultural or industrial use.

U.S. President Barack Obama may face a new minefield on the battlefields of Afghanistan — one that combines a potent mix of religion and culture.

Explosive allegations have emerged that U.S. soldiers have been attempting to convert Afghanis to Christianity, a scenario sure to stir passions and even anger in the overwhelming Islamic country. You can see our story on the issue here by my colleague Peter Graff in Kabul.

The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of Bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: “The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”

Critics have long contended that parts of the U.S. military have been unduly influenced by a powerful evangelical Christian wing which has pressured men and women in uniform to convert or conform.

Many U.S. military events often feature public prayers which some also say blur the line they say should be drawn between church and state. We have blogged on this issue before.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has for years tried to raise public awareness about this issue and has in the past accused the military of sanctioning missionary activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Headed by former U.S. air force judge advocate Mikey Weinstein, it said on Monday that: “His (Weinstein’s) calls for action have been met with a full assault of denials, baseless and anti-Semitic accusations, and most recently imprecatory prayers against him and his family. But now there is VIDEO PROOF that Mikey has been right all along.”

The U.S. military has said that the comments from the sermon shown in the video were taken out of context and that it firmly prohibits soldiers from proseltyzing while on duty.

Whether this is true or not, there is no question that at least some damage has been done.

Here’s the Al Jazeera video:

(Photo: U.S. Marines bow their heads in prayer before the arrival of President Barack Obama at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, February 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES))

The folks at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life have come up with a new bit of intriguing number crunching. This time round they have taken a more detailed look at how Americans change religious affiliations in a new report entitled “Faith in Flux.” You can see the report here. It is a follow-up to Pew’s huge U.S. Religious Landscape Survey which was conducted in 2007.

Among the highlights which underscore the fluid nature of American faith:

* It finds that 44 percent of the U.S. adults do not belong to their childhood faith.

* Among the 56 percent who belong to their childhood faith, one in six say there was a point in their life when their religion differed.

* Faith-switching is most appealing for the young: Most of those who left their childhood faith did so before reaching age 24; a large majority say they joined their current religion before they turned 36.

* But very few report changing religions after reaching the age of 50.

* When asked in an open-ended question to explain in their own words the main reason they are no longer part of their former religion, roughly half of former Catholics give an explanation related to religious and moral beliefs. The same is true of roughly four-in-ten former Protestants who have become unaffiliated.

* The Catholic Church has suffered the greatest net loss of faithful while the ranks of the unaffilated have swelled the most because of changing religions.

There are critics who will question some aspects of such an exercise. Among the crop of neo-atheists, Richard Dawkins for example has argued that it is absurd to refer to Catholic or Muslim children on the grounds that a child cannot make such a decision (so you cannot really say that anyone has changed their “childhood faith”). But there is clearly much to be gleaned from this survey and if one thinks of American history — its great awkenings, the birth of the Mormon Church, the recent evangelical surge — then it could be argued that changing faith is almost as American as apple pie.

(Photo: Newly appointed New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan at his installation in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, April 15, 2009/Julie Jacobson)

The largest U.S. Lutheran church group is about to begin a detailed discussion at the grass roots level on a policy change that would enable people in same-sex relationships to become clergy. Between now and June the debate will spread over some 65 synods covering the 5-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

These meetings will produce comminiques which will be sent to the church’s convention in August where a final decision will be made on issues that have nagged the church and other denominations for years.

The ELCA’s current policies allow gays to serve in the ministry but not engage in sexual relations outside marriage — and the church defines marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

But possible changes advanced this week when the Church Council, a top governing body, approved with only minor revisions recommendations made by a task force  after a lengthy study.  Those recommendations will go before a membership convention in August, after input from the synods which are beginning their meetings this month.

The task force report asks whether the church wants to find ways to recognize life-long, monogamous same-sex relationships, and if so whether the church is committed to finding a way for people in such relationships to serve as clergy. There are other recommendations and proposals on how the process would work, but the first two steps have drawn the most attention.

ELCA officials said they foresaw “an extensive church-wide discussion” in the synods which elect delegates to the convention whose 1,000 members will be 60 percent laity and 40 percent clergy, and the debate reflects shifting societal attitudes towards gays in general and their role in the church in particular. 

Lutherans Concerned/North America, which speaks for gays in the church, said it was “pleased but cautious” with where the issue has advanced.

“For the first time in the history of our church, a recommendation for the elimination of the policy of discrimination against ministers in same-gender relationships will come to the floor of the church-wide assembly, brought by the church-wide organization itself,” said Emily Eastwood, executive director of Lutherans Concerned/North America.

(Photo: Same-sex issues have been big news in America in recent months. Two men walk hand in hand outside the California Supreme Court during a Proposition 8 demonstration in San Francisco, California March 5, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES)

The video shows a near-naked Indian in a remote Amazon village as he digs a large hole. A terrified child is pulled out of a hut and placed in the freshly dug grave. Soon his body and face are covered in earth.

Is this a powerful indictment of the practice of infanticide by Indian tribes in the Amazon, or a distortion of the truth and an incitement to hatred by U.S. Christian missionaries?

The tribal rights group Survival International hit out this week at the “Hakani” video, which has several edited versions online,  calling it faked and a dangerous exaggeration of the problem of infanticide practiced by Indian tribes.  The video, made with the support of a U.S.-based evangelical missionary group Youth With A Mission, seems to be an attempt to rally support for a proposed Brazilian law that would ban infanticide and other harmful practices by indigenous tribes. When contacted by Reuters, Youth With A Mission said it wouldn’t comment on what it called baseless allegations.

(Photo: Brazilian Indians, 28 Jan 2009/Paulo Santos)

Enock Freire, one of the makers of the film that was shot with members of the Suruwaha tribe, defended it when contacted by Reuters. He said it was no secret that it was fiction, acted out by local Indians, but that it was aimed at drawing attention to the very real and what he said was the common problem of infanticide by Amazon Indian tribes. He said there is a widespread belief among tribes that children with “bad souls”, including those who are disabled, need to take their last breath underground to avoid them coming back to haunt the village.

The controversy raises fundamental questions about society’s relations with indigenous people and the role of religion. Should tribes be contacted and brought into line with national laws and customs, and should foreign missionaries be the ones doing it?

Proponents of the law say that children are vulnerable to cruel traditional practices. Groups like Survival accuse some missionary groups of trying to “civilize” Indians.

There is also the question of whether the video is misleading. It is introduced as a true story but the episode told in the video is not substantiated. Could it could risk demonizing Indians by giving the impression that infanticide is a general practice among tribes, something Survival says is not the case? Survival says the Suruwaha tribe, which lived in semi-isolation until the late 1970s, is known for its cultural practice of suicide and is not representative.

(Photo: Brazilian Indian, 27 Jan 2009/Raimundo Pacco)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Libyan theologian Aref Ali Nayed is a senior advisor to the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme and a leading signatory of A Common Word.

By Aref Ali Nayed

Being held in the early days of the Obama presidency, this year’s U.S.-Muslim World Forum in Doha last weekend was particularly luminescent with rays of hope. One was the very fact that its host, the influential Brookings Institution think-tank, invited faith leaders to discuss how to improve the dreadful state of relations between Washington and the Muslim world. The basis for discussion was A Common Word, an appeal by 138 Muslim scholars to Christian leaders to join in a dialogue based on the shared commandments to love God and love one’s neighbor.

That a theological and spiritual initiative is of keen interest to policy planners is indeed a fresh ray of light.  Basking in that hopeful light, moreover, I had the rare privilege for a Muslim theologian of listening to the U.S. CentCom Commander General David Petraeus expound there on a “network of networks” that constituted a “security architecture” for our Middle East region.

(Photo: General David Petraeus addresses the U.S.-Muslim World Forum, 14 Feb 2009/Osama Faisal)

General Petraeus argued that security can only be achieved through a multi-layered and multi-faceted network of networks that involved training, tooling and equipping, information sharing, and infrastructure building.

I very much liked the talk of a network of networks and indeed agreed with the need for training, tooling, information sharing and infrastructure building. Alas, I had to keep reminding myself, while looking at the elegantly uniformed speaker, that it is a military network of networks that he was advocating and that all those nice-sounding activities pertained to matters military. It turned out that I very much liked the structure of what General Petraeus was proposing, but definitely not its content!

The training we truly need is training in compassionate dialogue between all of us and in compassionate living amongst each other. The tools and equipment we truly need are those of compassionate communication and understanding. The information sharing we truly need is the honest sharing of, and witnessing to, our loftiest ideals and values and the cooperative shedding of dark stereotypes and caricatures of others. The infrastructures we truly need to build are infrastructures of public and shared spaces in which we respectfully appreciate and cherish each other just as we stand firmly rooted in our respective traditions.

The Obama presidency does NOT need more of the same “security architecture” inherited from the destructive, divisive and corrosive years of the Bush presidencies. Rather, it urgently needs a fresh “compassion architecture” that is constructive, mending and healing. Such a compassion architecture can only be communal and cooperative. All religious, spiritual and philosophical communities, Muslims included, must contribute to it.

(Photo: Aref Ali Nayed at U.S.-Muslim World Forum, 15 Feb 2009/Sohail Nakhooda)

Compassion architecture is built on the theological fact that true security can only come from God’s own compassion towards humanity and the compassion of humans towards humans. Compassion is the condition of possibility of true security.

A Common Word, which was launched in October 2007, is an important  contribution to an alternative compassion architecture. Its signatories, whose number has since grown to 301, include Muslim scholars and thinkers of all theological schools, both genders, all ages and occupations.

The response from Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians has been very  positive and several constructive conferences have already been held with them to explore our common ground. Some Jewish scholars have also made positive and encouraging comments and they will be addressed in a similar document.

For example, Muslim scholars met evangelical Christian leaders last summer at a conference at Yale University, for many the first time either had sat down to discuss faith with the other.  It was a transformative event.  The dark and twisted images Muslims and evangelicals often had of each other came tumbling down. A door for compassionate cooperation opened.

Last November, a Common Word delegation of two dozen Muslim scholars, led by Grand Mufti of Bosnia Mustafa Ceric, met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican and held three days of talks with leading Catholic scholars there.  The encounter was soothing and healing after the wounds of the pope’s speech in Regensburg in 2006.

(Photo: Pope Benedict and Grand Mufti Ceric at Vatican, 6 Nov 2008/Osservatore Romano)

Last month, one of Islam’s top Muslim television preachers, Amr Khaled, toured several Muslim countries including Sudan to rally tens of thousands of young people around the theme of A Common Word. The response proved overwhelmingly positive.

Initiatives such as A Common Word are giving rise to a “network of networks of compassion” with multiple nodes and growing complexity and interconnectivity. Much like the internet, this network of networks does not depend on any one node. It is robust and resilient precisely because it is so widespread and interconnected.  Compassion achitecture will rise from a wide variety of initiatives such as A Common Word coming together.

In a ‘stuck’ or ‘jammed’ world situation, A Common World hits the reset button with fresh and purified presuppositions. Now, we watch the lights come on in a fresh way, a way that may very well get our world going again. What better presuppositions to start with than Love of God and Love of Neighbor?

Reorienting and purifying intentions is the most important change to make if the Obama “change platform” is to work. Change requires a shift from self-righteous arrogance to attitudes of humility, concern for others, brokenness-before-God, compassion and understanding.

What humanity needs most today is a prophetic teaching of compassion and love. Inherent in A Common Word is a lofty, scriptures-based exhortation from which many lessons, sermons and much guidance can flow.

(Photo: Amr Khaled preaching in Sanaa, 1 July 2007/Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi)

Today we are all frightened, in one way or another, physically, politically, socially, and economically. For too many years, fear ran our lives both as actors and acted-upon. During those terrible Bush years, the generals and security agencies thrived on offering their “Security Architectures”. It is time for true change: change from fear to hope, from hate to love, from madness to sanity and from cruelty to compassion. The new day is indeed luminescent with rays of hope!

God knows best!