Ashtar Analeed Marcus reports on the concerns of exiled Iraqi Christians casting their votes here for the elections in their homeland: Yalda Hajey, draped in traditional Assyrian scarves around his neck and waist, with red and green feathers protruding from his hat, dropped his vote into a ballot box, dipped his finger into a purple ink sponge and sprang into an Iraqi version of the jig. But Hajey’s mood turned somber as he talked about recent killings of fellow Christians in Iraq, including bodyguards protecting a Christian ministry official and men putting up posters in support of a Christian candidate. Media reports said their splattered blood covered the posters. “I’m voting for those who martyred themselves,” said Hajey, of Chicago, who cast his ballot Tuesday (Dec. 13). Like Hajey, many of the tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians in the United States are deeply concerned about the future of their religious community in their native land.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners was among the activists arrested today outside the U.S. Capitol while protesting the 2006 federal budget. Kevin Eckstrom reports: More than 130 singing church activists were arrested Wednesday (Dec. 14) outside the U.S. Capitol in their most direct confrontation with a 2006 federal budget they say is “morally disgraceful.” Protesters were arrested after they blocked the main entrance of the Cannon House Office Building during a carefully choreographed protest that was coordinated by religious progressives at Sojourners and Call to Renewal. Singing “Caring for our neighbors, we shall not be moved,” demonstrators were frisked, photographed and booked on trespassing charges by the Capitol Police. The misdemeanor carries a $250 fine or 90 days in jail.
RNS presents its year-end review of the biggest religion stories of 2005. Kevin Eckstrom writes that death was a major theme: They say death waits for no one and makes no appointments. Indeed, for the 181,000 killed a year ago by the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the 70,000 dead in a Pakistani earthquake or the 1,000 taken by Hurricane Katrina, death came suddenly, with unusual ferocity. But for the year’s biggest religion newsmaker, Pope John Paul II, death seemed to hover at a distance. It was almost a final touch of grace, a pause that allowed the charismatic former playwright one final moment of drama before he slipped away on April 2 at age 84. The death of John Paul-and the election of his successor, Benedict XVI-easily ranked as the biggest religion story of the year. Yet death weaved its way throughout 2005 and touched on high-profile stories.
Correspondent G. Jeffrey MacDonald writes about 2005 as “the year of disastrous `acts of God'”: Millennia have passed since biblical times when every disaster seemed to be a call to repentance, but a look back at 2005 makes clear that some human impulses die hard. The year’s catastrophic hurricanes, earthquakes, famines and other disasters raised choruses of prayer, not only for relief from suffering, but also for guidance to light a better moral path. And it wasn’t just Christian conservatives who read blighted landscapes as urgent messages for individuals and societies. From American environmentalists concerned with global warming to Asian Muslims worried about encroachments of Western culture, survivors of this year’s myriad disasters were quick to link what they regard as moral improvements with the establishment of a more stable future. In doing so, they confirmed the health and breadth of an impulse that seems as natural to human beings as fighting to survive a storm.
