Ramadan and How You Can Participate
Peace Catalyst International exists to ignite local movements of Christians and Muslims (and others!) living together in peace and working together towards peace. To this end, our Muslim friends have graciously invited us to join them in fasting, praying, and eating together during one of their most holy times: Ramadan.
WHY RAMADAN?
Ramadan is one of the most important and holy seasons within the Islamic faith, during which Muslims around the world observe strict fasting from sunrise to sunset. Each Muslim who has reached puberty and is in good health is encouraged to fast. The sick and elderly, along with travelers, pregnant women, and those who are nursing are exempt - although they sometimes opt to make up for the missed fast days sometime in the future or help feed the poor. The first pre-dawn meal of the day during Ramadan is called suhoor. Each day’s fast is broken at sunset with a meal known as iftar.
PARTICIPATE WITH US!
Our friends have invited us to join them for Iftar dinners, and we'd love for you to be there. Throughout the month of June you can join us for an Iftar dinner with our Muslim friends in a few cities. Click here for more info and to tell us you're interested!
Wendell Berry died this week, and I find myself returning again to one of his poems I have loved for years, The Peace of Wild Things. The wild things can return us to a different rhythm, a peace that does not require us to deny what is happening around us. Perhaps they remind us that stillness itself can be a form of resistance to a world determined to keep us anxious, reactive, distracted, and afraid.
The lives we live and the legacies we leave behind. Reflections on the passing of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Ratko Mladić.
On Sunday, August 16th, US President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered the Department of War to reduce the joint military exercises (between the US and South Korean militaries) on the Korean Peninsula. I’d like to give some nuance to this situation, because whatever Trump’s motives, this public statement creates a small window of opportunity to open peace talks to end the Korean War.
Few words in the Christian vocabulary have been more distorted, weaponized, or misunderstood than “forgiveness.” In many church and societal contexts, forgiveness is asked from those who have been harmed—often quickly, publicly, and in ways that protect the comfort of the powerful and keep the oppressed in place. We need a liberative, trauma-informed, and biblical reimagining of forgiveness—one that centers survivors, breaks cycles of harm, and refuses to be co-opted by oppressive systems. Here’s what we think that looks like.
Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to go on a “Holy Land Pilgrimage.” This short trip, my first time in this so-called Holy Land, forever changed the way I read Scripture. I believe it was Saint Jerome in the early 5th century who first referred to this experience as reading the fifth gospel, a term I have heard repeated by many. But I also discovered what I might call a “sixth gospel.”
The following is a reflection by Bryan Carey, building on a conversation with Bishop Zac Niringiye. Bishop Zac is a Ugandan theologian and retired Anglican bishop whose decades of ministry, theological leadership, and public advocacy have made him a respected global voice on faith, justice, and the church’s public witness. His work challenges the church to embody the gospel through justice, humility, and solidarity rather than power and control.
Uganda is in crisis, and the world needs to pay attention. In this blog, an East African researcher and friend of Peace Catalyst discusses Uganda’s situation and what democracies around the world must learn from Uganda before it’s too late.
Over the years, I have heard a lot of talk about people deconstructing their faith, and my wife Lucy and I have helped people on their own journeys. Here, I want to focus a bit on my own faith journey and the process I’ve gone through, which I believe has involved three phases of deconstruction.
The argument for nonviolence needs to come from people who know what violence actually costs, not just from scholars who've read about it. Veterans need to be the primary voices calling the church to account. So here’s what I think the church actually owes to veterans and others, and what it looks like for the church to repent.
God’s reign has a direction: it moves toward the poor, the captive, the oppressed. It moves toward a world where the widow isn’t preyed upon, the orphan has an advocate, the stranger is welcomed rather than exploited. This is what the prophets meant by God’s justice.
