Jeremy Courtney, executive director and cofounder of Preemptive Love Coalition, speaks about living as an American in Iraq and pursuing a lifestyle of preemptive love. He says, “violence unmakes the world,” but “preemptive love unmakes violence. Preemptive Love remakes the world through healing.” This philosophy of preemptive love has led Jeremy and the staff of Preemptive Love to work in partnership with Iraqis to eradicate the backlog of children who need heart surgery in Iraq.

As we were leaving the mosque recently, the leaders there invited us to a special event that would include a dinner, special speakers, and a Muslim comedian. A Muslim comedian—at the mosque?? We were intrigued, so last Friday night we went to check it out.

Eboo Patel, an American Muslim and founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, talks about the increasing challenges of living in the U.S. as a Muslim and the need for people to protect and respect people from other faiths. Patel encourages people to promote peace, not in spite of their faith, but as a response to the robust peacemaking teaching found in their religious texts.

Today on the blog, we have something a bit different. This post was written by Christen Hansel, a friend of Peace Catalyst's, for her personal blog and we're reposting it here with her permission. It's very personal and a bit different than what we usually post, but it is a powerful story and one we hope will move you as much as it did us.

How can someone engage in respectful dialogue without compromising their deeply held beliefs? Teaching pastor at Mariners Church in Mission Viejo, Mike Erre, speaks on the necessity of “multi-faith dialogue” as an alternative to “interfaith dialogue.” “Multi-faith dialogue” is a genuine meeting of individuals who may not share similar beliefs, values, and/or experiences but are willing to meet, share their lives, and work for the common good.

In Peace Catalyst International, we aspire to launch a global movement of Jesus-centered peacemaking communities. To that end, our PCI team in Raleigh has helped to catalyze a significant movement of Muslims and Christians who are moving beyond unhelpful stereotypes and are building bridges of friendship and trust.Back in the fall, however, things took a major twist for us.

I was privileged to view an extraordinary documentary recently that presents a very different picture of Christian-Muslim relations than that which is promoted by the media and religious extremists. The name of the documentary is Different Books, Common Word.

Are today’s evangelical Christians going to miss the opportunity to be peacemakers in this generation? Generational blind spots have caused many Christians to miss the blessing of following Jesus as a peacemaker in the issues of their day—slavery, human rights of Native Americans, Japanese who were interned in camps during WWII, minorities during the civil rights era, etc. Is the issue of how we treat our Muslim neighbors nearby or around the world going to be another one of those missed opportunities?

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking to a group of North Carolina homeschoolers and then leading them on a tour of their neighborhood mosque.A few minutes before we went across the street to the mosque, I asked the kids if they had ever been to a mosque and how they were feeling about our pending visit.