Globe Trot: Calling U.S. Christians to action on Iraq

IRAQ: One year after the ISIS capture of Mosul, it’s imperative to find a way to take care of the survivors, most of them Iraqi Christians, who continue to subsist in miserable conditions. It should be a prime topic of foreign policy facing the 2016 presidential candidates, and it will be Christian organizations and individuals in the United States now who begin to make it their felt need. In 2007 and 2008 the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea and I disagreed over whether an autonomous region for Christians in Nineveh was wise. I thought it would make them sitting ducks and ghetto-ize them with less, not more, freedom, and she—probably wisely—saw the future that has now come to pass for them without such protection. As activated Christians struggle in the United States to protect their religious liberty, will they also extend that same concern to those overseas who have now, in large measure due to U.S. action in their country, lost everything?

RAMADAN: It’s true (and I’ve witnessed it and partaken)—Muslims probably eat more during the month of Ramadan, which begins June 18, than at any other time of the year. Think Thanksgiving Day feast starting every day at sundown. But Jerry Rankin, president emeritus of the Southern Baptist International Board, has more observations from his time in Indonesia about why Ramadan matters to Christians.

TURKEY: Socially conservative but upwardly mobile Kurds who abandoned the incumbent AKP party made the difference in this week’s election, giving the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) the momentum to enter parliament and hand President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his first electoral setback in over a decade.

TRADE: President Barack Obama made an unscheduled appearance at last night’s annual congressional baseball game in Washington. As he emerged from the dugout, Republicans in the stands began chanting, “TPP, TPP.” In fact, that’s why he was there, to lobby Democrats like Nancy Pelosi who oppose his efforts to expand trade in the Pacific region via the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The House takes up two related bills today.

NOTE: While some of you are away, I’ll be stepping away from Globe Trot for several weeks to work on a book project. Globe Trot will resume after the Fourth of July. Happy summer!