Visions of Humanity has released its Global Peace Index, ranking 140 nations in terms of their relative peacefulness.

• Bad news: We’re #97.
• Worse news: That’s +7 from last year (the lower the number, the more peaceful you are)
• Good news: I don’t live in Sudan (#138), Somalia (#139) or Iraq (#140).
• Even better news: Our neighbor Canada (#11) is very peaceful and they’re ripe for the pickin’.

The index’s methodology is discussed here.

Eddie Carson tagged me for this meme.

I am going to tag the following five educators (they all teach at Harding): Jeff Montgomery, Jeremy Beauchamp, Frank McCown, Jim Miller and DCT.

THE RULES: Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

My Title: Swords into Plowshares

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

If I don’t reference the role of Christians as peacemakers at least once in every course I teach, I feel like I’ve missed an opportunity I’ll never have again.

Today is the 50th birthday of one of the most recognized international symbols in history: the peace sign.

From Democracy Now!

Over the past five decades the peace sign has become one of the world’s enduring icons. The original peace sign was developed in 1958 by a British textile designer and conscientious objector named Gerald Holtom. He created the symbol by combining the semaphore letters N and D, for nuclear disarmament. On Feb. 21, 1958 the symbol was accepted by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. The symbol soon began to be used in anti-nuclear protests across Britain and then spread across the globe.

Give it a chance…

Last night, the Harding University Honors College hosted another session in L.C. Sears Seminar Series at the American Heritage Auditorium.

This year’s event was entitled: “Islam in America: A Dialogue in Faith” and features a discussion between Dr. Monte Cox, Associate Dean of the Harding’s College of Bible and Religion and Dr. Nabil Bayakly of Memphis, Tennessee.

This was a great event and it was well-organized and attended. The auditorium was full and that would put the crowd at about 400. It looked like most of the audience was from the Harding community.

Dr. Bayakly spoke for about thirty-five minutes about the history of Islam in America and Dr. Cox offered some quick observations of his own. The rest of the evening was taken up with dialog between them and questions from the audience.

All of the questions were directed toward Dr. Bayakly and were friendly in nature. Dr. Bayakly is a very disarming person who knows the Harding community. I’d like to think that he was able to put a face on Islam for many audience members who had never had an opportunity to hear a Muslim discuss his faith in person.

I felt that the strongest point made by Dr. Bayakly was his observation that Americans “don’t know anything about politics”. At the time, Dr. Bayakly was making a point about how little attention we give to looking at the Palestinian conflict from the perspective of Palestinians.

I would have to agree — although not necessarily about Americans not knowing anything about politics.

I think one of the changes that is coming to America and the Middle East in the next year or so is a foreign policy based less on a knee-jerk acceptance to Israel’s policies on the occupied territories and Palestinian political rights.

It would be hard to summarize everything that was said last night other than to make the most self-evident observation: a Muslim and a Christian held a rational and thoughtful discussion on the differences in our two faiths and nobody walked away angry.

I’m anxious to hear what the rest of you who were present last night thought.

And nice work by the Hardings Honors College in putting together another great campus event. Keep up the good work!

h/t: jm for the photo

On Sunday evening, the Harding Honors College will hold another session in the L.C. Sears Seminar Series at 7:00 pm in the American Heritage Auditorium.

This year’s event is entitled: “Islam in America: A Dialogue in Faith” and features a discussion between Dr. Monte Cox, Associate Dean of the Harding’s College of Bible and Religion and Dr. Nabil Bayakly of Memphis, Tennessee.

This Dr. Bayakly’s second visit to the Harding campus.

In March 2006, Dr. Bayakly and Rabbi Elliot Gertel of Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Chicago participated in an L.C. Sears seminar on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It should be an educational and entertaining evening. I’ll post a story on Monday morning.

This promotional video for the event was shown in chapel today.

When I told my biking partner (Eric) this morning that I was going to the Clinton Library tomorrow to hear Judith Hicks Stiehm’s presentation on the twelve women who have won the Nobel Prize for Peace, he asked me who they were.

I could use the excuse that it’s hard to demonstrate total recall when you are trying pedaling a bike but I can’t — I just come up with any names beyond Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi.

But I promised him that I would find out and I did:

• 1905 – Bertha von Suttner (Austria) – Honorary President of Permanent International Peace Bureau, Berne, Switzerland; Author of Lay Down Your Arms
• 1931 – Jane Addams (USA) – Sociologist; International President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• 1946 – Emily Greene Balch (USA) – Formerly Professor of History and Sociology; Honorary International President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• 1976 – Betty Williams & Mairead Corrigan (UK) – Founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People)
• 1979 – Mother Teresa (India) – Leader of Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta
• 1982 – Alva Myrdal (Sweden) – Former Cabinet Minister; Diplomat; Writer
• 1991 – Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma) – Human rights activist
• 1992 – Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Guatemala) – Advocate for indigenous rights
• 1997 – Jody Williams (USA) – Leader of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).
• 2003 – Shirin Ebadi (Iran) – Democracy and human rights activist; founder of the Children’s Rights Support Association in Iran
• 2004 – Wangari Maathai (Kenya) – Environmental and political activist

And now my students know who they are as well. By the end of the day tomorrow, they’ll probably know more about these women than they ever wanted to know.

It should be a good presentation; I’ll try to get something posted about what professor Stiehm had to say about them when I get back from Little Rock.

I can now add “shaking hands with a Nobel Prize laureate” to my extensive resume.

My congratulations to former congressman and vice-president Al Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for sharing the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy — I was an Al Gore fan before Al Gore was cool.

Granted, Al Gore was just a young Tennessee congressman when I met him in 1984 but I still got to shake his hand and chat with him for a few minutes about arms control in his Washington, DC office.

At the time, Gore was making a name for himself as one of the few members congress who actually understood the ramifications of the arms race and knew all kinds of things about missile throw-weights and warheads.

Shortly after that, in congress and in the office of the vice-president, Gore turned his attention to the environment.

There was a time when Al Gore’s passion for protecting the environment was written off as flaky, even by members of his own party. You may remember that George H. Bush once derided Gore as “Ozone Al” but even most Republicans now admit that Al Gore’s concern for the planet was not as far out in left field as they had originally thought.

In his statement upon hearing the news of the award, Gore said:

We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

I’ve always liked the spiritual angle on environmentalism — there’s nothing that should call Christians to stewardship more than taking care of the home that God gave us to live in.

Gore has also said he will donate his half of the approximately $1.5 million award to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

And Al Gore’s recognition as a leader on bringing attention to climate change should not overshadow the work of the IPCC, an IGO that has produced significant reports on the trends in global warming.

I might add that this is the second year in a row that an alumnus of Vanderbilt University has won a Nobel Prize for peace.

So, Go Dores…

What kind of regime orders its troops to open fire on unarmed Buddhist monks and nuns?

Thugs, criminals, despots.

It’s 2007, people.

Get with the program or get out of office.

Reuters has video.

Photo-blogger Greg Kendall-Ball has landed himself on the student section of this week’s The Nation.

One of GKB’s photos from the peace demonstration at Abilene Christian (ACU) on Friday was chosen as The Nation’s photo of the week.

You can see it here.

Nice work, Greg. Proud to know ya.

My friend and blog-brother GKB tells a lot more with images on his blog these days than he does with words.

Today, he was fortunate enough to witness something that not many of us get to see and he had his camera with him:

A peace demonstration on a Christian [Church of Christ] college campus.

Approximately twenty Abilene Christian University students held an anti-war/pro-peace demonstration on their campus today to celebrate the UN’s International Day of Peace.

And, in the truest and best fashion of public discourse, there was a counter-demonstration by a pro-war group of about the same size.

You can see Greg’s excellent photos of the event here and here.

You can leave comments for him here or at over at his place.

Yeah, I’m jealous.