Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

I interviewed Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) by phone on the same day he voted in favor of the resolution. He spoke about how his faith, "Gandhian Hinduism," informed his anti-war views. I was struck during our interview about the diversity of religious views that informed anti-war activism. I asked Khanna's staff to recommend other members of Congress to interview. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who is Catholic, and Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), who is Jewish, both shared their own thoughts in written responses to the same questions.

The second prayer request is for each member of the Special Counsel’s team. As Christians, we are instructed not just to pray for systemic issues, but for individual people. The Special Counsel team is not an amorphous blob — it is a set of veteran prosecutors.

Withstanding some unforeseen breakthrough, Power will not succeed in persuading Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime in Syria. Her plea is passionate, but likely not a winning argument. The best arguments don’t always win. But I believe I know why she still fights so hard, and it’s a lesson for all of us who care.

In the aftermath of the shooting at an Orlando, Fla., gay club, diverse leaders in the city have reached out to the LGBT community. One surprising photo emerged: evangelical megachurch pastor Joel Hunter shaking hands with Equality Florida’s Carlos Smith. It was a simple gesture, captured by a local newspaper reporter, but one with deep symbolic meaning.

Time magazine’s 2015 “Person of the Year” is a self-identified conservative Christian, but not one of the many running for president of the United States. While the dynamics of faith and politics are different in Europe, German leader Angela Merkel is an example of a conservative Christian living out her faith in the public square quite differently than we see in the U.S.

Time, which calls her “Chancellor of the Free World,” characterizes her strong leadership of economic and political crises in Europe as “no flair, no flourishes, no charisma, just a survivor’s sharp sense of power and a scientist’s devotion to data.” She may be a quantum chemist, but she’s also an Evangelical Lutheran preacher’s kid with an unwavering faith.

I must confess: until I learned that my country had committed a crime against humanity there, I had never heard of the city of Kunduz. I suspect many of my fellow Americans hadn’t either — even during the height of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, only 17 percent of young Americans could find Afghanistan on a map.

This must change.

Especially for those of us who have few memories of American political life before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, news from Afghanistan has been a steady drumbeat of ups and downs. The war — which has little to no effect on the day-to-day lives of Americans (other than, proponents of the war would argue, protecting us from the effects of terrorism in the United States) — seems removed from lives. And that’s reasonable. New world events have moved our attention away, and war weariness has long since set in as the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan drags on.

Even for Christians in the United States committed to political advocacy and public witness, other issues have long since taken the place of caring about Afghanistan.

But two reasons stand out for why war-weary Christians in the U.S. must care about recent events in Kunduz.

Later this week, President Obama will deliver a major speech promoting the Iran nuclear agreement at American University. I’m looking forward to the speech, both as an AU alum and someone closely following the upcoming Senate vote on the nuclear agreement. We know President Obama will make the strategic and scientific cases for the deal; I hope he makes the moral case as well.

President Obama has twice chosen the university in northwest D.C. to deliver major speeches, but it was also the site of President Kennedy’s landmark speech on peace and nuclear disarmament in 1963, where he declared, “While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests” and “the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both.”