If there were a Nobel Prize for Theology, large parts of President Barack Obama's Oslo speech could be cut and pasted into an acceptance speech for it. The Peace Prize speech dealt with war and he made a clear case from the start for the use of force when necessary. While he began with political arguments for this position, his rationale took on an increasingly religious tone as the speech echoed faith leaders and theologians going back to the origins of Christianity.

Twenty years after they were killed at Central American University in San Salvador, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, six Jesuit priests are being honored by the Salvadoran government, the U.S. Congress and Jesuit institutions. Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes announced in early November that the priests would receive the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado awards, the country's highest honor, on Nov. 16, the 20th anniversary of the killings. Funes said the awards would be presented as a "public act of atonement" for mistakes by past governments. Two Salvadoran military officers were found guilty in 1991 of ordering the murders.

To see the spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians making his rounds in Washington this week -- meeting with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Senate leader Reid and speaking at the Brookings Institution today -- you could make that case. In his talk yesterday at Georgetown University (sponsored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress), the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew spoke about the spiritual imperative for nonviolence, universal health care and reducing consumption to help the environment. But Bartholomew knows the political language of America, and he made a point in his talk to claim that these positions are neither left nor right, calling the Orthodox "one of the most conservative members of the Christian family."

On the face of it, a commitment by all United Nations member states to reach an understanding on how the world body should intervene to stop genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing would not seem like a major stretch. But the debate scheduled in the General Assembly for Thursday over the concept, known as "the responsibility to protect," is producing rancor before it even begins. So much, in fact, that instead of figuring out how to enforce the doctrine, the General Assembly could end up debating the policy's validity all over again, even though about 150 world leaders already endorsed it in 2005.

A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. -- formerly known as the U.S. Army's School of the Americas -- is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned. A day after an SOA-trained army general ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, President Barack Obama stated that "the coup was not legal" and that Zelaya remained "the democratically elected president." The Foreign Operations Appropriations Act requires that U.S. military aid and training be suspended when a country undergoes a military coup, and the Obama administration has indicated those steps have been taken.

As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.

Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications.

Last week, on Easter Sunday morning, 60 of us gathered for Mass around a makeshift altar in the spectacular Nevada desert, about an hour and half northwest of Las Vegas. There in the natural cathedral of the wide open desert floor and the towering snow-capped mountains surrounding us, we celebrated the resurrection of the nonviolent Jesus. After the benediction, 21 of us crossed the line and entered the grounds of the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. We were trying to put the resurrection into practice, to non-cooperate with death, and to welcome the risen Jesus' gift of peace here and now. It was a beautiful moment. Arrest followed swiftly. To my mind, resurrection means refusing to cooperate with systems and forces of death. Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed this resolve far more poetically, saying, "I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death." People of resurrection do not cooperate with death or the machinery of death, making them people of nonviolence, love, and peace.

"Active nonviolence is...like saying to a person: On the one hand (symbolized by the hand that is our in front of me), I will not cooperate with your violence of injustice...On the other hand (symbolized by the hand that is open), I am open to you as a human being." For a good part of the past eight years, in order to cope and survive, we have too often stood with both of our arms in front of us, palms facing out. The day before the inauguration, several groups held a rally at Dupont Circle in which one had the opportunity to throw a shoe at an inflatable caricature of former President George W. Bush. We have been on the defense; and at times, we have forgotten to be open to the humanity of our elected officials. This is all not to say that the Obama administration will be perfect, will not give us reason to question and will not present us with opportunities to hold our government accountable. Still, my hope is that during this time of change, we can learn how to collaborate and how to respond with active nonviolence.

Although George W. Bush is a man without intellectual pretensions, his departure from office brings down the curtain on a distinctive era of American political thought. Ideas that recently qualified as smart have suddenly become passe. Propositions once alluringly au courant now appear not simply obsolete but absurd. The bubble of American triumphalism has burst. Proponents of triumphalism vied with one another in explaining the implications of these two notions. First out of the gate was the scholar Francis Fukuyama. Even before the Berlin Wall had fallen, Fukuyama rendered his verdict on the entire twentieth century: Democratic capitalism had won. For Fukuyama, this "triumph of the West" found expression "in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism," embodied above all by the United States. Fukuyama titled the essay that made him famous "The End of History?"-the question mark suggesting a lingering circumspection. Soon thereafter circumspection fell from favor. Certainty emerged as a triumphalist hallmark.

Christian leaders in Jerusalem called on Tuesday for global intervention to stop the Gaza conflict and urged Israelis and Palestinians to "return to their senses." Medical officials say more than 380 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched bombing raids on Saturday designed to stop rocket salvoes from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In a joint statement issued by the Vatican, patriarchs, bishops and heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem also pressed all parties to chose non-violent methods to resolve their disputes. "We also call on the international community to fulfil its responsibilities and intervene immediately and actively to stop the bloodshed and end all forms of confrontation," they said.