She hasn’t felt quite as “merry” this season as she did last year.
CHR Comment: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were indeed refugees in Egypt and aiding modern refugees is certainly a good work. How to best help them is often a more difficult issue. Lord, grant wisdom.
A wave of migrants from the Mediterranean meets a hostile reception from many Americans. The migrants are seen as alien in religion, culture, politics, law. So different in fact that some Americans argue that they can never be assimilated. They are the Italians, in the 1890s.
CHR Comment: The article uses the example of Italian Catholic immigration to predominantly Protestant America in the nineteenth century to argue for changes in attitude toward Syrian immigrants today. Americans at that time were afraid of Sicilians and mafia due to acts of violence. The comparison seems inexact since the Sicilians weren’t killing people for religious reasons.
The Greek island of Lesbos has been struggling to care for the Syrian refugees who’ve reached its shores. Now, it’s struggling to find space to bury the ones who haven’t.
CHR Comment: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim clergy will hold an interfaith service to commemorate the many who have died.
church history review 