Why Understanding America's Religious Landscape Is the Most Important Challenge Facing Us Today

• The 1990s saw the U.S. Navy commission its first Muslim chaplain and open its first mosque.
• There are presently more than three hundred temples in Los Angeles, home to the greatest variety of Buddhists in the world.
• There are more American Muslims than there are American Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians.

Jean Zaru, the longtime activist and Quaker leader from Ramallah, here brings home the pain and central convictions that animate Christian nonviolence and activity today. Zaru vividly paints the complex realities faced by all parties in Palestine - Jews and Muslims and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians, women and men. Yet even as Zaru eloquently names the common misunderstandings of the history, present situation, and current policies of the parties there, she vividly articulates an alternative: a religiously motivated nonviolent path to peace and justice in the world's most troubled region.