Should the American people harness their admiration for the military to revitalize the virtues of democratic engagement? Can we harness this admiration without undermining our ability to keep our militaristic overconfidence in check, especially in the face of increasing economic and military competition from China and beyond?

President Obama’s State of the Union address frames his understanding of the challenges and opportunities we face with the suggestion that emulating the virtues of America’s armed forces would enable us to become a more cohesive and mission-focused community. The challenges he notes are well-known—economic stagnation, declining standards of living, gross inequality, and decreasing confidence in our power both to improve our lot at home and maintain our influence abroad. For the president, however, America’s economic and geopolitical prospects are better than many believe. What we should really worry about is the increasingly prominent role that political cynicism and cultural and religious difference-mongering play in our political life. As the president rightly understands, cynicism about Washington rarely translates into energetic local efforts to address the inequalities in our midst or to put constructive pressure on our representatives for “nation building” here at home. With noteworthy understatement, the president suggests that our tendency to “obsess over [our] differences” is undermining our ability constructively to confront our challenges and opportunities. The problem is as much about our political culture as it is our political policies. The president suggests that the military provides the nation and its leaders a much-needed example of joining together in trust to accomplish a common mission.

What are we to make of this claim? To an extent, President Obama is simply calling for more cooperation in American politics. This is a valuable point, as far as it goes, but is uninteresting. If we take President Obama to suggest something bigger, then we may understand him as echoing ideas from the roots of American progressivism and replaying some of its dilemmas. John Dewey once argued that Americans were the inheritors of a democratic faith in our ability to redress social problems through conversation and cooperation. This faith, Dewey argued, is implicit in our very way of doing things, despite the still-powerful, obfuscating influences of superstition, moralism, and ideological rigidity. What we need, Dewey claimed, is to make this faith “explicit and militant,” to embrace it self-consciously as a source of our common resolve (John Dewey, A Common Faith (Yale University Press, 1934, p. 87)). Made militant, democratic faith can propel what William James once called “the moral equivalent of war”—the marshaling of civic passions for a cohesive social effort against the sorts of inequality, hopelessness, and degradation many Americans now face. For Dewey, however, democratic militancy was deeply distrustful of American militarism. War, Dewey recognized, can lead to forms of social and political discipline that are antithetical to democratic cooperation and exchange. For the democratic tradition descended from Dewey, therefore, the challenge of American life is to identify forms of democratic solidarity that do not feed off militarism abroad.

President Obama plays on these ideas—with a twist. For the president, the end of the war in Iraq, and our decreasing commitment in Afghanistan, provides more than a much-needed infusion of investment dollars that we could turn toward more productive purposes. It allows the nation to turn its militant energies from imperial policing abroad and refocus them at home. By nursing our admiration for our military’s virtues, he suggests, we can transform our beleaguered democracy into a more cohesive and mission-focused political community. Further, we can transform our admiration for the military vocation into a greater estimation of our own vocation as citizens.

The realism of this suggestion is immensely attractive. Rather than condemning the militaristic energies that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the president attempts to redirect those energies to more democratic purposes. William James would have been proud. Yet there are dangers here. The president’s vision of a militantly democratic community—a community characterized by at least some of the martial virtues—depends implicitly on the very militarism that the president was widely admired for criticizing. The mission-focused social cohesion that he seems to propose is fed on a diet of military exploits, of Navy SEALs working as a team to kill terrorists in far-off places.

Unless the president is merely cheerleading for more “teamwork” in American politics—an idea scarcely worth hearing—he is suggesting we buy an expanded sense of and passion for citizenship with the coin of militaristic enthusiasm. Instead of taking the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an opportunity to rethink the vice of militaristic overconfidence, President Obama proposes simply to reduce American military action to a minor drama that gives the larger drama of domestic democracy its energy. As long as the military drama remains minor—for example, with small special operations units engaging in targeted strikes—it provides the necessary thrill without provoking the more destructive forms of solidarity to which militarized societies are prone.

The problem with this view, as I see it, is that, once the bitter lessons of the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are old news, there will be little to prevent an American society fed by militaristic enthusiasm from giving in to the temptations of military power. Especially in future periods of uncertainty and threat, a political society that sustains itself through an embrace of martial valor will seek to discipline itself in ways more in keeping with war than democratic ideals.

Democratic citizenship undoubtedly requires courage, selflessness, and teamwork. It takes courage to make yourself vulnerable to viewpoints with which you seriously disagree. It takes selflessness to make the care and upkeep of the community a priority alongside the demands of earning a living for oneself and for a family. It takes teamwork to organize people effectively to make a difference in the life of a community, especially in the face of entrenched interests. But one may well question whether it is plausible or desirable to promote these virtues by harnessing the nation’s admiration for the military.

Howard Rhodes has taught at the University of Iowa and is currently is a J.D. candidate at Duke University School of Law. His research interests include the ethics of war, international humanitarian law, and religion and international relations.

One of the more boisterous moments of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech came when he stated his belief in what Abraham Lincoln believed before him: “That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” The House chamber erupted with applause and shouts of approval—none louder than from the mouths of Republicans.

But this moment was little more than another lesson in party difference. The speech actually confirmed Obama’s belief that there is a lot people cannot do better by themselves. They cannot fund massive and necessary public works projects; they cannot fund equally massive research breakthroughs like those connected to natural gas extraction; they cannot be counted on to levy fair taxes; and, as he observed several times, they cannot be trusted to uphold sound financial rules and practices.

In contrast, the GOP response from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels confirmed that Republicans believe there is little government can do better than the individual: “government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them.” This is Party Politics 101. To borrow from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, Democrats have faith in the “better angels” of the federal government while Republicans trust in the “better angels of our nature.”

Both parties trust in the better angels of the military. Obama opened and closed the speech with resounding praise for the military’s teamwork and self-sacrifice, and he called for Congress and America to emulate both traits. There is much to admire about the armed forces and the veterans who serve in them. Yet we should honor their service without elevating them beyond reproach. Otherwise we patronize our veterans—as Obama did when he said, “they exceed all expectations;” lack “personal ambition”; “don’t obsess over their differences.” We neglect the reality that “war is hell. ” And we obscure the undemocratic nature of the military. The democratic system may at times feel like hell, but it is one made from the luxuries of debate, disagreement, compromise, and representative government, not chain of command and direct orders.

By Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, after four years of bloody civil war, he no longer spoke of the “better angels of our nature.” Instead he asked for “malice toward none” and “charity for all” in an effort “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and establish “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Our crisis is ideological civil war, and like his predecessor Obama urged the nation toward political cooperation in service to an “America built to last.” But he argued that its longevity depends upon whether we “settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by” or for a country “where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” This economic wound will not heal without profound disagreement—that is the nature of democracy—but Obama hopes that we might bind it charitably and without malice.

Our disagreements about it and the other major issues of the day have devolved, however, into silliness, even absurdity. We are a nation of finger pointers, unrelenting, disingenuous, and uncharitable in laying blame at the feet of others for the political and economic disarray of our times. But, as Obama has argued throughout his presidency, if Democrats and Republicans see angels when they look in the mirror and demons when they look at each other, then we cannot expect that the “state of our Union will always be strong.”

The scariest commentary on our natures is that there are national leaders and everyday Americans who believe in political angels and demons, and there are those who do not but allow the charade to go on anyway.

Andrew Finstuen is director of the Honors College and associate professor of history at Boise State University.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech marks a major shift in strategy for the Democratic Party. During the 2008 campaign, Democrats caught the religion bug from the GOP. Apparently they have finally killed it. Obama is back on message. Echoing Franklin Roosevelt, he preached economic liberty to the poor and justice to the oppressed without pandering to religious prejudices. For decades Republican leaders have used faith to cloak exploitative economic policies that favored the rich and the powerful. No more. I am encouraged that going into the 2012 campaign the president is not going to let them set the terms of the debate.

Matthew Avery Sutton is an associate professor of history at Washington State University and the author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2007).

His speech on religion was one of the defining moments of the 2008 presidential campaign. Revisit analysis of what Republican president candidate Mitt Romney had to say about his Mormon faith and religion in America.

Allen Hertzke: An Eloquent and Evocative Address
It was designed to allay concerns of evangelicals, tie his personal story to the nation’s heritage, and appeal to the broader public. But it remains to be seen whether it will do enough to win the hearts of born-again Christians who still view Mormonism as a non-Christian cult.

Charles T. Mathewes: Romney and the Eisenhower Approach
The distinctions Romney drew are very unusual, historically speaking, and it is still not at all clear that those distinctions are right — that in fact we can imagine religion and politics as totally separate spheres of human life without tension between them.

David Davenport: A Good Speech, But Will It Do Any Good?
Romney faced high expectations and an almost impossible dilemma as he delivered this message. On one hand, the American people as a whole are ambivalent about the matter of faith and religion in their public leaders. They want leaders who are religious enough to have strong personal values, but who are not too religious in the sense of looking to God to tell them which policies to adopt.

David O’Brien: Is America the Real Religion?
Governor Romney says some wise things about faith and freedom and politics… He unfortunately joins the crowd of christians who love to bash the straw man of secularism.

David P. Gushee: God and Country with a Mormon Twist
I want to know how any presidential candidate who claims to be a religious believer translates that faith commitment into moral convictions and then, by extension, rings such convictions to bear on policy positions.

James K.A. Smith: The God of Americanism
Romney has indicated in no uncertain terms that he is an “Americanist,” like almost every other president candidate.

Kimberly H. Conger: Not a Recipe for a Romney Win
A focus on civil religion and the importance of faith in Americans’ lives is not enough for most evangelicals to choose a Mormon.

Leo Ribuffo: God and the Presidency from Jack to Mitt
The speech shows that Romney has begun to think about questions that he will face over and over and over again if he wins the Republican nomination.

Randall Balmer: Mitt Romney’s Defining Moment
Romney sought to downplay his faith, protesting that he is not a spokesman for Mormonism. But many voters, evangelicals epsecially, have not been mollifed.

Richard Wightman Fox: “A Memorable American Political Oration”
Romney said nothing about his specifically Mormon beliefs, but everything he said about faith in America — his own and everyone else’s — was subtly and potently informed by his memory of the persecution experienced by his Mormon ancestors.

Ronald C. White Jr: Get Right with Religion
Romney made a thoughtful argument for the role of religion in the public square that he hopes can reach across denominational divisions. The question he did not address was what was the content of that religion?

Steve Monsma: Good As Far As It Goes
Anyone who might have felt that being a Mormon is in by itself disqualified one from serving as president of all the American people should be reassued by what Romney had to say.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: During this week’s debate, Mitt Romney said voters should not select candidates on the basis of their faith.

MITT ROMNEY (Presidential Candidate): That idea, that we choose people based upon their religion for public office, is what I find to be most troubling, because the founders of this country went to great length to make sure, and even put it in the Constitution, that we would not choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion.

LAWTON: Romney was responding to recent remarks by Dallas evangelical megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who told reporters he believed that Romney, as a Mormon, is part of a “theological cult” that is not Christian. At the Values Voter Summit earlier this month, Jeffress introduced Rick Perry, referring to his evangelical faith.

REV. ROBERT JEFFRESS (First Baptist Church of Dallas): Do we want a candidate who is a good moral person, or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?

LAWTON: Jeffress’ comments stirred controversy, even among other religious conservatives.

WILLIAM BENNETT (Conservative Commentator): Pastor Jeffress, do not give voice to bigotry. Do not give voice to bigotry.

LAWTON: Romney’s Mormon faith was also an issue in the last presidential campaign, prompting his 2007 speech saying that while he will be true to his beliefs, they would not dictate his presidency. It’s an issue of particular concern to many evangelical voters. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, almost 60 percent of white evangelicals believe that Mormonism is not a Christian religion. Although Romney does have some high-profile evangelical supporters, it appears he still hasn’t caught on at the evangelical grassroots. But neither has Perry, who has been openly touting his evangelical faith, so much so that Perry’s wife told supporters she feels he’s come under unfair attack because of his beliefs. Meanwhile, Herman Cain, who describes himself as a conservative Christian, is also making a play for evangelical voters with several recent faith-based stops, including a book signing at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

Evangelicals are a key GOP constituency, especially in the primary season. In 2008, 44 percent of all Republican presidential primary voters were self-identified evangelicals, with even higher percentages in several early voting states. This time around, evangelicals are still undecided. At the Values Voter Summit, Ron Paul won the straw poll, followed by Cain and Rick Santorum. Perry and Michele Bachmann tied for fourth. Romney came in sixth.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Nestled in the hills between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is a small village called the Oasis of Peace—in Hebrew, Neve Shalom and in Arabic, Wahat al-Salam. While the Middle East conflict continues to churn all around, here they are trying to create a different reality, one that says Israelis and Arabs can live side-by-side in peace.

ABDESSALAM NAJJAR (Oasis of Peace): It’s possible. We need to learn how to make the impossible possible. We don’t take in our consideration impossible. It’s possible, let’s do it now.

LAWTON: Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam was founded more than 30 years ago by an Egyptian-born Dominican monk, Father Bruno Hussar, who died in 1996. He wanted to create a place where Jews, Muslims, and Christians intentionally lived together in mutual understanding and respect.

NAJJAR: His interest was to deal with the conflict. Why do we have a conflict? How can we influence the dynamics of the conflict and how can we change it for dynamics for peace building?

LAWTON: Abdessalam Najjar is an Arab Muslim from the Galilee region of Israel. He was part of the first group to move here 33 years ago.

LAWTON: Why did you want to do this? Why did you want to be part of this?

NAJJAR: You ask me a very difficult question. You assume that I know the answer. I don’t know. For me, I said, ah, it’s a way that we can deal with the conflict in an alternative way. Cooperation instead of confrontation. Dialogue instead of fight.

LAWTON: Today, 55 families live here, and another 30 families are in the process of moving in. Others are on a waiting list if space becomes available. The community screens applicants and chooses who will live here.

NAJJAR: We need groups that are capable to understand that differences between us and not trying to change the other, mainly to work on the self, and the transformation will start from within and not transforming the others.

LAWTON: In Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, there’s a big emphasis on education, not just for those who live here, but for the greater community as well. The bilingual Hebrew Arabic primary school has 200 students, the vast majority from outside the village.

NAJJAR: The most important thing that we are keeping, trying to keep equality between Arab and Jewish pupils and the staff, also Arab and Jewish teachers.

LAWTON: And there’s adult education as well. Nava Zonenshein directs programs at the School for Peace, which sponsors encounter groups and conflict-resolution seminars.

NAVA ZONENSHEIN (Oasis of Peace): People have to learn history they didn’t know of the other side, learn power relations and how to share more equally, learn how to change the images that they have of the other side. So these are challenges we have to deal all the time with.

LAWTON: Zonenshein, who is Jewish, also moved to the village more than 30 years ago. She raised her three children here.

ZONENSHEIN: They don’t see the other as an enemy. Everywhere they go they will fight for equality, for justice, so it’s something very deep in their experience, not just they heard about it but they lived this.

LAWTON: Rabbi Ron Kronish says Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is one of several interfaith projects taking place despite the ongoing tensions in the region.

RABBI RON KRONISH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): These things don’t make the news. I often joke, because we don’t kill anybody, we don’t make the news and we don’t make page one anyway. So I’d like people to know that there are a lot of people in this country who are into dialogue, education, getting to know one another, trying to live together.

LAWTON: Kronish has lived in Israel for 32 years and directs the Interreligious Coordinating Council based in Jerusalem. Interfaith work here has two tracks. One is promoting dialogue inside Israel proper between the majority Jewish population and the 20 percent who are Arab Muslims and Christians. The other track is promoting dialogue between people from Israel and the Palestinian territories, which can be especially difficult given security concerns. Kronish says the ongoing political stalemate does complicate all their work.

KRONISH: When there’s not a war or lots of terror and counterterror and all that, it’s easier to bring people together, on the one hand. On the other hand, the lack of political hope and the lack of political progress keeps people from coming out in larger numbers. Some people say, what for?

ISSA JABER ABU GHOSH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): When sometimes there is something on the political arena, the conflict, some, let me say, violence, terror events somewhere, the whole issues became very complicated, very mixed.

LAWTON: Kronish works closely on the council with Issa Jaber Abu Ghosh, a Palestinian Muslim who lives just outside Jerusalem in the Arab town of Abu Ghosh, which is named for his family. They believe building relationships between individuals lays the groundwork for peace.

KRONISH: We don’t invite people to our dialogues to solve the problem. We invite them to get to know one another, to be in place, to do what you can, to mitigate violence and hatred.

LAWTON: Kronish admits the lack of political progress can be discouraging, but he takes heart in his interfaith work with kids.

KRONISH: My hope is more in the younger generation, to tell you the truth, who are less cynical and less tired and who don’t have easy political solutions, because we don’t have those around here, but who are reaching out to know each other, to encounter the other, to work with each other, to do small things together, to do what’s feasible at the current time.

LAWTON: At Neve Shalem/Wahat al-Salam many say spirituality is also a key part of building the framework for peace.

NAJJAR: I believe, and there are some others believe, that peace education and the peace actions in the absence of the spiritual factor will be not complete, and if we will use the spiritual factor, we will be more able, more courage to do a peaceful action.

LAWTON: Here there are many places where people of all faiths, and those of no faiths, can pray or meditate. One of the most unusual spots is called the Space of Silence.

NAJJAR: See in the shape, very beautiful, you can come inside, you can pray, you can meditate as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, anything, but everything should be in silence.

LAWTON: Here there are no walls and no sharp edges. Najjar says the founder, Father Bruno, believed you can’t talk to others until you talk to God and yourself. His vision was that by pursuing peace, people are doing God’s work, whatever their belief system may be.

NAJJAR: This is the most important thing, the outcome, the results. If the results is what God wants from us to do, we do it, everybody with his own way.

LAWTON: And that’s the work they intend to continue and expand, no matter what happens in the political world outside.

I’m Kim Lawton in Israel.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: In a region that’s seen civil wars and bloodshed, Ghana has enjoyed years of peace.

Church leader: May somebody leave this service knowing that their tomorrow is better than their today…

DE SAM LAZARO: In its packed churches there’s a palpable sense of optimism about Ghana’s future.

REV. FRED DEEGBE: I wish I could say we’ve reached the Promised Land. We are quite close to it, we believe.

DE SAM LAZARO: The first building block to Ghana’s relative prosperity has been a free press.

Radio announcer: This is your show, the unique breakfast drive….

DE SAM LAZARO: Almost everyone listens to the radio in Ghana and lively political give and take is a breakfast staple. Tempers flared close to boiling point at times in the studios but only until the show was over. All was quickly forgiven. In a continent where long-running dictatorships are the norm, Ghana has enjoyed two decades of thriving democracy. Two incumbent leaders have lost in general elections. In 2008, the margin was less than one percent. Yet on both cases the sitting president stepped aside, and power was transferred peacefully.

PROFESSOR EMMANUEL GYIMAH-BOADI (Executive Director, Ghana Center for Democratic Development): This is the first time we’ve had both economic growth and political stability and freedom.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ghana was the first African colony to gain independence back in 1957, from Britain. It had its share of autocrats and military coups until the early 90s, when long ruling military strongman Jerry Rawlins stepped aside and allowed democratic elections. Ghana has seen steady economic growth ever since. It exports gold, diamonds and cocoa beans, and now new wealth awaits.

Video announcer: In June 2007, Kosmos struck gold…

DE SAM LAZARO: Major offshore oil reserves have been found here and the first oil revenues began to flow last December. Across Africa the discovery of such riches, especially oil, has become known as the “resource curse.”

DEEGBE: Instead of having oil be a source of prosperity and progress for this nation we just allow a few people, very corrupt people, to amass this wealth and flaunt it to all of us, and we want to work towards this not being the story of Ghana.

PATRICK AWUAH: Ghana has been very fortunate to have oil after democracy and not before. Because that democracy is going to influence how Ghana manages its oil wealth.

DE SAM LAZARO: Patrick Awuah is one of a growing number of overseas Ghanaians who’ve returned. He went to college in the US, then worked at Microsoft. He started a university called Ashesi or “beginning.” Ghana’s fledgling democracy needs ethical leaders he says.

AWUAH: We’ve borrowed the model of the liberal arts and sciences as the way to do that, that teaches broad perspectives, a deep ethos, a deep concern for ethics and a specialization.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ashesi has 450 students and will soon triple that number in a new campus being built just outside the capital, Accra, with funds from the World Bank and other investors. Students and alumni we talked to echoed the school’s values

NAA AYELEYSA QUAYNOR-METTLE (Business Major, Ashesi University): You are training ethical leaders, entrepreneurs who are going to take over in terms of the integrity, in terms of sharing the national cake or the national pie among everybody so that the majority of the Ghanaian nationals are not eating the drops or the crumbs from the table, but then they are sharing equally.

DE SAM LAZARO: For now, Ghanaians are hardly sharing equally. There’s still deep poverty in rural areas, where the majority of Ghana’s 22 million people live. Development experts say the best way to attack poverty is to create jobs and improve the rural economy. A number of efforts have begun to do this. For example, shea nuts are a major export. They’re processed in Europe and America into shea butter, used in skin creams or as a food additive. Now several small processing enterprises have been set up in Ghana, supported by private aid groups as well as the US government. Some are mechanized but hundreds of women are employed in traditional processing, kneading a dough that comes from boiling and crushing the nuts to release the prized shea butter.

RITA DAMPSON (Small Business Owner): When you pick the nuts and sell, that is just the end of it, but when you process it into butter, the profit you can get to support your children by paying their school fees.

DE SAM LAZARO: So there is more profit than if you process the nuts?

DAMPSON: Yes, please.

DE SAM LAZARO: There’s a long way to go. Ninety-five percent of Ghana’s shea nuts are still exported raw, and processing is even more difficult with what is still Ghana’s chief export: cocoa beans. Very little chocolate is made anywhere in Africa because of a lack of refrigeration or milk. So the emphasis here instead is on getting a better price. Kojo Aduhene Tano and his neighbors belong to Kuapa Kokoo, Ghana’s largest cooperative. It was set up 20 years ago with the help of British aid group called Twin Trading. Its buyers have pledged to pay higher fair-trade prices. The coop even owns part of a fair trade chocolate line called Divine, sold mostly in Europe and online in the US. Nationwide, the coop has 64,000 members, and its profits have paid for community wells, credit unions, and schools. It’s hardly made anyone rich. Fair trade does not have a fair share of the chocolate market. Kuapa accounts for just five percent of cocoa growers in Ghana.

KOJO ADUHENE TANO: We need more money from you.

DE SAM LAZARO: People in rich countries need to buy more fair trade chocolate, he says, even as I discover that he got his first taste of it very recently.

(speaking to Tano): How old were you when you first tasted chocolate?

TANO: I was 48 years.

DE SAM LAZARO: You were 48 years old?

Life is still tough, but Kojo Tano is much more optimistic about the future. He only went through eighth grade, but his six children are being educated. The two oldest are away in college.

TANO: When I grow old they will look after me.

QUAYNOR-METTLE: This is the best times to be a young person in Ghana.

DE SAM LAZARO: That optimism is echoed in the capital, especially among young people.

QUAYNOR-METTLE: There’s the oil find, Vodafon has just come to settle, there’s KPMG, there’s Price-Waterhouse, there are all the giant multinational companies coming in. The opportunities are just overflowing.

DE SAM LAZARO: Whether it’s in big oil or tiny shea nuts, Ghana’s challenge will be to make the benefits flow more equitably, also to keep its commitment to democracy and freedom of information. Religious leaders in this largely Christian country will have a key role in all of this.

DEEGBE: With the advent of oil, there is a civil society oil and gas platform who are watching, who are keeping vigil over everything. There’s even a faith-based organization, coalition between the Christian Council of Ghana and the Ghana Pentecostal Council. Between those two you have a majority of Ghanaians, and we are extending that a third level to add a coalition that involves the Muslims, and what we want to do is to monitor what comes in.

Radio newsreader: The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation has for the second time lifted a total of 994,691 barrels of Jubilee crude oil …

DE SAM LAZARO: For now, oil revenues are being meticulously reported. How they should be monitored and spent is an on going debate that will escalate as elections approach in 2012.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Accra, Ghana.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Karachi is several hundred miles from the main conflict zone along Pakistan’s Afghan border, but the war resonates almost every day in this commercial capital of some 16 million people. Hundreds have been killed in recent weeks, some in targeted violence, some randomly, most across the ethnic divides. This largely Islamic country is comprised of several ethnic groups, each speaking a different language. Karachi is often shut down when one or another faction declares its own curfew. Residents complain that the police presence is usually late and feeble. Amid the deadly chaos, one of the loudest voices appealing for calm has been that of an energetic 84-year-old devout Muslim named Abdul Sattar Edhi.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: I’ve been asking people one question. We’ve been Muslims for 1400 years. Why don’t we become human beings? Why have we lost touch with our humanity? God doesn’t just love Muslims. He loves human beings.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pakistan’s and Karachi’s fledgling civilian governments are simply not up to the task of bringing order, he said, imploring the country’s top military leader to intervene.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Mr. Kiyani, I am appealing to you. Where have you been sleeping?

DE SAM LAZARO: Edhi moved to Karachi from western India not long after Pakistan’s creation 62 years ago. He began an ambulance service in the 1950s, trying to serve a city that was growing rapidly. It now has the largest fleet in the city—mostly simple vans with stretcher, lights, and siren. Partly because the country has few such services, the Edhi Foundation has also grown into one of its largest social service agencies. Edhi, who had little formal education, boasts that his entire budget of more than $10 million comes from ordinary Pakistanis. To demonstrate, he stood on a busy Karachi street for about 15 minutes. Dozens of passers-by thrust money in his hands. It has helped fund food relief in neighborhoods that have been under siege for days during the fighting.

RUMANA HUSAIN: I don’t know where we would have been if Edhi wasn’t around, really.

DE SAM LAZARO: In what sense do you mean that?

HUSAIN: In every sense, because he seems to be everywhere. I mean, even if an animal gets hurt, and if there is a donkey lying somewhere or a crow falling from a tree, it seems that it is Edhi volunteers who pick them up.

DE SAM LAZARO: Edhi has been partnered with his wife, Bilquis, of 40 years. She oversees facilities that house about 9,000: women in shelters, children in orphanages, schools, and this nursery for abandoned infants, most of them severely handicapped. Bilquis Edhi began working as a nurse for Edhi’s fledgling organization. She accepted his marriage proposal even though he was more than 20 years her senior. She says she admired his dedication to serve, drawn from a deep religious faith. The flowing beard, a symbol of his religious practice, was not a plus, she admits. But today, in a more conservative Pakistan beards are common, but she says they are a false symbol of piety.

BILQUIS EDHI: People had beards because they were practicing. Today there’s less practice but more beards. It is this high number of narrow-minded people that have created all of the trouble we have in our country.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: When there is poverty, illiteracy, when people don’t get their rights that gives rise to organizations like the Taliban, and other such groups were formed, and it just spreads from that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Experts say it’s much more than religious extremism that’s stoked the unrest. A lot of it stems from the way Karachi has grown. Modern-day Karachi has been defined by migration. In 1947 at independence, when the British partitioned India, millions of Indian Muslims flocked to the city. So did people from other provinces of the new Pakistan, like Punjab and the Northwest along the Afghan border, and migration from that troubled region skyrocketed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and after 9/11. Today Karachi’s neighborhoods, its politics, and much of its strife happen along ethnic lines.

ARIF HASAN: Almost all of Karachi’s issues are related to the conflict in Afghanistan. Even the “ethnicization” of the city is related to Afghanistan.

DE SAM LAZARO: Arif Hasan, a prominent architect and historian, says the divisiveness first came under Pakistan’s military ruler in the late seventies and eighties. Zia ul-Haq also introduced a strict religious conservatism, which intensified as Pakistan, with US support, closely allied with the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation.

HASAN: And it was from this city that that war was fought, supplies, training, ideological training, the heroin trade that financed that war to a great extent, it all took place from here. Today, if you look the city, the supplies to the NATO troops all go through the city. Because they go through the city almost everyone has an interest in the city. The Americans have an interest. The Pakistani intelligence agencies have an interest. The Taliban are here, the Afghan intelligence agencies are here. They all have a presence.

DE SAM LAZARO: Not present is any consensus on how to govern among the political parties, which are largely drawn ethnic lines, competing for turf in convulsions of violence that have taken a huge toll.

HASAN: Every time you strike or the city closes down, apart from the formal losses that are made, at least half a million households don’t have any earnings on that day because they are day-wage earners, so poverty has increased considerably as a result.

DE SAM LAZARO: On Karachi’s streets, Edhi says there’s growing despair. These men pleaded with him to help them get more police protection in their neighborhood. It is encounters like these that Edhi says prompted him to call for military intervention, much to the surprise of journalists at his news conference.

Journalist: Do you want a dictator to come in, like Musharraf?

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Brother, if for the time being you have to say salaam to somebody, there’s no harm. If a civil revolution comes in there will be anarchy and millions will die. What is needed for three to six months is somebody should come and control the situation.

Journalist: Are you inviting martial law?

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Brother, tell me if there’s a different road.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pakistan has already been on the martial law road. Until 2008, this country was mostly ruled mostly by military men. Ayesha Tammy Huq, a lawyer and talk show host, doesn’t think there’s much yearning yet for their return.

AYESHA TAMMY HUQ: We don’t want those people to come back and run this country. The military is responsible for a lot. They have run and controlled Pakistan for so long. The Afghan policy is theirs, foreign policy is theirs. Everything is the military’s, and so therefore we need to allow these terrible civilians who are so corrupt and so dreadful, we have to allow them a little time to get it together and to change the way things are done in Pakistan.

DE SAM LAZARO: And it will be up to Pakistan’s civil society to hold politicians accountable, she says, much as it did during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. Civic groups led by lawyers fought successfully to restore judges Musharraf had dismissed, eventually forcing out the general himself in 2008. Abdul Sattar Edhi says he can only hope for that kind of change can happen in Karachi with a minimum of bloodshed. For now, demand for his services has never been higher.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this if Fred De Sam Lazaro in Karachi, Pakistan.