Good, bad or otherwise? For Presbyterians, 2011 was either the year of the breakthrough or the year of the collapse, either the year of clarifying or the year of confusing, either the year of ending the war or declaring war. It all depends on your perspective.

The good news for Mitt Romney: he won the Iowa caucuses. The bad news for Romney: evangelicals remain reluctant to support him.

When a cup of hot tea spilled on her infant son’s hand, new mother Yehut Amer, 22, panicked. “I was very scared and didn’t know what to do. It took me some time to get my wits together and get to the clinic,” said Amer, who on Dec. 14 was among 45 Arab women from the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Qassem to take part in a home safety and accident prevention course offered for the first time by ZAKA, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish volunteer rescue and recovery organization.

For those thinking about entering pastoral ministry, the Parish Resident Internship Program at the Church of All Nations here could provide some second thoughts.

The world may still have gold and myrrh, but it’s quite possible that frankincense could become a thing of the past, given ecological pressures on the arid lands where it grows in Ethiopia.

More than 100 countries agreed on Dec. 22 here to a set of initiatives to strengthen international cooperation to prevent biological weapons such as toxins or infectious agents being developed or used by terrorists or nations.

The streets of Bethlehem were brightly lit with multi-colored lights, stars, bells and angels as Christmas 2011 was celebrated in the “little town” that is becoming smaller and smaller, said the Rev. Mitri Raheb in his opening remarks at a Christmas Eve service at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church here.

Rabbi Richard Jacobs, who will soon head the congregational arm of the largest Jewish denomination in North America, understands why so many Jews avoid synagogues. His own experience growing up in a Reform synagogue in Southern California, he said, was “dreary” and “shallow.”

Omaha, Nebraska may not be the place that some imagine as fertile ground for the prospect of the three Abrahamic faiths finding common ground but, the vision of such peaceful co-existence has taken a major step towards becoming reality. The Tri-Faith Initiative of Omaha announced on 13 December that it has completed the purchase of four adjacent parcels of land, amounting to about 35 acres, on a former golf course in the heart of Omaha.