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“Wow, where do you people come from? You’re the fourth one tonight!!!” quips the emergency room attendant as I am eased out of my car into the waiting wheelchair. I do not laugh at his…

In a 1933 address, Elder Glenn L. Pace asked the question, “Faced with ever louder cries for help from the world, how do we determine where to focus our efforts?” This essay asks a related question: How efficient and equitable is the allocation of the church’s charitable resources? As we compare the distribution of these resources to the poorer, less-developed countries (LDCs) with the distribution to wealthy countries (WCs), could efficiency and equity be improved?

Ever since the dark hours of September 11, I have been disquieted about what is now called “The War on Terrorism.” While I share America’s moral outrage over the barbaric attacks on our nation and its people, I have also felt uneasy about the quick polarizing rhetoric, the boasting of our power, the clamoring calls for revenge, and the military force we have unleashed upon other countries. I have wondered if there weren’t a better alternative than to launch an all-out assault on a country (Afghanistan) that had already been devastated by recent wars (and which had suffered a million casualties in the decade of the nineties), to wage a preemptive war against another nation (Iraq) on the supposition that it was tied to the September 11 attacks, and to undertake the seemingly impossible eradication of terror from the face of the earth, if not from the hearts of its inhabitants. 

For more than fifty years, the conflict between Palestinian Arab nationalism and Jewish Zionism has been one of the most protracted and seemingly irreconcilable conflicts in the world. Most people have difficulties discussing this conflict in a detached or academic way because it is so fraught with emotion and consequence.