Published online every two months, the UN Office Global Briefing speaks to a global audience of readers at the intersection of critical global challenges and the global church.

Subscribe

March 2023

Read the full March 2023 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Myanmar (Burma): How one Christian leader works for hope in a hopeless time 
  • “The Swimmers” movie puts a human face on the Syria crisis
  • North Korea: The power of conciliatory action
  • Update on UN Security Council engagement
  • We are ministers not Messiahs

 

December 2022

Read the full December 2022 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Dangers of a China vs U.S. worldview
  • How Ukraine can overshadow other pain
  • UN seminar: students dig into global issues
  • Fresh Asian voices
  • World Cup good, bad, and ugly
  • Richard Foster on holy laughter
 
August 2022

Read the full August 2022 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Courageous Congolese uncover disturbing truths
  • Disarming conflict through listening
  • MCC establishes Michael J. Sharp Global Peacemaker Award
  • Making peace beautiful for young readers
  • Malcolm Gladwell to speak at October MCC event
 
April 2022
Special Issue: Russian military invasion of Ukraine

Read the full April 2022 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Military invasion and six views on nonviolence
  • Ukraine: Defiant Russian priests, call for UN reform, chilling Syria-Ukraine connections
  • Sanctions: Nonviolent tool or lethal weapon?
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the futility of lies and violence
 
February 2022

Read the full February 2022 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • A Jeremiah scholar who meets with both rebel leaders and government officials
  • Book excerpt: Reading Jeremiah in Africa
  • The spirituality of Desmond Tutu
  • Hope for swaying people about climate change
  • A smile - the most basic peace work
 
December 2021

Read the full December 2021 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Without peace there is no change
  • Created in the beauty of climate
  • Coffee for peace
  • What the United Nations gets right
  • Jesus’s birth: the missing hospitality story
 
September 2021

Read the full September 2021 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Decolonizing relief: a biblical approach
  • What Archbishop Romero of El Salvador teaches us about public courage
  • Stories of hope at the Korea divide
  • Why poetry and activism need one another
 
July 2021

Read the full July 2021 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • The Lord’s prayer as political engagement
  • Why peacemaking must not ignore China
  • Digital literacy: an urgent moral calling
  • The roots of vaccine inequality
  • 2021 global student seminar announced: "Climate change, Conflict, and Peacebuilding"
 
May 2021

Read the full May 2021 Global Briefing here

In this issue:

  • Scholar Emmanuel Katongole on why politics needs lament
  • MCC U.S. leader Ann Graber Hershberger: Not forgetting our first language as faith-based agencies
  • Author Q&A with Mennonite World Conference General Secretary César García: “What is God’s Kingdom and What Does Citizenship Look like?”
  • Wrestling with the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
  • Myanmar military rule: Unprecedented resistance, weak international action
  • Listen to a Harlem choir in New York City rejoice again
    March 2021

    Read the full March 2021 Global Briefing here

    In this issue:

    • Interview: Theologian Stanley Hauerwas on the pandemic, United Nations, and Church
    • “Beyond the Vaccine” by Vinoth Ramachandra
    • Author Q&A: How world Christianity challenges U.S. evangelicalism
    • The danger of “information disorder”: lessons from the U.S. Capitol attack, Rwanda, and South Korea
    • Action: Myanmar, Ethiopia, Syria, vaccine equality
    • A prayer remembering El Salvador’s Archbishop Romero
    January 2021, Special Focus: A Better Kind of Politics

    Read the full January 2021 Global Briefing here

    In this issue:

    • Divided politics and the politics of Jesus
    • From symptoms to root causes, from interests to ethics: a call to the church
    • Students energized by 2020 UN student seminar on global inequality
    • Recommended reading: vaccine equality, winning the global disinformation war, and being “neighbors without borders”
    • Beethoven and peace
    August 2020, Special Focus: Global Inequalities

    Read the full August 2020 Global Briefing here

    In this issue:

    • The challenge of a global pigmentocracy
    • The inequality pandemic: where is moral leadership?
    • Interview: do spirituality and advocacy mix?
    • Alerts, actions, events
    • Deep breath moment
    May 2020, Special Report: COVID-19, the UN, and the Global Church

    Read the full May 2020 Newsletter here

    In this issue:

    • The nations and a pandemic time of crisis, kairos and call
    • Perspective from the global church
    • Staff report from U.S. epicenter in New York City
    • Alerts, actions, events
    • Deep breath moment

    •  

    Discover more