In the midst of the gripping political dramas dominating our news cycle, images of Bhutan (where I was earlier this month) color my processing of the news. Bhutan is about as far as you can get from contemporary American life - a small Himalayan kingdom where ferocious deities are part of daily life and serfdom is a living memory (it was abolished in 1956). Nevertheless, parallels there are.

The most blatant one is the way changing societies are grappling with the role of religion - in both countries, with difficulty. The bumbling public discourse in the U.S. about religion and politics stems from differing approaches to religion, when fervent belief confronts sharp diversity. We desperately want a strong moral compass in our leadership but the freedom to believe is absolutely fundamental. Not that long ago, religion was pretty simple - children went to their parents' church or synagogue and most identified with their inherited religious identity. That's a far cry from the smorgasborg of possible religious options today. The "religious tests" for our political leaders seem to involve an extraordinary balancing act of honesty and avoidance of anything that can offend.

Bhutan is Buddhist, with its Buddhist heritage tightly tied to Tibet but with its own distinct character that I could only dimly understand. Religion is everywhere in this society. Most visible are prayer flags. Wind horse flags--small squares of cloth with religious texts--are hung where the wind will carry their messages - on bridges, hills, beside roads. White flags carry the spirits of the dead. Temples are all over the place. They have statues of the Buddha but also a bewildering array of other deities and saints, good and evil. Demons are crushed underfoot. And butter lamps burn everywhere to carry messages. The deep red of monks' robes are omnipresent, some monks as young as seven or eight. And it was hard not to be fascinated by the "Divine Madman", Drupka Kunley, so beloved in Bhutan that his phallus decorates many houses, commemorating this fifteenth century saint's exuberant approach to life and sexuality.

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Out of the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan came a concept that has enthralled the international development community: Gross National Happiness. GNH offers up a different way to measure a country's well-being, based on the common welfare and infused with a good dose of spirituality--in contrast to the materialism represented by the Gross National Product (GNP). In a time dominated by anxiety about recession, climate change and spiraling energy and food prices, GNH seems to offer a respite, an alternative vision.

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Far away on a remote border between Cambodia and Thailand, an international conflict is brewing. The United Nations Security Council has been notified. Newspapers in Thailand and Cambodia report on hourly developments and, at least in Cambodia, the Ministry of Education warned students to remain calm in the face of nationalist fervor, recalling past violence triggered by similar disputes.

The problem? Both countries lay claim to the 900-year-old Khmer Buddhist temple of Preah Vihear, which lies on the mountainous border between the two countries. As the temperature of dispute has increased, both sides have mobilized troops and weapons at the border, an undemarcated boundary that is still full of landmines from past conflicts. Reports say the troops are calm, even trading cell phone pictures, though it is smack in the middle of the rainy season and one soldier was quoted as saying that they are like worms in their trenches.

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Tolstoy wrote that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The same could be said about the ethnic and religious conflicts that cause so much strife in the world--in Burundi, Sri Lanka, the Ivory Coast and the Middle East. Memories run deep, and anyone who attempts to mediate finds bitterness, conflicting narratives and wounded people. Efforts to find common threads that could lead to solutions can be slow, fitful, and full of pain.

Nonetheless, several remarkable organizations are dedicated to this work. Initiatives of Change is prominent among them; it recently hosted, for example, an active peace process for Burundi.

Happily, the effort to unearth root causes of the conflicts that contribute so heavily to insecurity in the world is getting more attention these days. It was behind a meeting I attended last week at IOC's Caux Palace in Switzerland, where a carefully orchestrated discussion explored "the root causes of human insecurity." The meeting, attended by a mix of politicians, academics and media, was exploratory, but it was a start.

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Global warming makes strange bedfellows.

That’s the basic explanation of why Rich Cizik, a prominent evangelical pastor, could be found for two days last month closeted at the World Bank and on Capitol Hill with a group of other evangelicals and a delegation of Moroccan Muslims, led by their ambassador to the U.S., Aziz Mekouar.

Cizik is propelled by his conviction that no issue is more urgent and carries a stronger moral imperative than global warming. He casts a wide net in his effort to make common cause and galvanize effective partnerships to persuade and mobilize. The Moroccans were willing to sign on to a dialogue because for them, also, climate change is not an abstraction; it means drought, hunger and acute water shortages.

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World leaders are heading for Japan for the annual ritual known as the Group of Eight meeting. Last week a different group of leaders met, also in Japan, also to take stock of the leading issues that face the world.

They were religious leaders, and their gathering took place in two Japanese cities with spiritual roots, Osaka and Kyoto. The meeting is part of a tradition, now three years old, of a religious summit on the eve of the grand G8 summit.

Religious leaders don’t make policy, but they wield tremendous influence on billions of people. So their meeting, echoing the summit of states, could have real significance. If, for example, religious leaders were to agree on needed action to address climate change, they could truly make a difference.

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Planting churches in The Hague?

I admit I was a bit baffled to hear a Nigerian pastor discussing this subject at a conference in the rather staid and orderly capital of the Netherlands. But meeting Dele Olowu in person, I came away with new respect for the phenomenon that some call the “reverse missionary movement”—Africans bringing religion to Europe. He upsets plenty of notions about religion and proselytizing, which he calls planting churches.

Olowu arrived late at a lively discussion I was co-chairing with scholar Gerrie Ter Haar about faith-inspired organizations working in Africa and Europe. Cell phone glued to his ear and glasses jauntily tilted across his head, he brought a new energy into the room at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Olowu leads a dynamic Pentecostal church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, in the Netherlands, where he lives. Born in Nigeria, he joined the church there while teaching at the university. The RCCG, only 55 years old, has grown rapidly and has branches in 100 countries today.

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The blitz of publicity around the launch of the new Tony Blair Faith Foundation hammered home one core theme: Religion matters. Public policy makers and intelligent citizens should give it due attention.

You would think this message would be old hat by now. But it’s not, because such large parts of the policy world, in particular, still don’t get it. When the topic of religion comes up, they squirm or their eyes glaze, or they bristle with hostility.

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The disconnects among different worlds come through powerfully at World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings. Bringing everyone together under one tent is a feat all by itself, but once they get there they can talk quite different languages.

The WEF is best known for the Davos meeting it organizes each January, but a long series of regional meetings takes place under the WEF aegis in different parts of the world as well. The annual Middle East meeting took place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, this year, from May 18-20. The WEF looks at global issues and prides itself as a place where world leaders meet and act. Its founder, Klaus Schwab, talks movingly about how important both ethics and religion are for leadership. But when the meeting gets underway, the business leaders tend to network like crazy and gravitate to certain kinds of discussion (say about inflation or new technologies), while those whose focus is intercultural dialogue go in different directions. They might as well be at different meetings.

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The World Economic Forum on the Middle East at Sharm El Sheikh reeks of solemnity. There is a sense that the people who attend this annual business-driven meeting carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. With speeches by three heads of state (Presidents Mubarak and Bush and King Abdullah) at the opening event Sunday, with 1,500 world leaders from many different sectors, the gravity of the issues at hand seemed overwhelming.

So I was intrigued to see, amid this serious talk, a session about interreligious dialogue, scent and religion. This was a part of the forum devoted to dialogue between the Muslim World and the West.

As the “scent of peace and dialogue” was released into the air, Christophe Laudamiel, senior perfumer from International Flavors and Fragrances (a New York based group), presented a narrative of why smells and religion are intricately linked. The perfume, he said, was made up of scents reminiscent of the three monotheistic faiths that were born in the Middle East: musk and rose, representing Islam, frankincense and sea breeze, symbolizing Christianity, and Jaffa citrus and orange, for the Jewish faith. Added to it is Egyptian absolute (a perfume fixant) and jasmine. And finally a whiff of sandalwood.

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Seamus Finn OMI is a priest with the Catholic religious order, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He spends a good amount of his time on investment issues. He is a “socially responsible investing” (SRI) consultant and a leader in a new international effort to bring different religious traditions together in using their financial muscle for worthy causes. I asked him what is most on his mind these days: Wheat subsidies? Mining ventures? Gas prices? No, he said, outrage in his voice, it's the credit crisis. The current financial meltdown in the United States reflects failures to look at the ethical implications of basic lending practices right up and down the line. And millions of real people are hurting as a result.

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The global food crisis came like a tsunami, with amazing speed and stealth. Development institutions everywhere are scrambling to face the urgent problems and questions that come in its wake.

There’s the immediate problem: How to find funds to buy enough food to meet steep increases in demand to feed hungry people here and now.

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Music is a well known path for crossing wide cultural divides. Music speaks without words. It can epitomize a mood as well as a culture. And it can stir up emotions and preconceptions. There’s a fascinating venture afoot in Fes, Morocco, to use those very qualities to bridge divides between the Muslim world and western cultures and faiths. The idea is that people can, through their love of music, explore new realms and appreciate the world’s wonderful diversity. But even more, the hope is that with emotions roused through music and art, people will open their minds as well as their hearts to new ideas.

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For guts combined with grace, Thoraya Obaid has few rivals. A proud Saudi Muslim, she leads what is probably the United Nations' most controversial agency, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – which addresses women's reproductive health. Recently she was the speaker at the Washington National Cathedral's Sunday Forum, arguing that religious leaders must address the sorry state of women in much of the developing world.

She even dared utter the words "unsafe abortion." She wanted this issue, usually avoided in polite discussion, front and center because the suffering and loss of life it causes women the world over need to be addressed forthrightly. The Cathedral's dean (who moderated her talk), she said, told her as they moved towards the podium that those words had probably never been uttered before inside the Cathedral's hallowed walls.

Ms. Obaid reels off heart-rending statistics about what women suffer – how many still die each day in childbirth, how many girls are taken out of school, or married without a say before they are 14, and on and on. She also exudes confidence that things can change. Her experience convinces her that it can be done.

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Sloshing through Hezekiah’s tunnel near the City of David in Jerusalem brings home what fear and faith can do. The 530-meter-long tunnel was chiseled out of rock over 2500 years ago, deep underground, by men without flashlights or scientific instruments to guide them. They knew that if they were attacked they could survive only if they were sure of their water source. To this day water flows through the tunnel from a spring to a reservoir.

Both faith and anxiety were in evidence at a conference last month in Israel, organized by the University of Tel Aviv. It brought together a diverse group of scholars, human rights activists, philanthropists, NGOs hoping for ideas and financing, and rabbis. The topic was faith and international development and how Israelis and Jews could and should engage, through private charity and public development programs, on programs ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming and water desalination.

The theme woven through two days of discussion was Tikkun Olam. Generally translated (from the Hebrew) as “repairing the world”, it is a call both to charity and to social activism, going far beyond the family and immediate community. The challenge for this diverse group from many parts of the world was what Tikkun Olam should mean today.

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Avoid religion and politics at the dinner table -- so goes the conventional wisdom. Tempers will flare and appetites curdle with the passions that both topics so often arouse. But in reality we need to get the kind of dinner-table discussions going that can help overcome some deep and poorly understood prejudices about religion in American life.

Keith Ellison, the first elected Muslim in Congress, observed this week that while America's founders got race and gender very wrong, they got religion right. America's foundation as a pluralistic society is one of their great legacies. A drive along 16th Street in Washington with its extraordinary array of churches, temples, and other religious centers, gives an inkling of what is happening across the country – complexity, color, variety, and change.

Ellison was hosting a three-hour event on Capitol Hill Thursday, about how the global tensions that some call a "clash of civilizations" play out in the United States. It was an eminently civil discussion among 12 experts, a diverse group chosen to represent a range of views – Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. Journalist Sally Quinn moderated the event, which was organized by the World Economic Forum (the Davos folks), which sees West-Islam relations as one of the world's greatest strategic challenges, and by Georgetown University, which oversees an annual global stocktaking about how those relations are faring.

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I had blundered, bigtime.

Speaking at an interfaith assembly, I had made the case that women's welfare would improve much faster if more women were in decision-making positions. A “rule of thumb,” I said, should be 30 percent women among leaders of any institution. With less than that, women are too often fighting tokenism. When the numbers of men and women are balanced, agendas and tone change.

Two women pastors, quite independently, drew me aside right afterwards. The term "rule of thumb", they told me, came from an ancient common law that limited the size of the switch a man could use to beat his wife: no larger than the diameter of his thumb. Since I was arguing for religious leaders to take action against domestic violence, my use of the phrase was particularly jarring.

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You can’t miss rising food prices if you do the grocery shopping or listen to the radio these days. They are causing real pain all around the world as family budgets everywhere are squeezed. There’s no end in sight, though hunger is much more prominent at least in policy discussions, from Davos to U.S. political campaigns.

Food was on the agenda for three events I attended last week, but I came away with a sense of frustration because they approached the question from such different perspectives, and the solutions offered seemed vague and slippery. It’s hard to see how we can move forward in this jumble of debates and narratives.

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“Come with an example of a situation where you were judged by a stereotype. Tell about how it affected you and what you tried to do to address it.” A group of strangers tackled that tantalizing assignment one evening last month. We were invited to a lovely dinner at a private Washington home for an introduction to the “Public Conversations Project”.

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Where are the passionate moderates in Islam, Madeleine Albright wanted to know. Why does all the passion seem to come from extremists?

The former secretary of State was speaking at the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, sponsored by the Brookings Institution. To the Islamic world, her message was that what we need now is “moderates on the march, moderates with swagger.”

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From videos left behind by suicide bombers to movies like Syriana, Americans have become quite familiar with radicalized Muslim youth. But last week, a remarkable Egyptian evangelist, whose influence reaches across much of the Muslim world, offered a different vision: young Muslims driven by both hope and faith.

At the U.S.-Islamic World Forum that just wrapped up in Doha, Amr Khaled was everywhere with his message that faith is a powerful force and motivator for young people in the Middle East, but that it doesn't have to lead to jihad.

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I should have been prepared for the backlash! I stepped right into the middle of a heated controversy when I co-authored a report for Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs in November about the role of religious organizations in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Just last week, an angry letter from the Gerald Health Foundation in Boston to Georgetown University’s president actually called for the report’s withdrawal, with a litany of accusations.

The complaint? That our report gives insufficient “credit” to promoting abstinence and faithfulness as a central approach to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and that it reveals an “anti-Catholic bias” in its treatment of Church teaching on condoms.

Perhaps nowhere is the role of religion in public policy and service delivery more significant than in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The storm around the Berkley Center report is a depressing illustration of how hard dialogue can be. And how important.

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As I ventured into the hotel lobby in Jeddah earlier this week, I was not thinking about the role of women in Islam, but the issue came abruptly into the picture. In my terms I felt pretty well covered in a mid-calf dark red suit with long sleves, but I was quickly conscious of disapproving stares from two hotel porters. One asked me what I was looking for in a way that made it clear I did not belong there.

I knew that women in Saudi Arabia are required to wear the long black robes known as abayas in public places, and I was hoping to find a shop that sold them in the lobby. In the meantime, I thought I would be given a pass in this hotel that catered to Western visitors. It was my temporary home–for me, it wasn't really a public place, was it? The porter's glance told me otherwise.

My abaya search was unsuccessful and I turned to a planned meeting with a colleague (a man) whom I had known for years. We sat down at a café in the middle of the lobby. A waiter materialized instantly, but said that these tables were for men only. There was a "family" section, hidden to one side, where they were willing to serve us. It's been a long time since I felt that combined sense of being unwelcome and disapproved of.

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If Muslim leaders were underrepresented in Naples at the Catholic Church's International Encounter for Peace last month, it must be said that there were also remarkably few women religious leaders nominated to represent their faiths.

The predominance of males reflects a power reality that deserves careful consideration. It is, after all, obvious that women are critical for all the religions, and that religion is of deep importance for many women.

But what troubles me more is how few issues for women make it onto the agenda at meetings like this one, issues such as domestic violence, education for girls, ways to balance families, and nurture children. What kind of picture would we hope to see when religious leaders gather 10 years from now?

The 'Prayer for Peace' concludes with a striking ceremony where religious leaders sit on a platform grouped by religion, in ceremonial garb. The colors are vivid, crimson, white, black, and saffron. The symbolism is also vivid, as they light candles together for peace.

This year's visual pageant showed some of the complexities of encouraging dialog among very different kinds of religions and religious organizations. The Catholic hierarchy was marked by differing colors and robes. The ranks of Orthodox recalled their ancient history with varied, yet distinctive robes and headgear. Protestants generally wore more sober hues, but visible symbols marked their office.

Other faiths, and especially Islam, were represented more sparingly, and underscored the broader question of who can speak for Islam. Ezzeddin Ibrahim, founder of the University of the United Arab Emirates, was the principal spokesman for Islam at the inter-religious gathering and Muslims were outnumbered and, by some measures, outranked. The challenge of representing this diverse global religion was vividly apparent.

Forty years ago, Andrea Riccardi dedicated himself in Rome to helping his poorest neighbors. Last month in Naples, he challenged leading religious officials and members of the Catholic lay group he founded to confront terrorism and the "idealized" violence of war, as well as the "culture of contempt" that feeds them both.

Speaking at the opening of this year's International Encounter for Peace, organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio, Riccardi acknowledged the difficulty in overcoming "the mist of pessimism that often clouds our vision."

However, the gentle-aired, erudite history professor also reminded those in attendance that faith requires them to overcome pessimism and to act. "Anyone who uses the name of God to hate the other, to practice violence, or to wage war, is cursing the name of God," said Riccardi. "We commit ourselves to learn the art of living together and to offer it to our fellow believers."

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Faith is more than beliefs. It is about right and wrong, justice and injustice -- about remaking the world.

"Faith in Action" tracks the activities of people of faith across the globe and across religious traditions. It maps their engagement around critical issues, from global health to the environment -- from AIDS to zebras.

It explores the struggles, alliances, and common efforts of people of faith, public and private, local and global. And it highlights how important it is for Americans to look beyond their borders and to appreciate the struggles of the "bottom billion" people in today's globalized world.