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The activities of courageous Christians in Zimbabwe could be chapters in a new, politicized version of the book of Acts. Christians have long been in the forefront of challenging the brutal autocratic rule of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, and in January eight church leaders were arrested by security forces as they and hundreds of supporters opened a new office of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance. The interdenominational ZCA coordinates nonviolent resistance to Mugabe’s rule and seeks to serve the country’s increasing number of destitute people.

For the past 10 months, the people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca have been waging a campaign to remove their governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who was narrowly elected in 2004 amid allegations of fraud. A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI), he has been accused of corruption and political repression since taking office. After Ruiz’s heavy-handed attempt to quell a teachers strike last spring, the teachers and their allies ran his government out of town and created the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).

Rick Ufford-Chase, a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was arrested last September in Washington, D.C., while demonstrating against the Iraq war along with four other Presbyterian ministers. “We wondered what we might do to invite other Presbyterians to take similar action,” he said.