The reading from the Letter to the Colossians for the Sunday, December 27 celebration of the Holy Family implores: "Let the peace of Christ control your hearts." But even in this season celebrating the Prince of Peace, war is never far from the headlines.

In contrast to recent years, Afghanistan rather than Iraq has become the central focus of U.S. concern and activity. During the year casualties on all sides mounted as U.S. forces, with their Afghan and NATO allies, battled a resilient Taliban. When presented by his generals with a request for more troops, President Barack Obama engaged in a process of lengthy deliberations this fall, which were complicated by a disputed Afghan election and allegations of widespread fraud.

The president chose to send 30,000 more troops as soon as possible but also pledged to start withdrawing them by July, 2011. Allies were expected to add to the total troop increase with the hope that the surge in troops will blunt the Taliban's momentum long enough to give the shaky Afghan political and military structures time to strengthen and take over the task themselves.

Militant Islam in general was a topic never far from the headlines this year. The Taliban destroyed scores of schools, mostly for girls, in northwest Pakistan during the year. Hardliners in Iran resorted to fraud, censorship, and bloodshed in order to hold onto power and put down dissent after highly irregular presidential election results in July.

President Obama made an unprecedented appeal to moderate Muslims in a widely lauded speech in Cairo, Egypt in June, a story that was voted the number one religion story of the year by the Religion Newswriters Association.

The speech at Cairo University was broadly viewed as providing a dramatic contrast to the approach taken by the previous administration. During his talk Obama invoked the Qur'an, the Talmud, and the Bible while declaring that the United States was not at war with Islam, only with terrorism. He urged Muslims to join him in condemning extremisms of all kinds and promoting democratic values.