Pray the Devil Back to Hell

The documentarydiscussied in this op-ed piece by Bob Herbert sounds more than interesting.

In Liberia amidst a war of "excruciating violence", Leymah Gbowee...

...rallied the women at her Lutheran church to pray for peace, ... organized them into a full-blown, all-women peace initiative that spread to other Christian churches — and then to women of the Muslim faith...
Working with hardly any resources, save their extraordinary will and intense desire to end the conflict, the women’s initial efforts evolved into a movement, the Liberian Mass Action for Peace....
Thousands of women responded to the call, broadcast over a Catholic radio station, to demonstrate at the market for peace. The women showed up day after day, praying, waving signs, singing, dancing, chanting and agitating for peace.

They called on the two sides in the conflict to begin peace talks and their calls coincided with international efforts to have the two sides sit down and begin to negotiate.

Nothing could stop the rallies at the market, not the fierce heat of the sun, nor drenching rainstorms, nor the publicly expressed anger of [Charles Taylor, their despotic "president",] who was embarrassed by the protests. Public support for the women grew and eventually Mr. Taylor, and soon afterward the rebel leaders, felt obliged to meet with them and hear their grievances.

The moral authority of this movement that seemed to have arisen from nowhere had become one of the significant factors pushing the warring sides to the peace table.

Really, it seemed to arise from nowhere?
It arose from these women's love. and more specifically, it arose from their FAITH.

(Take that, Christopher Hitchens.)