On Oct. 19, 2001, as I drove to a prayer breakfast in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, the radio crackled with news of U.S. special forces on the ground in Afghanistan.

This was not a particularly shocking development since air and missile strikes in retaliation for 9/11 had started 12 days earlier.

Then religion editor for The Oklahoman, I quoted the breakfast’s keynote speaker — Steve Largent, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member then serving in Congress — in the story I wrote.

“We have been sent a very important wake-up call," Largent said that Friday morning. "Let's not go back to sleep."

All of us — at that point — felt an urgency about the war in Afghanistan and the effort to destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

Nearly 20 years later, my attention had diverted elsewhere until Afghanistan burst back into the headlines — in a major way — this past week.

It’s impossible to keep up with all the rapid-fire developments, but these stories delve into compelling religion angles:

• Young Afghans speak out about rapidly changing life under the Taliban (by Meagan Clark, ReligionUnplugged)

• Refugee aid groups criticize Biden for stumbles in evacuating ‘desperate’ Afghans (by Emily McFarlan Miller and Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)

• Taliban begins targeting Christians while cementing control over desperate Afghans (by Mindy Belz, World)

• Afghan-American scholar agonizes over homeland, lashes out at Taliban, U.S. (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)

• Afghanistan’s Christians, small in number, have gone underground, expert says (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)

• Was Afghanistan worthwhile or wasted? Christians lament, pray and learn as Taliban retakes control (by Morgan Lee, Christianity Today)

• As Afghan government collapses, Christians work to help volunteers leave (by Cheryl Mann Bacon, Christian Chronicle)

• Afghan government collapses, Taliban seize control: 5 essential reads (by Catesby Holmes, The Conversation)

• With the Taliban takeover, world Islam – and the press – have much at stake in the future (by Richard Ostling, GetReligion)

• Trying to spot religion 'ghosts' in the dramatic fall of America's version of Afghanistan and a new podcast, “When the Taliban cracks down, will all the victims be worthy of news coverage?” (by Terry Mattingly, GetReligion)

• What Christian aid workers want you to know about Afghanistan (by Rebecca Hopkins, Christianity Today)

Looking ahead to Monday’s ReligionUnplugged podcast: Fernando Arroyo, a minister to veterans in California, talks about his harrowing time as a paratrooper in Iraq and Afghanistan — and how his faith and counseling helped him move past the depression, loneliness and PTSD that haunted him post-deployment.

Now Arroyo helps veterans in California get out of homelessness and advance their lives. You’ll definitely want to check out his conversation with Paul Glader, ReligionUnplugged’s executive editor.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Many Bible Belt preachers silent on shots as COVID-19 surges: The religion-and-vaccines story — crucial background here, here, here, here and here — remains big news.

Latest case in point:

“Across the nation’s deeply religious Bible Belt, a region beset by soaring infection rates from the fast-spreading delta variant of the virus, churches and pastors are both helping and hurting in the campaign to get people vaccinated against COVID-19,” The Associated Press’ Jay Reeves reports.

2. Philly’s archdiocese advised priests not to help Catholics seeking exemptions from vaccine mandates: “As vaccine mandates have proliferated amid the latest coronavirus surge, so has a divide among the Roman Catholic Church’s U.S. hierarchy over whether their faith provides any basis for congregants to opt out,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jeremy Roebuck notes.

Roebuck covers the Philadelphia archdiocese’s position, which puts it “at odds with Catholic leaders in other parts of the country, as well as an influential but little-known Philadelphia-based Catholic think tank whose position on the issue has stoked the latest culture-war battle in the U.S. church.”

CONTINUE READING: “What The Afghan Government's Collapse Means For Christians, Muslims, Refugees,” by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.