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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to Religion
- Sprache: Englisch
Incisive contributions from leading and emerging scholars in the field of Peace Studies In the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace, a team of renowned scholars delivers an authoritative and interdisciplinary sourcebook that addresses the key concepts, history, theories, models, resources, and practices in the complex and ambivalent relationship between religion and peace. The editors have included contributions from a wide range of perspectives and locations that reflect diverse methods and approaches. The Companion provides a collection grounded in experience and context that draws on established, developing, and new research characterized by academic rigor. The differences between the approaches taken by several religious traditions are fully explored and numerous case studies highlight relevant theories, models, and resources. Accessible as either a standalone collection or as a partner to the Companion to Religion and Violence, this edited volume also offers: * A thorough introduction to religion and its search for peace, including the relationships between religion and peace and theories and practices for studying the interplay between religion and peace * Comprehensive explorations of religion and peace in local contexts, including discussions of women's empowerment and peacebuilding in an Islamic context * Practical discussions of practices and embodiments of religion and peace, including treatments of museums for peace and self-religion in global peace movements * In-depth examinations of lived Christian theologies and building peace, including discussions of Martin Luther King Jr. and spiritual activism in Scotland Perfect for students and scholars of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building, the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace will also earn a place in the libraries of anyone professionally or personally interested in the field of Peace or Religious Studies, International Relations, History, Politics, or Theology.
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The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion series presents a collection of the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions. Each volume draws together newly-commissioned essays by distinguished authors in the field, and is presented in a style which is accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader. These volumes approach the subject in a creative and forward-thinking style, providing a forum in which leading scholars in the field can make their views and research available to a wider audience.
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The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace, First EditionEdited by Jolyon Mitchell, Suzanna R. Millar, Francesca Po, and Martyn Percy
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace
First Edition
Edited by
Jolyon Mitchell
Suzanna R. Millar
Francesca Po
Martyn Percy
This edition first published 2022
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Edition History
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Names: Mitchell, Jolyon, editor. | Millar, Suzanna R., editor. | Po, Francesca, editor. | Percy, Martyn, editor. Title: The Wiley Blackwell companion to religion and peace / edited by Jolyon Mitchell, Suzanna R. Millar, Francesca Po, Martyn Percy.Other titles: Companion to religion and peace Description: Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley & Sons, 2022. | Series: Wiley blackwell companions to religion | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022012666 (print) | LCCN 2022012667 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119424345 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119424390 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119424413 (epub) | ISBN 9781119424420 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Peace--Religious aspects. | Peace-building--Religious aspects. | Religion and international relations. Classification: LCC BL65.P4 W54 2022 (print) | LCC BL65.P4 (ebook) | DDC 201/.7273--dc23/eng20220616 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012666LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012667
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Contents
Cover
Series pages
Title page
Copyright
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
PART I Religion and the Search for Peace
1 Introduction: Religion and the Search for Peace
2 World Religions and Peace
3 Relationships between Religion and Peace
4 The Intersectional Turn: Theories and Practices for Studying Religion and Peace
5 Peacebuilding and Religion
PART II Religion and Peace in Local Contexts
6 ‘And a Little Child Shall Lead Them’
7 Negotiating the Sacred and the Profane in Jerusalem
8 Women’s Empowerment and Peacebuilding in an Islamic Context
9 Grassroots Peacebuilding in Contemporary Indonesia
10 From Dust and Ashes: Religion and Peacebuilding in Nepal
11 Pursuing an ‘Oppressed Peace’: Religion, Identity, and Minority Politics among Muslims in Sri Lanka
12 Religion and Peacebuilding in Nigeria
13 Reconciliation and Non-violent Transformation in South Africa
14 Religious Emotions and Religious Peacebuilding in Colombia
15 Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
16 Gendering the Peace Process in Northern Ireland
PART III Practices and Embodiments
17 Hinduism: The Culture of Peace and the Ethics of War
18 Cities of Sanctuary, Religion, and Justice
19 Religion and Museums for Peace
20 ‘Witchy’ Activism
21 Ritual and Peacebuilding
22 Scriptural Reasoning and Peacebuilding
23 Contemporary Buddhist Peace Movements
24 Mahatma Gandhi, Satyagraha, and the Politics of Non-Violence
PART IV Lived Theologies and Building Peace
25 Theology and Peacebuilding
26 ‘Righteousness and Peace Will Kiss Each Other’
27 Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Search for Peace
28 Acts of Resistance: Fruits of Grace
29 Spiritual Activism, Atomic Theology, and ‘The Bomb’ in Scotland
30 Conflict in Congregations
31 Islamophobia and Nonviolence in a ‘Christian Nation’
32 News Media for Just Peace? Footwashing Making Headlines
33 Of Gods and Men: Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching
PART V Just War, Just Peace
34 Just War, Critique, and Conscientious Objection
35 Just Peace
36 Religious Warrants: Virtue, Nonviolence, and Just Peace
37 Can Restorative Justice Transform Structural and Cultural Violence?
38 The Humanitarian Conscience between War and Peace
39 Ambivalence, Diversity and the Possibility of Religious Peacebuilding
PART VI Religion and Peace on a Global Stage
40 International Relations, Religion, and Peace
41 Histories: Religious Peace Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
42 Sociological Conceptualizations of Religion and Peacemaking
43 Geographies of Peace and Religion
44 Divine Intervention: Invoking God in Peace Agreements
45 Genocide Prevention, Religion, and Development
46 Nationalism, Religion, and Peace
47 Religious Leaders and Peace
48 Religion in Peacebuilding: An Emerging Force for Change
49 Mediation, Peacebuilding, Arts, and Religion
50 Religion and Peacebuilding in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Figures
CHAPTER 04
Figure 4.1 A kabalat shabat...
CHAPTER 08
Figure 8.1 A woman prays...
CHAPTER 09
Figure 9.1 Co-founders of the...
CHAPTER 10
Figure 10.1 Basantapur Durbar...
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Picture taken by...
CHAPTER 15
Figure 15.1 Beekeepers in...
CHAPTER 16
Figure 16.1 Monica McWilliams...
CHAPTER 18
Figure 18.1 ‘Sanctuary’, Body...
CHAPTER 19
Figure 19.1
The Concie
, by Arthur...
CHAPTER 20
Figure 20.1 ‘Black Lives Matter’...
CHAPTER 22
Figure 22.2 Action Recommendations.
Figure 22.1 Nine-point Scale...
CHAPTER 24
Figure 24.1 Gandhi smiling 1942.
CHAPTER 26
Figure 26.1 ‘Black Lives Matter’...
CHAPTER 27
Figure 27.1 Meredith March...
CHAPTER 29
Figure 29.2 Salvador Dali...
CHAPTER 34
Figure 34.1 Sandro Botticelli...
CHAPTER 41
Figure 41.1 Turning Swords into...
CHAPTER 42
Figure 42.1 The Sedimentary Layers...
Figure 42.2 Active peacemaking...
Figure 42.3 Civil society’s...
CHAPTER 46
Figure 46.1 A parade of Australian...
CHAPTER 48
Figure 48.1 A three-stage process...
List of Tables
CHAPTER 44
Table 44.1 List of religious...
Table 44.2 Christian and Islamic...
Guide
Cover
Series pages
Title page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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Notes on Contributors
Mohammed Abu-Nimer is a professor at the School of International Service at American University. He served as Director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute (1999-2013). He is also a Senior Advisor at KAICIID and also founded Salam Institute for Peace and Justice, an organization that focuses on intra-faith and inter-faith dialogue. In addition to his numerous articles and books, he is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development.
Maryam Ahmad is an attorney practicing in California. She completed her JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and her bachelor’s degree in government with an international relations concentration at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). As a second-generation Palestinian American and Muslim woman, Maryam is committed to principles of peace and equality and regularly uses her free time to research and advocate for reform.
Sumanto Al Qurtuby is Associate Professor in the Department of Global & Social Studies, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. A graduate of Boston University, Al Qurtuby’s research interests include the studies of Muslim politics and cultures, religious violence and peacebuilding. His publications include Religious Violence and Conciliation in Indonesia (Routledge, 2016) and Saudi Arabia and Indonesian Networks: Migration, Education and Islam (I.B. Tauris & Bloomsbury, 2019).
Scott Appleby is Professor of History and the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame. He is the author or editor of 15 books on religion and religions in the modern world and the recipient of four honorary doctorates, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.
Trond Bakkevig is a pastor of the Church of Norway. He undertook his doctorate at the University of Oslo (entitled ‘Theology and Nuclear Arms’) and subsequently has served as the General Secretary of The Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Affairs (1984-1993), personal advisor to the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs (1987-1988), Vicar of Røa, Oslo (1993-2000), and Dean of Vestre Aker, Oslo (2000-2018). He has facilitated dialogue between religious leaders in Jerusalem and moderated several commissions related to the recent separation of church and state.
Clive Barrett is Chair of Trustees of The Peace Museum, Bradford and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Leeds. A peace movement historian, whose doctoral thesis explored 1930’s Christian pacifism, he is the author of Subversive Peacemakers: War-Resistance 1914–1918 (Lutterworth, Cambridge, 2014). An Anglican priest with a background of ecumenical community action, he edited Unity in Process (DLT, London, 2012) and, with Joyce Apsel, Museums for Peace: Transforming Cultures (INMP, The Hague, 2012).
Christine Bell is Professor of Constitutional Law, Assistant Principal (Global Justice) and Director of the Political Settlements Research Programme (www.politicalsettlements.org). She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Nigel Biggar is an ordained Anglican priest, the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life at Christ Church College, Oxford University. He is the author of many books, including In Defence of War, Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia, Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation, and What’s Wrong With Rights?
Victoria Biggs is a storyteller and special school teacher who has worked extensively with young people who have experienced violence. Her interests include legacies of genocide, taboo histories in contested spaces, and young people’s participation in conflict and peacebuilding. She holds Durham University’s La Retraite Fellowship in Trauma, Lived Theology, and Reconciliation. Her book Youth and Conflict in Israel-Palestine: Storytelling, Contested Space, and the Politics of Memory was published in 2020 by I.B. Tauris
Julie Blythe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her doctoral research explores Tibetan approaches to conflict within the Tibetan diaspora community. Prior to her current studies, Julie researched and wrote a first-class honours thesis on Tibetan nonviolence while completing a Bachelor degree in International Relations at La Trobe University. Her research areas of interest include peace, nonviolence, conflict resolution and conflict transformation.
Cynthia Boaz, is Professor of Political Science at Sonoma State University, where she specializes in civil resistance and nonviolent strategy, gender and politics, media and political communication, quality of democracy, and politics in science fiction. She has published articles and book chapters on nonviolent action, with special attention to the Iran and Burma cases. Her current research looks at the impact of reproductive rights restrictions on quality of life for women in the United States.
John D. Brewer is Professor of Post-Conflict Studies, Senator George J Mitchell Institute, Queen’s University Belfast and Honorary Professor Extraordinary, Stellenbosch University. He is a member of national academies in four countries and of the UN Roster of Global Experts. He was awarded Honorary Doctorate from Brunel University for services to social science and is a former President of the British Sociological Association.
Maryann Cusimano Love is a tenured Associate Professor in the Politics Department of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She serves on the Arms Control Association Board, Pope Francis’ Security Task Force, the Advisory Board of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, and the US Catholic Bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee. She is an alumna of Johns Hopkins University (PhD) and her recent books include Global Issues Beyond Sovereignty (Rowman and Littlefield 2020).
James DeShaw Rae is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He formerly worked in Washington, DC, as a researcher at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and completed a master’s degree in International Affairs (Peace and Conflict Resolution concentration) at American University. He received his PhD in Political Science at the University of Hawai‘i and is the author of Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice in East Timor (Lynne Rienner, 2009).
Robert Forster is the PhD fellow at CMI on the project ‘Urban Displacement, Development and Donor Policies in the Middle East’ (URBAN3DP). He is writing his PhD on the contemporary history of Tripoli, Lebanon.
Ruth Gamble is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She is an environmental and cultural historian of Tibet and the Himalaya. Her first book was Reincarnation in Tibetan BuddhismReincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism; the Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition (Oxford University Press, New York, 2018), and she has also written a biography of the third Karmapa, for the Lives of the Masters Series, Rangjung Dorje, Master of Mahamudra (Shambhala 2020).
Aruna Gnanadason, with a doctorate in ministries (DMin) in feminist theologies from the San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS, USA), directed the programmes on Women in Church and Society and the Justice, Peace and Creation, World Council of Churches, Geneva (1991-2009). She now lives in Chennai, India, and is presently national convener of the ecumenically formed Indian Christian Women’s Movement. She is the author of With Courage and Compassion: Women and the Ecumenical Movement (Fortress Press, 2020).
John W. de Gruchy is Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town, and Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University. He is the author of books and articles on the church and social history in South Africa, the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theology of reconciliation and justice, the relationship between Christianity and democracy, and Christian aesthetics and social transformation.
Theodora Hawksley is an independent British theologian specialising in Catholic social teaching, social ethics, and peacebuilding. She is the author of Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching (Notre Dame University Press, 2020) and an editor of Peacebuilding and the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Jeffrey Haynes is Professor Emeritus of Politics at London Metropolitan University, UK. Among his recent publications are Religion, Conflict and Post-Secular Politics (London, Routledge, 2020) and The Routledge Handbook to Religion and Political Parties (ed.), (London: Routledge, 2020).
Helen M. Hintjens is Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Hague. Her interests span pro-asylum advocacy, (de)securitisation of cross-border forced migration, forced migration, and sanctuary cities, especially in Swansea (Wales), and in post-genocide forced migration and recovery in the African Great Lakes region. Her current work with undocumented researchers, and collaborators at the UK’s Open University, explores how migrants were affected by and creatively coped with COVID-19.
Dean J. Johnson is Director of Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor of Philosophy. An interdisciplinary activist scholar, Johnson teaches courses in Peace Studies and Religious Studies. His research interests include religion and social change, race critical theory, critical whiteness studies, gender critical theory, nonviolent activism, community organizing, conflict transformation, and critical pedagogies. He is co-editor with JoanMay Cordova, Matt Guynn, and Regina Shands Stoltzfus of Resist, Organize, Transform: An Introduction to Nonviolence and Activism (San Diego, CA: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2020).
Azza Karam serves as Secretary General of Religions for Peace. Prior to this, she served in diverse positions in the United Nations, for example, as Founding Chair of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion. She has published scholarly works since 1993 on political Islam, gender, conflict and peacemaking, and transnational religious dynamics. She is also a Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Isabel Käser is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Research Associate at the University of Bern. She gained her PhD at SOAS University of London, where she worked on the Kurdish Women’s Movement and issues around women’s activism, nationalism, and militarism. She has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy and is the Principal Investigator of a collaborative project titled ‘The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender.’ Her book The Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement: Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities is forthcoming (CUP, 2021).
Tobias Kelly is Professor of Political and Legal Anthropology in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include human rights, political violence, and freedom of conscience. He has carried out ethnographic and archival research in Britain, Israel/Palestine and at the United Nations.
Darren Kew is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He studies the relationship between conflict resolution, interfaith, and inter-ethnic peacebuilding, and democratic development in Africa. Much of his work focuses on the role of civil society groups. He is author of numerous works, including Civil Society, Conflict Resolution, and Democracy in Nigeria (Syracuse UP, 2016).
Avila Kilmurray is a founder member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) and was on its Negotiation Team. She was a community activist from 1975 and Director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland (1994-2014). She is the author of Community Action in a Contested Society: The Story of Northern Ireland (2017), and she currently works on peacebuilding issues.
Anna S. King is Professor of Religious Studies and Social Anthropology at the University of Winchester, and Director of Research in the Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace. She trained as an anthropologist at the University of Oxford, carrying out fieldwork among priests, ascetics, and pilgrims in India. She has most recently worked with multireligious/faith-based international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) in conflict areas in South and Southeast Asia and is interested in the theory and practice of religious peacebuilding. She is founder editor of Religions of South Asia (RoSA).
Chris M.A. Kwaja is a Senior Lecturer & Researcher at the Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria. His research covers areas, such as the politics of identity in Africa, the privatization of security, democratization and governance, conflict and peace studies, and security sector reform in transition societies.
Christopher Landau, a former BBC World Service religious affairs correspondent, left journalism to train for ministry in the Church of England, completing a DPhil in Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford. His book, A Theology of Disagreement: New Testament Ethics for Ecclesial Conflicts, was published by SCM Press in 2021. He is an associate minister at St Aldates Church Oxford, and McDonald Chaplain to the Oxford Pastorate.
John Paul Lederach is Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and serves as Senior Fellow at Humanity United. Widely known for his pioneering work in conflict transformation, Lederach has engaged in conciliation work in Colombia, the Philippines, and Nepal, plus countries in East and West Africa. Lederach is the author of 26 books and manuals including When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation (University of Queensland Press, 2010), The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (OUP, 2005), and Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997).
Ian S. Markham is the Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and professor of theology and ethics. With degrees from King’s College London, University of Cambridge, and the University of Exeter, he has pioneered research in the realms of interreligious dialogue, social ethics, and theology.
Marc LiVecche is the executive editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy. He is also a research fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy. He is a former McDonald Visiting Scholar at the McDonald Centre at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, Oxford University Press.
Eli S. McCarthy teaches at Georgetown University in Justice and Peace Studies. He recently published A Just Peace Ethic Primer: Breaking Cycles of Violence and Building Sustainable Peace (2020). He has served as the Director of Justice and Peace for CMSM, which is the leadership conference of the US Catholic men’s religious orders. He is the co-founder of the DC Peace Team which offers training in nonviolent skills, along with providing unarmed civilian protection deployments.
Alastair McIntosh is a Quaker who has been an honorary fellow at the School of Divinity in Edinburgh University and is an honorary professor in the College of Social Sciences at Glasgow University. His books include Soil and Soul on land reform and community empowerment, Spiritual Activism (with Matt Carmichael), Poacher’s Pilgrimage exploring nonviolent soteriology in a wilderness journey through the Hebrides, and recently, Riders on the Storm: Climate Change and the Survival of Being.
Monica McWilliams is Chairperson of Interpeace, an international nongovernmental organisation (INGO) based in Geneva. She was a signatory to the Good Friday Peace Agreement and co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC). She was a member of the first Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly and served as Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. She is Patron of WAVE, the organisation for victims of the conflict and a joint recipient of the JF Kennedy Profile in Courage award.
Farah Mihlar is a British/Sri Lankan academic and human rights activist. She lecturers at the Department of Politics, University of Exeter, UK. Her research focuses on two areas; the first is on Islamic reform in Muslim minority contexts, and the second is on victim and survivor claims for post-conflict justice. Prior to becoming an academic she had a longstanding career in international human rights, specialising in policy work on minority rights and transitional justice.
Suzanna R. Millar is Chancellor’s Fellow in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Assistant Director of Edinburgh’s Centre for Theology and Public Issues. Her research interests include wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, ecological hermeneutics and non-human animals. She is the author of Genre and Openness in Proverbs 10:1-22:16 (2020).
Jolyon Mitchell specialises in Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding, with particular reference to the arts, at Edinburgh University. Previously, Professor Mitchell worked as a producer and journalist with the BBC World service. He has served as President of TRS-UK and is Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at Edinburgh University. His publications include Promoting Peace and Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (Routledge, 2012); Religion and War (OUP, 2021); Media Violence and Christian Ethics (CUP, 2007); and Peacebuilding and the Arts (as co-editor; Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). He recently worked with religious leaders and journalists in Israel-Palestine on a peacebuilding project.
Peter Ochs is Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, where he co-directs the UVA Research Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Conflict. Among his publications are 250 essays in Jewish philosophy; pragmatism and semiotics; the logic of scripture; religion and conflict; comparative Abrahamic scriptural traditions; and Jewish-Christian theological dialogue. His most recent books are Religion Without Violence: The Practice and Philosophy of Scriptural Reasoning; and Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews.
Atalia Omer is a professor of religion, conflict, and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. An Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2017), she is the author of When Peace Is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (2015).
Mark Owen is Director of the Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace, University of Winchester, UK. Dr Owen has carried out research on religion’s roles in peacebuilding and reconciliation in numerous countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Mark’s current research focuses on designing innovative and evidence based analytical methods for accurately assessing the potential roles religious actors can play in peacebuilding and reconciliation processes in a given context.
Martyn Percy is the Dean of Christ Church Oxford. From 2004 to 2014, he was Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon. He has undertaken a number of roles in public life, including the Advertising Standards Authority and British Board of Film Classification. Martyn writes on religion in contemporary culture and modern ecclesiology. He teaches for the Faculty of Theology and Religion, the Social Sciences Division, and at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.
Francesca Po is a scholar of religion specializing in contemporary religion and nonreligion. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors at the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, CA, USA, and an educator at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, CA, USA. She previously served in the US Peace Corps as well as a high school campus minister, and is the co-editor of The Study of Ministry (2019).
Joshua Rey, a Priest in the Church of England, was formerly Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Southwark and now serves as Vicar of Roehampton. Prior to ordination he worked in Whitehall in the field of unemployment policy, as an aid worker in Afghanistan, Albania, and Sri Lanka, and in investment banking. His Religion and Peace, a Very Short Introduction (with Jolyon Mitchell) is forthcoming from OUP.
Sandra M. Rios Oyola is a FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain; she researches how transitional justice helps to restoring victims’ human dignity in Colombia. She obtained her PhD in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen in 2014. She is the author of Religion and Social Memory amid Conflict: The Massacre of Bojayá in Colombia (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and is the co-editor of Time and Temporality in the Study of Transitional Societies (Routledge 2018).
Leah E. Robinson is currently Associate Professor of Religion at Pfeiffer University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She studied for her PhD in Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She previously worked at the University of Glasgow as University Teacher in Practical Theology and Peacebuilding and at the University of Edinburgh as Lecturer in Practical and Pastoral Theology. She has served as a minister, a youth minister, a chaplain, and a university professor in both the UK and the USA now for 13 years. She has published in journals that range from Practical Theology to the Victorian Review, and offered chapters on subjects that range from sectarianism in Scottish sports to Feminist Trauma Theology. Her first book Embodied Peacebuilding: Reconciliation as Practical Theology is out now. Her newest book is entitled Bad Theology in Practice: Oppression in the Name of God and it will be out with SCM Press in 2023.
Nukhet Sandal is Associate Professor and the Chair of the Political Science Department at Ohio University. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is the author of Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Religion and International Relations Theory (with Jonathan Fox; Routledge, 2013). Sandal is also serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies.
Lisa Schirch, Ph.D. is a Professor of the Practice of Peacebuilding and the Starmann Chair in Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She also directs the Social Media, Technology, and Peacebuilding program for the Toda Peace Institute. A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Schirch is the author of eleven books, including Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding and Social Media Impactsd on Conflict and Democracy: The Tech-tonic Shift.
Megan Shore is Associate Professor of Social Justice and Peace Studies at King’s University College at Western University (Ontario, Canada). Her research focuses on the role of religion and ethics in contemporary issues of justice and peace, such as homelessness, bystanderism, and health care. She has written numerous articles and chapters on religion and peacebuilding, and she is the author of Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ashgate, 2009).
J.P. Singh is Professor of International Commerce and Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow with the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin. He specializes in culture and political economy. Singh has authored or edited 10 books, published over 100 scholarly articles, and worked with international organizations, such as UNESCO, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
Jason A. Springs is Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His latest book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (2018), integrates recent pragmatist thought and conflict transformation to engage the constructive potentialities of conflict in religiously plural and politically riven contexts. Springs’ current project examines the capacity of restorative justice initiatives to address structural and cultural forms of violence in Chicago. Previous books include Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology (2010), and Religious Nationalism (2013).
Samuel Wells is Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. He has published 35 books, including Living Without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence (with Marcia A. Owen; Downers Grove: IVP, 2011) and Love Mercy (Norwich: Canterbury 2020).
George R. Wilkes directs the Project on Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace (University of Edinburgh) and is a Senior Visiting Fellow at KCL School of Security Studies. He has lectured at the universities of Cambridge, Leuven, Edinburgh, and Birmingham and has conducted collaborative research on reconciliation and religion in Bosnia-Herzegovina since 2011.
Acknowledgments
This book brings together a wide range of over 50 international scholars, with experience of working all over the world. The editors are extremely grateful to each of them for their hard work, wise insights, and patience. This project has evolved and grown over a number of seasons, beginning before the COVID-19 pandemic and finishing in what will hopefully be the final phase of a global phenomenon that has changed the way in which many look at the world, including understandings of religion and peace.
The editors want to say a huge thank you to these writers for all they have done to enrich this work, which reflects many different perspectives on the complex relationship between religion and peace. One of the delights of this project has been to learn from senior established scholars, experienced peacebuilders, and religious leaders from different traditions, as well as those more recently embarking on academic careers. The diversity of voices and world views represented in this book has enriched our own understanding of the complex interactions between various religions and peace. We are in the debt of each of the contributors in more ways than can be expressed adequately here.
At Wiley Blackwell we are thankful to Rebecca Harkin, who commissioned this volume, and for her many encouragements at the start of the project. We are also grateful to Juliet Booker, Catriona King, Richard Sampson, and Liz Wingett for their assistance and wise advice along the way. The insightful and encouraging comments by the anonymous readers were also invaluable. Thanks to the production team, including the following:
Alongside the contributors, we are thankful to those who in different ways, through collegial advice, insightful encouragements, and hospitality have helped make this project fly. These include Nick Adams, Catharine Beck, Linden Bicket, Iona and Mark Birchall, Helen Bond, Kit and Janet Bowen, Linzy Brady, Stewart Jay Brown, Celia Clegg, David Clough, David Craig, Tim Dean, James Eglinton, David Fergusson, David Ford, Duncan Forrester, Paul Foster, Caleb Froehlich, Jamie and Sandy Frost, Robin Gill, Hannah Holtschneider, Stewart Hoover, Anja Klein, Allan Little, Gordon Lynch, Peter Mitchell, Ebrahim Moosa, Michael Northcott, Matt Novenson, Emma Percy, Charles Pickstone, Oliver O’Donovan, Shadaab Rahemtulla, Kevin Reinhardt, Joshua Ralston, David Rosen, Ulrich Schmiedel, Mona Siddiqui, David Smith, Geoffrey and Judith Stevenson, Steve Sutcliffe, Sarah Synder, Suzie Synder, Michael Wakelin, Charles and Sarah Warren, Deborah Whitehead, Mike Wooldridge, Linda Woodhead, and Emma Wild-Wood.
Without the support of Jo Elliot and Dr Alison Elliot and the Binks Trust this book would not have happened. We are also very grateful to the Carnegie Trust, the Social Trends Institute, and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) at the University of Edinburgh for all their support.
Martyn is, as ever, grateful for the support and encouragement of colleagues and the loving, sustaining and enabling constancy of Emma, Ben, and Joe.
Francesca thanks her fellow co-editors for the opportunity to work on this book, which is something of a passion project for her. She is also ever grateful to her family, Fernando, Sandy, Paul, and Julia, as well as Michael Nagler, Stephanie Van Hook, and all at the Metta Center for their unwavering support and inspiration in her personal practices of spirituality and social justice.
Suzanna would like to thank her colleagues, friends, and family, especially her mum, sisters, and ‘support bubble,’ without whom producing a book in lockdown would not have been possible. She is also grateful to her co-editors, particularly to Jolyon, for their support in this project.
Jolyon Mitchell is hugely thankful to Clare, and our children, Sebastian, Jasmine and Xanthe. He is also indebted and deeply grateful to his co-editors Suzanna Millar, Francesca Po, and Martyn Percy, as well Lesley Orr, without whom this book would not have seen the light of day.
List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure 4.1. A kabalat shabat (welcoming of Shabat) during a solidarity/co-resistance action in the West Bank, May 2017.
Figure 8.1. A woman prays at Cairo mosque, 2010.
Figure 9.1. Co-founders of the Peace Provocateurs, Jacky Manuputty (sitting in a black t-shirt) and Abidin Wakano (bowing wearing a brown batik cloth) give an informal lecture on peacebuilding practice in an interreligious senior high school in the region of Siwalima, Ambon.
Figure 10.1. Basantapur Durbar Square, after the devastating earthquake in 12 April 2015.
Figure 14.1. Picture taken by the author at the Chapel in Quibdó, September 2016.
Figure 15.1. Beekeepers in Baljvine, and across Bosnia and Herzegovina, produce a range of honey, often sold through cooperatives.
Figure 16.1. Monica McWilliams with members of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition happy and relaxed following the Good Friday Peace Agreement on 10 April 1998.
Figure 18.1. ‘Sanctuary’, Body Art by Amy Hintjens.
Figure 19.1. The Concie, by Arthur W. Gay, used by permission of his daughter and The Peace Museum, Bradford.
Figure 20.1. ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration in Bad Mergentheim, Germany. Note the ‘Witches for Black Lives Matter’ sign on the left.
Figure 22.1. Nine-point Scale of Linguistic Flexibility.
Figure 22.2. Action Recommendations.
Figure 24.1. Gandhi smiling 1942.
Figure 26.1. ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural by ALX DLRG in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Figure 27.1. Meredith March Against Fear, June 1966. Unidentified Person, Juanita Abernathy, Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr., Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture), Claude Sterrett, unidentified, marching.
Figure 29.1. Police dog attending protest at the Faslane nuclear submarine base, Scotland, 2003.
Figure 29.2. Salvador Dali, Christ of St. John of the Cross, 1951, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow.
Figure 34.1. Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c.1485, National Gallery, London.
Figure 41.1. Turning Swords into Plowshares, by Pauline Shore.
Figure 42.1. The Sedimentary Layers of Religious Peacebuilding.
Figure 42.2. Active peacemaking in practice.
Figure 42.3. Civil society’s strategic social spaces.
Figure 46.1. A parade of Australian and New Zealand troops passes the Houses of Parliament, St. Margaret’s Church and Westminster Abbey, London 1916. At the heart of Europe’s mightiest theocracy, the architecture of the Legislature and the Church are indistinguishable; State, Religion and Army are woven into a single fabric, for better or for worse.
Figure 48.1. A three-stage process from instrumentalization to compartmentalization to integration.
Tables
Table 44.1 List of religious references and the number of conflict zones in which they appear, 1990-2015 (Bell et al. 2018).
Table 44.2 Christian and Islamic references in peace agreements by conflict territory, 1990-2015 (Bell et al. 2018).
Part I Religion and the Search for Peace
1 Introduction: Religion and the Search for Peace
2 World Religions and Peace
3 Relationships between Religion and Peace
4 The Intersectional Turn: Theories and Practices for Studying Religion and Peace
5 Peacebuilding and Religion
CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Religion and the Search for Peace
Jolyon Mitchell and Suzanna R. Millar
When it is peace, then we may view again With new-won eyes each other’s truer form And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, When it is peace. But until peace, the storm The darkness and the thunder and the rain.1
These lines from the poem To Germany (1914) reflect a deeply felt tension between the yearning for peace and the painful reality of conflict. Like so many of the young soldier poets of the Great War, amidst the unfolding despair and devastation, Charles Hamilton Sorley hoped that his verse would give voice to the men mown down prematurely in this conflict, those he described as the ‘millions of the mouthless dead.’2 A year after he penned these six lines, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet to his head at the Battle of Loos. He was only 20 years old. This sonnet reflects aspects of his own personal experience, swept as he was from his Edwardian boyhood years of peace and prosperity to an adulthood immersed in the brutality of modern warfare from libraries to trenches and from friendship to enmity. In the months before the First World War, Sorley had travelled and studied in Germany, declaring when he got home that he felt he was German and could ‘perhaps’ even ‘die for Deutschland.’3 Only a few months later, he had enlisted in the British Army and was being ordered to fight and kill the people whom he had grown to love and to admire. His loyalties were divided: ‘I regard the war as one between sisters, between Martha and Mary.’4 In the previous eight lines of To Germany, he refuses to apportion blame to either side: ‘We stumble and we do not understand’, concluding with:
And in each other’s dearest ways we stand, And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.
The sestet that follows potently conveys his hope for a lasting peace, where the present enemy is not demonised but viewed afresh in a far kinder and more generous light. His ‘faintly’ biblical hope for ‘new-won eyes’5 and his vision of future reconciliation combine with a recognition, mature beyond his youth, that there is still much agony, much darkness, to be endured.
The daily wielding of bayonet and rifle, the seeming insatiability of the machine guns, quickly taught Sorley and his contemporaries to recognise the glib jingoism of government propaganda as dangerous and deadly on both sides. As the bodies piled up, each poem became a clarion call to peace and ‘an indispensable guidebook to the infernal cellars of the age’,6 which gave rise to new horrors in the form of mechanised and chemical warfare. For Sorley, the only plausible response to this conflict was a steadfast refusal to romanticise sacrificial deaths and the saying of ‘soft things.’7 He is often described as one of the transitional war poets. In calling ‘a spade a spade’,8 Sorley passionately promoted the search for peace by actively exposing and decrying such large-scale, unprecedented violence. Rejecting heroic patriotic poems, which celebrated the honour of fighting for one’s country and peace, he wrote instead of the realities of ‘battered trenches’, the ‘gashed head’, and ‘life crushed.’9 Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon believed him to be ‘the first poet capable of writing the truth of war unembellished.’10 Like other soldier poets, Sorley’s craft was shaped by his experiencing first-hand the fog and ‘pity of war.’ In this setting, peace is not an easily won or found experience.
Regarded widely as one of that brilliantly gifted group of young officer poets to have lost their lives in the Great War,11 Sorley is less well-known than Wilfred Owen12 (1893–1918), Isaac Rosenberg13 (1890–1918), and Siegfried Sassoon14 (1886–1967).15 Yet like them, he was influenced by the religious traditions (Christianity and Judaism) encountered at home, school, and beyond. In their unique and different ways, each of these poets depicts the complex relationship between the desire for peace and the merciless nature of modern conflict, as well as between living religions and searching for peace.
This is not of course confined to poets writing out of the First World War. Consider, for example, Christmas Bells,16 written on Christmas Day 1863 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), shortly after his son was brought home seriously wounded. Writing during the deadliest conflict in American history, the Civil War (1861–1865), Longfellow describes how ‘hate is strong’, and the cannons of war drown out the carols of ‘peace on earth, goodwill to all men [sic]’ (Luke 2.14). As in Sorley’s To Germany, there is nevertheless also hope for sustainable peace embedded in his poem even as it evokes the sounds of the harrowing brutality of the Civil War. This simple poem illustrates the complex relationship between religion and peace.
The thematic focus of the poems To Germany and Christmas Bells points to one of the aims of this entire book: the simple desire to untangle the ambivalent relationship between religion and peace, while also exploring how different religious traditions and practices can be a foundation or even a motivating force for peace amidst the storms of violence. Many of the essays in this book discuss the ambivalence in the relationship between religion and peace. They demonstrate how contemporary interpreters, commentators, and peacebuilders do well to recognise the complex and often fraught dynamic between religion and peace.
Far more common are accounts that investigate the connections between religion and violence. What Longfellow described as the ‘wranglings and dissensions’ inspired by religious belief, the ‘prayers for vengeance’, and the fault lines between communities, supposedly caused by or at least accentuated by religious faith, are regularly discussed. Terms such as ‘religious wars’ and ‘religious violence’ are commonly used uncritically with the assumption that religion inevitably causes or contributes to disharmony, conflict, and bloodshed between peoples. It is, therefore, refreshing to see how scholars and commentators are increasingly recognising that religious traditions and practices can and do contribute to a more peaceful way of building the world.
This growing recognition correlates to the recent rise of Peace Studies, which has developed into a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary field of research and teaching. Questions related to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding as well as conflict prevention, conflict transformation, and reconciliation are commonly raised not only in Peace Studies but also in a range of other disciplines such as International Relations, History and Politics, as well as Theology and Religious Studies. Though similarities and dissimilarities exist among and within different evolving religious traditions, all world religions include visions and values of peace, alongside principles for and practices of building peace.
As observed earlier, the relationship between religion and violence has attracted far greater scholarly attention than the connections between religion and peace. For example, The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (2011), edited by Andrew R. Murphy, provides an overview and guide to the expanding field of study analysing the relationship of religion and violence, drawing on expertise from many contexts and disciplines.
This Companion to Religion and Peace provides an interdisciplinary book addressing key concepts, history, theories, models, resources, and practices in the complex and ambivalent relationship between religion and peace. Contributions are drawn from a range of perspectives and locations, reflecting diverse methods and approaches currently proliferating in research and practice. There is by no means a single unified voice; different authors take significantly different approaches. This collection is grounded in experience and context, drawing on established, developing, and new research.
This book can be read as a standalone collection or as a partner to the Companion to Religion and Violence, as it is partly modelled on aspects of that earlier volume, while recognising that Religion and Peace is a distinct topic, with its own evolving literature, theories, and practices. This volume provides an introduction to debates about conceptualising the core terms ‘religion’ and ‘peace’ and their relationships, including contested meanings and changing paradigms. Taken together, nearly 50 essays explore how religious ideals and visions of peace have been embedded and embodied, expressed and challenged in traditions, movements, strategies, and practices. The actions of nonviolent resistance, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding will be considered in diverse contexts, from interpersonal to international and from mysticism to social and political activism. Themes cut across historical and contemporary examples, drawing upon expertise in various disciplines.
Religion has been, and is increasingly, a persistent and significant socio-political and cultural factor, operational in all domains and at all levels of human interaction. Like peace, religion encompasses the interpersonal and international as well as the symbolic, discursive, and economic. The role of religion in challenging violence and building peace has been analysed and interrogated in many different ways. In the chapters that follow, practices, processes, motivations, resources, leaders, histories, and social capital are considered. Likewise, the significance of religious actors in civil society or as interveners in conflict situations is considered, offering conducive contexts for liminal space and transformative shifts in understanding and empathy with ‘the Other.’
