How do religious people promote peace

Responsibility of religious leaders for nurturing peace in society Peacebuilding is an essential part of human life in many countries today. What then is our religious role in peacebuilding? I would therefore like to offer some tips on the role of religious in peacebuilding. Our religious practice should bring positive change to society and enhance mutual relationships among us in order to live in peace with one another. Know that peace or conflict can have an effect on us either as victims or perpetrators.

Build relationships of trust with other religions. Use our religion as a means of fostering unity among all people. Prayer God of peace, During this season of Advent, we watch for your coming reign of peace. Themes Peace Messengers Peace Training. Programs DMD until Youth. The Iraqi example describes the establishment and operation of the Iraqi Institute of Peace to promote interfaith reconciliation.

Issues such as Women, Religion and Democracy and the Inter-religious Dialogue were particularly emphasised. The two Nigerian examples describe the training of religious leaders in peacemaking as well as the successful mediation between Muslims and Christians in the PlateauState that brought the conflict to an end. While each conflict situation and intervention has its own unique set of characteristics in terms of history, culture and particular orientations of religious peacemakers, some overall lessons can be drawn: The creation or finding of a credible local partner should be the major purpose of international actors hoping to contribute to conflict resolution.

Only local partners can sustain the peace process and give it local roots. Linking faith-based peacemaking to secular and political processes and authorities is critical. There realpolitik rules and the ministers should confine themselves to individual or local moral issues. The only religious institutions that are really free to oppose war during wartime are sectarian organizations far removed from power. Finally, many religious organizations are organized within a state.

Even when there is a transnational body, like the Roman Catholic Church, most members of the hierarchy were born and live in the nation their churches are in. History shows how easy it has been for fellow believers to war; it is even easier when the parties are of different religions.

Bertram Russell was right when he complained that churches are like a thermometer, reflecting rather than shaping, their societies views of war. Augustine, writing at the time of the decline of the Roman Empire, insisted that built into humanity was a desire for peace. Aristotle, unlike Plato who saw war as an essential ingredient in creating civilization, believed peace was the normal state and war the abnormality, i. Virtually all religions insist that pax, shalom, salaam, nirvana are the desideratum of life and promise to bestow it on their followers who practice right belief, rituals, and ethics.

Modern peace theorists, including Quaker Elise Boulding, remind us that peace is the condition of most of humanity most of the time. Even belligerent powers, and there is a strong correlation with being a great power and the frequency of war, remain at peace most of the time. That is, if peace is defined solely as the absence of war. So it may be that not peace, but war needs to be seen as the abnormality and explained. What we mean by peace is often unclear. What is the difference between peace and non-peace, and is war the best or a misleading description of non-peace.

The analogy is similar to the distinction between violence and non-violence. If there are a variety of wars, should we not also talk about a variety of peaces? For Quakers and the Historic Peace Churches, which make a very small percentage of the population, a major issue in their work to prevent war should be determining whether there is a direct relationship among individual, small group, community, national, and international peace?

Briefly put, does domestic politics in some complicated fashion end up determining international relations or do the systemic features of our interstate politics govern the incidence of war and peace? Perhaps because both of these men, like Gene Sharp, the theorist of civilian based defense, were writing to persuade secular academics and military strategists of the value of their perspectives, they divorced themselves from religious and moral precepts and ran away from rather than seeking, any direct contact with modern pacifists.

The results of attempting to teach the theories to professional practitioners who will apply non-violence in a wide variety of contexts have been more successful dealing with individuals and small groups rather than in easing intractable international conflicts, such as the war in Bosnia or disputes between Israelis and the Palestinians.

No use of non-violence, or diplomacy, or peacekeeping forces seems likely to bring an end to conflicts in the Congo, Somali, the Sudan. The many churches teaching non-violent conflict resolution and the Alternatives to Violence Project of the AFSC have had many small-scale successes.

This paper will finesse the issue of evaluating non-violent conflict resolution as either a religious movement or secular technique because many scholars and practitioners are assessing whether its failures are due to the type of people who become national leaders, or the theories, or the techniques. For our purposes of focusing primarily upon religion and the international realm, a logical starting place is to decide what we mean by first political and then religious peace and then to see where they are congruent and the roles that organized religions can play.

Imperial peace can come by controlling a contiguous land mass or by using cultural influence to keep the peace, as the papacy attempted in the medieval Europe.

Currently the U. None of the great empires had lasting success, and what they did to subject peoples could as easily be labeled as oppression rather than peace. Certainly the U. The U. Early Islam, the Ottomans, and maybe Russia before were the last empires created successfully using religion as a unifying factor. Today religious diversity is so pronounced that creating an empire utilizing an existing or new religion will fail. A second form of peace is obtained by defense.

Its classic formulation was given by the 4 th century Roman theorist Vegetius: to have peace, prepare for war. The modern form of military might is justified by the assumption that the international realm is anarchy with states constantly engaged in competition, of which one form is war.

Plato refuted the Sophist version of this argument as applied to domestic society but realist theorists as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Robert Kaplan continue to apply it to contemporary issues. Often building upon realism is a belief in a balance of power. As old as Renaissance Italy, balance of power received its classic form with the emergence of the modern state system in the seventeenth century. One difficulty in ascertaining whether a balance of power can bring peace is that it is difficult to determine whether war is prevented by a gross disparity of power or an equilibrium among states — all of whom are trying to increase their power relative to each other in a zero sum game.

If it is the equilibrium that brings peace, the danger is, as Kant observed, that this house of cards can be destroyed by a slight wind. The break up of the USSR which still had its military intact shows the limitations in calculating power based upon armies.

If the theories of international anarchy and that relations among states are always either latent or hot war are true, then there is very little that organized religions can do to bring world peace.

The best that we can hope is to create a widespread moral opprobrium against the use of nuclear weapons. We have returned to the situation that existed in Europe before The modern form of this theory assumes that war is inevitable, because of the nature of the state and the international system. The best that can be hoped for is a cold peace based upon mutual deterrence or overwhelming force. A third form of peace is a stable peace, when war becomes so remote as to become unthinkable.

Examples would be the U. The example of the European Union shows that a stable peace can be created in what historically is a very limited time frame. It has been done by modifications of rather than abandoning a state system and it works because, in spite of a long history of war and different languages, similar economic and political systems have emerged.

The irony for students of religion in thinking about this positive development is that the old warring Europe was a far more Christian place than the new peaceful Europe where secularism, as defined as the declining influence of religion in all areas of life, is rampant.

Still, religious organizations have and can continue to play a supporting role in the integration of Europe. However, if one defines the religious fault lines as between Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim Europe, as Samuel Huntington does, then the acid test for the Common Market model of stable peace will be whether the very different countries of the Balkans, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey can become integrated in this system.

A final definition of peace links transnational peace with justice within a society. Here when one works for peace, he or she is also working for a more just economic and social order within and external to a society. This is a secular theory, but it is easy to baptize it because in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures God demands justice for the poor. The liberal church lobbies working in Washington have been described as not knowing that peace and justice are two words. They assume that the process of creating a more just society can be done without violence, even when privileged groups lose influence.

The peace and justice groups often link a peaceful society with a democratic society as more likely to allow a change that does not directly benefit the ruling class. That is a big assumption! I suspect that also built in is the belief of some political scientists and virtually all Americans that democracies tend to be peaceful. At least, many political scientists argue that democracies rarely fight each other, but, of course, this may be because they find so many non-democracies to fight.

The classic theories of just war assume that the society to be defended is a moral good, though the preference for legitimate authority and distrust of rebellion overrode almost all other criteria. A democratic society is now seen as offering the greatest potentiality for becoming a moral society, although — as Niebuhr said — this is because everything else looks worse. Obviously such a utopian society has never existed, perhaps never can, and is even difficult to conceptualize.

Would, for example, the child who never achieved what his parents thought was his potential, be a cause for concern. The theory is also very human centered, with environmental concerns placed second to individual capacities, i.

Galtung might say that asking if such an ideal society can be created is the wrong question. Rather, the concept allows us to see what we should be focusing on. The advantage of any version of the peace and justice linkage is that one can begin working at any level and can obtain successes even if the micro does not easily transform into the macro level.

I used to ask my students, who were required to write term papers on various NGOs, whether it was necessary to have a comprehensive theory of peace to do effective peace work. The answer, of course, depended upon the definition of peace and the work undertaken, but most students decided that peace work was not primarily an academic exercise.

The world today is a better place for the activities of the NGOs, but recent history does not prove that it is becoming a more peaceful place, if the quantity of wars and numbers of deaths are the criteria. This dilemma is not new: to cite a Quaker example, the difference between Lucretia Mott and John Whittier on reform activities in the s. Whittier believed in all of these causes, but crusaded only against slavery and, because he saw the potential from political activities, in supported the Liberty Party.

Who was more effective is difficult to prove. Another analogy, using more classic terms: the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, you remember from the Camus book, is condemned to carrying a boulder to the top of the hill and then watch as it rolls down the hill.

My solution, not original and one I suspect most of you already practice, is to work in a few causes, accept small victories, and hope without much expectation that the academic professionals in many fields will in the future provide more helpful theories that will influence the political class. Peace shalom is a frequently used term in the Hebrew Scriptures with a wide variety of meanings. It can be what we would call religious — obedience to or a right relationship to God or a blessing from God.

Peace can be a greeting or a benediction. Peace can also be what we, but not the ancient Hebrews, see as more secular: security, prosperity, health, justice.

In the Bible these qualities can be applied to an individual, household, a kingdom, or the whole world.

Peace can be a description of relations between kingdoms, a ceasing of hostilities or a treaty, and even, on one occasion, a war undertaken in obedience to God. In Jeremiah peace requires a whole new creation and in 2nd Isaiah God controls the processes of all kingdoms. For Ecclesiastes, even peace may be a vanity. In the Psalms, peace, identified with rest, can refer to death. Peace can be a past, present, or future condition. Seeking the will of God, finding it, and responding appropriately is the key to the Peace of God.

Virtually all of these meanings are carried over into the New Testament. Peace is proclaimed by the angels at the nativity, advocated in the Beatitudes, and is the desired condition among the followers of Jesus before the resurrection and in the early church. The biggest change is that the Old Testament prophecies about the coming age of peace are applied to Jesus. Jesus in his teaching, suffering, and resurrection is the bringer of peace.

The peace is not political, however. The Gospels present Jesus as mourning over the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in a coming war, not preventing their destruction. In the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem comes after the time of troubles, including war, and takes place at the throne of God after the judging of the quick and the dead. None of the teachings about peace in the New Testament are about politics or war.

This is one of differences between the two Testaments. They agree in seeing peace as having many dimensions and as a gift from God. The Kingdom of God is at hand, realized in the disciples of Jesus before the crucifixion and then in the church, even though — as the letters of Paul show — the early church was far from unified or peaceful. The concept of salaam or peace in Islam is more like the Old than the New Testament; that is, there is a explicit political as well as a religious dimension.

In fact, they are almost one. Islam means submission to God and doing so brings the believer peace. By clicking the "I accept" button, you consent to the use of these cookies.

In recent years, much foreign policy attention has focused on the role of religion in contributing to strife across the globe. In many fragile states, such as Myanmar, Congo and Sri Lanka, religious divisions do exacerbate strife, even where religion may not be the root cause of the conflict. Religion, however, can play an important role in peace-making and conflict prevention and resolution.

In almost every conflict region in the world, interfaith efforts have contributed to resolving or avoiding disputes, as well as improving the conditions of millions caught up in civil strife. However, there are limitations to the successes, impact, or consistency of these interfaith endeavours. Too often, their voices are drowned out by the raucousness of strife, cannot gain political traction, and are not a determining factor as such crises play out. All these interfaith efforts, from Africa to the Middle East to East Asia, do so much good at the micro level, yet rarely are they able to truly change the short term destiny of countries caught up in civil war or regional strife.

Despite these limitations, it is often the very existence of interfaith groups that inspires or encourages others to move in the direction of peace, mutual cooperation and reconciliation.