What role does religion play in peacebuilding? American and European nongovernmental organizations, agencies in the U.S. government, academia, and international organizations—sectors that once held religious issues at a distance or understood religion mainly as a driver of violence—increasingly engage religious communities and institutions as partners in creating peace. Meanwhile, religious organizations that have been involved in creating peace for decades, if not longer, increasingly have institutionalized and professionalized their work, suggesting ways that religious and secular organizations could coordinate their efforts more closely.
This paper looks at the current challenges and future prospects for religious communities and institutions as partners in creating peace.
Recommendations:
- Religious peacebuilding work often is designed and implemented independent of secular peacebuilding initiatives, and while it has moved toward the center of the field, it is not yet mainstreamed. The road to significant integration remains long, and there is a great need for individuals and organizations involved in religious peacebuilding to strategically collaborate with other sectors, and vice versa, to ensure greater effect. Those involved in the field must determine how religious peacebuilding fits within efforts in and studies of economic development, human rights, security, counterinsurgency, and rule of law, to create opportunities for collaboration and advance common goals.
- The religious peacebuilding field has tended to target clerics and heads of religious institutions in its work, which in much of the world means older men. Experience has shown, however, that women and youth are important shapers of religious narratives and motivations that support violence and peace. Women have been particularly effective implementers of religious peacebuilding, particularly interfaith or intercommunal activities. Interfaith work with children and youth is particularly important in much of the world experiencing the “youth bulge,” to ensure they have personal commitments to peace and relationships across lines of difference; these can strengthen their resolve when being recruited, on religious grounds, to perpetuate violence.
- Scholarship and support from the Western world has tended to focus on the Abrahamic traditions, that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which identify Abraham as a foundational figure. However, a great deal of knowledge and practice from indigenous and dharmic traditions—Buddhism, Hindusim, Taoism, and other Asian religions—analyses the causes of conflict and the means to manage and resolve it that could deepen the field. Indigenous traditions around the world vary enormously, but generally speaking, they have developed communal practices for addressing conflict and contribute wisdom about the need to preserve the integrity of the environment, which is often harmed during conflict and, in turn, propels it further. Greater engagement between peacebuilders in the Abrahamic traditions and those of other religions is necessary to broaden and deepen the field.
- There is a pressing need for greater monitoring and evaluation of religious peacebuilding work—and peacebuilding generally—to understand better which interventions, led by whom, and in which situations, have the greatest effect. The lack of evaluation to demonstrate the value of religious peacebuilding work has fueled skepticism about its effectiveness, particularly among secular-biased peace organizations and diplomats. Being able to show that religious peacebuilding works will help the field better integrate with other sectors.
