Peace on Earth: The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies

by Thomas Matyók The University of North C (Editor), Maureen Flaherty (Editor), Hamdesa Tuso University of Manitoba (Editor), Jessica Senehi (Editor), Sean Byrne University of Manitoba (Editor)

Overview

Peace on Earth: The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies provides a critical analysis of faith and religious institutions in peacebuilding practice and pedagogy. The work captures the synergistic relationships among faith traditions and how multiple approaches to conflict transformation and peacebuilding result in a creative process that has the potential to achieve a more detailed view of peace on earth, containing breadth as well as depth.
Library and bookstore shelves are filled with critiques of the negative impacts of religion in conflict scenarios. Peace on Earth: The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies offers an alternate view that suggests religious organizations play a more complex role in conflict than a simply negative one. Faith-based organizations, and their workers, are often found on the frontlines of conflict throughout the world, conducting conflict management and resolution activities as well as advancing peacebuilding initiatives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739176290
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	12/16/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	500
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Thomas Matyók is associate professor in the Program in Conflict and Peace Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is a co-editor of Critical Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy.

Maureen Flaherty is assistant professor in peace and conflict studies at the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice, St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba. She is the author of Peacebuilding with Women in Ukraine: Using Narrative to Envision a Common Future.

Hamdesa Tuso is a faculty member at the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies of the University of Manitoba. He is the founder of the Oromo Studies Association, and founder and director of the Africa Working Group.

Jessica Senehi is associate professor of peace and conflict studies, and associate director of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice, St. Paul’s College at University of Manitoba. She co-authored with Sean Byrne, Violence: Analysis, Intervention, and Prevention, and coedited the Handbook of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Sean Byrne is professor of peace and conflict studies, and founding head of the Ph.D. and joint MA programs in peace and conflict studies at University of Manitoba, and founding director of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice housed in St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba. He is author, co-author, and co-editor of numerous books, journal articles and book chapters.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Can People of Faith, and People in Peace and Conflict Studies, Work Together?
Thomas Matyók and Maureen Flaherty
Part I: Peace and Conflict Studies in a Contextualized Place
Chapter Two: Religion, Peace and Violence: Tensions and Promises
David Creamer and Christopher Hrynkow
Chapter Three: Ahimsa: A World without Violence?
Klaus Klostermaier
Chapter FourBlessing-Based Love (Agape) As a Heuristic to Understanding Effective Reconciliation Practices: A Reading of I Corinthians 13 In a Peacebuilding Context
Vern Neufeld Redekop
Part II: Religions and Peace and Conflict Studies
Chapter Five: Catholic Peacemaking: A History and Analysis with Special Emphasis on the Work of the Community of Sant ’Egidio
John Perry
Chapter Six: Evangelical Women and Transformative Peacebuilding
Kristen Lundquist, Hien Vu, and Chris Seiple
Chapter Seven: Judaism and the Path to Peace
Michael Lerner
Chapter Eight: Islam and Peace and Conflict Studies
Nathan Funk
Chapter Nine: The Role of Indigenous African Religion in Peacemaking
Hamdesa Tuso
Chapter Ten: Aboriginal Peoples’ in Canada and the Role of Religion in Conflict: The Ever Elusive Peace
Paul Nicolas Cormier
Chapter Eleven: Mennonite International Peacebuilding and Local Ownership
Chuck Thiessen
Chapter Twelve: Let Us See What Love Can Do: Quaker Contributions to Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation
Vernie Davis
Chapter Thirteen: Haïtian Vodou: Peace Begins Within
Margret Mitchell Armand
Chapter Fourteen: Eastern Orthodox Christianity: Provocations and Challenges for a Just Peace in an Era of Conflict and Global Transition
Harry Anastasiou
Chapter Fifteen: Ancient News from Buddha’s Research Lab: the Role of Buddhism in Peace and Conflict Settings
Katharina Bitzker
Chapter Sixteen: Hinduism: War, Peace, and Peace and Conflict Studies
S. I. Keethaponcalan
Chapter Seventeen: Daoist Harmony as a Chinese Worldview
Yueh-Ting Lee, Honggang Yang, and Min Wang
Chapter Eighteen: Humanity’s Coming of Age: A Bahá’í View of the Process toward World Peace
Charles Egerton
Chapter Nineteen: Religious Leader Engagement: Military Chaplains Engaging Indigenous Religious Leaders and Their Communities in Operations (Voices from the International Chaplaincy Community)
S. K. Moore
Part III: The Way Forward: Four Faith Models
Chapter Twenty: Striving for Justice and Peace on Earth, Catholic Peace Initiatives
Ismael Muvingi
Chapter Twenty-One: Peacebuilding Principles and Values in Islam: Beyond the Basic Framework
Mohammed Abu-Nimer
Chapter Twenty-Two:Peace on Earth: The Anabaptist-Mennonite Perspective
Lois Edmund
Chapter Twenty-Three: Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: the ‘Oasis of Peace’
Deanna Armbruster
Chapter Twenty-Four:Conclusions: Peace on Earth Revisited
Hamdesa Tuso, Jessica Senehi, and Sean Byrne

Editorial Reviews

These insightful essays and informative case studies gathered by Matyok and Flaherty will help readers understand why developing peace literacy is not only something many religious believers consider essential, but also why developing religious literacy is essential for those studying and working toward peace. Peace on Earth: The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies provides valuable tools to help peace scholars, peace educators, and peace activists alike better understand roles religion and religious actors play today in both conflict and peacemaking.

Jennifer S. Bryson

This book provides insightful views of the place of religion in peace and conflict studies. Its amazingly wide, yet deep, reports of diverse religions’ approaches to peace and conflict offer specific paths to peacebuilding. The editors have assembled excellent contributors, with great knowledge about and experience with the important topics they examine. Every reader will learn about more and better ways that peace can be advanced at many different levels from this work.

Louis Kriesberg

Academic peace study programs frequently ignore religion as a partner in pursuit of conflict resolution. These 24 essays advocate religion as a vital, if partial, participant in any serious pursuit of lasting peace. Religion's absence in peace studies—and peacemaking—is a crippling lack. Contributors to this volume present casebook studies of religious groups involved in recent conflict resolution—successes and failures alike. Brief but nuanced accounts of several religious traditions, with their ambivalent histories of war and peace efforts, are excellent summaries of those traditions, and also show how they have fallen short of their ideals. Some religious groups, only rarely at the table, present the unique witness they have maintained, often in the face of persecution or marginalization because of their relative size or beliefs and practices at odds with dominant religions. The essay on military chaplains stands out, as it discusses going beyond the unarmed morale officer for war-weary troops, to becoming a middle-range actor in affirming that those outside the military unit are not 'other.' The essays demonstrate in diverse ways that religion can be the source of conflict, but also a source of peace building, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

Choice Reviews

This volume will be a useful counterpoint for those who associate religious bigotry and scapegoating with the advent of many violent clashes in the world, as well as a valuable pedagogical aid in the philosophical teaching about peace and conflict studies. Religion is only one somewhat inconsistent source in the development of public morality and norms which lead to conflict resolution, but it is undoubtedly an important one and subject to much misunderstanding; battles over faith and belief or between religion and science may be among the most challenging to resolve. The reader will grapple with many such contentious issues, not least the relationship between religion and human rights, the proper place of religion in political life and the most advisable balance between religious and secular institutions.

Fred Pearson

This is an important and exciting book with depth as well as breadth of coverage of the role of religion and religious actors in peace building work. The diverse and rich case studies and the theme of constructively addressing ‘religious illiteracy’ should make it a useful volume for students, researchers, and a wide variety of practitioners.

Siobhan McEvoy-Levy

Academic peace study programs frequently ignore religion as a partner in pursuit of conflict resolution. These 24 essays advocate religion as a vital, if partial, participant in any serious pursuit of lasting peace. Religion's absence in peace studies—and peacemaking—is a crippling lack. Contributors to this volume present casebook studies of religious groups involved in recent conflict resolution—successes and failures alike. Brief but nuanced accounts of several religious traditions, with their ambivalent histories of war and peace efforts, are excellent summaries of those traditions, and also show how they have fallen short of their ideals. Some religious groups, only rarely at the table, present the unique witness they have maintained, often in the face of persecution or marginalization because of their relative size or beliefs and practices at odds with dominant religions. The essay on military chaplains stands out, as it discusses going beyond the unarmed morale officer for war-weary troops, to becoming a middle-range actor in affirming that those outside the military unit are not 'other.' The essays demonstrate in diverse ways that religion can be the source of conflict, but also a source of peace building, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

Choice

Academic peace study programs frequently ignore religion as a partner in pursuit of conflict resolution. These 24 essays advocate religion as a vital, if partial, participant in any serious pursuit of lasting peace. Religion's absence in peace studies—and peacemaking—is a crippling lack. Contributors to this volume present casebook studies of religious groups involved in recent conflict resolution—successes and failures alike. Brief but nuanced accounts of several religious traditions, with their ambivalent histories of war and peace efforts, are excellent summaries of those traditions, and also show how they have fallen short of their ideals. Some religious groups, only rarely at the table, present the unique witness they have maintained, often in the face of persecution or marginalization because of their relative size or beliefs and practices at odds with dominant religions. The essay on military chaplains stands out, as it discusses going beyond the unarmed morale officer for war-weary troops, to becoming a middle-range actor in affirming that those outside the military unit are not 'other.' The essays demonstrate in diverse ways that religion can be the source of conflict, but also a source of peace building, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

CHOICE