Peace on Earth
The Role of Religion in Peace and Conflict Studies
Contributions by David Creamer, Christopher Hrynkow, Klaus Klostermaier, John Perry, Kristen Lundquist, Chris Seiple, Hien Vu, Michael Lerner, Nathan Funk, Paul Nicolas Cormier, Chuck Thiessen, Vernie Davis, Margaret Mitchell Armand, Harry Anastasiou, Katharina Bitzker, S. I. Keethaponcalan, Min Wang, Yueh-Ting Lee, Honggang Yang, Charles Egerton, S. K. Moore, Ismael Muvingi, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Lois Edmund, Deanna Armbruster Edited by Thomas Matyók, Maureen Flaherty, Hamdesa Tuso, Jessica Senehi, Sean Byrne
Not available to order
Publication date:
16 December 2013Length of book:
500 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739176290
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.
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.
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.