THE RELEVANCE OF RELIGION IN CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION
Religion has a dual legacy in human history regarding peace and violence. Conflict resolution theory must examine more systematically the decision-making of religious actors and leaders in order for strategies of peacemaking to be effective in the relevant contexts. It is the argument here that the study of religion and conflict resolution will yield an important new field of inquiry. A series of topics need to be addressed, including the mixture of religious and pragmatic motivations in behavior, the struggle between intra communal moral values and other traditional values that generate conflict, multifaith dialogue and pluralism as conflict resolution strategies, the sociopolitical impact of religious leadership on conflict generation and resolution, the limited scope of religious ethics in regard to the rejection of nonbelievers and traditional outgroups, and the promising role of interpretation of sacred tradition in generating peacemaking strategies.
Every major religion of the world has expressed at some point, through its leaders and thinkers, a commitment to the value of peace, both in classical texts and modem reformulations. (Sparkle,2015).
Furthermore, religious actors are playing an increasingly important and valuable role in resolving international conflicts. Mennonite, Quaker, and Catholic leaders have successfully intervened in and mediated African, Asian, and Latin American conflicts, as have key Buddhist leaders such as Maha Gosananda from Cambodia and Thich Nhat Hanh from Vietnam.But a faith-based commitment to peace is a complex phenomenon. While some believers creatively integrate their spiritual tradition and peacemaking, many others engage in some of the most destabilizing violence confronting the global community today. The purpose of this article is to outline what will be necessary for a new course of study of religion that examines its relationship to conflict and conflict resolution methodologies.(Brown,2011)
Throughout the long era of human history, religion has been a major contributor to war, bloodshed, hatred, and intolerance. Yet religion has also developed laws and ideas that have provided civilizations with a cultural commitment to critical peace-related values. The latter include empathy, an openness to and even love for strangers, the suppression of unbridled ego and acquisitiveness, the articulation of human rights, unilateral gestures of forgiveness and humility, interpersonal repentance and the acceptance of responsibility for past errors as a means of reconciliation, and the drive for social justice.
There are two essential benefits to exploring a relationship between religion and conflict resolution theory.
First, there is a vast reservoir of information in sacred texts on peacemaking and on prosocial and antisocial values that affect conflict. This literature contains a litany of individual struggles with the inner life that have led either toward or away from a violent disposition. What has worked and failed to work in the past, and why? What can it teach us about the relationship between violence and the religious person in a particular culture? The replicability of past methods of conflict resolution or of deterring violence should be a critical concern.
