The daily bloodbath in Iraq is mainly fighting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Clashes in the Palestinian territories often approach civil war and threaten the lives of people of many faiths. When violence flares across this planet, a common denominator is often religion.
Religion and violence. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,has made the case that religion must be abandoned because it leads only to bloodshed, and he certainly assembles some damning evidence from history and current events.
But violence is a sign of religion's failure, not its success.
The great faiths of the world challenge people to look for a unifying truth above national differences and a common humanity beneath tribal tensions. When religion fails, as it often does, people settle their differences through violence. But when it succeeds, people are inspired to do the work of reconciliation — the peaceful settling of disputes, overcoming of divisions and re-establishment of friendship.
This work might not make the nightly news, but it's out there. Many faiths seek reconciliation, sometimes with success but sometimes just short of it:
•Christian Peacemaker Teams, an international organization, accompanies refugees and shipments of medicine in Iraq, sometimes with loss of life in the process. In Colombia, CPT helps rural civilians displaced by armed groups — including rightist paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas — return to their communities and live in peace.
•The Jewish concept "tikkun" — to heal, repair and transform the world — gives rise to work for non-violence and social justice. In South Africa under the apartheid system, blacks received an inferior education, so the organization MaAfrika Tikkun now trains community leaders and offers life skills courses to children. In Canada, Tikkun Toronto touts a message of peace through drama, art and dialogue. It is part of the international Tikkun Community, which has grown beyond its Jewish roots to become an interfaith organization.
•Shiite and Sunni Muslims recently gathered in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar for a conference on reconciliation, with the hope of narrowing the gap between Islam's sects. Unfortunately, arguments broke out over sectarian violence in Iraq and the growing influence of Iran, and the conference failed to achieve its goal.
"There is more in our great holy books and religious teachings about reconciliation and peace than violence and bloodshed," says Fred Lyon, a colleague and interim pastor of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church in McLean, Va. He's right, but it is also true that there is more in our history books linking religion to violence than to reconciliation.
Reaching out
Trying to reverse this tragic trend are groups such as the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington (IFC), an organization of 11 faith communities that hosts religious dignitaries and international visitors.
After Pope Benedict XVI angered Muslims in September with a speech that quoted a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor's perspective on Islamic holy war, the IFC brought together Muslim leaders and the pope's representative. They worked to fix the damage done to Catholic-Muslim relations by posting the pope's apology on several Muslim websites and delivering a message to the pope via his representative. Did it make Muslims forget about the original slight? No, but it helped the healing begin.
"Building relationships and understanding really changes things," says Clark Lobenstine, executive director of the IFC. "Studies have shown that people who know a Muslim are less likely to be in favor of restricting their civil rights." Across the country, other groups are holding Catholic-Muslim dialogues on spirituality, theology and interfaith marriage.
Religion can also play a healing role in countries racked by violence. For instance, in post-apartheid South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on victims and perpetrators of apartheid to tell their stories — a move that opened the door to confession and forgiveness.
"The key leader was Bishop Desmond Tutu," says Eric Law, an Episcopal priest in Los Angeles and author of The Word at the Crossings: Living the Good News in a Multicontextual Community.
Law says he is convinced that true reconciliation on the international level always involves religious leaders. Through extensive work with multicultural faith communities, he has discovered that in times of conflict — which create extreme uncertainties in people's lives — "religious rituals are crucial in the work of moving from conflicts to dialogue, to understanding, to possible reconciliation."
Where change must start
But religious institutions cannot do the job alone. Individuals have a role to play as well. It would be hard to find a more striking image of religion-inspired reconciliation than what took place last year in Lancaster County, Pa. It wasn't a summit in which the world's leaders met to hammer out treaties to solve the world's problems. What the world saw instead was Amish men and women who took a stand for forgiveness after a gunman slaughtered five young girls at a schoolhouse.
Most impressive about the Amish response to the schoolhouse murders was the way that these peace-loving Christians reached out with support to the gunman's widow and children.
"Such exemplary acts of witness stir the imaginations of the larger world," observes L. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., and author of Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis. "We need our imagination to be set on fire by stories that show that what we think is impossible or unrealistic is indeed possible — if we have the courage to cultivate habits of reconciliation."
I'm afraid that many people today have lost the courage of their convictions and are more comfortable debating internal church issues than taking a risk for reconciliation in the world around us. Instead of arguing about human sexuality, for example, our Christian denominations ought to be focusing on dialogue with other faiths, and putting together Christian Peacemaker Teams to work with Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq — finding ways to use faith to stem the flow of violence rather than igniting it.
Just last month, in fact, a delegation of 13 Christian leaders from the USA traveled to Iran to meet with political and religious leaders. The goal: Ease the growing tensions between the two countries. At a time in which leaders of the two countries are loath to talk, such outreach couldn't hurt.
In a world so bloodied by religious conflict, empathetic conversation might not appear to be a powerful weapon. But it remains the best tool for settling disputes, overcoming divisions and re-establishing relationships — in other words, doing the work of reconciliation.
Now, more than ever, dialogue should be a central spiritual practice for all who take their religion seriously.
Henry G. Brinton is pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia and author of Balancing Acts: Obligation, Liberation, and Contemporary Christian Conflicts.
