Reconciliation, Peace and Justice

Branding Identity; Building Community: Church as Neighborhood Center for Forgiveness, Reconciliation and for Restorative Justice

By what metaphor should the church be known? Does religion harm or heal? Does theology matter? These are potent questions as we consider the role of the churches and other faith communities in the context of conflict. This introductory page highlights sub-categories that draw us to the following topics:

Several BTI Peace-Building Initiatives
A Select List of Global Connections
The Nature of Forgiveness and Reconciliation
An Introduction to Restorative Justice
Building Community, Overcoming Violence

The twentieth century has been referred to as the most self-consciously violent century in history.[i] While replete with human and technological advances, its legacy of mass destruction and trauma is bracketed by the Armenian (1915) and Rwandan (1994) genocides. The report launched by the World Health Organization in 2003, World Report on Violence and Health, asks us to consider violence as not only a political phenomenon but as a public health priority – as a leading cause of disease, as a matter of domestic abuse, as a factor in mental health and of concern for children and of central concern to the health of the next generation.[ii]

Now overshadowed by the “War on Terror,” for a time political policy was fascinated with the idea of an Age of Apology and all that such implied with respect to forgiveness and reconciliation,[iii] - an Age marked by ad hoc tribunals, truth commissions, a permanent international court and other legal innovations.[iv] As political policy has now wavered between a restorative and retributive approach to violence, the danger to public health has become ever clearer.[v] Insofar as spirituality is an aspect of health or a holistic expression of human identity,[vi] it has become ever more important for churches to see violence as not only a moral problem, but one of deepest significance for our understanding of Christian mission with the very health of the human community in the twenty-first century in view. Violence is a matter of concern for Christian spirituality.

This understanding of violence as an issue framing the work of the churches can be read into the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches (WCC) that met in Athens, May 2005, in that it affirmed a ministry of reconciliation as a paradigm for mission in the twenty-first century.[vii] The agenda for the World Council of Churches in 2006, “God, in your Grace, Transform the World,” reminiscent of that in 1948, “God’s Design, Man’s Disorder,” sets the context for that mission, a world then engulfed in holocaust; but now coming at the end of a century of genocide.

What would it be like if the church were to be seen as a Neighborhood Center for Forgiveness, Reconciliation and for Restorative Justice?[viii] To use the language of the advertising world so dominant in the twenty-first century: “How do we brand the Church?” Can theology and its institutional embodiment, the Church, bear the weight of the necessary insight, perspective on the human condition, and normative critique of society in the twenty-first century cited being asked of it?

If the problem of violence is the dominating issue before the human community in the twenty-first century, can the churches absorb this issue in an integrative doctrinal theology and engaged pastoral capacity so as to catch up the imagination of the human community in its search for the solution to violence. If it cannot, the church faces a period of theological antiquarianism, political irrelevance and social obsolescence.[ix]

This section explores the inter-relationship of forgiveness, reconciliation, restorative justice and community-building. USIP and Harvard scholar David Little and William Vendley, of Religions for Peace, argue that to develop the peacemaking potential, members of the world’s great religious traditions need to reflect critically on the primary language of their traditions’ customs, stories, narratives, and faith claims and be able to translate those claims into a “secondary language” of secular terms comprehensible to other religious traditions and reflecting a mutually agreed-upon set of “shared cares.” Examining the role of aid and aid delivery as an important component of religious peacemaking is important toward an understanding of the “secondary language” that William Vendley and others argue is a necessary step for all religious traditions to fully develop their theological capacity and resources for peacemaking in a religiously plural world. (Points of moral common ground or “shared cares” were articulated in 1970 by 250 senior leaders representing 10 major religious traditions at a World Conference on Religion and Peace gathering in Kyoto, Japan. Homer, Jack A, ed., Religion for Peace: Proceedings of the Kyoto Conference on Religion and Peace (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1973).

[i] Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century, by Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). The twentieth century has witnessed the most profound and far-reaching devastation of war. More than 120,000,000 people have lost their lives in war in the 20^th century and whole societies have been decimated by modern war. The Second World War was the most destructive war the human race has ever seen, and at the end of it, came nuclear weapons and the capacity to destroy the entire planet. Soon after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Cold War began between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that witnessed the development of thousands of nuclear weapons by both sides. This history of genocides and violence led Samantha Power to write, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). She details a century of inaction by the United States as decision-makers looked away from mass murder in disbelief, opining intervention as futile, and incomprehensive of the extent of the calamity.

[ii] World Report on Violence and Health, Etienne G. Krug, Linda L. Dahlberg, James A. Mercy, Anthony B Zwi and Rafael Lozano (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002).

[iii] The terminology and entry points for the public discussion of forgiveness might be seen to be embedded in reactions to WWII, to the example of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation process, and to emerging an awareness of issues of health connected with violence and unresolved issues surrounding harm to victims and the cycle of revenge in which offenders find themselves. See “The Age of Apology.” In R. L. Brooks, ed., When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy Over Apology and Reparation for Human Injustice. Pg. 3-11. New York: New York University Press, 1999. See also Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, Cindy C. Combs, ed., (New York: Prentice-Hall, 3^rd ed., 2003.

[iv] See Martha Minow, “Innovating Responses to the Past: Human Rights Institutions,” in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice After Civil Conflict, Nigel Biggar, ed. (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003): 87-100.

[v] James Gilligan, Violence. Reflections on a National Epidemic (New York: Random House, 1996).

[vi] What churches have to offer in the 21^st century is framed by its understanding of theological anthropology in light of identity shaped by the psychological and other sciences. Sigmund Freud put the question to the domain of religion in The Question of a Weltanschauung; science was now seen to offer insight into three areas once dominated by religion: 1) information about origins, 2) protection and ultimate happiness, 3) direction in life. For an assessment in light of theological considerations, see Armand Nicholi, The Question of God. C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Free Press, 2002).

[vii] Jacques Matthey and the Ecumenical Formation Team, “Mission as Ministry of Reconciliation,” Preparatory Paper No. 1. Conference on World Mission and Evangelism, Athens, May, 2005.

[viii] This is a phrase used by colleagues in the Boston Theological Institute as we have explored issues of religion and conflict transformation in a developing masters program at Boston University School of Theology and through the schools of the Boston Theological Institute.

[ix] See Denny Weaver, The NonViolent Atonement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), who ties the question of the church’s ability to deal with violence to our understanding of the atonement. See also Kenneth R. Chase and Alan Jacobs, Must Christianity Be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003); and Hent De Vries, Religion and Violence, Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2002)