Concluding Reflections: Themes and Challenges

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CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS: THEMES AND CHALLENGES

Teaching Religion, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding

August 9 -11, 2010

Boston University School of Theology

Mary Elizabeth Moore

I had a funny experience two weeks ago when I ducked into an unfamiliar restroom to wash my hands. With my hands dripping, I turned to the fancy new towel dispenser, which looked different from any that I had ever seen. I stood in front of it and waved my hands like a magic wand to release the paper towel. Nothing happened. I waved my hands again in front of the machine, then across the sides and the top. Nothing happened. I searched for a button to push or a knob to turn. Nothing. Finally, in exasperation, I bent over to look under the machine, only to discover the old-fashioned style of paper towel hanging from a slit waiting to be pulled.

I think of this incident as being something like peacemaking. We often approach a new situation with assumptions about the context and about the tools that we need to make a difference. Standing in the situation, we size up what we see, and we try all of our tools. We wave our hands and search for buttons and knobs. Then, in exasperation, we resort to looking under the situation to see what we have missed. At that point, we might discover that the most basic actions are needed, like pulling the paper towel. We might discover something else. But, whatever we discover, looking under the situation makes all the difference.

Thank you for joining in these days of looking under the realities of violence in the world and the possibilities of peacemaking. I will close our time by giving you back to you. I will venture to identify some themes and challenges that have emerged in our time together.

Realities

Some of our themes have to do with the raw and often discouraging realities of justice- and peace-making. First, tensions are real in human relations. Tensions arise because of decades and centuries of injustice and oppression. Tensions can even arise simply because people see the world differently. Consider Phil Amerson’s story about a lively, or deadly, debate over a homeless shelter in which the tools of theology and the intentions of prophetic witness were used to create an either/or stand-off in the group. The debate was filled with natural tensions, but these escalated when the people converted their naturally held differences “into tools to demean and demonize others.” Tensions are real.

Second, competition is real in the work of peacemaking. Leaders compete, groups compete. The competition may be between academics and activists, or among people from diverse religious communions or people who are different in race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, or simply between people with different leadership styles. The competition may be conscious and overt or unconscious and subtle. In any of these cases, the competition among peacemakers is often a repetition of competition, fear, distrust, and patterns of violence that indwell their cultures and communities. Peace-makers are drawn into the very patterns they seek to subvert. The competitive dynamics then subvert the peace-makers’ efforts to offer alternate ways to discuss controversial issues or make decisions on matters about which people fundamentally disagree.

Tension and competition are sobering in themselves, but they are all the more disturbing if we study the contradictions in our peacemaking traditions, including our most potent religious traditions. Consider Brita Gil-Austern’s concern that Christian Eucharistic liturgy often emphasizes Jesus’ suffering and death “for others” and does not carry words that name Jesus as a peacemaker and Jesus as a contradiction to the habitus of scapegoating. Consider Yehezekel Landau’s awareness that Jewish theology could equip people to relate differently in the Middle East, but often does not. Consider his proposal that Jews could begin by repenting their own practices of scapegoating, discriminating, or oppressing others, past and present. In these two examples, Gil-Austern and Landau awaken us to the potential of their own traditions to encourage a habitus of peacemaking but, also, to undercut that potential by offering what I will call a partial or distorted version of the whole. The whole is always larger than finite humans can grasp, but it is far more life-giving than the distortions and partial truths that we espouse. The enduring religious traditions, in their fullness, point toward hope and call people to live toward hope while acknowledging the messiness of reality. For example, Thee Smith recognizes that the Christian sacrament of Eucharist is both a recognition of our human complicity in violence (targeting, neglecting, and perpetrating) and our reception of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Facing the realities I have named, I identify four challenges to communities who would step fully into the messy middle:

(1)Analyze the dynamics of conflict and peacemaking without getting stuck in analysis;

(2)Avoid simplistic explanations of conflict. Perhaps the contrast between the victim and the victimizer, the powerful party and the underdog, is never as clear as it seems. Perhaps the description of ANY situation in terms of two sides is inherently inadequate. Can we begin to think in 3s and 4s instead of 2s?

(3)Avoid simplistic religious solutions. Perhaps most religious traditions (if not all) carry as much potential to maim or mute as to heal. We cannot claim the power of religion without claiming its complexities?

(4)Look under each new situation to see what you are missing. The best response may even be the simplest one after you look carefully (like pulling the paper towel).

Purposes

We turn now to the purposes of conflict transformation and just-peace building. Phil Amerson, referring to an accent of Bishop Gregory V. Palmer, argued that the mission of a religious community needs to take precedence over its preoccupation with conflict. Thus, one purpose of conflict transformation is to clear space for people to engage in mission, that is, to clear away the debris of conflict. I would add one more related purpose for transforming conflict. Responding creatively to conflict can actually enhance mission – making it more honest, more focused on that which is life-giving, and more effectively implemented.

Consider how 18th and 19th century Protestant missions were often initiated and sustained with strong ideals about converting people to Christianity without attending to conflicts within the home church and without addressing tensions at home betweenChristians and their neighbors: indigenous peoples, peoples of other faiths, and peoples of non-dominant cultural traditions. Consider, for example, the narrow limits on Chinese immigration and intense discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the U.S. during the very 19th century period when Protestant Christian missions were flourishing in China. Is it possible that Christian missions in China and other countries would have been less imperialistic if ethnic conflicts had been more broadly recognized and engaged more constructively at home? Might the relations with Chinese immigrants in the U.S. have been more open and tolerant if people living in the U.S. had listened more carefully to the Chinese missionaries? Many missionaries were developing deep and respectful relationships with the Chinese people that were not grounded in imperialism.

This brief discussion of purpose suggests two further challenges:

(1)Understand our work for justice and peace as being more than problem-solving and more than making people feel better about themselves and others. The work of reconciliation can redirect a community to its central mission, or create time and space in which people discern what their mission is. Otherwise, we might actually use conflict, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid the demands of mission.

(2)Practice reconciliation in such a way that the community is better equipped for mission.

Teaching

On the cluster of themes around teaching, I will name a few approaches that have been highlighted in this consultation, but will leave space for others to add. I will use the term “method” to describe these approaches to teaching because the proposals are more than techniques and less than a complete system. They are practices imbued with purpose and intentionality, and each one opens to a wide range of specific techniques.

(1)Narratives: Phil Amerson emphasized the need to share alternative stories, and Pamela Couture emphasized the power of biography and autobiography. I will add to the challenge that we need to seek reversals in the stories we tell and the interpretations we give. For example, the Samaritan story has often been heard by Jews as a Christian anti-Jewish text because of the portrayal of the Pharisee and the Sadducee in Luke’s story. Some recent commentaries on Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasize the need to attend to the limitations King placed on women leaders is the Civil Rights movement. To seek reversals in such stories is not to destroy and discard the narratives, but to look under the texts and the most conventional interpretations and ask what we have been missing.

(2)Apprenticeships: Marc Gopin and others emphasized teaching through apprenticeships, internships, and travel seminars in which people take active peacemaking roles.

(3)Pilgrimages: Chris Rice emphasized teaching through pilgrimages that disrupt a group’s common experiences and practices.

(4)Collaboration: Several have emphasized the need to involve students in groups to do collaborative work with one another and, when possible, with community partners.

(5)Healing practices: Almost everyone has mentioned the need to teach practices that can mend the broken lives of peacemakers – praying, reading, writing, retreating, “porching,” and laughing. These are practices that contribute to healing and resilience.

(6)Action-reflection: Another repeated theme is the need to teach through diverse practices or actions, combined with reflection. Actions include shared eating, shared play, and many other practices of life-sharing. Reflection includes discussion, artistic expression, and silence.

(7)Dialogue: Dialogue is an art that can be taught and learned. Jan Love emphasized the importance of engaging in “dialogue in spite of offense,” thus moving beyond “polite parallelism.” To teach such dialogue, we need to develop the capacity as teachers to stay at the table in spite of offence, and we need to develop skills to guide, support, and encourage people through such tough moments. We might stir, or at least welcome, such dialogues in our classrooms and communities rather than avoiding tough conversations.

(8)Holy envy and hard conversations: These two methods go together. In the early 1990s, Krister Stendahl offered the idea of “holy envy” in interreligious relations, suggesting that one of the strongest ways to relate with another is to practice holy envy – seeing in another person or community some quality or value that you wish for yourself and your people.

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(9)[i] Susannah Heschel elaborates on this idea in her present work, “Intrigued with Islam.”[ii] Marc Gopin named a similar idea in this consultation when he acknowledged his own “immature hope” for this conference, namely that “liberal Protestants will save the planet.” To entertain that hope, Gopin had to see positive values and practices in liberal Protestantism. That is holy envy.

I suggest that a companion to holy envy is Carol Lakey Hess’s idea of “hard conversation.”[iii] Hard conversation is a practice of actively engaging the most divisive and troublesome questions about which people disagree. Hard conversation is engaging with what Jan Love calls “deeply held differences.” I first learned the power of hard conversation in interreligious relations from John Hick who, in addition to writing prolifically on religious pluralism and sponsoring large conferences on the subject, launched ongoing groups of people from diverse traditions.[iv] In one such group, the one in which I participated, John Hick turned the conversation midway through the first session to confess to aspects of Christian faith that he experienced as deeply problematic. Then, he asked of a Muslim participant, “How do you deal with the potential destructive consequences of the belief that you just named?” He later asked of a Jewish participant, “Does that scripture text seem problematic to you?” The result was that the group dived into the middle of hard conversation in our first meeting together, and we decided for the next series of months to spend each session sharing difficult texts from our respective traditions. In short, we decided to build our relationships through hard conversations.

(10)Democratic & consensus decision-making: The methods of democratic engagement and decision-making by consensus were repeatedly emphasized in this consultation, placing an emphasis on process as a critical outcome and not just a route to some other outcome. We have talked here about democratic ideals and practices that enhance or thwart democratic relations, and our conversations return us to the democratic values accented by John Dewey and many other educational thinkers of the past century.[v] In this conference, Jan Love not only accented the values of relating democratically across difference, but she also shared stories from the World Council of Churches that reveal the potential and challenges of consensus decision-making. Such practices value the process of decision-making more than the outcome.

This is not to say that outcomes are trivial, but only that they are never ends in themselves. Even such stellar moments in U.S. history as the Gettysburg Address are fraught with limits. These limits would seem to undercut the value of the moment, but a moment such as the Gettysburg Address is truly remarkable. To recognize the limitations is simply to mark that this is a one amazing moment in an ongoing process. However momentous the Gettysburg Address was and however positive were the consequences, it was a moment in time. The gaps and flaws of the Address do not undercut its significance, but they mark places where people need to continue working. Similarly, the Civil Rights Act was a precious moment in U.S. history, but it was all the more powerful because it was part of a larger process that included the overturning of Jim Crow laws and the passing of the Head Start bill and many other less visible actions.[vi]

The educational practices of democratic relations are ways to develop skills in consensus decision-making and other forms of collaboration. They are also ways to develop perspectives on history and complex human relations as a process that never ends, one that requires astuteness and wise judgments and actions.

(11)Art of knowing what one does not know: Many people have made references to humility as a value for peacemakers. This calls forth an educational practice of encountering what we do not know. Marc Gopin raised this point when he asked how Christians can make pronouncements about the ethical actions of peoples different from themselves, e.g., condemning actions that take place in another country, led by a government or religious group different from themselves. Gopin asks this of the World Council of Churches, for example. He puts this forth as an “honest question,” but it raises an educational question as well. How do we teach people to encounter and acknowledge that which they do not know?

Closing Challenges

I conclude by stepping back to look at the ethos of schools and agencies as institutions of teaching and learning. We need to look not only at our particular practices of teaching and learning, but also at our institutional cultures and the ways we live our lives as teachers in community. I suggest four concluding challenges – a beginning point for further conversation and building.

(1)Reorganize ourselves as theological schools, colleges, and agencies so the goals of justice and peacemaking correspond with the ways we live our lives within our unique (indigenous) contexts? If we did this, our schools ad agencies would be permeated with the values and intentions of justice and peace.

(2)Develop and share core pedagogies that encourage people to probe and wrestle rather than compete and destroy? The Yeshiva is one example. According to Yehezekel Landau, the Yeshiva form of debate is intended to refine persons’ positions to be closer to the mind of God. The purpose is not to produce winners and losers or sameness.

(3)Develop worship, rituals, and patterns of contemplation that form a habitus that contributes to justice and peace.

(4)Publish books and articles, not as an obligation, but as a contribution to new ways of thinking, new actions in the world, new pedagogies, and new curricular designs?

The list goes on, and our challenge is to keep identifying and responding to new challenges as they emerge.

[i] Krister Stendahl, “From God’s Perspective, We are All Minorities,” The Journal of Religious Pluralism, Volume II, 1993. [Also available at:

[ii] Susannah Heschel, “Intrigued with Islam,” Inaugural Goldziher Lecture presented at Merrimack College, The Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, North Andover, MA, April 15, 2010.

[iii] Carol Lakey Hess, Caretakers of Our Common House (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997).

[iv] John Hick, God Has Many Names (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1986).

[v] John Dewey, Democracy and Education (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004, 1916).

[vi] This point was made to me in an interview with Civil Rights leader James Lawson, Los Angeles, CA, June 2010.