Harold Coward and Gordon S. Smith, co-editors for the book, Religion and Peacebuilding endorse a project incredibly helpful to anybody looking to do some sort of cultural reconciliation, which inevitably implies some religious reconciliation.
The book highlights many of the major world religions, finding strategies in each to foster peace. In response to the media, which covers the warring aspect of religion, this book seeks to counter the false premise and explicitly provides religious practice and theology that fosters reconciliation and peace.
Some of the articles find these peace-making processes at the margins of the religion. I could have my own religious biases, however, the language surrounding some of the theology in different religions seems to provide weak, at best, processes for reconciliation. Some religions are pointed out to have such a miniscule history of promoting peace, that the practices mentioned by the author seem diminished.
The book speaks highly of Christians, which for a religious tolerance book, seems quite odd. As a Christian reading this book, it was quite appreciated. I do think that the article could have been a bit more critical, in order to gain a full appreciation of the struggles of peacemaking within Christianity.
Despite the somewhat short comings and marginal opportunities for fostering peace within some of the religions, the book is very helpful and very hopeful. Though some of the strategies are peripheral, it is not worth chucking them to the curb. In fact, if they are indeed the only tools within the religious context, they should certainly be used and used often.
Preemptive action is necessary in peacebuilding and the strategies that this book contains must be practiced now - in conflict situations, tense situations or even blissful situations. Religious violence may realistically not be curbed in its entirety, however, preemptively building a culture of peace with contextual religious practices can help make conflict so distasteful that it is only the aberration who engages in it.
Most importantly, active peacemaking is necessary to keep people from being apathetic. Apathy is silent permission for conflict to occur. Eventually, as conflict encompasses public emotion, sympathies will err on the side of the violence. This is detrimental to peacemaking.
I will use this book in whatever religious context I will be serving in and look forward to the basic tools that will propel me to explore deeper, the specific tools within that context.
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