About the Report

The field of religious peacebuilding has grown significantly in 

recent decades, emerging as a specialized sector of the field 

of conflict management. Yet recent events, including the 2011 

so-called Arab Spring and its aftermath, reveal both persistent 

anxieties about religion, particularly in the West, and religion’s 

support for nonviolence. This report tracks the history and 

context of religious peacebuilding and identifies the particular 

challenges it faces as it moves into the future.

About the Author

Susan Hayward is a senior program officer in USIP’s Religion 

and Peacemaking Program. Her work engages religious actors 

and factors in global conflict zones, particularly Sri Lanka, 

Colombia, and Iraq, to advance peace, religious coexistence, 

and reconciliation. She coordinates a special initiative 

exploring the experiences and techniques of women building 

peace through religious institutions or resources. 

2301 Constitution Ave., NW • Washington, DC 20037 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063

Special Report 313 August 2012

© 2012 by the United States Institute of Peace. 

All rights reserved.

Contents

The Context of Religious Peacebuilding 2

The Religion and Peacemaking Program 6 

Future Challenges for Religious Peacebuilding 7

Conclusion 8

Susan Hayward

Religion and 

Peacebuilding

Reflections on Current Challenges and 

Future Prospects

Summary

•	 The field of religious peacebuilding has begun to move closer to the mainstream of conflict 

resolution practice and theory. The 2011 unrest in the Middle East and North Africa—the 

Arab Spring—reflects ongoing challenges and opportunities for the field.

•	 American and European nongovernmental organizations, agencies in the U.S. government, 

academia, and international organizations—sectors that once held religious issues at a distance or understood religion mainly as a driver of violence—increasingly engage religious 

communities and institutions as partners in creating peace. Meanwhile, religious organizations that have been involved in creating peace for decades, if not longer, increasingly have 

institutionalized and professionalized their work, suggesting ways that religious and secular 

organizations could coordinate their efforts more closely.

•	 The U.S. Institute of Peace’s own programs on religion reflect the development of the 

wider field, having moved from research and analysis to on-the-ground programming to 

foster interfaith dialogue in the Balkans, Nigeria, Israel-Palestine, and Sudan. In addition, 

it has trained religious actors in conflict management in Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Colombia and 

developed peace curricula based on Islamic principles for religious and secular schools in 

Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. 

•	 As the U.S. field of religious peacebuilding continues to develop, challenges include integrating further with secular peacebuilding efforts, engaging women and youth and addressing their priorities, working more effectively with non-Abrahamic religious traditions, and 

improving evaluation, both to show how religious peacebuilding can reduce and resolve 

conflict and to strengthen the field’s ability to do so.

United States Institute of Peace www.usip.org

SPECIAL REPORT
2 

The Context of Religious Peacebuilding

As the field of religious peacebuilding begins to move from the margins toward the center 

of the field of conflict resolution, it has matured into what Scott Appleby describes as its 

“dread teen years: awkward, gawky, a bit reckless.”1 As the field has grown, it has had to 

contend with the changing nature of global conflict while demonstrating its effectiveness 

in transforming drivers of conflict. The changes both inside and outside the discipline have 

clarified the possibilities and current limitations of religious peacebuilding.

Religious peacebuilding work has evolved within a larger, decades-old discussion about 

the role of religion in both fomenting and alleviating conflict. After the Iranian Revolution 

in 1979, several analysts and scholars were alarmed about the U.S. government’s insufficient 

understanding of global religious dynamics and their effects on international politics.2 

When the Cold War ended and persistent localized conflicts overseas were interpreted afresh, 

analysts noted the salience of religion as a driver of conflict.3 Several organizations and 

individuals advocated for the U.S. government to begin to take more seriously the role of 

religion and to pursue engagement with religious actors and institutions as part of its work 

to promote peace, security, and development overseas. The passage of the International 

Religious Freedom Act in 1998, which created the Office of International Religious Freedom 

within the Department of State, was one response to this rally. 

The government’s development of a more sophisticated and concerted effort to understand and engage religion has been swift in recent years, particularly following the events of 

September 11, 2001, and encouraged by former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s 

2006 The Mighty and the Almighty, which called for increased diplomatic engagement with 

the religious sector.4 In 2009 the Obama administration initiated a mapping exercise across 

government agencies and bureaus to determine how, when, and why religious actors and 

communities overseas were being engaged to advance U.S. interests, including peace, 

human rights, and development. The exercise unearthed a great deal of interest in religious 

engagement and nearly universal engagement with religious leaders by embassies overseas, 

but it also found that the work was conducted largely on an “ad hoc and sporadic” basis, 

rather than as part of any strategic process.5 Since then, there have been several advances 

to institutionalize religious engagement. This began with seeking greater legal clarity from 

U.S. government legal counsels about how U.S. agencies can engage faith-based groups 

while still abiding by the establishment clause of the Constitution.6 Secretary Clinton initiated the Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society in February 2011, which includes a religion and 

foreign policy working group cochaired by Ambassador at Large for International Religious 

Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook, Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human 

Rights Maria Otero, and Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the 

White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Joshua DuBois.7 The 

Religion and Foreign Policy working group seeks to “initiate a continuing dialogue with religious leaders and other members of civil society that informs U.S. foreign policy and fosters 

common partnerships with the NGO community, including faith-based groups, in support of 

conflict mitigation and development as well as efforts to promote human rights, including 

religious freedom,” doing so through three subgroups that look at religious engagement and 

conflict prevention and mitigation, religious freedom, stability and democracy, and the role 

of faith-based groups in development and humanitarian assistance.8 

The State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, which provides predeployment training 

for foreign service officers, now offers a course on religious engagement. The U.S. Agency 

for International Development offers regular quarterly trainings on engaging religious actors 

in development projects overseas, and released a manual in 2009, entitled Religion, Conflict 

and Peacebuilding, seeking to “lower the discomfort of USAID staff in making the analytical 

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org.

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. 

Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, 

promote postconflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with 

knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy •

George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor of 

Practice, The George Washington University • Judy Ansley,

Former Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser under President George W. Bush • Eric Edelman,

Hertog Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Johns Hopkins 

School of Advanced International Studies • Kerry Kennedy, 

President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human 

Rights • Ikram U. Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, 

LLC • Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor 

of International Relations, Stanford University • John A. 

Lancaster, Former Executive Director of the National Council 

on Independent Living • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor, 

George Mason School of Law • Judy Van Rest, Executive Vice 

President, International Republican Institute • Nancy Zirkin,

Executive Vice President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Members Ex Officio

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for 

Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor • James N. Miller, 

Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy •

Nancy McEldowney, Acting President, National Defense 

University • Richard H. Solomon, President, United States 

Institute of Peace (nonvoting) 
 3

and programmatic connections between conflict, religion, and peacebuilding.”9 The Defense 

Department, meanwhile, has noted the benefit of liaising with local religious leaders in 

places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and created a core of chaplains whose primary job 

is to engage with local religious leaders. Religious engagement is now included in Joint 

Forces chaplaincy training and manuals and is being touted as useful in counterinsurgency 

efforts.10 The White House, working with the national security staff, formed the first interagency working group on the protection of religious minorities.11 

The International Religious Freedom Office at the State Department increasingly has 

taken a broader and more engaged approach to its mandate, seeing its role as being not 

only about monitoring and criticizing violations of religious freedom abroad, but actively 

developing religious pluralism and peaceful coexistence through engagement with and support of peacebuilding by religious actors, organizations, and communities. Its approach to 

nurturing environments in which religious freedom is protected and respected is understood 

as contributing to peacebuilding overall. In remarks at USIP in 2011, Ambassador Suzan 

Johnson Cook noted that 

Hatred and intolerance are destabilizing. When governments crack down on 

religious expression, when politicians or public figures try to use religion 

as a wedge issue, or when they fail to denounce religious bigotry and curb 

discrimination based on religious identity, they embolden extremists and fuel 

sectarian strife. It therefore is our core conviction that religious freedom and 

respect for religious diversity is an essential element of a peaceful society. And 

it’s an element of successful democracy as well, because people who see that their 

rights and dignity are respected are more likely to have a stake in the success of 

their country and their society.12

Joshua DuBois, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood 

Partnerships, has noted that his office, following a directive from President Obama, has 

increasingly looked internationally for ways to partner with faith-based groups to advance 

common interests with the United States. 

In U.S. academia, meanwhile, centers and institutes studying the intersection of religion, conflict, and peace have proliferated. George Mason University, American University, 

and Eastern Mennonite University offer master’s degrees focusing on religious peacebuilding. Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs houses a 

corps of researchers who study faith-based development, religious freedom, and religious 

peacebuilding. Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute has a distinct program on religion, conflict, and 

peacebuilding. Emory University has an ongoing religion, conflict, and peacebuilding initiative. The University of Arizona houses the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. 

Several prominent universities also have conducted dedicated multiyear studies of religion, 

conflict, and peace. Harvard University’s Religion in Global Politics Research Project, which 

ran from 2001 to 2007, was led by Samuel P. Huntington, Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, 

J. Bryan Hehir, David Little, Jessica Stern, and Tim Shah.13 From 2007 to 2010 the University 

of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies conducted a project, led by former 

U.S. Institute of Peace employee Timothy Sisk, examining the intersection of religion, conflict, and peacemaking in deeply divided societies.14 Several of these initiatives have been 

funded by grants from the Luce Foundation’s Initiative on Religion in International Affairs. 

The explosion of academic interest in religious violence and peacebuilding has led to the 

publication of thousands of books, journal articles, and reports. 

Finally, a number of nongovernmental organizations have emerged that engage specifically in religious peacebuilding, such as Religions for Peace, based in New York City, and the 

International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, in Washington, D.C. The past decade has 
4 

also seen traditional conflict-resolution organizations, such as Search for Common Ground, 

Mercy Corps, and IREX, integrate religious peacebuilding into their ongoing work.

Within the toolbox of religious peacebuilding activities, interfaith dialogue has been 

embraced with particular enthusiasm; increasingly organizations and governments tout it 

as a means to build global peace and security. The UN General Assembly resolutions 58/128, 

59/23, 60/10, and 61/221 all call for interreligious dialogue and cooperation to promote a 

global culture of peace. Other UN forums, including the Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace and the Alliance for Civilizations, led by the Turkish government, confirm 

the worth of interfaith dialogue to strengthen international human rights and peace. In 

his 2009 Cairo speech, President Obama affirmed how interfaith dialogue and service can 

bridge global divides,15 and the White House website has announced the U.S. government’s 

subsequent efforts to foster interfaith dialogue.16 Centers for interfaith dialogue have 

sprouted across the world and particularly in Arab states.17 Jordan has been particularly 

active, playing a significant role in launching A Common Word Between Us, a major ongoing 

Muslim-Christian dialogue movement that engages scholars and clergy around the world.18 

Of course, many religious communities have long been engaged in building peace, 

justice, and development themselves, and the emergence of the secular peacemaking field 

has led religious communities to systematize and institutionalize their own peacebuilding 

and interfaith work. The Catholic Church has worked in development and poverty reduction, 

human rights, solidarity, and peace, and after World War II, it began to develop specific 

tools and apply conflict transformation practices.19 Not only have individual bishops served 

as national conciliators in their countries’ civil conflicts, such as the late Archbishop Monswego in the Congo or Bishop Belo in East Timor, but the Vatican and bishops’ conferences 

around the world, such as in Colombia and the Philippines, have become actively engaged 

in peacemaking. Several organizational arms of the Catholic Church also have developed 

peacebuilding practices in recent decades. Catholic Relief Services, a U.S. relief and development organization, integrated conflict transformation into its work following the Rwandan 

genocide and has created Catholic and faith-based peacebuilding manuals to help others 

replicate its approach.20 Catholic nuns have been particularly active in building peace, as 

have Jesuit communities. A number of lay Catholic organizations, such as Sant’Egidio, have 

been instrumental in facilitating peace dialogues in Mozambique, Burundi, and elsewhere. 

Finally, the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, organized out of Notre Dame University, brings 

into conversation Catholics both lay and ordained from around the world to share and further develop strategies for effective peacebuilding that draw on Catholic social teachings.21

Similar examples of faith-based peacemaking organizations appear in the Islamic tradition, both inside and outside formal religious institutions. Many Muslim peace groups have 

emerged in conflict zones to promote Islamic principles of nonviolence and peacebuilding, 

emphasizing the pursuit of justice; doing good; the universality and dignity of humanity; the 

sacredness of human life; equality; the quest for peace (individual, interpersonal, communal, 

regional, and international); peacemaking through reason, knowledge, and understanding; 

creativity; forgiveness; proper deeds and actions; responsibility; patience; collaborative 

actions and solidarity; inclusivity; diversity; pluralism; and tolerance. These principles are 

integral to the faith tradition of many Muslims and are crucial to Muslim peacebuilding 

initiatives developed by major figures such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, 

Khalid Kishtainy, Hakim Mohammed Said, and Sakina Yakoobi. Since September 11, the field 

of conflict resolution has researched, identified, and highlighted such centuries-old peacebuilding practices within the Islamic tradition.  

According to Qamar-ul Huda, some have argued that nonviolent protests during the 2011–

12 unrest in the Middle East and North Africa—the Arab Spring—were not connected to Islam 

and that religion played no part in contesting authority or bringing change to the region.22

Many religious communities 

have long been engaged 

in building peace, and the 

emergence of the secular 

peacemaking field has led 

religious communities to 

systematize and institutionalize 

their own peacebuilding and 

interfaith work. 
 5

However, the ways faith-based and secular organizations cooperated in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia suggest that religion cannot be entirely subtracted from the peacebuilding equation. Even a 

cursory glance at organizations such as the Wajir Peace and Development Committee of Kenya, 

the Muslim Women’s Research and Action Front in Sri Lanka, the Salam Institute for Peace and 

Justice in the United States, and the Asian Muslim Action Network in Thailand demonstrates 

that Muslim civil society actors are important agents of change operating within an Islamic 

paradigm in their communities. In the Philippines, former USIP senior fellow Amina Rasul has 

worked tirelessly to implement peace education in Islamic education, including for women 

training to be scholars (aleemat). Muslim peace organizations and peacebuilders draw from a 

rich source of material within Islam that supports peace, as evidenced in the USIP-published 

Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam.23

Examples from other religious traditions abound as well. The International Network of 

Engaged Buddhists, founded by Thai lay Buddhist leader Sulak Sivaraksa, was inspired by 

the nonviolent peace work of Thich Nhat Hanh, Maha Ghosananda, and the Dalai Lama. 

Other examples include the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Hindu organizations influenced by 

Gandhian principles, such as the Brahma Kumaris and the Ramakrishna Mission, the American Jewish World Service, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Mennonite Central Committee, 

and the Quaker Church’s American Friends Service Committee.24 

In The Complex Reality of Religious Peacebuilding, scholar Katrien Hertog affirms much of 

what we see above, namely that

since 2000 . . . one has observed the emergence of a distinct field of study 

known as “religious peacebuilding.” . . . The field has grown rapidly through 

an expanding body of literature, the dedication of scholars, the establishment 

of research centers and the organization of specific disciplines.  At the same 

time, religious peacebuilding is also gaining international momentum as a 

movement from the local level to the global level.  In recent years, religious 

peacebuilding initiatives have become more visible, more urgent, more numerous, 

and more recognized.  Diplomats, governmental  and non-governmental bodies, 

international and global organizations, journalists, and funding organizations 

pay increasing attention to the possibilities of religious peacebuilding and 

of positive cooperation with religious leaders to address specific problems, 

including war, conflict, and violence. Also, religious actors themselves—ranging 

from laypersons and individual religious leaders of denominational structures 

to interdenominational and multiple religious bodies—seem more open and 

encouraged to take up a role as peacebuilders, exploring their own faith traditions 

and developing their resources and practices for peace. They increasingly develop 

an intentional, systematic, and proactive approach to peacebuilding, often in 

cooperation with other religious or confessional organizations.25  

Reflecting on constructive religious peacebuilding initiatives over the past two decades—

such as the mediation by the Catholic lay group Sant’Egidio to end the civil war in Mozambique, 

the participation of religious leaders in South Africa’s reconciliation efforts, or the intervention 

of an imam and pastor team in Yelwa Shendam Nigeria to stem Christian-Muslim violence—one 

might make several observations about the particular role that religious actors and communities can play in peacebuilding.26 In these cases, the religious leaders or organizations involved 

were seen as long-term members of the community with moral authority and nonsectarian 

objectives. In South Africa and Nigeria, they could challenge and transform religious narratives compelling violence and mobilize communities to support peace. In all three cases, those 

involved framed their work in religious terms. As Appleby states,

religious actors build peace when they act religiously, that is, when they draw 

on the deep wells of their traditions, and extract from those depths the spiritual 
6 

instincts and moral imperatives for recognizing and embracing the humanity 

of the other; and, when they employ the distinctive ritual and symbolic and 

psychological resources of religion for transforming the dream of a common 

humanity into a tangible, felt reality. They exhibit greater capacity for peace when 

they form alliances and spend the social capital they have gained through years 

and decades of confidence-building service to the local community.27 

Outside organizations engaging religious actors thus should not seek to scrub religious 

sentiment and power from these leaders by turning them into peace technocrats, but allow 

the traditions that religious actors work within to amplify their conflict management skills. 

As Jackie Ogega emphasizes, outside organizations’ support of religious actors in peacebuilding works best when the actors are given the lead in identifying needs and designing 

initiatives from the outset, drawing on their religious assets.28

The Religion and Peacemaking Program

USIP’s Religion and Peacemaking Program (RPP) was created from two related Institute 

projects in the 1990s led by Dr. David Little. These were the Religion, Ethics, and Human 

Rights Special Initiative and a working group on religion, ideology, and nationalism. These 

primarily research-based programs analyzed the role of religion in several global conflicts 

at the time, including conflicts in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Israel-Palestine, and the Balkans. The 

project analyzed the destructive role of exclusionary forms of religious nationalism that 

justified violations of human rights and discriminatory governance, which in turn drove 

civil strife and violence. It surmised that protection of human rights, nondiscrimination 

based on religious or other fundamental beliefs, and the free exercise of religion, recognized 

as markers of tolerance, could help stem the use of religion to drive violence and war and 

promote peace and reconciliation in places marked by religiously motivated violence. Testing this hypothesis, Little helped establish an interreligious council of religious leaders to 

support postconflict reconciliation in the Balkans in the late 1990s. This council sought to 

bridge religious divides and actively challenge formal and informal forms of religious exclusion and bias. 

When Dr. Little left USIP in 2000, the Institute created a committee to determine 

whether and how to continue a project aimed at understanding and engaging religion in 

conflict zones. Noting religion’s consequential role in global conflict, clarified through the 

research programs, and the continued lack of understanding and engagement of religion’s 

role in building peace, the committee decided to continue programming on religion, focusing on analyzing and strengthening religion’s positive contributions to peacebuilding. What 

was crucially needed, determined the committee, was a program to promote the role of 

religious resources to counter violence in places where religion was driving conflict and to 

build peace in a more general sense. Hence the RPP was born, in July 2000; the dire need 

for its work was made abundantly clear one year later on September 11, 2001.

The RPP began with several survey meetings to highlight the peacebuilding activities and 

commitments of several faith communities, including the Catholic and Mennonite churches 

and the Jewish tradition.29 It also focused on interfaith dialogue as a bridge-building tool 

in divided societies and supported several interfaith engagement efforts in the Balkans, 

Nigeria, Israel-Palestine, and Sudan, including the early work of the Sudanese Inter-Religious 

Council and the Alexandria Process in Israel-Palestine, which brought together senior Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clerics to negotiate issues, particularly religious issues, at the heart 

of the ongoing conflict. The work of the RPP’s local peacemaking team in Nigeria, a Christian 

pastor and Muslim imam, has been captured in two documentaries—The Imam and the Pastor and An African Answer—produced with USIP support.30 As the RPP has grown up within 

Protection of human rights, 

nondiscrimination based on 

religious or other fundamental 

beliefs, and the free exercise 

of religion could help stem 

the use of religion to drive 

violence and war and promote 

peace and reconciliation in 

places marked by religiously 

motivated violence.
 7

and alongside the religious peacebuilding field, its work has expanded beyond interfaith 

dialogue to include conflict management training of religious actors in Sri Lanka, Iraq, and 

Colombia, and the development of peace curricula based on Islamic principles for religious 

and secular schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The RPP’s modus 

operandi has been to identify local partners with access to and understanding of local religious communities in conflict zones and work with them to design and implement projects 

that respond to local needs and dynamics. 

Future Challenges for Religious Peacebuilding

As the field continues to develop, the needs and gaps are real and obvious. Four topics—

integration into the larger peacebuilding field, the role of women and youth in religious 

peacebuilding efforts, religious peacebuilding in non-Abrahamic traditions, and the challenges of evaluation—are most mentioned in discussions about the state of the field.31

Integration

Religious peacebuilding work often is designed and implemented independent of secular 

peacebuilding initiatives, and while it has moved toward the center of the field, it is not yet 

mainstreamed. Mohammed Abu-Nimer states that the religious peacebuilding “operates in 

the fringes of peacemaking and peacebuilding field, which itself is in the fringes of realpolitik or government policy making.”32 The road to significant integration remains long, and 

there is a great need for individuals and organizations involved in religious peacebuilding to 

strategically collaborate with other sectors, and vice versa, to ensure greater effect. Those 

involved in the field must determine how religious peacebuilding fits within efforts in and 

studies of economic development, human rights, security, counterinsurgency, and rule of 

law, to create opportunities for collaboration and advance common goals. These sectors can 

gain much from leveraging the influence of religious leaders, institutions, and rhetoric; in 

turn, religious leaders can realize significant benefits from collaboration. 

Women and Youth

The religious peacebuilding field has tended to target clerics and heads of religious institutions in its work, which in much of the world means older men. Experience has shown, however, that women and youth are important shapers of religious narratives and motivations 

that support violence and peace. Women have been particularly effective implementors 

of religious peacebuilding, particularly interfaith or intercommunal activities.33 Interfaith 

work with children and youth is particularly important in much of the world experiencing 

the “youth bulge,” to ensure they have personal commitments to peace and relationships 

across lines of difference; these can strengthen their resolve when being recruited, on 

religious grounds, to perpetuate violence. The field must do a better job engaging women 

and youth, as doing so ensures that religious peacebuilding work addresses issues including 

sexual violence, education, and jobs, that are important to these sectors and the larger 

population. This may require creating separate initiatives for women and youth, particularly 

to create a space where participants feel free to speak openly. But women and youth must 

also be mainstreamed into religious peacebuilding initiatives, even against the predilection 

of senior male religious leaders, who may want to serve as gatekeepers for their traditions. 

Indigenous and Non-Abrahamic Traditions

Scholarship and support from the Western world has tended to focus on the Abrahamic 

traditions, that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which identify Abraham as a foundational figure. However, a great deal of knowledge and practice from indigenous and dharmic 

Women and youth are important 

shapers of religious narratives 

and motivations that support 

violence and peace.
8 

traditions—Buddhism, Hindusim, Taoism, and other Asian religions—analyzes the causes 

of conflict and the means to manage and resolve it that could deepen the field. Buddhism 

offers insight into how greed, anger, and ignorance drive suffering and conflict, both in individuals and in social, political, and economic structures. Hinduism contributes understandings of ahimsa (nonviolence) and shanti (peace), as well as teachings that promote respect 

for other religious traditions. Indigenous traditions around the world vary enormously, but 

generally speaking, they have developed communal practices for addressing conflict and 

contribute wisdom about the need to preserve the integrity of the environment, which is 

often harmed during conflict and, in turn, propels it further. Greater engagement between 

peacebuilders in the Abrahamic traditions and those of other religions is necessary to 

broaden and deepen the field. 

Evaluation

There is a pressing need for greater monitoring and evaluation of religious peacebuilding 

work—and peacebuilding generally—to understand better which interventions, led by 

whom, and in which situations, have the greatest effect. The lack of evaluation to demonstrate the value of religious peacebuilding work has fueled skepticism about its effectiveness, particularly among secular-biased peace organizations and diplomats, and being 

able to show that religious peacebuilding works will help the field better integrate with 

other sectors. Historically, the reluctance to engage the religious sector has been based in 

concerns about inflaming religious passions, instrumentalizing religion, overstepping the 

U.S. government’s appropriate roles, and causing offense. These concerns are well founded: 

engagement with religious institutions is not necessarily constructive and can cause harm 

when not done sensitively and carefully. But certain strategies and tools have proven effective in conducting constructive religious peacebuilding. Evaluating the work will require 

creativity and commitment, particularly for projects that seek attitudinal changes (i.e., 

interfaith dialogue) or other intangible personal and social transformations. However, it is 

possible, and a moral imperative to ensure that religious peacebuilding efforts constructively affect societies. 

Conclusion

Since the launch of the RPP over ten years ago, the environment in which the program 

operates has changed. Religious peacebuilding increasingly has been accepted in what was 

previously a secular conflict resolution field, and U.S. government agencies have begun 

mainstreaming religious engagement into their work. The field is not accepted everywhere 

and at all times; Rabbi Michael Melchior has pointed out that in Israel-Palestine, those 

involved in negotiations continue to marginalize religious actors from peace processes, seeing them as having no possible constructive role.34 There is no doubt that the tools to deal 

constructively with the religious dynamics driving many conflicts around the world are, as 

yet, insufficient. But the very awareness of this puts the field, and the RPP in particular, at 

an important crossroads. 

A great deal of knowledge and 

practice from indigenous and 

dharmic traditions analyzes 

the causes of conflict and the 

means to manage and resolve it 

that could deepen the field.
 9

Notes

1. In July 2010 the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Religion and Peacemaking Program (RPP) marked ten years of programs 

and activities. To honor the occasion, the Institute hosted conversations in 2009 and 2011 among leading 

religious peacebuilding scholars and practitioners assessing the state of their field. This report summarizes 

the November 9, 2011, discussion held at the Institute’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Presenters at this 

event, entitled “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future Prospects,” included 

Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook, Joshua DuBois from the White 

House Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, scholar-practitioners R. Scott Appleby and Mohammed 

Abu Nimer, Jackie Ogega from Religions for Peace, former Israeli parliamentarian Rabbi Michael Melchior, and RPP 

staff Qamar-ul Huda and David Smock.

2. Barry Rubin argues that “United States foreign policy in recent decades has often misread the importance of 

religion as a factor in the national politics and international behavior of some countries and regions,” in Douglas 

Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds., Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1994), 20. 

3. See also Douglas Johnston, ed., Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2003); Jonathan Fox, “Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations,” International 

Studies Review, vol. 3, no. 3 (Autumn 2001); and Emile Sahliyeh, ed., Religious Resurgence and Politics in the 

Contemporary World (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990). 

4. Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (New York: 

HarperCollins, 2006). 

5. Comments by Joshua DuBois at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

6. Comments by DuBois.

7. See U.S. State Department, “Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society,” announcement, http://www.state.gov/s/

sacsed/c47725.htm. 

8. From U.S. State Department, “Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group 

Overview,” Washington, DC, document provided to authors.

9. U.S. Agency for International Development, Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding: An Introductory Programming 

Guide (Washington, DC: USAID, 2009), 3, http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/conflict/

publications/docs/Religion_Conflict_and_Peacebuilding_Toolkit.pdf.

10. Department of Defense, Religious Affairs in Joint Operations, Joint Publication 1-05, Washington, DC, November 

13, 2009. See also George Adams, “Chaplains as Liaisons with Religious Leaders: Lessons from Iraq and 

Afghanistan,” USIP Peaceworks no. 56, March 2006.

11. Joshua DuBois, “The White House, Religion, and Global Affairs,” Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood 

Partnerships blog, July 11, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/11/white-house-religion-andglobal-affairs. 

12. Comments by Suzan Johnson Cook at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

13. See “Religion in Global Politics,” Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, http://www.

wcfia.harvard.edu/weatherhead_initiative/02_religion_global_politics. This initiative helped spawn Monica 

Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New 

York: W.W. Norton, 2011). 

14. See “Religious Leaders and Conflict Management: Between Terror and Tolerance,” http://religionandconflict.org/

rc2/. The project resulted in Timothy D. Sisk, ed., Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders and Conflict 

Management in Deeply Divided Societies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011). 

15. White House, “The President’s Speech in Cairo: A New Beginning,” June 4, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/

issues/foreign-policy/presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning.

16. White House, “Speech in Cairo.”

17. See Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Amal I. Khoury, and Emily Welty, Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle 

East (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 2007). 

18. See A Common Word, http://www.acommonword.com.

19. David Smock, “Catholic Contributions to International Peace,” USIP Special Report no. 69, Washington, DC, 

April 2001. 

20. Mark M. Rogers, Tom Bamat, and Julie Ideh, eds., Pursuing Just Peace: An Overview and Case Studies for FaithBased Peacebuilders (Baltimore, MD: Catholic Relief Services, 2008). 

21. See Catholic Peacebuilding Network, http://cpn.nd.edu/.

22. Comments by Qamar-ul Huda at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

23. Qamar-ul Huda, ed., Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 2010).

24. USIP supported research that led to a publication on Mennonite peacebuilding; see Cynthia Sampon and John 

Paul Lederach, eds., From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2000).

25. Katrien Hertog, The Complex Reality of Religious Peacebuilding: Conceptual Contributions and Analysis (Lanham, 

MD: Lexington Books, 2010), xv.

26. Much of this has been elaborated on in previous USIP publications, particularly David Smock, ed., “Religious 

Contributions to Peacemaking: When Religion Brings Peace, Not War,” USIP Peaceworks no. 55, January 2006. 

27. Comments by R. Scott Appleby at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

28. Comments by Jackie Ogega at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

29. Smock, “Catholic Contributions”; see also “Mennonite International Peacemaking,” USIP public event, 

Washington, DC, November 2, 2000. 
10 

30. More on these films can be found at http://www.usip.org/publications/dvd-imam-and-pastor and at http://

anafricananswer.org (accessed July 9, 2012). 

31. In his presentation on November 9, 2011, Mohammed Abu-Nimer discussed the gaps in the field, particularly the 

need for greater engagement with women, youth, and non-Abrahamic traditions, and for evaluation. His thoughts 

are integrated into this section. 

32. Comments by Mohammed Abu-Nimer at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

33. For more, see Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward with Claudia Zambra, Esther Berger, and Sarah Jackson, 

“Women in Religious Peacebuilding,” USIP Peaceworks no. 71, May 2011. 

34. Comments by Michael Melchior at “Religion and Peacemaking: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future 

Prospects,” USIP public event, Washington, DC, November 9, 2011.

Of Related Interest

•	 Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam (USIP Press, 2010) by Qamar-ul Huda

•	 The Koran Desecration and the Role of Religion in Conflict by Qamar-ul Huda (Peace Brief, 

March 2012)

•	 Countering Radicalization in America by Lorenzo Vidino (Special Report, November 2010)

•	 Averting Hell on Earth: Religion and the Prevention of Genocide by Susan Hayward (Special 

Report, September 2010)

•	 Abrahamic Alternatives to War: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on Just Peacemaking by Susan Thistlethwaite and Glen Stassen (Special Report, October 2008)

•	 Religion in World Affairs: Its Role in Conflict and Peace by David Smock (Special Report, 

February 2008) 

•	 Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East (USIP Press, 2007) by Mohammed 

Abu-Nimer, Amal I. Khoury, and Emily Welty

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An online edition of this and related 

reports can be found on our Web site 

(www.usip.org), together with additional 

information on the subject.