TWO weeks ago I shared excerpts from a presentation Methodidt Church president, Reverend Dr Tevita Banivanua on the topic on peace and religion at the 2016 Pacific Peace Conference.
The third presenter on the same panel was Dr Jaqcueline Ryle, a social anthropologist who lectures at the University of the South Pacific and is the author of the 2010 book, “My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji”.
Over the next two weeks this column will share Dr Ryle’s presentation in two parts as it provides an important discussion on an important strand in the mat on which we sit in Fiji.
In her presentation, Dr Ryle invited those present to reflect on the theme, “Religion: cause of conflict or key to reconciliation?”
The thinking behind her title was to highlight the negative and problematic ways religion is conceived of today in secular circles, and the challenges of defining and discussing religion in relation to peace in a way that adequately captures the complexity of the topic in relation to the Pacific Island region”.
Definitions
Contemporary scholars of religion willingly admit that ‘religion’ is an extremely difficult concept to define.
Most scholars of religion in the 19th and much of the 20th Century, who were predominantly either atheists or non-believers, saw religion from a universal perspective as a phenomenon which would evolve in all societies from so-called ‘primitive’ religious beliefs and practices through set stages towards increasing secularization and rationalization.
Religion, often defined as superstition, illusory or a social construct, would fade over time and eventually become obsolete as societies developed become rational and secularised, based on scientific thought. Several of the classical scholars of religion maintained a sharp distinction between the sacred sphere and the secular sphere, a distinction that makes little sense in non-western cultures and societies where religion and culture as belief and practice are often, as in Pacific Island societies, so interwoven that they become almost indistinguishable from one another.
Yet this western distinction between the sacred and the secular permeates much understanding of religion and is at the root of western lack of understanding of the centrality of religion and religious thinking in the lives of most of the rest of the world.
The futility of binary oppositions
There is of course no either/or answer to the question of whether religion is the cause of conflict or the key to reconciliation. We cannot categorise religion solely as the baddie or the goodie, as the poser of that polemical guest lecture question well knew. And yet it is a popular and often unchallenged comment that religion is the cause of all conflicts and wars.
There is no doubt that religion and religious actors have been and are the cause of conflict, division, violence, wars, great cruelty, suffering and bloodshed. The heinous crimes and barbarism we have witnessed in recent years, perpetrated in the name of religion, have served to reinforce this image. But viewing religion as the cause of conflicts and wars needs to be qualified to avoid being reductionist. It will often be a simplistic explanation that masks the complexity of conflict and other deeply rooted societal issues such as socioeconomic and gender inequalities.
And religious beliefs and religious actors have played and are playing transformative roles in responding to violence and conflict through acting out theologies of justice and peace, defending peace in non-violent ways and working for reconciliation processes and peace-building at national and local levels of society. One of the most well-known examples of this is the South African Truth and Reconciliation process. More close to home is the central role the Anglican Melanesian Brotherhood played in negotiating peace and reconciliation during the civil war in the Solomon Islands. And there are countless other examples of religiously-founded peace-building and reconciliation.
We limit ourselves by using the simplistic binary oppositions that characterise western approaches to discussing religion, such as peace/violence; conflict/resolution; secular/religious; practicing/non-practicing; inclusive/exclusive; conservative/progressive. Such oppositions lock political discussions into entrenched camps advocating for or against a particular position, such as whether religion is the cause of conflict or the key to reconciliation; whether religion has a role to play in peace-building , or not; or whether religion should be part of politics, or not … creating the false idea that it is possible or makes sense to make such distinctions … For example, is it possible, or does it make sense to posit the idea of a value-laden religious sphere against a contrived secular sphere which is defined as ‘neutral’ because it is considered religion-less?
We would do better to focus on understanding the historical, cultural, religious and political interconnections and dynamics of these categories than such oppositions. We should focus on where and how religion and politics converge, in relation to peace for example, than focusing on whether they should converge or not.
Next week: Dr Ryle outlines points on peace and religion from three main, interwoven perspectives: global/international perspectives; Pacific regional/national perspectives and local/communal/individual perspectives
* Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained Methodist minister and a citizen journalist. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Methodist Church in Fiji or this newspaper.
