Research : Spirituality, Religion, Culture and Peace - Exploring the foundations for inner-outer peace in the twenty-first century.

SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PEACE:
EXPLORING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR INNER-OUTER PEACE
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Linda Groff
California State University

Paul Smoker
Antioch College

"If a man sings of God and hears of Him, And lets love of God sprout within him, All his sorrows shall vanish, And in his mind, God will bestow abiding peace." --Sikhism
"A Muslim is one who surrenders to the will of Allah and is an establisher of peace (while Islam means establishment of peace, Muslim means one who establishes peace through his actions and conduct)."--Islam
"The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By his grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change." --Hinduism
"The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace." --Judaism
"All things exist for world peace." --Perfect Liberty Kyodan
"Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God." --Christianity
"Peace ... comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their openness, with the universe and all its powers and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."--From The Sacred Pipe, by Black Elk, Lakota Sioux Medicine Man

Introduction

This paper is about different spiritual and religious traditions in the world and how they have or could in the future contribute to the creation of a global culture of peace. As the above quotations indicate, almost all of the world's religions, in their own sacred writings and scriptures, say that they support "peace". Yet it is a known fact that war and violence have often been undertaken historically, as well as at present, in the name of religion (as is discussed further below). Yet religions profess to want peace. So what is 'peace'? And how have religions historically helped to promote peace, and how might they help create a more peaceful world in the 21st century? These are a few of the questions that this paper will attempt to explore.
Traditionally many people focus on how wars and conflicts are seemingly undertaken for religious reasons, or at least undertaken in the name of religion. Indeed, it is not difficult to find data and statistics in support of this hypothesis. Quincy Wright, in his monumental study, A Study of War , documents numerous wars and armed conflicts that involve a direct or indirect religious component, (Wright, 1941) as does Lewis Richardson in his statistical treatise, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. (Richardson, 1960)
As the Cold War has ended and inter-ethnic conflicts have re-emerged in many parts of the world, it has indeed been a popular thesis of different writers to argue that these inter-ethnic conflicts often have a religious component. A few examples of such recent writing include: Samuel Huntington's, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993); Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics; and R. Scott Appleby, Religious Fundamentalisms and Global Conflict.


Following UNESCO's lead in holding two conferences on "The Contributions of Religions to a Culture of Peace" (both held in Barcelona, Spain, in April 1993 and December 1994), and other interfaith dialogues between different religions that are occurring in a serious way around the planet--including the World Parliament of Religions, in Chicago, August 1993; 1and the ongoing work of the World Council on Religion and Peace--this paper will focus instead on how religious and spiritual traditions can contribute to creating a more peaceful world via an exploration of the foundations for both inner and outer peace in the twenty first-century.

Future reading recommended : http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol1_1/smoker.html