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Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, edited by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Gh. Simion, Rodney L. Petersen (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Multi-Track Diplomacy for Religious Communities
#6 in series
Rev. Rodney Petersen, PhD
CMM Executive Director Emeritus
In an effort toward the correlation of public policy and public theology, religious communities can be valuable actors in our contemporary political climate where so much violent conflict is related to issues of identity. This has been amply illustrated by David Little in Peacemakers in Action (1). Indeed, such is increasingly the case not only at grassroots and middle-levels of social leadership, but even in the international arena. Recent years have seen the formation of the UN Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace, on the Alliance of Civilizations, on the acceptance of numerous religious NGOs into the UN system, and the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief, to name only a few areas of development (2).
Religious communities are communities of memory and identity. The struggle with the past and with the nature of forgiveness, the problems of “re-membering” after periods of destruction, intermingle with the problem of memory and faithfulness to the past and with forgiving, and the problem of guilt and reconciliation with the past (3). With political as well as issues of deep humanity involved in the very tragedy of violence, theologian Paul Ricoeur writes that, “at the heart of selfhood and at the core of imputability, the paradox of forgiveness is laid bare, sharpened by the dialectic of repentance in the great Abrahamic tradition” (4).
What is at issue here is nothing less than the power of the spirit of forgiveness to unbind the agent from his act. Writing autobiographically, theologian Miroslav Volf asks: “So from the start, the central question for me was not whether to remember. I most assuredly would remember and most incontestably should remember. Instead, the central question was how to remember rightly. And given my Christian sensibilities, my question from the start was, how should I remember abuse as a person committed to loving the wrongdoer and overcoming evil with good?” (5).
Author and theologian Flora Keshgegian re-scripts Christian narrative in a way reminiscent of Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness (2000), by musing on the nature of time and narrative in relation to the dynamics of forgiveness by writing, “As we engage in intentional practices, cultivate new habits, and relearn the contours of hope, what will be the effect on how we tell time? How will time’s tale change? Our narratives of time may well change to be less linear and ends-driven, not so relentlessly comedic and more multi-dimensional. We may become better schooled in living with complexity and multiplicity, ambiguity and indeterminacy” (6).
What makes the work of religious actors so powerful is that they can address the deepest needs of a shared public narrative or world view and offer the possibility or the re-storying of a person or people’s experience. Cycles of revenge or anger can be lifted up through forgiveness and repentance into a new narrative that re-humanizes the offender, deepens meaning for victims, and lays out meaningful steps toward enhanced community safety and historical meaning.
Legal scholar and former Dean of Harvard Law School Martha Minow even argues that forgiveness may even be a “third order” human right, making possible healthy social and economic rights and development which, in turn, promote what are normally thought of as human rights associated with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights agenda (7).
Footnotes
1. David Little, ed., Peacemakers in Action. Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution (Cambridge University Press, 2007): 219-248; and see also Helmick and Petersen, Forgiveness and Reconciliation.
2. Abdullahi An-Na’im, “Religion and Global Civil Society: Inherent Incompatibility or Synergy and Interdependency?” in Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor (eds.) Global Civil Society 2002 (Oxford University Press, 2002).
3. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (University of Chicago, 2004).
4. Ibid., 459.
5. Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007).
6. Flora Keshgegian, Time for Hope (Continuum, 2006).
7. Martha Minow in dialogue with Fr. Leonel Narvaez, December 6, 2011; manuscript of the Boston Theological Institute.
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