I recently returned from an unprecedented gathering in Burundi of Catholic representatives from six countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa, a region that has become synonymous with genocide (Rwanda and Burundi), one of the world’s most ruthless rebel groups (the Lord’s Resistance Army), and perhaps the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II (the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The church leaders met to formulate a strategic plan for regional peacebuilding so they could better address collectively the inter-locking conflicts that have brought so much suffering to their countries.
Blessed are the African Peacebuilders
I had dinner with Archbishop John Baptist Odama, president of the Ugandan Episcopal Conference, a plain-spoken, courageous cleric who has gone into the bush four times to try to persuade Joseph Kony, the brutal LRA leader, to stop the violence and sue for peace. When Kony’s LRA did finally enter formal peace negotiations, Archbishop Odama and his Anglican, Muslim and Orthodox counterparts in the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative were given a seat at the table.
Also at the conference was Fr. Appolinaire Malu-Malu, who in 2006 chaired the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw the DRC’s first democratic elections since its independence in 1960. Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, the Church’s massive grassroots campaign in support of the elections was a surprising success, with little violence. The Catholic Church could play this role because, as in many other poor countries, it enjoys a moral credibility that is due, in part, to its being one of the only functioning institutions, providing a large portion of the educational, health care, relief and development, and human rights programs in the country.
Others in Burundi included specialists in trauma healing, Church agencies involved in the politically and economically fraught process of reintegrating returning Burundian refugees, and Catholic Relief Services, the largest private development agency in the region and a major catalyst for developing the Church’s peacebuilding capacity there.
What Catholic Peacebuilding Contributes
The peacebuilding work of the Catholic Church and other religious actors in the Great Lakes region is mostly a well-kept secret. Those from outside who are aware of it tend to evaluate it using standard social science metrics applied to political actors, NGOs, or social movements. To some extent that is valid, for peacebuilding by the Catholic Church shares many of the motivations, practices, and concerns that shape the peacebuilding of other faith groups and a host of secular NGOs—and even some governments.
But there is more to it than that. Unfortunately, the relatively few scholars, foreign policy specialists, governments and foundations who bother to pay attention to faith-based peacebuilding treat religion mostly as an undifferentiated monolith. And they treat peacebuilding as an autonomous package of skills, strategies, concepts and institutions to which religion offers no distinctive contribution. What that approach misses is the peacebuilding power of faith. Not faith in general, but a particular kind of faith—in this case Catholic.
The strategic plan that the delegates developed in Burundi—the culmination of a 3-year process—is different from other plans for peacebuilding in the region because it is designed by and for people whose mission and self-understanding is shaped by a specific set of Catholic beliefs, practices and institutions—and whose effectiveness is derived in large measure from that Catholic identity. Or at least that’s the case that a prominent Mennonite peacebuilder, John Paul Lederach, makes in a new book, Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis. In a chapter on Church engagement with armed actors, Lederach argues that the Catholic Church’s “ubiquitous presence” is a sociological phenomenon, but one that arises from a particular ecclesiology, which gives it a “unique if not unprecedented presence in the landscape” of particular conflicts. At least in majority-Catholic countries like Colombia and Congo, the Church’s depth and breadth of engagement in areas of conflict aligns with the multilevel and multifaceted demands of peacebuilding in ways rare among religious and secular actors.
Lederach points out that secular notions of mediation, negotiation, and conflict resolution do not adequately account for the Church’s engagement with armed actors. A local pastor in the “no-go” areas that make up large swaths of rural Colombia reaches out to the narco-trafficker or paramilitary leader, not as mediator, but as pastor, who engages and accompanies both the victims and perpetrators of violence, and prophet, who denounces and calls for accountability for violence and human rights abuses.
As pastor, he might also offer to hear the hardened killer’s confession, or invite him to celebrate the Eucharist. The sacraments, especially the Eucharist, Lederach explains, stand “as an important, perhaps unique, contribution of the Catholic tradition” insofar as “the sacramental act, symbolic and real, connects, heals, and challenges people affected by, and who can affect, the wider conflict.”
Lederach touches on just a few dimensions of Catholic peacebuilding. In the same volume, leading theologians and scholar-practitioners also evaluate Catholic teaching on inter-religious dialogue, Christology, reconciliation, human rights, development and ecclesiology through a peacebuilding lens.
A Corrective to Modern Conflict Resolution
The authors in Peacebuilding, like the participants in the Burundi strategy meeting, offer an important corrective to conventional approaches to religion and conflict. They show how strategic approaches to peacebuilding must go beyond the monolithic, undifferentiated, and functionalist approach to religion and conflict which characterizes so much of the academic literature and public policy debate. They take seriously the rich variety of peacebuilding resources found in the billion-strong, complex, and diverse community called the Catholic Church—and do not assume that the peacebuilding of this community is no different from other faiths or secular groups. They are deeply committed to engaging with other religious bodies, civil society groups, and governments in promoting peace, for that is what “catholic” peacebuilding means. But they do not insist—as many policymakers, scholars, and foundations do insist—that religious peacebuilding initiatives such as the strategy meeting in Burundi need to be inter-religious in order to be effective.
It is long past time to take religious peacebuilding seriously. The only way to do that is to take Catholic—and Presbyterian, Anglican, Mennonite, Orthodox, Jewish, Sunni, Shi’ite, Hindu, Buddhist—peacebuilding seriously.
