The ‘Priest’ and the ‘Prophet’ - the Church and conflict disruptive friendships

Many early liberal development professionals and scholars saw religion and religious people as an obstacle to progress, touting that religion’s influence would wane as countries and cultures modernised. This result, like many other assumptions of liberal development, has not materialised. [1]

One of the results of this early assumption (and perhaps hope) has been that expertise in local and regional religious histories, practices and beliefs have not been well integrated into modern development planning and practice. When planning has included religion as a factor in design, it has tended to focus on organisational aspects of religion whilst overlooking the significance of how religious ideas inspire institutions and human practices which are shaping communal life. [2] This leaves a lot of room for much conjecture over the influence of religion on peace (and conflict).

Peacebuilding and peace research are not value-free, and often-times they are motivated by a normative agenda, “Peace has been invented and reinvented throughout history to reflect the worldview of its sponsors.” [3] Religious actors in the field of peace are not immune to the evolution of these normative agendas. Rees contended that religion has three modes: secular religion (religion that is subordinate to the priorities and structures of the state, market, and political ideologies), sacral religion (in contrast, where religion promotes primacy of spiritual and ‘otherworldly’ actors and interests and encourages detachment from the material world), and integrated religion (which brings a balance between sacral and secular interests and dynamics). [4] According to Rees, integrated religion offers the most potential for development (and building peace) within public and plural contexts.

Appleby drew from Rees’ typology to analyse how religious institutions, groups and actors tend to fall into one of two groups in their expression of integrated religion. The first group tends toward adopting more bureaucratic liberal structures in their development and peace work, downplaying their religious identities and histories to align more closely with the goals of secular relief and state aid. The other group tends to be more aligned with critical development ideals and prioritises religiously inspired social movements of resistance to the destructive aspects of the Modern capitalist development agenda (including liberal peace) and celebrates theologies of liberation as they align with critical development ideals [5].

These contributions from Appleby, Omer argued, are essential towards understanding engagement in religiously inspired just peace by religious actors and institutions. She wrote:

Religion as a tool in program implementation is not prophetic religion. It does not disrupt anything, is bureaucratized and NGO-ized, and carries little to no resemblance to the prophetic figure and her prophetic actions—moving power, disrupting it, rewriting national and religious scripts. In this postsecular turn, it is not a Martin Luther King Jr. or other exemplary figures who are cultivated. Instead, polished leaders, bureaucrats, religioncrats, and other professionalized religious actors take centre stage and actively circulate from one big conference to another in fancy hotels around the world, declaring commitments to stop poverty, reduce child rape and marriage, and many other ills. This is priestly, not prophetic. [6]

From the perspectives of Appleby and Omer, the ‘Priestly’ voice of peace has emerged out of a dualism that the realist philosophy creates, and continues today to perpetuate its assumptions and structures without adequately reforming them when they reproduce structural inequities and violence. The ‘Prophetic’ voice of religion, on the other hand, demonstrates the possibility of religion to challenge the hegemony of the positivist realism when it produces inequity and violence. These dynamics also appear to transcend differences in religions with ‘Prophetic’ functions of hegemony subversion being cited in literature from proponents of Protestant & Catholic Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Pope Francis in the 2016 conference on “Nonviolence and Just Peace” cited Christian–Muslim women’s peace movement in Liberia, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan as effective examples of this function and the role that ethical virtues in religion contribute to Just Peace. [7]

However, while this way of categorising behaviours of religious actors may aid us in situating some of the dynamics of religiously inspired actions of subversion and resistance to the negative effects of the processes of Modernity (as well as violence evolving from other social and cultural factors), Mac Ginty cautions us to avoid assuming stark binaries especially at the everyday of either dynamics of subversion of the hegemony or oppression of the hegemony:

“Alongside ‘routine actions whose repetition brings stability, order and submission to institutional authorities’ [8] , there can be space for alternatives and resistance but also space for in-between situations and flux.” [9]

Seek Peace attends to this intersection in our work: moving beyond the trend of development practice to only show interest in religious organisational structures in relation to (liberal) peace programme delivery, and also beyond the highly publicised examples of religious actors defying the injustices of our cultures and systems in highly public ‘Prophetic’ acts that are often idealised/glorified…

We focus on better understanding and promoting how religious ideas inspire human practices and actions shaping communal life and relationships in the everyday. The actions we are interested in are case studies of what Mac Ginty calls ‘remarkable friendships’ that contradict the dominant narrative in their own societies in which the ‘other’ is demonised [10], and initiate forms of ‘conflict disruption’ through challenging normative narratives of the other, normative actions towards the other, and to challenge dominant mentalities of conflict.

To us, this is part of the 'Prophetic' voice of the local Church, inspiring everyday actions for people in their normal lives and relationships to turn away from the dominant narratives that exist in all our societies that tell us to demonise (and dehumanise) the 'other', by turning them into our enemy, and pursue instead a just peace flowing from Jesus' Kingdom ethics. 

Read next a story from our own experiences of a ‘remarkable friendship’ that inspires us in our work and caused an effective disruption in conflict in middle-belt Nigeria.

Endnotes:

[1] Omer, Little, and Appleby, The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, 186, 190.

[2] Ibid, see also ter Haar, Religion and Development.

[3] Söderström and Olivius, Pluralism, Temporality and Affect., Mac Ginty, No War, No Peace., see also Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order.

[4] Rees, Religion in International Politics and Development.

[5] Appleby et al, Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, 187.

[6] Omer, Prophets versus Religiocrats, 3.

[7] Francis, Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.

[8] Capasso, ‘Sketches’, 221.

[9] Mac Ginty, Everyday Peace: How so-Called Ordinary People Can Disrupt Violent Conflict, 30.

A ‘remarkable friendship’

In 2014 the city of Jos in Nigeria faced unprecedented violence. Situated in the middle-belt region, it is one of political frontiers of the Islamic-dominant northern states and the Christianity-dominant southern states. When an ideological conflict (spurred by political, economic and religious agendas and failures) boiled over, the city descended into mass violent conflict demarcated along religious and ethnic lines.

In one episode, angered youth from the Christian community in the suburb of Bukuru arrived at the rented facilities of a Christian college threatening to set the facilities alight because the premises was owned by a Muslim. Gabriel, a pastor, and teacher in the college pleaded with the young people and convinced them not to burn the whole building, but in their anger to just burn one, a small food store next to the facility. Convinced by him this time, they did this and then left.

In another episode Gabriel saved his friend Abdul, a Muslim barrister and elder from the neighbouring village by hiding him in his family’s home when their suburb descended into violent conflict. This ‘remarkable friendship’ was the beginning of disrupting the violence and changing the course of regional conflict in their part of the city of Jos.

Inspired by this act of courageous kindness, Abdul convinced other Muslim elders from Bukuru to meet with Gabriel and staff from the Christian college and begin a dialogue that has today had a profound impact on their shared community.

Realising how susceptible their young people were to being coopted into violence (waging other people’s wars), they designed a community project together to teach youth in their community ICT skills, to enhance their employability and to give them opportunities to focus on something productive. From their friendship and influence as elders within their communities they designed the intake structure so that it would bring together 50% youth from a Muslim background and 50% youth from a Christian background. They employed two teachers: one from the Muslim community and one from the Christian community in Bukuru. This remarkable friendship not only disrupted initial violence, but it changed the course of the community of Bukuru towards one of intergroup friendship, the rebuilding of trust and the changing of narratives.

These stories played a significant role in motivating us to move to Jos from 2016-2020 and work in religious peacebuilding in Bukuru and the surrounding regions. They, among other remarkable friendships we’ve experienced during this season of our work, also played a significant role in motivating us to establish Seek Peace and offer churches and faith-based organisations support in their everyday peacebuilding.

What motivates these kinds of courageous compassionate actions? Are there common features or characteristics that can be observed across a range of examples of these fascinating relationships? Do religious beliefs, convictions and practices correlate with the incidence of these friendships?

We think they do. We think Jesus started something new in our world 2000 years ago that turned the logic of this world and its kingdoms on its head.