Conflict & Reconciliation

Contributors

This book is the result of a Project set up and financed by Gresham College, London. The thanks of all of us go to the College for great generosity in bringing the Project into being. The contributors met on three occasions to discuss the Project. For more than 400 years Gresham College has existed to share with a wider public the findings of current research in many subjects. Details of its lectures, programmes and projects can be found at www.gresham.ac.uk

Andrew Acland has been an author, trainer, consultant and practitioner in mediation, conflict resolution, consensus-building and stakeholder dialogue since 1985, and has worked in contexts ranging from the political, social and environmental to the legal, corporate and organisational. He was one of the pioneers of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the United Kingdom; his political intervention experience includes South Africa and the Middle East; and in 1994 Andrew was Bryant Wedge Visiting Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. Since 1999 Andrew has also been a Director of Dialogue by Design (www.dialoguebydesign.com), which has pioneered the use of the Internet for public and stakeholder engagement and consultation in the United Kingdom.

The Revd Jeremy Brooks is a parish priest in Hertfordshire, UK. He is the author of A World of Prayers, a collection of children's prayers from across the world and a number of forthcoming collections of children's prayers, drawn from different faith traditions.

Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok has taught religious studies in a variety of educational institutions in the United Kingdom over a period of twenty years. She is the author of Who’s Who in Christianity (Routledge) and A History of Jewish Civilization (Bison Books) and, with Dan Cohn-Sherbok The American Jew (Harper Collins), A Short History of Judaism, A Short Reader in Judaism and A Short Introduction to Judaism (One World). She was also consultant editor for Judaism in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (OUP).

Gavin Flood is Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Previously he was head of department and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Stirling. His research interests are in medieval Hindu traditions, particularly Tantrism, and also in phenomenology and comparative religion. He has published papers and books in these areas including The Tantric Body (Tauris Press 2006); The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge University Press 2004); Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion (Cassell 1999) and An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Future research work will develop his interests in comparative religion, in religion as reading, and in medieval tantric texts.

Mary Grey is an ecofeminist liberation theologian, until recently D.J. James Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of Wales, Lampeter and formerly Professor of Contemporary Theology at the University of Southampton, based at La Sainte Union (1993-7). Before that she was Professor of Feminism and Christianity at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is now professorial research fellow at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London, UK. Her recent writing includes: Introducing Feminist Images of God (London: Continuum 2001), Sacred Longings: Ecofeminist Theology and Globalisation (London: SCM 2003, Fortress 2004), The Unheard Scream – the Struggles of Dalit Women in India (New Delhi 2004), Pursuing the Dream – a Jewish- Christian Conversation with Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, (Darton, Longman and Todd 2005). For 10 years she was editor of the Journal Ecotheology. Her theological project is now reconciliation, of which reconciliation to the earth is a special focus. See To Rwanda and Back: Spirituality, Justice and Liberation forthcoming 2007 (Darton, Longman and Todd). She is a founding trustee of the NGO, Wells for India, a water-based organisation in Rajasthan, NW India.

Peter Harvey is author of An Introduction to Buddhism: teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 1990), An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues (Cambridge University Press,2000) and The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism (Curzon, 1995). He was co-founder of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies and runs a web-based MA Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland: http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/buddhist

Christopher Lamb (MA Oxon.) (MA SOAS) has been involved in conflict resolution since lobbying in resistance to Thatcherite social discrimination, related to Clause 28 (which has since been repealed). His interest has developed in conflict and resolution in parliamentary democracy, especially at the sharp end of lobbying and parliamentary debate. He is disturbed that religion, which often claims to ameliorate oppression, is all too frequently used to invoke a religious literalism to compound that oppression.

His work has developed through having lectured on Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. He has focused within each domain on conflict issues, including: sati, female and male circumcision, religiously-inspired homophobia, abortion, gender inequality, persecution of non-believers, religious privilege and the religious indoctrination of children. He also founded the Centre for Interfaith Dialogue at Middlesex University, which he headed until his retirement. Christopher encouraged Professor Edward Bailey to bring his Centre for Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality to a home there.

Christopher now lives in Cambridge and writes about the conflicts raised by religionists in public debate, as they oppose secularists, particularly in the area of justice and law-making. Christopher has been inspired in his work by exemplary resolvers of conflict working around the world. Of special support is the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ninian Smart, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Stephen Greenberg. He is currently acting as a consultant on a video-documentary project, involving Dilemma Theory, and research into new techniques of conflict resolution. He wishes that those with conflicting ideologies would make more genuine and open
attempts to reconcile their differences - to mutual benefit.

David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam, has MA degrees from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Lancaster. He specialises in the history and theology of Islamic thought and also in Christian-Muslim relations, and is presently Reader in Christianity and Islam in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively about Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, and among recent books he has written or edited are: Early Muslim Anti-Christian Polemic, Abu `Isa al-Warraq's 'Against the Incarnation' (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Muslim-Christian Polemic during the Crusades, the letter from the People of Cyprus and Ibn Abi Talib's Response, ed. with R. Ebied, (Leiden: Brill, 2005); The Bible in Arab Christianity, ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2006). He is editor of the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Xinzhong Yao is Professor of Religion and Ethics,and Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at University of Wales, Lampeter, UK. He has been teaching courses on religion and philosophy in Wales since 1991 and his publications include Wisdom in Early Confucian and Israelite Traditions (Ashgate, 2006), Encyclopedia of Confucianism (ed., Routledge, 2003), An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Confucianism and Christianity (Sussex Academic Press, 1996).

Endorsements

Conflict and Reconciliation admirably draws on wide-ranging scholarly expertise for the most important and practical goal of uncovering how our various religious traditions can most directly and deeply serve the work of peace. It will engage and challenge readers who want to do what is practical, yet with full awareness of how religions diagnose our crisis and recommend our healing.
—Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University.

This timely book brings together the insights into conflict resolution and transformation of contemporary research and practise with the resources to be found within the major religions and religious philosophies. It is a reminder that each of the latter has its own internal language, conceptual framework and history and that it is important not to be satisfied with assuming over-simplified equivalencies amongst them. Nevertheless the necessity of creating social harmony is a common feature, so that, at the very least, points of meeting can be found, and, at best, mutual
respect and trust engendered. The book is a forcible reminder that the quest for the universal has to acknowledge and accommodate the particularities of our spiritual traditions.
—Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet, Emeritus Professor of Bible, Leo Baeck College. Editor of the journal ‘European Judaism’. Author of ‘Talking to the Other: Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims’.