As threats on the global stage deepened over a century ago, eventually culminating in an array of hostilities so widespread as to be designated history’s first world war, a new institution was simultaneously being established in the Netherlands. Founded in 1915 by 30 leading peace activists and twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Central Organization for a Durable Peace sought to reorganize the foundations of international peace work, even in the midst of ongoing war. The Organization reached out to a truly diverse array of thinkers and visionaries, and so came into contact with the leader of the Bahá’í Faith at that time, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who praised the Organization for its efforts and commended to its attention the vital link between aspirations toward peace, on the one hand, and the influence of religion as a social force, on the other. He wrote, in the second of two lengthy communications addressed to the Organization:
Today the benefits of universal peace are recognized amongst the people, and likewise the harmful effects of war are clear and manifest to all. But in this matter, knowledge alone is far from sufficient: A power of implementation is needed to establish it throughout the world…. It is our firm belief that the power of implementation in this great endeavour is the penetrating influence of the Word of God and the confirmations of the Holy Spirit.
Embedded within such an assertion are two interrelated propositions that remain every bit as relevant today as then: that people of faith must concern themselves with promoting the cause of universal peace, and that people committed to peace must, in some way, tap the highest and best aspects of the human spirit. These two propositions have been at the heart of years’ worth of peace-related work that I have undertaken as both the Co-President of Religions for Peace and the Principal Representative of the Bahá’í International Community United Nations Office. And it is from that experience that I draw the following thoughts on the role to be played by religious communities in raising up ever-growing numbers of true practitioners of peace in societies all around the world.
In the heart of Manhattan, a powerful call for peace
Far from the Netherlands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, directly across First Avenue from the sprawling complex of the United Nations Headquarters, is a granite monument that bears the following inscription:
THEY SHALL BEAT THEIR SWORDS INTO / PLOWSHARES, AND THEIR SPEARS INTO / PRUNING HOOKS; NATION SHALL NOT LIFT / UP SWORD AGAINST NATION. NEITHER / SHALL THEY LEARN WAR ANY MORE / ISAIAH
This unassuming memorial bears witness to several truths that are fundamental to the quest for peace, or so it seems to me. One is the fact that humankind’s deepest longing for peace, safety, and security has, for thousands of years, been tightly bound up with and expressed through our collective understanding of the Divine Will. Though we live in a difficult and often unjust world that might sometimes require defence of the vulnerable or opposition to the tyrant, perhaps with force, the sacred scriptures of the world’s great religious systems declare again and again that the world always intended for the future of humanity, at the behest of a loving Creator, is a world of peace.
That this monument was dedicated in 1948, the same year that saw the groundbreaking of the United Nations Headquarters itself, suggests a further truth to me. The United Nations represents the widest and most inclusive expression, to date, of humanity’s millennia-long endeavor of organizing its collective affairs and wider and wider levels. Though far from perfect in either design or operation, the United Nations is nevertheless an endeavor grounded first and foremost in the common determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as famously expressed in the first sentence of its Charter. And the fact that its physical presence is so clearly linked by time and location with the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah seems to suggest a recognition on the part of the UN’s founders that the enduring history of humanity’s religious impulse toward peace is a powerful heritage that can and perhaps should be drawn upon in organizing the political affairs of an increasingly global civilization.
Can religions contribute to peace?
This latter proposition, though agreeable to numerous people of faith around the world, has been far from self-evident over the years. Indeed, many within the international system, particularly in the realm of peace and security, view religion and religious actors with no small measure of distrust and suspicion. And it must be acknowledged that in this, they are not without justification. Any honest reckoning must acknowledge that organized religion, whose very reason for being entails peace and brotherhood, has often stood as one of the foremost obstacles to their realization.
Yet if wars have been fought in the name of religion, wars have similarly been fought in the name of territorial expansion, political ideology, access to resources, ethnicity, culture, history, pride, vengeance, and countless other justifications. More to the point, religion offers a preeminent framework for exploring some of the deepest normative questions of human meaning and purpose, of the nature of the good life and the good society. Experience demonstrates that humanity’s existence is governed not only by physical forces, but also by social and moral laws of cause and effect. Greed is inherently corrosive to the common good, no matter how artfully justified or concealed. Acts of selfless compassion invariably hold the power to motivate and inspire, no matter how seemingly simple or isolated. From this perspective, the path to a more just and peaceful world cannot be one of political or statutory adjustment alone. It must also involve communities and societies learning to align themselves with higher principles. And this brings us to the role of religion, as the work of unlocking the high-minded qualities latent in every individual has been a central concern of religious teachings from time immemorial.
In the multilateral system of international organizations and processes, religion is often treated as either a network of social and institutional structures that can be leveraged for purposes of service delivery, or a fragile cultural artifact in need of protection and preservation. In the sense described above, though, religious communities committed to the well being of humanity can be understood as communities of practice in which spiritual teachings are translated into social reality, for the good of all. Within them, a process of capacity building that enables people of all backgrounds to participate in the transformation of society—and protects and nurtures them—can be set in motion. Such communities of individuals actively laboring to put transcendent values into practice represent a reservoir of experience worthy of serious consideration and exploration.
Peace is not merely the absence of war
How does religion advance the cause of peace in practical ways? This is a question that members of my own religious community, the Bahá’í Faith, are striving to learn about all around the world, by working to translate spiritual ideals into action at the community and neighborhood levels. From a Bahá’í perspective, the abolition of war is not simply a matter of signing treaties and protocols; it is a complex task that requires a new level of commitment to resolving issues that are not customarily associated with the pursuit of peace but nevertheless vital to its attainment. In 1985, anticipating the United Nations International Year of Peace the following year, the world governing body of the Bahá’í Faith, the Universal House of Justice, addressed the peoples of the world in a message entitled The Promise of World Peace. This document explored a number of prerequisites for peace, touching on such weighty themes as racial prejudice, unbridled nationalism, religious strife, the need for universal education, a fundamental lack of communication between peoples, and the emancipation of women and achievement of full equality between the sexes.
Any of these topics could, of course, be the object of an entire exploration in its own right. For the purposes of illustration, I will expand on just one of the prerequisites for peace mentioned in that document, that of eradicating unsustainable extremes of wealth and poverty. Addressing this theme, The Promise of World Peace notes:
The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the brink of war. Few societies have dealt effectively with this situation. The solution calls for the combined application of spiritual, moral and practical approaches. A fresh look at the problem is required, entailing consultation with experts from a wide spectrum of disciplines, devoid of economic and ideological polemics, and involving the people directly affected in the decisions that must urgently be made. It is an issue that is bound up not only with the necessity for eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty but also with those spiritual verities the understanding of which can produce a new universal attitude. Fostering such an attitude is itself a major part of the solution.
The connections between extremes of wealth and poverty and the requisites of peace and security are of course layered. There is the violence of poverty itself and the conditions that lead to it, including the structural violence that allows poverty to exist and be perpetuated. There are the very practical implications of poverty and what it does to people. When the fundamental needs of people are left unattended, they are hindered in contributing their full share to the work of building the type of safe and peaceful communities in which we all wish to live. The same can be said for those at the opposite end of the spectrum—the energy required to accumulate and maintain vast wealth similarly acts as a formidable barrier to people lending their talents and personal capacities to the betterment of their community and society.
As local Bahá’í communities have gradually developed their capacity to make tangible contributions, at growing levels of significance and scope, to the advancement of the societies of which they are a part, questions around the economic life of the individual and the community can and must receive more concerted attention. In response, the Universal House of Justice has offered guidance to help Bahá’ís and their likeminded collaborators to explore such issues. One such message offers the following analysis of contemporary economic arrangements and central challenges to be overcome:
The welfare of any segment of humanity is inextricably bound up with the welfare of the whole. Humanity’s collective life suffers when any one group thinks of its own well-being in isolation from that of its neighbours or pursues economic gain without regard for how the natural environment, which provides sustenance for all, is affected. A stubborn obstruction, then, stands in the way of meaningful social progress: time and again, avarice and self-interest prevail at the expense of the common good. Unconscionable quantities of wealth are being amassed, and the instability this creates is made worse by how income and opportunity are spread so unevenly both between nations and within nations. But it need not be so. However much such conditions are the outcome of history, they do not have to define the future, and even if current approaches to economic life satisfied humanity’s stage of adolescence, they are certainly inadequate for its dawning age of maturity. There is no justification for continuing to perpetuate structures, rules, and systems that manifestly fail to serve the interests of all peoples. The teachings of the [Bahá’í] Faith leave no room for doubt: there is an inherent moral dimension to the generation, distribution, and utilization of wealth and resources.
A culture of Peace
The application of spiritual, moral, and practical approaches is relevant not only to economic behavior, of course, but also to political engagement, race relations, gender equality, and countless other facets of human existence that have a bearing on peace and security. The aim is not to make isolated adjustments in one domain or another, but rather to lay the foundations for an entirely new pattern of individual and collective life, characterized by the highest spiritual qualities. The holistic transformation of society in this way—an endeavor understood to be both a contribution to and a prerequisite of peaceful societies—is a notion that is very present in religious scholarship and practice. But it also finds expression in academic and policy discourses as well, particularly around what is sometimes termed positive peace, a culture of peace, and similar ideas, including the role of local communities, resilience, inclusive societies, dialogue, and human security. Whatever the details of any specific school of thought, the overarching notion is that peace must be understood as more than just the absence of conflict and hostility. It must include those qualities and characteristics that should be proactively fostered in any society, regardless of its degree of vulnerability to armed conflict.
The experience of the Bahá’í community is of course just one example among many other faith-based groups that are seeking to build more peaceful societies through the application of religious teachings and principles. Hopefully the elements shared above give some insight into the role that religion, as a social force, can play in helping to raise up true practitioners of peace in location after location, generation after generation. Countless religious actors and peace activists share this goal, and those of each background would do well to collaborate with and draw strength from the other. Such collaboration is both a means toward and an expression of a vision of world peace, and advancement of the common good stands as a powerful point of unity in an often contentious world. As Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet Founder of the Bahá’í Faith declared:
“True peace and tranquility will only be realized when every soul will have become the well-wisher of all mankind.”