Religion without Violence

The Practice and Philosophy of Scriptural Reasoning

Peter Ochs

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532638954
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In 1992, Peter Ochs and a few Christian and Muslim colleagues began to gather small groups, in and outside the classroom, to practice close and attentive reading of the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. The hope was that members of different religions could hear one another through the patient, respectful reading of each other's Scripture. Hearing each other, participants might enter into interreligious relationships that might point a way to the peaceful engagement of religions--especially those who, after September 11, 2001, too often found themselves at each other's throats. It was a hope for religion without violence.Nearly thirty years later, this practice of study-across-difference has seeded an international movement, now named Scriptural Reasoning. The movement nurtures cooperative study among students, scholars, and congregants devoted to distinctly different religious and value traditions. In Religion without Violence, Ochs reflects on the practical and philosophic lessons he has learned from hosting hundreds of Scriptural Reasoning engagements. He introduces the "scriptural pragmatism" of Scriptural Reasoning." He painstakingly recounts instances of successful scriptural reasoning and warns where and how it might fail. He provides guidance on how to introduce and facilitate Scriptural Reasoning in the classroom. He shows how reading out of the "hearth" of a faith can contribute to peace building across religions. And, drawing on the resources of rabbinic tradition, Augustine, and Charles Peirce, he moves beyond practice to reflect on the implications of Scriptural Reasoning for discerning what kinds of "reasoning" best address and help repair societal crises like religion-related violent conflict.

Chapter 6

Hearth-To-Hearth Interreligious Peace Building

After four chapters of intense discussion of SR in the classroom and in contemporary academic thinking, chapter 6 returns to the theme introduced in chapter 1: SR as an approach to peacebuilding.208 This is the dimension of SR that gets most public attention and for good reason, since religion-related violence is increasing globally. This chapter offers three arguments about religion-related violent conflict: (i) At the present time, governmental and civic agencies dedicated to conflict resolution fail to identify any successful method for diagnosing the contribution of religion/religious behavior to such conflict or to its resolution; (ii) SR introduces models of reasoning and practice that may repair this failure; (iii) One such model, “Hearth to Hearth Peace Building” (H2H), is now ready for field tests in regions of conflict. The chapter offers three additional arguments about how to employ SR: (a) Formational SR (FSR) is not an appropriate instrument for peacebuilding in settings of violent conflict; (b) The Logic of SR (SRL) is, however, a vital resource for peacebuilding in settings of religion-related violent conflict, and SRL is obtained by constructing logical diagrams of the elemental patterns of SR reasoning displayed in FSR; (c) H2H is an application of SRL to the setting of religion-related violent conflict. I introduce general features of H2H by applying SRL to a general model of such conflict. For practical use, analysts must reframe H2H (or comparable instruments) with respect to the conditions and objectives of location-specific peacebuilding activities and in dialogue with stakeholders to the conflict.

I divide the chapter into two sections. In section I, “Religion and Violence,” I offer general claims about why governmental and civic agencies have failed to identify and address religion’s role in violent conflict. I compose section I for a general audience. In section II, “H2H Peacebuilding and the Logic of SR,” I offer more technical claims about the potential peacebuilding contributions of SRL and H2H. In the process, I offer concluding accounts of why FSR may succeed and of how and why SR reasoning may contribute to peacebuilding. I compose section II for a somewhat more specialized audience.

I. Religion and Violence

Religion is Dangerous. Recent studies suggest that religion is indeed a significant factor in armed conflict around the world. According to a 2014 Pew Research report, “the share of countries with a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religions reached a six-year peak in 2012. A third of the 198 counties and territories included in the study had high religious hostilities in 2012, up from 20% as of mid-2007. Religious hostilities increased in every major region of the world except the Americas.”209 These conflicts were driven by a broad range of factors, but interreligious animosities and violence played as significant role. In fact, of thirty-five significant armed conflict reported in 2013, the top two factors were matters of identity (twenty-one conflicts) and matters of religion (twenty-one conflicts).210

I interpret such reports as evidence that what I call “religion” is dangerous to humankind. But I add that there is nonetheless a solution to religion-related violence, and that what I am calling “religion” is a primary source of a solution. In the following section, I offer a six-point argument to support this interpretation. Before I start, however, let me clarify something.

One lesson I learned from twenty-five years of SR practice is that our behavior as possible contributors to peace building will be demonstrably improved if we adopted the following, operational models for collecting data about what I will call “indigenous religious value judgements.” The data will be speeches, sermons, teachings and, in some cases, informal presentations by leaders and teachers of groups participating in a given conflict. Guided by our operational categories of “religious values,” researchers will cull that data for evidence of “religious value judgements,” from which researchers would base their diagnoses of a given religious group’s contributions to conflict as well as its possible contributions to conflict resolution. My argument is that researchers would indeed “impose” certain stipulated definitions of religious values, but the validity of these definitions would be measured only by the success or failure of the diagnoses that they stimulate. Once a given conflict-specific study is concluded, the stipulated definitions are retired. Even if a set of diagnoses prove fruitful, the specific claims offered about the “religion” and “values” of a particular group are no longer useful. Any subsequent study will rely on new operational definitions. If, case after case, this diagnostic approach proves unfruitful, then, this way of formulating op...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• How SR Reads and Interprets Scripture
• Pragmatic Reasoning in SR
• Teaching SR
• What Is (Really) Going on in the SR Classroom?138
• Hearth-To-Hearth Interreligious Peace Building
• Bibliography