Religion and Conflict: Lessons from Inter-Religious Engagement for our Intra-Christian Tensions

While inter-religious dynamics continue to add fuel to conflict globally, efforts to improve inter-religious understanding over recent years have shown promising results and offered useful tools for constructive engagement. Those tools—especially approaches that emphasize the importance of finding a shared ethical commitment—hold similar promise for improving contentious contemporary relationships between different Christian communities. This practically-focused class will consider how we might realize that promise. November 10 – Religion and Conflict: insights from religious dynamics in the Bosnian war of the late 20th century (this gets at the “why this matters” question) November 17 – Inter-Religious Engagement: insights on how best to engage the religious other (this gets into tools/approaches that have proven valuable in inter-religious engagements) November 24 Implications for Today: engaging the (arguably) most challenging contemporary religious “other”-the Christian with whom we disagree