Check out this interview with SASI 2010 Keynote Speaker Dr. Scott Appleby, which was featured in the April 2010 issue of the Roundtable Report. Scott Appleby is director of the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame and the Roundtable Report spoke with him in March for the interview.
Roundtable Report: We know you are an active expert today in the world of peace and particularly in the field of religious peacebuilding. We thank you for accepting the Roundtable’s invitation to an interview and we very much look forward to you being with us as a keynote presenter and advanced track co-leader during this year’s Social Action Summer Institute August 1-4, 2010 at Santa Clara University.
First, could you talk briefly about your academic and professional background? And how did you get into peace work?
Scott Appleby: I received my undergraduate degree from Notre Dame in 1978 and my PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985, where I focused on the History of Christianity. As a Catholic, the study of religion has always interested me. After I graduated, I taught at Saint Xavier College in Chicago, and then in 1986 I was recruited by my doctoral mentor, Martin E. Marty, to work on a research initiative that changed my career and my life – it was called The Fundamentalism Project. It was a multi-year, interdisciplinary study of global religious resurgence in the world’s major religions. The project produced five encyclopedic volumes of scholarly essays, three PBS TV documentaries, and an NPR radio series.
As a scholar, I focus on religion in the modern period. The question most central to my work is “How can people remain faithful to a religious tradition during the era of modernity, when secular trends and forces conspire to dominate our thinking and behavior?” This is a time in history when patterns of social life and thought tend to erode traditional ways of life and belief. In response religions are forced to react, resist and adapt in various ways. In so doing, they risk manipulating the very tradition they are trying to preserve by politicizing it and reducing it to a “social program” or ideology. Some reactions distort the tradition by or placing an excessive emphasis on certain doctrines and scriptures and construing them as ingredients of a political platform. This is the foundation for both fundamentalisms and modernisms.
After my time at the Fundamentalism Project, in 1994 I came to Notre Dame to direct the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and teach in the History department. In 2000 I was asked to become the director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. My time at Kroc has deepened my appreciation of the larger world of peacebuilding and conflict resolution, and I see strong links between the quest for peace in this world and the religious life as it is unfolds in conflict settings.
At Kroc we focus on conflict and the social and political foundations for building a sustainable peace. Our interlocutors include governments, intergovernmental organizations, NGOs and faith communities that are working for peace, justice, economic development and human rights. A peacebuilder’s vision must incorporate every social good, from access to clean drinking water and education, to protection of women and children from exploitation, to the negotiated resolution of civil wars. We examine what it means to develop lasting peace in societies that are emerging from years or even decades of destructive conflict – it is a long and arduous process that requires patience and wisdom as well as technical know-how.
RR: What is the difference between being a peace maker, as the scriptures say, and a peacebuilder? What exactly is peace building?
SA: Let’s first take the word peace. It is a word with a theological or eschatological connotation, but also a practical, this-worldly meaning. The risen Lord says to the frightened apostles huddled together: “Peace be with you.” Jesus was offering eschatological peace, the final peace that accompanies perfect unity with God. Here on terra firma, our realization of peace is always partial, as we attempt to bring a chaotic and conflicted world a measure of the love and compassion that God offers us all.
Peacemaking and peacebuilding are two related but different ideas. Peacemaking usually has the connotation of official treaties and settlements that unfold at a political and national level. Peacebuilding, on the other hand, refers to a grassroots process that moves “from the ground up” eventually to reach the high level elites who are involved in peacemaking. Peacebuilding begins with local communities and calls upon a variety of local and regional actors, including political officials, religious and business leaders, young people, the media, etc. to form alliances and partnerships for sustainable development, conflict management and human rights. Aside from official negotiations, which often characterize peacemaking, peacebuilding also strives to prevent destructive conflict, at one end of the conflict cycle, and to implement peace accords and rebuild institutions, from courts and schools to churches and mosques, in societies coming out of violent conflict, at the other end of the cycle. If the negotiations and peace accords do not resonate with the people on the ground, if the settlement is not inclusive and just, there will not be lasting peace. All of this is part of the peacebuilding process.
RR: Can you give us a preview of what you’ll be sharing during the Social Action Summer Institute?
SA: I will ask the participants to think of themselves primarily as peacebuilders, and ask how this self-identification would affect their self-understanding and sense of vocation, and prod them and re-conceptualize what they are doing. Thinking of yourself as a peacebuilder suggests a different notion of time and space, process and outcomes, more in keeping with “building the kingdom of God” than with “Getting to Yes” in a negotiation process. The spiritual charisms of peacebuilding include discernment, patience, and fortitude.
The first part of my presentation, then, will focus on what it means to be a peacebuilder and how that lens might affects the work of social justice and charity. We’ll also look at how peacebuilding is situated within Catholic social doctrine and scripture. The second section will focus on “reconciliation” and what that might mean as a distant goal for peacebuilders. Healing includes not only the physical but also psychological and spiritual wounds as well. Finally, we will ask how the Catholic religious imagination informs and can be informed by the concept and practice of peacebuilding.
RR: How does your Catholic faith influence your peacebuilding work?
SA: Peacebuilding is not merely a mundane occupation. We are called to live in the Kingdom of God, a state of being that is measured not merely by how many people are fed or diseases cured –these things are, of course, important— but how we nurture and show compassion toward one another and ourselves. We are not going to bring peace in the final sense; we are not going to eradicate original sin. Catholics understand that the interplay of grace, freedom and sin are part of the human condition, and that perfection will not be achieved until the human heart is purified in a definitive unity with God. Being a peacebuilder changes your way of being in the world, however. You measure progress and success not only through numbers and empirical studies, but also through questions such as “Am I growing spiritually, in the practice of compassion? Am I participating in the Kingdom of mercy and forgiveness?” When those are the metrics, you are more forgiving of yourself –and you realize that Jesus has already overcome the world. Such spiritual insights and religious convictions cast the daily work of “building peace and pursuing justice” in a different light.
RR: What are the biggest challenges peacebuilders face in the 21st Century, particularly those who identify as Catholics or work in ministry?
SA: Peacebuilding today faces many challenges, particularly in this economy where money is tight and budgets and staff are being reduced, people are out of work. Preparing people to be professional peacebuilders is costly; they need cultural studies and language training, interdisciplinary education and technical skills. Peacebuilding is an enterprise and a vocation that integrates many types of knowledge and resources. But now we have fewer resources to do this work. Catholic Relief Services (CRS), for example, has had to cut back on its peacebuilding budget. In the financial crisis, the first thing that has suffered is “peace.”
A second major challenge is burnout. There are many talented people working for justice and peace, but they can very quickly become exhausted. This work takes great patience and persistence, and the question is how these workers can be renewed and persist on a long path to peace.
Image is a third challenge. Someone might ask, “What do peace people do?” They march on Washington, they negotiate settlements, they advocate for human rights, they fight corruption in government—the reality is that peacebuilders perform all of these activities, and more. The actual profile of the peacebuilder, who must be a strategic thinker and a coordinator of various skilled and gifted colleagues, is not widely known or appreciated, as it should be. Only then will professional peacebuilders be integrated more fully into government and civil society and humanitarian agencies like CRS.
RR: Are you currently working on any research or writing?
SA: I am leading a major interdisciplinary, multi-year research project called “Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim and secular.” It is an attempt to understand how these two major religious traditions and communities have been affected by secularization—by the “separation of church and state,” the rise of religious pluralism, the drive toward democratization, the human rights revolution and other modern trends and forces. The study attempts to anticipate ways in which Catholic, Muslim and secular actors might collaborate in the future in battling poverty and disease, reducing violence, and advancing human rights for all.
RR: Do you have any reading recommendations for Roundtable members and SASI attendees?
SA: Strategies of Peace, edited by Daniel Philpott and Gerard Powers and recently published by Oxford University Press, provides the best definition and discussion of strategic peacebuilding (and it just came out in paperback!). Also, I recommend The Moral Imagination by my friend and colleague John Paul Lederach.
