Issues of War and Peace: Is Religion More of the Problem and What Are Mahatma Gandhi’s Insights?

Abstract

When examining the history of religions and dominant religious narratives, institutions, cultures, ideologies, and practices in the contemporary world, one is tempted to conclude that religion is more of the problem in relating to diverse issues of war and peace. Dominant religions and religious cultures seem overwhelmingly to be causes, express systemic structures, and provide ideological, theological, and philosophical justifications for violence, war, militarism, intolerance, divisiveness, oppression, injustice, hatred, environmental destruction, and anti-democratic hierarchical domination. Can religious culture also be a positive force for nonviolence, peace, love, compassion, justice, tolerance and mutual respect, and harmonious and sustainable relations with human and nonhuman life, nature, and the cosmos? A universal, phenomenological, structural model of the dialectic of the sacred and the profane allows us to understand how and why religious culture has been such a negative force, but also how it can develop as a positive force. In that regard, Mahatma Gandhi, the best known and most influential proponent of nonviolence, offers a complex and insightful approach to religious culture in ways that are most significant for relating issues of war, peace, and religious culture today. What I propose to show, by focusing on the phenomenology of religion and the insights of Mahatma Gandhi, is that the full picture of religious culture, violence, war, and peace is complex, nuanced, and contradictory, and there are structural and contextualized openings for understanding ways that religious culture can be a positive force for nonviolence and peace.