Shelby Sadler

Abbie Jenks

Intro. To Peace and Social Justice

Paper #3

November 25^th, 2010

Nonviolence and Religious Inspiration: Roots Of Peace

The correlation between religion and nonviolent practices has been the main topic on everyone’s minds lately. With the “religious wars” being fought in the Middle East and the influence of the American military, many people are losing faith in the nonviolent practices of religion. Throughout the history of religions, many battles have been fought because of the fact that their god has told them to. Although many religions, including Christianity, seem to preach “pacifism, turning the other cheek, and loving one’s neighbor” they have all been at the root of bloodshed. A negative affect that religion has on nonviolent practices is the way that people label their conflict as an act of religion. This makes people think that to be a good Christian, Muslim, what have you, you have to support this war.

Nonviolence is an approach to peace that many people feel is the most successful option. Ghandi called it ahimsa, translated into “nonviolent love”. Love for not only yourself, others, but also the environment. The people who practice nonviolence recognize the fact that even the most well intended uses of protesting and violent methods can late cause resentment and hatred toward the people with opposing ideas, so they have to be executed very carefully. Instead of resolving conflict through violence, they look to solve it at the core and use mediation between the two groups.

Religion and nonviolence practices play a huge role in the roots of peace. Nonviolence is the stepping-stones for peace. Not only does it encourage the use of mediation and the removal of war from our culture, but it also tries to incorporate the health of our environment and our planet. Religious affiliations also play a large role because many people put their religions above all else. So if their religions tell them do something, most likely they will. With this said, I think that it’s important to make people understand that to have peace, you have to be able to understand what you know to be intrinsically right and wrong. But, with these two working in unison, I think that it could be very possible for the roots of peace to be successful.

I think that nonviolence is very powerful. When you see movements that incorporate it, it sends a message louder then violence and hatred. And I feel as if many people, these days, are appreciating the use of it because, frankly, we’re all sick of getting nowhere with the use of violence. The practicality of it, on the other hand, is another story. It’s hard convincing the people who have been educated that violence and conflicts are what make up human beings. I think that it will be incredibly difficult to get people to understand that there are other ways and approaches besides war, but if I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t be in this class.

I’ve gained some very interesting new perspectives about war and religion from these readings. Growing up with no religious affiliation, I always found religion a very dangerous thing. My feelings have stayed the same, especially recently. I find that religions don’t give the option for accepting other people’s ideas, even though they claim to. To me, understanding and accepting is what we need. When reading about Christianity: The New Testament, I found that I got frustrated. Even within the first lines, when they state to “love their enemy, and actively to return good for evil”. Our biggest problem is identifying an enemy in the first place.