Religion and Peacemaking

About the Religion and Peacemaking Program

The United States Institute of Peace launched its Religion and Peacemaking Initiative in July 2000. It became an official USIP program in 2005. Its purpose is to enhance the capacity of faith communities to be forces for peace.

The Religion and Peacemaking program builds on and modifies USIP's earlier initiative on Religion, Ethics, and Human Rights. That initiative's primary focus was on the role of religion in world conflicts and the applicability of human rights norms to such conflicts. In the late 1990s the initiative gave particular attention to religion and peacebuilding in Bosnia, including support for Bosnia's Inter-Religious Council. The initiative, directed by David Little, now a professor at Harvard Divinity School, produced a wide array of research findings and publications, including books on Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and Islamic activism.

Why Engage with Faith Communities?

USIP now focuses more directly on the increasingly significant role of faith-based peacemaking efforts. Churches and other religious organizations were centrally involved in the grassroots campaign in the 1970s and 1980s that led to the creation of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Moreover, the Institute has a decade of experience exploring the interconnections between religion, conflict, and peace. Finally and most compelling, religious communities play an important role in many parts of the world as forces for peace and as peacemakers. Moreover, with assistance from organizations like the Institute, the peacemaking roles of faith organizations can be further enhanced.

Faith-Based Organizations and Peacemaking

The overarching goal of the program is to help facilitate the resolution of international disputes through aiding the efforts of faith-based organizations. The program will also expand knowledge about the actual and potential roles of religious organizations in international peacemaking.

Because USIP is a secular, government-funded organization, the USIP's Religion and Peacemaking program does not promote the religious doctrines of any particular religious organization. Moreover, this program will by its nature be interfaith and ecumenical.