Interreligious Peacebuilding: A New Engagement of Religious Actors in European Politics?

The ethics of peace between religion and politics

Peacebuilding stood at the very beginning of what is today the European Union (EU); building peace through a new approach to the accord of nations. It was not the dictates of the victorious that was the guiding principle, but the integration of the defeated; not the exertion of power, but the transfer of sovereignty; not humiliating terms of peace, but ‘de facto solidarity’. ¹ It is difficult, or even presumptuous, to reduce this endeavour to a mere by-product of the Cold War, as some scholars suggest [3]. Peacebuilding is more than a question of political power; it is a question of ethics. The principles of reconciliation, renunciation of sovereignty and recognition of the other, which have guided the process of European integration [16], are not self-evident deductions from the value of peace. They are attributes of a specific ethical programme which does not conceive of peace as triumph of the will but as service to the neighbour and love of the enemy. The question is open as to what extent the religious beliefs of the EU's founders influenced their ethical convictions and political choices.

If in the past, according to von Clausewitz ([10], 1832), war was ‘merely a continuation of politics by other means’, then peace was perhaps nothing but a continuation of religion by political means. Presumably throughout most centuries in the history of humanity, peace was indeed a promise only seldom fulfilled in this world. Pax aeterna, eternal peace, was but hope for the afterlife, together with joy, justice and other expectations of salvation. To be sure, transcendent promises were in most cases moral premises for every believer. But neither religion nor moral philosophy dared to prescribe peace as an ultimate goal of political power. Even the pax romana meant peace by submission through the use of force. The famous quotation by Aristotle ([1], fourth century BC) is quite telling in this regard: ‘We make war that we may live in peace.’ The prospect of ‘perpetual peace’ [20] only emerged with the Age of Enlightenment, once statecraft and practical reason were thought to have emancipated themselves from the sphere of religious doctrine. ² Without any doubt, the European Union situates itself within this narrative. But once again, the debate is open as to what extent the ideas of Enlightenment were developed in opposition to, in spite of or on the basis of religious beliefs [17].

A strong anti-religious or anti-clerical connotation might at least be found in the French tradition of the Enlightenment, which is often regarded as its most important branch [9]. In that tradition, religion has been held responsible for the dark ages of ignorance, holding humanity in its ‘self-incurred immaturity’ ([21], malgré lui). The ‘wars of religion’, which in many respects might rather be seen as wars of the homogenisation of the nation-state [37], are part of this narrative. The common perception of religion changed at this point from seeing it as the source of salvation and righteousness to regarding it as the cause of hatred and blindness, to the extent that the ‘pathologies of reason’ [17] have often been left out of the narrative. Attempts to explain the patterns of the new international order after the end of the bipolar world by recourse to categories of religion and culture have partly drawn from this viewpoint. Huntington's theory of the clash of civilisations [19] may have attracted as much attention as it did because it combined the fear of the traditional other–-here the Muslim–-with secular opposition to any religious belief. Al-Qaida and the attacks of 9/11 seemed to confirm his hypothesis too easily. In many regards, Huntington fell back into the cultural essentialism that had been so heavily refuted in post-colonial studies [33]. For understanding new forms of conflict, his findings are merely of minor help.

Does this critique imply that religion means only peace and happiness? Certainly not! Evidence indeed suggests that religion may be used as a powerful weapon for the affirmation of one group's identity against another, at home or abroad [4]. In this respect, the end of the ideological freeze of the Cold War has unleashed old and new areas of conflict that do not comply with the principles of war and peace in the Westphalian world [30,32]. Religion might be part of this contest of identities, alongside ethnicity, language or other marks of ‘distinction’. But a distinction should be made between conflicts where the causes of violence are directly drawn from religious doctrine, and conflicts between communities that ‘use’ religion as an element of a distinctive group identity in order to claim power or resources. Only the former could be labelled ‘wars of religion’, whereas the common trait of the latter is rather situated within the mechanisms of what [26] calls ‘murderous identities’. Nevertheless, both forms of conflict, at least in their contemporary manifestations, can be seen as a second clash with modernity: in the case of al-Qaida, for instance, in the fight against what is perceived as imperialistic intrusion into traditional doctrines and lifestyles; in the case of many community conflicts, in the battle for group sovereignty inside former colonial borders that were sometimes frozen for many years by the logic of the Cold War. At any rate, the ‘pathologies of religion’ play a role in both sorts of conflicts and do often provide the eschatological basis for unquestioning loyalties: ‘God wills it!’

In order to even partially grasp the complex interaction between modernity and culture, religion and identity, ethics and politics, further clarifications are needed. The functional differentiation of society, characteristic for modernity and one of the main reasons for its success, started with the separation between religious and political power, affirming the primacy of the state in the public sphere [24,25]. Nevertheless, channels of communication do exist between different systems, and religion might have an impact on ethical convictions and ultimately on the exercise of political power, as the earlier example of the EU's founders has shown. The ethics of peace did make a difference in post-war Europe. At a moment when the central role of the nation-state itself is being questioned [2], when globalisation is leading various communities of different cultural backgrounds to settle next door to each other in Europe and abroad [35], it might be asked on which ethical and political grounds can the peace of heterogeneous societies be built. Is the concept of intercultural dialogue an answer to this challenge? Does religion matter in this regard? To what extent does and might the EU engage religious actors for the purpose of peacebuilding?

Religion in the political sphere of the European Union

‘We do not do God.’ Such was the famous reply by Tony Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell, when journalists asked the then Prime Minister about his religious beliefs. ³ Indeed, religion and politics do not make for appropriate dinner conversation–-and mixing them up would be worse still. At least in Western Europe, the divorce between religion and politics seems to be consummated, despite the formal persistence in different traditions of the relationship between church and state. ⁴ Furthermore, the progressive secularisation of the West had seemed irreversible. Many influential writers of the modern era considered religion as some avatar of primitive societies that was overcome by the Enlightenment, rational science and technological progress. ⁵ Max Weber coined the term, a ‘disenchanted world’ [40,15]. The fruitless attempts to make reference to the Judeo-Christian heritage in the preamble of the European Constitution, which later became the Treaty of Lisbon, showed that the modern polis of the EU is not based upon any particular religion [14].

At a second glance, the picture looks slightly different. The conviction that religion might eventually be overcome by modernity has lost ground, at least since the end of the Cold War. Several sociologists have revised the classical theory of secularisation over the last decades. According to them, religious beliefs are indeed transformed in the course of modernity, but will not disappear [18,28]. In comparison with other parts of the world, Western Europe might not be the standard model for the evolution of religion and society, but rather ‘the exceptional case’ [12]. In the EU, three developments suggest that the place of religion in the political sphere might indeed be re-evaluated: (a) the quest for some form of ‘civil religion’ to foster the cohesion of European integration, most visible in Jacques Delors's project ‘A Soul for Europe’; (b) the fall of the Berlin Wall and the accession to the EU of new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe, which have a different relationship to religion; (c) the permanent integration of Muslim immigrants into Western European societies and hence the establishment of Islam in the public sphere.

Since the very beginning of the EU, religious communities have closely accompanied the process of European integration. Historically, the most prominent role amongst them has been played by the Roman Catholic Church [8]. In particular, Pope Pius XII was highly committed to the cause of European unity and put much emphasis on the supranational character of the new institutions. ⁶ The churches and other religious communities established their representations in Strasbourg and Brussels over the following decades and ever since then have stayed in permanent contact with European politics, first and foremost at the personal level [7]. ⁷ Except for the accreditation of an Apostolic Nunciature to the European Community in 1970, European institutions did not establish any official relations with religious authorities until 1992, when the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, invited religious leaders to his initiative ‘A Soul for Europe’. Driven by a concern to bridge the gap between institutions and citizens, Delors's intention was to give ‘a spiritual and ethical dimension to the European Union’. ⁸ The dialogue with religious communities has since then been pursued, deepened and extended to representatives of Judaism, Islam and secular humanism. President Santer started to hold regular debriefings with representatives of religious communities after every European summit, and beginning with the Presidency of Romano Prodi, several meetings have been organised under the explicit auspices of interfaith and interreligious dialogue [29]. ⁹

The religious and political patterns of the European Union have changed considerably since the advent of eastern enlargement. Church leaders have not been the only ones to acknowledge that religion played a major role in the overthrow of Central and Eastern Europe's communist regimes and in the subsequent transformation of society [6]. In the words of the late Pope John Paul II, Europe had to learn to breathe with ‘both lungs’ again. The European People's Party (EPP), as a political movement in the Christian Democratic tradition, actively accompanied the quest for change in the East, mainly through its group Amici Poloniae in the 1980s. Once the accession talks with the first group of candidate states had started, the EPP launched a second move towards the integration of Central and Eastern European states through the establishment of a permanent platform for dialogue with Orthodox Churches in 1996. ¹⁰ The annual meetings have taken place ever since in different countries of the Orthodox tradition and since 2008 have been complemented by regional dialogues addressing political issues in particular areas of concern, such as the Southern Caucasus and Ukraine. Almost all meetings are attended by heads of state or government and high dignitaries of different Orthodox Churches; they have to some extent contributed to the integration of Eastern European parties into the political family of the EPP and to regional stabilisation. ¹¹ Moreover, the dialogue has increasingly embraced an interreligious dimension by including representatives of other Christian denominations and later of Judaism and Islam as well.

The political awareness of the need for integration and dialogue with other religions has certainly been boosted by jihadi terrorist attacks in the Western hemisphere. It is no coincidence that the first conference of the EPP on dialogue with Islam took place in 2002 under the explicit theme of Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations and the way to avoid it.’ ¹² The EPP-ED Group in European Parliament has since then complemented its dialogue with Orthodox Churches by forming a second working group on dialogue with Islam. At present, according to the many who are involved, this endeavour is still in its early stages of development, largely due to the delicate question of whom to talk to. The EPP-ED working group has mostly met with diplomatic representatives of the Arab League and of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). ¹³ But the debate has been launched to the extent to which engaging religious actors in dialogue might become a political objective in an increasingly diversified Europe. The proclamation of 2008 as European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID) was a major step in this regard. The President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, can be credited as the driving force behind the efforts to focus on the religious dimension of culture, inviting representatives of all world religions to deliver keynote speeches to the plenary. ¹⁴

The EYID might indeed be seen as a breakthrough in the EU's engagement with religious actors for the purpose of intercultural dialogue. Most official contacts between political and religious authorities have been more or less dedicated to this cause. But it must be stressed that at present this development is neither consensual nor coherent. The sole political actors maintaining regular and institutionalised contacts with representatives of religious communities are the Presidency of the Commission and the EPP-ED Group in Parliament. Some Member States in the Council, particularly France and Belgium, and some other political groups in Parliament are fiercely opposed to any efforts to give religious actors further place on the political stage. ¹⁵ The very vague definition of what the Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC), in charge of the EYID, understands as belonging under ‘intercultural dialogue’ has added to the general confusion. Religion plays a much less prominent role in the concepts of the DG EAC than in the equivalent of the Council of Europe or UNESCO. ¹⁶ Too often dialogue at the EU level seems to lack determination and purpose.

Building peace with religious actors?

Peacebuilding might be an underlying principle of the EU's dialogue with religious actors, but it has never been an explicit objective. The existing platforms of dialogue are governed by a variety of more-or-less overlapping political and ethical interests. The Commission puts a priority on fostering internal cohesion and the emergence of a European public sphere through the engagement of all parts of civil society; the EPP tries to reach out to traditional electoral groups and potential new member parties; religious representatives hope to influence EU decision-making in terms of their ethical doctrine or simply for the benefit of their community; and above all the individual religious and/or ethical commitments of particular actors should not be forgotten. ¹⁷ Peace might be a part of these multiple interests, but it is not identified as a priority on the daily agenda. The existing platforms of dialogue are rather a concern of domestic policies, whereas peacebuilding is a matter of external relations. In this domain, no official contacts with religious actors have yet been established. ¹⁸ The same might be said for the religious dimension of intercultural dialogue. For the Commission and other institutions, it was rather a question of non-discrimination to include different religious communities. Only cautiously are religious actors from conflict areas being engaged. ¹⁹

The lack of clarity in the concept of intercultural dialogue [38] might be connected to the difficulty in locating the new patterns of violent conflict after the end of the Cold War. As shown above, the classical distinction between internal and external security has been blurred more and more [13]. What then is the place of religious actors in addressing violent conflict and building peace? We might distinguish three categories: (a) faith-based peacebuilding, in which organisations of committed believers work for peace alongside other NGOs but without particular emphasis on their religious background; (b) religious peacebuilding, in which dignitaries or laypersons, individually or collectively, make an explicit appeal to religious values for the sake of peace and reconciliation; (c) interreli-gious peacebuilding, in which representative persons or bodies of different communities are engaged to overcome sectarian strife in conflicts of collective identity with a religious dimension. All three categories might be useful in different types of conflict and at different stages of the conflict cycle [22,34], but only the third seems to be of crucial importance for building peace in clashes involving religious identity.

Anyone who has experienced a violent community conflict with a religious dimension might possibly join the Lebanese Minister for Public Reform, Ibrahim Chamseddine, in his affirmation that ‘obviously you cannot build peace without religious authorities!‘ ²⁰ Until today, the EU has neglected this aspect in its peacebuilding policies, for a variety of reasons. ²¹ The time might have come to reconsider this position. The attempts of the EPP and the EPP-ED Group to address issues of war and peace within the framework of intercultural and religious dialogue might be seen as a first step in this direction. But the question is open as to whether, on the one hand, political consensus might be found within the EU to foster the engagement of religious actors on the political stage, or, on the other hand, whether religious dignitaries are really willing to embrace dialogue for the sake of reconciliation and peace. Furthermore, even if the principle of interreligious peacebuilding is accepted, the most difficult question remains whom to talk to. Initial evidence on the ground suggests that interreligious dialogue should include, but also go beyond, the level of high-ranking religious authorities. ²² Peacebuilding and reconciliation are an incremental process and must be undertaken at different levels [22]. But what about the troublemakers? What about religious radicals or extremists? These are legitimate questions that can ultimately only be answered on a case-by-case basis.

No illusions should be held! Interreligious peacebuilding will not end all violence and bring eternal peace. But any form of understanding will help to build confidence and trust amongst enemies, as long as they agree to engage in dialogue and hence to recognise the other. Certainly, questions of war and peace are first and foremost a matter of politics, and the separation between religion and politics is perhaps one of the most precious goods of modern civilisation. But if, according to Ernst-Wolfgang [5], ‘liberal democracy draws upon presuppositions that it cannot guarantee by itself’, then the EU should perhaps acknowledge and foster the role religion might play, amongst other sources, in the construction of a common ethos. In heterogeneous societies, where several communities coexist, intercultural dialogue might be an adequate tool for this venture, notwithstanding the necessity to build dialogue on the basis of and not contra individual rights. This premise should not only apply to the EU's domestic policies but also to its peacebuilding efforts abroad, especially in the case of community conflicts with religious aspects. Peacekeeping troops and technical assistance are but half the rent; the ethical and religious bases of peace should not be ignored. Living together in diversity requires a common ethical ground.