At Religion Dispatches, Richard Ricketts interviews Sharon Nepstad, a sociologist of religion whose new book, Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement, explores the nearly 30-year history of the Catholic anti-war group:
I felt that it was an important movement to document, but I also thought there is a fascinating story here about the role of religion. For whatever reason, a lot of people still have the assumption that religion is a purely conservative force. So I wanted to show another side of it and to show what elements of a faith-based movement make it effective in working for peace. I was also interested in how a shared religious identity helped to link Christians in North and Central America, bridging some of the cultural, class, and ideological differences between these groups.
She also insists that peace work can’t end with the cessation of violence:
Some people feel that once a peace treaty is signed, the conflict is over. But it is certainly not; there is a whole lot more work to be done. Many times during the course of the conflict there have been so many wounds created that it sets the stage for another conflict to erupt. More attention is now being given to post-conflict reconciliation and that is essential. If you look at the literature over time, early references name this field “conflict resolution.” The assumption is that we have fixed the conflict and it’s now completely resolved. More recently, people are starting to use other terms such conflict transformation; people are recognizing that you don’t typically solve conflict in one fell swoop. These are often longstanding, historically-rooted tensions that you can, overtime, transform into a more peaceful situation. But it usually is not resolved with one peace treaty.
Read more at Religion Dispatches.