RCT History

Religious leaders clearly need and want competence in peacebuilding in their daily work. The Faith Communities Today 2000 national survey of over 14,000 congregations revealed that about 75% of congregations reported some level of conflict in the five years prior to the survey; that, at any given time, about one fifth of congregations are experiencing active conflict; and that destructive conflict within a religious community proves to be a major predictor of church decline.[1] Religious leaders report many positive outcomes of conflict, but also report spending a significant portion of their and their community’s time and resources dealing with personal, religious, and civil conflict. They also lament that they have not received training in seminaries or schools of theology for such work. Practicing religious leaders, in varied settings ranging from Boston to Cape Town, are confronting both the burdens and opportunities of conflict within their congregations and communities without the skills or support needed to meet this challenge effectively. The Boston University Program in Religion and Conflict Transformation emerged out of this now widely recognized pastoral need and the timely confluence of the collaborators’ institutional interests and capacities. The alumni, faculty, students and religious leaders we assembled with the help of the Luce Foundation in 2004-05 vocally affirmed the need to prepare religious leaders in the theology, theory, and practice of conflict transformation as a central mission of the seminary. This program aims to put the theology and practice of conflict transformation and the ministry of reconciliation back at the center of seminary education.

There are four primary contexts and needs for this Program:

  1. For the sake of Individual Leaders:
  • One study found that pastors spent 40% of their time dealing with conflict.
  • Most religious leaders have had no training.
  • For some this has led to burnout or unnecessary suffering—including leaving the ministry or other leadership position.
  • Religious communities aren’t the only places our students will work where there is conflict.
  • Leaders need to understand the theology (worldview), theory, skills and practices of conflict transformation.
  1. For the sake of the Religious and Other Institution:
  • The greatest indicator of decline in a religious community is destructive conflict.
  • Religious communities can and should be centers of conflict transformation and healing: Neighborhood Reconciliation Centers.
  1. For the sake of the World:
  • To begin to feel the pulse of the world’s needs, all we need to do is read the news.
  • We see a world groaning for the experience of the God who is Love, for shalom as right relations and well-being, for forgiveness, restorative justice and reconciliation. Our Relational Theology Matters not just for religious communities but for the world.
  • We also see a world where we need to develop, promote and practice interfaith JustPeacemaking, which includes the development of a theology of religions.
  • Finally, we need to see ourselves as partners with all those organizations working to create a culture of JustPeace.
  1. For the sake of our Calling:
  • The most important reason for this program is our calling—to be practitioners of reconciliation. Our Practice Matters!

 

 

[1] Insights Into, Series edited by David Roozen (Hartford Seminary and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research: Faith Communities Today and the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership; accessed in 2008: http://fact.hartsem.edu/products/Insights_Into_Congregational_Conflict.pdf). These statistics were roughly confirmed by a 2004 survey of 506 pastors by Christianity Today (http://www.ctlibrary.com/le/2004/fall/6.25.html)