Religious Peace, Then and Now
In a world troubled by religious polarization, hatred, violence, and war, it can be difficult to imagine “Peace on Earth” as anything other than a hollow Advent greeting or a laudable, but very distant goal. Religious peace nevertheless has a long and rich history that can help us to see that peaceful religious coexistence is much more common and durable than we might imagine, and that religious violence and war need not be our “new normal” in the twenty-first century.
Using both historical and contemporary examples, Religious Peace, Then and Now maps out the many ways that competitive communities of faith have learned to accommodate their differences in a wide variety of conflicted circumstances. In these accommodations, which are often improvised and imperfect, ordinary people have, in contentious interaction with those who claim religious and political authority over them, built durable structures of peaceful coexistence. These structures have served as the foundation of modern religious pluralism, and the stories of how they came into being can help us both to envision and to work for a more peaceful future.
All welcome– This event is free, but booking is required.
This page was last updated on 14 March 2025
