Berkley Center

Background: This June 2010 discussion between David Smock, vice president of the Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), and Susan Hayward focuses on his experiences in international development and as a Christian minister that led him to work in the field of religious peacemaking. Smock speaks about his religious peacemaking work and the ways in which women have often been excluded from that work.

Tell me a bit about your background, and what led to your current positions at USIP.

I’ve worked in the international field ever since I finished graduate school, and my graduate training was aiming towards work in international development originally, with a focus on Africa. I spent 16 years with the Ford Foundation doing development work, mostly with Africa but also some with the Middle East. But during this time I only had occasional, peripheral encounters with issues of conflict and peace. I was primarily working on issues of agriculture, education and family planning, economic planning, public administration, and rural development.

Then I became involved as a part of my Ford Foundation work with South Africa and the anti-apartheid work there. I started working for the Institute for International Education to organize a program to bring black students from South Africa to the United States for college and then return to try to promote South Africa to promote justice and democracy there. This ultimately had a big impact on the transition in South Africa. As they moved into professional roles as educated blacks, many of them had graduate degrees from the United States.

During this period at [the Institute of International Education] I started going to seminary in the evening and eventually graduated and was ordained as a clergy person in the United Church of Christ (UCC). But my life was two parallel lives: religion on the one hand, and international development on the other. They weren’t interwoven professionally, although they were personally or spiritually. With one exception: part of the South Africa program worked with students who were attending seminary in the United States, so I became familiar with seminaries around the country to offer scholarships to South African students.

And then I had a little more than a year heading International Volunteer Services as an interim step before coming to USIP 20 years ago. I began here in the grant program, and again there wasn’t any particular overlap with religion, although some of the grants we offered had to do with religion. But then, in 1999 David Little left as head of the program on religion, ethics, and human rights, and we had an interim review of whether we should continue to work in the field of religion or not. As a quasi-governmental institution that seemed a little odd to some people, given the Establishment Clause, that we would have a religion program. So we had this review that determined we should continue to look at religion, but in contrast to David Little’s program, it would be more action-oriented (his had been research-oriented) and it should involve a great deal more engagement with partners overseas in conflict zones. Moreover, the emphasis would be more on the peacemaking capacity of religion, rather than primarily looking at religion as a source of conflict. So once this was established as the mandate of the program, I offered to head it. This was 10 years ago, when I left my job as head of the grant program here and took up the position as head of the new religion and peacemaking program.

During this period from when you became ordained as a minister in the UCC to becoming head of the religion and peacemaking program at USIP, in what way was your identity as a clergy person being lived out?

I failed to mention that there was a three-year period when I was executive associate to the president of the UCC. This was mostly focused on the internal workings of the church and our decision-making bodies. But because the church was involved internationally, I did get involved in some international issues at the time. We had one very important delegation that sent the top leadership of the church to countries in Africa—South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola—to try to support peace. But this period with the UCC was the only time I was specifically working in a ministerial capacity. And of course I have had many opportunities to preach at churches since ordination and continue to do so. But it wasn’t until 2000, when I took over the religion and peacemaking program at USIP, that I felt that my two interests were merged in a meaningful way: my commitment to religion and to international peace work. This has been a very satisfying convergence of interests and commitments. I feel that I have had a much more integrated life now that I’ve been able to bring these two interests and my background together for a single purpose.

So tell me about how you’ve operationalized the mandate of the religion and peacemaking program since its creation, and your personal involvement.

We hold public workshops, write publications, and we do research. But in a way these things are ancillary to our primary focus, which is engagement in zones of conflict. The basic strategy I adopted, which continues to shape much of our engagement internationally, is to identify a zone of conflict in which we want to work, identify an issue we want to work on, identify a local partner we can work with in that location, and work out with the local partner a project plan. We provide most of the funding for that local partner to implement our work. We are partners, but we aren’t as engaged on-the-ground as the partner organization is.

The areas in which I’ve been particularly involved began with the Arab/Israeli conflict, which brought together religious leaders of all three Abrahamic faiths to engage in dialogue and to provide a parallel track to what we thought at the time was going to be a vibrant peace process, but what ultimately turned out not to be. As a result, the religious track has spun its wheels. But it was a chance to build relationships and to provide an interfaith structure that did not exist before in Israel and Palestine.

I’ve been heavily involved in Nigeria working with the imam and the pastor [Imam Mohammed Hendi and Pastor James Wuye]. We’ve done a range of projects together. There was a youth training program. There was an effort to try to strengthen the national interreligious body in Nigeria. But the deepest engagement has come in the Plateau State where there has been many killings of Christians and Muslims. I was involved with the imam and the pastor in Yelwa where people had been killed, and we were involved in negotiating a peace agreement, which has held since 2005. I’ve supported their subsequent peace work in Plateau State, in Jos and other places, Bauchi.

There have been other engagements in Uganda, Macedonia, Bosnia. And then the other staff in the program are involved in other places.

What are some of your observations about how working with the religious sector in zones of conflict differs in impact or process from work with other sectors—or differs from the other sort of work that happens at the Institute?

The most obvious difference is our focus on working with religious individuals, communities, and organizations, building on their potential. The other programs at the Institute focus primarily on secular organizations.

But the most important difference is the way in which the textual references are used—looking at religious mandates for peacemaking as a primary motivator for people involved in the projects, reading each other’s religious texts as a way of mutual understanding, and seeking understanding through the religious narratives of different communities in conflict. Not that other issues are neglected, because rarely is the conflict over theology. As in the Middle East, it’s conflict over who is going to control what land. It’s not over which religion—Christianity, Islam, or Judaism—is superior. So our participants are looking at the underlying sources of the conflict, but through the prism of religious understanding, understanding of each other, understanding the commonalities of faith traditions, understanding the mutually reinforcing mandates for peacemaking in different religions that can create a common platform for those from different traditions to come together to work for peace.

So it’s the way in which religion provides the framework for analyzing the drivers of conflict and a framework for common discussion?

And the motivation for peacemaking.

And the religion is used to bring all of these issues to the fore and so hopefully strengthens commitment to working on it.

Yes, and for example in the Middle East a secular organization might try to create a joint project between Israelis and Palestinians that would have a secular focus. Religious organizations are going to maybe rebuild a mosque that has been destroyed—and bring together people from different religious groups—to repair a particular place of worship, or something that has meaning for one religious community.

When you use this as an example, what is curious to me is that it’s merely the identity or purpose of this building that sets it aside as a “religious peacemaking” project. What makes it different when you repair a mosque versus repairing a school destroyed by the conflict? Is there any difference in how relationships are built or attitudes changed?

I think it’s the recognition that the mosque has more symbolic meaning for Muslims than a school does.

Another example of a powerful instance of interfaith collaboration and action was when Christian and Muslim Palestinians approached religious Jews and said, “We want you to help us understand the Holocaust, and we want you to take us to Auschwitz and explain your understanding of what happened there." Now the genocide in itself was not necessarily a extinction of a set of religious beliefs, but it was primarily Jews who were being annihilated (in addition to some other groups). This bringing together religious communities to understand and observe a trauma faced by one of the communities was particularly powerful.

What are the ways in which you’ve seen gender dynamics play out in religious peacemaking, either in terms of participants in these projects or how issues pertinent to women are addressed?

To some extent gender stands out because it’s neglected. For example, in the Alexandria Process there were no women involved. It was billed as religious elites’ projects, and the orthodox rabbis, bishops, and imams were all male. So women were excluded and didn’t play a significant part in the interfaith dialogue between men.

Where women have been included, it’s been where there has been a particular emphasis made—particular effort made—to ensure they are involved. The imam and pastor in Nigeria, for example, have been quite good about bringing in women as participants. Often this is done separately from the men to ensure they have an adequate voice and aren’t given a secondary role in the presence of male religious leaders. They have helped to motivate local women’s leadership. But there hasn’t been the same level of women involved at the national level taking on leadership.

But it’s particularly important. The rationale for this project is that so often women have been excluded that the talents and perspective they offer have not been fully recognized and built upon. This is also a recognition that peace can’t merely be an elite process, but must be undertaken at lower and middle strata of society, where women have particular influence. To exclude women is to neglect a particular set of opportunities that have often been neglected.

Is it your sense that women have been excluded from all religious peacemaking, or that they have been excluded from religious peacemaking that targets higher elite, but that there is more going on involving women at the lower and middle strata of society that is not visible?

I think it’s both. In Macedonia, for instance, we had a particularly powerful interfaith gathering at a critical moment in the relationship between the different communities. Again, just as in Alexandria, there were no women present or involved. It only engaged the leaders of the communities. In Macedonia, I’m not even sufficiently aware of what women might have been doing at the grassroots, so I don’t know if the failure to include women was lack of recognition of what was already going on, or if it was an instance of gathering the male leadership around, or if women really weren’t doing their own religious peacemaking work.

I sense that it is different in different contexts, and you’ll find different stories of women’s exclusion. There may be some instances where women are being excluded simply because their work is not being seen or recognized. It is going underappreciated, not publicized, not rising to elite levels. Or there just may not be activities underway that women are engaged in for religious peacemaking. It varies from place to place.

One example of a woman taking leadership in religious peacemaking is Amina Rasul in the Philippines, with whom we’ve worked over the years. She is particularly good at mobilizing both male and female leadership. She is such a dynamic organizer and motivator, and she comes from an elite family that has held political power in the past. She is looked to as a leader and respected even by the male ulama, who follow her lead. She chairs the meetings, and it is quite remarkable to watch. It is a combination of her charisma, her education, and her status that afford her this opportunity. And the fact that she has ideas—she is organizing new things that others haven’t thought of, and she is doing it capably. If there were a man trying to do the same things, with the same status, she might be nudged aside. But there aren’t men providing comparable leadership.

There aren’t a lot of examples like this, though, of women taking a role like Amina has. This is because of the constraint within various religious traditions on women rising up to leadership positions. It’s the lack of opportunities that present themselves. It’s a combination of things. But there are means by which women can play distinctive roles that men have been unwilling to play, like our work with women in Colombia. They are working at the middle level of strata, even at a national level.

Can you identify what the challenges for outsiders seeking to strengthen women’s religious peacemaking might be, and what strategies might counteract them?

I think internationals need to make a particular effort to find partners locally. I blame myself for this. It’s so easy to find the male-dominated organizations you can work with. It takes more effort to find the organizations that are less visible, that are dominated or run by women you can work with. It is incumbent on internationals to make the extra effort to find organizations that are run by women, and to seize on opportunities to work with women and to lift them up. Often they don’t play leadership roles because they haven’t been given the opportunity and support. So internationals can give them the support and stature to be seen as national leaders.

Do you see any possibilities for women’s religious peacemaking that can be distinguished from traditional or male-dominated religious peacemaking?

It’s much too simplistic to talk about women having an innate orientation toward peacemaking. But it’s not only that men dominate religious orders and hierarchy, but men dominate religious violence. It’s rare that you find women partaking in armed combat on behalf of one faith tradition or another. They are just much less likely to engage in armed violence, and in turn they are much more likely to have amicable relationships across religious lines of difference which makes accommodation easier, and dialogue. This is a gross oversimplification, but I think there is something to it.

What questions do you hope this conference will address?

A lot of the questions we’ve tackled in this interview!

But I hope we will generate insights into missed opportunities. We will see in the ways in which there is potential, there is unrecognized activity, there are partners, there is leadership within the female communities that international partners haven’t fully recognized or utilized. I think this will raise awareness not only about existing opportunities that have not been taken advantage of, but how international partners can collaborate with women in way that will allow them to live up to their peacemaking potential that they are ready to live up to, but haven’t been given the opportunities to do so.