Berkley Center

Background: This June 2010 exchange between Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall focuses on experiences that have inspired Susan Hayward to press for more purposeful exploration of the issues of women, religion, and peace, notably drawing on her work in Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Iraq. She highlights her growing concern about the sidelined roles of women in work for peace and the need to turn women’s issues into a central, not a peripheral concern. Instead of favoring the plans and agendas of men, women’s initiatives need to be brought to the forefront. Hayward highlights the distinctive roles she has witnessed women play in shaping peace processes that blend religious and analytic approaches in creative and powerful ways.

How did you become involved in religious peacemaking?

I was not raised religious. I came to an interest in religion on my own, discovering in my Minneapolis neighborhood a Presbyterian Church when I was about ten years old and riding to services on my bicycle. A couple of years later I became involved in social justice and human rights advocacy. I would go to anti-landmine rallies before school and spearheaded some human rights campaigns at my school. But for me, then, these were distinct worlds; the church and political justice work fell into separate spheres. As I grew older I raised particular issues of social justice in church (homophobia, misogyny). This was encouraged by my pastors, sort of, but not my peers. Largely for this reason I left the church when I was about 15. But I continued to be curious about religion and to develop my spirituality, and I remained very committed to justice.

At college, I studied comparative religion, with a focus on Buddhism. I studied in Nepal, where my two interests—religion and justice—came together. In the United States, it is possible not to see and be aware of religion if you so wish—it is compartmentalized. That was not the case in Nepal, where religion is everywhere. I was working with Tibetan refugees, living in a neighborhood with a large stupa where people came throughout the day to walk and chant and meditate. Religion was part of every facet of life. It was especially important for Tibetans’ politics, and for their understanding of themselves and their connection to their homeland.

I also learned from the way different faith traditions there interacted. Religious syncretism and pluralism was the norm, and when there was a holiday—basically every three days—everyone came to celebrate together, no matter their background, no matter the tensions between them during the day. It was a striking example that religion could create a space where people could come together; religion as a bridge between communities rather than a barrier.

After college, I worked in Minneapolis on political asylum and refugee work. My job centered on the intake process, doing interviews with people seeking asylum. As I heard the many stories, I was struck by how religion was often a central part of the narrative. It came up in almost every conversation—in relating why people were persecuted, where they had found strength to persevere, who provided refuge in their home countries, and, when they came to the United States who had supported and connected them (almost always faith-based organizations, particularly Catholic Charities). There were counter currents. Religion was part of trauma and suffering as well as part of the healing and support. The persistent pervasiveness of religion intrigued me.

My sense of different spheres, social justice and religious, had firmly collapsed by this point. I saw more and more the ways in which religion could be leveraged or tapped more to create peace and justice, and its powerful role to do so, particularly in places where religion was instigating violence, injustice and conflict. And this sense of religion as part of the framing, the inspiration, and the hope, was not something that I had encountered at Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, where religion was rarely addressed as part of a solution, and primarily seen as a force for oppression and violence if it was acknowledged at all. I saw a great need to bridge the worlds, to link the secular and the religious frameworks and actions for justice.

When did you decide to be ordained as a minister?

When I went to seminary, it was not my plan to be ordained. I was both at the Fletcher School of Tufts University and at Harvard Divinity School. During that period, I came to see that the place I wanted to operate from as my own base was religious. I wanted to be grounded primarily in the values, the standards, the accountability that were religious, not secular. It was not that I thought one was better than the other, but, for me, it was about how I wanted to be challenged and pushed, who I would be accountable to in what I did, where I wanted to draw my energy from. I wanted something that would constantly challenge me, to check myself against a standard, to assess the ethical implications of what I did, and my religious community provided that naturally and compellingly.

Also, in working with religious communities and leaders, I wanted to relate to them as a religious person, on religious terms, rather than as a secular diplomat or wonk.

And, as I came back into the Christian world and church, I fell in love with the community, the practice, the ritual world of the church. It gave me sense that I could translate how I had come to see justice, as something that essentially was about love for others, into practice, and to hear and draw on stories, ancient and contemporary, to be a witness to the dignity of people and their motivations. The sense of religious peace—shalom, salaam—as incorporating both justice and well-being, spiritual wholeness, was more resonant for me as an objective that shaped my process of peacemaking. I wanted to do peace work, ultimately, as a ministerial task, in partnership with other religious traditions. And I also kind of love to preach!

You often cite the example of women’s dynamic and visible roles in addressing conflict in Colombia, in contrast to your other projects in which women’s roles are more muted. What is so distinctive there and what has been the starting point of your reflections on these topics?

I was struck from my first visit to Colombia by the way in which women, especially Catholic nuns, are doing remarkable and gutsy work, reshaping the peace dialogue and process in Colombia. They have a confidence, a determination, and a grace that, at least in my experience, stands in quite marked contrast to religious women in other situations I have seen, and is particularly remarkable considering the machismo of Colombian society. This includes the work of both secular women’s organizations as well as women operating through religious organizations and institution, although my experience has been mostly working with the latter. Catholic nuns are at the front lines of violence, creating zones of peace, providing humanitarian assistance and accompaniment to human rights defenders and communities under attack. Protestant women are deeply engaged in displaced communities, empowering them and helping them to create means of uplift. Catholic and Protestant women are vocal, and they are at the head of many local initiatives. I would want to qualify this by pointing out that this has not necessarily translated into women having a prominent or central role in institutional decision-making, particularly in the Catholic Church (although a woman just served as head of the Mennonite Church in Colombia, and another woman serves as head of the largest Protestant peace organization, Justapaz). By contrast, in Sri Lanka, where women can certainly be feisty on occasion and a woman has served as head of state, I encounter Buddhist nuns who tend to be far less visible and active, in contrast with many monks who take leading and vocal roles in mobilizing communities around social and political issues. When monks are present in the room, nuns hold back and are deferential. Many of the inter-religious initiatives have been run and populated almost exclusively by male religious figures. The contrast in my experience of both places, which may be different from others’ experiences of course, brings home starkly the power imbalances between men and women that play out in religious settings, and the long roots of those behaviors. It also raises for me questions about the causes for these different manifestations in different contexts—are they cultural? Religious? Political? I know it is complex, and I wouldn’t want to essentialize it.

And what path led you from these observations to the more systematic focus on women, religion, and conflict that you advocate?

The path was very much shaped by my experience as I became more deeply involved in the field of religious peacemaking. In graduate school, I observed that most of the texts we were reading that put forward analysis of and strategies for religious peacemaking were written by men. These strategies and analyses often focused on the leverage, influence, and authority of elite religious leadership, which in most of the world, obviously, is male. As I began to participate in international discussions on interfaith relations and peace, almost all the participants and voices were men. I was often one of a few women in the room. In my engagement in Sri Lanka and Iraq, I noticed how male clergy responded to me as a woman. The more entrenched I became, the more I became increasingly conscious of gender dynamics and roles. The views of women and their voices were simply not there, or were only included in a cursory way, to speak to issues on an agenda, and within a process, that was entirely shaped by men, and focused on what men, in their roles as clergy, could do to promote transformation. If women were involved in a substantive way, it was often a “side project”—the woman’s initiative, rather than the central initiative. This made me uncomfortable. I grew antsy about how we define leverage and authority within the field of religious peacemaking—who we recognize as holding authority, and who we marginalize in our efforts.

The field of policy, international affairs, and peacemaking at large is already male dominated, as has been recognized by many and is acknowledged in UN resolution 1325. There are many good organizations that have sought to get women at the peace table, and more deeply and centrally involved in international affairs, such as the Institute for Inclusive Security or Women to Women. But the analytical and visible field of religious peacemaking is behind the curve here, I fear. And yet observing efforts on-the-ground, outside of these elite dialogues, I often discovered clear evidence of women at work for peace, operating through their religious communities. It’s not a matter of women not being involved in religious peacemaking. It’s more a matter of their efforts not being seen, supported, or analyzed, I suspect. In very real ways they are shaping religious perceptions, interpretations, and motivations. They hold authority and leverage. They are interpreters of their traditions in very real ways.

This growing sense of the importance and distinctiveness of women’s roles in religious peace process led me to work exclusively with women in Colombia. In the year prior to my arrival, USIP had become increasingly involved there. My predecessor, Paul Wee, had supported an ecumenical process, largely involving Catholics and evangelicals. There were some tensions between the two communities, and though not generally overt, they were growing, particularly as Pentecostalism spread amongst displaced communities. The tensions arose in the peace work of the two communities, tensions that were rooted in historical grievances, but also related to different agendas, different styles, different approaches to peacemaking. So the effort sought both to mitigate the tensions and to strengthen the efforts for peace, by bringing the communities together to share and learn from each other.

The effort was fairly new when I came into the picture (it had been underway some seven to eight months) but it had essentially, despite some movement, hit a wall when my predecessor left. He had been pursuing the effort doggedly, working largely through the formal decision-making channels on both Catholic and Protestant sides. I received a message when I arrived that there was not a keen interest, particularly from the Catholic side, in pursuing the project further.

As I explored the many organizations that were involved in work for peace, both evangelical/protestant and Catholic, I was impressed by the extraordinary number of women who were passionately involved in peace and justice work. They were engaged, right in the most difficult zones, at the front lines, working to create the zones of peace. The Pentecostal women were working especially with displaced people, mobilizing to give them some self-sufficiency and to eradicate some of the socially destructive behaviors that were making the situation worse, for example alcoholism. These women, nuns and Protestants, were already involved in ecumenical work at the community level and were very open to new initiatives and approaches. Attempts at ecumenical collaboration in the past had not always been successful but they were open to new ideas and efforts to bridge the divides.

So we decided to pursue a similar initiative, with similar objectives, but this time working with women. The effort has proceeded along these lines, remarkably successfully, though not without its hiccups (for example, challenges have arisen due to an imbalance of resources, institutional capacity, and time between Catholic and Protestant women). And my colleagues and I have found it remarkably rewarding to pursue a religious peace building project that is primarily about and with women. There are men who support the initiative, and the Catholic Bishops Conference has given it its blessing. But generally when we gather as a group it is all women. And that changes the tone, the spirit, and the process. As an example, recently at a strategic planning meeting in Bogota we began with candles, singing, poetry and scripture, before rolling up our sleeves and digging into our project work. That simply has not happened in any meeting I have attended that was led by men or one without a large number of women.

Can you elaborate a bit more on how this difference in approach and tone has played out and why you think it makes such a difference?

What is so distinctive and what matters is the capacity to draw on deep resources of creativity that comes from an authentic facet of spiritual experience, and to tie that seamlessly into the strategic or analytical work. I have seen this in many settings, especially small gatherings but also larger ones. At one large gathering some time ago, with about 60 women, it was striking that intellectual panels discussions, complete with powerpoint, were seamlessly interspersed with artistic moments, like dancing, music, and poetry, use of candles, and other elements drawn from ritual and art. What makes this distinctive and what seems to be a gift that women especially bring is that these moments are not hokey, nor is it segmented and separated: it is authentically an integral part of the process, and the tough minded intellectual discussion is tied to this element of spirit and emotion. The discussion of rights and sustainable development proceeds smoothly into dancing in the courtyard. There is hard work, with sleeves rolled up, but the group is energized and inspired by drawing on the deeper connections that seem to come from approaches that draw on deeper emotions and understandings, that are part of ritual. In other interfaith dialogues I’ve been to, by contrast, these moments are often staged, theatrical, set aside.

In terms of witness, women organize a lot of protests, and use their faith powerfully here also. I heard a story of a wonderful protest on Palm Sunday by a group of nuns at a palm oil plantation that had displaced Afro Colombians and led to some local violence by armed guards. They broke into the plantation, cut palm fronds, and acted out the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, using the story to mimic the contrast between the powerful and the weak, portraying the contrast between Jesus with his poverty and humility and the forces which held political power, tying it to the reality of the plantation and its exploitation of and relationship to local communities. It was a brilliant use of ritual religious ideas, and drama. It was a moving way of drawing on the religious world of meaning and ritual, and intertwining them with advocacy. These women were able to show that they are one and the same.

I have reflected long on why this was so and why it has been so marked in the Colombia experience: is it because they are women? Latinas? Colombian? Probably some combination. But what stands out is the genuine quality I have witnessed in this kind of experience: this is not theater or a performance. It comes from the hearts of those involved and from their spiritual practices and traditions.

What is the diagnosis of the women involved of the causes of the conflict in Colombia? How do they explain the problem they are addressing?

They focus strongly on social inequality and poverty. And in the way they speak about solutions, they focus on justice, including economic justice for the campesinos, the small farmers. They speak often about the government’s complicity in the sources of armed actors and violence that keeps some communities down and gives implicit support to those who refuse to share power. They speak a lot about empowerment.

And they highlight and are moved by the suffering of many ordinary Colombians. People have suffered so much violence for so many years that it is hard to be empowered and to take control. There is a fatigue and a sense of fatalism, born of trauma. Some of their work is thus around psycho-social support, workshops on self care. They try to convey a spirit of optimism and hope. They have a strong sense of how complex are the forces that are working against peace, all the different armed groups, the political contenders, the different agendas, the drugs, the external forces, Plan Colombia, all supporting forces that are involved in the violence. But even so, they have a spirit of vitality that is quite remarkable. This is Colombians in general, not just women.

What conclusions do you draw from your work with women and with religious peacemaking, especially in terms of policy?

I feel strongly that religious peace making is at a point where we need to think seriously about strategy, and to rethink how we are going about it to engage in evaluation and self-criticism. There have been important accomplishments and we have learned many lessons, but we also need to recognize that some of the approaches, including the large meetings that tend to be a primary vehicle to bring people together for interfaith dialogue, go only so far. We need to have an honest reflection about where we are, and our impact. We need above all to integrate the different approaches: formal dialogue, education, rituals, and negotiations, and we need to integrate them with the political sectors. It will be important to move in this direction overall. To be more strategic.

The insights that have come from working with women are an important element. Religious peacemaking must, above all, not lose this sense of the spirit, of tapping into the sacred, into what makes people care about religion, be moved to do extraordinary things by it. This element is often unplanned, uncoordinated, and messy. It ties to other dimensions of life, to history. It is never the answer by itself, of course. It must be coupled with strong strategy, evaluation, and analysis. But we need a balance of both, and I think women often have something to contribute here.

How did you become so involved in Sri Lanka?

I was drawn in part because I had some background in South Asia and was intrigued by how religion manifests there, particularly as a political and social force. But I was also drawn to Sri Lanka because I wanted to challenge the popular assumption, the reigning paradigm then (and to some extent still today) that the Abrahamic faiths are more prone than others to political manipulation and patterns of conflict. Sri Lanka seemed to represent a counter to that assumption. There, the monks had mobilized for war, and drew on Buddhist teachings for their cause, quoting from Sri Lankan Buddhist texts to justify war. The war pitted the primarily Buddhist Sinhalese against the primarily Hindu Tamils. The third largest ethnic group, the Muslim community, was caught in the cross fire, pushed by both sides, and, by and large, did not respond in kind. When I asked members of the Ulema why they did not resort to violence, I was struck by their very clear assertion that to do so would be counter to Islam’s commitment to non-violence. So the—at least superficial—outlines of the conflict went very much against the popular assumption of a peaceful Buddhism and a violent Islam. For me it highlighted both the complexity and the importance of religion, as a source of conflict and as part of the path to peace. It forced observers away from a simple analysis that the content of a religion’s teachings determines whether or not it supports peace or violence. It broke open a possibility to see both the positive and negative potentials of all religious traditions. At least this was my hope.

What do you see as distinctive in women’s approaches to peace that goes back to religion?

As we have worked to define the parameters of this project, and to articulate why we should focus explicitly on women, a number of experiences have contributed. One example is the experience of Iraq. We work with the Parliamentary Commission that works on religious affairs and has a mandate to increase religious pluralism. Our main counterpart on the commission is a woman, an elected member of Parliament. I have been very conscious of some rare qualities that she brings. Her leadership style shows a special sensitivity. She is able to observe the subtle dynamics in the room during a meeting, and knows how to direct and recognize tensions that arise. She is able to step in and navigate tensions.

I have asked myself if her sensitivity, her ability to recognize moods and to pick out the unspoken dynamics and tensions, to navigate egos, comes because she is a woman, at least in part. And I suppose I have generally concluded that it does seem to be something that women are particularly good at. It may be because women have been marginalized that they have developed this ability and sensitivity, this unconscious sense of the dynamic at work. If you already hold power and authority, you may be less inclined to develop a sensitive radar for these dynamics.

An interesting phenomenon that has also contributed to our thinking is a recent resurgence of religious feminism. Women are looking for and finding, in their religious traditions, teachings and practices that are empowering. I think some men have used scripture, in the community and in their homes, to justify their positions of power and dominance—and that religion has been used in this way to affirm patriarchal power in a larger social and political sense as well. As long as men are the only ones empowered and educated to serve as interpreters of the religious traditions (translating it into cultural norms but also legal and political policy), this is not challenged. However, women, when they can have direct access to the teachings, often find passages that tell a different story. One Iraqi woman I met in a workshop told me that her husband often quoted particular passages from the Qur’an to “put her in her place,” until finally she picked up the Qur’an and found passages that affirmed her power and demanded respect. When she quoted these passages of scripture to her husband, he had nothing to say and it changed the dynamic in her household. So being able to interpret directly and shape and influence the way scripture is interpreted is an important element of changing women’s roles, of empowering them.

To come back to our mission here, which is to enhance the roles and power of women as peacemakers. I am heartened to find religious women from different traditions increasingly able to assert themselves creatively, and to claim religious teachings to empower themselves. Women are often those who interpret scripture in daily life, in families and communities, who shape practices, who pass on beliefs. So this trend towards religious feminism is powerful. It harks back to Paolo Freire’s core message. As long as men hold the key to our religious traditions, it is likely to be drawn on to preserve traditions of masculine control. Reasserting a different interpretation is thus important.

What are some other issues on the agenda?

If women are to be peacemakers, they have to be empowered and to have authority in the community. There is a nagging concern that their gifts, the sensitivity they display, their ability to reach across traditional lines of difference, for interfaith dialogue, for example, may be tempered if and when in fact they are in positions of real power. Are they able to do some of these things because they are under the radar? Because they have less stake in maintaining the status quo? Will they lose the sensitivity that marks their current roles, will they change, if they wield real power, if they are more visible? This is a small concern, just something to watch. Women do seem to bring different and special gifts to the process.

Another area to explore is how women who have had power in conflict situations, for example serving as commanders with the LTTE in Sri Lanka or with the FARC in Colombia (both secular organizations, for what it’s worth), will fare when they are reintegrated into civilian society: will religious traditions relegate them again to traditional roles? How will this play out? What happens to changing women’s roles in post conflict situations?

Women’s roles in trauma healing can be powerful and important and deserve more light and attention. That is a topic that Andy Blanch can speak to.

Another facet of religion and peacebuilding is how religion can help, in some settings, in building women’s skills and capacities. This is something we witnessed in Colombia, especially among the Pentecostal women. In those communities, women are often the leaders and pastors, and many have gained their leadership skills—for public speaking, for organizing communities, for managing institutions—as well as authority through that route. Their position as church leaders has also made it possible for them to understand the community, to identify its problems and to have an idea of where the solutions might lie. It is through their religious roles that they have become peace leaders; they are religious leaders first, and then through this they become community leaders and peacemakers.

And looking at women’s roles in families is important, not only through the lens of peace and transmission of positive values and teachings, but as encouraging and teaching violence, especially to sons, for example by sanctifying “martyrdom” in various contexts.

And finally, I think we need to address the divide between secular women and religious women. Many organizations working on women’s empowerment, particularly in the West, have not addressed religion. This is either because of a conscious bias against religion, or because of blinders—a lack of recognition of the importance of religion, and the resources within religion that could be tapped to support their mission. Similarly, some religious women’s organizations are wary of secular women’s organizations, and so avoid them. As long as secular and religious women remain divided, the movement for women’s empowerment in peacemaking is fragmented, weaker. So we need to understand the barriers for collaboration across the secular/religious divide, and how to reduce them.