A Religio-Theological Perspective of the Role of Religion in Conflict Resolution

Abstract

The Christian religion has a mandate from Jesus Christ to spread the Good News in the world (Mt. 28:19-20), in the process it meets a lot of conflicts, wars and other misunderstandings in society. The philosophy of religion is to invite men and women to discover themselves as transcendent beings, in every dimension of their lives, including those related to social, economic and political contexts. Religion preaches love, justice, and human dignity but in the world we find that there is a lot of injustice, unfairness, hatred, corruption and other evils which religion has to contend with. The philosophy of the world is quite different from that of religion. Church Leaders such as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador has played a major role in convincing the Roman Catholic Church to switch its traditional alliances with the wealthy and powerful to stand with the poor against injustice, thus living out the Gospel message portrayed in the Bible. [1]

In this paper, I would like to argue that it is the mandate of the Church to engage in conflict mitigation just as Cardinal Oscar Romero and other Church Leaders have done and are still doing. Another example is that of Pope John Paul 11 who wrote three Encyclicals which were compiled into a volume known as a