The purpose of this article is to find out the position of religion in contemporary peace studies. As the ultimate pursuit of religions is “peace”, I
want to see how and where religious ideas on peace can be found and what
roles they play in contemporary peace theory. After introducing how
contemporary peace theory has been developed, I would like to find out the
relationship between religions and peace theory based on the thought of its
creator, Johan Galtung.
At first, Contemporary Peace Theory was introduced to prevent wars,
especially the nuclear wars. Early peace studies were negative studies aiming for preventing wars. In 1960s, more positive studies on peace were activated by the Scandinavian peace scholars in the concept of “human security of nonexistence of direct-structural-cultural violence”. They emphasized that the realization of peace should be achieved by non-violence means. At the background of their theories, there were encounters of them with Indian religions. Especially, Johan Galtung, the creator of peace theory, was pretty much influenced by the peace ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism through Indian non-violence resistant, Gandhi. Galtung suggested “peace by peaceful means” and insisted that all violence was standing on its cultural bases. What is remarkable among his ideas is the finding of the cultural violence by the religions.
The position and role of religion in contemporary peace studies can be
explained in three ideas: First, religions shall do their roles to be the bases for
pursuing positive peace. That is because religion, as a study movement, gives
evaluation to peace studies. While negative peace is the roll of political
scientists and security scholars, positive peace is the roll of the religion.
Second, religion provides non-violence means to the achievement of positive
peace. The theory of non-violence pursued by all religion becomes the basis
of contemporary peace studies. Third, all the peace studies are positive and
executable in their characteristics and we know many of the actual peace
movements are uprising with their religious backgrounds. Ganhi, Dalai Lama,
Martin Luther King, Sok-hun Ham are good examples of the peace movement
from Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.