{"id":209,"date":"2012-03-01T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/practicalmattersjournal.ecdsdev.org\/?p=209"},"modified":"2015-09-01T16:18:54","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T20:18:54","slug":"exploring-conflict-and-peacebuilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/2012\/03\/01\/exploring-conflict-and-peacebuilding\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Conflict and Peacebuilding through Sacred Space: A Course on World Religions"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
\u201cSacred Space in World Religions\u201d is a course taught at Candler School of Theology as a summer intensive. In it, we take advantage of the intensive summer school schedule, as well as the rich resources of the city of Atlanta, to explore religious architecture in four major world religions: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Using worship spaces as the focal point not only allows us to make use of a common touchstone for comparing and contrasting different religious traditions and practices, but also sharpens our awareness of the impact of space on our own religious practices.<\/p>\n
The course is designed specifically for Christians in a graduate theological program, the majority of whom are in preparation for church ministry. The intent, therefore, is to prepare church leaders for the contemporary United States context, a milieu both increasingly pluralistic and technologically fluid. Christian ministry best suited for this context is ministry that can find common touchstones for inter-faith dialogue and cross-community collaboration while remaining deeply and reflectively rooted in a particular tradition and identity. Christian ministry that can embody its faith commitments in the way it exercises stewardship of its resources, including buildings and grounds, is ministry able to flourish in this context.<\/p>\n
The following learning goals shape the course design:<\/p>\n
These latter two goals, and the specific classroom activities created to advance these goals, are the subject of this reflection.<\/p>\n
In this team-taught course, each instructor plays a distinct role. Hazem Ziada, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer and BA (Honors) Course Director at the Birmingham School of Architecture in Birmingham, England. Elizabeth W. Corrie, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Youth Education and Peacebuilding at Candler School of Theology. While Dr. Ziada introduces concepts of space and architecture, Dr. Corrie introduces concepts of sacrality and ritual, and together the instructors encourage students to develop a practical theology that attends to the role of space and ritual in worshipping communities. Instructors also draw on their own religious traditions\u2014Muslim and Christian\u2014as resources for modeling inter-faith dialogue in the classroom.<\/p>\n
While the entire course seeks to develop skills in engaging religious pluralism with an eye towards peacemaking, the final unit and integrative project of the course deal directly with sacred space as both a site of conflict and a resource for peacemaking between and within religious communities.<\/p>\n
The final unit falls on the last two days of the ten-day course. The first day introduces the problem of sharing sacred space. Students begin by reading the article, \u201c\u2019To Halve and to Hold\u2019: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility,\u201d by political scientist Ron E. Hassner. In this piece, Hassner develops a typology for explaining why religious communities consider their sacred sites \u201cindivisible\u201d\u2014a view which impedes sharing, dividing, or finding other sites as substitutes\u2014and what contingent factors determine whether this indivisibility will lead to conflict.1<\/u><\/sup>\u00a0The degree to which a site is central to a faith tradition, accessible exclusively to that tradition\u2019s community, irreplaceable by other sites, and marked out by clear and rigid boundaries determines the degree to which the sacred space is \u201cindivisible\u201d and non-negotiable. When contingent factors related to territorial conquest, sectarian rivalry, or economic competition for land come into play, the indivisibility of sacred space leads to conflict. Hassner analyzes the nature of conflict over sacred space in order to suggest an alternative policy for approaching conflict resolution. Rather than following a \u201cHobbesian\u201d view that ignores the symbolic dimension of these disputes and treats them merely as territorial negotiations, or a \u201cHuntingtonian\u201d view that sees the disputes as rooted in intractable religious forces beyond the influence of political actors, Hassner recommends taking the symbolic import of sacred space seriously while lifting up the socially constructed dimension of sacrality as a more \u201cflexible\u201d framework for viewing sacred space in conflict mediation. He emphasizes the role religious leaders can play in helping their communities \u201creframe\u201d the way they view their sacred sites so as to make negotiation a viable, faithful option.<\/p>\n Hassner\u2019s article provides students with analytical leverage to develop their understanding of the role sacred space plays in disputes. In addition to reading this piece, students divide into groups to examine one of two case studies and apply Hassner\u2019s typology to assess the nature of the disputes and possibilities for their resolution. The two cases involve the\u00a0Temple Mount\/Haram al-Sharif site in Jerusalem and the Babri Mosque site in Ayodhya, India.<\/u>\u00a0During their small group discussions, students apply Hassner\u2019s theory by assessing the degree of \u201cindivisibility\u201d involved in their particular case, using a\u00a0worksheet<\/u>\u00a0that walks them through the various aspects of sacred space Hassner discusses. By employing Hassner\u2019s theory, students gain a deeper understanding of what is at stake in conflicts over sacred space while developing some tools for helping communities find ways to share sacred space that continue to honor and draw on their traditions\u2019 beliefs and ritual practices.<\/p>\n On the second day, these skills are put to the test in the final integrative activity of the course. Students are assigned particular \u201croles\u201d as representatives of different religious communities currently active on our university campus, including Orthodox Jewish, Orthodox Christian, Reform Jewish, Evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic, Hindu, and Muslim, and must work together to design a multi-faith religious life center for the Emory University campus. We assign two students to each \u201crole,\u201d so that we can divide the group into two different \u201cdesign groups\u201d that will each develop an original proposal for a Religious Life Center to present in a \u201cdesign competition\u201d to the Dean of Religious Life, the Reverend Susan Henry-Crowe. Since her Office of Religious Life has actual long-term plans for building such a multi-faith center, the presence of Reverend Henry-Crowe as the \u201cjudge\u201d of our design competition adds to the practical relevance of the exercise. She acts as an outside voice to provide feedback to the students on the extent to which they have attended to the multiple aspects involved in creating workable, sharable sacred space for a pluralistic context.<\/p>\n Before this class session, students prepare by reviewing the attitudes towards sacred space typical of the community they will be \u201crepresenting,\u201d as well as that tradition\u2019s practical space and design needs. They draw on all the readings they have been doing throughout the class on their topic, as well as their field notes from the site visits to these religious communities and information on the Emory University website that these groups publicize about their commitments and mission. During the first part of the class, the pairs assigned to the same tradition meet to discuss their notes and prepare for the negotiation process. We instruct them to develop lists of what their religious tradition requires for a space to be usable\u2013the \u201cnon-negotiables\u201d\u2013as well as a list of aspects of design that would be good to have, but could be adjusted as they enter into negotiations with others. Students are encouraged to embrace fully their \u201crole\u201d and stay \u201cin character\u201d throughout the session. In the two iterations of this assignment, we have not met with any significant challenges in encouraging students to do this. Although one might expect some students to have reservations about playing a role that is far outside their experience, we have observed better results in these cases than in the cases of students playing roles that are \u201cclose to home.\u201d Emphasizing that the assignment offers an opportunity to \u201cshow what you know\u201d in a non-traditional manner has made the exercise appealing to nearly all students in our experience.<\/p>\n