The Sound of the Sun: Religious Leaders and Peacebuilding, a Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This presentation discusses the different roles of religious leaders in peacebuilding processes and their specific understanding of peace. It is based on analysis of 76 in-depth interviews with Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim religious leaders from Bosnia and Herzegovina, conducted in the period from 2015 to 2017. In the first part, the paper will discuss the notion of peace as a category that combines elements of spirituality (peace needs to be spiritually nourished), praxis (peace needs to be achieved), and as a ‘giftness’ (peace needs to be discovered and freely accepted). In the second part, different forms of peacebuilding activities of religious leaders will be presented. The tripartite model distinguishes their activities: 1) before conflicts, 2) during conflicts, and 3) in post-conflict phases. In those scenarios, religious leaders play preventive, reactive, and transformative roles, respectively. The preventive role comprises of all activities related to the development of moral character and social ethics that promote non-violence. The reactive role includes activities related to humanitarian assistance, spiritual and emotional accompaniment, denunciations of crimes, and promotion of alternative social visions to those of group-separation. Lastly, in the post-conflict phase (the transformative role), peacebuilding is inseparable from the challenges related to the legacy of past violence, especially those of forgiveness, reconciliation, and memory of conflicts, all of which can be used in hegemonic and exclusionary ways. A special analytical emphasis will be placed on discrepancies between theological ideas and concrete shortcomings of religiously-inspired peacebuilding. Finally, the paper will suggest three new concepts: prayerful commemoration, ecumene of compassion, and the Degree Zero of Reconciliation as a possible way to promote realistic, inclusive, and context-sensitive modes of peacebuilding that draw inspiration from Abrahamic religious traditions