Occasional Papers
Curtains of Fire: Religious Identity and Emerging Conflicts
7. Conclusion
Scholars will go on observing fundamentalisms. Politicians will go on using religion for political ends and negotiating peace in the eventual conflicts. Top-level religious dialogues will issue finely-worded statements that rarely trickle down. But, who will take up those forms of encounter that transform? Who will take those daring steps of love and living that generate the stories of peace that take on life in local networks of sharing among the other? Through his work in the former Yugoslavia, David Steele affirms that churches and other religious groups have a significant role to play in peacemaking: "It is difficult to find many other organizations with a better local infrastructure and the moral vision necessary to restore basic trust among peoples." (Steele, p.19) The church has a crucial role to play in this witness and reconciliation.
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