– 87 --
Religion in Cooperation and Conflict
Jeffrey R. Seul
Editors’ Note: In the first of two chapters, the author argues that the relationship between religion and conflict is widely oversimplified. Recent and careful social science research has demonstrated that, contrary to the assumptions of some people, religion most often increases its adherents’ ability to relate positively to others—and this can include adherents of another religion or none at all. In contrast, he reviews the research on extreme religious militancy, including the evidence on suicide and other violent attackers, and concludes that the most careful researchers have universally found that these actions are not principally propelled by religion itself, but by other factors. In his next chapter, Seul proceeds to analysis of how religion can help to transform conflict, and how it can be consciously invoked toward that purpose.
Religion and conflict sometimes mix, but perspectives on their relationship tend to be overly simplified. For some, religion is irrational and in tension with modern, liberal notions of democracy and collective problem solving; it is not merely a factor in some conflicts, it is a cause of conflict, and it offers little or nothing in the way of resources for conflict resolution. For others, religion, properly understood, is a benevolent force that promotes personal and collective peace and wellbeing, and all entanglements of religion and conflict stem from perversions of religion or cynical manipulations of it by unscrupulous leaders who are not genuinely religious, but who understand and exploit religion’s capacity to bind and mobilize people. Still others see religion simply as a hopelessly complex, impenetrable mass of traditions, perspectives and social structures; a feature of history and culture that must be superficially understood and acknowledged, but which must largely be quarantined as parties seek a resolution to their conflict in a political, social and conceptual space mostly free of its influence.
This chapter presents a different perspective on the role of religion in both conflict and cooperation, and the potential for transformation of conflicts involving religion. A clearer and more nuanced picture of the ways in which religion and conflict relate, and also how religion promotes cooperation within groups and can contribute to the transformation of conflict between groups, has begun to emerge over the past couple of decades—thanks, in part, to the efforts of a small group of social scientists who have approached these questions with genuine curiosity, largely steering clear of the polemics that too often attend them. This chapter provides an in-depth introduction to this emerging, interdisciplinary field of research. The next chapter, Religious Prosociality for Conflict Transformation, attempts to draw lessons from it, and from the fields of religious studies and conflict resolution, that can be employed to avert, moderate or transform destructive cycles of conflict in which religion is a factor. Violent conflict is the focus of these chapters, but the perspective on religion they present, and the lessons drawn, also are applicable to other types of disputes involving religion.
The Prosocial Character of Religion
Nineteenth and 20th century proclamations that religion was dead or dying are now themselves widely considered deceased. Data compiled by the Pew Research Center indicates that humanity now is approximately 31 percent Christian and 23 percent Muslim. The percentage of Christians is projected to be precisely the same in 2050, while the percentage of Muslims is projected to climb to about 30 percent. If current trends hold, by mid-century about 60 percent of the world’s population will consist of roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, and another 27 percent will identify with other religions. Just 13 percent of the world’s population will be religiously unaffiliated, down from approximately 16 percent today (Pew Research Center 2015). Even many of these unaffiliated people say they hold religious beliefs; for example, 68 percent of unaffiliated adults in the U.S. and 30 percent of unaffiliated adults in France report believing in God or a higher power (Pew Research Center 2012). Following decades of official efforts in the Soviet Union to promote atheism, 82% of Russians identify with one religion or another (Pew Research Center 2014b).
As political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart sum up the data, “[t]here is no evidence of a worldwide decline of religiosity, or of the role of religion in politics” (Norris and Inglehart 2011: 212). Those who are confounded by these trends would do well to consider recent, interdisciplinary research on the prosocial dimensions of religion. A....
----
For full contents please purchase The Negotiator’s Desk Reference.
----
References
Ahmed, A. 2015. Taliban Justice Gains Favor as Official Afghan Courts Fail. New York Times, February 1, 2015. Available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/world/asia/taliban-justice-gains-favor-as-official-afghan-courts-fail.html (last accessed May 17, 2016).
Appleby, R.S. 2000. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Asad, T., W. Brown, J. P. Butler and S. Mahmood. 2013. Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. New York: Fordham University Press.
Atkinson, Q. D., A. J. Latham and J. Watts. 2014. Are Big Gods a Big Deal in the Emergence of Big Groups? Religion, Brain & Behavior 1-9. DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2014.928359 (last accessed August 13, 2015).
Atran, S. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Atran, S. 2010a. Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What It Means to be Human. London, England: Penguin Books.
Atran, S. 2010b. Pathways To and From Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-based Field Research. Statement Before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities, March 10, 2010. Available at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/atran10/atran10_index.html (last accessed July 31, 2015).
Austin, G., T. Kranock and T. Oommen. 2003. God and War: An Audit and Exploration. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/04/war_audit_pdf/pdf/war_audit.pdf (last accessed August 14, 2015).
Axelrod, R. 2006. The Evolution of Cooperation. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.
Balch, E. 2015. Myth Busting: Robert Pape on Suicide Terrorism, ISIS, and U.S. Foreign Policy. Chicago Policy Review, May 5, 2015. Available online at http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2015/05/05/myth-busting-robert-pape-on-isis-suicide-terrorism-and-u-s-foreign-policy/ (last accessed on September 7, 2015).
Barrett, J. L. 2004. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Basedau, M., B. Pfeiffer and J. Vüllers. 2016. Bad Religion? Religion, Collective Action, and the Onset of Armed Conflict in Developing Countries. Journal of Conflict Resolution 60(2): 226-255.
Bateson, M., D. Nettle and G. Roberts. 2006. Cues of Being Watched Enhance Cooperation in a Real-World Setting. Biology Letters 2(3): 412-414.
Brewer, M. 1979. In-group Bias in the Minimal Intergroup Situation: A Cognitive-Motivational Analysis. Psychological Bulletin 86(2): 307-324.
Brown, C. and E. A. Eff. 2010. The State and the Supernatural: Support for Prosocial Behavior. Structure and Dynamics 4(1): 1-21.
Bunzel, C. 2015. From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State. The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World Analysis Paper No. 19. Available online at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/03/ideology-of-islamic-state-bunzel/the-ideology-of-the-islamic-state.pdf (last accessed July 30, 2015).
Calhoun, C., M. Juergensmeyer and J. VanAntwerpen (eds). 2011. Rethinking Secularism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Casanova, J. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Clingingsmith, D., A. I. Khwaja and M. R. Kremer. 2009. Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam’s Global Gathering. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(3): 1133-1170.
Collier, P. and A. Hoeffler. 2004. Greed and Grievance in Civil War. Oxford Economic Papers 56: 563-595.
Connor, W. 1994. Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Dreber, A., D. G. Rand, D. Fudenberg and M. A. Nowak. 2008. Winners Don’t Punish. Nature 452: 348-351.
Everett, J. A. C., O. S. Haque and D. G. Rand. 2015. How Good is the Samaritan, and Why? An Experimental Investigation of the Extent and Nature of Religious Prosociality Using Economic Games (February 27, 2015). Available online at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2484659 (last accessed August 14, 2015).
Fish, M. S. 2011. Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Fish, S. 2015. Why is Terror Islamist? The Washington Post, January 27, 2015. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/27/why-is-terror-islamist/ (last accessed August 29, 2015).
Fox, J. 2015. Political Secularism, Religion, and the State: A Time Series Analysis of Worldwide Data, edited by D.C. Leege, K.D. Wald, and R.L. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fuentes, A. 2014. Hyper-cooperation is Deep in Our Evolutionary History and Individual Perception of Belief Matters. Religion, Brian & Behavior 5(4): 284-290. DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2014.928359 (last accessed August 13, 2015).
Ginges, J., S. Atran, D. Medin and K. Shikaki. 2007. Sacred Bounds on Rational Resolution of Violent Political Conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(18): 7357-7360.
Ginges, J., I. Hansen, and A. Norenzayan. 2009. Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks. Psychological Science 20(2): 224-230.
Gopin, M. 2000. Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Gopin, M. 2012. Religion as Destroyer and Creator of Peace: A Postmortem on Failed Peace Processes. In Religion and Foreign Affairs: Essential Readings, edited by D.R. Hoover and D.M. Johnston. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
Habyarimana, J., M. Humphreys, D. N. Posner and J. M. Weinstein. 2007. Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision. American Political Science Review 101(4): 709-725.
Haidt, J. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books.
Halliday, J. 2015. London Schoolgirls among 60 Female Britons Thought to Have Joined ISIS. The Guardian, March 1, 2015. Available online at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/01/london-schoolgirls-60-female-britons-joined-isis (last accessed August 3, 2015).
Hamilton, W. D. 1964. The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior, Parts I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-52.
Hansen, I. and A. Norenzayan. 2009. Does Religious Belief Promote Religious Scapegoating? Manuscript in preparation available at http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~anlab/pdf/Hansen%26NorenzayanScapegoating.pdf (last accessed August 29, 2015).
Harris, S. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Henrich, J. 2009. The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior 30(4): 244-260.
Hoffman, A. J., J. J. Gillespie, D. A. Moore, K. A. Wade-Benzoni, L. L. Thompson and M. H. Bazerman. 1999. A Mixed-Motive Perspective on the Economics Versus Environment Debate. American Behavioral Scientist 42(8): 1254-1276.
Hubbard, B. 2015a. Offering Services, ISIS Ensconces Itself in Seized Territories. New York Times (June 17, 2015). A1.
Hubbard, B. 2015b. Statehood Project is Troubled, Those Who Escaped ISIS Say. New York Times (December 2, 2015). A1.
Institute for Economics & Peace. 2014. Five Key Questions Answered on the Link Between Peace & Religion: A Global Statistical Analysis of the Empirical Link between Peace and Religion. Institute for Economics and Peace, October 2014. Available online at http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Peace-and-Religion-Report.pdf (last accessed August 14, 2015).
Kaplan, M. 2015. ISIS Ramadan War: Muslim Leaders Condemn Islamic State Attacks, Call Holy Month Time for Peace. International Business Times, July 1, 2015. Available online at http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-ramadan-war-muslim-leaders-condemn-islamic-state-attacks-call-holy-month-time-1990904 (accessed on August 3, 2015).
Kappmeier, M. 2016. Trusting the Enemy: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Trust in Intergroup Conflict. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 22(2) 134-144.
Keen, D. 2007. Complex Emergencies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Laurin, K., A. F. Shariff, J. Henrich and A. C. Kay. 2012. Outsourcing Punishment to God: Beliefs in Divine Control Reduce Earthly Punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0615 (last accessed August 14, 2015).
Lenfesty, H. L. and J. P. Schloss. 2014. Big Gods and the Greater Good. Religion, Brain & Behavior 40-48. DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2014.928359 (last accessed August 13, 2015).
Liao, X., S. Rong and D. C. Queller. 2015. Relatedness, Conflict, and the Evolution of Eusociality. PLOS Biology. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002098 (last accessed September 16, 2015).
Malhotra, D. 2010. (When) Are Religious People Nicer? Religious Salience and the “Sunday Effect” on Pro-social Behavior. Judgment and Decision Making 5(2): 138-143.
Nesse, R. M. 1999. The Evolution of Commitment and the Origins of Religion. Science and Spirit 10(2): 32-33, 46.
Norenzayan, A. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Norenzayan, A. 2015. Big Questions About Big Gods: Response and Discussion. Religion, Brain & Behavior 5(4): 327-342. DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2014.928359 (last accessed August 13, 2015).
Norenzayan, A., A. F. Shariff, A. K. Willard, E. Slingerland, W. M. Gervais, R. McNamara and J. Henrich. 2014. The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (in press). Available online at http://sharifflab.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2015/06/Norenzayan_etal_BBS_preprint.pdf (last accessed August 14, 2015).
Nowak, M. A. and S. Coakley. 2013. Introduction. In Evolution, Games, and God: The Principle of Cooperation, edited by M.A. Nowak and S. Coakley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Norris, P. and R. Inglehart. 2011. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pape, R. A. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House.
Pape, R. A. and J. K. Feldman. 2010. Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Pew Research Center. 2012. The Global Religious Landscape. Available online at http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-unaffiliated/ (last accessed August 12, 2015).
Pew Research Center. 2014a. Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East: Negative Opinions of al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah Widespread. Available online at http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/ (last accessed August 29, 2015).
Pew Research Center. 2014b. Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church. Available online at http://www.pewforum.org/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/ (last accessed August 29, 2015).
Pew Research Center. 2015. The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2015. Available online at http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/ (last accessed August 12, 2015).
Phillips, C. and A. Axelrod. 2004. Encyclopedia of War. New York: Facts on File.
Piazza, J. and J. F. Landy. 2013. “Lean Not on Your Own Understanding”: Belief that Morality is Founded on Divine Authority and Non-Utilitarian Moral Judgments. Judgment and Decision Making 8(6): 639-661.
Piazza, J. and P. Sousa. 2014. Religiosity, Political Orientation, and Consequentialist Moral Thinking. Social Psychological & Personality Science 5(3): 334-342.
Pinker, S. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Penguin Group.
Pyszczynski, T., A. Abdollahi and Z. K. Rothschild. 2009. Does Peace Have a Prayer? The Effects of Morality Salience, Compassionate Values, and Religious Fundamentalism on Hostility Toward Out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45(4): 816-827.
Pyysiäinen, I. 2003. Buddhism, Religion, and the Concept of “God”. Numen 50(2): 147-171.
Rand, D. G., A. Dreber, O. S. Haque, R. J, Kane, M. A. Nowak and S. Coakley. 2014. Religious Motivations for Cooperation: An Experimental Investigation Using Explicit Primes. Religion, Brain & Behavior 4(1): 31-48.
Sageman, M. 2004. Understanding Terror Networks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Sageman, M. 2008. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Schelling, T.C. 1980. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Seul, J. R. 1999. “Ours is the Way of God”: Religion, Identity, and Intergroup Conflict. Journal of Peace Research 36(5): 553-569.
Seul, J. R. 2006. Religion and Conflict. In The Negotiator’s Fieldbook, edited by A.K. Schneider and C. Honeyman. Washington, DC: American Bar Association.
Shariff, A. F. 2015. Does Religion Increase Moral Behavior? Current Opinion in Psychology 6: 108-113.
Shariff, A. F. and A. Norenzayan. 2007. God is Watching You: Supernatural Agent Concepts Increase Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game. Psychological Science 18(9): 803-809.
Shariff, A. F. and A. Norenzayan. 2012. Religious Priming Effects Are Sensitive to Religious Group Boundaries. Unpublished data (referenced in Norenzayan 2013:161). University of Oregon.
Shariff, A. F., A. K. Willard, T. Andersen and A. Norenzayan. 2015. Religious Priming: A Meta-Analysis with a Focus on Prosociality. Personality and Social Psychology Review 1-22. DOI: 10.1177/1088868314568811 (last accessed August 13, 2015).
Sheikh, H., J. Ginges, A. Coman and S. Atran. 2012. Religion, Group Threat and Sacred Values. Judgment and Decision Making 7(2): 110-118.
Tajfel, H. 1970. Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination. Scientific American 223: 96-102.
Taylor, C. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tetlock, P. E., R. S. Peterson and J. S. Lerner. 1996. Revising the Value Pluralism Model: Incorporating Social Content and Context Postulates. In The Psychology of Values: The Ontario Symposium, Volume 8, edited by C. Seligman, J. Olson and M. Zanna. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Trivers, R. L. 1971. The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology 46(1): 35-57.
Vinci, A. 2006. Greed-Grievance Reconsidered: The Role of Power and Survival in the Motivation of Armed Groups. Civil Wars 8(1): 25-45.
Walt, S. M. 2015. What Should We Do if the Islamic State Wins?: Live With It. Foreign Policy, June 10, 2015. Available online at http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/10/what-should-we-do-if-isis-islamic-state-wins-containment/ (last accessed August 29, 2015).
Waytz, A., L. L. Young and J. Ginges. 2014. Motive Attribution Asymmetry for Love vs. Hate Drives Intractable Conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(44): 15687-15692.
Welch, M. R., D. Sikkink, E. Sartain and C. Bond. 2004. Trust in God and Trust in Man: The Ambivalent Role of Religion in Shaping Dimensions of Social Trust. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43(3): 317-343.
Wood, G. 2015. What ISIS Really Wants. The Atlantic, March 2015. Available online at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ (last accessed September 7, 2015).
Xygalatas, D. 2013. Effects of Religious Setting on Cooperative Behavior: A Case Study from Mauritius. Religion, Brain & Behavior 3(2): 91-102.