Theologians and scholars of religion draw on rich resources to address the complex issues raised by political reconciliation in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Northern Ireland and elsewhere. The questions addressed include: Can truth set a person, or a society, free? How is political forgiveness possible? Are political, personal, and spiritual reconciliation essentially related? Explorations in Reconciliation brings Catholic, Protestant, Mennonite, Jewish and Islamic perspectives together within a single volume to present some of the most relevant theological work today. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/ISBN, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The support of the Irish School of Ecumenics Trust in making this OA version possible is gratefully acknowledged.

Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another", but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.

Since the end of the Cold War, the concept of reconciliation has emerged as a central term of political discourse within societies divided by a history of political violence. Reconciliation has been promoted as a way of reckoning with the legacy of past wrongs while opening the way for community in the future. This book examines the issues of transitional justice in the context of contemporary debates in political theory concerning the nature of 'the political'. Bringing together research on transitional justice and political theory, the author argues that if we are to talk of reconciliation in politics we need to think about it in a fundamentally different way than is commonly presupposed; as agonistic rather than restorative.

Nationally recognized speaker and church leader Jay Augustine demonstrates that the church is called and equipped to model reconciliation, justice, diversity, and inclusion. This book develops three uses of the term "reconciliation": salvific, social, and civil. Augustine examines the intersection of the salvific and social forms of reconciliation through an engagement with Paul's letters and uses the Black church as an exemplar to connect the concept of salvation to social and political movements that seek justice for those marginalized by racism, class structures, and unjust legal systems. He then traces the reaction to racial progress in the form of white backlash as he explores the fate of civil reconciliation from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement. This book argues that the church's work in reconciliation can serve as a model for society at large and that secular diversity and inclusion practices can benefit the church. It offers a prophetic call to pastors, church leaders, and students to recover reconciliation as the heart of the church's message to a divided world. Foreword by William H. Willimon and afterword by Michael B. Curry.

Holding each other up with respect, dignity and kindness.

Are countries truly reconciled after successful conflict resolution? Are only resource-rich regions capable of reconciliation, while supposedly resource-poor ones are condemned to recurring conflicts? This book examines the availability of various resources for political reconciliation, and explores how they are utilized in overcoming particular obstacles during the process. While the existing literature focus on themes such as justice, apology and resentment, the analysis here is centered on intellectual resources in terms of ideas, memory cultures, master narratives, economic incentives, civil society initiatives and object lessons. The research and comparative research in this volume are conducted by renowned regional experts from South Africa to the Asia-Pacific, thus providing multidisciplinary perspectives and new insight on the subject.