Religion for Peace: Investigating Messengers and Messages for Interreligious Peace

这项建议寻求更新由德国政府资助的“宗教促进和平：确定宗教间和平的条件和机制”项目。最初的项目在一个嵌套的研究设计中调查了宗教间和平关系的条件和机制。该项目在全球定量分析中应用了宗教间和平的新概念，首先确定了宗教间和平的不利条件，如加强分裂或以前的暴力冲突。下一步，项目团队选择多哥和塞拉利昂作为不太可能的成功案例，尽管条件不利，但宗教间的和平程度很高。在案例国家进行的定性分析以及调查和实验研究强调了宗教领袖作为宗教间和平使者可以发挥的作用。然而，也提出了关于宗教领袖作为和平使者的相对效力和和平信息的有效内容的新问题。关于和平使者和信息的知识需要：(1)通过在不同背景下（重新）测试我们的发现和新假设来扩大；(2)深化干预措施的因果影响。拟议的更新项目要求额外的两年资金，以实现两个目标：首先，将收集数据，以研究宗教领袖作为和平使者的（相对）有效性，以及在另外四个宗教间和平程度相对较低、背景条件有利或不利的情况下（即奥地利、希腊、伊拉克和肯尼亚）和平信息的有效内容。研究这些额外的案例很重要，因为在这些环境中，信使和信息如何影响宗教间和平的个人层面机制可能与原始项目中研究的不太可能成功的案例不同。其次，我们将测试我们对和平使者和信息（例如，倡导和社交媒体培训）的研究所提供的干预措施对宗教间和平的因果影响。我们的团队与一个民间社会组织建立了联系，该组织旨在抵消多哥宗教间和平不断下降的动力，我们的团队有独特的可能性共同设计干预措施，并评估其对宗教间和平的影响。这些干预研究回答了宗教与和平关系研究的核心因果关系问题，并为建设和平的实践者提供了影响宗教间和平的具体指示。

This proposal seeks a renewal project for the DFG-funded project "Religion for Peace: Identifying Conditions and Mechanisms of Interfaith Peace". The original project investigated conditions and mechanisms of peaceful interreligious relations in a nested research design. Applying a novel conceptualization of interreligious peace in a global quantitative analysis, the project first identified unfavorable conditions for interreligious peace such as reinforcing cleavages or previous violent conflict. In a next step, the project team selected Togo and Sierra Leone as unlikely success cases where interreligious peace is high despite unfavorable conditions. Qualitative analyses as well as survey and experimental studies conducted in the case countries highlighted the role religious leaders can play as messengers for interreligious peace. Yet, new questions regarding the comparative effectiveness of religious leaders as peace messengers and effective content of peace messages were also raised. Knowledge on peace messengers and messages needs to be: (1) broadened by (re)testing our findings and new hypotheses in different contexts and (2) deepened regarding the causal effects of interventions. The proposed renewal project requests additional funding for two years to address two objectives: First, data will be collected to study the (comparative) effectiveness of religious leaders as peace messengers and effective content of peace messages in four additional cases where interreligious peace is comparably low and background conditions are favorable or unfavorable (i.e., Austria, Greece, Iraq, and Kenya). Studying these additional cases is important because individual-level mechanisms of how messengers and messages matter for interreligious peace may differ in these settings compared to in the unlikely success cases studied in the original project. Second, the causal effects of interventions informed by our research on peace messengers and messages (e.g., advocacy and social media training) on interreligious peace will be tested. Building on contact established with a civil society organization that aims to counteract dynamics of declining interreligious peace in Togo, our team has the unique possibility to co-design interventions and to evaluate their effects on interreligious peace. These intervention studies answer questions of causality central to research on the religion-peace link and provide peacebuilding practitioners with concrete indications on programs that can affect interreligious peace.