HEAD: My thesis aims to recognize that social justice is essential to a culture of peace. Peoples’ perceptions of social justice vitally affect their sense of the legitimacy of social structures and their willingness to cooperate, sustain, and reproduce them. A widespread sense that a system is unjust will undermine a sense of its legitimacy, and ultimately lead to its collapse.

I am interested whether religion and/or spiritual practices has an important role and responsibility in shaping, teaching, and upholding ideas and standards of social justice. This includes the ideas and standards of social justice delineated in international human rights agreements. Many of these rights were prefigured in religious teachings about the inherent dignity of human beings, their cultures, and all creation, and the requirement to treat all with respect and reverence.

I want to understand through participatory action research, literature review, and narrative inquiry whether religious groups themselves may consciously or unconsciously contribute to social injustice and the breakdown of positive peace through their support of, or failure to question, unjust policies and practices, both within their own structures and within the local, national, and international systems of which they are a part.

I plan to examine the beliefs, ideas, teachings, and practices of religion and ways they enhance or undermine social justice and peace. I want to understand how we can affirm and strengthen those that contribute to social justice and peace, and work to change those that undermine it. Doing this in one’s own faith community is an important first step toward world justice and peace.

Do religions help develop a sense of self-worth, self-confidence, self-discipline, conscience, and solidarity regarding social justice and peace among members of one’s faith community that will enable them to both resist injustice and oppression and contribute to a culture of peace and nonviolent conflict resolution? Research has shown that those most capable of resisting oppression and contributing to positive peace are people with these traits, and that often these traits are supported by their faith and beliefs.