Marc Gopin

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Marc Gopin is a professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He directs the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at the same institution, and is a foremost expert on the role that religion and culture play in conflicts and conflict resolution.

The integration of religion into public peace processes was popularized in Western diplomatic circles by Douglas Johnston in Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994). Gopin by contrast warns against the dangers of fundamentalist religions to freedom and diversity. At the same time he insists that the most appealing aspects of contemporary religious experience be understood by peacemakers, diplomats, and civil servants, in order to create more inclusive peace processes and social arrangements. He aims to establish religious parties' stake in any negotiated agreement in order to undermine the appeal of religious militancy in the establishment of political and social orders. Other important scholars and practitioners in the field of religious peacemaking include Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Scott Appleby, John Paul Lederach, Joseph Montville, Marc Ross, and Vamik Volkan.

Gopin's research has focused on the selection and use of religious texts, symbols and rituals as these are interpreted by religious people to understand forces or events that are largely secular, such as globalization, resource distribution or political access. Religious language provides a critical access point for many traditional people in interpreting social conflicts. Religious practices of prayer, ritual, hospitality, forgiveness and reconciliation, are crucial in shaping a community's social response to conflict situations. These practices can be utilized by those engaged in peace processes to widen the appeal of secular forms of creating political order. Gopin's characterization of values dilemmas as they apply to international issues has also provided an important framework for understanding conflicts related to development, clash of cultures and social justice.

Gopin has found that the most religious segment of a community is often the one that most deeply internalizes the community's collective identity, history and memory. Studying their prayers, rituals and study, Gopin has found that these communities can be bellwethers for framing community responses to conflict.

In developing language and techniques for religious diplomats, Gopin looks to sacred texts as they are understood within a group's accepted cultural traditions and experience. He researches the use of spiritual guidance within religion traditions' larger justice and peace framework, including generosity, empathy, compassion, compromise, symbolic acts, and metaphorical understandings. To better support religious leaders and lay people who promote constructive relationships between competing groups, Gopin calls on improvements to contemporary forums, institutions and funding mechanisms.

Gopin has engaged in back-channel diplomacy with religious, political and military figures in many conflicts, and is particularly focused on Arab and Israeli issues. He has met with many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religious leaders in Israel, the Occupied Territories and neighborhood states. In recent years he has conducted extensive interfaith work and back channel diplomacy in Syria.

Gopin has authored three books on religious peacemaking. Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking (Oxford University Press, 2000) describes the role the religion can play in constructing a global community of shared moral commitments to constructive conflict resolution. In Holy War, Holy Peace (Oxford University Press, 2002), Gopin provides analysis of what has gone wrong in Arab-Israeli peace processes till now, and how diplomats and peacemakers can more effectively move all parties toward peace and justice in the future. Gopin addresses personal conflicts in his latest book, Healing the Heart of Conflict (Rodale Press, 2004), with an eight-step plan to address the deeply emotional stages that are necessary to resolve the most painful human conflicts.

Gopin's recent work in the field is pointing toward a need for a more aggressive global commitment to social contracts and constructs of society that welcome the inclusion of religious people as equal members of society. At the same time, he argues, we must established very firm boundaries that prevent religion from becoming corrupted by its use of force or power. Religious force is especially dangerous when it comes to the lives of citizens who have been abused by traditional religions, such as women, homosexuals, progressive interpreters of religions, syncretists or those who combine traditions, or those who have no religious affiliation. Religion globally today is turning out to offer a rich contribution to many areas of inquiry, especially in ethics, philosophy, literature, healing and psychotherapy, and many quests by human beings for a deeper meaning to existence. But religion's constructive nonviolent value seems to endure only when it is has no power over the public or military sphere. It is especially important that clerics be included as teachers only with no political or martial authority.

Gopin has appeared on numerous media outlets, including CNN, CNN International, Court TV, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, Israel Radio, National Public Radio, The Connection, Voice of America, and the national public radios of Sweden, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. He has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and his work has been featured in news stories of The Times, the Times of India, the Associated Press, and Newhouse News Service, regarding issues of conflict resolution, religion and violence.

Gopin has lectured widely on conflict resolution; in Switzerland, Ireland, India, Italy, and Israel, as well as at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and numerous other academic institutions. He has trained thousands of people worldwide in peacemaking strategies for complex conflicts in which religion and culture play a role.

Gopin received a Ph.D. in religious ethics from Brandeis University in 1993.