Marc Gopin
Encyclopedia
Marc Gopin is director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution http://www.gmu.edu/departments/crdc/ at George Mason University
. He is an expert on the role that religion
and culture
play in conflicts
and conflict resolution
. In 2008 he received the Andrew Thomas Peacebuilder Award from the New York State Dispute Resolution Association (NYSDRA). He is currently the James H. Laue Professor of Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University's [Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution http://icar.gmu.edu/.
Gopin's particular emphasis is on the role of religion and culture in not only sparking conflict, but as critical to reaching lasting resolution between peoples and nations. Widely recognized for his lectures and trainings on peacemaking strategies, Gopin has worked in Ireland, Israel, India, Switzerland, and Italy, and has presented at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton Universities. He has also engaged in back channel diplomacy with religious, political, and military figures on both sides of entrenched conflicts, especially in the Arab/Israeli conflict.
, where he was a student of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
. Though ordained as an Orthodox rabbi, he eventually stopped identifying with any Jewish denomination.
Gopin received a Ph.D.
in religious ethics from Brandeis University
in 1993.
, 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.
The integration of religion into public peace
processes was popularized in Western diplomat
ic circles by Douglas Johnston in Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994). Gopin by contrast warns against the dangers that fundamentalist religions present 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 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 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 wrote a series of opeds in 2007-2008 on Common Ground News Service, available at www.commongroundnews.org. These include: "New Treaty for Iran and Israel," "Winds of Change in Syria," "Counter Religious Extremism with religious Compassion," "A New Coalition for Justice and Peace I Israel," "A Mufti, a Christian, and a Rabbi," "Jewish Arabs and a New Middle East," "What Exactly is Pro-Israel?" "Regional Peace with Palestine at the Core," "Testing Hamas and a Saudi Option," "Lebanon for the Golan," "Leo the Healer: an untold story of Jewish/Palestinian medical partnership," "Israelis are
Talking to Hamas: religion at the cutting edge."
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. His writing 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, Associated Press
, and Newhouse News Service, regarding issues of conflict resolution, religion and violence. He has lectured widely on conflict resolution and has trained thousands of people worldwide in peacemaking strategies for complex conflicts in which religion and culture play a role.
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's recent work in the field points 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 is now working in partnership with the Fetzer Foundation to create a web-based video series and book on enemies who become friends and close partners. Filming began in the summer of 2008. He is also the author of To Make the Earth Whole: Creating Global Community in an Age of Religious Militancy (forthcoming, Rowman Littlefield). Gopin is creator and principal author of [www.marcgopin.com]http://www.marcgopin.com, a weblog dedicated to addressing the transformation of conflicts facing humanity.
Earlier publications:
and member of Leadership Group (US Muslim Engagement Project, Washington DC,
Cambridge, MA, September 2008)http://www.usmuslimengagement.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=44.
Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2007
George Mason University
George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...
. He is an expert on the role that religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
play in conflicts
Group conflict
Group conflict, or hostilities between different groups, is a pervasive feature common to all levels of social organization .. Although group conflict is one of the most complex phenomena studied by social scientists, the history of the human race evidences a series of group-level conflicts that...
and conflict resolution
Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...
. In 2008 he received the Andrew Thomas Peacebuilder Award from the New York State Dispute Resolution Association (NYSDRA). He is currently the James H. Laue Professor of Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University's [Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution http://icar.gmu.edu/.
Gopin's particular emphasis is on the role of religion and culture in not only sparking conflict, but as critical to reaching lasting resolution between peoples and nations. Widely recognized for his lectures and trainings on peacemaking strategies, Gopin has worked in Ireland, Israel, India, Switzerland, and Italy, and has presented at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton Universities. He has also engaged in back channel diplomacy with religious, political, and military figures on both sides of entrenched conflicts, especially in the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Education
In 1983, Gopin was ordained as a rabbi at Yeshiva UniversityYeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...
, where he was a student of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
Joseph Soloveitchik
Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was an American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist and modern Jewish philosopher. He was a descendant of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty....
. Though ordained as an Orthodox rabbi, he eventually stopped identifying with any Jewish denomination.
Gopin received a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in religious ethics from Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1993.
Research
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 globalizationGlobalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, resource distribution or political access. Religious language provides a critical access point for many traditional people in interpreting social conflicts. Religious practices of prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
, ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
, hospitality
Hospitality
Hospitality is the relationship between guest and host, or the act or practice of being hospitable. Specifically, this includes the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, resorts, membership clubs, conventions, attractions, special events, and other services for travelers...
, forgiveness
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines forgiveness as 'to grant free pardon and to give up all...
and reconciliation
Reconciliation (theology)
Reconciliation, a theological term, is an element of salvation that refers to the results of atonement. Reconciliation as a theological concept describes the end of the estrangement, caused by sin, between God and humanity. John Calvin describes reconciliation as the peace between humanity and...
, 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.
The integration of religion into public peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
processes was popularized in Western diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
ic circles by Douglas Johnston in Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994). Gopin by contrast warns against the dangers that fundamentalist religions present 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
John Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University...
, Joseph Montville, Marc Ross, and Vamik Volkan
Vamik Volkan
Vamık D. Volkan, M.D. is a Turkish-Cypriot emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine...
.
Gopin has found that the most religious segment of a community is often the one that most deeply internalizes the community's collective identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
, 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 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 wrote a series of opeds in 2007-2008 on Common Ground News Service, available at www.commongroundnews.org. These include: "New Treaty for Iran and Israel," "Winds of Change in Syria," "Counter Religious Extremism with religious Compassion," "A New Coalition for Justice and Peace I Israel," "A Mufti, a Christian, and a Rabbi," "Jewish Arabs and a New Middle East," "What Exactly is Pro-Israel?" "Regional Peace with Palestine at the Core," "Testing Hamas and a Saudi Option," "Lebanon for the Golan," "Leo the Healer: an untold story of Jewish/Palestinian medical partnership," "Israelis are
Talking to Hamas: religion at the cutting edge."
Gopin has appeared on numerous media outlets, including CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, CNN International
CNN International
CNN International is an international English language television network that carries news, current affairs, politics, opinions, and business programming worldwide. CNN is one of the world's largest news organizations. It is owned by Time Warner, and is affiliated with CNN, which is mainly...
, Court TV
Court TV
truTV is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Time Warner. The network launched as Court TV in 1991, changing to truTV in 2008...
, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, Israel Radio, National Public Radio, The Connection, Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
, and the national public radios of Sweden, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. His writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune
International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and his work has been featured in news stories of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, the Times of India, Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, and Newhouse News Service, regarding issues of conflict resolution, religion and violence. He has lectured widely on conflict resolution and has trained thousands of people worldwide in peacemaking strategies for complex conflicts in which religion and culture play a role.
Recent work
Gopin has engaged in back-channel diplomacyDiplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
with religious, political and military figures in many conflicts, and is particularly focused on Arab and Israeli issues. He has met with many Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
, Jewish, and Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
religious leaders in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, the Occupied Territories
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
and neighborhood states. In recent years he has conducted extensive interfaith work and back channel diplomacy in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
.
Gopin's recent work in the field points 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
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
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
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, healing
Healing
Physiological healing is the restoration of damaged living tissue, organs and biological system to normal function. It is the process by which the cells in the body regenerate and repair to reduce the size of a damaged or necrotic area....
and psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
, and many quests by human beings for a deeper meaning to existence. But religion's constructive nonviolent
Nonviolence
Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...
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 is now working in partnership with the Fetzer Foundation to create a web-based video series and book on enemies who become friends and close partners. Filming began in the summer of 2008. He is also the author of To Make the Earth Whole: Creating Global Community in an Age of Religious Militancy (forthcoming, Rowman Littlefield). Gopin is creator and principal author of [www.marcgopin.com]http://www.marcgopin.com, a weblog dedicated to addressing the transformation of conflicts facing humanity.
Published Works and Reviews
Gopin's latest work is summarized in his most recent book,, To Make the Earth Whole: Citizen Diplomacy in the Age of Religious Militancyhttp://www.marcgopin.com/?page_id=2027 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). The book introduces a critique of the field of conflict resolution, with a recommended emphasis now on practice based on social network theory and the art of citizen diplomacy. Gopin recounts his five years of work inside Syria, and in between Damascus, Washington and Jerusalem. He also engages in in-depth analysis of the ethics of intervention in conflict, from the perspective of Western philosophical ethics, as well as Eastern Wisdom traditions.Earlier publications:
- Changing Course: A New Direction for US Relations with the Muslim World, co-author
and member of Leadership Group (US Muslim Engagement Project, Washington DC,
Cambridge, MA, September 2008)http://www.usmuslimengagement.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=44.
- Healing the Heart of Conflict (Rodale Press, 2004)
- "Judaism and Peacebuilding in Religion and Peacebuilding, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004
- Holy War, Holy Peace (Oxford University Press, 2002)
- Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking (Oxford University Press, 2000)
- "New Treaty for Iran and Israel," Middle East Times, June 26, 2008.
- "How to challenge Iran's militancy without using arms,' with Rep. Gregory Meeks,
Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2007
Affiliations
- International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, member of the Academic Advisory Committee, Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. Chairman of the Advisory Board on Religion and Conflict Resolution
- American Friends of the Parents Circle, Board Member. Organization of Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for PeaceThe Parents Circle-Families ForumThe Parents Circle-Families Forum is a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict...
- A Different Future, Board member. Organization dedicated to the use of media to promote shared values of the monotheistic traditions for peace in the Middle East
- American Friends of the Open House at Ramle, Board member. Organization dedicated to Arab/Israeli coexistence and coeducation