A Restorative Peace-making Process for Conflicted Faith Communities

Abstract

Restorative justice has been part of Jewish and Christian scriptures and praxis for thousands of years. Over most of this history, restorative practices were applied when one or more members of a specific faith community were found to be in theological or moral error and wished to be restored to full participation in the community. However, restorative praxis has not generally been applied to internal faith community conflicts except in certain groups with peace traditions such as Amish, Mennonite and Bruderhof. This paper briefly describes a restorative process model focusing on interpersonal forgiveness and reconciliation based on Christian scripture, research studies, and facilitative best practices.