Global crises-from pandemics to climate change-demonstrate the vulnerability of the biosphere and each of us as individuals, calling for responses guided by creative analysis and compassionate reflection. Transforming, building on its companion volume, Awakening, explores actions that create paths of understanding and collaboration as the groundwork for transformative community. The community of scholars in this volume offers perspectives that collectively form a complex tapestry of resources. The volume engages with the complex range of challenges and possibilities across a variety of sectors, and provides an interdisciplinary approach to the prospects for transformative healing of human and non-human communities, and the global environment we inhabit. Spirituality is essential to this, and, as such, the work explores vital dimensions of emerging spiritual concepts, methods, and practices that harbor interfaith potential for genuine reconciliation and communion.

Global crises-from pandemics to climate change-demonstrate the vulnerability of the biosphere and each of us as individuals, calling for responses guided by creative analysis and compassionate reflection. Transforming, building on its companion volume, Awakening, explores actions that create paths of understanding and collaboration as the groundwork for transformative community. The community of scholars in this volume offers perspectives that collectively form a complex tapestry of resources. The volume engages with the complex range of challenges and possibilities across a variety of sectors, and provides an interdisciplinary approach to the prospects for transformative healing of human and non-human communities, and the global environment we inhabit. Spirituality is essential to this, and, as such, the work explores vital dimensions of emerging spiritual concepts, methods, and practices that harbor interfaith potential for genuine reconciliation and communion.

The role of military chaplains has changed over the past decade as Western militaries have deployed to highly religious environments such as East Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq. US military chaplains, who are by definition non-combatants, have been called upon by their war-fighting commanders to take on new roles beyond providing religious services to the troops to also engage the local citizenry and provide their commanders with assessments of the religious and cultural landscape outside the base. More specifically, in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, chaplains have occasionally been asked to provide their commanders with background on the religious and cultural environment to which they deployed (e.g. Islam and the Muslim world) and to reach out to local civilian clerics in hostile territory in pursuit of peace and understanding. Despite some internal resistance to this expansion of duties, some military chaplains have engaged local religious authorities in order to quell misunderstandings and promote peace in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa.In this edited volume, practitioners and scholars chronicle the changes that have happened in the field in the 21st century. For example, they explain how the Multi-National Forces-Iraq command chaplain (who reported directly to General Petraeus) worked with the NGO Foundation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction in the Middle East, contributing to a significant drop in sectarian violence. In the Horn of Africa, the command chaplain, who was a Jewish rabbi, helped build relationships between Muslims and Christians. In Afghanistan, Muslim chaplains engaged with Sunni and Shia religious leaders to develop local trust and Coalition and a training program for religious leaders within the Afghan National Army. By looking at the rapidly changing role of the military chaplain, this volume raises issues critical to US foreign and national security policy and diplomacy.

Globally, where faith and political processes share the public space with indigenous populations, religious leaders of tolerant voice, who desire to transcend the conflict that often divides their peoples, are coming forward. Affirming and enabling these leaders is increasingly becoming the focus of the reconciliation efforts of peace builders, both internally and externally to existing conflict. By way of theoretical analysis and documented case studies from a number of countries, Military Chaplains as Agents of Peace considers Religious Leader Engagement (RLE) as an emerging domain that advances the cause of reconciliation via the religious peace building of chaplains: A construct that may be generalized to expeditionary, humanitarian, and domestic operational contexts. An overview of the benefits and limitations of RLE is offered and accompanied by a candid discussion of a number of the more perplexing questions related to such operational ministry: Influence Activities, Information Gathering for Intelligence Purposes, and the Protected (Non-Combatant) Status of Chaplains.

Globally, where faith and political processes share the public space with indigenous populations, religious leaders of tolerant voice, who desire to transcend the conflict that often divides their peoples, are coming forward. Affirming and enabling these leaders is increasingly becoming the focus of the reconciliation efforts of peace builders, both internally and externally to existing conflict. By way of theoretical analysis and documented case studies from a number of countries, Military Chaplains as Agents of Peace considers Religious Leader Engagement (RLE) as an emerging domain that advances the cause of reconciliation via the religious peace building of chaplains: A construct that may be generalized to expeditionary, humanitarian, and domestic operational contexts. An overview of the benefits and limitations of RLE is offered and accompanied by a candid discussion of a number of the more perplexing questions related to such operational ministry: Influence Activities, Information Gathering for Intelligence Purposes, and the Protected (Non-Combatant) Status of Chaplains.