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In this book, Atalia Omer argues that the efforts of western religious organizations in peacebuilding campaigns often reinforce neocolonial practices and disempower local religious actors. Focusing on Kenya and the Philippines, she shows that religious peacebuilding practices are both empowering and depoliticizing. Further, she argues that these religious actors generate decolonial openings regardless of how closed or open their religious communities are. The book not only uses decolonial and intersectional prisms to expose the entrenched and ongoing colonial dynamics operative in religion and the practices of peacebuilding and development in the global South, but it also speaks to decolonial theory through stories of transformation and survival.
Atalia Omer is a Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She is also the Dermot T.J. Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peace Building at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard University's Religion and Public Life program. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017. Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (2019). She is also a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford, 2015).
