ABSTRACT
The complexity and intractability of the violence in our society and world, which other authors have indicated, could easily discourage any attempt to combat it. In every religion there is the hope that the individual can be changed and a new ordering of society achieved – a hope shared by many nourished in liberal and humanistic values, who find it hard to identify with a traditional religious community. ‘White’ and ‘Christian’ are subtly combined in assumptions of superiority, so that even ‘Black-led’ church members often feel alienated from society and from other Christians. In some Islamic states, religion is used to reinforce an externally imposed pattern of moral behaviour, but to hope that religion could be used in such a way in a democratic society would be a denial of liberal values and, a perversion of religion. In Vietnam, the Buddhist monks became active in the search for peace and Buddhists have shown recently increasing social concern.
