For the 9th time in a row, the Forum for Religious Issues and the Center for Sociological and Anthropological Research of the ISS, with the partner support of the Center for Empirical Research of Religion from Novi Sad, are organizing the Annual International sociological-religious studies gathering themed “Religion in the international conflicts of the modern world”.
The previous year, as well as earlier years and the very beginning of 2024, were marked by social conflicts in several neuralgic points in the world, with each of those threatening to expand beyond their current limits, potentially even leading to a world conflict. At first, it might seem that these conflicts are predominantly territorial, but essentially, they are certainly not just that: they are identity conflicts, conflicts of different social values, or even existential ones. Although religions and churches are not directly involved, there is always a possibility that a religious-church discourse might be employed to amplify those political, value, and geostrategic conflicts, to provide legitimization and to homogenize a larger number of conflict participants, making them even more destructive. The experience of the wars in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s is an illustrative example of such a possibility.
This is why theorists of social conflicts are directly or indirectly linking churches and religions in the world with social conflicts that affect not only individual societies but also entire regions with populations of heterogeneous national and religious composition. It is a logical question whether the root causes of previously mentioned conflicts (Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, Taiwan, the Balkans) that include world powers like the USA, China, Russia, or Turkey, are of a religious nature (identity, different collective values) or the efficient causes lie beyond confessional divisions whose mere existence effectively encourages and morally justifies conflicts. The consequence of understanding religion as an intensifier of social conflicts implies the view that religions and churches are not generators of world conflicts, but that they have an instrumental value in them.
Certainly, the topic of religion and social conflicts is by definition interdisciplinary. The primary goal of the conference is to bring together experts from various disciplines: sociologists, theologians, political scientists, anthropologists, historians and economists, who would then, in an open and tolerant discussion, try to examine the current international, social, political and geostrategic conflicts in the context of religions and churches, and to show by analyzing concrete religious situations, in which direction and intensity do believers and hierarchies of religious organizations define, encourage, justify and legitimize conflicts.
This would be a traditional, ninth scientific gathering dedicated to the theme of various aspects of relations between societies, religions, and churches. So far, we have had a considerable number of participants, ranging from established authors to young scientists taking their first steps in academia. It is a general belief that these gatherings of researchers have produced positive results, either through the publishing of collections of papers or by publishing the papers of participants in the Institute’s journal Religion and Tolerance.
