An Innovative Approach to Religious Dialogue, The World Alliance of Religions’ Peace Office

According to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR), there are 500,000 religions existing and out of 7.2 billion people over 85% of the population identify themselves as being religious. Seeing this current status, the different principles and values in each religious scripture have played an important role in people’s search for peace. However, ironically, it also resulted in religious conflicts and atrocities because more than 80% of wars are caused or motivated by religious misunderstandings. The misinterpretation of religious texts and biases built due to different faiths have led to religious hatred, persecutions, and conflicts involving physical violence. Thus, religious leaders have an integral role to educate their congregations that differences in religious beliefs must not hinder the progress of establishing world peace.

Realizing such phenomenon, Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL, Chairman Man Hee Lee) created the World Alliance of Religions’ Peace (WARP) Office, a forum for dialogue centering on world peace in interfaith relations and scriptural texts. Many religious leaders who participated in the WARP Summit 2014 have voluntarily established the peace offices in their home countries, advocating for true values and unity in religions and peace.

HWPL’s WARP Office aims to prevent the conflicts caused by religious misunderstandings and bring forth peace through gaining deeper understandings of the standards and teachings of each religion and the concept of peace spoken in each scripture. The Peace Offices that engage the local and regional communities of all religions are arising all over the world through 76 offices in 46 countries covering all continents, Europe, Oceania, America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and CIS and the numbers are increasing. Among various nations, the global conflict zones such as the Middle East, Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria have also opened the WARP Office and actively gather to take a proactive step toward peace.

Religious leaders assemble and participate in office meeting especially the event titled, “O” or “X” (Yes or No) Question Session about their respective sacred texts. Through the series of questions presented, leaders are able to compare and contrast scriptures and express their beliefs in a non-traditional way. This innovative task has stirred the discussion among the leaders of various faiths and increase interaction. It has deemed to be an effective tool to break the wall between religions and achieve our common goal, peace.

These peace office meetings are becoming a way to bridge the religions in all areas of the globe. With each successive peace meeting which became the global movement, an increasing number of influential religious leaders go beyond their roles, but work as the messengers of peace with sincere duty.