PARTICIPANTS

Brian Cox
International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD)

Canon Brian Cox is an ordained Episcopal Priest and a trained professional mediator who serves both as a pastor and as a senior official of a Washington DC based non-govern-mental organization devoted to faith-based diplomacy.

In 1990 he founded the European Reconciliation Fellowship which focused on the work of faith-based reconciliation with political and religious leaders in East Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.  It was in East Central Europe that he began to develop the strategic paradigm of faith-based reconciliation as a spirituality for individuals and as a moral vision for societies.

In 1999 he joined a newly formed non-governmental organization called the International Center For Religion and Diplomacy and later became ICRD’s Senior Vice President.  The mission of the International Center For Religion and Diplomacy is to address problems of communal identity that exceed the grasp of traditional diplomacy (such as ethnic conflict, tribal warfare and religious hostilities) by effectively combining religious concerns with the practice of international politics.  As such, it is committed to faith-based diplomacy.  He has served as ICRD’s Project Leader for Kashmir and the Middle East.  During these years he has had extensive exposure to the Islamic world in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. 

He has been a pioneer and practitioner in integrating faith and politics in the international context.  Over the course of his work in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East he has developed the strategic paradigm of faith-based reconciliation as a fresh approach to identity-based conflict and as an alternative to religious extremism.  Besides his experience in some of the world’s roughest neighborhoods, he has contributed to the scholarly and conceptual development of faith-based reconciliation with journal articles and opinion pieces and he serves as an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University School of Law where he teaches a course entitled “Faith-Based Diplomacy and International Peacemaking.”  He is the author of a recently published book “Faith-Based Reconciliation”.

Paragraph Statement

Question: What do you think is the most important issue involving religion that confronts international NGOs?

Policymakers are already convinced that religion is part of the problem in intractable identity-based conflicts.  It is viewed as either a cause or contributing factor in many interstate or intrastate conflicts.  This presents both a challenge and an opportunity to international NGOs.  The challenge is to demonstrate with tangible results that religion can be an asset for peacemaking and preventive diplomacy.  The opportunity is to provide a fresh paradigm for resolving intractable identity-based conflict where traditional diplomacy and conflict resolution has failed.

back to listing