The Sacred Lands Project
The Sacred Lands Project is a micro-project initiated and supported by Susan Podziba.
The Sacred Lands Project (Project), originally founded at the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, explores the idea of sacred land disputes as a subset of public conflicts.
To assist communities in resolving disputes centered on sacred land, mediators need to have an understanding of and sensitivity to the concept of sacred lands, the symbols that attach, the roles of religious leaders as protectors of sacred space, and as spiritual as well as political leaders, and the roles and relationships of secular political leaders to religious leaders including how they may or may not politicize protections of and threats against sacred lands.
The goal of the Project is to develop a set of teachable practices for mediators working in the context of sacred land conflicts specifically, as well as when sacred land disputes are embedded in larger conflicts.
Publications
In an early paper, “The Need for and Conduct of a Conflict Assessment concerning the Sacred Esplanade of Jerusalem,” Susan Podziba outlined the need to focus the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on Jerusalem first, which upended typical approaches that left Jerusalem among final outstanding issues. This has now become an accepted approach and has led to many Track II efforts.
Susan Podziba’s second and third papers, “Harnessing Unresolvable Difference Across Abrahamic Faiths to Resolve Religion-Related Tangible Conflicts,” and “Mediating Conflicts over Sacred Lands,” identify strategies for convening spiritual religious leaders, as opposed to political religious leaders, in an effort to achieve civic fusion, a strong bond among people with deep value differences to reach a shared public goal. This innovation and distinction, which Susan Podziba spoke of at the 2018 Conference of the International Center for Ethno-Religious Mediation, was met with great interest. There was curiosity about future areas of exploration. For example, perhaps at the heart of battles to protect, harm, and establish primacy over sacred lands is an expectation that these places offer the possibility of access to the divine. If this is so, might those known as humbly holy in their communities determine to jointly seek such access and later, share mutual understandings of divine intentions for such sacred land?
Worldview Conflict: The Case of Mauna Kea (Hawaii) and the Thirty Meter Telescope, Publication of the Zurich Center for Security Studies of Switzerland, forthcoming.
Mediating Conflicts over Sacred Lands, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3: Spring 2018.