Working for durable peace is more or less Susan Hayward’s job description. Where fellow HDS alum Steve Simon keeps his eye on the potential for religiously inspired violence, Hayward, MDiv ’07, director of religion and peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), leverages the power of faith communities to resolve conflict.
“Through USIP’s religion and peacebuilding program, we work in active conflict zones around the world, across myriad faith traditions,” she says. “We seek to develop effective processes for engaging religious actors and factors to advance interfaith respect and cooperation, promote human rights, strengthen security and justice, and to address the needs of those living in the midst of violence.”
Established by Congress in 1984, USIP is involved both in research and analysis and in the implementation of peacebuilding efforts around the world. Since 1989, the Institute has had programs exploring the role of religion in conflict and peace. USIP’s first, primarily research-based, religion program was led by former Harvard Divinity School professor David Little. Hayward, the group’s current thematic expert in the area of religion, has partnered with governments and international organizations on field projects in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Colombia, and Iraq. She begins her work by examining the immense complexity of the forces that influence the situation in any conflict zone.
Hayward arrived in Myanmar, for instance, at a time of massive social, political, and economic transformation. In the wake of the Saffron Revolution, where Buddhist monks took to the streets, the country was transitioning to democracy from nearly 50 years of military rule. The stresses on the society manifested as tension between Buddhists and Muslims. Hayward and her team supported religious actors working to de-escalate the situation and head off outbreaks of violence.
“I went in and got to know how the various religious communities were responding to the peace process and ceasefire negotiations and to the transition from authoritarianism,” she says. “We helped by providing knowledge and strategy about how to do interfaith work in a way that could truly transform the dynamics of conflict, as well as the state structures that impede peace.”
Hayward, who is a minister in the United Church of Christ, says that she chose the ordination path with her current career in mind. At HDS, she was impressed at the way that Christian ministry combined the prophetic voice and pastoral care—both essential to peacemaking.
“There always needs to be a balance between calling out, telling truth to power, and bringing care and love to those who are living in situations of violence,” she says. “I came to fully appreciate my own tradition, Christianity, as kind of the divine disruptor of the world, achieved through this prophetic-pastoral approach.”
Today, as a member of the clergy, Hayward can relate to religious actors as a colleague, rather than as an outsider looking to harness the local faith community to serve political or security interests. Most of all, the ordination path gave her the internal resources to do work that can be frustrating and challenging as often as it is rewarding.
“The deepening and strengthening of my spiritual practices and commitments has not only given me a moral compass, but also internal resilience,” she says. “Most importantly, it’s given me hope that violence doesn’t have the last word, that love overcomes hate, and that putting your faith and your belief in those things is not a weakness, but a strength.”
—by Paul Massari