Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

In this book, Atalia Omer argues that the efforts of western religious organizations in peacebuilding campaigns often reinforce neocolonial practices and disempower local religious actors. Focusing on Kenya and the Philippines, she shows that religious peacebuilding practices are both empowering and depoliticizing. Further, she argues that these religious actors generate decolonial openings regardless of how closed or open their religious communities are. The book not only uses decolonial and intersectional prisms to expose the entrenched and ongoing colonial dynamics operative in religion and the practices of peacebuilding and development in the global South, but it also speaks to decolonial theory through stories of transformation and survival.