Spirituality for Peace

This chapter delves into the interconnection between spirituality as a character strength and peace in its various forms and manifestations. It offers a comprehensive background on the multifaceted aspects of peace, highlighting their intricate complexities. Furthermore, it underscores the significance of spirituality in individuals’ lives and its correlation with other character strengths, some of which are explicitly spiritual (e.g., awe, forgiveness) while others are spiritually related. Drawing upon these conceptualizations and aiming for a deeper comprehension of the relationship between spirituality and peace, the chapter introduces a multifaceted heuristic spiritual model designed to foster peace across different domains—intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup. This model incorporates a spiritual development framework that can pave the way for holistic levels of spirituality and advocates for adopting a worldview that embraces peace-oriented spiritual beliefs, urging a transformative shift from divisive values and dispositions towards interconnectedness and peaceful ideologies. Moreover, the model suggests leveraging other character strengths alongside spirituality, especially those with spiritual inclinations, as these strengths can be expressions of spirituality. The synergy created by concurrently activating multiple strengths holds the potential for broader and more impactful outcomes than the sum of their individual effects. The chapter concludes with recommendations for further research and practical applications that build upon these insights in order to foster spiritually informed peace initiatives across the three domains.