Volf teaches at the Yale Divinity School, where his specialty is how faith can connect to everyday life -- especially to questions about violence.
The fighting in the early '90s between Serbia and Croatia challenged Volf's commitment to nonviolence. He was the son of a pacifist Pentecostal minister. How should he react? He spoke of that recently with Krista Tippett of Minnesota Public Radio.
MIROSLAV VOLF (Director, Center for Faith and Culture, Yale Divinity School): Once this occupation of my own country had taken place, I suddenly felt a surge of violence within me, and I was not sure exactly what I ought to do as a Christian. And that put on the map for me the question, how does one think as a Christian about situations of violence, and how does Christian faith interact in our violent world?ABERNETHY: Volf knows religion is often used to justify violence, but he also insists it can bring about reconciliation.
Dr. VOLF: At the very heart of the Christian tradition is this impulse that [the] enemy is there as a human being who needs to be embraced, who needs to be taken into the fold, who needs to be made from [an] enemy into a friend.
ABERNETHY: Does an enemy have to repent and ask for forgiveness before you can forgive that enemy?
Dr. VOLF: Before I can make that enemy my friend, yes. But before I can start the process of making an enemy a friend, no.
ABERNETHY: Volf acknowledges how difficult reconciliation is -- even harder for nations than for individuals. Nevertheless, he thinks reconciliation can happen in the former Yugoslavia, and he hopes it can happen between Americans and Islamic terrorists.
Dr. VOLF: I think the process of negotiation -- process of seeing ourselves through their eyes, helping them to see themselves in our eyes -- these kinds of processes are very important. I think that is what the stuff of politics is made [of].
ABERNETHY: Volf and his wife, also a Yale professor, have two young sons, Nathaniel and Aaron, six and two. I asked Volf what he teaches his boys about fighting.
Dr. VOLF: We all try to teach our children, well, share that toy, right? There's your turn, and there's other person's turn. "Well, look what Aaron wants now. Try to imagine yourself in his shoes. What would you do if you were in his place?"ABERNETHY: Does it work?
Dr. VOLF: Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't work. But my sense is that is what education -- that is what moral education is all about.
ABERNETHY: Do you spank them?
Dr. VOLF: I don't.
ABERNETHY: As Volf studies religion and everyday life as director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, he emphasizes his belief that for Christians, pursuing justice is not enough. They must go further.
Dr. VOLF: I find it almost like an insult to human nature, an insult to religious people, whatever religion they belong to, to say, "We have to agree at the bottom in order to be able to live in peace." I want to believe that if you and I disagree about something, that we can still be very good neighbors; indeed, that we can be friends. And that ought to apply also for our various world religions. We can disagree. We can disagree on profound matters of life and nevertheless, we can live in peace with one another. Why? Because I do believe that different religions have their own internal resources which will motivate us to live in peace, indeed, to love those who differ from us.
