Standing in the Breach: Conflict Transformation and the Practice of Preaching

In an era of social and political polarization, the question of how to preach amid divided communities looms large. The field of conflict transformation, which emerged as a corrective to earlier conflict resolution and management models, offers new insight into how conflict might serve as a constructive catalyst for change. Conflict transformation provides perspectives and orientations to conflict that are useful to homiletics—but which also challenge assumptions about conflict that are present in the church and in the larger society. This essay introduces secular and Christian approaches to conflict transformation and analyzes some of their implications for preaching, including the claims that conflict is not sinful and could be a way in which God is acting in the world, that conflict transformation requires broad participation and not top-down solutions, and that restoration of right relationships can be more important to conflict transformation than coming to agreement.