Global Dialogues

Last weekend, I had breakfast with my family, and my brother and sister were there. We are, by all accounts, very different people—our temperaments, professional trajectories, convictions, and even morning moods diverge widely. Yet, as I watched us share stories and laughter, I realized that these differences have never led us to actual hostility. On the contrary, and despite a few spirited discussions, they have helped us build a solid bond—one that honors the uniqueness of each of us while nurturing the dreams and hopes we hold together as a family. 

That simple scene made me think of two fundamental values for peacebuilding: solidarity and fraternity. The first, derived from the Latin solidus, speaks of what is solid, stable, and enduring: of the effort to strengthen relationships so that our social fabric does not crack. The second, from frater (brother), evokes the particular kind of love that grows between siblings: a love that embraces difference without demanding uniformity. Both, as John Paul Lederach reminds us, lie at the heart of peacebuilding, which is ultimately an art of cultivating and protecting relationships. 

In Colombia, amongst the many social sectors that are part of our vibrant and complex social fabric, communities of faith have long played a crucial role in peacebuilding, as the Truth Commission’s recent Final Report highlights. However, I believe they face a range of challenges today that call precisely for these two virtues I’ve mentioned before. Many are learning to confront their own violent or exclusionary imaginaries—not only between different religious traditions, but even amongst subgroups within the same community. Others are reckoning with inherited religious imaginaries that perpetuate harm toward women or LGBT persons, or that separate spirituality from the tough, long-term demands of social transformation. Still others struggle to articulate their efforts with broader peace and restorative justice initiatives, whether through lack of awareness or deliberate avoidance. 

Beyond these internal tensions, communities of faith also face the challenge of connecting their imaginaries of peace and reconciliation with public policy, amplifying the voices of local religious and women leaders, accompanying victims and their families, and healing memories scarred by conflict. Each of these efforts involves revising the symbolic frameworks through which faith communities imagine God, the human person, and the other: frameworks that can either sustain impenetrable walls or open doors. 

Across all these fronts, fraternity and solidarity emerge as the quiet, steady forces that sustain transformation. Without fraternity, dialogue becomes negotiation; without solidarity, compassion dissolves into the cracks of rhetoric. Together, they remind faith communities that peace is not an abstraction but a daily practice of becoming loving siblings—with each other, with society, and with those who still carry the wounds of violence. 

The task is as difficult as it is exciting. It would be extraordinary to see communities of faith overcome their fractures, not by dissolving their identities, but by strengthening dialogical imaginaries capable of holding difference without fear. Such an example would shine brightly in a world where confrontation, othering, and insincerity have become defining traits of so many conflicts and conversations, even on the global stage. Perhaps that is the deepest promise of fraternity and solidarity today: that they can renew our imaginaries of peace and help us dream of a future built, quite literally, among siblings.

Eduardo Gutiérrez González is an assistant professor at the Center of Theological Formation at Pontifica Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.