The Panorama of Peace and Global Religions

Abstract

This chapter examines the major roles of some top global religions, their mission on peace and how they fit into the master plan on the New World Order from the late twentieth century. The origin of the New World Order can be gleaned from the commonly accepted global religio-political concept. But by the early 1990s, the concept of the New World Order had rather resonated more on the political atmosphere especially during the reign of George Bush (Nye, 1992, 83-96; Freedman and Karsh, 1993, xxix; Slaughter, 1997, 183-197; Baker and DeFrank, 1995, xv; Mcgrew, 2000, 345-352). Skreslet (1997, 150-164) and Schroeder (2010, 25) opine further that the New World Order expresses a perception on a global change that has overtaken the purported ideals, as perceived by the global elite groups, to a world more orderly in its affair. Humanity surely needs a new order to salvage the insecurity, wars and rumors of wars, sufferings, climatic change and the disrespect to the rule of law that permeates the various societies (Freedman and Karsh, 1993, xxix). Nonetheless, the New World Order concept has played itself in various fronts since 1990s. The focus has been on the economic, social, political, technological and religious platforms. Recent discoveries also show that the world has experienced some notable incredible records of disaster, Patti (2010, 551) states that there have been irreparable acts of terrorism, earth-shattering disasters as pandemics that have been either natural and manmade, the resurgence of widespread armed international conflicts, global financial meltdowns, unbridled individual and corporate financial ethics violations, (and) the escalation of nuclear expansion by powerful nations. All this has posed a great upheaval on the landscape of the world with religious bodies. Consequently, these have generated the development of various approaches to create common grounds for a peaceful co-existence of man and global tranquility.