Oded Adomi Leshem, Hope Amidst Conflict: Philosophical and Psychological Explorations (2023, Oxford University Press)
Hope is a key concept both for theology and for church life. It has been an interest of ours at SWF for some time and Challenging Hope is the title of our annual conference on June 18th, 2024. Oded Adomi Leshem will be one of our keynote speakers at that conference and here Emma Pavey explores his book ‘Hope Amidst Conflict’, reflecting on his findings.
In brief:
In ‘Hope Amidst Conflict’, Leshem examines hope’s intricate interplay with reality, focusing on its relevance in the Israel-Palestine conflict and its potential for fostering peace. He highlights hope’s dual nature as desire and expectation, crucial in analysing hope. Leshem’s research, notably the Hope Map Project, delves into hope’s nuances and its impact on activism and political discourse. In her reflection here, Emma Pavey extends his discussion to theological dimensions, pointing to how nuanced reflections on hope can feed thinking about church life.
Reflection:
In ‘Hope Amidst Conflict’, political psychologist Oded Leshem explores “[h]ope’s perplexing relationship with reality” and, in particular, in situations of intractable conflict (xiv). He looks specifically at the Israel-Palestine conflict, in part on the basis that “hope can be understood best when challenged the most” (95). And if it is “understood best”, this understanding can serve the cause of peace. However, a question he considered at the time of writing which is perhaps even more resonant now remains in the forefront throughout: “Is it legitimate to talk about hope for peace while people are burying their loved ones? Is hope a thing to be discussed when hope is essentially absent?…Good scholarship and effective practice must always be connected to harsh reality” (171).
He notes that having been the domain of theologians and writers, hope has become a key area of research among philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and others resulting in a wealth of interdisciplinary studies. Given his learning around hope, one of Leshem’s core questions in this study is,
“What should we accept, and what should we hope to transform?” (1)
As the saying goes, we need the wisdom to know the difference, and tools to help us understand how and why others answer these same questions in their own way.
Right from the start, Leshem draws a vital distinction, not always noted in the literature yet crucial for understanding, between hope as the desire or wish for something to happen, and hope as a measure of expectation that it could happen. This is his “bidimensional model of hope” (17). This distinction proves essential for fully understanding hope in persistent conflict situations. He is quick to point out that this is not an exclusive distinction; there is mutual influence and interweaving between the two aspects of hope, and there must be some small element of both (49, 57). When wishes are high but expectation is below zero we have despair, and when expectation is high but wish is below zero we have fear.
The bulk of Leshem’s book presents his Hope Map Project, and specifically the research pertaining to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Overall, and probably not surprisingly, he found high wishes and low expectations for peace (whether understood broadly or precisely). Through exploring the seemingly intractable conflict situation in this area, he explores how different notions of hope might impact (or not) effective actions that lead to peace, and specifically the instrumentalization of hope as “a tool for political change among leaders and peacebuilders” (17).
Before the presentation of that research, Leshem provides a necessary discussion of the potential dangers and inherent risks of hope, pointing to history and literature that considered hope as a malady, a weakness or ignorance in the light of reason. However, in our time it is considered in an almost unquestioningly positive light. Thus, he adds that it is a particular feature of Western culture and modernity that “hope always prevails and that people’s stubborn desires, positive expectations, and uncompromising commitments to social and political change ultimately pay off. Yet history does not always lean in the direction of the hopeful” (3). He points out hope can cause passivity or reflect arrogance (“unwarranted optimism”, 28) in dealing with present realities, and that one of the ways hope can suffer great diminishment is through hopes having been built up (for example through a promising peace process) and then dashed (30). Is it better to have hoped and lost than never to have hoped at all? We might consider, when hopes are indeed dashed, how we know when to be a shoulder to cry on, and when to be a hand that lifts a person up to hope again. And as Leshem points out, it is therefore “not surprising that skeptical leadership can be attractive to constituents”, perceived as the courage to ‘face reality’ (88). Would we rather have leaders with too little hope or too much?
Having provided this important questioning of hope as a wholly positive thing, he shifts to the benefits. He notes that hope is considered both a virtue and duty in Judeo-Christian tradition and observes how this view prevails in the West, where “one is expected to hope and hope big, both in terms of the levels of enthusiasm and the scope of the hoped-for goal” (34). Being hopeful is, as he notes, “the norm, not a character defect…[it is] socially desirable” (34).
Leshem’s work and developing Hope Map Project offer a rich discussion of a careful project and thoughtful, evidenced approach to hope. He includes chapters exploring the connection between activism and hope using qualitative research methods (chapter co-written with Shanny Talmor and Eran Halperin), and the political messaging of hope using textual analysis (chapter co-written with Ilana Ushomirsky, Emma Paul and Eran Halperin). Though he points to ample precedent (48), a statistical method for measuring and analysing hope might seem odd, but it is paired with qualitative research and rich discussion that bring the numbers to life.
One of the “predictors” in Leshem’s study was acceptance of uncertainty. In his research he found that the “degree to which Palestinians and Jewish Israelis accept uncertainty…did predict their wishes for peace” (84). An “openness to experience” also predicted Jewish Israelis’ wish for peace (84). In addition, in his chapter on the determinants of hope, he cites an interesting study that explored the link between worldview and hopes for peace (by Cohen-Chen, 72). They found that “those assigned to the ‘world is ever-changing’ condition had higher hopes for peace than those who drew a picture of the world as fixed and rigid” (72). This makes me wonder about the relationship between our perception of hope, uncertainty and possibility and our theology of the future as either malleable, as we collaborate with God into the future of potential, or fixed by God’s pre-ordained will.
In exploring hope specifically in relation to peace, Leshem provides some interesting insight into that notion too. He argues that the reputation of ‘peace’ has been “severely damaged” through the failure of ‘peace’ processes and become “a hollow concept…as a brand, [it] has lost its power” (89). It seems that it is not only the substance but the perception of things hoped for that is important, just as much as the kind of hope we have. It makes me wonder about notions related to church hopes whose ‘brand’ and perception may have been damaged due to misuse, such as ‘growth’ or ‘mission’.
I’m interested too in the connection between this analysis of hope on the one hand and interest, particularly among activists, in emergence and emergent thinking. In frameworks such as Theory U, there is a sense that a hopeful, positive deep dive has creative potential to either unearth and/or create new possibilities. Taken to its extreme, followers of the ‘law of attraction’ believe in ‘manifesting’ the future they hope for, and their ability to thereby make it happen, granting hope strong reality-shifting powers. Leshem notes,
“the claim about hope’s potential to create change should deserve…more attention simply because it is hardly contested. People commonly take it for granted that hope can bring about positive outcomes” (145).
We might consider then how our understanding of hope intersects with our understanding of prayer, its purpose, its power, and our part to play.
Leshem notes that behavioural change is harder to achieve and research than attitudinal change and yet a key aspect of his research is to explore whether and how hope is related to a change in behaviour towards ‘peace-promoting’ behaviour. Read Leshem’s book to find out about the ingenious methodology he used.
Furthermore, the observations that Leshem provides offer helpful insights for those considering the role of hope for the practices of the church, whether related to the leadership and implementation of church growth initiatives, the exploration of justice issues, or programmes serving the local community, to name a few. We can see that Leshem’s work provides a useful caution against a naïve assumption that such a common, key term has a shared understanding. Exploring together the comparative and interwoven understanding of hope as wish, and hope as expectation, and learning to identify each one and how they intersect, adds essential nuance to discussions of hope in these contexts, particularly, though not only, in conflict situations.
Here are some additional questions to consider in the light of this discussion:
- What kind of hope does God have in terms of wish and expectation?
- To what extent do our cultural, psychological, even political assumptions about hope colour our theology, and vice versa?
- What is the relationship, theological and practical, between hope and lament? Between hope and forgiveness/grace? Between hope and judgement?
- To what extent does our theology in all its features engage with the risk, uncertainty, psychology and politics of hope?
- How does our understanding of hope intersect with our understanding of prayer?
- To what extent can we choose hope?
See also our other book reviews on hope:
Tia DeNora (sociologist), Hope: The Dream We Carry
Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller (psychologists), Hope in the Age of Anxiety, a guide to understanding and strengthening our most important virtue