QCE Religion & Ethics Religion & Ethics - Unit 0 - Option E · Peace

Peace, justice, conflict and duty to act

Compare secular, religious, spiritual and ethical approaches to peace and explain upstander responsibility.

Part of the free QCE Religion & Ethics notes library for Unit 0: Option E · Peace.

Updated 2026-08-08 - 8 min read

Compare secular, religious, spiritual and ethical approaches to peace and explain upstander responsibility. This lesson is built for active use: first construct the mental model, then examine evidence, follow a worked application, identify the trap and complete a transfer check.

Build the mental model

Negative peace is absence of direct violence; positive peace includes just relationships and institutions that address structural causes. Begin by defining the religious, spiritual or ethical question and locating each source in its tradition, community and context. Identify who has authority to speak, whose perspective may be absent, and which principle or practice gives the evidence meaning.

Conflict can be managed constructively and is not identical to violence. Do not compress a tradition into one universal viewpoint or substitute personal opinion for inquiry. Compare contextualised perspectives, connect claims to authorised evidence and principles, and test the judgment against rights, consequences, responsibilities and affected stakeholders. Dignity, safety, respect, justice and inclusion provide criteria for peaceful outcomes. That is the move that converts recall into reasoning a marker can follow.

The relationships you must be able to use

• Negative peace is absence of direct violence; positive peace includes just relationships and institutions that address structural causes.
• Conflict can be managed constructively and is not identical to violence.
• Dignity, safety, respect, justice and inclusion provide criteria for peaceful outcomes.
• Religious and spiritual approaches may include prayer, meditation, dialogue, forgiveness, nonviolent resistance and sacred-story guidance.
• The duty to act asks when a bystander should become an upstander and what safe, proportionate action is possible.
• SDG 16 connects peace with justice, accountable institutions and inclusive participation.

Current syllabus scope for this lesson

• Describe principles of religious, spiritual and ethical approaches to peace and conflict, including prayer, meditation, dialogue, nonviolent resistance, reference to sacred stories, examples of influential people such as Mahatma Gandhi
• Describe principles of peace, justice and conflict
• Describe principles of secular methods and approaches to justice and fairness, e.g. the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
• Describe principles of dignity, safety and respect
• Explain different views of peace
• Explain the principle of the ‘duty to act’ and the role of upstanders
• Explain approaches, frameworks or the role of institutions that promote peaceful and respectful outcomes and responses.
• Apply knowledge to make decisions that inform religious, spiritual and ethical views in a range of contexts.
• Select and use information from relevant and reliable sources to examine the role of religious, spiritual and ethical traditions in different contexts related to peace.

These ideas form a sequence rather than six isolated facts. A useful workflow is: frame → represent → analyse → infer → verify → communicate. Frame the exact problem and boundaries. Represent the important relationships using the most informative diagram, quotation, data display or decision framework. Analyse the representation for pattern, mechanism or implication. Infer only what the evidence supports. Verify through a second method or source. Communicate the decision in the conventions of Religion & Ethics.

Worked example — from prompt to defensible answer

Notice that the answer is not a one-line conclusion. It shows the intermediate decision that makes the conclusion inspectable. If the context changed, retain the reasoning structure but replace the evidence, conditions and implications.

Common mistakes and how to repair them

A second common mistake is to overstate certainty. Use precise verbs: *shows* for directly displayed evidence, *suggests* or *is consistent with* for a supported inference, and *causes* only when a justified mechanism and evidence support causation. A third is to add material that is true but irrelevant. Every paragraph, calculation or design element should help answer the command.

Classroom deep dive — distinguish restraint, justice and durable peace

Conflict is not identical to violence. People and groups can have incompatible goals or interpretations without using harm, while apparent quiet can conceal fear, exclusion or structural violence. Negative peace refers to the reduction or absence of direct violence. Positive peace includes conditions that support dignity, justice, participation, safety and accountable institutions. These are not mutually exclusive stages: immediate restraint may be essential while longer-term work addresses causes, relationships and power.

Religious, spiritual and ethical approaches may include prayer, meditation, forgiveness, lament, dialogue, nonviolent resistance, hospitality, reconciliation, sacred story, just-war or pacifist reasoning, service and witness. Explain the principle and mechanism rather than listing practices. Nonviolent resistance, for example, is not passivity: it can organise participation, withdraw cooperation, expose injustice and create moral or political pressure while attempting to limit harm. Secular frameworks and institutions may use human rights, law, mediation, diplomacy, development, restorative practice and Sustainable Development Goal 16. Compare approaches under the same context and criteria without pretending their sources or purposes are identical.

The duty to act raises questions of knowledge, capacity, role, risk, proximity and consequence. An upstander notices harm, interprets responsibility and chooses a proportionate response; direct confrontation is not always safe or effective. Alternatives include documenting, reporting, interrupting, supporting the targeted person, mobilising others or changing an institution. Evaluate who bears the danger and whether the proposed action transfers risk onto those already harmed. In a case response, diagnose direct, structural and cultural dimensions; locate an authorised principle or framework; compare at least two feasible actions; then judge them using safety, dignity, justice, participation, effectiveness and sustainability. State what short-term evidence and longer-term evidence would show movement toward positive peace.

Exam and assessment transfer

Use this five-part response check:

1. Task: Have you answered the exact command and named the required context?
2. Evidence: Is the evidence precise, relevant and correctly represented?
3. Reasoning: Can a reader see the mechanism, relationship or interpretive chain?
4. Judgment: If evaluation or action is required, are the criteria and trade-offs explicit?
5. Verification: Have you used source authority, an alternative perspective and ethical criteria?

Deliberate practice — deepen the transfer

Practise with a perspective matrix. For each source or participant, record context, authority, key principle or practice, evidence, and what the source cannot establish. Compare traditions through a shared question while preserving differences in meaning and internal diversity. When applying an ethical framework, explain why the principle matters in this situation, who carries obligations, which people may be unheard, and what consequences or rights create a genuine tension. A project response should convert these findings into a specific action and evaluation plan. Check dignity, consent, cultural authority, safety, participation and the possibility that your preferred action creates a new exclusion.

Sources

• QCAA Religion & Ethics 2024 v1.2 syllabus
• Australian Bureau of Statistics religious affiliation
• AIATSIS ethical research guidance
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16

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