By Charles Randall Paul, Ph.D.
Tehran, October 26, 2026
Illustration from the official program of the 7th International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution, held in Tehran, Iran, October 26–27, 2026.
Honored colleagues in pursuit of a more peaceful world,
I wish I could be attending this conference on peace-building in person with you in Tehran today. I am especially grateful you have provided me a hearing during a time of serious hostility between our nations. In this presentation I am speaking as a religious diplomat, a social theorist, a Christian, and a colleague of my Iranian scholarly friends who have invited me to add my thoughts to theirs in this conference. I am the president of a privately funded NGO called the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. I will try to speak truthfully so you will trust me. I want to persuade you to consider the validity of the following thesis: By divine design we should live in peaceful tension as trustworthy rivals seeking, affirming and contesting truth together by respectful means of mutual persuasion.
The truth is human life was designed for us to live in peaceful tension together as rivals in a contest over the most righteous way to live and the common good. (Quran 5: 48) This natural rivalry need not cause us to fear each other as long as we aim to influence each other to change only by means of mutually respectful persuasion without threat of force. Living in peaceful tension requires that humans to regulate natural feelings of fear, suspicion and anger when we are challenged by others' incompatible religious of ideological beliefs. We neither fight with nor flee from our honest challengers; we stay together patiently engaged as trustworthy rivals who speak and seek the truth as well as we can. Cooperative co-resistance is the goal for trustworthy rivals that by divine design are meant to meet in this world.
To be a serious claim, this thesis of righteous human rivalry must boldly face the near ubiquitous problem of distrust between rivals who see each other as enemies that present existential threats that must be eliminated by violent or legal coercion. Of course, we presume that enemies can only lie to each other when existential threats to their cultural or physical security are at stake. We expect no trust between them. Ordinary diplomacy is not even reasonable. No conversation matters. Only brute force will prevail against an enemy’s existential threats. Today I am presenting another rarely considered alternative to cycles of violence in the face of existential threat, namely a strategy of existential trust. I title my paper, Trust Before Peace: Facing Existential Threats with Courageous Existential Trust
We are all very aware of suffering from a dilemma of utter distrust between the leaders of the United States and Iran. To end the belligerence between our nations I believe we need to experiment with existential trust-building. My brief paper introduces existential trust as a radical form of diplomacy when conditions for ordinary rational verification of trust have broken down. Existential trust contrasts with traditional trust models—based on reliable competence, motives, and institutions. Existential trust entails a moral choice to risk remaining constant in a caring relationship for an opponent even when a formidable conflict remains unresolved. Its moral nature blends religious and political diplomacy to face extremely intractable conflicts.
Introduction to the Topic
Conventional theories of social trust have largely focused on stable conditions in which trust is cultivated and sustained through clear motives, demonstrated competence, aligned interests, and reliable institutional frameworks. Existential trust, however, engages with the lived reality of ideological and religious conflict when trust must often be extended not in conditions of stability, but in moments of breakdown, betrayal, or irresolvable tension. This paper introduces and justifies the practice of a form of trust that emerges as both a personal and persuasive action in the absence of sufficient rational guarantees.
Classical Foundations of Trust
We begin with four foundational approaches to trust, each of which has made lasting contributions:
Mayer, Davis & Schoorman (1995) define trust in terms of three attributes of the trustee: ability, benevolence, and integrity. Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable based on this perceived trustworthiness.
Hardin (2002) proposes the concept of encapsulated interest: we trust others when we believe it is in their interest to take our interests into account—an account of strategic, interest-based cooperation.
Barber (1983) sees trust as the expectation of both moral obligation and technical competence within social roles—especially relevant in complex, role-differentiated societies.
Luhmann (1979) frames trust as a systemic mechanism to reduce social complexity, particularly at the institutional level where personal knowledge is unavailable.
Classical theories of trust converge in describing trust as relational, functional, and rational, rooted in expectations that can be tracked, predicted, or explained. Yet they largely presume that trust is cultivated under conditions of relative order and mutual intelligibility.
Choosing Trust Under Existential Risk
Strange as it may seem, the practice of existential trust builds on the insight from psychologist John Gottman’s research on successful long-term marriage, which found that 67% of marital conflicts are never finally resolved in happy, committed unions. This empirical reality challenges the theory that lasting trust is dependent on rational agreement or final resolution of conflicts. Instead, long-term trustworthiness must be proven by mutual loyalty to the relationship that withstands unresolved disagreements.
We propose the practice of existential trust as an essential supplement to classical theories. Existential trust is the chosen action to risk remaining loyal to a respectful relationship even when motives cannot be fully verified, competence is compromised, and the institutional safety net is failing. The wager is that the apparent enemy is antagonist out of fear of being attacked; but in reality, if that fear were to be assuaged—is actually a trustworthy rival that does not desire to impose their will by force—but by means of respectful persuasion.
Existential Trust Defined
Existential trust is the act of extending or embodying trust when conditions for trustworthiness are absent or severely compromised. It answers the question, “Why do you risk trusting even now?” with: “Because I choose to be trustworthy to see if it will inspire the same in my adversary.” Existential trust is not reducible to optimism, nor does it reject rational caution. Rather, it occupies a seemingly paradoxical middle ground: discerning and practical in assessing risks and boundaries, yet open-hearted and resilient in choosing to act with respect and goodwill beyond what current verification allows.
We do not promote existential trust as the primary or optimal approach in every case. Rather, it acknowledges “trust and verify” methods—especially incremental, staged trust-building—as wise and essential tools for reducing unnecessary risk. These methods often provide the safest and most sustainable way to test, refine, and grow trust over time. However, there are moments—often in crisis—when such staged verification is unavailable or inadequate. In these moments, some individuals or groups may choose to extend existential trust as a last resort or breakthrough gesture of goodwill. No one can demand this choice from others. Yet when freely offered, its moral and persuasive impact can be profound.
When to Use Which Approach: Practical Guidance
We encourage practitioners to begin with a clear understanding of the situation and the parties involved. The following distinctions can guide the choice between staged trust-building and existential trust:
- Start with Staged Trust-Building when:
Verification is possible and culturally appropriate
There is time and space to build trust gradually
Institutional or contractual safeguards are present
Mistrust stems from past failures, not active crisis
- Consider Existential Trust when:
The situation involves deep, longstanding, or sacred disagreement
Prior structures have broken down and verification is not feasible
A moral gesture is needed to de-escalate or rehumanize the relationship
The relationship itself is worth risking vulnerability to preserve
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, existential trust may open the door to a new cycle of staged trust-building. And even staged trust must sometimes rely on assumptions or leaps of faith that resemble existential trust in miniature.
Implications for Religious Diplomacy
The practice of existential trust offers a viable framework for engaging religious and ideological rivals without requiring consensus or resolution. It validates the experience of sustaining loyalty amid unresolvable disagreement. This model is particularly apt in pluralistic societies where deep commitments collide and no institutional authority can resolve foundational disagreements.
Conclusion
In condition when all rational foundations for trust feel unstable—when conflict seems unresolvable, institutions unreliable, and motives unknowable—existential trust becomes the last and highest test of a group’s trustworthy commitment to live in peaceful tension instead of hostility. It is not naive; it is courageous. The choice to risk trust cannot be fully imposed by circumstances; it must be chosen freely to be signal an existential desire to be trustworthy. When this happens, the act presents a moral surprise that transforms can uncover the real nature of the adversarial relationship. It reveals if an agonist is truly an enemy or trustworthy rival desires a continuing relationship of mutual persuasion. This allows for the most enduring form of trust: not trust based on conditional safety, but trust based on the existential choice to live in trust in the face of conflict.
The NGO that I represent stands as a witness to this deeper possibility for rival engagement. In a world of justified distrust, existential trust is not the default strategy—but it now stands as a vital alternative for those willing to risk that sustained respectful co-resistance will allow all parties to promote their ideals while living together in peaceful tension. We humans change through new experiences. Taking the step to engage with a rival or opponent by extending existential trust is a courageous stand for continuing mutual influence that—when reciprocated—reduces fear of harm and builds desire for respectful relations that we would not believe possible in advance. It is always therefore an experiment. It is a worthy one.
In conclusion, allow me this speculation about the divine design for healthy human contestation over truth: Even if all humanity agreed on a single religion or way of life, because of their different perspectives, and their radical desire to make a difference, humans would soon disagree on how to interpret the one true way or how to implement it. Thus, to believe that Providence purposes a world of peaceful agreement is unwise. It sets up frustrating human expectations for a final peace that eventually will be imposed by totalitarian power. Peacefulness is a lively experiment that thrives on digesting tensions over the truth and what’s best for humanity. I suggest peaceful tension is the highest social accomplishment. We and our leaders should set expectations and provide new institutional support for continual persuasive contestation of values that allows for mutual conversion of hearts and minds of trustworthy rivals without loss of integrity. Nothing can assure that humans will cease harming each other, but the way forward is to incrementally risk building enough mutual trust between rivals to withstand the fear from existential threats ahead.
