In Religious Interests in Community Conflict, Paul Djupe and Laura Olson have assembled a volume that explores the process by which religious organizations become involved (or do not become involved) in local-level socio-political activism. In addition to the editors' own introductory and concluding chapters, the book contains nine case studies of religious involvement in specific local political efforts. The book's focus is quite broad, as the “conflicts” discussed in its chapters range from classic “culture wars” political battles over gay marriage to more consensual (and less obviously political) efforts to provide community health care and to help the homeless. Uniting all of the chapters, however, is a desire to go beyond mere story-telling, to embed the cases in existing theoretical frameworks, and to speak meaningfully to broader questions of mobilization and interest group activism. For this, the editors are to be commended; they are able to take nine individually interesting and richly contextual case studies and draw them together, in an outstanding final chapter, into a coherent and compelling statement about the dynamics of religious group mobilization. The book ultimately succeeds in its objective of focusing on local action and emphasizing the importance of context without becoming simply anecdotal or “missing the forest for the trees.” As a result, it is an extremely valuable contribution to the religion and politics literature.

The book's case studies are divided into four groups: moral issues, social justice issues, questions of religion in the public square, and race relations. All of the studies focus on political action within a single community (with the partial exception of the chapter by David F. Damore, Ted G. Jelen, and Michael W. Bowers about the gay marriage battle in Nevada — but even that is a state dominated by a single metropolitan area). The methodologies employed vary somewhat from chapter to chapter, but consist predominantly of research in newspaper archives, local elite surveys, and in-depth interviews with religious and community leaders. The general format of each chapter is similar, and effective: a description of the community and its religious context, an account of the specific socio-political conflict under consideration, a presentation of some original data, and an attempt to situate the case theoretically and analyze it in terms of broader social science paradigms. Different chapters place varying degrees of emphasis on these four components (Franklyn C. Niles's chapter on religious response to the Klan rally in Northwest Arkansas has an especially strong theoretical discussion, for example), but the editors and authors have done a nice job of creating volume continuity by ensuring that each of these elements is present to some degree in each chapter.

Part 1 of the book, “Moral Concerns,” includes a study by James M. Penning and Andrew Storteboom of a controversy over a proposed Indian casino in Southwestern Michigan, along with two studies of battles over gay marriage ballot initiatives — one in Nevada (by Damore, Jelen and Bowers) and one in Ohio, with a focus on the Columbus area (by Paul A. Djupe, Jacob R. Neiheisel and Edward Sokhey). These are the most conventionally political battles considered in the volume, as religious interests in each case faced identifiable adversaries on issues with national resonance and sought to win tangible political victories, either via referenda or in the state legislature. In each case, the authors provide a detailed discussion of how theologically diverse interests (Mormons, Catholics, and evangelicals in the gay marriage cases; virtually all religious groups in the casino case) coalesced to achieve their political objectives. Especially interesting are the analyses of how religious groups worked in tandem with non-ecclesiastical interests (such as the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage).

Part 2, “Social Justice,” deals with cases that are, by a strict definition, not really “conflicts.” In this section, Sue E. S. Crawford considers an ecumenical effort to provide health care for the poor in Omaha, while Laura R. Olson considers cooperative provision of services to the homeless in Racine, Wisconsin. In neither case is there an adversary per se — very few people in the community actively object to poor people getting health care or to the homeless having a place to sleep. Moreover, the objective of these community religious movements was not to pass or defeat a particular piece of legislation or to elect any particular party or candidates. At the same time, however, as Crawford and Olson both show, very real battles against indifference and inertia had to be fought, and ecumenical religious coalitions felt compelled to step into the breach to provide social services that local government would not. Both chapters provide excellent insight into the strains and challenges, but also the psychological and spiritual rewards, of building ecumenical coalitions to serve the poor. Olson's chapter in particular provides fascinating insight into how the religious ardor and enthusiasm that has sustained such a coalition can wane when attempts are made to partner with the secular bureaucracy of a governmental entity.

Part 3, “Religion in the Public Square,” includes a chapter by James L. Guth, Lyman A. Kellstedt, Joshua Copeland and Christine Rowland about the battle over a Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday in Greenville, South Carolina, and a chapter by J. Quin Monson and Kara L. Norman on the controversy surrounding the LDS Church's purchase and control of a once-public park in Salt Lake City. Both chapters do an excellent job of documenting the complexity of the interactions among local government, business/civic boosters, and religious interests — especially when, as in these cases, some members of government are clearly identified with particular religious traditions or congregations, and not all religious interests are (at least initially) on the same side of the controversy. In addition, the Guth study highlights an important distinction between the activities of local interests, which tend to work toward compromise and accommodation, and national interests (in this case, Rev. Jesse Jackson and the NAACP), which many locals perceive as overly interested in grandstanding and prolonging conflict (a theme Sohkey echoes in his later chapter on racial conflict in Cincinnati).

Part 4, “Race Relations,” consists of two chapters, one by Sokhey on responses to Cincinnati's race riots and the other by Niles on resistance to a Ku Klux Klan rally in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. These chapters are in many ways the book's most theoretically rich. Sokhey tests multiple explanations for religious engagement in racial reconciliation efforts, including resource-based, recruitment-based, and motivational models, and draws an important empirical and theoretical distinction between individual activity and community action. Niles' chapter explains the unified, successful, and unprecedented efforts of the Siloam Springs Ministerial Alliance against the Klan in terms of both issue framing and social network theory, drawing on an extensive body of social science literature.

As the authors of this volume's chapters show, and as Djupe and Olson emphasize in their final chapter, it is possible to distill theoretically significant, broadly applicable conclusions from a group of very diverse case studies. That this volume manages to do so, while telling a series of individual stories that are quite engaging on their own terms, is very much to its credit. Religious Interests in Community Conflict manages simultaneously to be both a good, accessible read and a meaningful contribution to theory building in the field of religion and politics — and that's no mean feat.