According to exit polls in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump received a majority of votes from those who report that they attend religious services at least weekly and a slim plurality of votes from those who attend monthly. This took many by surprise given that there was no small amount of punditry predicting that religious voters may have been perhaps a little more squeamish about supporting a twice-divorced reality television star who was caught on tape bragging about multiple incidences of sexual assault and who regularly mocked women, minorities, and even a disabled reporter during the campaign. Given that Donald Trump was also arguably the first presidential candidate in many years to win on a platform of white racial identity while explicitly calling for a ban on Muslim immigration and making statements that even House Speaker Paul Ryan said constituted “the definition of a racist remark,” it is difficult to avoid the obvious question: does religion produce intolerance in contemporary American politics such that religious individuals would be eager to support a clearly intolerant candidate for president?

In Religion and Political Tolerance in America: Advances in the State of the Art, Paul Djupe brings together nearly two dozen reputable scholars of religion and politics to tackle the broader question of the link between religion and political tolerance in American society. Though some consistent themes materialize, a good deal of nuance about religion and political tolerance arises out of this volume. On the whole, it provides useful insight regarding the relationship between religion and democratic values in America.

The book is organized into three main sections: (1) religion and elitist theory; (2) social psychology of religion and citizen political tolerance; and (3) how religion shapes responses to intolerance. Each of these sections is approached from an exclusively quantitative empirical approach. The editor provides a comprehensive literature review of the topic in the introductory chapter and Ted Jelen provides the concluding remarks, summarizing some of the key findings and offering questions for future research. There are a number of novel findings throughout the book. Because space is limited, I will highlight one compelling chapter in each section.

Clyde Wilcox and Christine Kim examine attitudes among liberal and conservative donors and find that, as one might expect, liberals tend not to like Christian fundamentalists and conservatives tend not to like feminists, atheists, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender individuals. This symmetrical antipathy, however, does not extend to tolerance in terms of civil liberties: liberals are more supportive of civil liberties for religious fundamentalists than conservatives are for feminists, atheists, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender individuals.

The contribution from Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom and Marie Courtemanche is compelling in that it provides an alternative theoretical model for how religion and political tolerance may be related. While many explanations rely on theological or sociological frameworks to theorize a link between the two, this chapter lays out a physiological explanation. They draw on evolutionary theory to posit a link between the disgust response, morality (specifically sensitivity to purity versus impurity), and social psychology. Using an analysis of online survey data, they find that disgust sensitivity drives intolerance for religious out-groups.

Finally, Patrick Schoettmer examines a novel and extensive survey of American Muslims living in Indiana and finds that the degree to which Muslims perceive threat is strongly associated with their levels of civic engagement. Specifically, Muslims who perceive hostility from the government, their neighbors, or “Christian extremists” are significantly less likely to participate in political campaigns, express their views in public settings, and participate in community organizations. This has very relevant and timely implications for the incorporation of Muslim immigrants and refugees into the fabric of the American community.

While each chapter covers distinct topics from different angles, there are some common themes that quickly emerge. For example, one prominent refrain relates to one of the defining patterns in American religious behavior over the past half-century: the sorting of theological liberals and conservatives into their parallel political liberal and conservative identity groups and coalitions. Many findings throughout the book fit that broader pattern. For example, Marie Eisenstein and April Clark find that basic theological orientations about human sinfulness, scripture, and salvation (traditional vs. progressive) are consistent predictors of political tolerance. Daniel Cox, Robert Jones, and Juhem Navarro-Rivera find that political intolerance on the part of religious Americans is not entirely due to their views of atheists, but rather a heightened perception of threat and competition from a “more organized secular coalition that is actively seeking converts” (146). Paul Djupe, Jacob Neiheisel, and Laura Olson find that explicit calls for tolerance toward immigrants from clergy tend to increase tolerance among those already predisposed toward tolerance, but also weaken tolerance among those already predisposed to intolerance. In each of these cases, religious and political worldviews interact to divide and polarize rather than unite.

One of the methodological strengths of this edited volume is the variety of different ways in which the various contributors operationalize both “religion” and “tolerance.” In many ways, the various chapters make for an excellent resource to consult on the ways in which political tolerance can be defined and empirically measured in social science research.

A methodological shortcoming, however, is that many of the volume's quantitative analyses rely on small sample sizes, samples of convenience (often undergraduate students), or samples from limited geographical areas. For example, a quick count of the various data samples throughout the volume shows that roughly half of the empirical findings are based on samples of less than 300 individuals with about half of those at less than 150, decreasing confidence in the generalizability and replicability of the findings. That being said, large and nationally-representative public opinion samples with sturdy and consistent measures of religion, religiosity, and political tolerance are hard to come by and the authors turned to a variety of creative sources to gather their data.

Hopefully this volume will inspire spin-off studies of new samples in different contexts as researchers continue to expand the reach of our knowledge on this topic. The editor and contributors are to be commended for their efforts to further explore and deepen our understanding of this subject. After all, the election of 2016 has made clear that the nexus of religion and political tolerance is arguably more timely, relevant, and consequential than ever before.