At first glance, Between Terror and Tolerance might suggest the kind of investigation into religion and political violence exemplified in the works of Scott Appleby, Mark Jeurgensmeyer, or Miroslav Volf. Indeed, Appleby's notion of the “ambivalence of the sacred,” cited here numerous times, sets up one of the major puzzles driving this book. If religion can be a powerfully motivating force for either violence or peace, yet does not move its adherents essentially toward one or the other, what are, in the words of editor, Timothy Sisk, "the contingencies and circumstances under which religious leaders may play a conflict-exacerbating or conflict-ameliorating role" in divided societies (2)?

But Between Terror and Tolerance winds up being a different sort of book. File it away from a general “Religion and Violence” section in your library and alongside the comparative politics portion of your peace-building literature. If works by Appleby, Juergensmeyer, and Volf plumb the linkages between theology, religious practice, violence and peace by, to some degree, journeying through the actual experience of religiosity — through, in Juergensmeyer's words, “the deepest levels of religion's imaginations” — Sisk and his 12 contributors think of religious actors in more functional terms, focusing on how they help or hinder the possibility of peace-building in divided societies. In fact, in the hands of Sisk and contributor David Little, if not the rest of the authors, Between Terror and Tolerance ultimately becomes a book concerned with a particular vision of peace-building associated in the literature with the “liberal peace”: where, crudely put, peace is understood as the product of liberalized and democratized social, political and economic conditions. By the end of the book, interest in religious actors, at least for Sisk and Little, seems to center on how such actors fit, like irksome puzzle pieces, into a “liberal peace” model.

Much of the book is comprised of 10 qualitative case studies analyzing the effects of religious actors on peace or violence in various divided societies. Taken together, they present an array of interesting arguments. Micheline Ishay finds that in Palestine, neoliberal capitalism has created socioeconomic vacuums that divisive religious figures have risen to fill. Mari Fitzduff contrasts the critical activities of key religious figures in Northern Ireland with the somnambulism of the wider churches. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban holds that religion might “provide the vision as well as the leadership” for greater peace in Sudan (120). Nader Hashemi argues “the primary divide in the [Muslim world] is not between Sunni and Shi'ia but between the people and … authoritarian elites” (44). Sumit Ganguly and Praveen Swami find that in the Kashmiri conflict religion takes a backseat to political opportunism, while the remaining cases, again and again, re-illustrate Appleby's “ambivalence of the sacred.”

Sweeping, fecund, diverse, Sisk is right when he claims this collection of studies “yield[s] rich insights too complex to be simply summarized in a simple message” (229). This is a book without a clear guiding thesis, or for that matter a set of hypotheses to test. Still, Sisk looks to hone that complexity into some more focused, universalizable conclusions, the loudest of which amount to an endorsement of the liberal peace. He concludes: “religious roles in conflict are essentially instrumental,” “religious leaders have very little opportunity to promote peace when the social, economic and political conditions are prohibitive,” “religion and ethnicity are themselves reciprocally influenced by the character and practice of the state,” and therefore, “the role of the state in defining a liberal, tolerant religious character for the nation is, at the end of day, pivotal” (228–229). Again, peace grows from the liberalized state, by which the conditions that allow religious groups to effect division and violence wither. Still, peace-promoting religious groups retain a significant function, deputized with the important task of legitimating, even furthering, the new peace via “discursive practices” and “symbolic acts” that “may tip the balance from tolerance … to coexistence” (235).

The case studies, independently, are the great strength of this book, offering a robust data source for political science classes on religion and conflict. Moreover, they illustrate what I take as the most valuable message this volume provides. Against scholars who apply overly-reductive methodologies in pursuit of master variables to explain peace or conflict, and wind up dismissing religion's influence (this volume cites Paul Collier in particular and his focus on economics), these case studies suggest we miss crucial understandings when we reduce away the essential complexity of divided societies. The influence of religious actors on conflict or peace, this volume illustrates, resides exactly within their complex interplay with the state, economics, ethnic nationalism and other social variables.

The strengths of the editor's conclusions are, however, more debatable — not because the liberal peace approach is itself problematic (that point remains a debate in the literature) but because many of Sisk's conclusions go beyond what the reader feels warranted to draw from the case studies. Some moments in the studies even potentially trouble liberal peace assumptions, as in Ishay's critique of neoliberalism. In hindsight we realize something Little tries to tell us from the start, when he clarifies that his opening chapter, intended as the book's theoretical lens, “builds on the work of Jack Snyder” for whom “[v]iolence is mitigated… by means of ‘thick versions’ of liberal or constitutional democracy” (16). Sisk and Little are working, from page one, with a prior commitment to the liberal peace approach, and the book's conclusions are rooted as much in those pre-assumed commitments as the case studies themselves. The degree to which the reader finds warrant or worth in Sisk's conclusions may wind up depending on how much the reader already endorses the liberal peace.

Beyond Terror and Tolerance presents a set of intriguing studies on the complex interactions between religious actors and the state, local economics and other social forces, with a view to how they help or hinder peace, then fits those studies into an argument for liberal democratic peace-building. This book could work well for comparative politics classes on religious actors and conflict, and its commitment to praxis is welcome, but I can also imagine some readers – for example, Daniel Philpott, whose recent works explore a conception of peace-building inspired by religious notions of shalom, which itself becomes a critique of the liberal peace – deciding this book ultimately misses something important about the religious mind and its potentially creative engagement with questions of violence or peace, in a way the works of Appleby, Juergensmeyer, and Volf tend not to.