The book provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. With a focus on structural and cultural violence, the volume also offers a cutting edge interdisciplinary reframing of the scope of scholarship in the field.

The use of religion in inflaming the Palestinian/Israeli conflict represents one understanding of the Abrahamic traditions. Marc Goplin argues for a greater integration of the Middle East peace process with the region's religious groups.

This text explains what religious terrorists and religious peacemakers share in common and what causes them to take different paths in fighting injustice.

Peacebuilding is explained by combining interpretive frameworks (paradigms) that have evolved from the subfields of international relations and comparative politics.

This broad-ranging book examines the creation, through the arts and culture, of societies that enjoy sustainable, positive peace. It begins with a critique of the pervasive nature of militarism and violence embedded deep in the cultural fabric of many societies, influencing the language and discourses we use, the films we watch, our museums and histories, our journalism, and our education systems. It also examines the roots of violence in our parenting styles, gender roles, and spiritual practices. It contrasts this with an examination of a number of peaceful societies that already exist, drawing useful lessons from their cultures. It critiques discrepancies in history education with regard to war and peace and examines artistic and cultural processes, institutions, and artifacts designed to create peace, such as peace museums and parks, peace journalism, peace education, and resistance to violence through cultural means, such as film-making, fine arts, satirical theatre, and protest music. Solutions-oriented, it examines the efficacy of these attempts and suggests positive ways forward. It also explores the role of gender in creating cultures of peace and the impacts on peacebuilding of cultivating peace within.

How do faith-based organizations influence the work of transnational peacebuilding, development, and human rights advocacy? How is the political role of such organizations informed by their religious ideas and practices? This book investigates this set of questions by examining how three transnational faith-based organizations—Religions for Peace, the Taizé Community, and International Justice Mission—conceptualize their own religious practices, values, and identities, and how those acts and ideas inform their political goals and strategies. The book demonstrates the political importance of prayer in the work of transnational faith-based organizations, specifically in areas of conflict resolution, post-conflict integration, agenda setting, and in constituting narratives about justice and reconciliation. It also evaluates the distinctive strategies that faith-based organizations employ to navigate religious difference. A central goal of the book is to propose a new way to study “religion” in international politics, by actively questioning and reflecting on what it means for an act, idea, or community to be “religious.”