R. Scott Appleby is professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, where he also directs the Cushwa Center
for the Study of American Catholicism and serves as a fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace
Studies.
Review
"In this volume [Appleby] seeks to balance the overall picture by focusing on the success stories and peacebuilding
initiatives buried inside the newspapers, embedded in a largely untold past, and emerging piecemeal in the final
years of this genocidal century. This is a kind of compensatory history, urgently needed in the contemporary debate,
and it carries enormous implications for the way we think about religion's complex role, and undeniable potential,
in preventing deadly conflict and in rebuilding communities shattered by violence."
--Theodore M. Hesburgh, from the Foreword
"Scott Appleby's book provides a timely, clear, and highly perceptive treatment of why and how religion
has, especially since the end of the Cold War, gravitated to the center of the discussion of international affairs.
. . . There is no doubt that this volume will be the centerpiece henceforward of an important new discussion on
'religion, violence, and reconciliation."
--David Little, United States Institute of Peace
Submitted by Publisher, October, 2001
Summary
Terrorists and peacemakers may grow up in the same community and adhere to the same religious tradition. The
killing carried out by one and the reconciliation fostered by the other indicate the range of dramatic and contradictory
responses to human suffering by religious actors. Yet religion's ability to inspire violence is intimately related
to its equally impressive power as a force for peace, especially in the growing number of conflicts around the
world that involve religious claims and religiously inspired combatants. This book explains what religious terrorists
and religious peacemakers share in common, what causes them to take different paths in fighting injustice, and
how a deeper understanding of religious extremism can and must be integrated more effectively into our thinking
about tribal, regional, and international conflict.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Powerful Medicine
p. 1
Coming to Terms with Religion
The Growing End of an Argument
p. 25
Religion's Violent Accomplices
p. 57
Violence as a Sacred Duty: Patterns of Religious Extremism
p. 81
Militants for Peace
p. 121
Reconciliation and the Politics of Forgiveness
p. 167
The Logic of Religious Peacebuilding
Religion and Conflict Transformation
p. 207
The Promise of Internal Pluralism: Human Rights and Religious Mission
p. 245
Ambivalence as Opportunity: Strategies for Promoting Religious Peacebuilding
p. 281
Notes
p. 309
Selected Bibliography
p. 389
Index
p. 407
About the Carnegie Commission
p. 425
About the Author
p. 429
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.