Handbook on Religious Toleration in Comparative Perspective

This Handbook challenges the view--widely held today--that religious toleration is a specifically modern, liberal, and Western concept. To the contrary, it shows that principles of religious coexistence have been articulated since recorded history. As many cultures have recognized across times and places, toleration in some form is a key virtue for enabling peaceful coexistence and human flourishing. Yet owing to its very cross-cultural prevalence, “toleration” has meant many different things in theory and practice. To properly understand it, much less evaluate it, a historical and comparative perspective is necessary.

This Handbook provides a foundation for the comparative and historical study of religious toleration. Gathering together primary sources and original analytic essays by leading scholars, it offers the first comprehensive reference work on how toleration has been theorized and practiced across cultures, religions, and historical periods. The primary sources compiled, moreover, span a rich array of genres, including literary works, religious texts, theological, poems and political edicts. Radically shifting the terms of contemporary debates about toleration, this sourcebook provides an indispensable resource to all scholars of religion, comparative politics, and globalization, and to students and teachers alike.

Karen Barkey is the Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion at Bard College. Her research has focused on empires, toleration and shared sacred spaces. Her book, Empire of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008), is a comparative study of the flexibility and longevity of imperial systems. It was awarded the 2009 Barrington Moore Award from the Comparative Historical Sociology section at American Sociology Association and the 2009 J. David Greenstone Book Prize from the Politics and History section at the American Political Science Association. Her recent publications include Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism: India, Pakistan and Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Shared Sacred Sites: A Contemporary Pilgrimage (City University of New York Publications, 2018).

Jonathan Laurence is Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His principal areas of teaching and research have been concerned with the development of religious toleration and state-religion relations in Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Prof. Laurence's latest book is Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State (Princeton University Press, 2021). Both this work, and his prior book, The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims (Princeton University Press, 2012), were awarded Best Book in Religion and Politics by the American Political Science Association. His first book, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (Brookings 2006, with Justin Vaïsse) was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine.