This introductory textbook brings together the interrelated issues of religious conflict, dialogue and peace. Writings on religious violence and terrorism have engulfed public opinion, but few publications offer an introduction to both religious conflict and cooperation in the same volume. Scott Dunbar approaches the topic of religion from a balanced perspective by looking at both the malevolent and benevolent faces of religion and combining them into one coherent analysis.

Like the book's cover-image, religion's impact on human society consists of multifaceted narratives that comprise strands of a larger whole. The individual chapters of this book give readers new insights into specific issues of religious conflict and cooperation, while combined together they reveal a larger interconnected picture. Dunbar navigates religion's mixed history and ambivalent messages, offering new philosophical insights and pragmatic suggestions for facing and alleviating one of the greatest challenges of our time.