An investigation of what consolidating religion as a technology of peacebuilding and development does to people's accounts of their religious and cultural traditions and why interreligious peacebuilding entrenches colonial legacies in the present.
Throughout the global south, local and international organizations are frequent participants in peacebuilding projects that focus on interreligious dialogue. Yet as Atalia Omer argues in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding, the effects of their efforts are often perverse, reinforcing neocolonial practices and disempowering local religious actors. Based on empirical research of inter and intra-religious peacebuilding practices in Kenya and the Philippines, Omer identifies two paradoxical findings: first, religious peacebuilding practices are both empowering and depoliticizing and, second, more doing of religion does not necessarily denote deeper or more critical religious literacy. Further, she shows that these religious actors generate decolonial openings regardless of how closed or open their religious communities are. Hence, religion's occasional usefulness in peacebuilding does not necessarily mean justice-oriented outcomes. The book not only uses decolonial and intersectional prisms to expose the entrenched and ongoing colonial dynamics operative in religion and the practices of peacebuilding and development in the global South, but it also speaks to decolonial theory through stories of transformation and survival.

Atalia Omer is a Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She is also the Dermot T.J. Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peace Building at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard University's Religion and Public Life program. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017. Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (2019). She is also a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford, 2015).

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and frequently Used non-English Words
Introduction
Chapter 1: Historical Background and Colonial Afterlives
Chapter 2: "Sisyphean" Governance
Chapter 3: Doing Religion
Chapter 4: Survival Piety: A Preferential Option for the Poor?
Chapter 5: Religion and "Soft" Security: Countermessaging and Surveillance
Chapter 6: "Religious" Resiliency and "Soft" Security
Chapter 7: Un-Revolutionary Decolonial Love: The Spirituality of Just "Getting Alone"
Chapter 8: Conclusion or Does Justice Have Anything to Do with Religion and the Practice of Peace
Index