Governing the Sacred

Yuval Jobani and Nahshson Perez have blended politics and careful historical-sociological analysis to provide different models of state religion relations and modes of toleration at holy sites that are contested. Their analysis is not only elegant, convincing, and textured, but it shows that we cannot understand what is going on at contentious sites with one overarching theoretical framework. We need in-depth, thick descriptions and comparative analyses of what actors want, how states perceive their needs, and what is possible on the ground. Governing the Sacred will persist. It is excellent political science and it has significant policy implications. It needs to be read widely. * Karen Barkey, University of California * Governing the Sacred is a novel contribution to the understanding of holy places world-wide. It is extraordinarily original in its comparative analysis, historically complete in its descriptions of the past regulations, and, most importantly, frankly honest in its discussion of the virtues and vices of the competing models used worldwide. This book ought to change the way many different people-academics and faith-practitioners alike-understand how to regulate sacred space. * Michael Broyde, Emory University School of Law and Projects * Jobani and Perez have written a wonderful book about how sacred sites should be treated in a liberal society. With insights from an unusually broad spectrum of fields-including philosophy, political theory, economics, history, sociology, and religious studies-and using five paradigm cases (and others), they weave together a bottom-up, contextualist theory that can help us better discuss contested sacred sites. In doing so, they remind us just how far from settled is the ideal church-state relationship in liberal thought and provide a much needed example of how to move from theoretical work to practical political thinking. * Andrew J. Cohen, author of Toleration and Freedom from Harm: Liberalism Reconceived *