Can Religious Reinterpretations Bridge the Secular-Religious Divide? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia

• Author: Sharan Grewal,Matthew D. Cebul
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221119097
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2023, Vol. 67(2-3) 428–456

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027221119097

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Can Religious

Reinterpretations Bridge the

Secular-Religious Divide?

Experimental Evidence from

Tunisia

Sharan Grewal

1

and Matthew D. Cebul

1,2



Abstract

Domestic politics around the globe have become increasingly polarized along secular-

religious lines. Recent literature suggests that one way to ease secular-religious tension

and gridlock is for religious leaders to offer progressive reinterpretations of religious

texts, that might convince religious conservatives to compromise from their seemingly-

f‌ixed policy positions. But can everyday citizens deploy religious reinterpretations

themselves? We examine this question through a series of citizen debates in Tunisia, in

which 602 participants attempted to reach a compromise over two ‘culture wars’

issues. Across both experiments, we f‌ind that having secular liberals engage religious

conservatives with religious reinterpretations backf‌ired, nearly halving the rate of

compromise. Religious reinterpretations produced both defensive conservatives and

emboldened liberals, obstructing compromise between them. While scholarship

suggests that religious leaders may be able to deploy reinterpretations effectively, our

results caution that everyday citizens may not.

Keywords

religion, compromise, polarization, Tunisia

1

College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

2

US Institute of Peace, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sharan Grewal, Government, College of William & Mary, James Blair Rd, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA.

Email: ssgrewal@wm.edu

The rise of the Christian right in the United States, Hindu nationalists in India, and

Islamist parties in the Middle East mark a global upswell of conservative religious

mobilization (Norris and Inglehart, 2004;Toft, Philpott, and Shah, 2011). This re-

surgence of religion into politics, and the accompanying salience of secular-religious

cleavages, have upended politics in democracies worldwide. Religious conservatives

are thought to be particularly dogmatic, leading them to reject the pragmatic com-

promises that sustain healthy democratic governance (Rawls, 1997). When religious

movements meet secular liberal opposition, the result is typically polarization, gridlock,

and conf‌lict (Layman, 2001;Toft, 2006;Svensson, 2007).

To break this gridlock, a growing literature advocates for what we call “religious

reinterpretations”

1

: progressive readings of scripture intended to endow liberal policies

with religious legitimacy. The hope is that liberals can better convince religious

conservatives to compromise by engaging them on their own terms, working within

religion rather than struggling against it. In this vein, recent scholarship demonstrates

that progressive messages delivered by church leaders increased their followers’

tolerance for homosexuality and immigration (Adkins et al., 2013;Djupe, Neiheisel,

and Olson, 2015;Wallsten and Nteta, 2016;Margolis, 2018).

But in contexts where religious authorities are not often making progressive re-

interpretations, scholars have sought to examine whether everyday citizens can deploy

reinterpretations themselves. In Egypt, Masoud, Jamal, and Nugent (2016) f‌ind that

Quranic reinterpretations, without a source or endorser, can shift attitudes in a more

progressive direction, but Hassan and Shalaby (2019) f‌ind that they do not. From a

practical perspective, adjudicating between these divergent studies is important for

assessing who can actually deliver religious reinterpretations. After all, Robinson

(2010) highlights that the effect of religious appeals depends on their source, so we

should not assume that what works for religious authorities would also work for the

masses.

To that end, this article offers a careful theoretical and empirical assessment of

religious reinterpretations and support for political compromise among everyday

citizens. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, we theorize that religious reinterpretations

by citizens may actually decrease the odds of compromise, and identify two mech-

anisms driving this effect. The f‌irst is Conservative Backlash: religious conservatives

may defensively resist reinterpretations that challenge their religious beliefs and

identity, particularly from a source that they do not view as an authority. The second is

Liberal Emboldenment: armed with reinterpretations, liberals may become less willing

to tolerate religious motivations for conservative policies, which they now perceive to

be hypocritical or baseless.

For empirical support, we conducted two lab-in-the-f‌ield experiments in Tunisia in

2016-18. At that time, Tunisian religious leaders had succeeded in bridging the secular-

religious divide in part through reinterpretations advocating compromise (Marks,

2015), making Tunisia an ideal setting for testing whether everyday citizens can

similarly deploy reinterpretations. Our experimental design entailed a series of

301 citizen debates (602 participants), pairing everyday Tunisians to debate a ‘culture

Grewal and Cebul 429