**Conclusions**

This Special Issue of *Religions*, focusing on 'Peace, Politics and Religion', incorporates theoretical, comparative and case studies to examine these and other issues.

What do we now know about the crucial relationships between peace, politics and religion? The issue, it seems clear, is not generally about religion *per se*, or even about religious di fferences that necessarily cause irresolvable conflicts. Instead, such conflicts develop, due to a number of causes, which are typically as much about material concerns as they are about di ffering views of the world deriving from their religious interpretations. But when we add religion to the issues which are causing conflict, then they tend to be harder to resolve. This is because, it seems, religious di fferences often seem particularly unamenable to compromise and can lead to various sets of believers coming to the conclusion that it is better to fight to the bitter end than 'betraying' God by appearing to "give in" to the enemy.

A second concluding point is that those individuals, groups and communities motivated by their religious worldviews may find it much harder to build durable peace as the foundation of better harmonious relations, without drawing on the helpfulness and recognition of significant non-religious people, that is, those who are especially a ffected by the conflict and have a significant stake in resolving it. Put another way, this is to underline that notwithstanding the often sincere intentions of those seeking to diminish religious disagreements through discourse and improved understanding, such a process is only likely to include those who agree that such an approach is likely to be beneficial to all in the long run. On the other hand, such an approach is likely to fail if it does not convince those who are especially willing to use violence as a key strategy in pursuit of an unachievable goal, whether it be a global Islamic State or an ethnically-cleansed Northern Ireland.

Finally, religion can end up being a relatively marginal issue in wider conflict scenarios, some of which are analysed in the Special Issue's constituent articles. What they emphasise is that while of course religion is 'important' in a scholarly sense, it is absolutely vital to many millions of "ordinary" people and to tiny numbers of extremists who are willing to use prolonged violence to try to achieve their goals. But a wider point may warrant repetition: serious conflicts involving religion nearly always involve not only the impact of religious di fference as such, but also other equally important material and existential issues: such as, territory, employment, security, culture, civilization, ethnic group, fear and hope.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
