Wayne TeBrake

Between 1529 and 1651 six major clusters of religious war engulfed Europe. Most of these wars ended in some form of political compromise, but even in the exceptional cases – for example, the civil wars in Scotland, Ireland, and England – religious war eventually yielded to religious peace. Though historians traditionally focus on the wars, this presentation will focus on the broad and durable pattern of religious peace that followed.

Today, with headlines suggesting a new era of religious war on an even broader scale, religious peace seems elusive if not impossible. The evidence from European history, however, suggests otherwise. Using photographs to illustrate what religious peace actually looked like in early modern Europe – shared churches, nominally hidden worship spaces, clandestine sites for ritual practice, and the like – Te Brake shows how it is possible to envision and to work for a more peaceful future.