This conference is chaired by J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Montgomery Professor of Practice of Religion and Public Life, John F. Kennedy School of Government; and Peggy Levitt, associate professor of sociology, Wellesley College. This conference seeks to answer the following question: what explains why religion incites violence among some and serves as a pathway to citizenship among others? The proposed set of activities would begin to address these themes by looking at two interrelated questions: first, what is it about the intersection between religion, immigration, and social context that make religious beliefs and practices play these two very different roles? In other words, when does faith act as a pathway to political participation and when does it become a political pathway of its own? Second, are faiths that many allege to be antithetical to deeply-held Western values, such as democracy and gender equality, really that incompatible? What really happens during the encounter between longstanding and imported faith traditions? How does the second generation reshape its religious beliefs and practices to fit new contexts, and how do the resulting religious articulations shape political and civic engagement?