1 Religion as a Peacemaker? Gurses and Rost Religion as a Peacemaker? Peace Duration after Ethnic Civil Wars Mehmet Gurses Florida Atlantic University Nicolas Rost United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs We would like to thank Gail Choate, two anonymous reviewers, and Paul A. Djupe for their helpful comments. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Mehmet Gurses, Department of Political Science, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Social Science 391E, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991. E-mail: gurses@fau.edu; or to: Nicolas Rost, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 405 East 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10017. E-mail: nicorost@gmail.com. Abstract: What role does religion play in preventing civil war from recurring? Politicians have proposed that when warring groups share the same religion, achieving a durable peace will be easier. We test this hypothesis empirically using a large-n sample of all ethnic civil wars that began and ended between 1950 and 2006, and a measure of co-religiosity between the ethnic group in power and the main opposition group. The analysis shows that there is no positive relationship between co-religiosity and the duration of post-civil war peace, showing that sharing