The rise of the religious right in the United States and Islamist political parties in the Arab world are but the most prominent examples of a global resurgence in religious conservatism. This resurgence could spell an era of increasing polarization and gridlock, as religious conservatives are widely believed to be unwilling to compromise on their divinely ordained principles. Recent literature suggests that one avenue to facilitate compromise with religious conservatives may be to engage them with liberal reinterpretations of religious texts. In this study, we examine whether 1) conservatives are truly less willing to compromise when they hold a religious rather than secular justification for their position, and 2) if so, whether engaging religious conservatives with liberal religious counterarguments can facilitate compromise. We investigate these questions through a series of laboratory experiments in Tunisia. While previous scholarship has struggled to measure compromise, we offer a direct, behavioral measure, pairing up one liberal and one conservative respondent to debate a current policy issue and attempt to reach a compromise. Prior to the debate, we prime each side with either religious or secular justifications for their position. We first hold fixed the secular prime given to the liberal, and investigate whether a religious rather than secular justification given to the conservative inhibits compromise. We then hold fixed the religious justification given the conservative, and examine whether priming the liberal with a religious reinterpretation facilitates compromise. We find that priming the conservative side with a religious justification for their side had no impact on the rate of compromise. This suggests that contrary to popular belief, the rise of religious conservatives in politics may not produce greater polarization and gridlock. However, priming the liberal side with a religious counterargument hindered compromise. Through a post-debate questionnaire, we find that a religious counterargument emboldened the liberal side to stand their ground, while making the religious conservative defensive and unwilling to compromise. This suggests that engaging religious conservatives with religious reinterpretations may have the opposite of its intended effect, discouraging compromise.