ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the alternative, more transformational, approach that emerged from their discussions and experimentations, even as the drive to professionalise and mainstream was pushing full steam ahead. The ‘religious revitalists’ felt strongly that Tearfund was going in the wrong direction with the growing emphasis on professionalisation and moving into the mainstream, and felt compelled to push against the leadership and to develop an alternative vision of a more Christian kind of development. In the mid-1990s Hughes had put together a group to work on articulating Tearfund’s theology of development. The Operating Principles sought to create a framework for a specifically Christian type of development. The document ended by stating that the Christian development needed to take place in the context of prayer because ‘there is a spiritual reality to development which a secular worldview often ignores.
