ABSTRACT
Religion is not new to development. Indeed, religious institutions and individuals motivated by faith have been at the forefront of service provision since long before states and other actors became involved in development. Moreover, more than eight out of ten people self-profess religious belief. In developing countries, religious belief is often higher still. These facts alone suggest development agencies should seriously engage with religious beliefs and religious institutions, as they work to improve well-being, address inequality and alleviate poverty and vulnerability. For many, faith acts as a central organising framework for their core beliefs and values, and thus draws their internal map of reality and sets their compass of acceptable norms, behaviours and relationships. As a result, faith plays a significant role in shaping worldviews, laws, behavioural norms, public policy and social practices in the developing world, as has been extensively discussed in this volume. Effective development inherently involves social change. Providing equal access, participation and rights to the poor and marginalised requires changes to behaviour, as well as to social values and norms, and a reorientation of power. Religious institutions and personal faith, with their impact on social values and relationships, can be either an obstacle to this social change or at the vanguard creating more informed and inclusive values and norms. Likewise, faith leaders often serve as gatekeepers to communities and may be either barriers to or champions of development. Certainly, religion can sometimes be highly conservative, hierarchical and restrictive. However, it can equally be a cultural and social force facilitating safe spaces for discussion and innovation, and lead to the expansion of informed rational agency. Thus, while not sharing or even holding opposing religious teachings and norms, development practitioners who do not share the faith of recipients should still appreciate the genuineness and importance of these beliefs, values and institutions to those who hold them. Seeking to work alongside communities and partner with local organisations, empowering them to lead in the process of development, requires engaging with any deeply held personal values and significant institutional influences, in ways that do not marginalise or trivialise that
which is held in esteem, even in the process of advocating change. This requires crossing a faith boundary. There is already a long and well-established literature making this argument on the need for the development sector to engage more robustly with faith and religion. There is also a growing literature on the role of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in development. FBOs ‘derive inspiration from and guidance for [their] activities from the teachings and principles of faith or from a particular interpretation or school of thought within a faith’ (Clarke and Jennings 2008, p. 6). As with personal faith, the impact of faith on FBOs falls across a wide spectrum, from motivating an ethical imperative to intervene on behalf of the poor, through to a sense of divine guidance and instruction to act (Berger 2003; Bradley 2009; James 2010). Nonetheless, it is becoming widely accepted that FBOs can have an advantage in delivering programmes and interventions with local partners and communities of the same faith. Shared values, personal networks and institutional memberships can facilitate a sense of affinity and common identity across cultural difference, allowing FBOs to build trust more quickly and understand community perspectives with more emic eyes. Intuitively, however, the reported advantages of FBOs working in communities of the same faith may falter when faith-based or secular international development agencies work across faith boundaries, with partners or communities that hold different religious beliefs. The key contribution of this volume is examining the impact of faith and religion where outside development agencies work with partner organisations or recipient communities of different faiths. FBOs are increasingly working across faith boundaries, with local partners, staff and communities of a different faith background. Secular NGOs likewise increasingly partner with FBOs and religious institutions in programme delivery. However, the evidence of advantage or disadvantage, and the issues involved in working across religious boundaries, are poorly researched, more the domain of conjecture and presupposition than documented research. This volume seeks to contribute to filling this research gap.
