ABSTRACT
Development research, policy and practice have typically avoided engagement with considerations of religion and spirituality (Sweetman, 1999; Ver Beek, 2002; Selinger, 2004); this is so of major world religions and indigenous religions alike. While the persistence of religious forms across the globe would seem to challenge versions of secularization that predict the disappearance of religion with modernization, social scientists working in the field of development have tended to overlook the influence of religion on individuals and societies. They tend to ‘see in religious conviction an eclipse of reason and in religious motivation a constraint on enlightened social behaviour’ (Candland, 2000, pp129–130) and instead focus on ‘practical, technical, or material’ concerns (Sweetman, 1999, p3). Underlying this avoidance is the implicit assumption that religion will decline as communities modernize, and a wariness of engaging with religious issues that are frequently political and potentially socially divisive.
