ABSTRACT
Religious groups draw from rich historical traditions to act in solidarity with those who suffer. In doing so, they impact the global aid field and the lives of those embroiled in chronic emergency. Although many question the compatibility of ‘faith-based’ actors with humanitarian norms and practices, religion has always formed part of the ‘secular’ humanitarian field. Attention to humanitarianism’s past and present suggests a more important question concerning the different ways in which faith groups identify and are identified with mainstream humanitarianism, the conditions in which this is subject to change, and the extent to which this occurs in and against broader ideological frameworks that attempt to discipline global public behaviour. This chapter illustrates how faith-based humanitarians negotiate a range of imaginaries and practices, struggling to balance overlapping and sometimes competing frameworks of collective action. As I argue, neither ‘faith-based’ nor ‘secular’ frameworks of humanitarianism can be disentangled from one another. Both constitute a single field in which each is subject to a politics of differentiation. In order to move beyond monolithic accounts of global humanitarianism and come to grips with the full range of contestation within the global humanitarian field, we need to acknowledge its ‘non-secular’ dimensions.
