ABSTRACT
So-called faith-based organisations (FBOs) have become increasingly important development actors over the past 20 years. While the engagement of faith actors in service delivery, as well as advocacy on behalf of the poor and marginalised, is not a new phenomenon, the formalisation of the faith response is. In this chapter, I examine the rise of the FBO in international development policy and practice as an offshoot of the regularisation of the faith contribution to public life in the US domestic space from the late 1990s. From the early 2000s, FBOs have received increasing amounts of funding from donors and are increasingly welcomed into development arenas. While this is heralded by some as evidence of the de-secularisation and decolonisation of development spaces, others are critical that this ‘turn to religion’ is limited by its narrow assimilation into neoliberal development forms where religion is instrumentalised to serve the political interests of Global North states and institutions. In this chapter, I argue that religion and development studies need to move beyond a narrow interest in formal FBOs and instead embrace a broader range of faith responses to ‘development’ problems, both in terms in how those problems are conceptualised and responses to them.
