ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the author’s two-decade-long personal journey towards religious literacy. The setting and central challenges reflect a history that distanced two communities—international development and religious approaches to human development—whose objectives and ethical focus overlap in important ways. Jarring discourse and common visions, sometimes one upon the heels of another, have characterized relationships between the two communities with parallel unfamiliarities and arrays of suspicions. Narratives of the journey illustrate both distancing and engagement between development and faith actors and perspectives. Unfamiliarity with and sometimes hostility towards religious approaches among many development professionals accounts in part for patterns and habits of separation. Different religious actors, in turn, have tended to look askance, even with contempt, at the institutions and language of development institutions. With engagement and better knowledge, however, tensions and divides can be overcome, but it takes appreciation for the complexity and dynamism involved and commitment to building relationships. Mutual understanding (read literacy) and creative strategies for engagement can allow both communities to build on common visions and learn from differences, in the interest of human development and peace.
