Implementing Strategic Religious Engagement in International Development

Abstract

Strategic religious engagement in relief & development efforts requires: a careful country assessment, establishing appropriate principles of engagement, and defining priority sectors and institutions (possibly including multireligious platforms equipped to serve as intermediaries). Important factors to take into account include: (a) a risk assessment; (b) review of information sources and gaps; (c) understanding religion-state relationships; (d) religious roles in civil society and with both formal and informal institutions; (e) involvement in humanitarian activities including prevention and response; and (f) possible sensitivities and conflicts involving religious actors including potential for engagement with a peacebuilding focus.

Keywords:

• faith-based organizations
• USAID
• Establishment Clause
• peacebuilding
• religious ecology
• pluralism

Acknowledgments

Support for the production of this research paper was provided by the US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace. Its publication as part of a special open-access issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs was made possible through the additional support of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Disclaimer Statement

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development, the co-conveners, or the United States Government.

Notes

1 USAID’s Rule on Participation by Religious Organizations in USAID Programming can be accessed in the “Code of Federal Regulations”- Title 22 Foreign Relations, Volume 1, Chapter 2, Section 205. https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=1e57bccd805b2046288e019cf2614656&mc=true&node=pt22.1.205&rgn=div. See also Establishment Clause n.d.

2 For a discussion of the positive and negative cycles of relationship between a government and religious communities, (see Seiple and Hoover 2012). (See also Seiple 2007; Seiple 2009; Seiple 2010; Seiple 2012; Seiple 2013; Seiple 2014).

3 In a webinar (see https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/wcc-imf-and-the-world-bank-to-continue-dialogue-first-encounter-described-as-historic) a WCC leader observed that “we lost it” by not focusing the dialogue more constructively on ways in which the parties might engage together towards common ends.

4 For a detailed discussion on faith-based organizations’ roles in poverty alleviation, particularly through economic development and microfinances, (see Hoda and Gupta 2014; Khan and Phillips 2010; Five Talents n.d).

5 The annual State Department reports for each country on religious freedom present a starting point for understanding the religious dynamics of a country, as well as, in cooperation with the embassy, a set of potentially relevant relationships that could serve as a point of departure. But the reports are by no means a landscape survey of the various religious actors, good and bad, and their potential impact regarding USAID’s humanitarian assistance and development goals.

6 Brené Brown (2011) coins and develops this idea in her TED Talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o.

7 Adapted from Moigne and Petersen (2016) and Clarke, Jennings, and Shaw (2008).

8 The toolkit was authored by Ruth Watson, ACT Alliance EU, in consortia with Richard McLaverty of Islamic Relief Worldwide, Silvia Sinibaldi of Caritas Europa, and Ruth Faber of EU-CORD.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall has worked on international development for some five decades. A Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and Professor of the Practice of Development, Religion, and Conflict in the School of Foreign Service, she also directs the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), whose mission is to bridge gulfs separating the worlds of development and religion. A long career at the World Bank was as an operational manager.

Sudipta Roy

Sudipta Roy is a Senior Researcher at the World Faiths Development Dialogue at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affair. He is currently co-leading several research and learning programs in South and Southeast Asia that focus on religious dimensions of development, freedom of religion and belief, and social cohesion. Sudipta also directs the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies—a consortium of higher education and research institutions in the United States and Bangladesh.

Chris Seiple

Chris Seiple (Ph.D., The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy) is President Emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement and Principal Advisor to the Templeton Religion Trust’s Covenantal Pluralism Initiative. A former U.S. Marine infantry officer, he has served as a Senior Fellow for Comparative Religion at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Evidence-Based Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement (2020), and as Co-Chair of the U.S. Secretary of State’s “Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group” (2011–2013).

Hugo Slim

Hugo Slim is Senior Research Fellow, Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He has combined a career in academia and humanitarian agencies, including Save the Children, the UN, the ICRC, Oxfam GB, and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. He was Reader in International Humanitarianism at Oxford Brookes University and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University and Academic Director of the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights.