Intrinsic and Strategic Leverage of Religion in Development

Abstract

Strategic religious engagement (SRE) is important for five main reasons: (a) the direct and significant contributions of religious actors to humanitarian assistance and development, not least their high levels of trust and access, and their distinctive contributions to spiritual care; (b) The local presence and knowledge of faith-based organizations (FBOs) and religious communities that are critical to self-reliance; (c) the significant if often complex relationships that FBOs and religious communities have with governments and other civil society actors; (d) the dual capacity of religious communities to amplify/ameliorate suffering and conflict; and, (e) the central roles of religions in shaping humanitarian norms and law.

Keywords:

• religious terminology
• strategic religious engagement
• USAID
• gender equality
• spiritual capital
• moral capital
• self-reliance

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 See https://www.usaid.gov/faith-and-opportunity-initiatives/us-strategy.

2 See https://www.usaid.gov/faith-and-opportunity-initiatives/2020-evidence-summit-strategic-religious-engagement.

3 See https://www.iccr.org/.

4 See "Zug: Faith in Finance meeting, November 2017", http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=674. A related initiative was the "Zug Guidelines for Faith-consistent Investing, October, 2017, https://www.faithinvest.org/resources. For information on 3iG see http://www.3ignet.org/

5 An effort to estimate shares as part of the Berkley Center review of “Faith and Development in Focus: Kenya” (https://s3.amazonaws.com/berkley-center/170328BCWFDDFaithDevelopmentFocusKenya.pdf) found blind alleys for example on evangelical church contributions, on local mobilization of funds, on contributions from Gulf States, and even aggregate contributions of foundations to organizations with specific religious affiliations.

6 We are quick to note that such attributes can be no less true of non-religious organizations in the humanitarian and development sectors. The extraordinarily wide range of entities involved, by tradition, region, purpose, size, and ethical grounding belie simplistic conclusions. In practice many faith-linked NGOs operate with principles indistinguishable from non-faith-linked counterparts. Likewise, many non-religiously linked entities operate with a fervor many might label as religious, while many of their officers and staff have strong religious beliefs and ties.

7 Pulley (2019) highlights a very elaborate network of faith-linked communities in the Philippines.

8 Her obituary appeared in the Guardian—see https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/aug/09/dekha-ibrahim-abdi-obituary; see also the 2011 interview at https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/blessed-be-the-peacemakers-mourning-dekha-ibrahim-abdi.

9 For example, see Chapter 3 of Seiple (2006), for a discussion of the “mahalla” (neighborhood) in Uzbek

society. Seiple (2006, 66) writes, “This chapter concludes that the U.S. did not have a geo-communal framework for understanding the “going concern” of Uzbek civil society; and was thus unable to grasp the essential elements of Uzbekistan’s pre-existing civil society—namely, religion, the mahalla, and the elites. Instead, it insisted, with the best of intentions, on promoting its definition of civil society, while making no attempt to understand and work within those fundamental elements of Uzbek civil society.”

10 For more on the potential positive and negative roles of religion—and its relationship to both state and society—see R. Seiple and Hoover 2004; Seiple 2007; C. Seiple and Hoover 2012.

11 The October 1648 peace agreement—signed in Westphalia, now northwest Germany—ended The Thirty Years War (between Protestants and Catholics), establishing the non-religious norms and expectations of an international system.

12 Also see Casanova 1994.

13 In addition, see Panagopoulos 2006; Berger 2009; and a Gallup survey on Islamophobia at https://news.gallup.com/poll/157082/islamophobia-understanding-anti-muslim-sentiment-west.aspx.

14 Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (2011) discusses this enmeshment. Gregorio Bettiza (2019, 212–213) describes this intersection of religion and US global engagement as the “growing enmeshment of religious actors, communities, and agendas with US foreign policy institutions and practices and vice versa” resulting in a “religious engagement … strategy to augment, rather than replace, existing American diplomatic practices.”

15 See https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/about-clusters/what-is-the-cluster-approach.

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.