Impressions & Indications of Religious Engagement in Development

Abstract

This article focuses on the challenges of gathering, presenting, and using evidence that shapes deliberate and systematic religious engagement linked to international development and humanitarian programs. It sets the topic in a historical context, exploring the abrupt shift from a general neglect of religious dimensions by many institutions to the contemporary rising interest across wide-ranging institutions. It explores the “state of the art” today, asking what knowledge is available focused specifically on religion and development and in what disciplines, pertinent research (actual and emerging), and various relevant literature reviews that assess bodies of evidence.

Keywords:

• religious
• evidence
• development
• humanitarian
• research
• literature reviews
• operational knowledge

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 author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development, the co-conveners, or the United States Government.

Notes

1 Both development and humanitarian action are terms widely used and understood but also contested. For this purpose, the work refers to dedicated programs that, today, are often set explicitly within the framework of the Global Goals or the Sustainable Development Goals framework (SDGs) that were approved by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015.

2 For a fascinating account of links among religion, Cold War politics, with some development spillover see Ford (2017).

3 While there are continuing debates about what the law requires, including distinctions between domestic and international settings, concerns about respecting the Establishment clause are often driven more by perceptions than robust analysis.

4 Serageldin, David Beckmann, Sven Burmester, and Ram Agarwala were the initial force behind a group that met regularly for over 25 years and that regularly grappled with religious and spiritual issues: the Values in Development or Friday Morning Group (Beckmann et al. 1991). Katherine Marshall was also part of the group, as was Sabina Alkire.

5 See for example Jeffrey Haynes (2019), who introduced a special issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs on the topic: “Introduction: The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and Relations between the West and the Muslim World.”

6 On the focus on girls’ education, see Summers (1992).

7 For an assessment of the impact of the Jubilee debt campaign see Marshall and Keough (2004).

8 See Narayan and Petesch (2002), Voices of the Poor: From Many Lands.

9 The Global Ethic project is described at https://www.global-ethic.org/the-global-ethic-project/, including reference to several books and other publications. The Global Ethic was a centerpiece of the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago.

10 See the Berkley Center/WFDD/JLI repository on COVID-19 faith response here: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/faith-and-covid-19-resource-repository. See also Marshall 2020b.

11 Two reports (Petersen and Marshall 2019, and Petersen 2020) highlight evolving thinking and practice on FoRB and especially the important and often neglected gender dimensions.

12 One definition from Palmer and Wong (2013): “We define spiritual capital as ‘the individual and collective capacities generated through affirming and nurturing the intrinsic spiritual value of every human being’. In contrast to some other definitions and theorizations of spiritual capital, this conceptual framework stresses (1) that spiritual capital is an autonomous form of value which is not merely a subset of social, cultural, or religious capital; (2) that spiritual capital is based on the affirmation of intrinsic value and, as such, offers a critical perspective on instrumental concepts of capital and its conversion; (3) that spiritual capital generates and transforms social and material relations.”

13 I would apply this also to the motivations of program staff of development programs, where widely different motivations drive individuals in their work, though compassion and concern for those who suffer is a common thread.

14 Some especially interesting observations on changes in culture are presented in Ronald Inglehart’s (2018) review of World Values Survey data, linking cultural shifts above all to the impact of security on a generation as it grows up.

15 See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08ae640f0b652dd000988/working_paper_66.pdf https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/government/departments/international-development/research/projects/archive/religions-development.aspx.

16 See https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/topics/religion-and-development.

17 See https://jliflc.com/.

18 See https://www.iss.nl/en.

19 See https://worldea.org/en/what-we-do/relief-development/.

20 See https://mwawater.org/about/history/.

21 Notable are four overview books: Tomalin 2011; Tomalin 2013; Tomalin 2017; and Starkey and Tomalin 2022.

22 An example is The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, edited by Atalia Omer, R. Scott Appleby, and David Little (2019).

23 A review of literature by Timur Kuran (2018) highlights historic gaps separating Muslim and other communities as an important explanatory factor for contemporary topics like land and property rights and gender relations.

24 Two examples are Kimball (2008) and Juergensmeyer (2017). On religion and peacebuilding, Joyce Dubensky’s (2016) Peacemakers in Action: Profiles in Religious Peacebuilding is a good example drawing on different religious traditions, as is The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Omer, Appleby, and Little 2015). Of note is substantial work on Catholic peacebuilding as a specific tradition and practice.

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.