Strategic Religious Engagement in International Development: Building a Basic Baseline

Abstract

This essay introduces a special, open-access issue of this journal focused on the intersection of religion and relief & development. It describes the discussions—of terminology and tangibility, of perspective and practice—that shaped the research done for the “Evidence-Based Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement,” a conference organized and hosted October 5–8, 2020 by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). This special issue consists of four research papers produced for the Summit, along with four response essays. While the available empirical evidence, expertise, and experience varies across myriad issues involving the nexus of religion and relief & development, these papers do document the tremendous growth of this field in the last 20 years, as well as the enormous opportunity to contribute.

Keywords:

• faith
• religion
• relief
• humanitarian
• development
• strategic
• engagement

Acknowledgments

Support for the production of these research papers was provided by the US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace. The publication of the research papers and response essays as a special open-access issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs was made possible through the additional support of the Templeton Religion Trust. We also want to express particular thanks to the USAID Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives (CFOI) team.¹³ This topic has not been addressed in this manner before, in part because it is always tricky, always delicate. We thank Kirsten Evans for her leadership, and her conviction that now was the time to think humbly and comprehensively about the interrelated set of issues that is strategic religious engagement. We also thank Amanda Vigneaud for the idea and vision for this summit, as well as her insightful capacity—along with such CFOI stalwarts as Alexandra Rice, Courtney Brode Roberts, and Jared Noetzel—to implement it. USAID’s David Hunsicker has been a steady and thoughtful hand in providing feedback on all dimensions of this project, as have USIP’s Susan Hayward and Melissa Nozell, who also helped facilitate our work. We also express our gratitude for Themrise Khan, Fulata Moyo, and Digvijay Rewatkar, who were integral in the first phase of the humanitarian literature review. We are also thankful for Alan Berg, Paul Eisenman, Louise Fox, Jeffrey Haynes, Robert Klitgaard, Marie Juul Petersen, Alexander Shakow, Emma Tomalin, and, Olivia Wilkinson, for their prompt and insightful review of Katherine’s reflection on evidence. And we are thankful to the USAID personnel who took time to review the various iterations of our work. All of these folks improved our work, not only through their comments and suggestions, but according to their good hearts, and their long service in these fields. Finally, we are thankful for Jean Duff, who is an inspiration to, and a catalyst of, this emerging field. Jean’s is an indefatigable spirit. Her passion for practical research that is as humble as it is honest, patient as it is persistent, pushes us all forward. And in so doing, she makes all of us better. Our hope is that this special issue would do the same.

Disclaimer Statement

The views expressed in this introduction 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 Albright 2006, 75–76, 285.

2 Bettiza 2019, 226, 233.

3 USAID Administrator, Mark Green, July 16, 2018; available from: https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/jul-26-2018-usaid-administrator-mark-green-remarks-ministerial-advance-religious-freedom.

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

5 The papers were edited for length and style but the substantive arguments remain unchanged.

6 See for example, among others, Tomalin, Haustein, and Kidy 2019; Wodon 2018; Karam and Marshall 2016; Sidibé 2016; Olivier 2016; Karam 2015; Olivier and Wodon 2014; Marshall 2013; Gill 2013; Shah 2013; King 2011; Marshall 2010; Kaplan 2010; Anderson 2008; Thomas 2004. Special theme issues of The Review of Faith & International Affairs that have dealt with religion and development include: “Religion and Sustainable Development,” (Fall 2016, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfia20/14/3); “Faith-inspired Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa,” (Spring 2014, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfia20/12/1); “Religious Liberty & and Economic Development” (Winter 2013, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfia20/11/4); “Religion and Global Development” (Winter 2010, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfia20/8/4).

7 The pandemic significantly hamstrung the contracting process of the research team, who, as a result, produced these papers in under 90 days.

8 Religious identity exists among multiple identities and allegiances. By stating that 84 percent of the world self-identifies with a belief system is not to say that those beliefs always frame and order behavior. It is simply to say that, depending on the circumstance and context, “religion,” like the air, will be present, and not always discernible. According to the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, by 2050, 87 percent of the world will self-identify as a believer of some kind. See http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/. That said, others suggest that religion is in global decline. For example, see Inglehart 2020.

9 For Islamic FBOs’ codes of conduct, please see Mohamed and Ofteringer 2015, and Ghafran and Yasmin 2019. In addition, for a Christian perspective, please see World Council of Churches 2011.

10 Personal email to the lead author, July 31, 2020. Quoted with permission.

11 For a useful overview of how the field of religion and development has emerged and evolved, see Tomalin 2020.

12 For example, one of the key findings & recommendations for action from the July 7–9, 2015 World Bank conference on “Religion and Sustainable Development” (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/07/12/global-conference-religion-sustainable-development) was to: “Develop faith-inspired measurement and metrics, and a faith-inspired understanding of evidence.” Also, please see Check, Green, and Kumar 2020. Whatever one’s opinion of the theology, clearly there is a separate filter for monitoring and evaluation not found in traditional social science.

13 The Center has since been renamed the “Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” under the Biden Administration.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

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).

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.

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.

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.