Religious engineering: exploring projects of transformation from a relational perspective

ABSTRACT

This introduction presents the concept of religious engineering, offering a new perspective on a field of research which deals with the interrelations of religion and international development. The concept, we propose, allows for an analysis of a wide array of projects of transformation without presupposing religion, secularity and development as different given spheres or concepts. Following criticisms of the instrumental use of a sui generis concept of religion and a narrow definition of development, we suggest a focus on the relational, on-going constitution of development and religion through transformative practices of religious engineering. This refers to ways of working on the future shape of a society, group or individual, where the ‘engineers’ allude to what they understand as religious traditions and practices. At the same time, the concept accesses purposeful transformations of religious traditions and self-understandings that are spurred on by such projects of societal and/or individual improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious engineering
• transformation
• development
• religion
• secularity
• relationality

Introduction*

• (I). The Religion-Development Nexus

International development is a field that is shaped by competing visions and practices of change and improvement. Today, development agencies are increasingly interested in cooperating with religious actors, and more and more religious organizations engage with development work. At the same time, diverse actors are contesting dominant ways of ‘doing development’ by offering alternative approaches and projects of ethical and societal improvement. The academic interest in the connections between religion and development is rather new. While individual studies have been around for many years, it is only in the last fifteen years that this field of research has begun to substantially grow. The impulse came from development organizations, such as the World Bank (under President James D. Wolfensohn, in office from 1999 to 2005), and individual governments, e.g., the George W. Bush administration, rather than from development studies, the anthropology of development or the study of religion. International development organizations and national ministries put religion on their agenda and triggered a strongly donor-driven discussion about the ‘positive’ influence of religion in developing societies and the need to work with religious partners to transform development approaches and to accomplish sustainable development. Development, in this context, refers to policy-related efforts of directed change following certain indicators, today usually based on the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted as follow-up measure to the Millennium Development Goals by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. According to goal 17 of the SDGs, civil society partnerships should be promoted to support the achievement of the other goals (cf. UN-SDG). Development initiatives should thus be based on broad societal participation, which could include cooperation with religious actors. Earlier World Bank publications (cf. Marshall and Keough 2004; Marshall and van Saanen 2007) as well as recent initiatives by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ (BMZ 2015, 2016) also emphasized the necessity of values-based development policy and the empowerment of religious actors to participate in the development of their society and to bring in their religious values. This turn to an explicitly value-driven development agenda happened against the backdrop of the introduction of a broader notion of development as ‘human development’ including immaterial needs in the 1990s, while the more general discourse on the resurgence of religion also played a role (Haynes 2007). Religion has made its way into the development mainstream and inspired research in different disciplines, including applied affirmative research, as well as a rather critical perspective on the religion-development nexus. It is from the latter perspective that this article proposes a new approach to the field by introducing the concept of religious engineering and thereby contributing to a better understanding of this nexus. With ‘religious engineering’, we focus on cases where actors, such as individuals, groups or organizations, consciously work on projects of transformation and relate them in one way or another to religious resources. With their activities, they not only create what comes to be understood as development or improvement, but also contribute to a (re)configuration of the religious perceptions and practices they refer to. This thematic issue brings together contributions to and critical discussions of our concept of religious engineering, which is introduced in the third section of this article.

• (II). Religion and Development as a Field of Research

Today, the religion-development nexus is not only a subject in interdisciplinary development studies but also in anthropology, history and the study of religion. So far, we see three dominant perspectives regarding this nexus – that is, three approaches which reflect different interests in this field. Although a clear-cut tripartition is too simple and the boundaries between the approaches are blurred, it will nonetheless help to briefly set these out, in order to see the different foci and pitfalls and show why we think a new perspective is necessary.

1. In recent years, new initiatives by development institutions have inspired many research projects; some of them funded by governments or development institutions themselves. Many scholars have welcomed such initiatives in political terms and have focused their research on the question of how religious organizations and values contribute to development, asking how one can integrate religion as a variable into development thinking and practice. Hence, much of the interdisciplinary development research follows a practice-oriented or applied approach to satisfy the donors’ needs for information about religious organizations and the benefits and challenges of integrating ‘religion’ into a field of practice that has been imagined as purely secular (cf. Clarke 2007; Marshall and van Saanen 2007; Rakodi 2007; Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals). Some researchers have developed an institutional focus and consider forms of cooperation with religious groups; the sudden interest of developmental institutions in religion and religious organizations has, for instance, led to a growing number of studies on so-called faith-based organizations (FBOs) and religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs) and their contributions to development work (Clarke 2008; Marshall 2013). Here, attempts at classifying organizations and differentiating religious from non-religious organizations are central (cf. Berger 2003; Thaut 2009). Others have worked on the general question of how religious norms of charity or peace, for example, relate to development (Deneulin and Bano 2009). Yet others have focused attempts on trying to bring together development ideals and religious practices and views (Ellis and Haar 2006; Ter Haar 2011). Much of this work aims at improving development effectiveness through the factor of religion or tries to empower religious actors to participate in ‘their’ development.

   These approaches by political and development institutions (e.g., DFID, BMZ, World Bank) and some of the early applied studies tended to work with a rather simplistic concept of religion: religion is considered a category sui generis, that is, it is assumed to be a given and a clearly identifiable autonomous sphere. Religion is here often defined through allegedly essential contents (values and norms) and less through human practices or cultural and historical contexts. In this perspective, religion is understood as a positive phenomenon, and its ‘problematic’ aspects as perceived by the secular West (e.g., violence, intolerance, gender roles) tend to be seen as expressions of the misuse of a religious tradition. This notion of religion as a phenomenon sui generis corresponds to the assumption of a clear separation between the religious and the secular, that is, between religion and secular development (Marshall and Keough 2004). It follows from this that development discourses on religion, and some of the studies they have inspired, are rather ahistorical. They ignore, for example, the interwovenness of Christian organizations and secular development work from the 1960s onwards, not to mention the historical roots of development work in Christian missions (Haustein in this issue). Moreover, this development discourse is rather instrumental and considers religion mainly from the perspective of what it can contribute to the (already fixed) development goals. As such, projects of transformation that do not fit into the framework of development cooperation and international development ideals or are presented as alternatives to such ideals by their inventors, are widely ignored.

(2)

A critique has thus arisen of this instrumental and simplistic notion of religion and religious groups, promoted by development institutions and some researchers. Furthermore, a critical review of the construction of a secular history of development has emerged (Fountain 2013; Fountain, Bush, and Feener 2015; Jones and Petersen 2011; Manji and O'Coill 2002; Barnett 2011; Paulmann 2013; Rist 2014). Many of these critics follow a discourse-oriented approach and have begun to analyse this latest turn of the development discourse by revealing the normative notion of religion as universal, peaceful, and always connected to positive values. They criticize the vague concept of religious organizations / FBOs (Fountain 2013) and question the secular-religious divide, which is constructed on the basis of earlier development thinking and feeds talk of the new role of religion for development. Instead, authors within this line of argument remind us of the role of Christian missionaries in the colonial civilizing mission (Haustein and Tomalin 2018), while others point also to the political aspects and power imbued in the strategies and practices behind the latest ‘religious turn’ in development. From this perspective, it appears that it was less an analytical or empowering impetus, but rather the promise of cost-effective development, which led to the incorporation of a functional and instrumental, i.e., ‘developmentalised’, notion of religion (Jones and Petersen 2011, 1300) by the international development establishment. Seen in this way, the religious turn could be interpreted as yet another dimension of the increasingly widespread ‘consensus narrative’ in international development (as Cornwall and Brock 2005, 1054 have called it in a different context). As a highly moralizing discourse, this consensus narrative stresses the rightness of the project of development and the moral sense of its shared responsibility, thus presenting a normative position as consensus. Hence, we experience the construction of a narrative which tells that developers and the religions of the world share the same values and the same ideals of peace, charity and a better life, which makes their cooperation only natural. This interpretation suggests that religion in development discourse at times functions as a moral disguise for political goals of development (cf. Fountain 2013). Although this interpretation seems plausible when analysing development policies, it still takes a separation of religion, development and politics for granted, rather than studying their co-constitution.

(3)

Yet other researchers tackle the religion-development nexus through ethnographic and other empirical approaches. They might, for example, study a particular religious tradition in a specific context and question its relation to development practices and goals – sometimes with a wider notion of development as change, transformation or improvement (Feener 2013; Tittensor 2014). Others focus on a specific development constellation (a project, an organization or a local discourse of development) and ask questions about the (changing) roles, the interest and the status of religious actors or institutions in countries where international development is an integral part of people’s and the nation’s lives (cf. Bompani 2015; Bornstein 2003; Sounaye 2011). Still others review the field from a historical perspective and show that development work has never been as secular as claimed. Their case studies contribute to the necessary rewriting of the ‘secular script’ (Deneulin and Bano 2009) by examining both the history of religion in development and concrete practices of organizations and their categorization as ‘religious’. In recent years, the disciplines of history and anthropology have both contributed studies to the religion and development field of research, in particular on Christian and Muslim ideas of societal or individual change. Pentecostal churches especially, with their emphasis on success, change and prosperity, are thought to stimulate new ways of individual and social transformation beyond development policies (Freeman 2012; Green 2014; Meagher 2009; Van Dijk 2013; see Arthur in this issue). When it comes to Muslim organizations, the political agenda of newly-founded aid organizations have been the focus of much interest (cf. Ghandour 2002; Petersen 2010). At the same time, scholars have started to explore an Islam-based ‘invisible aid economy’ (Clarke and Tittensor 2014) that offers alternative approaches to Western development (Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan 2003; Tripp 2006), for example by promoting projects of education and charity as (alternative) paths into the futures of Muslim societies, but also as new forms of daʿwa and identity formation (Hansjörg and Schulz 2013; Isik and Tittensor in this issue). Altogether, one might say that this third approach is characterized by a perspective that treats ‘development’ as a category of practice (Mosse 2013, 230). It invites case studies on how development is understood and done in specific contexts, and how development emerges and changes as a category while something called development is done. Fountain, Bush, and Feener (2015) for instance call their approach interactionist, setting out to analyse ‘both “religion” and “development” as dynamic, interrelated and contingent formations’ (Fountain, Bush, and Feener 2015, 243) and not as given static categories. This is where the notion of religious engineering links up, as, from our view, the similarity, difference or entanglement of what comes to be understood as religion and development emerges in practice. A focus on the continuous processes of doing development and religion not only reveals them to be realities in the making but also points to their relational constitution. Religious engineering as a concept of analysis takes these processes as a starting point for the study of the differentiations made between religious and secular in projects of transformation, the relationality of religious traditions, the situational construction of the categories of religion and development, and the powerful empirical consequences of this. Our approach owes a lot to earlier actor-oriented research in the anthropology of development, which conceptualized development activities as arenas or interfaces where players with different interests, skills, norms and knowledges meet (Bierschenk, Chauveau, and de Sardan 2000; Long 2001). However, these works have not dealt with religion explicitly and have tended to focus on arenas as social sites where given concepts, interests and norms meet. In contrast, religious engineering opts for a relational and praxeological perspective, focusing on the processes of emergence and shaping of such concepts, norms, interests and sites in practice. With this relational understanding, religious engineering also goes beyond the micro-level of interactionist analysis and the mere focus on human agency.

• (III). Religious Engineering – Introducing the Concept

Introducing the notion of religious engineering, we follow the above-mentioned criticism concerning the sui generis concept of religion and the dichotomous secular-religious divide. Opting for a research-oriented, rather than an applied, approach, we propose the concept of religious engineering to allow for an analysis of different projects of transformation, improvement or change without limiting ourselves to narrow concepts of religion, secularity, and development. The notion religious engineering refers to active and conscious ways of working on the future shape of a given society, of individuals or the world, where the ‘engineers’ of such transformative projects refer to religious resources such as religious traditions, practices, identities or institutions. At the same time, the concept alludes to active transformations of religious traditions and self-understanding that are spurred on by specific projects of societal and/or individual improvement.¹ It thus also captures activities that try to relate religious traditions to new social, political and economic spaces of opportunity, to processes of in-/exclusion, and to restrictions or openings of economic regimes. International development, which is at the centre of this thematic issue, is a paradigmatic field for such processes of religious engineering. Here practices of development are, for instance, reinterpreted as religious practice, while religious practices are translated into discourses of humanitarianism and development and are integrated into new sets of practices and infrastructures. The introduction of Islamic sharīʿa in Indonesia as a tool for social engineering (see Feener in this issue) can thus be read as state practice for the implementation of change, but also as a process that has been tantamount to a reconfiguration of religious traditions (Feener 2013). Haustein (in this issue) points out that colonial notions of salvation and civilization cannot be separated from the instrumental approach to religion among colonial actors and shows how understandings of religion were and still are intrinsically linked to colonial and postcolonial notions of development.

Relationality

Adopting a relational perspective, we take concepts such as development, religion, projects of transformation, and religious traditions as configurations composed of relations (Powell 2013; Spies 2019), that is, as coming into being and forming as separate entities or categories only by relating to other concepts, traditions, practices or knowledges. Relations may include forms of cooperation and exchange, but also conflict, denial or resistance. Religious engineering involves relational practices that constitute and shape what is understood as development, religious, Christian, Islamic or secular in specific contexts, and it is at the same time itself also product of such discourses and relational practices. Thus, the concept helps to analyse the interdependence of how religious traditions are shaped and transformed through practices of engineering, as well as how traditions and materialized discourses such as Muslim solidarity, prosperity, religion or development generate and mould specific practices of engineering by providing spaces of opportunity for engineers to link up to and to reshape. Studying processes of religious engineering focuses on engineering practices and not on a given group of actors or individuals with specific attributes and identities. Depending on the web of relations they are embedded in, individuals, groups or organizations may in some situations act as engineers and in others not. Our relational perspective is about studying processes of relating, as well as understanding actors, concepts, etc., as products which emerge from these processes.

Engineering

Our notion of religious engineering is inspired by the well-known concept of social engineering (cf. Feener 2013), an idea that still inspires development policy and international co-operation: it holds that human societies and their existing structures can be designed and modified by means of rational, technical, economic, and political instruments and mechanisms. Thus, engineering refers to directed and conscious efforts to improve a given state (of a society, the world, religious traditions, an individual) by actors who assume to have the agency to make a change and who presume that what they want to change is changeable. Research on development which has dealt with ideals and practices of planning and designing life (e.g., Scott 1998) have sometimes implied that social engineering can only be found in Western thought and is connected to practices of Western domination (cf. Escobar 2010, 158). In our understanding, however, designs for life and society, projections of progress or improvement, models for and of life and the assumption of the capability to make a difference, are not Western blueprints that are merely adapted, appropriated or denied.

Engineering for us alludes to the intentionality of the actors involved, but we do not restrict it to activities one could characterize as rational. While one could also use other terms such as shaping or (re)forming, the notion of engineering is meant to imply that the ‘engineers’ adopt an imaginary that considers as possible an active reshaping of the world / society / the self with the help of specific tools and practices, and therefore assumes the / their capability to make a change. Within this imaginary, actors do not necessarily restrict their ideas of agency to humans but may rather extend them to include non-human beings and the material world. Thus, engineering practices are not exceptional, particularly not in the field of religion. We rather see them as part of the universal human effort to somehow get life under control and shape it. How engineers see themselves and their projects, why they assume capability, to whom they attribute agency, what they consider crucial for their success and how they refer to religious resources in order to pursue which objectives, are pivotal research questions to be analysed through the study of their practices. Arthur, for example, describes the importance which a Pentecostal church leader in Ghana attributes to proper planning, monitoring and control as well as to faith and (his own) charisma in his programmes for individual and societal transformation (Arthur in this volume).

Our notion of engineering implies actors who assume a power asymmetry between themselves and the ‘objects’ of their engineering practice. By using the term engineering, we want to highlight that these practices are linked to ideas of potent actors, empowered by religion, spiritual beings, objects, knowledge, or assumed correct values; engineers typically portray agency as located primarily or exclusively on their own side (including the religious resources they draw on), as exemplified by pictures of active donors and passive recipients. This is also mirrored in some studies of Western (secular) development organizations which deal with religious NGOs as their presumed ‘others’ (cf. Fountain 2013). Although power asymmetries are part of the self-image of engineers, and of course of social realities in general, we consider religious engineering a practice that is not restricted to a specific side of often dichotomous constructs such as donors/recipients; developees/developers; secular/religious: power relations and the assumption of agency are not fixed but also subject to relational processes, and they lead to specific views about the field to be engineered.² However, Tomalin (in this issue) criticizes the concept of religious engineering for nevertheless remaining too one-sided by giving too much attention to the powerful Western actors, and proposes instead a return to Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of social fields. This discussion shows the importance of acknowledging power asymmetries in the religion-development nexus as well as the different stances (applied, emancipatory, analytical etc.) researchers may take towards this nexus.

Finally, to speak about religious engineering and conscious ways of working on the improvement and future shape of a given society does not imply a rational-choice approach where actors are necessarily rational entrepreneurs, and where projects always go according to plan. Using the term engineering is not tantamount to claiming that the practices we refer to are rational and efficacious: quite the contrary, engineering regularly involves bricolage, as actors have to deal with unforeseen influences as well as the unintended consequences of their conduct (see Arthur in this issue). Speaking of engineering is a way to take the projects, intentions and aspirations of the actors involved seriously, but it does not mean limiting research to well-drawn plans and ‘rational’ practices. The anthropology of development long ago taught us the unintended consequences of well-planned projects (Bierschenk, Elwert, and Kohnert 1993; Scott 1998), and actor-network theory (among others) has pointed to the interdependence of human agency and materiality (Latour 2005). Studying processes of religious engineering therefore always implies the study of bricolage and practices of muddling through, of dealing with ambivalences and failures, as well as of concepts of agency other than those implied in the rational actor.

It is not our aim to evaluate the effectiveness of engineering in terms of a set norm, such as sustainable development. Rather, we want to scrutinize practices of engineering and the way they create and express dynamic relations between various actors, institutions, knowledges and imaginaries of transformation and possibilities for change. To look at specific notions of improvement or development, as well as transformative practices, also implies situating these in broader socio-cultural, historical and political contexts and the power relations these contexts are made up of. For example, Isik shows how the neoliberal Turkish state provides spaces of opportunity for religious engineers to reshape society along a communitarian Muslim ideal rooted in the Ottoman past, and how, at the same time, the engineers have to deal with expectations concerning professionalism and accountability (Isik in this issue).

Religious engineering

For us, religious engineering is a particular form of social engineering which, in the framework of this thematic issue, is limited to contexts where projects of transformations are related to practices and discourses of international development and religion. However, religious engineering does not necessarily refer to societal change in the strict sense, as a project might also be one of individual transformation or the making of a moral self that only points to social transformation at a later stage. For instance, the contribution by Tittensor portrays the Gülen movement’s idea of engineering as the creation of a pious generation who would later on function as ‘moral change agents’ for the whole of society (Tittensor in this issue). In ‘social engineering’, the ‘social’ usually refers to the goal of change, as well as to the chosen instruments. Likewise, we speak of religious engineering when the tools and measures that the engineers choose refer to religious practices, teachings, symbols or groups, as well as when the goals themselves are related to religion. Religious can for example refer to allusions to traditions such as Christianity or Islam that are commonly referred to as ‘religions’ in the specific field of research; it may also refer to other practices, symbols or teachings that the actors themselves understand as religious. Religious engineering can be pursued by actors who do not conceive of themselves as being religious, such as development institutions, but who aim for example at transforming religious traditions (see BMZ example below). Using religious engineering as an analytical category helps us to take a closer look at those projects of transformation in which the reference to ‘religions’ (e.g., to Christianity or Islam) or the adjective ‘religious’ are used discursively or in concrete interaction to differentiate between groups of actors or approaches.

Our focus on religious engineering is thus not based on normative premises such as religion being a force for good or religion being specifically important, beneficial or effective in shaping a society or doing development. Neither do we aim at evaluating whether religious traditions, values, teachings or practices are conducive or obstructive in relation to a given goal. Our empirical approach concentrates on projects that refer to different traditions, worldviews and institutions (e.g., various brands of Christianity or Islam, development agencies) which interact in the same field and are therefore strongly shaped by relational processes and dynamics between each other. This is why we suggest leaving the notion religious as open as possible and scrutinizing in each case whether the empirical data points to forms of religious engineering within the given context. Rather than starting from a predefined or substantialist notion of the religious, we start from the idea that projects and practices of transforming societies are always to be understood in their relationality to other projects and practices within heterogeneous and tension-fraught fields made up of a multitude of actors. In the context of those practices we describe as religious engineering, religion is envisioned as an asset for the transformation of societies and individuals. The concept, therefore, concentrates on the engineers’ organized, systematic, project-bound and instrumental approach to religion, which in many respects is contrary to what Robert A. Orsi describes as ‘everyday religion’ (Orsi 2012, 159). This, however, does not imply that we differentiate between pure, authentic as opposed to instrumentalized, less authentic religion. Rather, a relational notion of religion overcomes such either/or oppositions and acknowledges the different forms religion may take depending on the relational practices through which it is (temporarily) constituted in a specific field of research.

The contribution of the religious engineering-approach to theory and research

By analysing practices, attempts and politics of engineering, we aim at a substantiated critique of essentializing notions of religion as adopted in the recent turn to religion by powerful institutions of global development. Against a sui generis understanding of religion, religious engineering challenges the claim that religious actors provide alternatives that are essentially different from ‘technocratic (neo)liberal development’ (Carbonnier 2013, 4). We focus rather on their relational co-constitution: the practice of ‘rendering religion manageable’ (Fountain 2013, 23f.) that Philip Fountain describes for ‘Western’ development organizations is not restricted to one side of the development configuration. As mentioned above, different actors do have ‘a will to improve’ (Li 2007), but their diverging notions of improvement, well-being and transformation, future visions, projects of ethical and societal change, as well as their specific ways of putting religion consciously to work (cf. Starrett 1998), should all be analysed as a result of relational practices rather than of Western hegemony alone. Thus, religious engineering as the study of projects of transformation and the transformation of religious traditions allows us to investigate how notions of religion and development, as well as other categories, emerge, constitute and relate in practices of change.

With the concept of religious engineering we, therefore, want to introduce a perspective on projects of change that goes beyond the activities and objectives of development agencies, but one that is still very often connected to their ideas of development. Working with the notion of religious engineering offers not only a possibility to understand the world of development itself as an object of investigation, but above all to learn about alternative designs and projects of transformation. If we want to analyse such projects, we have to go via the practices, agencies and processes of world-making in the specific cultural and historical contexts in which they are pursued. Here the term religious engineering helps to analyse the activities as transformative practices and to examine whether and how the religious and the secular, or religion and development, are being differentiated from or connected to one another in the context of these activities – or not. Thus, religious engineering is not simply another word for ‘religious actors in development’. Rather, the concept covers a much broader range of projects of change.

• (IV). Examples of Religious Engineering

The following three examples show how cases can be analysed with the help of the concept of religious engineering. Each example presents different projects of transformation and objectives, different practices as well as engineers, and points to different possible configurations of how religion and development are constituted as distinct or not. These constellations are not to be understood as exhaustive.

1. Developing Religion for the General Good – German Development Policies

From the perspective of religious engineering, actors in German development policy try to manage religion and thereby re-constitute the category of religion. Their policy and support structures generate and shape practices of religious actors, which may lead to a reconfiguration of a religious tradition in a specific context.

Since 2014 the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has begun to deal more intensely with the role of religion in development. The ministry has termed its (sector) project ‘values, religion, development’ and is working on a so-called ‘religion strategy’, because ‘The BMZ wants to better integrate the potential of religions for sustainable development and peace’ (BMZ-website, our translation).

Gerd Müller, Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, is committed to value-based development work. Since the beginning of his term as a minister in 2013, the ministry has been pursuing the question of what religion can do for global sustainable development and how its potential can be incorporated into development cooperation. It is with the help of religious communities that the ministry wants to spread the idea of global responsibility to promote sustainable development and to implement this in its projects. Overall, partnerships with religious actors are seen as new ways ‘to improve the acceptance, effectiveness and sustainability of our projects and to use synergies’ (BMZ 2016, 9).

To include religion in development thinking as a ‘factor’, to try to involve religious actors in development projects because they represent suitable skills and values, to establish criteria for the definition of religion and of suitable partners, and to develop principles of co-operation, constitutes a case of religious engineering in our understanding of the term. The ministry is searching for new, appropriate religious partners who conform to its own concept of development and global responsibility and are then to be supported accordingly, while other religious actors or communities who may represent deviant projects of transformation are not supported.

Development policy is connected to foreign and security policy, and the promotion of ‘good religion’ and ‘the right’ actors can be read as an attempt to engineer or domesticate religion (cf. Schmeissner 2017). By involving ‘good’ religious actors, BMZ seems to hope to be able to influence and (re)direct the religious traditions the actors represent in such a way that the ‘positive potential’ of religions is promoted and the ‘negative potential’ is overcome in the long run. In this way, the ministry not only tries to involve actors in international development but also tries to shape the religious traditions in such a way that they do not pose a security risk for secular political goals. Involving religious groups, activities, and values that seem ‘good’, i.e., favourable and functional to the ministry’s goals of development, goes hand in hand with the idea of arranging religious traditions in such a way that they fit into the conceptions of ‘values-based work’ and security policy goals.³ Thus, the ministry’s practices of involving selected religious actors and promoting partnerships with them in the framework of development policy can be read as a way of influencing their practices so that a reshaping of religious traditions gets underway.

(b)	Transformation beyond Development Cooperation – Pentecostal Projects of Education

This example presents engineering practices of Pentecostal pastors / churches that are conceptualized as alternatives to international development practices but nonetheless seek improvement. The Pentecostal world and its work on a new society do not permit a separation of secular and religious spheres, for the development of Christianity and of society go hand in hand, just as the agency of the Holy Spirit is connected to the activities of the church leaders.

With the growth of so-called mega-churches and their international mission work, the organization of African Pentecostal churches has become increasingly hierarchized, bureaucratized and professionalized (cf. Ukah 2007). Today, this involves many church leaders who develop explicit concepts of leadership, organization and the formation of a new elite, i.e., leaders who work not only on their own development and that of their followers as good Christians but who help to transform the society they live in.

Dag Heward-Mills, the founder of the Ghanaian Lighthouse Chapel International (LCI), for instance, promotes a so-called ‘Literature Crusade’ to teach pastors to lead a ministry with the help of his books. He sees himself as an anointed author who writes with help of the Holy Spirit. His motto, ‘If you can’t read, you can’t lead!’ (Heward-Mills 2014, 101), not only implies a call to read his books and to experience the author’s gifts, but also strongly resembles the older (development) slogan, ‘today a reader, tomorrow a leader’, still used by UNICEF today. In both cases, reading is correlated with social skills and points to broader notions of leadership and social change. For Heward-Mills, reading is equivalent to learning (Heward-Mills 2014, 107–109) and it is therefore an indispensable prerequisite for leadership. Reading means education and thus also the formation of personality. In the long term, he and other Pentecostal church founders are not only concerned about the leadership of a church. They invest large sums of money to also create a new generation of leaders for society based on the ideal of lived faith, according to which Pentecostal teachings and practices should pervade every aspect of life, no matter whether you are working in accounting or in parliament. According to this view, a separation of religion and non-religion is not possible in any way. Church leaders are thus striving in their role as leaders not only to establish and lead churches but also to change their societies. The forms of leadership and the roles of leaders also take centre stage in educational institutions that Pentecostal church founders establish, such as the Covenant University of the Nigerian church founder David Oyedepo, for instance, or simpler private schools such as the Institute of Leadership Chrétien (ILC) in Antananarivo.

The website of the Convenant University reads: ‘We are driven by the compelling vision of raising a new generation of Leaders for the African Continent on the platform of a Holistic, Human Development and integrated learning curriculum, in order to raise Total Men who will go out to develop their world. Our Core-Values of Spirituality, Possibility Mentality, Capacity Building, Integrity, Responsibility, Diligence and Sacrifice are what defines our commitment to excellence’. (Covenant University).

We think that the references to the discourse of international development – such as the need for education/literacy or the keyword ‘Human Development’ – are not accidental. However, the activities of these church leaders show that they pursue alternative projects of transformation and are financially and organizationally independent of the international development world. They do not simply pursue the spread of the gospel, nor do they cooperate with development institutions, but the harmonization of their Christian message with the development discourse helps them to present their religious tradition as an overall project of change.

We read the teachings and training schemes of the Pentecostal Churches as projects of transformation and the activities of the church leaders as a form of religious engineering. The leaders work in a conscious and active way towards social change and the future shape of their society (or the world) – in their case with the help of Pentecostal education, ideas of leadership and the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal leaders such as Heward-Mills point to the Holy Spirit as the source of wisdom and prosperity, and they present themselves as gatekeepers and engineers who are able to bring about change and create a new society, thanks to their privileged access to this source of power. Thus religious engineering practices might not only involve non-human agency but also a rejection of a distinction between religion and development.

(c)	The Re-branding of Religious Traditions – Muslim Charity and Civil Society

Another case of religious engineering can be observed in the practice of bringing charitable activities into prominence in order to advertise single religious traditions and to present these in an idealized form. An important Muslim charity organization in Germany bears the name ‘Muslime helfen’, which translates as: ‘Muslims do help’, or ‘Muslims will help’, suggesting that helping is simply a general characteristic of Muslims. The name can be read as an appeal to the Muslim community and at the same time as a message to non-Muslim German society, with its high levels of scepticism towards the country’s Muslim population and its continuing suspicious questioning of their contribution to the polity. This example illustrates the relationality of religious engineering: the redefinition of Muslim identity – here expressed in ethics of help and care – aims at reconfiguring relations between Muslims, society, and the larger world. It also aims at a new understanding of what it means to belong to a certain tradition. At the same time, these redefinitions are put into practice not just by choosing a name, but by the actual projects that are operated by ‘Muslime helfen’. We propose to analyse such efforts to change the world or society, as well as to reposition one's own community through image politics and resource assessment, as cases of religious engineering: ‘helping’ in this case stands for reshaping a tradition according to one's own socially situated understanding and at the same time denotes the production of future visions for the community.

More variations of the three forms of religious engineering described in this section are discussed in the different contributions to this thematic issue.

(V)	Programme of the Thematic Issue

The aim of this thematic issue is to discuss and further elaborate religious engineering as a category of analysis by testing its usefulness for approaching empirical and theoretical questions related to projects of transformation. This should allow us to develop a new approach to the research field ‘religion and development’ that overcomes normative discussions of the role of religion for development, as well as binary conceptions of development as either religious or secular.

We argue that religious engineering can be a useful concept for analysing projects of transformation where engineers refer to religion for at least three reasons. First, because it starts with the practices and not with (normative) development schemes. Second, because it helps to keep in mind those projects that do not fit into the framework of international development cooperation. Finally, a praxeological relational approach overcomes pre-defined binaries of religious and secular, religion and development, or religion and politics, and instead focuses on their co-constitution by following the definitions produced in the projects of transformation themselves. We draw on discourse-oriented works while favouring a praxeological and thus ethnographic approach to study the processes and relations through which religion and development emerge in specific configurations in specific contexts. Instead of taking FBOs or the framework of development cooperation as points of departure, we suggest starting with projects: our focus lies on what actors do and the projects of change, transformation or development they pursue. We explore the (changing) meanings and roles they ascribe to religion in the context of their projects and in what way they refer to the world of international development. The aim is to develop a more open perspective on projects of social change which prominently refer to religion or to resources which the engineers associate with a religious tradition. Instead of asking what religious actors can do for development cooperation, we ask how actors who have the will to change society or the world relate to, or differentiate from, development cooperation and religion – and how their activities change the social reality of religious traditions at the same time. Thus, the concept focuses on imaginaries of the doable and practices related to these. It does not aim to replace previous approaches to religion and development but offers a new take on the religion-development nexus. This thematic issue explores and discusses the concept of religious engineering as a new approach and category of analysis in this regard. It assembles contributions that develop the notion of religious engineering as an analytical and conceptual tool, but also includes critical assessments of it.

Joerg Haustein analyses the historical interrelations between discourses of religion and development from colonial civilizing missions to the post-Second World War development industry, using the example of Africa to show how the religious-secular boundary is engineered as part of transformative projects. He reminds us that alongside the colonial state and the nation-state, the academic study of religion forms part of this history, too. He critically notes that the notion of engineering overemphasizes directed processes and tends to overlook their contingency.

Michael Feener adopts the notion of social engineering from an Indonesian context and shows how state policies of religion and legislation engineer what one considers religion to be. In this study, Feener also contributes to the question of how religious practices, ideas and views on societal/individual improvement change in and through development interventions by the state, pointing to the mutually reinforcing processes set in motion by engineering practices.

Damla Isik gives another example of how the relation to the state – this time a relation of absence – triggers civil society practices of religious engineering and how this again is linked to the transformation of religious selves. Through the case of the civil society organization Deniz Feneri Aid and Solidarity Association (DF) in Turkey, she shows, inter alia, that charitable giving is considered an important path through which to become both a good Muslim and a good citizen.

David Tittensor focuses on a Turkish organization, too, known as the transnational Gülen movement. Analysing Gülen’s notion and practices of education, Tittensor exemplifies an alternative project of transformation that, at first glance, seems to be located beyond religion, the state and questions of development. However, the organization’s missionary aims to create an educated but pious generation of Muslims finally reveals education to be a field of engineering practices, chosen to work towards the transformation of a whole generation of Muslims, and thus of the Muslim world.

Similarly, in his study of Pentecostal notions of the development of the self through hard work and faith, Justice Arthur analyses questions of education and the formation of a moral self as a first step towards the transformation of a society as a whole. His example of individual ‘development plans’ promoted by the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), a Pentecostal-charismatic church in Ghana, not only presents alternative ways and visions of development beyond development cooperation. It also points to the processes of how plans and practices of church members co-evolve and it thus shows that engineering always involves bricolage.

Finally, Emma Tomalin’s contribution criticizes the concept of religious engineering for not sufficiently emphasizing the asymmetries of power involved in the encounter of religious and non-religious actors in the field of development. She proposes instead to use Bourdieu’s concepts of the social field for an applied emancipatory approach to the religion-development nexus, in order to empower alternative (religious) voices in development contexts.

With this thematic issue and the discussion of our concept in its individual contributions, we hope to stimulate the development of theoretical approaches that help scholars meet the complexities of the religion-development nexus, as well as of the study of projects of transformation in other fields of action.

Many thanks to the student assistants Tatjana Hering and Nadia Rennette for patience, endurance and technical support and to Hauke Dorsch for reminding us of the notion of bricolage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Eva Spies is professor for the Study of Religion with a special focus on Africa at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Her current work focuses on contemporary Christianity in Madagascar and Niger, where she has conducted research. Her research interests include Pentecostal mission, ordinary ethics and the entanglement of religion and international development, as well was conceptual questions of religious diversity and relationality.

Paula Schrode is professor for the Study of Religion with special focus on contemporary cultures of Islam at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Currently she is working on Turkish charitable organizations, focusing their activities in Niger. Other research interests include Islam in Germany, Turkey and Central Asia and transnational dimensions of Turkish Islam.

Notes

* This introduction and the thematic issue as a whole are the outcome of the workshop ‘Religious Engineering – Alternative Practices in the Context of Global Development?’, which took place at the University of Bayreuth in September 2016, supported by the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) and the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Bayreuth. We would like to thank the participants of this workshop for engaging with the concept of religious engineering in such a constructive and supportive way. We would especially like to thank the authors of this issue for their willingness to deal with the concept and their patience with the editing process. The topics and concepts discussed in this thematic issue are also at the basis of the ongoing research project ‘Religious engineering – the making of moralities, development and religion in Niger’ (01/2020-12/2023), directed by Mahaman Tidjani Alou, Paula Schrode and Eva Spies, which is part of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Africa Multiple: reconfiguring African Studies’ at the University of Bayreuth and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germanýs Excellence Strategy – EXC-2052/1–390713894.

1 It seems to be in this sense that Kuah-Pearce Khun Eng refers to ‘religious engineering’, although in her book she does not give a clear definition (Kuah-Pearce 2009, 4–6).

2 Cf. Petersen’s notion of ideologies of aid which define the aid chain and the subjects (giver, receiver etc.) involved (Petersen 2015).

3 A similar and even more general notion of religion as ‘a force for good’ can be found in Tony Blair’s ideas on the use of religion in the globalized world in the aftermath of 9/11 and the London terror attacks of 2005. As speaker of the interfaith charitable ‘Tony Blair Foundation’, the former British Prime Minister stated in 2008 that religion ‘must be rescued not simply from extremism, faith as a means of exclusion; but also from irrelevance (…) and militant secularism … ’. (Butt 2018).