CIDA's secular fiction and Canadian faith-based organisations

Abstract

Many have argued that the secularism that dominates both political science and development studies neglects how religion has historically contributed to development practices, as well as the potential of faith-based organisations (FBOs) to bring a more holistic approach to development. Despite these arguments, it remains difficult for secular donor agencies and FBOs to engage with each other. Drawing on interviews with key organisational actors, this article examines how the secular fiction – that is, the separation between religion and politics – plays out in policy and in Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA's) relationship with FBOs. The article argues that CIDA and Canadian FBOs stand to gain by re-engaging with each other, and it identifies a number of obstacles preventing such a policy of engagement.

Résumé Plusieurs ont constaté que le sécularisme, qui domine la science politique et les études du développement, néglige la contribution historique de la religion aux pratiques du développement ainsi bien que le rôle joué par les organisations confessionnelles dans le développement. En dépit de ces arguments, il est toujours difficile pour les donateurs séculaires et les organisations confessionnelles de travailler ensemble. S'inspirant des entretiens avec les acteurs clés de ces organisations, cet article examine la façon dont la fiction séculaire, c'est-à-dire la séparation entre la religion et la politique, se manifeste dans le contexte de la politique canadienne sur le développement international et la relation entre ACDI (Agence canadienne du développement international) et les organisations confessionnelles. Ce travail affirme qu'ACDI et les organisations confessionnelles canadiennes se bénéficieront en travaillent ensemble et identifie quelques obstacles empêchant le développement et la mise-en-œuvre d'une telle politique d'engagement.

Keywords:

• Canadian International Development Agency
• religion
• secularism
• faith-based organisations

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs. In particular, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, Anita Singh and the participants of the ‘Faith in Security’ workshop held at the Munk School in June 2011 for challenging me with helpful comments and criticisms. All errors remain my own.

Notes

WFDD is based in Washington DC at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Peace, Religion, and World Affairs. See http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/wfdd.

Various initiatives on faith and development are not without their own controversies. I point them out merely to demonstrate that other donor agencies and organisations have actively engaged with FBOs.

For further information about these debates, see Bramadat and Seljak (2005) and Van Die (2001).

Julia Trotter, the current co-chair of the Canadian Christian Relief and Development Association (CCRDA), also observes that, in its early decades, the “corridors of CIDA were full of ex-missionaries” (interview, 26 January 2011).

Wayne de Jong, the current director of Disaster Response and Rehabilitation at the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), recalls: “CIDA officers were going out and doing institutional evaluations and finding all kinds of suspicious activities like development work attached to church planting and evangelism to the same communities, because many of the organisations didn't have a clear distinction between their programs. Canadian Baptist Ministries, for example, didn't have a separate relief and development department. It was all under one department called ‘The Sharing Way’ which was both world mission and international development. So some NGOs got their hands slapped because there was not a clear division in their activities between development and the promotion of church growth. In some cases, there was not a clear separation of the funding, so they couldn't prove that CIDA funding was not spent on these kinds of things” (interview with author, 10 February 2011).

In interview, Cooke does not recall the exact year of the incident, and declined to identify the specific organisation involved. Linda Tripp, who worked for World Vision at the time, tells another version of the story. The details are different but the tenor of the problem is similar: “We had this problem. Some Christian organisations, and to this day I don't know who it was, used CIDA funding, bought bibles and had this big bible distribution. How stupid is that! You know, clearly … Of course, people went ballistic, can't trust Christians, we have to look at our policies and procedures for dealing with Christian organisations” (interview with the author, 24 January 2011).

The paper does not identify Jim Cornelius as the author, but interviews with Norman Cooke and Jim Cornelius confirm that he did write the final version.

In interviews, I have been unable to determine the exact date of this reorganisation, but it seems to have occurred at some point in the late 1990s.

To my knowledge, this report is the only CIDA document that officially mentions the 1995 Dialogue.

Census Canada only collects information about religion every 10 years, so the last available information on this topic is from the 2001 census.

Over the same time period, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism increased at rates of 83.8 per cent, 89.3 per cent and 88.85 per cent respectively. To compare, those identifying as Roman Catholic increased by 4.8 per cent and as Baptist by 10 per cent, with many other Christian denominations declining. Interestingly, Islam has the second-lowest median age, 28.1 years, after the Hutterites, with the lowest median age 22.2 years. Immigration after 1991 largely accounts for these increasing numbers (Statistics Canada 2001).

For this reason, much of the discussion that follows focuses on Muslim organisations.

See also ‘Toronto answers call for Pakistani flood aid,’ (Toronto Star 2010a); ‘Millions in local aid head to Pakistan flood victims,’ (Toronto Star 2010b).

These numbers are the result of my own analysis of the public records of federal transfers from CIDA to Canadian NGOs in the period 2007–2010. The figure does not include bilateral or multilateral funding transfers, because I am mainly interested in how CIDA approaches its mandate to support the NGO-led initiatives in the Partnerships with Canadians program (whereas in bilateral and multilateral funding, CIDA maintains more control over how funds are disbursed). Although a slightly larger number of Muslim organisations receive bilateral or multilateral funding than in the Partnerships with Canadians program, the number of Christian organisations receiving funding still far exceeds the number of other FBOs receiving these transfers. Full archival records of transfer payments are available on the website of Public Works and Government Services Canada, under the heading Public Accounts of Canada: see http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/recgen/txt/72-eng.html.

Despite numerous attempts to contact representatives at the major Muslim relief and development organisations in Canada, no one agreed to speak with me about CIDA funding.

It goes beyond the scope of this paper to discuss how faith influences the practices of different organisations. See, for instance, Clarke (2006) and Thaut (2009).

See also Clarke's (2006) typology of faith-based organisations.

I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

I draw on Richard Falk's (2001) language for this formulation.