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

It is not a question of if but when personnel from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other development agencies will encounter religious actors, individuals, and institutions. The question is whether such personnel are equipped to engage these actors strategically, discerning and advancing shared humanitarian assistance and development goals with them, together, and therefore, sustainably.

Few terms within the orbit of strategic religious engagement are readily defined and accepted, and debates about terminology are common, if not endemic. What is meant by strategic religious engagement? Religious literacy? Religious freedom? And how do they relate? Ask five different senior officials—political appointee or civil service—from five different U.S. agencies, no matter the administration, and one will get five different answers.

Since it was developed by the National Security Council in 2013, a formal “U.S. Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement” has encouraged the broad objective of engaging with diverse faith entities.¹ However, the strategy, as with the academy, lacks conceptual clarity and definitional consistency regarding the terms of reference and models used to describe this dimension of U.S. governmental outreach and diplomacy. Meanwhile, words and concepts used to discuss strategic religious engagement continue to evolve.

USAID provided this working definition during its October 5-8, 2020 “Evidence Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement”:²

Strategic Religious Engagement advances USAID’s Journey to Self-Reliance, building local capacity and commitment to improve inclusive development and humanitarian outcomes, by engaging with religious communities and partnership with faith-based organizations to advance shared humanitarian assistance and development objectives.

Perhaps the most important word in this definition is “shared,” which suggests that neither party is the proxy of the other but that both act as full partners. Strategic religious engagement (SRE) should be understood as an inclusive approach seeking to ensure that religious actors are fully included, along with other civil society stakeholders. (SRE does not aim to elevate “religious communities and faith-based organizations” above other actors or issues amidst the overall USG engagement of a country.)

SRE in support of humanitarian assistance and development goals is a form of engagement, according to USAID policy, that should take place within the context of the Mission Director, Mission Orders, and Country Development Cooperation Strategies. As with all partner engagement, it involves a two-way street where each party seeks to better understand the other.

The process itself can serve different ends in development, peace, and humanitarian action, including operational partnerships, shared projects to support behavioral and attitudinal change, and common networking and advocacy. These purposes are all essentially cooperative, but SRE should also aim to discern differences within and among the religious communities and faith-based organizations, resulting in better landscape assessments of the country concerned.

As discussed in the introduction to this special issue, religious and non-religious perspectives, while inherently different, can, when fully engaged, expand and enrich the understanding of needs, and therefore enhance collaborative efforts toward shared goals that address those needs. Put differently, while some of the religious and non-religious experiences are too diverse, the assessments too specific and partial, the situations too different with different data, and the space too confined, a common understanding of how religious and non-religious perspectives work together can be traced. In this light, we believe that the following five statements—rooted in our review of the available evidence, as well as our experience—summarize why strategic religious engagement is important.

1. Religious communities and faith-based organizations make significant and often distinctive contributions to humanitarian assistance and development.

Religious actors are omnipresent, and at least some are actively involved in all sectors and places. Some are vital and indispensable, with healthcare and spiritual and trauma healing perhaps the most noteworthy. Roles in some places and on some topics are less positive, e.g. where faith-based groups stand in the way of action to assure gender equality. A holistic care mindset and methodology can be, however, their greatest—and perhaps most distinct—contribution. This approach generally seeks to address the material and spiritual needs of the whole person, and their whole community, in the context of the place where they live (Woolnough 2014). For those that take this approach, theoretically, such an approach interlinks an FBO’s humanitarian, development, and peace work as sacred work through which they are accountable to their belief system (Awio, Northcott, and Lawrence 2011). This integrated approach often results in a deeper access, delivering services to the most difficult, and sometimes most dangerous, places. Such enduring service usually builds significant trust in religious leaders vis-à-vis other groups (Narayan and Patesch 2002; Somma, Bargsted, and Valenzuela 2017; Howard 2020).

Quantifying the full, actual, and in-kind costs and benefits of such access is impossible. Aggregate statistics about the total levels and shares of religious financial and practical involvement in humanitarian and development work are not available. Better statistics in this area is of paramount interest to all parties, but it is equally true that not all parties will want to share such statistics.

Significant amounts of financial resources are invested in humanitarian and development work are by religiously linked groups (pension funds, for example). At the same time, several initiatives have focused on defining and reaching agreement on faith consistent investment principles, inter alia led by the Alliance of Religions for Conservation (ARC). The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)³ was founded in 1971, with a mandate focused on Apartheid in South Africa, and has since expanded its role to address broad issues of social justice, notably using shareholder power in engaging with corporations. Related efforts include the International Interfaith Investment Group (3iG) and FaithInvest which is building on the Zug principles.⁴

However, quantification of faith-related contributions toward development is extremely difficult. Some numbers that are quite widely cited, for example on share of healthcare provided globally and ownership of land, give rough approximations of significance, but specifics are open to question. Even at the country level, it is difficult to estimate flows, especially where volunteer inputs and in-kind contributions are involved.⁵

To date there are no aggregate estimates of the overall levels of financing of faith-linked development work. Some statistics are listed in national accounts and in estimates from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC), but significant amounts are not included, and the country coverage is not complete. Important questions remain both as to the amounts of resources mobilized and used by religious institutions, local and transnational, and specific amounts of OECD/DAC Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds that go to religiously linked institutions (few institutions designate or measure faith versus non-faith).

Several studies document parts of financial flows involving faith-based organizations (FBOs). A yearlong Boston Globe survey (Stockman 2006), for example, identified 159 faith-based organizations that received more than $1.7 billion in USAID prime contracts, grants, and agreements from fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2005.⁷ Scholar Robert Wuthnow writes that American churches’ spending on overseas ministries increased by 50% in a decade to nearly $4billion annually (Wuthnow 2009, 1; see also King 2018; Grönlund and Pessi 2015). He notes that a majority of US Christian churches are involved in overseas ministries. Meanwhile, mobilization of zakat resources in Muslim communities varies by mechanism and by level but is often significant (Stirk 2015). Several operational FBOs (e.g. Caritas, World Vision, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Samaritan’s Purse, Salvation Army, and others) raise substantial funds and are active partners with many development institutions. Some organizations (Compassion International, for example), as a matter of policy have not accepted public funds. Compassion raises some $250 million a year to support some 500,000 children worldwide (Wuthnow 2009, 5).

Clearly both as partners of humanitarian and development organizations and as contributors to overall financing, religious actors of many kinds play important roles. Moreover, in crossing religious lines pursuant humanitarian projects, multi-faith solidarity is often enhanced. An example of this dynamic occurred when a group with leaders from Ghana’s major religious communities met, under the auspices of the World Bank, to consider the problem of garbage and poor sanitation in the capital city, Accra. A large sporting event was coming and filth impeded drainage and detracted from the city’s allure. There was agreement on a common effort to preach cleanliness based on religious values, on the radio and in places of worship. The actors got to know each other. There was some disappointment when it became clear that large grants were not forthcoming—after all, religious bodies are less likely to include waste engineers and executors—but the initiative had some good results. Most significant, however, were unintended consequences. When tensions around elections arose, the individuals concerned, because they knew each other, got on phones, and worked to deflect conflicts (Marshall and Van Saanen 2007, Chapter 7).

A holistic, locally grounded perspective can enrich strategies and specific programs, supporting better appreciation of complex linkages and encouraging an escape from what can be “sector silos.”⁶ Faith actors are often significant in development via their current and potential relational capital. Relational capital usually involves (long-standing) links to local and broader communities, whether “on the ground,” or through the donors who support them financially.

Hand-in-glove with relational capital is access capital. Relationships bring knowledge and resources as well as prospects that the local capacities enhanced and/or built will be sustained. Meaningful links to powerful political leaders can be significant, though such relationships can also be a double-edged sword. Networks facilitate communication among religious and non-religious centers of influence. Religious leaders, FBOs, and communities are often critical players in decisions at local levels about the design and scope of public sector services and outside partnerships. Many focus on the “end of the road” places, where governments may be unpopular or unknown. In both the Ebola crisis, and now during the COVID emergency, religious actors are often vital in reaching people with critical public health messages. Similar comments apply for programs to end female genital cutting (FGC), child marriage, or other harmful practices. Advocacy roles may involve common efforts towards shared goals (more resources for health, for example), or aim to reshape policies in certain areas. (It would be heartening to see such strong watchdog functions for corruption.) Less positively, the influence of religious leaders and communities may detract from important social changes, for example denying the realities of domestic violence and sexual abuse and encouraging practices like early marriage.

Religious communities and FBOs can also have important social capital. This capital includes various (interwoven) social networks as well as logistical and physical infrastructure. Religious buildings can play a vital role as spaces that serve and protect people in fragile situations, natural and/or man-made. Social networks of FBOs and religious communities offer extensive opportunities for “bonding, bridging, and linking”—locally, nationally, and transnationally across a global faith community, or inter-religiously across a crisis zone. Networks of social influence often run between religious communities and political power at the local, national, and international level, which can help to change political attitudes, policies, and funding flows (Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities 2016). Heartening stories bear witness to displaced people, migrants and refugees taking shelter in religious spaces—e.g. during conflicts in the Central African Republic and in South Sudan (C. Mahony 2014; Wilkinson and Ager 2017).

Spiritual capital may be the most significant and distinctively religious asset. These deep resources include beliefs, prayers, gatherings, rituals, and practices which help to heal, assure, convene, mobilize, and sustain FBOs and religious communities in times of crisis and challenge. This spiritual capital is often overlooked by non-religious institutions, but it has a wide range of quite well-established benefits in humanitarian response and the resilience and recovery of individuals and communities. Intense spiritual needs can be met by FBOs and religious communities, and the importance of spiritual needs is increasingly emphasized with the recent psycho-social awakening in wider humanitarian and development practice. An analysis of FBO support to internally displaced populations notes that: “spiritual life, not often recognized by aid agencies, is a priority for many conflict-affected communities, perhaps especially in situations of displacement,” enabling IDPs to integrate better with each other and with their wider host communities (Kidwai, Moore, and Fitzgibbon 2014). In the COVID-19 emergency the need for spiritual support is widely recognized in very different settings (Marshall, Wilkinson, and Robinson 2020).

Moral capital includes the authority and legitimacy—but above all, the resulting trust—that religious leaders and their communities often hold. Religious actors have widely recognized responsibilities for setting the moral tone of societies and for supporting education to build values. While not all religious entities adhere to the standards they preach (reports of corruption, sexual abuse, pride, and greed are all too common and erode trust), there are many fine examples of prophetic voices and courage, and the mission and mandate of most religious entities center on basic approaches to social ethics, including in the critical area of governance (Marshall 2008).

The distinctive assets and practical agency of FBOs and religious communities represent unusual if not unique features and qualities that underline their important roles as valuable operational partners to US development strategy, across the humanitarian and development spectrum.

2. FBOs and religious communities are often local actors critical to self-reliance. Religious communities usually but not always form part of civil society as defined at the country level; many but by no means all have close relationships with governments.

Despite the paucity of data and peer-reviewed evidence, analysis of the humanitarian and development activities of FBOs and religious communities nevertheless demonstrates how different forms of capital come together in specific contexts, as the relief/development community tends to say, of “culturally grounded structures,” which support practices of “mutual obligation,” “mutual aid” and “social influence.” These structures pre-exist a crisis and continue after it is finished. As such, they are integral to USAID policies of localization, self-reliance, and what is sometimes called the “triple nexus” of humanitarian, development, and peace investments.

For example, certain religious traditions and denominations are better perceived and therefore received in certain places, precisely because their various capitals (relational, access, social, spiritual, moral) are context relevant. Consider a study comparing eight Muslim, Christian, and secular NGOs in Kano State, Nigeria. The study shows that even if these organizations were behaving and performing in a similar way to one another, people and politicians were likely to be more suspicious of the “new” and “recently arrived” secular organizations than of the “traditional” religious organizations. And where there was a clear Muslim majority, it was also clear that Christian FBOs “struggled much more with local perceptions” (Davis et al. 2011; also summarized by Leurs 2012).

Such situations, some anecdotal and some grounded in robust research,⁷ highlight the deeply local nature of some FBOs, and thus their capacity to sustain programs. These deep resources can also be found in the work of individuals (e.g. Kenya’s Dekha Ibrahim Abdi⁸), through institutions (e.g. the Community of Sant’Egidio, Catholic Relief Services), and in interreligious efforts (e.g. Religions for Peace in Burma, United Religions Initiative Cooperation Circles) that address the fear and insecurity that spark conflicts and work, often persistently and creatively, for peace. (Please see next section.) Precisely because they are respected for their faithful presence, and services, local religious communities and FBOs often enjoy excellent relations with their fellow civil society stakeholders, as well as local and national government officials. They know how the local “system” works, and therefore how to get things done.⁹

These distinctive attributes make many FBOs and religious communities natural partners in the move to localization and self-reliance in USAID’s humanitarian and development policy.

Beyond their sustainable local structures, there is also evidence from FBOs and religious communities that their faith mission means they naturally and simultaneously work with humanitarian, development, and peace intentions so that they “already operationalize a triple nexus approach” (Wolf and Wilkinson 2019).

3. Religion can play a key role in the making/reconciling of discrimination, conflict, and suffering.

Religious factors play complex but undeniable roles in many conflicts, historically and today. They are invariably part of complex causation of tensions and conflicts, but, with religious extremism and violence a prominent area of concern for US Government and USAID strategy, this aspect of religious engagement has particular importance. Religious beliefs and actors must be factored in as a significant driver and contributor to the creation/amelioration of suffering and humanitarian need in many contexts.

There has been much concern and research regarding the role religious actors play—and the resources they bring—in hurting and/or healing. Regarding the harm done, rising governmental and social restrictions on religious communities has been well documented by The Pew Research Center and others, and it is also true that religious communities themselves are involved in discriminating, harassing, and persecuting—as a function of their beliefs, or what their religious leaders tell them—those that do not believe as they do. In some cases, this is tied to racism and religious nationalism (Moore 2007) (e.g. Burmese Buddhists vis-à-vis Rohingya Muslims).

Monica Toft has analyzed the “peripheral” and “central” roles of religion in the structuring of civil wars since 1940. Her data analysis notes a continuous rise in the salience of religion in these wars, rising steeply from the 1970s and hitting 41% in the 1980s, 45% in the 1990s, and then making up the majority of civil wars from 2000 onwards. Her data also links a religious dimension in civil wars to increased “deadliness” and “longevity” in these wars. A large majority of these wars have also involved a central role played by the contest between Islamist groups and secularisms of different kinds (Toft, Philpot, & Shah, 2011, 115–140).

Religious doctrine and culture can shape personal discrimination too, notably around gender equality and the treatment of women and girls, and also the treatment of various minority communities, including but not exclusively religious and ethnic minorities. Access to humanitarian relief, education, health, work, marriage choice, personal freedom, economic opportunity and autonomy can be severely restricted by religious politics, religious culture, tradition, or the abuse of power by men within religious communities (Buss and Herman 2003). Such patterns account for three enduring negative perceptions of FBOs and religious communities—i.e. the perception that they are not always adequately representative, are anti-gender equality, or that they stand against LGBTQ rights (Gingerich et al. 2017). Despite differences in religious teachings on difficult moral issues such as those surrounding the use and freedoms of human sexuality and reproduction, many religious leaders and communities are staunchly committed to upholding and defending human rights for all. But others do not or do so half-heartedly. The fact that few religious institutions have democratic approaches themselves, not to speak of unease about transparency, can also contribute to negative perceptions.

Extreme patriarchal attitudes in some societies present particular challenges, for example where women are victims of “honor killings” justified within a religious frame of some kind (Awwad 2001; Hadi 2017; Ijaz 2019). Sexual violence, gender-based violence (GBV), child abuse, and “femicide” may similarly deploy quasi-religious justifications in highly patriarchal societies in humanitarian and development settings of conflict and gang violence (Müller 2018; Travaglino et al. 2014). Leaders and communities may characterize the violations of rights involved in all these violent acts as somehow faith-based, though cultural factors may play larger roles than scripture or doctrine.

Regarding its capacity to help, religion can play a role in peacebuilding (peace is not made but built). Individual religious traditions have specific theologies and practices that build on ancient traditions and contemporary realities of messy often internal conflicts. Examples include Catholic Relief Services, which revamped its core missions following the experience of the Rwanda genocide; the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD), following its founder, Douglas Johnston’s seminal insight that religion is “the missing dimension in statecraft” (Johnston and Sampson 1994); the International Network of Engaged Buddhists; the Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers (Finnish government supported); and, the large global multifaith institutions that have peace as their central focus (notably Religions for Peace, KAICIID).¹⁰

In sum, what Scott Appleby (2000) has described so well as “the ambivalence of the sacred”—i.e. that the same “religion” can result in peacebuilding or violence against innocents, depending on the context and circumstances³²—should be a constant factor in considering how USAID conducts strategic religious engagement (while also noting that non-religious perspectives can equally result in good and bad outcomes). The complex and varied roles that religious actors play in fragility, conflict, and peacebuilding will likely impact the development of shared goals in certain contexts, and their implementation.

4. Religious ideas and actors have played a constitutive role in the making of humanitarian norms and law, especially in developing and maintaining an ethic of engagement (of the other).

Historically, religious communities worldwide have played integral roles in the development and governance of society—and still do. Our current “Westphalian” system—and its traditional non-religious perspective—results directly from Europe’s 17^th century religious wars.¹¹ As Susan Hayward writes in her USAID commissioned paper, “USG Religious Literacy and Religious Engagement Resource Landscape and Assessment” (Hayward 2020): “ … the experience of the long period of Religious Wars in Europe that preceded the Protestant Reformation were the birth pangs of a new political order in which religious and political spheres of authority became differentiated (a historical anomaly) and the former was disempowered relative to the latter.”¹² However, as Gregorio Bettiza concludes in his 2019 book on about the religious engagement of the U.S. government (to include USAID’s): in a “post-secular world” it is “increasingly problematic” to describe the international system as “Westphalian” (i.e. non-religious) because of the unknown and uncharted influence and impact that religion can play in international relations (Bettiza 2019, 226, 233). Of course, this awareness, at least for Americans, has sharply increased since the events of September 11, 2001 (Barnett 2011, 93).¹³

All to say, the world is as it ever was, a constant and evolving mix of religious and non-religious perspectives that also happens to have shaped the modern relief and development system. In fact, most of humanitarian ethics, law, and practice is grounded in earlier religious ethics. International Humanitarian Law (IHL) owes much to its religious foundations in scriptural injunctions and prohibitions, and in the long Just War and pacifist traditions that are found across all religions.

So too does Refugee Law and more recent norms on the protection of internally displaced people (IDPs) and migrants that rely on universal religious ethics of showing welcome, hospitality, loving kindness, and asylum to the stranger (Türk, Riera, and Poirier 2014). The foundations of charitable responsibilities and practices can be found in religious traditions (Cohen 2005), and many underlying ideas that led to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights have religious antecedents from around the world (Glendon 2001). These common ethical roots and priorities can often ally religious and non-religious perspectives and communities in common humanitarian and development doctrine and common purpose.

Scholar Michael Barnett (2011, 109) reminds international theorists, and all of us, that “only by incorporating religion (into their analysis) will we have a better understanding of how the world is constantly made and re-made.”

5. The modern humanitarian and development system has always functioned as a mix of religious and non-religious perspectives. One must seek to understand both perspectives in a particular context.

Humanitarian and development actors of all faiths and none can and do collaborate and coordinate regarding ideas, objectives, and resources.¹⁴ It bears repeating that people who hold clear religious and non-religious convictions work for religious and non-religious organizations and (government) agencies worldwide. This mutual engagement is well illustrated in the presence of Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist FBOs and secular organizations working together in common purpose in the eleven global humanitarian “clusters” organized by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) with wider inter-religious FBO involvement in clusters at national level.¹⁵

In other words, by discussing “strategic religious engagement,” we do not want to encourage or enhance the notion that there is a divide between the religious and the non-religious. Our goal is to emphasize that natural normalcy of their overlapping presence within individuals and institutions—without watering down the also normal distinctiveness of different personal beliefs, and institutional missions. A number of scholars have recently begun exploring the evidence of religious roles in facets of development and humanitarian work. A starting point for many is an effort to address how religious and non-religious approaches are distinctive and where they are linked. Olivia J. Wilkinson (2019), drawing on research work especially in the Philippines, observes that she found less real tension between the secular and religious than “an ongoing intermingling … between Eurocentric, secular humanitarian modes of practice and daily realities” with secular-religious divides conceptualized very differently in different settings.

Conclusion

Obviously, there is much conversation to be had. Numerous questions warrant further exploration, such as: In conflicts and fragile settings, what might be significant roles played by different religious bodies?; What relevant experiences emerge from COVID-19 pandemic on humanitarian relief?; What roles have religious bodies played in civil society consultations where USAID has leading roles?; How might data about religious engagement be improved?; and more.

There are no easy answers, but if we accept different religious and non-religious perspectives as significant factors shaping the way local and national communities approach development challenges, then there is the potential for these differences in belief and resulting approaches to provide a sound foundation for a common approach. Strategic religious engagement, in some ways, is simply naming and accounting for differing perspectives. Humanitarian and development goals can be discussed, developed, and implemented, together as partners.

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.

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.

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.

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.