Impressions & Indications of Religious Engagement in Development

Abstract

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

Keywords:

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

Deliberate, systematic engagement with religious organizations and communities is a relatively new priority for many institutions working to advance economic and social development and respond to urgent humanitarian needs.¹ The contemporary focus reflects a recognition both that religious beliefs, individuals, and institutions play important roles in daily life and national politics in many if not most settings, and that they were often neglected in the past. Geopolitical forces and national politics also play roles in focusing attention on the topic. In efforts to define the nature, extent, and impact of (strategic) religious engagement, questions arise as to what information, what evidence can be identified to support analysis and action? What is the extent and focus of religiously led development activities, and their strengths and weaknesses? What characterizes the nature of engagement among different institutions, including their priorities, specific modalities, and perceptions of risk? This article focuses on the challenges of evidence, setting them in a historical context, while exploring the “state of the art” in terms of knowledge that focuses specifically on religion and development.

Religion and Development: A Long Neglect

Most multilateral and bilateral development and humanitarian agencies, including (as examples) the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Food Program, and the World Bank, in their formative years paid little explicit attention to religious factors. A similar comment applied for the academic fields most closely tied to international development and humanitarian work, where research that linked religious factors to development was often confined to the margins of development debates (if included at all). Topics covering religious beliefs and institutions were rarely taught in graduate programs from which many staff were recruited. The research arms of development institutions like the World Bank rarely investigated topics related to religious experience systematically or tried to link it to development strategies or performance. Especially significant, basic data systems (for example covering health and education) often excluded religious activities or captured them only partially.

There were important exceptions. In significant ways, the underlying paradigms shaping development thinking drew on religious traditions and values in their foundational principles and framing. Different policy makers and analysts highlighted and engaged religious actors and communities in their work, for example on vaccination campaigns. For some countries, for example India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Malaysia, religious factors were obvious driving forces and were seen as such by policy makers at many levels, albeit often through a lens colored by Cold War politics, which cast a shadow over many discussions about development challenges.² As sociology and anthropology (which naturally gravitated towards issues around culture, beliefs, and behavior) figured increasingly prominently in both the literature and practice that development and humanitarian institutions drew upon, perspectives broadened. In the core development fields, where economic approaches tended to dominate, especially in the early decades, however, religious topics were largely invisible. Humanitarian institutions, in contrast, had long been pressed—given the life and death situations where they operated—to address questions about how to deal with, and draw more effectively on, religious beliefs of both humanitarians and those they served (leading to explicit attention to, for example, non-discrimination on the basis of religion as a core principle and explicit attention to ethics and practical tensions around proselytizing). Overall, the topic of religious engagement was simply not on mainstream development agendas. Indeed, one scholar reviewing the development literature in 2000 concluded that the topic was essentially taboo (Beek 2000).

This neglect reflects in large part the early dominance of economic analysis and more technically focused sector disciplines in development strategies and practical work. While broad moral framings of the need for development work and funding often drew on religious principles and language, a field where decisions were shaped by macro economists, port and power engineers, and irrigation specialists rarely delved into theological matters or crossed paths with religious institutions. (Of course, the data for such fields was much easier to collect, almost always quantitative, and it was thus easier to demonstrate “progress.”) The neglect also reflected widely held assumptions that religious matters belonged in a private space, even that religious beliefs would inevitably decline in importance with progress on economic and social development. In the United States, some hesitation to engage actively with religious actors stemmed from understandings of restrictions linked to the Constitution’s Establishment Clause that, it was assumed, required a sharp separation between “church” and “state” as a matter of law as well as a tacit assumption guiding practice.³

Failure to consider religion as integral to development also reflected lack of knowledge, preconceptions about what religion entailed (patriarchy, for example), and unease or suspicion surrounding some religious traditions and entities that many saw as a brake to modernization. A prominent example that shaped perceptions was the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, where opposition on religious grounds to aspects of women’s and reproductive health rights came to be termed an “unholy alliance,” because even the state actors involved often presented their positions in a religious or cultural frame (Buss and Herman 2003).

Another interpretation of the reasons for silence about religious roles is that many who pursued human development and other development objectives left to the side (or abandoned) the religious sphere, assuming that it was dominated by actors who pursued identity and other non-development political objectives. Again, perceptions were often colored by the politics of the Cold War where, in many settings, religion was essentially off the table given communist ideologies of atheism, which tended to spill over to socialism in some settings. Hesitations to engage with religion were also colored by bitter memories of religiously linked violence in the past, starting with but by no means limited to the European Wars of Religion and the Inquisition. In some countries, Japan for example, readings of how religious factors had shaped history in negative ways partly explain why decision makers have tended to shy away from religious topics (e.g. links between Shinto traditions and militarism and the emergence of cults prone to violence).

Again, important exceptions complicate the picture. Thoughtful leaders appreciated well that the development challenge involved far more than economic growth and increases in per capita incomes. Ismail Serageldin, who was a champion for sustainable development in the World Bank and the Library of Alexandria, is an example of a polyglot leader who led creative and open-eyed outreaches to religion.⁴ Complex linkages between social mobilization inspired by Liberation Theology across Latin America and democratization processes were part of evolving development thinking, with a particular focus on ethics. Islamic theologies including finance principles shaped both development ethics and the practical evolution of banking in some societies. And the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, both infused with a complex mix of spiritual and cultural traditions, influenced and inspired many to enter the development field. Over the decades, the Caritas Internationalis family of institutions, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, the Salvation Army, Islamic Relief, the Aga Khan Development Network, Habitat for Humanity International, and many other institutions inspired by religious beliefs, as well as the visions and influence of religious leaders, expanded approaches to development programs and thinking and they engaged in various ways with development institutions (for example, Petersen 2010).

This summary sketch does poor justice to the complex institutional and intellectual histories involved, but it highlights a significant overall pattern where contacts were generally ad hoc and often driven by individual interest and leadership rather than a broad, let alone systematic, reflection on the topic of religious engagement.

Public critiques of development practice were rather subdued in the early decades after World War II, again subordinated to broader debates on economic, political, and social systems during the Cold War years and practices of institutional secrecy. They took on increasing vigor as civil society networks overall gained voice and visibility. These critiques came from a bewildering array of directions, some of them clearly linked to religious institutions, the World Council of Churches, for example. Dennis Goulet, an iconoclastic Catholic, inspired a number of followers and left the indelible image of development actors as “one-eyed giants” who came to poor countries with science but little appreciation for the roots of cultures, meeting communities where science was largely alien (Goulet 1980, 481–489).

The marginal treatment of religious topics applied broadly across the study of international relations in the decades following World War II, at least within the United States, Europe, and Japan, but also in a number of newly independent countries (where some new governments nationalized religious health and education systems wholesale following independence). With shifting geopolitical developments, this began to change, especially from the 1980s. Many hold the 1979 religiously inspired revolution in Iran as an indicative marker and wake-up call for many academic programs and especially in diplomacy about the significant power of religious forces. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and breakup of the Soviet Union, where a Polish Pope played a significant and catalytic role in the events and changed perspectives and discourse, as well as research agendas.

Several writings signaled a marked change which some describe as a conversion. Prominently, Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, whose co-edited book Religion: The Missing Dimension in Statecraft (1994) challenged diplomats to take religion into account, pressed for attention to religious communities and factors.⁹ Samuel Huntington’s Foreign Affairs article (1993) “The Clash of Civilizations?” (still the magazine’s most cited article) suggested that “civilizations” read “cultures” read “religions” with different interests and worldviews would dominate world affairs and would clash. Later, Madeleine Albright in her book, The Mighty and the Almighty (2006), lamented that she received limited professional advice about religious matters while she was Secretary of State although religious forces were vital in world affairs.¹⁰ The marked shift in understandings about religion’s global role is exemplified by sociologist Peter Berger, who began his career by propounding a thesis of progressive secularization but changed his tune explicitly (and publicly), arguing instead that religion was indeed still ferociously alive and well (Berger 2014; Berger 1999). In 2009, John Micklethwait (editor in chief of the Economist magazine) and Adrian Wooldridge published a book with the telling title: God is Back (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2010).

“God Is Back”

The break-up of the former USSR, with the remarkable resurfacing of religion in places where an aggressive atheism has reigned, and with prominent religious figures (including, as referenced above, Pope John Paul II in Poland) playing key roles in the transition, awakened new interest in religious influences.

Alongside came intensive reflections about the future balances of power beyond the Cold War, where inklings of active religious roles were becoming apparent. Among many theories and analyses, Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” sparked intense debates, underscoring the degree to which “religion” in international affairs was focused on Islam. To this day, references to diverse interpretation of a clash of civilizations crop up repeatedly in analysis and debates.⁵

Through the 1980s and 1990s, nevertheless, reviews of academic literature and anecdotal accounts of discussions within development institutions have found sparse references to religion as an important factor. It should not have been surprising that when, in 1999, the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, proposed a dialogue with senior religious leaders, there was almost unanimous opposition from the World Bank’s 184 member country governments, ostensibly at least on the grounds that engaging with religious leaders was not a priority for development work and institutions. Subsequent dialogue with representatives of these governments highlighted in particular an unease with the perceived political roles of religious institutions and their opposition to social change. Again, there were exceptions, as the powerful advocacy of religious groups for poor and vulnerable communities and their roles in service delivery were recognized and respected both at leadership and staff levels within the World Bank (Marshall 2020a).

And then the attacks of September 11, 2001, in many respects “changed everything,” catapulting religious topics to the top of many agendas, though generally in negative terms, as a risk. The events also colored understandings of what was happening within Muslim communities, often with a negative cast, leading, for example, to the establishment within the United Nations first of tripartite discussions (member states, UN Agencies, religious bodies), then of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, and more recently an Interfaith Harmony Week. Interreligious approaches took on allure as a mechanism to counter the extremist tendencies that were seen as the source of both 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks, notably, in Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Morocco, and other countries.

Changes in Development Thinking and Practice

The broad shifts towards an appreciation that religious beliefs and institutions mattered still in world politics came alongside, but in parallel to, important changes in the way development was conceived and in the policies and processes through which it was applied, especially at the country level. These may have reflected at least in part the roles played by religious factors and movements (Liberation Theology and Engaged Buddhism, for example), but few within the development world interpreted the shifts taking place as linked to religious forces. Pressures from newly energized civil society actors provided an important impetus to change, prying open what had been highly secretive processes, as was the experience and leadership that drove the broadening of development agendas as well as understandings of the importance of, for example, governance and accountability. Education, health, nutrition, gender relations, and social protection (health insurance and pension schemes, for example) were increasingly important areas of activity. Instead of set conditions and one-way conversations, where experts pronounced and country leaders accepted, development institutions came first to emphasize the need for consultation with beneficiaries. This expanded to an appreciation for participation, and, today, to an embrace of the goal of empowerment and a strong focus on the role of communities and local initiatives. The principles behind self-reliance are very much related to these evolutions in thought and process.

Awareness that development involved complex processes of behavior change drove rethinking that also involved an opening to new perspectives and concerns. A focus on equity and inequality is a notable example, a constant theme that goes back at least to the early 1970s. The increasingly strong focus on gender roles is both an illustration and a central theme. Institutions that were profoundly gender blind, with few women involved outside secretarial positions, began to change. A major turning point came with evidence from research that measured and highlighted tangible and measurable benefits that came from educating girls.⁶ Habits of confidentiality and “discretion” gave way to opening up of many development institutions to outside scrutiny, often pressed by civil society institutions that focused both on human rights principles and on negative impacts of development projects such as dam construction and forced population resettlement.

Changing country relationships in many settings (e.g. India, notably, Argentina, and others where robust contestation of “Western” development thinking played a role) led to an opening up of dialogue about core strategies for development work and lending. In the World Bank, for example, country strategy discussions and documents moved, responding to pressure from advocates, from top secret documents to more open, “participatory” exercises where governments and some within civil society were consulted. This brought civil society participants into discussions and changed the very nature of engagement; religious communities often but not always came into these conversations as part of civil society.

The economic turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s that especially affected Latin America and Africa also shifted discussion and practice, with the effect of highlighting policy frameworks and conditionality and thus changing the nature of large segments of development finance. Economists took even stronger roles in shaping both the language and the focus of decisions about priorities. Policy measures associated with the crisis response in turn became a lightning rod for many in civil society, including religious actors, who mobilized around their critique of both the content of the policy agendas (privatization and reductions in tariffs, for example) and the style of negotiations, which smacked of colonial-like imposition and secrecy. Dubbed “neo-liberalism,” the approaches and practices of many development institutions came under fire. This was exacerbated during the Thatcher/Reagan years, but the tensions went beyond a specific ideology to the full development agenda.

During this period, large NGOs with clear faith affiliations, like World Vision, Caritas, and Islamic Relief, continued to grow, providing much-needed services. They thus expected to have a voice in development institutions as well as contracts to expand their existing programs.

Perhaps even more important, both operational NGOs and broader faith communities became increasingly forceful advocates on where and how to intervene or not (for example, on the Balkans and Somalia) and on policy issues like cost recovery and broad measures aimed at wider inclusion and participation. These bifurcated interests and roles (on the ground and advocacy) continue to this day, though the faith dimension is not always at the fore: there is a critique of global FBOs that they have been cast by the international development system as essentially civil society organizations without a visible faith character. In some areas and on some topics, there was extensive engagement, forced or voluntary, superficial or deeper, on broad models of development but also specific topics. Such topics included user charges for services like water supply, credit policies, textbook coverage, schooling for girls, and approaches to HIV/AIDS. Macroeconomic programs came into sharper focus (devaluation, tariffs, and privatization), as economic crises multiplied, especially from the 1980s. These discussions went beyond the operational NGOs and transnational religious leaders became increasingly involved. The Jubilee debt campaign around the turn of the millennium (2000) involved the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, and other Protestant churches and it reached many local religious communities. The campaign helped put religious actors “on the map” for core development issues,⁷ as did the 2005 mobilization against poverty around G7/8 meetings (“Make Poverty History”) and rising critiques of, for example, environmental damage, where diverse religious actors were often involved. Especially for the latter efforts, religious actors generally worked in coalitions with non-religious civil society actors.

A moment of realization and reckoning came with the World Bank’s ambitious and widely read Voices of the Poor study. It was undertaken in conjunction with the World Development Report (WDR) for 2000/2001 which centered on “Attacking Poverty” (a theme taken up each decade). The three-book series resulting from a survey of some 60,000 people in 14 countries highlighted (among many important conclusions) the priority poor people gave to their religious lives and their trust in religious leaders relative to others.⁸ It prompted questions about the significance of the perspectives of poor people for strategies and approaches among development workers. Discussions around the study and the WDR—on which the nascent World Faiths Development Dialogue, that resulted from Jim Wolfensohn and George Carey’s dialogue initiative, was invited to comment (Tyndale 2000)—began to point to gaps in knowledge about religious actors and about how their perspectives aligned with core objectives (human rights, and now the SDG framework). The United Nations Millennium activities saw religious bodies in visible roles, notably in the large Millennium Summit in August 2000. In practice, however, religious actors had little meaningful input into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that emerged to shape, in principle, global action on development for the period 2000–2015.

Evolving Development Religious Institutional Engagement

The evolving engagement between multilateral and bilateral development institutions and broad approaches to religious actors in the past two decades presents a complex mosaic, with successive initiatives, periods of drought and discontinuity, presenting, overall, a picture of increasing mutual interest punctuated by some frustrations (for example around issues of “instrumentalization”). A number of networking efforts have emerged, including prominently the International Partnership for Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD) (formed in 2016), which USAID supports, the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLI), the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), and the Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers (initiated in 2013).

Some specific initiatives are highlighted below but, briefly, they include the UK government’s support for research programs, notably with the University of Birmingham (2005–2010) and currently CREID at the University of Sussex Institute for Development Studies (focused on religious inequalities), rising interest in links between violations of religious freedom and development (Petersen and Marshall 2019), and specific explorations of religion and development within several UN agencies (UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, UNAOC, notably). Both the UN Interagency Task Force on Religion and Development and the Faith Advisory Council have sought to encourage outreach and support coordination, including organization of strategic learning exchanges.

Several national governments—the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden (Odén and Samuelsson 2019), Germany—have supported significant initiatives to explore and encourage religion/development engagement. The European Commission has also supported some work, notably linked to FoRB (freedom of religion or belief) and to responses to the COVID-19 crises. The Interamerican Development Bank over several years had a program involving religious organizations and the International Monetary Fund supported discussions around Hans Kung’s Global Ethic.⁹ The World Bank’s “faith initiative” has taken various forms over the two decades since Wolfensohn’s initiative (with intensive inputs during the 2001–2005 period including high level international meetings in Canterbury, Dublin, and Accra); the current emphasis is largely focused on research aimed at bolstering action. Several foundations have taken leading roles in supporting research, dialogue, and action, notable among them the Henry R. Luce Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, the GHR Foundation, and the Porticus Foundation. The COVID-19 crisis has prompted several new initiatives focused on religious responses.¹⁰

Several parallel efforts focused on broader international relations also engaged religious dimensions. A demanding effort was the World Economic Forum’s initiatives to engage religious actors in the annual Davos gathering of world leaders as well as in regional meetings. This involved what is a continuing effort to invite prominent religious leaders. Following the events of 9/11, a “Council of 100” on Islam and the West aimed to address the attentions around Islam that preoccupied so many leaders at the time. It included political, business, religious, civil society, and academic leaders from a wide range of countries. The C-100 addressed issues that included values in education, resulting in two reports on the “state of dialogue” (DeGioia and Schwab 2008). The C-100 has since taken different forms, with similar aims to bring together communities that include religious leaders. Another major global effort focused on rethinking and reforming humanitarian systems was the 2016 Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. Substantial efforts, notably involving JLI, went into examining religious roles, with a side event linked to the summit, though the outcomes and lessons were only partially captured in the Summit’s outcomes (Seiple 2016).

Religious Freedom and Development

A theme that has gained increasing prominence in recent years is religious freedom, both as an integral part of human rights and as a distinctive issue with active advocates. Initially, especially in the United States, religious freedom was a widely supported non-partisan issue, focused on the plight and rights of minorities in different regions. However, again especially in the United States, religious freedom has taken on a sharply polarizing character, tied in large measure to the perceptions first, that it is unduly focused on Christian communities, and second because links made between reproductive rights and gender roles and religious freedom point to tensions around broad human rights. Two trends have accentuated the focus on religious freedom: considerable evidence of worsening restrictions and discrimination against religious minorities, and debates around the parameters and priorities for pluralism in societies that are becoming increasingly diverse, notably with influxes of refugee populations.

Religious freedom issues per se figured very little on development and humanitarian agendas until very recently. They surfaced indirectly, however, in treatment of minorities and regional disparities, as well as in the context of increasing focus on social cohesion and interest in the role of cultures. Pragmatic issues for action including project design arose around ethnicity, for example. This, however, is changing as various governments, prominent among them the United States, focus on religious freedom as part of development and humanitarian agendas.¹¹

In the Academy

Religion and its interactions with the challenges reflected in development work (for example, which communities change or adopt innovative practices more readily than others) are the topic of long-standing analysis and debate among historians. The study of religion itself is ancient—many other disciplines, notably philosophy, political science, theology, history, anthropology, and sociology also have had much to say about religion, religious beliefs, and the power of religion to shape events. The history of religion is an active discipline and in many influential analyses of the progress or lack thereof of development, for example by David Landes, William H. McNeill, Jared Diamond, and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, roles played by religious actors and ideas are reflected, though rarely as centerpieces (see Landes 1999; Bayly et al. 2011). The question here is where and how far these disciplines and bodies of research intersect with development (for example helping to explain how some systems succeed) and on specific topics like the history of religious education or health, or of religious charity.

The development of academic research programs focused specifically on religion and development has evolved on tracks that paralleled changes taking place in development practice. The broader changes taking place within and among the various academic disciplines engaged on development and humanitarian topics are obviously important also. Extensive searches of literature in a variety of disciplines have turned up few articles explicitly focused on religious aspects of development before 1990, but literature reviews point first to a growing trickle after that and then to what some today describe as an explosion of studies and publications (Beek 2000; Heist and Cnaan 2016; Swart and Nell 2016; Bompani 2019).

The shift in academic research has reflected growing interest and new frames of reference in several disciplines: development studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, public health, international relations, and others. Economics, both economic history and analysis, has witnessed sharp increases in publications linked to religious topics (see for example Barro and McCleary 2003; Woodberry 2012). In contrast, religious studies disciplines have produced less research explicitly linked to development approaches and work.

The growing influence of cross-disciplinary topics like gender relations and environmental protection has focused attention on religious roles within related disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach is especially true in the fields of conflict analysis and peacebuilding, an area where there is explosive growth in research outputs. An observation overall on this history of research and debate is that much has been concentrated in wealthier countries rather than in countries that are the focus for development work. An exception was the deliberate effort within the UK development agency (DfID) religions and development program (consortium led by the University of Birmingham) to work with research institutes in Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and India.

Evidence Challenges Specific to Religious Engagement

The topic of evidence has surfaced often in discussions about religious roles in development, more so than, for example on more technical topics (where, perhaps, it is simply taken for granted). The ethos and programs of development institutions have focused increasingly on disciplined reliance on research and evidence and on robust and measurable results expected for programs. A focus on demonstrable results came to dominate much discussion around development priorities and financial decisions, accentuating the questions raised about how to measure and judge the approaches and programs of different institutions. Those advocating more attention to religious dimensions have also been expected to produce evidence about benefits and risks as well as expected results. The concern to identify evidence took on increasing importance as more religious actors came with “sharp elbows” demanding a voice and place at policy tables and in design and implementation of development programs (see for example Olivier 2016).

A focus on building better evidence to support programs holds across the board in the development and humanitarian fields. However, there are some distinctive challenges around the topic of religious engagement. These reflect in part the size and diversity of religious engagements on development topics but also what are at times differences both in language and concepts used as well as understandings of standards and appropriate accountability. Specific critiques, couched in more or less explicit terms, have suggested that work by religious institutions is less development oriented, but aimed at such religious purposes as conversion or relative power, that work (say in health care) was of lesser quality, or (as with madrasa education or child marriage) that some religious approaches and programs even undermined basic development goals.

A summary assessment is that there is a plethora of research and operational evidence about religious involvement in development, coming from a wide range of different disciplines. It has increased sharply in the past two decades. The evidence is lop-sided, with far more focused on Christian experiences, a fair amount on parts of the Muslim world, and less on, or from within, other traditions. There is more evidence on Africa than other regions. More work has focused on religious NGOs than on local communities and less formal institutions. No compelling conclusions emerge as to unique features of development work linked to religious actors, as is to be expected given their wide diversity and different types of engagement. Many hypotheses as to the distinctive advantage of capacity to reach to remote and especially vulnerable communities are affirmed at least to a degree, albeit with nuances reflecting variations by place and community.

Four themes emerge in discussions about religious engagement on development:

1. Getting a grip on size and scope. Efforts to provide aggregate and more detailed quantitative estimates of faith roles in development work are problematic. The goals are, in the first instance, to evaluate and demonstrate their size and scope, and second to help in mapping activities on the ground. Data on the overall level of financial flows both from and to religious institutions and communities are especially incomplete. While some estimates, for example by Vatican groups on health and education, are surprisingly precise, overall, the estimates of faith work as a share and in aggregate terms are rough and often contradictory. This reflects, for example, different definitions (what is a “religious health asset”?), the fact that the underlying data is patchy and incomplete, and failure to appreciate wide differences among and even within countries in the practical roles that faith institutions play, for example, in service delivery or social protection. The result of the muddiness of estimates and lack of solid consensus is that some estimates, suggesting for example large shares of religious contributions to health and education, circulate widely though they are based on flimsy foundations. The diversity of situations is often obscured.

2. Bias versus objectivity. Questions about support for specific religious communities or “religion” in general can reflect implicit concerns about bias towards one or another community. The challenge is accentuated by the fact that much that is published has been produced by religious bodies and especially Christian organizations, and it presents largely positive, rather uncritical stories of their work, in some cases with an important eye to fund-raising.

3. Proving the worth of faith work. Some researchers and institutions have felt a need to demonstrate, through anecdotes and some studies, that faith approaches and designs produce better or equal results to those of non-religious actors. Parallel efforts look for a measurable and distinctive, even unique ‘added value’ that is intrinsic to religious approaches. Such arguments endeavor to counter critiques of a lack of robust analysis on which to base judgments about faith work and roles. Different language used to describe programs and impact and different habits for accounting and recording results can be an impediment, tending to jar with the “results focus” taking hold in development institutions. But efforts to look to generic conclusions about faith “performance” and “results” can send one down rabbit holes of fruitless analysis.

4. Identifying distinctive features as an “argument” for faith engagement. Efforts to pinpoint a “faith DNA” (as some desire) seems an elusive grail to pursue given the wide diversity of approaches and organizations involved in different facets of development. However, there are important areas where comparative advantage is emerging from research and operational experience. These include what is broadly termed “spiritual capital”¹² with links to the important issues around trauma healing. My response to lingering questions about whether specific and generic features can be identified as belonging to faith community approaches overall is a robust no: there is enormous overlap among different approaches, whether or not they are tied to a religious body, that preclude such simplistic distinctions.¹³ However, the work and approaches of many faith communities indeed have distinctive features that are useful to identify (for example the networks they draw on). Clearly many faith communities do remarkable work in many areas and labeling it as “faith-linked” as its central feature is often more distracting than informative.

Hard evidence about religious roles and their lasting impact is thin and widely varied. Quantitative evidence is especially difficult to come by. The picture, however, is changing, as development agencies support growth in research coverage and demand high quality and rigor, and as a larger group of academics—sometimes commissioned by development agencies, but increasingly also independently—engage in research on religion and development. There is considerable robust evidence about the work of several of the largest faith-linked organizations, for example, as well as micro studies on communities. New research and analysis provide both macro and micro insights into specific faith linked programs, including impact analyses, evaluations of programs, and efforts to fill in “missing links.” Among topics of particular interest for future research are those where religious factors may enrich the agenda and the overall work done, for example, trauma healing that takes place post disasters and conflicts and interreligious or civic programs within education systems. The rare clear and quantitative assessments attract particular attention: one relatively small study, by World Bank economists Ritva Reinekke and Jakob Svensson that compared public and non-profit (mostly religiously run) hospitals in Uganda, using data sources and demonstrating the efficiency both in terms of service and cost of the faith-run hospitals, is cited often, more than 15 years later, mainly because its clarity is so rare (Reinikka and Svensson 2004). This highlights the appetite for robust evidence and straightforward findings similar to those that shifted the landscape on girls’ education, but such findings seem unlikely in what must be recognized as a vastly complex and diverse field.

Significant gaps in knowledge can be identified, by region, tradition, and topic. A priority concern is data, both inclusion of religious work within data sets and specific information, for example on financial flows and impact on communities. Religious dimensions are often not well integrated within the disciplines in question (economics or sociology, for example). Two sets of data often offer tantalizing but fairly light brush indicators of religious roles: the household surveys (DHS) that are increasingly robust, granular, and widely used, and the World Values Surveys which address various dimensions of both culture and religion.¹⁴ Limited or peripheral attention to the topic of religious engagement can mean that researchers and what they produce tends to be rather marginalized. And in some settings the “taint” of political interest that can surround religious topics can shape or distort selection (and funding) of research topics and attention paid to findings.

But overall, today there is far more recognition than in the past, in both academic disciplines and in development and humanitarian institutions, that religious matters are important and development institutions should do far better in taking them purposefully into account. That calls both for clearer understandings of expectations for religious literacy among development institutions and “policy literacy” in the religious institutions that seek to engage on development policies and strategies.

The Scope and Scale of Research

Identifying and assessing the contemporary body of relevant research and evidence, both macro and micro, is a demanding challenge, as it involves very different work produced by scholars from many disciplines, and with significant regional differences (for example much writing by European authors is colored by critiques of “neoliberalism” and the impact of colonial legacies, while in Latin America the social and political roles of Catholics and Evangelicals is often a focus). Differing approaches reflect the disciplines scholars come from; the scholarly networks that judge quality influence what is read and how seriously it is taken. Important questions focus on where and why religious perspectives are, by habit, choice, or inadvertently, simply omitted from the data collection and analysis that underpins country strategies and policy and program design (the absence of evidence presented can hint at “the dog that did not bark”). What about religious roles on priority development and humanitarian agendas is well researched and documented, and what is not? How strong is the evidence and where are weaknesses? What essential questions are still to be answered? Efforts to respond to such questions demand a willingness to offer humble judgments on its quality but still more its relevance for operational work.

The body of research evidence has been influenced by several programs that have focused on religion and development. These include:

1. British government (DfID) support for the Religions and Development Programme, led by the University of Birmingham (2005–2010). Working as a consortium with partners in Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and India, the program produced literature reviews by discipline, topic, and country with a total of 67 working papers. Scholars associated with the program (notably Carole Rakodi, Emma Tomalin, Séverine Deneulin, and Heather Marquette) have drawn on the initiative with wide ranging publications in subsequent years.¹⁵

2. Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs has supported a research program on religion and development for 15 years, publishing a wide range of reviews by sector and country, policy briefs, interviews with practitioners and scholars, and case studies designed as teaching tools.¹⁶

3. The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) undertakes considerable research on religion and conflict, including country mapping work. A study of the role of women, religion, and peacebuilding opened windows on the tensions between religious and secular women’s networks in some settings and on the “invisibility” of much peacebuilding work by religiously inspired women (Hayward and Marshall 2015).

4. The Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLI), launched in 2012, aims deliberately to respond to concerns about weaknesses in evidence about religion and development. Grounded in a participatory approach (joint learning) the effort has grown over the years and focuses on several “hubs” which represent focal points for research (for example refugee work, anti-trafficking, ending violence against children) and provide scoping studies that gives overviews of each topic as related to religions.¹⁷

5. The Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, now part of Erasmus University, Rotterdam,¹⁸ devoted considerable effort to documenting religious roles in poorer countries, with publications, especially by Gerrie Ter Haar (see for example Haar 2009), and international conferences.

6. Several governments have supported research programs that have left legacies of publications and dialogue. Prominent among them are the Government of Germany currently investing substantial resources notably in the International Partnership for Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD), Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the Netherlands.

7. The World Council of Churches and the Vatican Dicastery for Human Development have substantial publication programs based on research and dialogue.

8. ARHAP/IRHAP: International Religious health Assets Programme (University of Cape Town). The program has focused on religious roles in health, with much focus on Africa.

9. The World Bank has undertaken some research on topics like health, education, and female genital cutting (FGC) and is undertaking a review of its broader development research programs to assess the roles for religious topics.

10. The Interamerican Development Bank had a robust research program for several years that was discontinued.

11. A number of peace studies programs produce important research, e.g. Eastern Mennonite University and University of Bradford.

12. The World Evangelical Alliance created a new department in December 2019 focused on development.¹⁹

Various other programs focus broadly on development topics or on more specific areas with a religious lens (an example is the Millennium Water Alliance).²⁰

Mining Literature Reviews on Religion and Development

Several scholars have published broad literature reviews on the topic of religion and development over the past two decades as well as on more specific sub-topics (health, for example). These highlight first, the rapid growth in research and published academic evidence, and second, they reflect efforts to assess trends, areas of focus, and gaps in knowledge. Several of these reviews are listed (in chronological order, with brief comments) in an annex.

Several journals have devoted special issues to topics linked to religion and development, including Development in Practice, the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Lancet, among others. The Review of Faith & International Affairs is a prominent and rare example of a journal focused on specific operational topics around religion; it has published several articles and special issues on development.

Several books serve both as reviews of the state of the field and analyses of different topics. Notable are collections and overviews (including in the form of handbooks) in works by Emma Tomalin,²¹ Jeffrey Haynes, and Gerrie ter Haar. Katherine Marshall’s (2013) Global Institutions of Religion: Ancient Movers, Modern Shakers, is the only strictly religiously focused work in the Routledge series on contemporary global institutions. New handbooks in the topic area include Seiple and Hoover (2021). Chapters on religious topics are included in volumes on broader development topics. This includes for example encyclopedia entries (Sabina Alkire), and chapters in handbooks and works about development (frankly these tend to be rather skimpy). Various Oxford handbooks on pertinent topics include thoughtful chapters on topics linked to religion and development.²² Several books that stand as influential landmarks are cited earlier in this article, to which might be added Michael Barnett, Sacred Aid (2012), and Hugo Slim’s Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (2015). Jill Olivier (University of Cape Town) is a prodigious scholar whose knowledge of African health systems is wide and deep. She has worked closely with another active scholar/practitioner, Quentin Wodon at the World Bank, and with Sally Smith, formerly with UNAIDS. A younger scholar focused squarely on these issues is Olivia Wilkinson, at the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities.

Several leaders span academia and practice. They include Azza Karam, Secretary General of Religions for Peace (see Karam 2018). Note her memorable statement:

A decade ago, it was difficult to get Western policy makers in governments to be interested in the role of religious organizations in human development. The secular mind-set was such that religion was perceived, at best, as a private affair. At worst, religion was deemed the cause of harmful social practices, an obstacle to the ‘sacred’ nature of universal human rights, and/or the root cause of terrorism. In short, religion belonged in the ‘basket of deplorables.’ (Karam 2017)

Several prominent writers and documents are noteworthy for their limited attention to religious topics. To cite just one example, Paul Collier (a brilliant analyst especially of fragile state challenges) rarely addresses the topic. Likewise, several World Bank World Development Reports (which are produced annually) are surprisingly sparse in their treatment of the roles of religious factors. Research on fragile states and religious dimensions of both conflict and peacebuilding is significant but with many gaps.

Some topics are far more intensively researched than others. Among these are violent extremism, religion and health, and religion and gender. There is significant work, notably led by the Yale Forum on Ecology, on religion and environment. Several quite far ranging international conferences have focused on religious links to development. Examples include the World Bank 2016 “Evidence Summit” and the University of Birmingham’s conference that was a culmination of the DfID supported research program in 2011.

Given the important role of the economics profession in shaping development thinking, it is interesting to track the evolution of the relationship between economics and religion. An influential article by Laurance Iannaccone (1998) commented that “With two centuries separating its first and second publications, there is no denying that the economics of religion got off to a slow start.” He was referring to Adam Smith’s influential role, but notes that over 200 papers had recently emerged, focusing on, for example, “determinants of religious belief and behavior, the nature of religious institutions, and the social and economic impact of religion” (Iannaccone 1998).

Two main areas of focus in contemporary research on economic links to religion are on economic factors causing religious adoption, religiosity, and religious change, and how religion affects economic development, including economic differences between regions and religious communities. Overall, there has been an estimated six-fold increase in the number of economics papers alone published in this area in the last decade, though the field is still nascent compared to other fields of economics research (Becker, Rubin, and Woessmann 2020a, 2020b).

Four trends are changing the field: (a) new theoretical models that include spatial models of religious markets and evolutionary models of religious traits; (b) empirical work addressing econometric identification to examine causal influences on religious behavior; (c) economic history of religion research that considers religion as an independent, rather than a dependent, variable; and (d) studies of religion outside the Western world (where the great majority of current work is concentrated). The vast majority of research and evidence focuses on Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, and much is on the United States and Europe. Significant work has focused specifically on Muslim societies and economies²³; an important source is John B. Alterman and Karin von Hippel’s (2007) Understanding Islamic Charities (CSIS). The hypotheses advanced by Max Weber (2013 [1904]) about religious practices and approaches linked to specific religious traditions continue to spark study and reflection, for example in assessing the factors driving the rise of charismatic religious traditions in many world regions.

In looking towards areas for future research, several priorities stand out, including religious influences on demography, urbanization patterns, health, gender norms, and family economics. Governance approaches could benefit from studies in religion and history. With religious institutions providing social safety nets in many situations, explorations into what this means for economic activity and how it crowded out (or in) public and other private investments are the subject of speculation but little solid empirical analysis. The roles of religious institutions and communities in supporting countless communities during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 emergencies offer a remarkable wealth of examples. A complex challenge is to dig deeper into the link between religiosity, rather than religious affiliation, in behaviors, though measuring religiosity and beliefs is exceptionally difficult. Although there is substantial work on religious roles in peacebuilding and in related topics linked to extremism and tendencies towards violence,²⁴ the specific research on fragile and conflict states is generally weak, in no small part because of instabilities and difficulties of access.

Towards Conclusions

The stocktaking of the “state of the art” looking to religious dimensions of development has turned on four central questions. We have explored first, what does religion have to do with development work, including how it changes it (and, less directly, what does development work have to do with religion?). That question turns on facts, essentially a global mapping of a vast array of transnational, national, and local interventions that are in differing fashions initiated or inspired by religious beliefs and practice. This mapping is fragmented but there is, when one looks, large amounts of information. A second set of questions turn on appreciating how the work identified (which cuts across every sector) and the engagements and partnerships involved matter: how large are the roles, how significant, is it smooth or are there tensions? Do religious institutions, for example, dominate education or health actions or are they fairly marginal and self-standing? Third come questions about quality: are there patterns in what is known about impact, especially measured in the classic terms of development professionals. Here, the written, researched evidence becomes more scattered and frankly difficult to assess as an aggregate body. And the fourth set of questions touch on the policy implications: what actions are suggested by the understandings of religious dimensions? The effort to address those questions, which take us deep into worlds of politics and of values, explain the focus in this paper on history and also on differing perceptions about fundamental questions of the role of states, individual freedoms, and the ends of development.

The journey that USAID has embarked on in this exploration is in many respects a beginning, one that offers countless insights into the work we seek to achieve in our shared goals of inclusion and respect for diversity, our determination to address the suffering that comes with poverty and injustice, and our conviction that, COVID and politics notwithstanding, exciting possibilities for a truly better world lie ahead.

Disclaimer Statement

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development, the co-conveners, or the United States Government.

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.

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17 See https://jliflc.com/.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appendix: Literature Reviews on Religion and Development

Appleby, R. Scott. 2015. “The New Name for Peace? Religion and Development as Partners in Strategic Peacebuilding.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, edited by R. Scott Appleby, Atalia Omer, and David Little. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A rich array of overview analyses and specific situation case studies. The volume provides a broad, interdisciplinary account of the scholarship on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. It explores the legacies of colonialism, missionary activism, secularism, orientalism, and liberalism. It is organized thematically, beginning with a mapping of scholarship on religion, violence, and peace.

Basedau, Matthias and Simone Gobien, Sebastian Prediger. 2018. “The Multidimensional Effects of Religion on Socioeconomic Development: A Review of The Empirical Literature.” Journal of Economic Surveys 32 (4): 1106–1133. Religion plays a fundamental role in most people's lives with profound implications for socioeconomic development. The survey overviews causal mechanisms between religion and development discussed and tested in the economics literature, and reviews quantitative empirical evidence on the actual effects of religion on economic and social dimensions of development. Concepts of religion are disaggregated into four religious dimensions with a proposed conceptual framework. Only a few uncontested findings exist. Religion is ambivalent vis à vis development: religious ideas can foster certain forms of human capital acquisition and labor market participation, but scholars have found a negative relationship between religious dimensions and both income and gender equality as well as innovation activities. Religious identity is also a source of labor market discrimination and has ambivalent effects on economic growth and social cohesion. Methodological challenges refer to the availability of fine grained data, especially for developing countries, the use of concepts and definitions, and the lack of causal inference.

Becker, Sascha O., Jared Rubin, and Ludger Woessman. 2021. “Religion in Economic History: A Survey.” In The Handbook of Historical Economics, edited by A. Bisin and G. Federico, 585–639. London: Academic Press, 2021. This chapter discusses causes and consequences of three major monotheistic religions on the economic history of the world up to the World War II. The chapter, albeit ambitiously, chronicles comparative and cross-thematic historical, political, and ethical developments of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with economic activities and human capital.

Beek, K. A. V. 2000. “Spirituality: A Development Taboo.” Development in Practice 10 (1): 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520052484. Searching the three leading development studies journals—Journal of Development Studies, World Development, and the Journal of Developing Areas—for the years 1982–1998, he found almost no hits. Journal of Development Studies had 46 hits for “gender,” 38 for “population,” 19 for “environment,” one for “religion,” and none for “spirituality.” In all three journals between 1982 and 1998 not one article had religion as a major theme.

Bompani, Barbara. 2019. “Religion and development: Tracing the trajectories of an evolving sub-discipline.” Progress in Development Studies 19 (3): 171–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464993419829598. Argues that religion is now incorporated into development studies, with rich empirical material, broader disciplinary engagement, and deeper analytical insight. Surveys almost 700 publications, with more critical engagement (between 2011 and 2018). Five emerging research themes and opportunities are identified.

Carbonnier, Giles. 2013. “Religion and Development: Reconsidering Secularism as the Norm.” International Development Policy: Revue internationale de politique de développement 4 (1): 1–5. Introduces a still relevant debate on the topic that appears in the issue he introduces, between Philip Fountain and Katherine Marshall, centered on issues of perceived instrumentalization of religion.

Deneulin, Sêverine and Carole Rakodi. 2011. “Revisiting Religion: Development Studies Thirty Years On.” W orld Development 39 (1): 45–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.05.007. A review of the treatment of religion in development studies 30 years after a special issue of World Development on “Religion and Development” was published. With changes in the social and political context, the subject of religion can no longer be avoided. This has two implications for development studies: the need to revisit assumptions of secularization and secularism that supposedly define the relationships between religion, society, and politics; and development studies must recognize that religion is dynamic and heterogeneous. Development studies and religion are concerned with the meaning of “progress” or a “better life,” implying that attention has to be given to social and historical processes of meaning creation, requiring a shift from positivist to interpretivist research methods.

Feener, Michael and Philip Fountain. 2018. “Religion in the Age of Development.” Religions 9 (12): 382, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9120382. This review article begins with the statement that religion has been profoundly reconfigured in the age of development, tracing transformations in the understandings and experiences of religion across traditions in communities. The review focuses on ways in which religion’ and ‘development’ interact and mutually inform each other with reference to case studies from Buddhist Thailand and Muslim Indonesia. These non-Christian cases from traditions outside contexts of major western nations provide windows on a complex, global history. A tantalizing comment: “If initially the ubiquitous ‘build back better’ slogan had been imagined by humanitarian workers as referring to their agendas for social and economic reconstruction, it soon became apparent that it could be appropriated and deployed in the service of new religious agendas for development.”

Heist, Dan and Ram A. Cnaan. 2016. “Faith-Based International Development Work: A Review.” Religions 7 (3), https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7030019. Substantial research inspired by the US Faith-Based Initiative has raised awareness of religious congregations and FBOs as welfare service providers. Roles of religious organizations in international social and economic development are seen as a next frontier. The review of available literature on the roles that FBOs play in international social and economic development highlights US FBOs, including positive contributions and drawbacks. Faith-based nonprofits constitute almost 60% of USA-based international development organizations. The review calls for more research and nuanced understanding.

Iyer, Sriya. 2016. “The New Economics of Religion.” Journal of Economic Literature 54 (2): 395–441. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.54.2.395/. Surveying the relatively new field of research, it is backward-looking, tracing the historical and sociological origins of this field, and forward-looking, examining insights and research themes that are offered by economists to investigate religion globally in the modern world. The review focuses on four themes—(1) secularization, pluralism, regulation, and economic growth; (2) religious markets, club goods, differentiated products, and networks; (3) identification including secular competition and charitable giving; and (4) conflict and cooperation in developing societies.

Jones, Ben and Marie Juul Petersen. 2011. “Instrumental, Narrow, Normative? Reviewing recent work on religion and development.” Third World Quarterly| Third World Quarterly 32 (7): 1291–1306. The growing body of research on religion and development, primarily from development scholars and practitioners, represents a new departure for development studies, which was largely uninterested in religion in the past. Various inter-linking factors offer explanations, including the persistence of religion in much of the world, and the sense that existing approaches to development have been ineffective. The review finds the literature instrumental in its approach—interested in understanding how religion can be used to do development ‘better.’ It has a narrow focus on faith-based organizations, in many ways a consequence of the need to understand religion instrumentally. And it is based on normative assumptions in terms of how both religion and development are conceptualized: religion is understood to be apart from ‘mainstream’ development, while development is defined as that thing that development agencies do. Recent interest in religion and development has come largely from donors and development agencies with little evidence of academic research on religion and development prefiguring the interest of the World Bank or bilateral agencies.

Olivier, Jill. “Guest editor conclusion: research agenda-setting for faith and health in development—where to now?” Development in Practice 27 (5): 775–781, DOI:10.1080/09614524.2017.1332164. Preponderance of northern scholars; a general absence of attention on the research agenda in this area, with dispersed This is a dispersed intersectional scholarship—with no clear boundaries, and no associated body that is tasked with shaping the research agenda. Research questions are generally shaped by international faith-based development agencies, and some international funders—both of which appear to have a fairly limited and rigid perspective on what role research can play. There is very little appreciation of the potential of exploratory or embedded research, or of the potentially important role that “critical” reflective research can play in public health and development practice. Few attempts are made to bridge silos that have emerged over the last few decades, resulting at times in overlapping and repetitive scholarship. It is time for engaged and critical scholarship to be highlighted and supported—and for collaborative research agenda-setting to be prioritized.

Olivier, Jill, C. Tsimpo, R. Gemignani, M. Shojo, H. Coulombe, F. Dimmock, M. Cong Nguyen. 2015. “Understanding the Roles of Faith-Based Health-Care Providers in Africa: Review of the Evidence with a Focus on Magnitude, Reach, Cost, and Satisfaction.” The Lancet 386 (10005): 1765–1775. The contribution of faith-based health-care providers is potentially crucial for global development goals, for example for better partnership to be achieved and for health systems to be strengthened to align faith-based health-providers with national systems and priorities. This first report in the Lancet Series on faith-based health care, the article reviews a broad body of published work and introduces some empirical evidence on the role of faith-based health-care providers, with a focus on Christian faith-based health providers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rakodi, Carole. 2011. Inspirational, Inhibiting, Institutionalized: Exploring the Links between Religion and Development. University of Birmingham, Religions and Development Program, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-social-sciences/government-society/research/rad/working-papers/wp-66.pdf. An exploration based on the Religions and Development Project that Rakodi led, at Birmingham University.

Swart, Ignatius and Elsabé Nell. 2016. “Religion and development: The rise of a bibliography.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72 (4), a3862. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i4.3862. Reviews what is termed an extraordinary rise in religion and development as a subject field, presenting a chronological bibliography of published literature especially since the early to mid-2000s. They review explanations for the extraordinary new interest, comment on the ongoing scholarly endeavor to develop the subject field; and explain the use of the bibliography and the selection criterion. It could strengthen and inform ongoing research in the subject field across topical issues and themes, from a religious, social science and theological perspective.

Tomalin, Emma. 2012. “Thinking about faith-based organisations in development: where have we got to and what next?” Development in Practice 22 (5-6): 689–703, DOI 10.1080/09614524.2012.686600. A stocktaking of current thinking about the nature and distinctiveness of FBOs in development. It looks at the efforts to define and categorize FBOs and to work with and finance them as well as how to assess them. The article concludes that broad generalizations over-simplifies reality, particularly in the absence of convincing evidence. Better assessments of characteristics, roles, and activities of all types of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are needed to assist in the choice of development partners and to test claims of distinctiveness and comparative advantage.

Tomalin, Emma. 2020. “Religions and development: a paradigm shift or business as usual?” Religion 51 (1): 105–124, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2020.1792055. A stock-taking review focused on the issue’s concept of religious engineering. Explores why interest in the field has increased sharply.