Faith matters: faith-based organisations, civil society and international development

Journal of International Development

J. Int. Dev. 18, 835–848 (2006)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.1317

FAITH MATTERS: FAITH-BASEDORGANISATIONS, CIVIL SOCIETY AND

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

GERARD CLARKE*

Centre for Development Studies, School of Environment and Society,

University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom

Abstract: Growing interest in faith-based organisations (FBOs) and development risks

compounding conceptual and programmatic biases in recent donor discourse on civil society

and development. This article develops this argument in two main respects. First, it argues,

donors have traditionally focused on supporting organisations associated with the mainstream

Christian Churches and current patterns of engagement risk compounding this trend. Second,

different types of faith-based organisation play an active role in the lives of the poor and in the

political contests that affect them. Improving the conceptual and programmatic rationale for

donor engagement with FBOs depends in significant part on developing an appreciation of

these organisational types and the resultant challenges. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley

& Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: religion; faith; development; civil society; faith-based organisations; donors

1 INTRODUCTION

As with other social science disciplines, development studies has traditionally neglected

the role of religion. In 1980, for instance, a special issue of World Development explored

the relationship between religion and development and proposed a significant research

agenda which went largely unnoticed in the development studies community.1 Since the

new millennium, however, research has examined growing engagement between donors

and faith communities,2 and the role of such communities in providing services to the poor

*Correspondence to: G. Clarke, Centre for Development Studies, School of Environment and Society, Universityof Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, Wales, United Kingdom.E-mail: [email protected]. 8, Issues 7–9, July–August. On the proposed research agenda, see Wilber and Jameson (1980) in particular.2Belshaw et al. (2001), Marshall and Marsh (2003) (eds), Palmer and Findlay (2003) and Marshall and Keough(2004) (eds).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

836 G. Clarke

and in helping to organise them.3 Recent research also examines the relevance of faith in

development, and the work of faith-based organisations (FBOs).4

New concern with organised religion and development offers a fresh challenge to recent

orthodoxy on the ‘civil society and development’ interface. This orthodoxy rests on two

main pillars, one conceptual (or ideological), and the other programmatic. Conceptually,

the leit motif of ‘civil society and development’ echoes the liberal view of civil society as an

arena of voluntary association, peaceful interest articulation and opposition to excessive

state power.5 In addition, donors acknowledge many forms of civil society organisation, yet

their programming focuses on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which subscribe to

key elements of donor ideology and strategy. Howell and Pearce (2001) provide a valuable

critique of this conceptual and programmatic quagmire. Conceptually, they argue, donors

risk ‘reifying civil society as a natural and historically inevitable component of a developed

capitalist economy’, while programmatically, ‘donor attempts to operationalise the

concept in the form of civil society strengthening programs threaten to reduce (it) to a

technical tool and so depoliticise it in a way that paradoxically could lead to a constriction

of intellectual and political space’ (Ibid, p. 2).

The new concern with religion and development risks repeating these conceptual and

programmatic problems, first by focusing disproportionately on organisations seen as

mainstream, liberal or moderate (and therefore more compatible with donor discourse and

policy) and second by focusing on faith-based charitable or development organisations at

the expense of a broader set of organisations. In response, this article develops two main

points. First, it argues, donors have traditionally focused on supporting organisations

associated with the mainstream Christian Churches and current patterns of engagement

risk compounding this trend. The importance of FBOs, however, has increased in many

faith contexts, including evangelical Christian, Islamic and Hindu. These developments

present a compelling case for donors to broaden their analytical gaze and programmatic

focus to include organisations from other faith traditions. Second, many types of FBO are

important in the lives of the poor and in the political contests that affect them. Improving

the conceptual and programmatic rationale for donor engagement with FBOs depends in

part on developing an appreciation of these organisational types. To this end, Section 2

traces the increasing prominence of FBOs in national and global politics and their

consequent significance in development discourse while Section 3 presents a typology of

FBOs, examines the activities of each, and identifies operational challenges for donors.

Section 4, the conclusion, sums up key arguments.

2 THE GROWING SALIENCE OF FAITH-BASED ORGANISATIONS

Western donors have traditionally supported the activities of FBOs from the mainstream

Christian churches. In the UK, for instance, the Overseas Development Administration

(ODA) funded organisations such as Christian Aid, the Catholic Fund for Overseas

Development (CAFOD) and the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR).

Organisations associated with other faith traditions, in contrast, received little support.

3See, for instance, Narayan et al. (2000) (eds) and Narayan (2001).4The Journal of Religion in Africa, 32(1), 2002, for instances, focuses on Christian and Islamic NGOs.Development, 46(4), 2003, focuses on religion and development. Berger (2003) provides an initial analysis offaith-based NGOs and development.5Captured most effectively in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835 and 1840).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 835–848 (2006)

DOI: 10.1002/jid

Faith Matters 837

Despite growing donor interest in the ‘faith and development’ interface, however,

engagement remains disproportionately focussed on the mainstream Christian Churches.

In 2005, for instance, the UK Department for International Development (the successor to

the ODA) maintained Programme Partnership Agreements with Christian Aid, CAFOD

and with Progressio (the successor to CIIR), but not with organisations from other faiths.

Similarly, engagement with faith groups and leaders initiated by the World Bank has failed

to draw Muslim leaders and organisations in particular into the dialogue and remains

disproportionately focused on the mainstream Christian Churches.6 This record of

engagement appears problematic when set against the factors propelling FBOs to

prominence in development discourse.

The growing importance of FBOs in development discourse can be traced to a specific year

and event—January 1980, when Ronald Reagan assumed office as US President. A born-

again (evangelical) Christian, Reagan mobilised the Christian right in support of his domestic

and foreign policy, especially his opposition to communism. Over the next two and a half

decades, the Christian right grew significantly in response to White House patronage,

transforming US politics in the new millennium. By 2003, an estimated 43 per cent of the US

electorate was evangelical,7 a significant shift away from the mainstream Christian

denominations towards a more fervent, and ideologically right-wing, form of faith. In the US,

the Christian right has been influential in the passage of new legislation that guidesUS foreign

policy. This influence is exercised in part by charismatic leaders, abetted by significant media

access, but organisations that represent the thousands of evangelical and Pentecostal

congregations form a vital bulwark. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), for

instance, had 30million members in 2005 (up from 2.6 million in 1980s)8 and has become an

important participant in debates around US policy on international development. In May

2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair met the NAE President during a visit to Washington

to lobby for support for UK proposals at the Gleneagles G7 summit, a recognition of the

perceived importance of NAE support to the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign.

The Reagan administration, in alliance with other right-of-centre governments in

Western Europe, promoted radical new economic policies at home and abroad in the 1980s,

including structural adjustment programmes in developing countries that linked

development aid to reduced government spending, privatisation and market liberalisation.

In ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries alike, FBOs expanded or proliferated as a result

of economic neo-liberalism as the faithful responded to growing poverty, inequality and

social exclusion. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, the World Bank estimates that

50 per cent of education and health services were provided by faith groups and FBOs at the

beginning of the millennium (Wolfensohn, 2004), a consequence, in part, of structural

adjustment and the pivotal role of FBOs in nascent civil societies. In the US, an ideological

revolution further transformed the role of FBOs at the cusp of the new millennium.

‘Charitable Choice’ provisions in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the 2001 Faith-Based

and Community Initiatives Act ended discrimination against FBOs in the award of

government contracts and funding, provoking concerns about the blurring of church-state

boundaries and potential discrimination in favour of FBOs (cf. Bartkowski and Regis,

2003; Dedayan, 2004, p. 1–9).

6See note 2 for accounts of World Bank dialogue with faith communities.7Peter Waldman, ‘Evangelicals give U.S. Foreign Policy an Activist Tinge’, The Wall Street Journal, 26 May2004.8‘History of the NAE’, www.nae.net. Accessed June 2005.


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838 G. Clarke

Opposition from the Arab world complemented the neo-liberal assault on communism,

the two converging in support for the Afghan Mujahidin. US aid to the Mujahidin

increased dramatically after the election of Ronald Reagan, from $30 million in 1980 to

$250 million in 1985 (Burke, 2004, p. 60). In the Arab world, however, the Mujahidin

struggle was seen as a pan-Islamic struggle and Arab, especially Saudi, aid increased

dramatically—to support the Mujahidin, to counteract growing Western influence over

the Afghan conflict and to counter militant Iranian Shiaism which appealed to disaffected

Saudi youth. Official Saudi aid to the Mujahidin matched, if not exceeded, US aid but was

boosted further by private donations (Ibid). ‘Official’ and ‘private’ funding was

channelled through Islamic organisations in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, many

of which opened offices in Pakistan, paving the way for further activism in other parts of

the Islamic world.

Aid to the Mujahidin echoed increasing aid from Arab countries to others with a

substantial Muslim population. Arab donors are not members of the Development

Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (the main ‘club’ of official donors) and aid flows from the Arab world go

largely unnoticed in the international aid community. Arab countries, however, provided

an average of 1.5 per cent of GNP per annum as net official development assistance

between 1974 and 1994, significantly more than most DAC members (Neumayer, 2003,

p. 135). Arab aid is largely provided on a government-to-government basis but significant

flows are hidden from public view and channelled through private agencies, including

Islamic FBOs at home and in recipient countries. The combination of the Afghan war and

increased Arab aid flows, allied to the adoption of neo-liberal economic policies at home,

led to a dramatic growth in the number of FBOs in the Arab world, mostly focusing on

domestic issues but with many supporting pan-Islamic causes. Such organisations have

become important players in the context of international development (see further below)

yet remain poorly understood.

Beyond the Afghan conflict, more global forces were at work. The decline of

communism and the end of the cold war, for instance, fuelled the rise of identity politics,

centred on novel blends of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Political activists

previously enthralled by socialism or communism became increasingly attracted to the

oppositional possibilities of faith-based discourse. In many parts of the world, political

parties and allied social movements diluted their class character and developed a more

multidimensional identity, incorporating a stronger faith dimension. In India, for instance,

the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian Peoples Party) increased its support throughout the

1980s at the expense of the Congress Party by strengthening its allegiance to Hindu

nationalism, winning 85 parliamentary seats by 1989. The BJP and associated

organisations were instrumental in generating the Hindu nationalist sentiment that

triggered the destruction in 1992 of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya and subsequent

riots in which an estimated 1500 people died in Gujarat. Today, as the Indian case

highlights, faith fuels multiple identities, incorporating ethnic and cultural dimensions

among others, bolstering the pivotal role of identity politics in both national and

international politics.

The rise of identity politics bolstered another development, the emergence or

revitalization of ‘public religion’. According to writers such as Jose Casanova, organised

religion has traditionally focused on the private sphere, on the moral or spiritual regulation

of individual conduct. In the late 20th century, however, religious discourse developed a

new concern with the conduct of public life and religious leaders and organisations became


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Faith Matters 839

more willing to tread the public stage and to highlight the moral and spiritual import of

public policy (cf. Herbert, 2003; Casanova, 2004). In the context of international

development, this revitalization of public religion is evident in the growth of faith-based

activism, for instance in the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief. Founded in 1996,

Jubilee 2000 originated in earlier plans to link demands for debt relief to the old Jewish

(and later, Christian) concept of jubilee, a year of celebration in which creditors forgive

debtors, slaves are set free and forfeited land is returned to its original owners. Although

supported by secular leaders and organisations, the campaign was notable in mobilising

local church congregations in North America, Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa

through faith-based activities and achieved enormous success. In the late 1990s, for

instance, Jubilee 2000 had affiliates in more than 60 countries and by 1999 had collected

17 million signatures,9 illustrating the latent synergies between faith and development

discourse.

The revitalisation of public religion is also apparent in the transition to democracy in

Asia, Africa and Latin America. Democratic transitions in the 1980s and 1990s were driven

by the spread of neo-liberal economics, the fall of communism and the end of the ColdWar.

These factors enabled opposition movements to make headway, often with prominent

support from faith leaders and associated organisations. In South-East Asia, for instance,

Christian leaders helped topple the Marcos regime in 1986, Thai Buddhist leaders

contributed to the collapse of military rule in 1992 and Indonesian Muslim leaders helped

bring down the Suharto regime in 1998.10 Today, faith leaders and organisations are

important participants in struggles to consolidate and expand democratic forms of

governance.

Finally, FBOs have become more prominent in development contexts because of

immigration. In recent decades, Western nations have become more multicultural and

multifaith as a result of immigration and migrants have developed multiple identities,

embracing new nationalities yet retaining faith identities and familial links to the country

of origin. In the early 1990s, for instance, an estimated 30 million migrants lived in North

America and Western Europe (Collinson, 1993, p. 5), and by the late 1990s, migration had

replaced natural increase as the main source of population growth in the European Union

(OECD, 1998, p. 23). Developing country migrants remain largely within the developing

world but migration to North America andWestern Europe has fuelled the growth of FBOs

representing the non-Christian faiths and Islamic, Hindu and Jewish organisations link

migrants to the homeland and the pan-national faith community. In the UK, for instance,

Islamic organisations such as Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid institutionalise Islamic

traditions of supporting the poor. Hindu organisations such as Hindu Aid channel support

from British Hindus on a non-sectarian basis but others such as Sewa International and

Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh reputedly support sectarian Hindu nationalism (cf. AWAAZ,

2004). These FBOs help the faithful to maintain their cultural identity, to help the poor

overseas and to provide alternatives to the secular or Christian organisations which

dominate aid flows to the developing world.

9With other networks, Jubilee 2000 mobilised 50 000 demonstrators at the 1999 G7 meeting in Cologne. SeeCollins et al. (2001). On the faith-based character of Jubilee 2000, see Wallis (2005, p. 272–278) or Marshall andKeough (2004, p. 35–48) (eds).10The Catholic prelate Cardinal Sin, the Buddhist ascetic Chamlong Srimuang and the Muslim cleric andpolitician Abdurrahman Wahid were significant actors in the democratic transitions in the Philippines, Thailandand Indonesia respectively.


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840 G. Clarke

3 THE COMPLEX WORLD OF FAITH-BASED ORGANISATIONS

The list of factors above is by no means exclusive but it demonstrates that FBOs beyond the

mainstream Christian churches are now significant actors in the context of international

development, challenging donor policy which continues to focus on mainstream

Christianity. The section that follows challenges a second feature of donor policy.

Donors have traditionally supported the work of charitable and development organisations

but FBOs come in a variety of guises, each of which warrants attention in development

discourse and policy. Even in the case of charitable and development organisations, the

section argues, recent developments warrant a reconsideration of donor policy. Here, we

focus on FBOs involved in: (1) public policy debates concerned with international

development; (2) social and political processes that impact positively or negatively on the

poor in developing countries; and (3) direct efforts to support, represent or engage with the

poor in the developing world. From this perspective, five many types of FBO are evident:

Faith-based representative organisations or apex bodies which rule on doctrinal

matters, govern the faithful and represent them through engagement with the state

and other actors;

Faith-based charitable or development organisations which mobilise the faithful in

support of the poor and other social groups, and which fund or manage programmes

which tackle poverty and social exclusion;

Faith-based socio-political organisations which interpret and deploy faith as a

political construct, organising and mobilising social groups on the basis of faith

identities but in pursuit of broader political objectives or, alternatively, promote faith

as a socio-cultural construct, as a means of uniting disparate social groups on the

basis of faith-based cultural identities;

Faith-based missionary organisations which spread key faith messages beyond the

faithful, by actively promoting the faith and seeking converts to it, or by supporting

and engaging with other faith communities on the basis of key faith principles;

And finally, faith-based illegal or terrorist organisations which engage in illegal

practices on the basis of faith beliefs or engage in armed struggle or violent acts

justified on the grounds of faith.

This typology captures a variety of organisational forms and a range of challenges in

development policy contexts. Faith-based representative organisations or apex bodies, for

instance, vary across the main faiths; the mainstream Christian churches (Catholic,

Protestant and Orthodox/Coptic), are hierarchically organised, so representative bodies

have an official status and are usually unchallenged by rival organisations, allowing them to

speak with authority to the membership and to represent them in engagement with other

stakeholders. Similarly, in national settings, Buddhism is usually characterised by a central

and legitimate authority, the sangha (the monastic community of monks, nuns and

novices). Other key religions, however, are less hierarchically organised. Islam, for

instance, is based on significant devolution of religious and political authority and no single

organisation represents the Muslim faith globally (although the Saudi-sponsored World

Muslim League enjoys support among many Sunni Muslims). Similarly, Hinduism

represents a diverse tradition with no single founder, creed or moral system and therefore

lacks a coherent political or administrative structure in national and international settings.

Representative organisations or apex bodies often include associated organisations

which promote development or charitable work but otherwise they remained aloof from


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Faith Matters 841

international development debates until comparatively recently. In recent years, they have

become more involved in international dialogue concerned with poverty reduction, debt

relief and HIV/AIDS. Leaders of international organisations such as the World Council

of Churches (WCC) or national organisations such as the United States Conference of

Catholic Bishops (USCCB) were active in the Jubilee 2000 campaign and in the more

recent ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign. These processes are critical to the global fight

against poverty. The teachings of key religions are sometimes at odds with key themes in

international development policy, yet the involvement of representative organisations in

dialogue with governments and the international donor community is critical to the

creation of the multistakeholder partnerships needed to tackle global poverty. The

absence of representative organisations with a broad-based legitimacy among adherents

in non-Christian traditions therefore militates against the global mobilisation of the

faithful in support of international development. It also prevents donors from identifying

obvious representative interlocutors but the need to mobilise the world’s faith

communities in the battle against global poverty makes it critical that donors’ work

with faith communities to identify representative interlocutors and involve them in

multilateral fora.

The second category, faith-based charitable or development organisations, play a more

direct role in tackling poverty by funding or managing programmes that help the poor and

by raising awareness of poverty among the faithful. In the industrialised ‘North’, FBOs

play an important role in providing social services to the poor. In the US, for instance, an

estimated 18 per cent of the 37 000 US non-profit organisations (NPOs) involved in social

service provision in 1999 had a faith-based ethos (Wuthnow, 2004, p. 141). These FBOs

had estimated annual budgets of $17 billion in 1999, equivalent to the annual Gross

National Income (GNI) of medium-sized economies such as Syria, Sri Lanka or Costa

Rica.11

Faith-based social engagement at home is mirrored in support for the poor in developing

countries. Members of Cooperation Internationale pour le Developpement et la Solidarite

(CIDSE, International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity), the largest alliance of

Catholic development agencies, had a combined budget of $950 million in 2000, members

of APRODEV, the main association of Protestant development agencies, $470 million, and

World Vision International, the single largest Christian development agency, had turnover

of $600 million in 1999 (Clark, 2003, p. 134–136). Including Caritas International, the

second main international coalition of Catholic development agencies, the big four faith-

based development agencies had a combined annual income of approximately $2.5 billion

at the beginning of the new millennium, or almost two-thirds of the annual budget of the

UK Department for International Development (£2.7 billion or $4 billion in 2000/2001).12

The ‘big four’, in particular, are therefore important players in the global development

policy community although multilateral and bilateral donors alike have yet to properly

reflect this reality in their engagement with them.13

11The 37 000 NPOs had assets of approximately $142 billion and annual budgets of $93 billion in 1999 (Wuthnow,2004, p. 140 and 325n5). This estimate assumes that FBOs have proportionately similar resources to all NPOs(Ibid, p. 142). In 2002, Syria, Sri Lanka and Costa Rica had GNI of US $ 19 billion, 16 billion and 16 billionrespectively (http://www.worldbank.org/data/dataquery.html) (accessed September 2005).12DFID figures: DFID (2001).13There is, for instance, no specific institutional mechanism for donors such as the World Bank to engage with thebig four nor to expand its membership to include organisations from other faith traditions. Donors largely see faith-based development NGOs and networks as indistinguishable from their secular peers.


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842 G. Clarke

Faith-based development and charitable organisations have become equally prevalent

and significant in developing countries. Across the Arab world, for instance, Islamic

charitable organisations proliferated during the 1990s as a result of political reform and

economic liberalisation (in most cases), or state fragility or collapse (in a minority of cases

such as Palestine or Somalia). In Egypt, an estimated 20 per cent of the 12 832 registered

voluntary organisations in 1997 were Islamic in character (cf. Clark, 2004, p. 12).

According to World Bank research, Islamic NGOs in Egypt are less dependent on state aid

than secular NGOs and better able to raise funds locally (Ibid. p. 60–61). In Somalia,

Islamic NGOs play an important role in providing social services in the absence of an

effective state. Almost all schools, for instance, are privately run and Islamic NGOs play a

vital role in channelling Arab funding to them (NOVIB, Oxfam Netherlands & WAMY,

2004).

The third category, faith-based socio-political organisations, is the most diverse, and

includes political parties, broad-based social movements, professional associations and

secret societies. They differ from representative organisations and apex bodies in that they

do not normally rule on doctrinal matters or govern the faithful. Such organisations are

omnipresent in the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds and have been largely ignored in

empirical analyses of civil society, most of which focus on non-profit organisations or

development NGOs. These organisations, however, have become increasingly important

amid the rise of identity politics as a driver of change in national and international contexts.

Throughout the world, for instance, many political parties have a faith-based ethos.

Christian democracy, for example, originated in the late 19th century when Pope Leo XIII’s

papal encyclical, Rerum Novarum (reacting to the rise of militant trades unions and

socialist parties), acknowledged the suffering of workers and the role of Christian

compassion in combating it. Today, Christian democratic parties are active throughout

Europe, Australia, Chile and Namibia. Islam has been equally adapted to political purposes

and faith-based political parties are common throughout the Islamic world, including the

Muttahaida Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six political parties in Pakistan which

secured 11.3 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2002.14 In Indonesia, the

world’s largest predominantly Muslim country, Islamic parties won 16 per cent of the vote

in the 1999 general elections, popular support which they retained in subsequent elections

and opinion polls.15

Islamic political parties have been central to the rise of political Islam as a force in

national and international politics but broad-based social movements have arguably played

a greater role (for instance, theMuslim Brotherhood, founded by Hassan El Banna in Egypt

in 1928 and which has branches today in over 70 countries).16 Political Islam seeks to

restore Islam as the organising principle of political power and social order and the political

basis of both the nation-state and the pan-national ummah, or community of Muslims. As

such, it challenges ruling secular regimes perceived to have marginalized Islam from

political life. Moderate political Islam promotes the gradual Islamisation of the nation-state

and concedes that the Islamist project must make tactical concessions. It promotes Islam as

the answer to the social, economic and political ills that afflict Muslim societies, effectively

that it is the solution (or at least that it frames the solutions), to development dilemmas

14On the MMA’s electoral performance, see Europa World Yearbook 2004, Vol. 2, p. 3263.15‘Terrorism Undermines Political Islam in Indonesia’, YaleGlobal online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu),26 November 2003.16For summary details of the Brotherhood, see Kepel (2002). For country-specific studies, seeWiktorowicz (2001)(on Jordan) or Mishal and Sela (2000, on Palestine).


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Faith Matters 843

across the Islamic world. According to Janine Clark, it is best understood as a reaction

against state encroachment on religious authority, including the takeover of mosque-based

social services (Clark, 2004, p. 12). In some respects, therefore, moderate political Islam

represents the struggle for autonomous civil societies in Muslim countries, where the

secular state exists alongside an active community of Islamic FBOs, some of which accept

the legitimacy of the state but some of which challenge it. This provides significant

potential for engagement with the global development policy community but this potential

has been slow to materialise.

Political parties and social movements are important because of their overt role in

mobilising social groups on the basis of faith and other identities but secret societies with

an explicit faith ethos can have an equivalent influence on the design and implementation

of public policy through covert networking among elite social groups. In the west, for

instance, Freemasonry derives members primarily from middle class nominal Protestants

and exercises a shadowy, often corrupt, influence on public institutions including the

judiciary and police while Opus Dei, the secretive Catholic sect, is accused of supporting

right-wing and fascist regimes in the 1970s. In Sub-Saharan Africa, political networks are

often based on common allegiance to secret societies that blend mainstream Christianity

and traditional African beliefs. Secret societies of European origin sit easily with

indigenous traditions of closed societies, especially in former French colonies influenced

by French Masonic traditions (Ellis and Ter Haar, 2004, p. 78). ‘A key attraction of secret

societies’, they write, ‘is that membership provides opportunities for doing deals

unobserved by the mass of the population and for forming bonds of solidarity that go

beyond the ordinary’, based on a widespread belief in the omnipresence of spiritual power

(Ibid, p. 83). Secret societies, however, represent an element of civil society which liberal

discourse and donor policy have traditionally ignored. Supporting ‘good governance’,

fighting corruption and expanding the scope of civil society in Sub-Saharan Africa,

however, depends in part on exposing the activities of such societies, encouraging them to

evolve into formal and transparent organisations and supporting institutional alternatives,

such as political parties or social movements, based on equally heterogeneous identities.

The fourth category, missionary organisations, have long been active in the context of

international development, but never more so than today. Missionary organisations

associated with the mainstream Christian churches are in many respects the forerunners of

modern-day development NGOs in their commitment to the provision of social services

and in their support of the poor. Such organisations, however, have been eclipsed in recent

decades by the proliferation of missionary organisations from other faith traditions. In the

US, for instance, the rise of the Christian right has led to a significant expansion in overseas

missionary activity by evangelical and Pentecostal congregations. In 2001, an estimated

350 000 Americans travelled abroad with Protestant missionary agencies, and donations to

such agencies totalled $3.75 billion, a 44 per cent increase in 5 years,17 and significantly

greater than the combined annual expenditure of the big four faith-based development

NGO networks (see above). US evangelical and Pentecostal missions in Africa, according

to Hearn (2002, p. 33–34), are critical to the implementation of United States Agency for

International Development (USAID) policy in particular yet effectively function as

‘invisible NGOs’, invisible because they have been ignored in the separate literatures on

development NGOs and on African Christianity.

17Waldman, op. cit. See Moreau et al. (2004, p. 283–285) (eds). for 1996–1999 figures.


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844 G. Clarke

Similarly, the 1990s and early years of the new millennium have seen an increase in

the number and reach of Islamic organisations committed to tabligh wa-da’wa,

preaching the message of Allah (da’wa, or mission, for short) internationally. In Africa,

for instance, Arab organisations, including the World Muslim League (Saudi Arabia)

and the African Muslim Agency (Kuwait) fund local madrasas (Islamic seminaries or

religious schools) which reach large sections of the population, promoting conservative

Islamic currents such as Wahabism and Salafism which, traditionally, had little purchase

in African societies. One significant consequence has been the emergence of a cleavage

between ‘African Islam’, and ‘Islam in Africa’, between traditional local forms of

Islamic practice and fundamentalist currents promoted by organisations from the Arab

world.18

Missionary activity characterised by active proselytising, however, is largely confined

to Christianity and Islam. In India, some Hindu nationalist FBOs promote the

reconversion of adivasi (tribals) who convert from Hinduism to escape the oppressive

social hierarchy of caste but otherwise Hinduism lacks the tradition of seeking new

converts to the faith, as do other major religions such as Buddhism and Sikhism. As

such, evangelical and Pentecostal missionary organisations from North America and

da’wa-focussed organisations from the Arab world present a particular challenge for

donors concerned to promote political stability in some of the poorest and most fragile

nation-states in sub-Saharan Africa.

The fifth and final category, faith-based illegal or terrorist organisations, typically grow

out of two main political phenomena: religious nationalism (or communalism) directed

against other religious communities and conservative religious politics (or fundament-

alism) directed mainly against secularists or enemies within the faith tradition (Keddie,

1998, p. 696). Such groups are common to all major faith traditions, but Islam has been

predominantly implicated in the promotion of faith-based violence and conflict in theWest.

Loose international terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah promote a

radical and puritanical vision of Islam. At heart, they seek the overthrow of the secular state

across the Islamic world and the creation of a pan-national caliphate that unifies the world’s

Muslims under a single political and religious leader, serving as the direct successor to the

Prophet Mohammed. This vision is both utopian and apocalyptic and few Muslims

subscribe to it, yet it feeds off a profound concern across the Islamic world at attacks on the

ummah in multiple settings; Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine etc.

From an international development perspective, this concern is a significant obstacle to

broad-based multistakeholder partnerships needed to promote international development

in a world which is increasingly interlinked and interdependent.

In some settings, however, organisations with a propensity for violence are more socially

embedded and represent an even stronger case for conceptual and programmatic attention

in the donor community. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for instance, Hamas19 has

emerged as a rival of the secular Fatah party as the principle representative of the

Palestinian people. Hamas achieved infamy in Israel and the West for indiscriminate

suicide bombings but is widely seen in Palestine, and by some academics, as a social

movement that supports Palestinians in the absence of a viable state. Until 2005, when

Saudi aid was reduced in support of the peace process, Hamas had annual expenditure of

18See Westerlund and Rosander (1997).19Literally ‘Zeal’ in Arabic, and the acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya or Islamic ResistanceMovement.


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Faith Matters 845

approximately $70 million. An estimated 90 per cent of this was spent on social services,

including schools, clinics, youth groups and day-care centres,20 a significant social safety

net given the weakness of the Palestinian Authority. The unexpected victory of Hamas in

parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in January 2006 highlighted the

challenge for Western donors posed by this dual character. In the short term, western

governments will cut aid to the Palestinian Authority in the knowledge that Arab donors

will make up the short fall but in the medium term, they face the challenge of engaging with

Hamas (or at a minimum, its service provision arm) and both protecting and sustaining

their investment in the construction of an embryonic Palestinian state.

4 CONCLUSION

This last example, of course, illustrates the significant challenges for donors posed by the

convergence of faith and development. Donor policy towards FBOs has traditionally been

driven by constitutional conventions on the separation of church and state, conventions

which dictated an arms-length relationship with most FBOs. Since the early 1980s,

however, fundamental changes in the conduct of international relations have subjected

these conventions to significant strain. In particular, the rise of the US Christian right, of

political Islam and of identity politics and public religion and the concomitant fall of

socialism, communism and secular nationalism have eroded the orthodoxy of secular

development discourse. In recent years, these developments have propelled FBOs to

prominence in development discourse and policy.

FBOs, the analysis here suggests, have a number of characteristics that distinguish them

from their secular peers. They draw on elaborate spiritual and moral values that represent

an important and distinct adjunct to secular development discourse. As a result, they have a

significant ability to mobilise adherents otherwise estranged by secular development

discourse. They are highly networked both nationally and internationally and are highly

embedded in political contests and in processes of governance in both horizontal and

vertical terms. They are less dependent on donor funding and they have well-developed

capacity and expertise in the key areas of development practice. As such, they are

important actors in the development process and warrant commensurate attention in

development policy. In this sense, its worth remembering that ‘development’ is itself a

normative ideal and moral cause, and as such has much in common with the faith

discourses from which it has traditionally remained aloof.

To the extent that Western donors support the work of FBOs, they focus on charitable

and development organisations. As Section 3 argues, however, a range of FBOs act as

drivers of change in the developing world, including representative organisations and apex

bodies, socio-political organisations and missionary organisations. Donors face

significant challenges in engaging with this broader set of FBOs: of blurring church-

state boundaries, of engaging with, or supporting, organisations which engage in

discriminatory or sectarian practices and of privileging some organisations at the expense

of others. They face the additional challenge of broadening their conception of civil

20‘Hamas, Islamic Jihad (Palestinian Islamists)’, Terrorism: Questions & Answers, Council on Foreign Relations(www.cfrterrorism.org/groups/hamas.html) citing Israeli scholar Reuvan Paz. On the social orientation of Hamas,see also Mishal and Sela (2000, p. 20–23).


DOI: 10.1002/jid

846 G. Clarke

society, of embracing its more politically contentious and culturally exotic aspects so that it

becomes more socially inclusive.

Take the case of missionary organisations, or those for which proselytising is a key

objective. Evangelical organisations in the case of Christianity orWahabi or Salafi-inspired

organisations in the case of Islam, are associated with a fervent form of missionary zeal, an

active campaign to win converts to the faith. World Vision International, for instance, seeks

converts to the faith among non-evangelical Christians and people of other faiths; in some

countries, field staff must sign a ‘statement of faith’ and evangelism committees are set up

at project sites (Bornstein, 2002). Such evangelism nevertheless produces positive

development outcomes such as the empowerment of women trained to speak and preach

publicly (ibid). WVI attracts significant USAID funding but aspects of its ethos, including

its overt proselytising and its emphasis on abstinence and faithfulness (at the expense of

condom use) in the fight against HIV/AIDS are problematic for some European donors.

Yet, such donors risk failing to capitalise on the potential of WVI and other evangelical and

Pentecostal organisations in important areas of development policy such as gender

empowerment and democratic accountability.

Donors face the challenge of devising strategies for engagement with a range of FBOs,

including representative organisations and apex bodies, socio-political organisations,

missionary organisations and illegal and terrorist organisations. In the past, donors with

secular world-views failed to connect with, or alienated, large groups of intended

beneficiaries because of their failure to understand the faith tradition and its political and

cultural import or to engage with representative organisations. The challenge posed by the

convergence of faith and development is to engage with faith discourses and associated

organizations, which seem counter-developmental or culturally exotic to secular and

technocratic worldviews, in building the complex multistakeholder partnerships

increasingly central to the fight against global poverty. Put simply, in development

contexts, faith matters!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is partly based on research by the Centre for Development Studies, University

of Wales Swansea, and the Department of Theology and Religion Studies, University of

Wales Lampeter for the Department for International Development (DFID) in 2004–05,

focusing on DFID engagement with FBOs and the role of faith groups in poverty reduction.

I am grateful in particular to Ian Linden, Dawoud El-Alami, Maya Warrier, JimManor and

Mohammed Kroessin and to the JID anonymous referees for helpful advice or comments. I

bear full responsibility, however, for mistakes or omissions here.

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Faith matters: faith-based organisations, civil society and international development