Should God play a role in development?

Abstract

Faith-based organisations (FBOs) have made important contributions to the furthering of development, particularly in health care and education. They have also stood up to dictatorial regimes, as with the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Protestant organisations, especially its Evangelical variants, have played a more ambivalent role, also because these were at times 'promoted' by military regimes subject to RC criticism. They also reveal why FBOs, for whom religion is the only relevant aspect of identity, can have a negative effect on development, especially if they promote rigid and inflexible beliefs, limiting individual freedom. Taking religion seriously is important in development studies, but there are good reasons to resist the 'faith-based bandwagon', not least because this increasingly obscures the borderline between analysis and endorsement. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.