The Myth of Religious NGOs: Development Studies and the Return of Religion

Priests of God: An Enchanted Humanitarianism on the African Migration Route

“…An enchanted humanitarianism was the ‘vernacular theology’, which informed organisational identity and objectives. Vernacular theology, as opposed to systematic theology, aims to go beyond the clerical to show how theology is lived and expressed in everyday life (Watson, , p.822) or, as Fountain () defines it, ‘the everyday circulation of religious ideas’ (p.19). However, as will be outlined in this article, this did not necessarily equal coherence or translate into religious ideas going uncontested within the organisation.…”

Religion and the Politics of Development

“…More recently, however, this situation has been challenged by a "surge of interest" (Hovland 2008) in the field and through the important work of several major research efforts (Marshall 2001;Marshall and Keough 2004;Marshall and Van Saanen 2007;Rakodi 2007;Deneulin and Rakodi 2011). 6 While Jones and Petersen (2011) characterise this emerging literature as "instrumental, narrow and normative," and while it is arguable that religion and secularism have never been absent from development concerns even when they have been off the explicit agenda (Fountain 2013), nevertheless these projects have resulted in important contributions to our understandings of the multiple ways that religious actors engage with development, and vice versa. Yet within these research initiatives there has been little explicit attention to the political leverage that religious actors can exert, nor to the political factors underpinning how and why development actors interact in the ways that they do with different religions and religious leaders/communities.…”

“…9 Acknowledging the historicity of the concept of religion is not the majority view among development scholars and practitioners today. Yet if we are to have meaningful discussions about religion, then issues of definition cannot simply be passed over as irrelevant or distracting; the politics of the discourse of religion, and its mutually constitutive relationship with the secular, must be part of the conversation (Fountain 2013).…”

“…Facilitating a constructive engagement with their encounter and exchange results in both conceptual and methodological implications. An interactionist approach to analysing religion and development is useful in moving beyond conceptual essentialisation to view both "religion" and " development" as dynamic, interrelated, and contingent formations (Feener 2013;Fountain 2013;Salemink et al 2004). In such work, neither "religion" nor "development" should be seen as a fixed, stable category, but rather as "moving targets" tracked across complex and ever-shifting landscapes.…”

Religion and Reconstruction in the Wake of Disaster

“…On the contested definition of "Religious ngos" and the importance of transcending conventional classifications, see Fountain (2013).…”