Download or read book Secular and Religious Dynamics in Humanitarian Response written by Olivia J. Wilkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the ways in which the humanitarian system is secular and understands religious beliefs and practices when responding to disasters. The book teases out the reasons why humanitarians are reluctant to engage with what are seen as "messy" cultural dynamics within the communities they work with, and how this can lead to strained or broken relationships with disaster-affected populations and irrelevant and inappropriate disaster assistance that imposes distant and relatively meaningless values. In order to interrogate secular boundaries within humanitarian response, the book draws particularly on qualitative primary data from the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The case study shows how religious practices and beliefs strongly influenced people's disaster experience, yet humanitarian organisations often failed to recognise or engage with this. Whilst secularity in the humanitarian system does not completely exclude religious participation and expression, it does create biases and boundaries. Many humanitarians view their secularity as essential to their position of impartiality and cultural sensitivity in comparison to what were seen as the biased and unprofessional beliefs and practices of religions and religious actors, even though disaster-affected people felt that it was the secular humanitarians that were less impartial and culturally sensitive. This empirically driven examination of the role of secularity within humanitarianism will be of interest to the growing field of "pracademic" researchers across NGOs, government, consultancy, and think tanks, as well as researchers working directly within academic institutions.

Download or read book Faith Secularism and Humanitarian Engagement Finding the Place of Religion in the Support of Displaced Communities written by Joey Ager and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-26 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strengthening local humanitarian engagement demands not only rethinking dominant understandings of religion, but also revisiting the principles and practices of humanitarianism. This book articulates key aspects of the 'transborder discourse' necessary for humanitarian dialogue in the 21st century.

Download or read book Sacred Aid written by Michael Barnett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been of most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement's religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular brethren. From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on those we associate with "rational" modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.

Download or read book Between Humanitarianism and Evangelism in Faith based Organisations written by May Ngo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion has always played an important, if often contested, role in the public domain. This book focuses on how faith-based organisations (FBOs) interact with the public sphere, showing how faith-based actors are themselves shaped by wider processes and global forces such as globalisation, migration, foreign policy and neoliberal markets. Focusing on a case study of an FBO in Morocco which gives aid to sub-Saharan African irregular migrants, the book reveals some of the challenges the organisation faces as it tries to negotiate at once local, national and international contexts through their particular Christian values. This book contends that the contradictions, tensions and ambiguities that arise are primarily a result of the organisation having to negotiate a normative global secular liberalism which requires a strict demarcation between religion and politics, and religion and the secular. Faith-based actors, particularly within humanitarianism, have to constantly navigate this divide and in examining the question of how religious values translate into humanitarian and development practices, categories such as religion, the secular and politics and the boundaries between them will need to be interrogated. This book explores the diversity and complexity of the work of FBOs and will be of great interest to students and researchers working at the intersections of humanitarianism and development studies, politics and religion.

Download or read book Faith Secularism and Humanitarian Engagement written by Alastair Ager and published by Palgrave Pivot. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strengthening local humanitarian engagement demands not only rethinking dominant understandings of religion, but also revisiting the principles and practices of humanitarianism. This book articulates key aspects of the 'transborder discourse' necessary for humanitarian dialogue in the 21st century.

Download or read book Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars 1914 1945 written by Patrick J. Houlihan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of modern war has focused on destruction; however, practices of saving lives and rebuilding societies have received far less scrutiny. The world wars reconfigured geopolitics on a sacred-secular spectrum dominated by the USA and the USSR. In these events, the motivations of humanitarian actors are disputed as either secular or religious, evoking approval or censure. Although modern global humanitarianism emerged during the world wars, it is often studied in a Euro-centric framework that does not engage the conflicts' globality. The effects of humanitarianism during the Second World War look toward the post-1945 era with not enough reflection on the pre-1945 history of humanitarianism. Thus, what is needed is a critical history beyond moralizing, bringing synchronic and diachronic expansion to study questions of continuity and change. A global history of religious humanitarianism during both world wars places faith-based humanitarianism on a spectrum of belief and unbelief.

Download or read book Institutional Logics within Faith Based Aid written by Nina G. Kurlberg and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-19 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates what faith means in the actual day-to-day practice of faith-based NGOs working in the development, humanitarian, and advocacy sectors. Faith-based organisations play an extremely prominent role in international aid and development, operating within the same sphere as organisations without an explicit religious affiliation. This book uses the case study of a UK-based Christian faith-based organisation to develop an analytic tool using institutional logics. Through exploration of how various institutional logics are manifested and negotiated across organisational practice, the book describes how the ‘telos,’ or objective, of the corporate logic (to sustain the organisation) interacts with the telos of the religious logic (namely, to worship God). The book demonstrates that since organisational practices must ultimately work to sustain the organisation, at the organisational level faith is restricted to certain spaces and forms, while at the individual level faith is dominant and active. Bringing a fresh perspective to discussions of religion and development by highlighting how faith influences development at the organisational level, this book will be an important read for researchers working on global development.

Download or read book The Refugee Crisis and Religion written by Luca Mavelli and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers together expertise from academics and practitioners in order to investigate the interconnections and interactions between religion, migration and the refugee regime.

Download or read book The Ambivalence of Religion Within the Framework of Secular Humanism written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper intends to explore the complex and often implicit relationship between religion, humanitarianism and secularized politics. The research consists of two major parts. The first chapter analyzes the theoretical approaches to the role of religion and faith-based decision-making in modern international politics. It does that by discussing three particular topics: the neglected connection between religion and IR scholarship, major theories of secularization, and the influences of religion on international politics. The second chapter intends to move the research from the level of philosophical and abstract towards more practical levels of analysis. It focuses on the issue of faith-based humanitarianism and the substantial role faith-based organizations play in international politics. The research points to two related conclusions. First, while acknowledging that secular humanism is a historic civilizational achievement, it can be argued that it is impossible and misleading to strive for clear-cut segregation of religious and secular spheres of life. Second, faith-based humanitarianism is one of the phenomena which increasingly challenge this artificial dichotomy between the sacred and the secular by bringing religion back into public discourse. The paper does not suggest that the dominant paradigm of international relations be abandoned. It rather calls for its modification in order to account for religion which norms and values can be used to support the existing regime of human rights and institutions. Faith-based organizations should be thus seen as a potential channel leading towards the reconciliation of the sacred and the secular.

Download or read book NGOs and Human Rights written by Charity Butcher and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines and compares the important work on global human rights advocacy done by religious NGOs and by secular NGOs. By studying the similarities in how such organizations understand their work, we can better consider not only how religious and secular NGOs might complement each other but also how they might collaborate and cooperate in the advancement of human rights. However, little research has attempted to compare these types of NGOs and their approaches. NGOs and Human Rights explores this comparison and identifies the key areas of overlap and divergence. In so doing, it lays the groundwork for better understanding how to capitalize on the strengths of religious groups, especially in addressing the world’s many human rights challenges. This book uses a new dataset of more than three hundred organizations affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council to compare the extent to which religious and secular NGOs differ in their framing, discussion, and operationalization of human rights work. Using both quantitative analysis of the extensive data collected by the authors and forty-seven in depth interviews conducted with members of human rights organizations in the sample, Charity Butcher and Maia Carter Hallward analyze these organizations’ approaches to questions of culture, development, women’s rights, children’s rights, and issues of peace and conflict.

Download or read book International Development and Local Faith Actors written by Kathryn Kraft and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interplay and dialogue between faith communities and the humanitarian-development community. Faith and religion are key influencers of thought and practice in many communities around the world and development practitioners would not be able to change behaviours for improved health and social relations without the understanding and influence of those with authority in communities, such as religious leaders. Equally, religious leaders feel responsibilities to their communities, but do not necessarily have the technical knowledge and resources at hand to provide the information or services needed to promote the well-being of all in their scope of influence. The book demonstrates that partnerships between humanitarian-development practitioners and religious communities can be mutually beneficial exchanges, but that there are also frequently pitfalls along the way and opportunities for lessons to be learned by each party. Delving into how humanitarians and faith communities engage with one another, the book focuses on building knowledge about how they interact as peers with different yet complementary roles in community development. The authors draw on the Channels of Hope methodology, a tool which seeks to engage faith leaders in addressing social norms and enact social change, as well as other related research in the sector to demonstrate the many ways in which humanitarian and development policy makers and practitioners could achieve more systematic engagement with faith groups. This book is an important contribution to the growing body of literature on faith and development, and will be useful both to researchers, and to practitioners working with faith communities.

Download or read book Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality written by Silke Roth and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-12 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.

Download or read book Tearfund and the Quest for Faith Based Development written by Dena Freeman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives an in-depth analysis of the role of faith in the work of Tearfund, a leading evangelical relief and development NGO that works in over 50 countries worldwide. The study traces the changing ways that faith has shaped and influenced Tearfund’s work over the organisation’s 50-year history. It shows how Tearfund has consciously grappled with the role of faith in its work and has invested considerable time and energy in developing an intentionally faith-based approach t relief and development that in several ways is quite different to the approaches of secular relief and development NGOs. The book charts the different perspectives and possibilities that were not taken and the internal discussions about theology, development practices, and humanitarian standards that took place as Tearfund worked out for itself what it meant to be a faith-based relief and development organisation. There is a growing academic literature about religion and development, as well as increasing interest from development ministries of many Northern governments in understanding the role of religion in development and the specific challenges and benefits involved in working with faith-based organisations. However, there are very few studies of actual faith-based organisations and no book-length detailed studies showing how such an organisation operates in practice and how it integrates its faith into its work. In documenting the story of Tearfund, the book provides important insights into the practice and ethos of faith-based organisations, which will be of interest to other FBOs and to researchers of religion and development.

Download or read book Handbook on Religion and Health written by James R. Cochrane and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revelatory Handbook explores the relationship between religion and health, emphasising the effects of organised religion and spirituality on community, population, and public health. While comprehensively summarising the current state of the field, it focusses on pursuing new pathways vital for human health in a turbulent world.

Download or read book Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding written by Omer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of what consolidating religion as a technology of peacebuilding and development does to people's accounts of their religious and cultural traditions and why interreligious peacebuilding entrenches colonial legacies in the present. Throughout the global south, local and international organizations are frequent participants in peacebuilding projects that focus on interreligious dialogue. Yet as Atalia Omer argues in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding, the effects of their efforts are often perverse, reinforcing neocolonial practices and disempowering local religious actors. Based on empirical research of inter and intra-religious peacebuilding practices in Kenya and the Philippines, Omer identifies two paradoxical findings: first, religious peacebuilding practices are both empowering and depoliticizing and, second, more doing of religion does not necessarily denote deeper or more critical religious literacy. Further, she shows that these religious actors generate decolonial openings regardless of how closed or open their religious communities are. Hence, religion's occasional usefulness in peacebuilding does not necessarily mean justice-oriented outcomes. The book not only uses decolonial and intersectional prisms to expose the entrenched and ongoing colonial dynamics operative in religion and the practices of peacebuilding and development in the global South, but it also speaks to decolonial theory through stories of transformation and survival.

Download or read book Faith and Charity written by Marie Nathalie LeBlanc and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative perspective on the relationship between religion, civil society and development through the prism of faith-based NGOs in West Africa

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Religious Literacy Pluralism and Global Engagement written by Chris Seiple and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-27 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering handbook proposes an approach to pluralism that is relational, principled, and non-relativistic, going beyond banal calls for mere "tolerance." The growing religious diversity within societies around the world presents both challenges and opportunities. A degree of competition between deeply held religious/worldview perspectives is natural and inevitable, yet at the same time the world urgently needs engagement and partnership across lines of difference. None of the world’s most pressing problems can be solved by any single actor, and as such it is not a question of if but when you partner with an individual or institution that does not think, act, or believe as you do. The authors argue that religious literacy—defined as a dynamic combination of competencies and skills, continuously refined through real-world cross-cultural engagement—is vital to building societies and states of neighborly solidarity and civic fairness. Through examination, reflection, and case studies across multiple faith traditions and professional fields, this handbook equips scholars and students, as well as policymakers and practitioners, to assess, analyze, and act collaboratively in a world of deep diversity. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.