THE DISCOURSE ON RELIGION IN NOWADAYS STUDIES ON DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The goal of this study is to show the difficult issues generated by the recent renewal of the interest for religion within the studies on development. Either if one refers to the difficulty of defining religion and development, or if the adjacent issues are more complex than one could believe (the sub-divisions of development, the idea of secularization and its critiques, the relation between fundamentalism and violence, the difficulties of the categorial pair sacredprofane, the relation of religion with modernity etc.), the burst of preoccupations towards the examination of the role of religion within development is, at first, the result of the evolution of some adjacent disciplines (especially anthropology and sociology of religion), but also the mark of a continuous presence of religion within the academic world and that of the agents of change.

Headnote

Abstract: The goal of this study is to show the difficult issues generated by the recent renewal of the interest for religion within the studies on development. Either if one refers to the difficulty of defining religion and development, or if the adjacent issues are more complex than one could believe (the sub-divisions of development, the idea of secularization and its critiques, the relation between fundamentalism and violence, the difficulties of the categorial pair sacredprofane, the relation of religion with modernity etc.), the burst of preoccupations towards the examination of the role of religion within development is, at first, the result of the evolution of some adjacent disciplines (especially anthropology and sociology of religion), but also the mark of a continuous presence of religion within the academic world and that of the agents of change.

Keywords: religion, development, secularization, modernization, religious NGO.

Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the Western world has confronted serious religious changes. These mutations were partially explained by the phenomenon of secularization, by separating religion from politics, at least in the case of Western democracies. This movement of secularization, some say, would have led to the separation from religion, to the spreading of the idea that religion is unable to restructure the social sphere, thus losing its traditional role of organizing it and becoming more a private matter.

More than a half of century ago, in social and human sciences, the idea of secularization was almost dogmatically used, representing the common place in which sociologists, historians, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and even the theorists of economic development met to announce, from the perspective of the culture of modernity and the rationality associated with it, the eclipse of religion, the disappearing of the sacred, briefly, the "disenchantment of the world", following a well-known formula of Weber and an important paper of Marcel Gauchet1. Considered as a sort of taboo within the discourse on development, religious beliefs and spirituality in general were not taken as having a result within the sphere of the economy. Max Weber's effort to examine the relevance of religion for the economic analysis, the relationship between the emergence of industrial society and the Reform, the following contributions of social Catholicism (beyond the classical sublimations of the eternal problem of poverty translated, during the 18th century, by "the minimal welfare that is indispensible for virtue") - all these have proven, beyond criticism, that the relationship religion-economic development is not a necessary contradictory one. But to clarify the relation between religion and development is a rather complicated task, due to the ambiguous and controversial character of the definitions of the two domains. The difficulty of defining religion, especially, made the theorists of the dominant stream of economic development that for more than a few years to leave the last place (or even eliminate) the relation that could exist between religion and development, which is a proof of carelessness that many people criticize nowadays.

Of course, within the early debates on this issue, the specialized literature used a series of stereotypes, one of them being that religion, taken as internal perfection and solitude, was identified with the suspension of all preoccupations for development, be it demographic (Judaism and Christianity consider reproduction as an evil in itself, due to the sin involved), or economic (by diminishing the material welfare, which affected commerce, industry, agriculture, etc.), or of consumption (decreased by culinary taboos or increased in the direction of prestige, magnificence, and sacrifice).

Be this as it may, the issue did not allow a monist approach, the researchers saying that this implies the answering to at least two questions: what is the effect of religion over development and what is the impact of development on religion. Generally speaking, the connections of religion with development were conceived as positive relations, as negative ones or as differentiated ones, sometimes even ambivalent. Is the relation was taken as positive, religion was presented as a factor of development, not a major one, but important enough for the studies on development to take it into account. Still, this had to be conditioned by some factors: interpretation or reinterpretation of religion, "adaptation" of religion, the resistance of religion if faced to a possible distortion of its specific content. Besides, the positive character of the relation religion-development was nuanced: either under the form of a superior ethical principle that ensures the collective solidarity and the individual discipline, or as a principle of collective o cultural organization, or, sometimes, as a principle of a pilot-experience of emancipation.

If the relation of religion with development was negatively conceived the critiques were always directed towards religion. Taken as a real hindrance for development, religion had to be removed from public life. Thus, all serious projects of development had to take into account the means that ensured the decline of religion and religious institutions. In this case, the common thesis announced that religions are themselves the proof of the opposition against development, which is sustained by the fact that, in most of the cases, the development would have led naturally to the removal of religion. Following this viewpoint, religion was taken as an interdiction (a set of rigorist principles, of negative taboos, interdictions that paralyze production, consumption, and social relations at all levels), as a hidden ally (religious class bands together with the dominant one in order to block the social development and restructuration), as closed society (religion would generate this kind of opaque societies, which are less favorable to development), and as alienation (religion orients the praxis towards a set of "ideal" recipes of obtaining divine rewards, thus ignoring the realities of life).

There were also some less radical perspectives. In this type of interpretation, the relation of religion with development was an ambivalent and differentiated one. Although they are domains that seem separated enough, their relations, still possible, are conceived as depending on the type, phases, and degrees of evolution of religions and development alike. According to this paradigm, one was more oriented towards the developed and developing countries, towards the relation between generic religion and the religion from within a country faced to the same political option (Christianity or Islam in Lebanon, for instance) or towards the mutations from the area of a single religion. In this case, there were some other interesting adjacent debates: if religion is a field that can be reinterpreted, if it is solidary with the programs of development, if it is dominated by an "obscurantist" traditionalism, if it is linked to the customary conservatism or if it is interested in new structures and practices in order to survive.

If this was the case in the past, nowadays we notice a spectacular process of renewal of the interest for religion in the studies on development. Considered either the "taboo" of development2, or the "forgotten factor" from the discourse on development, one can ask, together with Erica Bornstein3, why the scientific papers on development removed from their analysis the "issue of religion" for so many years, in order to become now a strongly debated matter4.

Humanities and social sciences foretold the revival of religion, but it is important to notice that the recent interest for the relation between religion and development is not an exclusively academic one, but one that comes from the industry of development. The 9/11 events and those associated to some other Islamist movement from today generate the integration of religion into strategies of development, as the World Bank has demanded, under the impulse of the former president James Wolfensohn. But we cannot say that specialized literature which is dedicated to the matter clearly separates the two domains. Besides, there are some authors who not only deny the revival of religion in the studies on development, but also reclaim the fact that some religious concepts are not enough explained in order to adequately analyze the report of religion with development. On the other hand, there are some difficulties that come from the experts of development who do not always succeed in avoiding, within their research, a certain ideological parti pris which is noticeable when it is about the understanding of religion.

The main critiques are directed towards the profoundly political character of the studies on the relation between religion and development. Another controversy, very important within the literature regarding this relation, is related to the definition as such and the nowadays utilizations of the concept of religion. There are also studies that reclaim the fact that there is a support for a real cognitive mystification regarding religious organizations, and there is also much talk about the vast mythology regarding religious NGO's, if we adopt J. Ferguson's definition of the myth: a "falsified history" and a "means of constructing the meaning"5. Authors like William Cavanaugh or Timothy Fitzgerald refer to "the modern myth of religion"6, which the other authors will use to throw over the dominant secularized ideologies the cloak of neutral normality and that of superior ethics7.

W. Cavanaugh8 sustains the careful analysis of the language used for religion, inasmuch as there were and are terrible conceptual disputes over the universal definitions of religion from the 17th century Europe. Recent research show with a vengeance that the manner of understanding religion as something impossible to define led to another regrettable error, i. E. To the imposing of the religion as a "construction of an academic discourse"9 that does not allow the identification of its negative attributes: the fact that it is not a universal category and that is full with ideology10 being related to fundamentalism and violence11. The definitions of religion are criticized mainly by the substantialists ones, which sustain that all religions have something in common and try to identify that trait. These definitions miss the religious diversity, as substantialist essentialize religion, assuming the existence of a "thing", a "fact" called "religion", always taken as differentiated, singular, and universal (identifiable in all circumstances)12. The generalizations which the substantialist definitions use and which impregnate the studies on development have another shortcoming. In general, they favor the ignoring of the understandings and effects of the religious practices that are, still, very important for the understanding of the phenomenon of development. Either too general, or too rigid, the substantialist definitions generate what Benson Saler calls the understanding of religion as "a category of Western tradition"13. In this paradigm, the science of religions can formulate only Euro-centric hypotheses. This is why Christian religion (sometimes Judaism and Islam) is imposed as a norm by means of which, completely inadequate, all other religions are evaluated. If we add to this idea on religion - born as a result of European Enlightenment - the contaminations coming from the modern liberal theology, we can hardly say that this concept is a neutral or descriptive one.

John Milbank speaks about a true strategy in separating the domain of application of religion, with serious political implications: "Traditional and particular religions are thought to encode in a nonperspicuous fashion this priority of the social, and only insofar as this is recognized is religion itself universalized and brought to perfection [...] Nevertheless, this still universalizes religion in a different fashion: religion has its source in 'charisma' which interrupts instrumental reason in many ways, registered by sociology as negative deviation. Universalization is here a way of 'managing' the many particular religions, and of confining them to the private sphere, but charisma also appears in the public realm as the supra-rational purpose of the political whole which instrumental reason is unable to specify or adjudicate"14. By this veritable "policing the sublime" one made further possible the institutional restructuration of political relations and the creation of the modern European nation-state as a laic entity.

Another common point of the papers dedicated to the concept of religion is the analysis of the relation between the apparition of the new definitions of religion and the birth of secularism taken as non-religion or anti-religion15, especially because the Western colonialism. There are some other reasons for which the clarification of the opposition relation between religion and secularism is meaningful. According to T. Fitzgerald, the construction of secularism is the meeting place of dominant values in Western societies and must be legitimated as a part of the real world of nature and of the rational development towards which all societies aim: "But how can so-called underdeveloped societies come to realize and conform to this natural reality in order to be considered fully rational? They can be helped by adopting the non-indigenous western division between the religious and the secular and by placing their traditional values in the department of 'religion', where they become objects of nostalgia a, thus clearing a cognitive space in their culture for putatively value-free scientific facts, for the natural world of autonomous individuals maximizing their rational selfinterest in capitalist markets, for liberal democratic institutions such as parliaments, for modern nation states, and so on"16.

Thus, the problem of the relation religion-development also implies the manner of understanding the issue of modernization. There is no contemporary paper dealing with this subject that does not underline the fact that marginalization of religion was essential for the evolution of consumerist capitalism and liberal democracy. Furthermore, a secularized society is presented as politically neutral and morally impeccable. Despite all these, there are numerous researches that sustain the background idea that within laic nations one can normalize social practices that resemble to the fundamentalist religious ones: "in the Western world, the repulsion of killing an dying for religion is one of the main means through which we allow us to be convinced that the fact of killing and of dying for the nation-state is praiseworthy and correct"17.

Regarding the manner in which one shout relate to religious NGO's, taking into account all elements presented so far, we find at Phillip Fountain a profound lecture of religion in the recent papers on the sociology of development, choosing three representative works for the dominant tendencies from this domain within the vast literature dedicated to religion and development. The first paper is called Mind, Heart, and Soul in the Fight against Poverty18 and is written by K. Marshall and L. Keough, employees of the World Bank, and represent a study over the partnerships between the main organizations for development and various "religious communities throughout the world"19. Having the same sui generis definition, religion is, according to the authors, trans-cultural, (trans)historical and easily identifiable in all given contexts, associating with the ideas of spirituality, culture, tradition, value, and ethics. Marshall and Keough sustain the importance of the agreements between the laic development organizations and the religious ones. The book analyses the possibility of future improvement of the relation between "the two worlds, that of religion and that of development"20, that were, so far, characterized by fragility, intermittences and conflict.

The positive and full of promises vision of the above-mentioned authors is opposed to that of Shawn Flanigan21, who displays a complete lack of trust into the ability of religious organizations to sustain development. On the contrary, following the interviews with the leaders of some religious NGO's from Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Flanigan reaches the conclusion that religious organizations not only generate and sustain situations of conflict, but also use coercive and discriminatory practices. The author draws attention on those religious NGO's that do not establish organizational directives and explicit directives regarding proselytism. In this case, also, the entire presentation is based on the opposition between the activities of religious organizations, which are illegitimate and immoral, and those of laic organizations, which are morally neutral and universal.

Another approach, which lacks the previous radical accents, belongs to J. Haynes22. Being aware of the difficulties that defining religion raises, the author says that he is trying to offer such a definition, given the fact that "there is no conception of religion that can safely be used in inter-cultural and/or interreligious contexts outside of Europe and the West more generally"23. Despite the fact that he understands the danger of offering an "euro-centrist" definition of religion, which he considers to be inadequate and useless for the study of the relation religion-development, he will slip towards the same mistake: "religion can usefully be thought of as: (1) a system of beliefs and practices - often but not necessarily related to an ultimate being, beings, or to the supernatural, and (2) involving that which is sacred in a society, including beliefs and practices which are widely regarded as inviolate. For purposes of social investigation, religion may also be approached (1) from the perspective of a body of ideas and outlooks - that is, as theology and ethical code, (2) as a type of formal organization - that is, an ecclesiastical 'church', and/or (3) as a social group - that is, faith-based organizations. Religion can affect the world in two basic ways: by what it says and by what it does"24. Saying that the world religions "broadly share a set of theological and spiritual values"25, he concludes that "a common metaphysical thread running through the world's major religions, encompassing a shared sense of 'oneness' of name and form that is believed to permeate our world"26. But the most important aspect of his vision pertains to the accent he places on the idea of planetary "religious resurgence" in international relations and development practices, such that the conventional religious problems have opened some breaches on the political and economic arenas. Taking into account that the world of religion and the secularized world are sustained by different ontologies, he states that "secular worldviews were the foundation of conventional development understandings and policy"27. For this very reason, for a "reclassification of the idea of civility that does not depend on its secularity", the laic character is synonymous with "multi-culturalism" and "pluralism".

Haynes' ambivalent conception, following the line of R. Scott Appleby28, is obvious: "the ambivalence of the sacred encourages a dual view of religion in relation to development that can be judged, normatively, as follows:

* Positive role, when religion motivates civil engagement in pursuit of socially and developmentally constructive goals;

* Negative role, when religion (1) seeks to exclude others, (2) perhaps resorts to conflict and violence, and (3) overall seriously undermines achievement of socially and developmentally constructive goals"29.

As a conclusion, we notice that the nowadays disputes over the relation between religion and development are far from being solved. Either one refers to the difficulty of defining religion and development, or that the adjacent issues are more complex than we could believe (the sub-divisions of development, the idea of secularization and its critiques, the relation between fundamentalism and violence, the difficulties of the categorial pair sacred-profane, the relation of religion with modernity, etc.), there is one certainty: the burst of preoccupations for examining of the role of religion within development is, on the one hand, the result of the evolution of some adjacent disciplines (especially anthropology and sociology of religion), but also the indicator of the continuous presence of religion within the concerns of the academic world and the actors of development.

Footnote

1 Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World, Bucharest, Nemira Publishing House, 2006.

2 K.A. Ver Beek, "Spirituality: A Development Taboo", in: Development in Practice, 10(1), 2000, pp. 31-43.

3 Erica Bornstein, The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe, New York, Routledge, 2003.

4 I. Hovland, "Who's Afraid of Religion? Tensions between "Mission" and "Development" in the Norwegian Mission Society", in: G. Clarke si M. Jennings (eds.), Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations: Bridging the Sacred and the Secular, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 171.

5 J. Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999, p. 23.

6 T. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003; idem, "Introduction", in: Fitzgerald, T. (ed.), Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations, London, Equinox Pub., 2007, pp. 1-24; idem, Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth, Londres & New York, Continuum, 2011.

7 W. Cavanaugh, Le mythe de la violence religieuse, Paris, Editions de l'Homme Nouveau, 2009.

8 W. Cavanaugh, "Does Religion Cause Violence?", in: Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 35(2-3), 2007.

9 D. Dubuisson, L'Occident et la religion: mythes, science et idéologie, Bruxelles, Editions Complexe, 1998.

10 W.C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, London, SPCK, 1978.

11 W. Cavanaugh, Le mythe de la violence religieuse, Paris, Editions de l'Homme Nouveau, 2009.

12 Fountain, P. (2013), "Le mythe des ONG religieuses: le retour de la religion dans les études du développement", in: International Development Policy|Revue internationale de politique de développement, 4 (1), p. 15-40.

13 B. Saler, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, Leiden, Brill, 2000, xi.

14 J. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Malden, WileyBlackwell, 2006, p. 103.

15 T. Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003; T. Fitzgerald, Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth, Londres & New York, Continuum, 2011.

16 T. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003,

17 W. Cavanaugh, Le mythe de la violence religieuse, Paris, Editions de l'Homme Nouveau, 2009, p. 9.

18 K. Marshall si L. Keough, Mind, Heart, and Soul in the Fight against Poverty, Washington, The World Bank, 2004.

19 Ibidem, XV.

20 K. Marshall and L. Keough, Mind, Heart, and Soul in the Fight against Poverty, Washington, The World Bank, 2004, pp. 1-2.

21 S.T. Flanigan, For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World, Sterling, Kumarian Press, 2010.

22 J. Haynes, Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

23 Ibidem, p. 14.

24 Ibidem.

25 Ibidem. p. 39.

26 J. Haynes, Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 15.

27 Ibidem, p. 104.

28 R.S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.

29 J. Haynes, Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 62.

References

REFERENCES

Appleby, R.S., (2000), The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield.

Asad, T., (2003), Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Bornstein, E., (2003), The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe, New York, Routledge.

Cavanaugh, W., (2007), "Does Religion Cause Violence?", in: Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 35 (2-3).

Cavanaugh, W., (2009), Le mythe de la violence religieuse, Paris, Editions de l'Homme Nouveau.

Dubuisson, D., (1998), L'Occident et la religion: mythes, science et idéologie, Bruxelles, Editions Complexe.

Ferguson, J., (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, Berkeley, University of California Press.

Fitzgerald, T., (2003), The Ideology of Religious Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Fitzgerald, T., (2007), "Introduction", in: Fitzgerald, T. (ed.), Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations, London, Equinox Pub.

Fitzgerald, T., (2011), Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth, Londres & New York, Continuum.

Flanigan, S.T., (2010), For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World, Sterling, Kumarian Press.

Fountain, P., (2013), "Le mythe des ONG religieuses: le retour de la religion dans les études du développement", in: International Development Policy|Revue internationale de politique de développement, 4 (1), p. 15-40.

Gauchet, M., (2006), Disenchantment of the World, Bucharest, Nemira Publishing House.

Haynes, J., (2007), Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Hovland, I., (2008), "Who's Afraid of Religion? Tensions between "Mission" and "Development" in the Norwegian Mission Society", in: G. Clarke and M. Jennings (eds.), Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations: Bridging the Sacred and the Secular, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 171-186.

Marshall, K. si L. Keough, (2004), Mind, Heart, and Soul in the Fight against Poverty, Washington, The World Bank.

Milbank, J., (2006), Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell.

Saler, B., (2000), Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, Leiden, Brill.

Smith, W.C., (1978), The Meaning and End of Religion, London, SPCK.

Ver Beek, K.A., (2000), "Spirituality: A Development Taboo", in: Development in Practice, 10(1), pp. 31-43.