ABSTRACT
Introduction: the prickliest of subjects One of the most frequent questions asked of me by new acquaintances when they learn about my ethnographic research into the Mennonite Central Committee, a North American Christian development organization, and its work in the context of Indonesia is: Do they proselytize? The sheer predictability of the question in both academic and development industry contexts would be a bore if it was not also so thoroughly revealing. The fact that ‘religious NGOs’ are imagined as having a predilection for illegitimate extensions of religious concerns says something important about the imaginations at work. The question almost always presumes that there is something inherently illegitimate, immoral, or just downright distasteful when development is intermixed with religious propagation. In fact, this is a veritable article of faith in development circles, and suggesting otherwise is tantamount to heresy. Proselytism is arguably the prickliest subject in the emerging eld of religion and development.1
