ABSTRACT
Introduction: why ‘religions and global development’? Significant research on the topic of ‘religions and global development’ has begun to emerge only relatively recently. Over the past decade or so there has been a noticeable shift within some areas of international development policy, practice and research to include religion as a relevant factor. For instance, the views of religious leaders have been invited on key initiatives such as the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, development partners such as DFID and USAID seem more open to engaging with and funding faith-based organizations (FBOs), development studies journals are witnessing an upturn in the publication of research articles that deal with the relationships between religions and international development, and a good number of monographs and edited volumes on the topic have been published (e.g. Tyndale 2006; Haynes 2007; Clarke and Jennings 2008; Deneulin 2009; ter Haar 2011; Barnett and Stein 2012; Carbonnier 2013; Tomalin 2013). However, this interest needs a broader context. Beyond examining how western development organizations have engaged with religion, research on ‘religions and global development’ needs to take into account how governments of nations in the Global South as well as communities within those nations engage with the nexus between religion and development in ways that reflect their own socio-political context. It is important not to view ‘development’ purely in the light of conceptions advanced by the ‘global aid business’.
