"If you are not at the table, you end up on the menu." The issue? Whether mainstream development specialists take faith-inspired work seriously and, more importantly, truly engage with and support it. Currently the answer is no, or very patchily. Why? Think "religionophobia."
The issue came up again and again at three different gatherings this summer: a meeting on service delivery and faith in Accra in early July, organized by the World Bank and the World Faiths Development Dialogue; a U.N. agency meeting in New York last week organized by UNFPA, the Family Planning Organization; and the African Religious Health Assets Program meeting in Capetown, South Africa. At all three, participants were frustrated by the way the experts ignore the multitude of faith-run hospitals, clinics, and other programs, and genuinely puzzled as to why.
Anyone who drives through Uganda or Ethiopia or pretty much any African country can't help but see that religion is everywhere. I drove north through Namibia years ago and collected the wonderful names of bars as well as schools and clinics; every single one had God or another theological reference in its title. Part of this omnipresence is the missionary legacy, but it goes way beyond. Religion in Africa may be the most vibrant in the world, growing and changing constantly.
It affects every dimension of life, and that of course means every development enterprise. But record-keeping is lousy and even seemingly solid data is in dispute. That makes it easy to dismiss large chunks of the work.
Anecdotes are inspirational but they do not get you to the policy table. Compiling information--solid data about who does what, where, with how much, with what results--is absolutely vital. We badly need facts and evidence if we expect the secular specialists to set aside their blinkers.
But data is not the only issue. Religion evokes a level of emotional response that, say, latrines or even child deaths from malaria do not. It is often very personal, but translates into institutional attitudes. Many institutions that work on development simply do not understand the work of religious institutions, much less know how to engage them as partners.
The passion that religious inspiration and motivation brings can be stunning, exemplified by Mother Teresa, working against all odds to care for desperately poor people. But religion can also bring counterproductive tendencies, a narrow conviction of rightness that excludes outsiders and works against the passion to care and to act. There is much ground in the middle.
Secular public institutions in the west are often leery of bringing religious players into the mix. Certain religious practices may be construed as discriminatory. Certain religious groups may refuse recommended policy on religious grounds.
But in Africa, faced by huge and urgent needs, the theoretical debates need to be contained or addressed quickly and pragmatically. Saving lives--of children, mothers, people living with HIV and AIDS--is what it's about. And it simply makes no sense not to engage actively with major faith players as a central part of daily work.
The good news, evidenced in the three meetings where the topic was discussed, is that this debate is happening. But it's a far more stilted and difficult debate than it should be.
Religionophobia, a real tendency that was named by many working in distinguished institutions -- the United Nations, national governments, think tanks, and universities -- surely needs to be addressed with the same determination we bring to rooting out anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. We need a solid, caring, pragmatic, and fact-based approach to the work that the countless faith-inspired organizations do to bring social change and to better the lives of the poorest among us.
And that means bringing these voices to tables. Policy tables, action tables, data discussions, medical conferences. Religion should be included in a smart way, not as a passive afterthought but because it is a major force.
