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Religion and development cooperation: a devil of a job?

 

New Year's meeting ICCO and Kerk in Actie

Januari 2010

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Also on behalf of my colleague and good friend Haaije Feenstra from our Service Organisation, I would like to welcome you and wish you all the best for the new year. 

 

Our joint New Year's function, which has become an established tradition, is generally intended to strengthen our mutual relations and to look both back an ahead at our society and our organisations.

For a retrospective on social developments, I gladly recommend the abundance of annual overviews published over the last few weeks.

For those among you who have not had a chance to peruse them yet: "It was a time of crisis, and not just any crisis, no, it was a time of crisis in every conceivable area" (financially, economically, in terms of climate, morally, in terms of personal communication (at least, according to our Queen. Remarkably, if you communicate about a pleasant conversation with the Queen, you quickly turn yourself into a pariah, as  our Liberal MP Mr.  Boekestijn found out to his cost), in short, one might say, a year best quickly put behind us.

 

Even a "fun" ending to the year seemed hard to come by this year. To begin with, it was almost impossible to choose between all the "prominent" performers who were asked to see out the year with festive cheer. Jan Jaap van der Walle hit the nail on the head by saying: I am one of the 62 leading performers who was asked to stage an exclusive New Year's Eve show on television. I ask you, what better way to illustrate the collapse of our broadcasting system? As far as I am concerned, that puts paid to the chapter "fun":

 

1 The message

Ladies and gentlemen, for years it has been tradition of the New Year's function of the services organisation and ICCO to emphasise getting together, which puts us one step ahead of our Queen's wish as it were, but being the preachers and missionaries that we are, we would also like to leave you with a message. Food for thought, as it were.

 

This year, we opted for a highly topical subject, which affects many people:

 

 " Religion and development cooperation: a devil of a job"

  

Perhaps not altogether very spectacular, but highly relevant in our present day and age. Traditional development cooperation, but also the traditional expressions of faith in the Netherlands, find themselves in or teetering on the brink of a crisis, or at the very least in a shrink scenario.

 

2 Crisis and opportunities

At the same time, religion is making a remarkable comeback, also in the Netherlands (perhaps as a result of the many crises?) and it receives a lot of attention, both in positive and negative ways. People are once again looking for meaning, and form and content are not fixed. We are currently witnessing a similar phenomenon in development cooperation. As a result of rapidly changing power relations in the world (climate conference), a changing moral consciousness among citizens and public authorities, the search is on for new conventions, new ways to give shape to our deep desire for justice, sustainability and above all dignity across the globe, or not. In this new context, in which Western thought on civilisation appears untenable (environment, overpopulation, natural resources, rich an poor), development must tread new paths. In this, despite the ongoing secularisation in the Netherlands, religion will continue to play an important part. Which only stands to reason if one takes into account that 93% of the world's population feels a religious connection (with the 7% who do not, all concentrated in the Netherlands, at least according to the media).

 

3 Current practice and the attack

We also opted for this theme, because we think that if one wishes to be successful in Sustainable and Equitable International Cooperation (and that task will only increase, given the mounting common interests in North and South, such as climate, natural resources, living conditions) one needs to be well-informed about how religion relates to development and cooperation, a theme which tends to be undervalued in out secularising society. Dutch novelist Kluun wrote in his recently published essay "God is Mad": ‘In the Netherlands, the debate on religion is being controlled by a fundamentalist elite of non-believers, who consistently underestimate the impact of religion'.

 

In a sense, the renewed interest in religion was forced upon us by world-wide developments. Issues such as large-scale migration, the rise of new religious movements such as the Pentecostal churches, as well as religiously inspired terrorist attacks have led to an international reflection on the role of religion in society. Do we sufficiently understand what occupies and motivates people elsewhere, other than in economic and geopolitical terms?

 

In the countries that we work in, is religion not a much more powerful driver of development than in our own secularised society? Can we look at religion and development as two separate spheres, as many organisations and companies do?

 

In addition to an economic, social and educational dimension, development also has an important moral component ( the domain of religious movements). Justice, sustainability and dignity are at least equally important motivators for development as "hard" components such as economics and education. Over the past few years, it has become painfully clear that when the right motivators for development are lacking, derailment of the process is close at hand. It suffices to point to the financial crisis of the last two years, which has proved to be predominantly a moral crisis of greed and shamefulness. In other words, we will now more than ever and with renewed energy need to give new meaning to the values underpinning development, even when this seems to go very much against the grain of this juncture in time, focused as it is on financial efficiency, results and factual reporting. 

 

Over the past few years, we have invested much in reflection and action in the area of Religion and Development. We founded the Knowledge Centre Religion and Development, we are funding an academic chair in Religion and Development at the ISS. We became aware - again - of how important religion is to a majority of the world population.

 

4 Making the most of opportunities and creating synergies by working together

In many of the contexts we work in, religion is a major force. It often exerts a major influence on the politics, culture and economies of countries. In particular in fragile contexts and in its positive interpretation and form - it helps maintain essential basic services. It generates social cohesion and stimulates community spirit. It influences whether people relate to each other peacefully or with hostility.

 

However, recognition of these facts does not automatically mean that there is efficient cooperation between the fields of religion and development cooperation.

If we're honest, we must recognises that from the 1990s, the focus increasingly shifted to professionalisation, which demanded a clear separation between churches (religion) and development cooperation. In doing so, in retrospect we made an error of reasoning. Not only did we separate development cooperation from some of its important motivators; we also cleared the way for the idea that issues of poverty and injustice could be solved in a purely technical manner.

A good, or rather bad, example of that is the AIDS problem in Africa. It is more than clear that a technocratic approach won't suffice to resolve this issue. Religious movements carry a particularly strong influence and responsibility in solving this immense problem.

However, when I say that we committed an error of reasoning, I do not mean to say that we didn't have reason to doubt the capacity of churches and church organisations to address development cooperation issues in a professional manner. The councils of churches that outgrew their strength because of our assistance were not always capable to properly manage their means. At the same time, we must realise that I we want to change unequal power relations in societies, we must take the institutions of those societies, whether they be good or bad, as our starting point. And churches and religious organisations are an integral part of that, and not only the new NGOs that we increasingly tend to focus on.

 

5 We can do Something

In short, if we wish to remain a significant influence in international cooperation, we will need to establish an intensive interaction with religion. Whether Good or Bad.

 

A well-known missionary expert, Sjef Donders, once phrased it as follows: "We must realise that there is good religion, bad religion and very bad religion." I have seen many examples that illustrate his point. Take for example the recent Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Churches played a fantastic supporting role there, not only through an active lobby by the World Council and other churches during the conference, but equally by mobilising their constituencies. Many thousands, if not ten thousands, of churches throughout the world rang their church bells for our climate on 13 December. Over 900 churches joined in the Netherlands alone, and they provide much of the funds required to be able to fulfil our Stewardship (sustainability) (in sharp contrast to our governments, who did manage to provide 1,000 billion for banks in record time, as compared to less than 100 for our climate).

 

Bad religion recently also came to the fore in relation to the launch of the Palestinian Christians' Kairos document. Both during the launch as in the subsequent media reporting, the initiative was torpedoed by Jewish groups, abusing the Bible to prove themselves in the right. As if the land of Israel was granted exclusively to Jews, as if other peoples must justifiably take second place for all eternity. Any theology based on exclusion and oppression, the authors of the document remonstrated, conflicts with the fundamental principle of the biblical faith, which holds that all people are equal and should and must be allowed to live in dignity - created as they all are in God's image.

 

I will not delve to deeply into bad fundamentalist religion, but it is clear that there is much to gain for us there. It appears that in our own Dutch society, but also the world over, intolerance is on the increase, pitting people against each other because of their ethnicity, but mainly also because of their religion.

 

Our media are full of the world-wide perils of and the excesses of Muslim fundamentalism. At the same time, we hear very little about the advance in Africa of right-wing evangelical Pentecostal movements from America, which, by their dominant ethics regarding life and death, in several countries have managed to cause a renewed increase in the number of aids cases. To which I would add, however, that fundamentalism is not exclusive to religions.

 

6 Hands On

Both in the Netherlands and in Europe there are those (Kluun, God is Mad) who feel that religious movements are incompatible with modern man. In their view, science offers explanations for everything. One might call these people "fundamentalists of reason", who see religion as a harmful influence.

 

I will give you an example of a promotional message of the Humanist Society - a more than reasonable organisation, one would think. "The voice of religion is heard ever more frequently and increasingly loud. Without your support, humanism is at the mercy of the gods." If we look at the essence of humanism - with self-determination and freedom as its core values - this message is completely incomprehensible. However, faith-based organisations can also take it to heart: are ecumenical religious communities who seek to work with other religious communities based on their shared values assertive enough? Are they making themselves heard? Or are they of the opinion that they must not force their convictions upon others and that they better keep mum about their identity? Clearly, we too still have much to learn in order to disseminate the messages we feel are important with confidence and from our own open and ecumenical identity. A good example of us doing so was the ringing of our churches' bells for our climate last month.

 

7 Meaning for ICCO

The essence of why I bring this up is that I see it as an essential part of our mission as a professional development organisation that we can engage with religion, be it good or bad. And that we are then able to determine who we may or may not work with. This demands an attitude of religious empathy on our part, or, to use that eloquent English phrase: faith literacy. Knowledge and understanding of the values, language, motivations and culture of religious communities.

Really connecting and collaborating effectively therefore demands an effort from all parties involved. Even though this may prove "a devil of a job". Because I believe that we can only bring about that better world that we all want by working together. And because I believe that we truly have something to say to one another.

Of course, the choice to invest in working together was initiated a number of years ago when we set up our Alliance and I feel this is very successful, even though at times I'd like to move faster (but patience is a virtue, as performer  Freek de Jonge rightly said in his New Year's monologue).

 

Our core values of justice, compassion and dignity are the moral motivators we will be needing over the coming decades. A strong ecumenical movement, open to cooperation, passionate without becoming obtrusive, and offering alternatives for the many dead ends in today's crisis is what we want and where our passion lies.

Our motivators are inspired by our Christian faith. Our good friend Farid Esack - a South African Muslim theologist - once said: "All prophets came to the world not to be part of the centre, but to link with the peripheries and challenge the centre". That is what religion's strength ought to be: the courage to change established (power) relations for the benefit of those - the poor - who find themselves forced to live on the peripheries.

  

8 My final point, dear colleagues

My final point. Even more so than the last few years, 2010 is set to be a year of changes. In the coming months, we face the major challenge to submit a sound business plan in the context of the MFS II public co-financing framework. How we will emerge from this process will in large part determine our options for the coming years. In addition, in the course of this year all the ICCO/Kerkinactie Regional Offices will become operational. This will have a drastic impact on our staff, which will affect both those leaving our organisation as well as those who will stay on. I myself (and in this I am joined by the whole management team) know and feel how deeply this affects all those involved. I understand the emotions involved: saying farewell, anger, mourning, searching for a new horizon. I also realise that those who are having to round off and transfer their tasks will be doing so with very mixed feelings. I all the more (and I cannot stress this enough) appreciate all your efforts to either complete your tasks to the best of your abilities or to continue your work under a completely new set of circumstances.

Every transformation - whether at the personal or the collective level - always has two sides. In addition to pain and loss, space is created for new things. I do not mention this as a platitude to those who will made redundant. I am deeply convinced that every crisis always contains new opportunities, an invitation to return to our essence  Please know that the organisations of ICCO and Kerkinactie fully support you in this.

 

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