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- Convenors:
-
Emma Tomalin
(University of Leeds)
Jennifer Philippa Eggert
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Papers Mixed
- Stream:
- Third sector leaders
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Faith leaders visible in development typically represent institutionalized religion and are mostly male. Invisible, but crucial in addressing global challenges, are local faith leaders, often excluded from formal leadership. This panel explores the breadth of faith leadership for global challenges.
Long Abstract:
The importance of faith communities in addressing global development challenges has now been well acknowledged. However, different types of leaders of faith communities are evident across the development, humanitarian and peacebuilding nexus in the Global South. The faith actors who are visible and connected to international networks are typically representatives of institutionalized religion and mostly male. These visible faith leaders often do not represent the communities on the ground or may only be included in global discussions as a result of political affiliation. More important but less visible are local faith leaders who provide crucial moral and practical leadership, and psycho-social and other support to vulnerable communities. These local faith leaders are often also 'a-typical' when compared to the global model of faith leadership, and include groups and individuals marginalized from formal leadership due to their sex, caste, ethnicity or sexual orientation, or their traditional or indigenous identity.
This panel invites papers that explore the breadth of faith leadership for global challenges. What forms of religious leadership are emerging at global, regional and local levels to address critical issues such as climate emergency, gender and identity-based inequalities, poverty, violence and ill health? How are traditional forms of religious leadership being contested and resisted, and what new forms of leadership are coming into being? How can global and local religious leaders, in all their diversity, better work together to address the challenges facing their communities? How do religious leaders currently excluded from global discussions ensure meaningful engagement and diverse participation?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 June, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
The paper argues that development studies needs to include the thinking conducted within religions. On the basis of two case studies, it discusses how theological reflection can be an important resource for interrogating processes of social change and creating new leaderships.
Paper long abstract:
Despite the field of 'religion and development' being now established, development studies remains cautious in engaging with the worldviews coming from religions. The paper argues that development studies, as a field of study that bears upon processes of social emancipation, needs to broaden its scope to include the thinking conducted within religions, i.e. theological reflection. On the basis of two cases studies, the paper discusses how the articulation of people's experience of disadvantage and dispossession from within a religious framework can help create spaces for new leadership to emerge.
The paper starts with discussing how development studies is constantly re-interpreting its geographical, multi-disciplinary and normative commitments in the face of new global realities. After analysing how development studies has been, and is currently, dealing with the question of the ultimate ends of social change, the paper discusses contributions from within religions and the normative standpoints from which they interrogate processes of social change. The paper then looks at the experience of dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Amazon and of extreme poverty in Bangladesh. It examines how their experience has been mediated by reflection about development's ultimate ends from within the normative standpoint of religious worldviews, and how such mediation has created new spaces for new leaderships against exclusion and dispossession to emerge. The paper concludes that leadership for global challenges does not only need leaders but also normative standpoints from which leaders can interpret, and transform, development processes. Theological reflection can act as a powerful resource for this.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the contrasting fortunes of female agency in leading Christian conversion and male pastors in channelling and distributing external resources, power and finance among the ethnic Hmong facing poverty, marginalisation, ethnic and gender inequalities in upland Vietnam.
Paper long abstract:
Sitting at the bottom of Vietnam's ethnic hierarchy with the highest poverty rates and lowest education levels, the Hmong minority group face a number of obstacles to development including discrimination by an ethnocentric state, living in remote rural borderlands areas with poor infrastructure, inability of the older generation to speak the national language, and exploitation by ethnic majority Vietnamese employers and traders. Over the past 30 years, approximately a third of the 1 million Hmong living in Vietnam's highlands have converted to evangelical Christianity; prompting conflict both with hostile government forces and between Christian and non-Christian sections of Hmong communities. In particular, Hmong women have shown remarkable agency to initiate and lead other family members to convert in spite (or perhaps because) of formidable gender inequalities and traditional patriarchal structures, leading to a degree of male 'domestication' and improving gender division of labour. Despite radical 'breaks with the past' in many aspects of Hmong culture, Christianisation has reinforced male religious leadership, leading to the rise of church leaders and pastors as powerful local elites who act as spokesmen for their communities and 'development brokers' to external state development projects and transnational religious networks. This paper explores the contrasting styles and fortunes of male and female leadership within Hmong Christian communities and assesses their respective potentials for relative empowerment in the context of poverty, marginalisation, ethnic and gender inequalities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper highlights how leaders of faith-based organizations are navigating through the dwindling aid contexts and utilizing faith-based giving as an emerging domestic resource mobilization strategy to address development challenges in Ghana.
Paper long abstract:
The importance of faith communities and faith-based organisations in addressing global development challenges has now been well acknowledged. Yet, series of research point out that the context through which civil society actors work to address development challenges are changing especially in Global South. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with leadership of FBOs in Ghana, West Africa. It highlights how leaders of faith-based organizations are navigating through the dwindling aid contexts and utilizing faith-based giving as an emerging domestic resource mobilization strategy to address development challenges in Ghana. Specifically, the study will present the strategies, experiences and challenges of leaders of faith-based organisations in mobilizing domestic resource to address development challenges to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.
Paper short abstract:
Faith leaders, as trusted opinion leaders, can play a strategic role in influencing community members towards mitigating ecological degradation. We investigate how training faith leaders can promote the extent of influence they exert within the community towards environmental sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
Faith leaders have a significant role to play in generating awareness and shaping the attitude of community members on environmental sustainability. Perceived as the most trusted members of their communities, faith leaders occupy a strategic position to more effectively influence their community members toward mitigating ecological degradation. Prior debates on religious contribution to the ecological crisis have not adequately explored the effect of intentional training of faith-leaders for combating development challenges. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge. We argue that intentional training of faith leaders will enable them to be more effective influencers on ecological and sustainability issues. The paper draws from semi-structured interviews of 20 selected faith leaders (consisting of 5 theological educators and 15 field ministers). All the respondents affirmed that faith leaders can influence their community members and shape their attitude towards creation care. This affirmation, however, did not translate to commensurate action among the field ministers as only 20% of them engaged in ecological awareness at least once in a year; 53.3%, once in 2 years; and 26.7% never did. Meanwhile, the theological educators, who have received explicit training on environmental issues, are more committed with 80% of them engaging in ecological awareness at least once in a year and the remaining 20%, at least once in 2 years. The findings underline the need for, and impact of, intentional training of faith leaders. This will equip them to appropriately engage in creating ecological awareness within the community thereby translating to mitigation of environmental degradation.
Paper short abstract:
The potential of faith perspectives to combat violence against women has been overshadowed by misunderstanding religion as a contributing factor to SGBV. On the contrary, local faith communities and faith leaders can take leadership and seek to end SGBV building upon their worldviews and values.
Paper long abstract:
The potential of faith perspectives to combat violence against women and girls has been overshadowed by misunderstanding religion as a contributing factor to SGBV. On the contrary, it is found that religion can also be a protective factor against SGBV. Drawing upon Islamic Relief's policies and programmatic experience, I discuss in what ways humanitarian agencies can engage with faith communities to address intersectional concerns of GBV and other abuses. Particularly, I examine Islamic perspectives on SGBV and the ways in which a faith-based SGBV intervention of Islamic Relief Ethiopia employs religion to combat SGBV in a humanitarian context. Qualitative evidence from project reports shows that religion can be a resource to prevent SGBV, and that faith-based interventions can challenge societal discriminatory norms and violence. I argue that local faith communities and faith leaders can take leadershiop and seek to end SGBV building upon their worldviews and values. Humanitarian infrastructure should recognise religious resources as inherent capacities of local faith communities and integrate faith perspectives and faith leaders into programming to effectively prevent and respond to SGBV among populations of high religiosity.
Paper short abstract:
The proposed paper draws from an study conducted among UFIC Pentecostals in Zimbabwe. The study explores ways in which leadership at a Pentecostal UFIC put in place strategies to help members construct houses and strengthen livelihood activities at a time the Zimbabwe state is incapacitated
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper explores ways in which leadership at a Pentecostal Charismatic Church (PCC) in Zimbabwe brings stability to the everyday lives of its followers in times characterized by uncertainties, insecurity, and precarity. The emerging Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity and its leadership anchor its strategies within a 'this worldly' discourse. The PCC has transformed itself into a network of opportunities and support in times when the state and market have failed to create a conducive environment for the bulk of the citizens to prosper. Pentecostal leaders have transformed themselves into experts who teach entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy, and investment expertise that come in handy in times of uncertainty. Furthermore, the leadership has initiated a self-helping housing project that aims to assist followers construct houses in urban areas. The PCC's approach is pragmatic, spurring congregants to deal with the objective realties of their everyday lives. Lastly, the paper explores ritual practices that inform and underscore congregants' efforts to pull themselves out of poverty in a poorly performing economic environment. The paper situates PCC's strategies within Appadurai's politics of hope framework. By addressing issues such as housing, livelihoods activities and financial literacy, Pentecostal leadership are to some extend assisting in improving the lives of the people. The study is based on ethnographic data collected between 2016 and 2017. Data were collected through life histories, in-depth interviews, and participant observation.
Paper short abstract:
Faith-based programmes were successful to improve general health maintenance, but have been unheeded to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) status. We designed a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) to evaluate the effectiveness of a faith-based intervention.
Paper long abstract:
Faith-based programmes were successful to improve general health maintenance, but have been unheeded to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) status. We designed a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) to evaluate the effectiveness of a faith-based intervention.
We designed a faith-based WASH Behaviour change intervention to improve the WASH situation in Islamic schools, their associated mosques and corresponding Muslim communities and Cristian Communities in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nepal.
We conducted a baseline survey in all clusters and delivered the intervention for six months and then conducted the endline survey among 192 respondents from Bangladesh, 236 from Indonesia and 248 from Nepal. A structured questionnaire was used for the data collection to determine current hygiene practices, facilities and knowledge. The data collector conducted face-to-face interviews, spot checks and hand washing demonstration and data was analyzed using STATA (version 13).
The results suggested improvement in knowledge, attitude and practices in the communities which indicates that using faith based interventions could be effective for improving hand washing practices and child faeces management. This is the first study focused on the Islamic faith-based approach to design and promote WASH interventions, which could be further tested as part of a broader intervention.