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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RELIGION,
POLITICS, AND POLICY

Religious Voices in the

Politics of International
Development
Faith-Based NGOs as Non-state Political
and Moral Actors

Paul J. Nelson
Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy

Series Editor
Mark J. Rozell, Schar School of Policy and Government,
George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA
This series originated under the co-editorship of the late Ted Jelen and Mark J.
Rozell. A generation ago, many social scientists regarded religion as an anachronism,
whose social, economic, and political importance would inevitably wane and disappear
in the face of the inexorable forces of modernity. Of course, nothing of the sort has
occurred; indeed, the public role of religion is resurgent in US domestic politics, in
other nations, and in the international arena. Today, religion is widely acknowledged
to be a key variable in candidate nominations, platforms, and elections; it is recognized
as a major influence on domestic and foreign policies. National religious movements
as diverse as the Christian Right in the United States and the Taliban in Afghanistan
are important factors in the internal politics of particular nations. Moreover, such
transnational religious actors as Al-Qaida, Falun Gong, and the Vatican have had
important effects on the politics and policies of nations around the world.
Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy serves a growing niche in the
discipline of political science. This subfield has proliferated rapidly during the past two
decades, and has generated an enormous amount of scholarly studies and journalistic
coverage. Five years ago, the journal Politics and Religion was created; in addition,
works relating to religion and politics have been the subject of many articles in
more general academic journals. The number of books and monographs on religion
and politics has increased tremendously. In the past, many social scientists dismissed
religion as a key variable in politics and government.
This series casts a broad net over the subfield, providing opportunities for scholars
at all levels to publish their works with Palgrave. The series publishes monographs
in all subfields of political science, including American Politics, Public Policy, Public
Law, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Political Theory.
The principal focus of the series is the public role of religion. “Religion” is
construed broadly to include public opinion, religious institutions, and the legal
frameworks under which religious politics are practiced. The “dependent variable”
in which we are interested is politics, defined broadly to include analyses of the
public sources and consequences of religious belief and behavior. These would include
matters of public policy, as well as variations in the practice of political life. We
welcome a diverse range of methodological perspectives, provided that the approaches
taken are intellectually rigorous.
The series does not deal with works of theology, in that arguments about the
validity or utility of religious beliefs are not a part of the series focus. Similarly, the
authors of works about the private or personal consequences of religious belief and
behavior, such as personal happiness, mental health, or family dysfunction, should
seek other outlets for their writings. Although historical perspectives can often illu-
minate our understanding of modern political phenomena, our focus in the Religion,
Politics, and Policy series is on the relationship between the sacred and the political
in contemporary societies.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14594
 Paul J. Nelson

Religious Voices
in the Politics
of International
Development
Faith-Based NGOs as Non-state Political
and Moral Actors
Paul J. Nelson
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy

ISBN 978-3-030-68963-6 ISBN 978-3-030-68964-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68964-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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 Preface

This project grew out of my scholarly interest in non-governmental orga-

nizations, religion, and international development and human rights,
but more profoundly it has its origins in my first career. I worked for
13 years for faith-based NGOs based in the United States—Bread for
the World, Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief, and Catholic
Relief Services—representing their views to policy makers in Washington,
D.C., and writing about their priority policy issues for the organizations’
members and supporters. I became convinced that the voices of people of
faith are important, and that there is enormous untapped potential for a
significant moral voice that could help shape the United States’ role in the
world. I am sure that conviction is evident in the writing in these chapters.
I think the evidence in this volume supports the view that the voices
of people of faith against poverty and for human rights could be much
more powerful, and that faith-based NGOs could contribute to raising
those voices. The need and potential for an informed, outspoken moral
citizenry has never seemed as clear to me as it does now, in October 2020.
The climate crisis; the COVID-19 pandemic; nationalist anti-immigrant
“America First” sentiment; and the heart-rending, furious cry for racial
justice in the United States and worldwide all are calls to people of faith
and conscience to step up and make their voices heard. Several of the
NGOs and movements I have studied give us guidance as to how to build
an informed, principled, outspoken moral and political voice. Many of my
conclusions are critical of how faith-based NGOs have approached this

v
vi PREFACE

challenge, but it is important to call attention to communities of faith

that are building powerful cultures of service and citizenship.
Because this project has been in process for ten years, I have had
the pleasure of working with many able graduate student researchers at
the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and Interna-
tional Affairs. Dr. Chris Belasco, Dr. Aya Okada, and Dr. Bok Jeong,
who are all long since launched into distinguished careers, made substan-
tial creative and intellectual contributions and coordinated a larger group
in data collection. Dijana Mujkanović, Caitlin Newman Thistle, Khurram
Butt, Rachel Vinciguerra, Jillian Royal, and Victoria Hoang also provided
skilled research support, and I thank them all. Comments from three
reviewers have challenged and strengthened the argument and the writing,
and I am grateful to them. I appreciate support and encouragement
of some of my colleagues at Pitt, especially Dr. Nuno Themudo, and
GSPIA’s Deans during the life of the project, Dr. Carolyn Ban and Dr.
John T. S. Keeler. Any errors of fact or judgment are my responsibility.
The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Henry T.
Luce Program on Religion and International Affairs, at the Henry Luce
Foundation.
My parents-in-law, Dr. Antonio and Lillian Scommegna, made their
house on a quiet wooded hilltop in Jefferson County, Wisconsin available
for writing retreats, and much of the writing was done in that beautiful
spot. My wife, Paola Scommegna, has been supportive and appropriately
skeptical of my arguments along the way, and I thank her for that and
much more. We met 40 years ago while both working at the faith-based
advocacy NGO Bread for the World in Washington, D.C., and it is ironic
that she is still enduring my pronouncements on the subject.
Many versions of these chapters have benefited from comments
and criticism during panels at the Association for Research on Non-
profit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the International
Studies Association (ISA), and the International Society for Third-Sector
Research. Passages in Chapter 4 are reprinted with permission from a
2019 article inReview of Faith and International Affairs.

Pittsburgh, USA Paul J. Nelson

October 2020
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Religious Voices 5
Between Silence and Social Protest 7
References 11
2 Religion, Development, and Faith-Based Organizations 13
Religion and Development 14
Religion’s Influence: Belief, Institutions, Practices 15
“World Religions”: Changing Patterns, Dynamism,
and Influence 21
Religion and Politics: The United States and Beyond 23
Contemporary Religious Voices in US Policy 24
Religion, Mobilization, and Politics in the Rich Countries 25
Perspectives on NGOs 27
Marketplace 27
Global Socio-Political Systems 28
Shared Values, Identity, and Trust 28
Institutions: Organizational Affiliation and Institutional
Rootedness 29
Why Faith-Based NGOs? 30
Religion, FBOs, and Development Agencies 31
References 34

vii
viii CONTENTS

3 Faith-Based Identities 41
FBOs as Religious and as Organizations 42
Types of Faith-Based Organizations in International
Charitable Action 44
FBOs: The Players 46
Human Rights NGOs and Religion 50
Balancing Professional and Religious Identities 51
Faith-Based NGOs: Four Big Issues 55
Whom to Serve? Universal or Communal? 55
Individual Transformation and Social Change 57
Proselytizing 58
Religious Belief, Organizational Culture, and Staff 60
FBOs’ Institutional Ties to Religion: A Typology 62
References 66
4 Encouraging Active Citizen Voices on International
Policy? The Record of US Faith-Based NGOs 71
FBOs, Religious Organizations, and Political Voice 73
Religious Agencies 75
Coalitions and Federations 77
Independent Issue-Focused Groups 77
Faith-Based Humanitarian NGOs and Advocacy 77
Faith-Based NGOs as Advocates 79
Record and Limitations 89
Independent Issue-Focused Groups 90
Mobilizing or Marginalizing Religious Citizen Action? 94
References 96
5 Agendas and Strategies: Prophetic Voices and Cautious
Reformers 101
Understanding FBO Advocacy: Theory and Motivations 102
Why FBO Advocacy? 103
Method: Categorizing Advocacy Issues 106
Public Policy Advocacy Agendas: Findings 109
FBO and Secular NGO Agendas 114
A Closer Look: “Advocating Against Hunger” 114
Benchmarks: Two Broad Agendas on Food Security 116
Faith-Based Food Security Agendas 118
Agendas in Comparative Perspective 120
References 121
 CONTENTS ix

6 Global Religions and National Politics 125

NGOs, Politics, Religion, and International Development 127
Four FBO Families 128
Transnational Relationships in Religious Communities 131
Universal Faiths and Sources of Variation 133
Legal-Institutional Framework 134
Public Opinion on Religion and Politics 134
Faith-Based Identities and Political Voice 136
Advocacy Issue Agendas 137
Advocacy Alliances 141
Universal Faiths and National Politics 142
References 145
7 Beyond Advocacy? Mobilizing Compassion 149
What We Know: Religion, Volunteering, and Mobilization 150
Methodology 152
Findings: What Are FBOs Asking of Supporters? 153
The FBOs and the Actions They Encourage 155
Transformative Work in Action: Some Themes and Cases 158
Transformative Experiences: Personal Practices
and Volunteering 159
Volunteering 160
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC): Building
a Culture of Service 161
Christian Peacemaker Teams 161
Maryknoll Lay Missioners and Volunteers 162
Faith in the Marketplace: Consumers and Investors 163
Simplicity 164
Impact Investing 165
Fair Trade 167
Divesting Fossil Fuels, Investing in Energy Access 167
Some Implications 169
References 172
8 Religious Movements and FBOs: The Climate Threat
and COVID-19 177
Social Movements, Religion, and FBOs 179
Historic Movements 180
Three Contemporary Movements 181
Jubilee Debt Campaign 181
x CONTENTS

Sanctuary Movements 184

Save Darfur Coalition 185
Climate and Energy Access: A Cause Struggles to Become
a Movement 186
COVID-19: Prophetic Voices in a Pandemic? 190
FBOs in a Society in Crisis: Racial Justice 197
References 199
9 Conclusions 205
FBOs, Religious Identities, and US Politics 206
Limiting Factors: Agendas and Communication 207
National or Global Voices? 208
Generosity, Citizenship, and Lifestyle 209
FBOs and the Potential for Mass Action 210
Lessons from Most Active Mobilizers 211

Appendix 215
Index 219
 About the Author

Paul J. Nelson is an Associate Professor of International Development

at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA),
University of Pittsburgh. Before joining the university in 1998, he worked
for several faith-related non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He
has published research on the World Bank, transnational NGO advo-
cacy, religion and development, human rights-based development, and
the Sustainable Development Goals. He holds a Ph.D. in International
Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

xi
 Abbreviations and Acronyms

ACLU American Civil Liberties Union

ACT (Alliance) Action by Churches Together
AFJN Africa Faith and Justice Network
AFSC American Friends Service Committee
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
AJWS American Jewish World Service
AKDN Aga Khan Development Network
BFW Bread for the World
BPF Buddhist Peace Fellowship
CAFOD Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (UK)
CRS Catholic Relief Services
DfID Department for International Development (UK)
ELCA Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
FBO Faith-Based organization
FCNL Friends Committee on National Legislation
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
INGO International Non-Governmental Organization
JDC Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender
LMIC Low- and Middle-Income Countries
LWR Lutheran World Relief
MCC Mennonite Central Committee
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
OVCs Orphans and Vulnerable Children
Sida Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

USAID United States Agency for International Development

WHO World Health Organization
WJA World Jewish Aid
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The continuum, generosity to resistance 26

Fig. 3.1 US religious traditions: moral project, source of authority,
perspective on development (Source Adapted from Kniss
[2003]) 43
Fig. 5.1 Issue selection: The charity to structural change continuum 107

xv
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Roman Catholic relief, humanitarian, and development

agencies 47
Table 3.2 Protestant and inter-denominational Christian agencies 49
Table 3.3 Agencies associated with Judaism and Islam 51
Table 3.4 Faith-based NGOs in human rights 52
Table 4.1 Ten faith-based NGOs and their relationships to religious
communities 74
Table 4.2 Sources for assessing advocacy, ten FBOs 80
Table 4.3 Advocacy at ten faith-based NGOs 81
Table 4.4 Advocacy content in Facebook and Twitter, September
1–24, 2020 83
Table 4.5 Advocacy profile of ten comparable secular development
NGOs 91
Table 5.1 Faith-based Advocacy Agendas, by Issue Category 110
Table 5.2 Advocacy Agendas of Selected Secular US-based NGOs 111
Table 6.1 Four faith-based NGO families in four countries 129
Table 6.2 Faith identity and opinion about religious voice
in politics, four countries 136
Table 6.3 Advocacy issues by category, country totals 138
Table 6.4 Number of advocacy issues by category and FBO family,
four countries, 2020 140
Table 7.1 Examples of lower and higher “cost” actions 153
Table 7.2 Mobilization activities, 50 FBOs 154
Table 7.3 Frequency of activities, by category of FBO 156
Table 8.1 Climate change in advocacy by selected faith-based NGOs 189

xvii
xviii LIST OF TABLES

Table 8.2 Communication by FBOs about the COVID-19

pandemic, March and April 2020 193
Table 8.3 Facebook posts by FBOs on pandemic & climate,
September 1–24, 2020 196
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

[W]e begin with spiritual empowerment. … When 200,000 people get

together, if they don’t have 100 percent spiritual discipline, if someone
throws a stone, the whole group can go astray. That’s why you need a
very strong spiritual foundation, and also a very strong scientific and tech-
nological foundation to bring about, from bottom up, an awakening. (A.T.
Aryaratne, leader of the Sarvodaya Shramadan movement, Sri Lanka)

The obligation to pursue justice is at the heart of Jewish tradition. In the

face of terrible poverty, epidemic disease, violence and human rights viola-
tions around the world, how should American Jews interpret and respond
to that obligation? (American Jewish World Service, introduction to
“Education”)

For Islamic Relief, it is a priority to increase partnership with religious

institutions and to re-integrate them into the development movement. Its
aim is to harness the spiritual and material capital of these communities and
to reduce the divide that imposed secularism has created in their perceived
role. (Islamic Relief on “Spiritual Capital in Development”)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
P. J. Nelson, Religious Voices in the Politics of International Development,
Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68964-3_1
2 P. J. NELSON

We believe in life before death. We seek to follow the teaching of Jesus

Christ, who commanded his followers to love their neighbour and work
for a better world…. We support people to stand up for their rights and
to build stable, secure lives they can enjoy living. (Christian Aid, “Our
Aims”)

As these statements show, there is no shortage of religiously inspired

moral motivation among outspoken advocates in international economic
and social development. Religious visions of a just social order often
motivate charitable, personal, and political engagement in social change,
at home and in societies far from home. Religion has supported
human slavery and its abolition, the subjugation of women and their
advancement, oppressive authoritarian rule and democratic and egali-
tarian communities. It has produced dynamic movements for pro-poor
social change, formed social safety nets, encouraged reverence and stew-
ardship of natural resources, and supported the human rights claims of
marginalized groups. It has also propped up violent authoritarian dicta-
tors, excluded already impoverished groups from communal protections,
justified ruthless environmental exploitation, and suppressed women and
sexual minorities.
The charitable role of religious and faith-based organization in inter-
national humanitarian work is well recognized in the rich countries.
This book explores a less-discussed aspect of their work: How do reli-
gious organizations in the United States and in other wealthy societies
explain global poverty and inequality to their constituents, and help
those constituents understand and fulfill their religious duties? In an era
when religious voices have become prominent in politics in the United
States and elsewhere, where is the moral and religious call for world-
wide greater opportunity, human rights, fair global economic rules, and
humane foreign policies? Is there a significant movement among people
of faith, and what are the roles of NGOs and other forms of faith-related
organizations in building such a constituency?
Religious principles and teachings have motivated acts of great charity
and self-sacrifice, as well as acts of violence and repression through the
ages. Religious principles and motivations are institutionalized and repre-
sented in the international arena today by religious organizations and
coalitions, faith-based NGOs (FBOs), and other research and advocacy
networks that translate principles into advocacy for human rights and
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

development policies. Faith-based NGOs and the religious organizations

that sponsor some of them have prominent roles through education,
volunteer opportunities, advocacy programs, and other initiatives that
religious organizations use to educate and mobilize their members and
supporters.
FBOs have become leaders in delivering humanitarian and commu-
nity development aid in poor countries. But how do they participate in
educating and mobilizing their members and donors on behalf of the
world’s poorest people? Their efforts to build public support for action
to expand opportunities, challenge injustices, and respect rights are, with
exceptions, modest in their scope and impact. This volume examines these
efforts in the United States in order to understand why they remain
modest, and what can be learned from the notable exceptions among
religious and faith-based groups.
There are two reasons why the question of faith-based NGOs’
policy advocacy work, especially their outreach to individual donors and
constituents, should be of urgent interest. First, it shapes the future direc-
tion of international NGOs (INGOs): Humanitarian nonprofits can steer
toward delivering material aid and services, or toward participating in the
kind of dynamic civil society that can shape social policy and influence
the direction and impact of political and economic change in the coun-
tries where they work. Both choices—aid delivery and political voice—are
legitimate, and secular and faith-based NGOs will choose both paths.
How faith-based groups navigate these choices is important, and shapes
their distinctive roles in international affairs.
Second, voices of the religious right have become politically influen-
tial in American politics, and FBOs have a distinctive opportunity to
inform and mobilize a potentially influential public voice in the coun-
try’s public life. Faith-based humanitarian agencies won’t be the central
religious actors in such a process, of course, but they have a legitimacy
and privileged access to a segment of the public. What they do with that
access and trust is politically important, and can help shape the future
roles of religion in public life.
At the center of the study are the tensions between charitable action
and political voice, and between religion and politics. The first tension
arises because FBOs were almost all created as charitable nonprofits
and therefore assign high priority to their ability to deliver material
aid and capacity-building support in poor communities. Delivering this
aid—expressing a religious community’s generosity—in turn requires a
4 P. J. NELSON

secure flow of funding. Can organizations whose primary interest in their

constituents is as a donor base also challenge and equip those constituents
to become informed, outspoken, prophetic advocates for economic justice
and political and civil freedoms?
The second tension, the role of religious voices in politics, has become
acute in twenty-first-century US politics. Many Americans and Europeans
are uncomfortable with the outspoken and direct application of religious
teaching to public policy. Yet activists, clergy, and candidates for public
office in the United States boldly compete for the strong positions on
“moral issues” of family, culture, sexuality, and personal character. How
do organizations that seek to mobilize a constituency in support of a just
global order handle this discomfort with religious influence over public
policy?
In general, the answer to these questions is in two parts: First, reli-
gious bodies tend to delegate their effort to influence international policy
issues to the organizations created to provide relief—faith-based NGOs.
Second, most of these faith-based NGOs practice a kind of cautious
reformism, advancing modest proposals, and reaching out tentatively to
their constituents. They call for modest reforms in foreign aid policy, more
generous aid, partial forgiveness of debts, and incremental improvement
in human rights performance. Real religious fervor seems to be concen-
trated in movements against abortion, for a traditional vision of the family,
and for specifically religious freedoms. Some FBOs are important excep-
tions, with programs of education, personal transformative activities, and
policy advocacy are strikingly more systematic and more prophetic in
tone. One strategy of this study is to document these outliers and under-
stand how they came to embrace such mobilization efforts and build a
culture of personal and political mobilization among their constituents.
This book has been on my mind for nearly 40 years. My first real
job, which began as an internship at age 24, was at the faith-based
advocacy organization Bread for the World. It was an exciting, fulfilling,
life-changing job, and I remain convinced of the organization’s premise
that people of faith should care about helping create opportunities for
poor and marginalized people, and that this caring must translate into
their citizenship—how they vote, communicate with elected officials, and
use their considerable power as consumers and investors. After 13 years
working for faith-based NGOs and more than 20 years teaching interna-
tional development to aspiring humanitarians, I continue to believe this
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

is true, and that when FBOs don’t work energetically and imaginatively
to build an informed, active constituency, it is a critical failing.
The potential of this moral voice seems particularly important at a
moment of extreme challenges for the United States and for the world.
The looming crisis of climate change is manifesting itself in fright-
ening weather patterns; the world is experiencing a pandemic of historic
proportions; the long history of racial exploitation and discrimination has
boiled over in response to deadly policy violence against Black Americans;
and the country’s electoral system and capacity for democratic decision-
making are being strained. All of these challenges have global implications
or manifestations, and they present challenges to people of faith that seem
to call for a level of urgency and bold religious leadership, not business as
usual.

Religious Voices
When I refer to “religious voices,” I mean to include religious leaders
themselves; worshipping communities; faith-based NGOs; interfaith
federations formed to address topics such as debt, HIV/AIDS, and labor
rights; and citizen movements and social movements with strong religious
identification. This study focuses primarily on US-based faith-related
NGOs, from well-known names such as Catholic Relief Services, Islamic
Relief, American Jewish World Service, and World Vision, to smaller agen-
cies with ties to particular religious communities or simply self-identified
as faith-based. These FBOs have come to play a large part in US and
European voluntary action in international humanitarian affairs. They are
among the largest, most influential NGOs in development and human-
itarian assistance, and in the United States they account for some 40
percent of gross NGO development expenditures (McCleary, 2011).
But their moral and political voice and the strength of their identifica-
tion with national and transnational religious communities are not widely
discussed or studied, and this book focuses on their significance as expres-
sions of religious identity, and their roles in the education and formation
of faith communities in the wealthy donor countries. It begins to fill this
gap by exploring and proposing answers to five questions:

1. How important is the religious identification of faith-based develop-

ment NGOs to their operations, theory of change, choice of whom
to serve, among other considerations?
6 P. J. NELSON

2. How do religious organizations and faith-based NGOs shape their

members’ awareness of global poverty, inequality, and human rights
violations, and mobilize them as citizens and consumers?
3. As public policy actors, how do faith-based organizations make their
views heard on international development and justice issues, and is
their agenda reformist or “prophetic”?
4. What explains the considerable variation among FBOs, and what
lessons can be learned from highly active mobilizers, and from mass
movements that have mobilized on international causes?
5. Are transnational faith-based NGOs essentially national or global
political actors?

Much of the research on religion and politics in the United States

focuses on volatile, high-profile issues, and on church-state relations.
This book takes a complementary approach, shedding light on religion
and politics by examining religious voices on a set of issues with great
moral significance but lower political salience for wealthy societies, issues
such as extreme economic inequality, widespread malnutrition in a world
with adequate food supplies, widespread violations of girls’ and women’s
rights to health and education, and human trafficking. I argue that these
are moral issues that command the attention and action of the reli-
gious traditions that FBOs represent, and I treat FBOs as political actors
and as organizations, non-profits that confront the same institutional
imperatives, including the need for stable funding, as do other NGOs.
The ten-year investigation reported here employs mixed methods and
rests on three sets of sources:

• a survey of public documents pertaining to 91 religious and faith-

based organizations in the United States, Europe, Japan, and
Australia, and a smaller number in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and
the Middle East;
• case studies of organizations with extensive or distinctive education
and advocacy agendas, to probe their strategies and identify factors
that make such work possible;
• studies of religious bodies’ and NGOs’ participation in several major
development policy and human rights issues: the “Jubilee 2000”
campaign to reduce and forgive the debt burden of highly indebted,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

low-income countries; the effort to expand energy access in commu-

nities and regions of the world where electricity and clean cooking
fuel are unavailable; and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic;
and demands for racial justice.

By examining how extensively FBOs and other religious bodies partic-

ipated, their places in international advocacy networks, and the advocacy
strategies they employ, I identify their distinctive voice and moral roles in
development policy-making, and their limitations and disagreements.

Between Silence and Social Protest

Religious institutions and people of faith in the United States and
Europe have from time to time mobilized and motivated enough of
their constituencies to produce influential movements. The best known in
contemporary US politics are culturally conservative, traditionalist move-
ments associated with the religious right and with anti-abortion advocacy
(Conger, 2010). But smaller movements led by religious activists have had
impacts on international human rights and poverty. US churches played
important roles in opposing to US interventions in Central America in the
1980s. Nepstad (2007) shows that progressive churches created the narra-
tives that inspired a strong enough “oppositional consciousness” that US
citizens were prepared to take to the streets, commit civil disobedience,
and harbor refugees from the region in what became known as the Sanc-
tuary movement. This movement and others focused on the well-being
of people living in or immigrating from poor countries—like the mobi-
lization in favor of debt forgiveness for low-income countries, and the
movement, led by Jewish congregations, to protect civilians in Sudan’s
Darfur region—all were episodes of unusually high level of mobilization
among American houses of worship.
This kind of mobilization is relatively rare. Do churches, religious
agencies, and faith-based NGOs effectively encourage their constituen-
cies to be active in the broad terrain that lies between donating in
response to a plea for generosity, and the level of outrage and commit-
ment that leads individuals and faith communities to take personal, social,
and political risks to express their solidarity with poor communities? This
middle terrain, made up of educational work, advocacy through letters
to elected representatives, programs to encourage significant volunteer
8 P. J. NELSON

service, changes in consumption patterns, or even new forms of invest-

ment, is the subject of this study. How do FBOs try to educate and
mobilize their constituencies to adopt these steps as principled citizens
and consumers?
Most faith-based NGOs in the wealthy countries have an asset that
their secular counterparts do not: Shared identity, faith, and in some
cases institutional affiliation and history. One of the central questions
motivating this research is about how they work with this powerful asset
that ties their constituencies to them more strongly than the constituen-
cies of other humanitarian NGOs. Do they operate like organizations
in a marketplace, competing for the generosity and loyalty of their
constituents? Or do they build on the shared identity and belief in an
effort to construct a more dynamic community of shared faith, voice
in society, and material support? Faith-based NGOs have the opportu-
nity to use these deep ties to build a dynamic moral voice for global
justice. Instead, most tend to behave more like charities in a marketplace,
competing for support and treading carefully when they ask their supports
to take actions as citizens or as consumers.
NGOs in development, environment, and human rights are often
discussed as political actors and have led some significant initiatives
to address policy issues of dam construction, debt forgiveness, anti-
personnel land mines. Among secular development/humanitarian NGOs,
Oxfam, Action Aid, Doctors Without Borders, and Save the Children,
UK and Sweden are among the most outspoken (Lindenberg & Bryant,
2001; Mahoney, 2008; Nelson & Dorsey, 2008). Religious agencies
and faith-based NGOs are often participants in major campaigns as well
and played significant leadership roles in several. But considering how
central economic justice and relief of poverty and hunger are in religious
teaching, their efforts are muted.
The remainder of the book opens up and examines the dimensions
of faith-based NGOs’ challenges to their supporters and constituents.
Chapter 2, on religion and development, establishes the context by intro-
ducing religion as a factor in developing societies, religion in social and
political movements in the United States and Europe, and FBOs as actors
in international development. Religious beliefs, institutions, and practices
are present and influential in almost every neighborhood and village in
the countries of the Global South and are often powerful sources of
rhetorical, ideological, spiritual, and organizational resources for commu-
nity development and social action. Religion is also often a conservative
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

force, anchoring traditional social orders, notably with respect to gender

relations and reproductive practices and choices. Religion is a powerful
societal and political force in the United States as well, both in contem-
porary politics and historically. Since the 1990s, conservative religious
leaders have been increasingly prominent, mobilizing a significant voting
public on policies that favor private education, restrict reproductive rights,
oppose LGBT rights, and redefine and expand “religious liberties.” Reli-
gion has also been a major organizing and motivating force for progressive
movements for civil rights, peace, and immigration and sanctuary.
Chapter 3 explores the faith-based identities of FBOs, how they are
expressed, and the issues and debates that shape their roles as actors in
development. The chapter begins by surveying the variety of religious
traditions and forms of action in international development, including
monastic traditions, missionary movements and schools, hospitals, and
religious solidarity groups. Then the religious identities of four contem-
porary faith-based NGOs are profiled: American Jewish World Service,
World Vision, Islamic Relief, and Catholic Relief Services. I develop
a typology of forms of organizational relationship between faith-based
NGO and religious institutions themselves, and discuss four critical
choices related to FBOs’ religious identity: Their understanding of whom
to serve; the relationship between individual transformation and social
change; their position and practice on proselytizing; and the roles of
religious belief, organizational culture, and staffing.
With FBOs defined, conceptualized, and profiled, Chapter 4 turns to
advocacy and constituency education. In practice, responsibility for the
moral formation of the faithful as global citizens often falls to NGOs that
were created to do charitable work. How do they educate and mobi-
lize their US constituencies? I examine ten diverse FBOs’ advocacy as
represented on their websites, and using budget and staffing data. Among
these Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Reform Jewish,
Islamic, Mennonite, and Quaker agencies, including some with significant
“insider” lobbying presence in Washington, DC and other capitals. The
extent of advocacy and its prominence and urgency in agencies’ websites
and other communications with their constituencies varies widely. Some
small Christian sects with historic commitment to social justice, and non-
Christian minority faiths in the United States make exceptional efforts
to mobilize their constituents, and independent NGOs that specialize in
advocacy play an important role. In light of the importance of helping
10 P. J. NELSON

poor people in religious teachings, the religious voice on these matters

is modest. People of faith in the United States can find guidance and
support in translating their faith and values into effective political voice,
but they need to seek it out.
When people do look to FBOs for such guidance, their understanding
is shaped by the issues that FBOs have chosen to highlight. In Chapter 5,
I analyze their policy advocacy agendas in 2010 and again in 2018,
and find that most agencies consistently devote their public voice to
supporting more generous and responsive aid spending, and give less
attention to more complex, structural causes of poverty, including human
rights, military policy, trade, taxation, immigration, or corporate conduct.
The findings suggest that, as is true of the larger development NGO
population, a handful of NGOs take leadership roles on new or difficult
issues, and a larger population of faith-based groups focus their advocacy
largely on encouraging generosity. Shifts in their agendas from 2010 to
2018 also suggest that climate and immigration issues have gained more
central positions in the religious humanitarian agenda, but FBOs are more
often cautious reformers than prophetic voices.
How do these generalizations vary across the rich countries? Recent
studies suggest that national boundaries and political cultures have a
powerful effect on NGOs that are often viewed as transnational actors in a
global civil society. Chapter 6 demonstrates that even organizations repre-
senting universal faith traditions and social teachings express themselves
differently in the varied political and cultural environments of distinct
wealthy donor societies. Four “families” of faith-based organizations, with
affiliates in the United States, the UK, Germany, and Japan, are examined,
representing Roman Catholicism , mainline Protestant denominations,
Reform Judaism, and evangelical Christianity. While the members of
each FBO family do embrace common principles and some common
agendas, choices about policy advocacy appear to be shaped by national
political cultures. This prominence of national political environments over
shared religious identities is further reinforced by sharp differences that
have emerged within transnational religious communities over policies
related to sexuality and sexual identities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and other issues. These findings reinforce the importance of national
political cultures, and the limits of “global” civil society.
Chapter 7 moves away from policy advocacy, examining how some
FBOs encourage their constituencies to consider pro-social investment,
conscious consumption patterns, long-term volunteering, international
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

service learning, and other potentially transformative experiences. By

assessing the range of activities encouraged by FBOs, and distinguishing
the demands they place on constituents’ time and other resources, it is
possible to make a broader assessment of what FBOs are asking of their
constituents, beyond financial support. I review the record of 50 NGOs,
most from the United States, in 2011 and 2020. Profiles of several FBOs
that motivate their constituents to provide exceptional levels of political or
other engagement highlight the patterns of volunteering, education, spir-
itual practices, and community engagement involved, and provide insight
into how religious belief and political, consumer, and investment action
are integrated.
In Chapter 8, significant faith-based movements have mobilized
around causes as diverse as religious freedom, anti-abortion, opposition
to (or support for) LGBT rights, civilians’ safety in Darfur, Sanctuary
movements in the United States, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, and climate
activism including the movement to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest in
energy access for poor communities. These and other movements, which
achieved varying degrees of success mobilizing mass support, offer lessons
about how faith communities help and hinder individual mobilization.
That experience also provides perspective on how US-based FBOs engage
with contemporary global crises—climate change, racial justice, and the
early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This approach to religious voices and an aspect of US foreign policy
may seem naïve to some, unreasonably demanding of FBOs to others. But
it is grounded in my experience with these NGOs, in what research has
shown about the importance of membership-based NGOs and the power
of religion to motivate political action, and grounded in a careful study
of a sample of FBOs.

References
Conger, K. H. (2010). Religious interest groups and the American polit-
ical process. In K. Black, D. Koopman & L. Hawkins (Eds.), Religion in
American politics (pp. 192–201). Boston: Longman.
Lindenberg, M., & Bryant, C. (2001). Going global. Transforming relief and
development NGOs. Kumarian Press.
Mahoney, C. (2008). Brussels versus the beltway: Advocacy in the United States
and the European Union. Washington, DC: Georgetown.
12 P. J. NELSON

McCleary, R. (2011). Private voluntary organizations and relief and development,

1939–2005. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, P., & Dorsey, E. (2008). New rights advocacy: Changing strategies
of development and human rights NGOs. Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press.
Nepstad, S. E. (2007). Oppositional consciousness among the privileged:
Remaking religion in the Central America solidarity movement. Critical
Sociology, 33(4), 661–688.
 CHAPTER 2

Religion, Development, and Faith-Based

Organizations

In early 2020, Zimbabwean Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa was busy

“reassuring his congregants that they will be ‘spared’ from the [Corona]
virus through prayer and the divine protection he mediates. ‘You will not
die, because the Son is involved,’ he says, giving believers ‘the freedom
that no medication can offer (in Kirby et al., 2020).’” In Uganda, concern
about similar messages was so great that the government threatened
to prosecute some pastors, but in neighboring Tanzania the President
himself uses imagery of spiritual battles against demonic disease to mobi-
lize his people (Kirby et al., 2020). At the same time, in all three countries
Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic-sponsored social service and public
health agencies are doing essential, life-saving work to prevent infections
and treat the sick (Rivera, 2020).
The urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic put contrasting roles and
views of religion in sharp relief in 2020. While some religious leaders
promoted magical thinking and offered dangerous guidance, others were
important voices communicating public health guidance, and religious
agencies provided critical support to immigrants, poor communities, and
other vulnerable people. None of this is unfamiliar to readers in the
United States, where some religious and political leaders have behaved
similarly, for good and ill.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2021
P. J. Nelson, Religious Voices in the Politics of International Development,
Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68964-3_2
14 P. J. NELSON

Before delving into the political life of FBOs, this chapter establishes
the context by discussing major themes in scholarship and experience with
religion and international development; religion and politics in the United
States and other aid donor countries; and NGOs as political actors.

Religion and Development

The apparent tensions between religion and the modernizing impulse of
development have led to a discomfort with religion among many devel-
opment scholars and professionals. Religious beliefs and institutions are
often seen as anti-scientific, emphasizing personal conduct over social rela-
tions, focusing on otherworldly concerns rather than concrete human
needs, and furthering communitarian and sectarian divisions. Religion
and development are sometimes seen as upholding competing visions for
human advancement. Religion invites people to find meaning in commu-
nity and in beliefs, disciplines, and rituals that recognize and honor the
sacred, discipline the mind and spirit, and ultimately uphold another
reality over the physical one. Development holds that improving the phys-
ical quality of life and promoting social cohesion and participation are the
goods that we should pursue.
Yet religious actors are persistently involved in development, through
missions; faith-based NGOs; and local religious communities, leaders, and
authorities. Whether they appear to development practitioners as obstacles
or resources, religious institutions and beliefs are influential almost every-
where that development practitioners work. The importance of national
and local faith-related community organizations, religious authorities,
and worshipping communities is increasingly recognized, as the recent
outpouring of published research suggests (Hoksbergen & Ewert, 2002;
Candland, 2001; Herbert, 2003; James, 2007; Hefferan et al., 2009; Ter
Haar, 2009; Clarke & Jennings, 2008; Haynes, 2007, 2014; Tomalin,
2013; Deneulin & Radoki, 2011; Kagawa et al., 2012; Ali & Hatta,
2014; Appleby et al., 2015; Hasan, 2017; Öhlmann et al., 2018; Barro
& McCleary, 2019; Rajkobal, 2019; Kraft & Wilkinson, 2020).
Faith-based organizations are subject to many of the concerns and
issues discussed in the literature on NGOs and nonprofits. But interna-
tional NGOs in the faith communities can play a particular role, linking
individuals, worshipping communities, and national religious organiza-
tions across geographic, economic, and cultural gaps. In the United
States, McCleary (2009) shows that FBOs raise and deliver a large
and growing share of private development and humanitarian assistance,
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 15

and these international NGOs (INGOs) with ties to religious traditions

are only the most visible manifestations of “faith-based” development
voluntary action. Tens of thousands of local, national, and sub-national
organizations, from individual congregations, temples, religious orders,
and authorities, to national religious agencies and movements, shape the
politics of economic and social development in virtually every society.
Religious and faith-based action are organized at many levels. A 2005
UNICEF study of Christian and Islamic faith-based responses to the
needs of orphans and vulnerable children in Africa identifies four kinds of
FBOs working in rural communities and urban neighborhoods: Worship-
ping congregations (churches, parishes, or mosques); faith-based NGOs,
which have an identity separate from a single congregation; community-
based organizations (which differ from NGOs in this study because
they employ no full-time staff); and religious coordinating bodies, which
support and coordinate the efforts of local congregations (Foster, 2005).
All of these except the “coordinating bodies” are organized in the
communities. The coordinating groups may be coalitions or more highly
structured and hierarchical agencies, as in the Anglican and Catholic
churches, whose national social service agencies are under the authority
of the country’s bishops. Among FBOs organized on all of these levels,
INGOs based in the rich countries play influential roles in the flow of
funds, but community-based groups are the service providers.

Religion’s Influence: Belief, Institutions, Practices

The relationship between religion and development is complicated. In
virtually every village and poor neighborhood, religious institutions are
important social features and central to many peoples’ daily lives. Reli-
gion influences people’s life choices and the social and economic life of
their communities through individual religious beliefs and ideas; through
religious disciplines, practices, and institutions that shape social life; and
through religious institutions and authorities. In pages that follow, I
consider examples of religion’s significance to the daily lives of poor
communities, including the significance of religious conversions; its signif-
icance to social and political movements; and the ways in which religious
organizations are political arenas where important social issues of power
identity are debated. First, consider the variety of ways that religious
influence is exercised at the local level.
16 P. J. NELSON

Daily Life
Buddhists in many Southeast Asian communities begin their mornings by
appearing on streets or footpaths to offer food or cash to monks who
live in and serve the community. The gesture “makes merit”—earns reli-
gious credit—for the donors, feeds the monks who provide educational
and other services in the community, and cements the link between the
institutions of Theravada Buddhism and its adherents in an immediate and
important way. Especially in villages and small towns, the village temple or
pagoda is not only the home of the monks and a religious center, but also
the best school for boys and a center for community activity (McDaniel,
2010).
Faithful Muslims see their dedication to God and to the global commu-
nity of the faithful (umma) as shaping every aspect of their lives. But the
faith’s expressions in clothing, family life, business, and everyday interac-
tions between the sexes differ widely across the Asian, Middle Eastern,
and African societies where Islam is most practiced. Fundamental obli-
gations, sometimes called Islam’s five pillars, are honored everywhere:
Prayer, affirming Allah’s Godhood and dominion, charity, the pilgrimage
to Mecca, and fasting. Other ethical requirements include the obligation
to structure financial transactions so that lenders share the risk involved
and do not charge interest. Ordinary life stops five times a day for prayers,
and Sufi Muslims practice forms of repetitive prayer intended to deepen
the consciousness of the presence of the Divine.
Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Catholic Christians in many parts of Latin
America express their religious faith in daily life in contrasting ways.
Sheldon Annis’ (2000) classic study of these groups in a Guatemalan
village puts these differences in sharp relief. Evangelicals’ emphasis on
personal righteousness and individual advancement means that in addition
to abstaining from worldly vices such as alcohol, gambling, and extra-
marital sex, evangelicals demonstrate their commitment by investing,
increasing non-farm incomes, and accumulating wealth even on a modest
scale. The Catholic emphasis on community obligations, ritual celebra-
tions, and solidarity produces a distinct pattern of mostly agricultural and
less abstemious conduct. The considerable costs of these ritual events
amounts to a kind of a “tax” on Catholic villagers, but they also provide
a source of social solidarity and spiritual and cultural meaning.
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 17

Religious Conversion and Identity

These examples only scratch the surface of the many ways that reli-
gious beliefs, practices, identities, and institutions shape individual and
community life. Religious identity is a source of inequalities and conflicts
that development practice does not consistently recognize (Tadros &
Sabates-Wheeler, 2020). One way to illustrate the depth and dimensions
of religion’s influence is to consider the significance of religious iden-
tity and religious conversions. Conversion can be an intensely personal
step, but it can have deep political meaning and profound implications
for livelihoods, social acceptance, and political identity.
In Brazil, Chesnut’s (1997) study of Pentecostal Christians in the
northeastern city of Belen found that the conversion from Catholicism
to emotionally expressive Pentecostal Christianity usually resulted from a
personal crisis—illness, addiction, spousal abuse—and had demonstrable
health benefits for many converts. The growing Pentecostal Christian
minority in Brazil is usually seen as politically conservative, patriarchal,
and less engaged in community development than the country’s activist
Catholic Church. But converts in Chesnut’s study had improved health
and incomes, traceable to the strict behavioral standards, and women
found powerful ways to leverage their new spiritual and social identity
to improve or escape from violent, abusive marriages.
Conversion from Hinduism in parts of India, on the other hand, has at
times been an individual or mass strategy to escape caste-based discrimina-
tion against dalits. Ever since the conversion of dalit leader Dr. Ambedkar
and 400,000 others in October 1956, conversion to Buddhism or Chris-
tianity has been a highly visible strategy. In 2010 and 2011, conversions
to Christianity in several Indian states sparked reprisals against Christians
suspected by militant Hindus of evangelizing among dalits (Wankede,
2008), and laws against conversions are on the books in several Indian
states (Jenkins, 2019).
Even when it is not a public, conspicuous gesture, conversion, or
re-assertion of religious identity can have wide-ranging social signifi-
cance. Religious commitment and identity has been used to mobilize
people in social movements, including civil rights in the United States,
anti-apartheid in South Africa, anti-colonial movements in India and
elsewhere, and movements for debt relief and other reforms. Human
rights standards recognize the right of every person to choose their own
religion, or to practice none, as well as the right of parents to raise chil-
dren in a chosen faith (Office of the High Commissioner on Human
18 P. J. NELSON

Rights, n.d.). But these freedoms are often restricted in practice, and
belonging to a religious minority is very often grounds for exclusion and
discrimination.

Religion and Social Movements

Religious belief, institutions, and leaders play significant roles in social and
political movements and community organizations. These movements,
whether focused on resistance to an authoritarian state, groups’ rights, or
on particular issues, often draw on religious resources. Religion appears to
provide shared ideology and identity, a set of individual beliefs as well as
group identities that help mobilize movements and give them a distinctive
(religious) identity socially (Williams, 2006). Religion can provide ideo-
logical and spiritual support for justice and rights claims, as did Christian
Base Communities in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s; institu-
tional support and protection for vulnerable communities, as in cases of
land occupation by poor peoples’ movements in Guatemala and Brazil;
and national-level resistance by religious leaders, as in resistance by the
Kenyan Churches under President Daniel Arap Moi in the 1990s, and by
Burmese monks in 2007 (Kinyanjui, 2002).
Whether well-known or obscure, successful or barely hanging on,
religiously-led campaigns have contributed in diverse ways to movements
for freedom and human rights. Buddhist monks in Burma at times helped
check the excesses of that country’s regime, even while the institutions of
Buddhism also provide the regime a measure of legitimacy. Thousands of
orange-robed monks took to the streets in September 2007 following
government violence against peaceful protesters, symbolically inverting
their alms bowls to signal that they would not accept gifts—a source of
religious merit—from the country’s rulers. But in the last decade Burma’s
monks have been better known for leading the extremist anti-Muslim
movement MaBaTha (Association for the Protection of Race and Reli-
gion) (International Crisis Group, 2017). The monks’ long-standing role
in providing education and articulating shared values and identity have
been sources of popularity for its Buddhist nationalist platform, associated
with the expulsion of Rohingya Muslims.
Catholic “base communities” in Latin America provided ideological
and material support for progressive grassroots social and political action
over four decades. Inspired in the late twentieth century by libera-
tion theology that emphasized God’s special care for poor people, base
communities are small groups mostly within Catholic parishes that meet
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 19

to study, pray, and to provide mutual support for practical action. Base
communities’ numbers and influence have been in decline as the Catholic
hierarchy has discouraged the radical politicization of the church (Nord-
stokke, 2015). But base community groups remain an enduring source
of trust and group solidarity in many countries. In El Salvador, for
example, the NGO FUNDAHMER works with ecclesial base commu-
nities on projects that integrate community development with political
and spiritual awareness. In Nicaragua, where base communities provided
support for the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s, these communities
continue to sponsor social services including community-based childcare,
child nutrition, schools, and preschools.
Progressive Catholic communities are not the only voice of Christianity
in the region. Pentecostal churches, often housed in storefronts, are the
fastest growing faith in the region, and they have a reputation as apolitical
or politically conservative. In many cases this reputation is well-earned, as
Pentecostal Christianity stresses personal transformation and has had close
ties to authoritarian rule in countries such as Guatemala and Brazil (Smith
& Silveira, 2018). Still, in many towns and poor urban neighborhoods
Pentecostal leaders too can be found struggling for housing rights and
against evictions, and helping provide water and healthcare services to
their underserved neighborhoods (Freeman, 2012).
Thai “environment monks” have worked since at least the 1980s to
support local communities and NGOs in protecting forest resources. The
Buddhist monks, whose high status in Thai society gives them a measure
of protection and credibility, have used both highly symbolic gestures
(“ordaining” individual trees and draping them with a monk’s orange
robes), and more conventional forms of organizing, dialogue, and protest
to educate and advocate for forest protection (Walter, 2006). They do this
work in several of Thailand’s regions despite the general conservatism of
organized Buddhist monks (the sangha) (McCargo, 2004).

Religious Institutions Are Important Social Institutions Themselves

Debates over authority and rights within religions themselves can also be
important arenas for shaping social relations. Debates over who has power
to define religious doctrine, practice, leadership, and membership, and to
exercise leadership and receive religious service and status are framed in
theological terms, but the debates can have direct implications for social
and political institutions. The sangha in Thailand is embroiled in debates
over ordination of women, and its strong links to the Thai monarchy
20 P. J. NELSON

and national identity make these debates important to national political

culture. Thai women who want to be ordained as nuns—bhikkhuni—are
limited to a secondary level of religious service as white-robed mae jis
who largely provide cleaning and cooking services to monks. In some
other national Theravada Buddhist institutions (Sri Lanka’s for example)
and in East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, women can be ordained to status
equal to that of monks, subject to all of the vows and disciplines by
which monks live, and able to play a role in education and commu-
nity services provided by Buddhism’s ordained religious (Tomalin, 2006;
Gray, 2017). In rural Thailand, where village pagodas are schools and
monks are respected local leaders, Tomalin (2006) and others have shown
that battles over religious ordination mirror larger social struggles over
equal rights and gender roles.
Churches and religious leaders have a mixed and contradictory record
of resisting or bowing to authoritarian governments’ excesses. The failure
of Christian leaders in Nazi Germany, and again in 1990s Rwanda,
inspired soul-searching and institutional reviews in churches and NGOs.
The Kenyan Council of Christian Churches helped protect electoral
processes and political rights from abuse by Daniel Arap Moi’s govern-
ment in the 1990s, leveraging its moral authority and mass support,
and its ability to retain some of the evangelical/Pentecostal movements,
successfully resisting Moi’s efforts to erode electoral rights (Kinyanjui,
2002). But the same churches failed to prevent mass political violence
during the 2010 elections. Similarly, the Philippines’ Catholic Bishop
Jaime Sin famously helped inspire the “people power” mass movement
that protected the results of a national election and ousted Ferdinand
Marcos from power in 2007. Since then, Buenaobra argues, the Philippine
Church has often opposed and blocked progressive change (Buenaobra,
2016).
At a global level, the Roman Catholic Church entered into a deliber-
ative process in the mid-twentieth century that changed its outlook and
practices on issues ranging from religious ecumenism to human rights.
Pope John XXIII opened a reconsideration of aspects of the Church’s
social teachings in 1959 that produced the reform process known as
Vatican II. Appleby traces the debates over social teachings and religious
pluralism, in what he calls an example of “internal religious pluralism
turned to the advantage of ecumenism, tolerance, human rights and
peace (Appleby, 2000, 42).” The substantive changes were momentous
for Catholics, and they illustrate how religious bodies themselves can be
political institutions subject to debates and policy changes. The changes in
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 21

tone and policy brought by Pope Francis beginning in 2013 are perhaps
equally significant for contemporary Catholics and their engagement
internationally (Algo & Gelito, n.d.).
From the local fabric of individual life to global institutions, religion is
often highly salient for political and social relations. At the global level,
membership and dynamics of the world religions are seeing momentous
changes, and these are the focus of this last introductory section.

“World Religions”: Changing Patterns, Dynamism, and Influence

What are often referred to as the world religions—Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism—can also be seen not as cohesive
global religions but as constructions that cobble together highly diverse
variants of these faith traditions (Kurtz, 2017). Christian patterns of
worship vary from highly emotional charismatic faith, stressing visible
manifestations of possession by the Holy Spirit such as speaking in
tongues and healing by touch and prayer; to Orthodox Christianity,
whose rich, highly ritualistic worship uses painted icons, age-old musical
settings, and ancient rites and sacraments to express devotion. The cere-
monies and physical trapping of religion vary most visibly, but institutions,
authority, governance, and social teachings are at least as diverse. Islam
displays an equally wide variety of religious/political institutions, from the
strict Wahabist Islam of Saudi Arabia to the cosmopolitan and often egal-
itarian Islam of Indonesia and Malaysia, practiced in multi-faith cultures
and societies; to the mystical and highly egalitarian practices of Sufi
communities (Roy, 2004).
Despite the variation within global religious traditions, it is possible to
see that the major world religions are undergoing important geographic,
institutional, and sometimes political shifts. Christianity and Islam have
both experienced dramatic shifts in the global distribution of influence,
numbers, and dynamism. Christianity’s historic spread from the Middle
East, Europe, and North America, often linked to European coloniza-
tion or US church-sponsored missionaries, has created a global religious
community whose numbers are much greater in the Global South than
in Europe and North America. More than 82% of Christians lived in the
“global North” in 1910, but a century later, the figure was 39%, reflecting
rapid growth in Africa and parts of Asia (Pew Forum, 2011).
The African majority within the Anglican Communion—which
includes the US Protestant Episcopal Church—is now pushing back
22 P. J. NELSON

against trends in North American and European churches that accom-

modate and embrace increasingly accepting views on issues of sexuality
and theology. These churches in the Global South have sometimes allied
and affiliated with traditionalists in the North American and European
churches to assert their perspectives. The US Episcopal church suffered a
major split in the first decade of the 2000’s, directly sparked by the status
of openly gay and lesbian people in the church and its clergy, but long
driven by differences over the ordination of women and the interpreta-
tion of scripture. A total of 1004 parishes left the US Episcopal Church
and formed a separate Anglican Church in North America, with its own
governing structures (Anglican Church in North America, n.d.).
When the state of Israel recognized and agreed to employ the first
Reform Jewish rabbi in 2012, it was a victory for reform and conserva-
tive Jews in Israel, where previously only Orthodox Jews were recognized
and employed. It was also a victory in a long-term effort for inter-
ests groups of Reform Jews elsewhere. The Union for Reform Judaism
(2012), for example, sponsors a Reform Israel Fund, ARZA, which works
in the United States to “make Israel fundamental to the sacred lives and
Jewish identities of Reform Jews… [and to] …help build an inclusive and
democratic Israeli society.”
Buddhism’s several variants, including Zen, Mahayana, and Theravada,
are being adapted and subtly reshaped by their interactions with new
adherents in the West. In particular, Western Buddhists have supported
the growth of socially and political active engaged Buddhist movements.
Queen (2000) argues that engaged Buddhism may even be considered a
new form of Buddhism, though this claim may not give enough atten-
tion to the practice of environmental, peace, and human rights activism
among Buddhists in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere.
Still, while internal dialogues about matters of faith, culture, and
ethics go on within religious traditions constantly, institutions show us
repeatedly that they are conservative and slow to change. The Vatican’s
resistance to change in the marital status of priests and the roles of women
in the Church show how determined global Catholic institutions are
to hold to traditions. An association “Future Church” was formed in
1990 to advocate for “changes that will provide all Roman Catholics the
opportunity to participate fully in Church life and leadership” (Future
Church, n.d.). The Church’s insistence on a celibate priesthood survived
a serious test in 2020 when a proposal to loosen the requirement in the
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 23

Brazilian Amazon, motivated by the desperate need for more priests to

serve growing populations there, failed to win support in the Vatican.
In Islam, where no global institution comparable to the Vatican defines
orthodoxy or sanctions religious practice, the wide variety of expres-
sions of the faith has not shaken the strictest, fundamentalist religious
establishments based in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, religious fundamentalism
often represents the opposite response: Fundamentalists typically react
against accommodation of “modern,” secular society by others in their
faith, countering this accommodation by reasserting selected teachings,
traditions, and institutions (Almond et al., 2003).
Religions are diverse, dynamic social organizations. They reach deep
into many dimensions of social life, promoting or resisting social change
in ways that development advocates sometimes see as positive, some-
times negative, and often as ambiguous. With these themes of religion
and development established, we turn to the interaction of religion and
politics.

Religion and Politics: The

United States and Beyond
Faith-based community organizations and religious congregations them-
selves are important features of voluntary action in the United States
and across many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In the
United States, faith-based initiatives in the 1990s promoted such social
service providers as replacing or supplementing state welfare services as
public budgets shrank and programs for poor people lost political support
(Sager, 2010).
During the same period, religious voices became more prominent in
the public arena. Christian and Jewish leaders from across the political
spectrum competed for legitimacy as interpreters of their faiths’ implica-
tions for public life, and an evangelical Christian movement with broad
support, deep pockets, and a conservative platform on social and cultural
issues was the most prominent (Conger, 2010; Butler, 2006). The promi-
nent support from conservative evangelical Christian leaders for Donald
Trump since 2016 has highlighted this political role and brought a deep-
ening divide between a reformist minority and the larger body of conser-
vative white evangelicals willing to support former President Trump
despite his manifest moral failings. When mainstream evangelical maga-
zine Christianity Today editorialized in favor of Trump’s impeachment
24 P. J. NELSON

in December 2019, it provoked a firestorm of criticism and some praise

from across the evangelical Christian community (Berr, 2019).
Historically, US religious activists have been prominent in social and
political movements. The campaigns against slavery and the trans-Atlantic
slave trade were led by religious activists in the United States and
England. The temperance movement was initially motivated by a broad-
based effort from the pulpit, and from local temperance societies. By the
early twentieth century, women’s organizations and others had assumed
leadership roles, but the moral and humanitarian message from Christian
clerics remained important (Evans, 2017).
Civil rights, voting rights, and housing movements among African-
Americans in the mid-twentieth century had important support in the
Black churches. Not all churches or even all the historically Black Chris-
tian denominations were supportive. Nonetheless, “[t]he church was not
only the meeting place for the movement in the South, it also was…
the symbol of the movement…,. [T]he church represented the freedom
that the movement participants sought. It was a facility in the community
beyond the control of the white power structure,…where people could
express themselves without reprisal (LaFayette, 2004).” As I will show in
Chapter 8, there are instances of religious leadership in movements on
transnational issues as well.

Contemporary Religious Voices in US Policy

A 2011 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life provided
a vivid profile of how religious opinion is represented in the nation’s
capital. The study surveyed 212 religious advocacy groups in Wash-
ington, DC, including religious bodies themselves, membership organi-
zations representing individuals’ opinions, permanent coalitions, think
tanks, and organizations representing groups of religious institutions
(Hertzke et al., 2011). The extent and range of religious advo-
cacy are striking. Of the 212 Washington offices, 17% are devoted
entirely to international, 64% both international and domestic. More
than 90% say that they practice insider lobbying methods (meet with
policy-makers and legislators, sign letters to members of Congress),
but more agencies name “contacting their constituency” as their most
important method of advocacy. Coordinated religious grassroots advo-
cacy, it appears, is alive and well in Washington. These 212 agen-
cies (up from 111 just before 1990) are affiliated as interreligious
(25%), Roman Catholic (19%), Evangelical (18%), Jewish (12), Muslim
 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 25

and Mainline Protestant (8% each), and the remainder represent other
faiths, including several affiliated with Quaker and Mennonite Christian
bodies, historic “peace churches” in which pacifism is a core teaching
(Hertzke et al., 2011).
On which issues do these religious voices clamor to be heard in
the US capital? The top forty spenders—with budgets totaling roughly
$330 million for advocacy in 2009—work on US policy toward Israel
($88 million), abortion ($30 million), conservative or traditional cultural
values ($64 million), progressive cultural values (at least $14 million),
and “social justice” issues of hunger poverty and peace ($30 million).
Pro-Israel and “family” and “traditional values” issues, including home-
schooling and abortion, dominate the largest spenders. But religious
voices on international issues are well represented in the top 25 budgets,
with the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, the anti-hunger move-
ment Bread for the World, World Vision, Save Darfur Coalition, Catholic
Relief Services, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, International
Campaign for Tibet, and the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness
Ministries. Religious voices on international development-related issues
are far from the biggest religious lobbies, but they are a significant
segment of those “lobbying for the faithful.”

Religion, Mobilization, and Politics in the Rich Countries

Religious leaders, institutions, and faith-based NGOs in the United
States and Europe have from time to time mobilized enough of their
constituencies to produce influential movements. US churches played this
role in the opposition to US policies in Central America in the 1990s.
Nepstad (2007) shows that progressive churches created the narratives
that framed US policy in the region and created a strong enough “oppo-
sitional consciousness” that US citizens were prepared to take to the
streets, commit civil disobedience, and harbor refugees from the region
in what became known as the sanctuary movement. Like the Jubilee
2000 campaign for debt forgiveness for low-income countries, and the
movement among Jewish congregations to protect civilians in Darfur, the
sanctuary movement was an episode of intense grassroots mobilization
focused on the well-being of people in low-income countries.
Religious symbols, teaching, and identities can be important vehicles
for mobilizing people of faith in these movements, as the Central America
movement of the 1980s and Jubilee debt forgiveness movement illustrate.
Sanctuary for refugees builds on a long tradition of houses of worship as
26 P. J. NELSON

safe havens beyond the reach of civil authority for individuals in urgent
need. The value of hospitality to “strangers and wayfarers” was linked
to religiously motivated opposition to US policy in Central America,
and to the identification that progressive US Christians often feel to
Central American members of “base communities.” Jewish support for
action on Darfur similarly taps into Jews’ identification with persecuted
minorities, and the Jubilee movement drew on the Biblical tradition of
periodic debt forgiveness that was taught (if not practiced) in ancient
Israel. Mayo stresses the Jubilee movement’s ability to mobilize large
numbers of participants who had never participated in demonstrations or
made phone calls to elected representatives before—in short, who were
“so evidently not the ‘usual suspects’” (Mayo, 2005, 148).
Among religious minorities, too, symbols and narratives can be impor-
tant mobilization tools. Much of the discussion that follows concentrates
on the three Abrahamic religions, and on the many agencies associated
with Christian faith communities. This is largely because more than 80%
of Americans identify as Christians (78.4%), Jews (1.7%), or Muslims
(.7%)—and Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahá’ís, and others total less than
two percent of the population. But other religious communities have
an active interest in international human rights and development issues.
Hindus do not make advocacy on international development a priority in
the United States, but Buddhist and Bahá’í organizations are quite active.
Their efforts and agendas are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
But in international humanitarian, human rights, and development
issues, episodes of mass mobilization have been rare. The more stan-
dard response in the religious community to chronic inequalities, needs,
and injustices is to make a financial contribution to an NGO or church’s
special appeal for compassionate aid. This raises a central question for
this study: How do organizations attempt to move their constituents to
continue to make financial contributions, while challenging them to other
forms of action as citizens, consumers, and investors?
What is the terrain in Fig. 2.1 that lies between the standard, usually
modest response to a plea for generosity, and the level of outrage and

Financial contribution Principled resistance in social

for material aid --------------------------------------- movement-style action

Fig. 2.1 The continuum, generosity to resistance

 2 RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 27

commitment that leads individuals and faith communities to take

personal, social, and political risks to express solidarity with suffering
people? This middle terrain, made up of educational work, conven-
tional political advocacy, public mobilization such as marches or vigils,
programs to encourage significant volunteer service, changes in consump-
tion patterns, and new forms of investment—these are the focus of this
study. How do FBOs try to educate and mobilize constituencies to
take more of these actions as principled citizens and consumers? How
active are the FBOs, and what can be learned from those that are most
outspoken?
But before examining faith-based NGOs more closely, we need a
framework for thinking about NGOs generally, and their roles in inter-
national development policy in particular.

Perspectives on NGOs
Here we step back from the focus on faith-related NGOs, to consider
NGOs broadly as actors in the international system. Their significance is
widely acknowledged, both in service delivery and as expressive organiza-
tions representing values, ideologies, or pragmatic policy positions. NGO
roles as transnational political actors continue to produce debate as well,
as a recent essay in the Stanford Social Innovation Review shows (Blood-
good et al., 2019). I identify four broad perspectives on NGOs, each
based in a tradition of social theory. Each of the approaches—empha-
sizing market dynamics, embeddedness in political systems, shared values,
and institutional relationships—emphasizes a distinct aspect of the NGOs’
organizational life and relationship to the aid system that surrounds them.

Marketplace
Charitable agencies compete in a market for the compassion, generosity,
and loyalty of individual and institutional donors. Sogge et al. (1996)
portray relief and development NGOs, religious, and secular alike, as
competitors for whom image, substantive reputation, and loyalties are
key variables in organizational survival. This view of social interactions,
when applied to NGOs, emphasizes their strategic calculation and calls
attention to the operation of sectors (e.g., development, human rights)
in which NGOs work.
Several recent books portray humanitarian relief NGOs, for example,
as competitors in a humanitarian arena (Aldashev & Verdier, 2009;
28 P. J. NELSON

Smillie, 1995). International environmental, development, and human

rights NGOs may also compete for resources from a few foundation and
other sources to maintain their public advocacy roles, or, as Bob (2005)
has argued, to position themselves with the most articulate, compelling,
and photogenic local partner organizations. Eilstrup-Sangiovianni (2019)
shows how differentiation in advocacy strategies can produce “…a
strategic division of labor whereby some groups (mainly larger, well-
established and resource-rich groups) specialize in gaining political access
and media attention, while others (mainly smaller, less established groups)
focus on developing ‘niche’ agendas and strategies including, inter alia,
radical protest, monitoring and enforcement, and litigation.”

Global Socio-Political Systems

NGOs, in this view, are secondary actors within an international develop-
ment aid system dominated by states and donor agencies. Scholars who
treat them as political actors in such a system see NGOs either as trans-
formative actors promoting principled changes in international norms and
practices; or as actors who conform with and thereby support existing state
or corporate-dominated systems. In the latter view, the system’s more
powerful actors define NGOs’ roles within the system’s operation, and
religious NGOs may compete with other NGOs and contracting firms for
contracts to deliver services (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Tvedt, 1998). This
view emphasizes the state- and donor-dominated system in which NGOs
work, and which has assigned them their current relatively prominent
public role. The aid system supplies key resources, especially for many
of the larger religious development NGOs. Stroup (2012) shows that the
global identities of international NGOs can be over-emphasized, a theme
explored later in Chapter 6.

Shared Values, Identity, and Trust

Many NGOs and social movements define themselves with reference to
shared ideologies, identities, and community, and this perspective on
voluntary organizations has also been adopted by some scholars inter-
ested in NGOs as political actors. Many faith-based NGOs are agencies
of particular religious communities and act as a public expression of the
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 V

PRAYER AND TROUBLE

“‘He will.’ It may not be today,

That God Himself shall wipe our tears away,
Nor, hope deferred, may it be yet tomorrow
He’ll take away our cup of earthly sorrow;
But, precious promise, He has said He will,
If we but trust Him fully—and be still.
“We, too, as He, may fall, and die unknown;
And e’en the place we fell be all unshown,
But eyes omniscient will mark the spot
Till empires perish and the world’s forgot.
Then they who bore the yoke and drank the cup
In fadeless glory shall the Lord raise up.
God’s word is ever good; His will is best:—
The yoke, the heart all broken—and then rest.”
—Claudius L. Chilton.

Trouble and prayer are closely related to each other. Prayer is of

great value to trouble. Trouble often drives men to God in prayer,
while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble. There is great value in
prayer in the time of trouble. Prayer often delivers out of trouble, and
still oftener gives strength to bear trouble, ministers comfort in
trouble, and begets patience in the midst of trouble. Wise is he in the
day of trouble who knows his true source of strength and who fails
not to pray.
 Trouble belongs to the present state of man on earth. “Man that is
born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.” Trouble is
common to man. There is no exception in any age or clime or
station. Rich and poor alike, the learned and the ignorant, one and
all are partakers of this sad and painful inheritance of the fall of man.
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to
man.” The “day of trouble” dawns on every one at some time in his
life. “The evil days come and the years draw nigh” when the heart
feels its heavy pressure.
That is an entirely false view of life and shows supreme ignorance
that expects nothing but sunshine and looks only for ease, pleasure
and flowers. It is this class who are so sadly disappointed and
surprised when trouble breaks into their lives. These are the ones
who know not God, who know nothing of His disciplinary dealings
with His people and who are prayerless.
What an infinite variety there is in the troubles of life! How
diversified the experiences of men in the school of trouble! No two
people have the same troubles under like environments. God deals
with no two of His children in the same way. And as God varies His
treatment of His children, so trouble is varied. God does not repeat
Himself. He does not run in a rut. He has not one pattern for every
child. Each trouble is proportioned to each child. Each one is dealt
with according to his own peculiar case.
Trouble is God’s servant, doing His will unless He is defeated in
the execution of that will. Trouble is under the control of Almighty
God, and is one of His most efficient agents in fulfilling His purposes
and in perfecting His saints. God’s hand is in every trouble which
breaks into the lives of men. Not that He directly and arbitrarily
orders every unpleasant experience of life. Not that He is personally
responsible for every painful and afflicting thing which comes into the
lives of His people. But no trouble is ever turned loose in this world
and comes into the life of saint or sinner, but comes with Divine
permission, and is allowed to exist and do its painful work with God’s
hand in it or on it, carrying out His gracious designs of redemption.
 All things are under Divine control. Trouble is neither above God
nor beyond His control. It is not something in life independent of
God. No matter from what source it springs nor whence it arises,
God is sufficiently wise and able to lay His hand upon it without
assuming responsibility for its origin, and work it into His plans and
purposes concerning the highest welfare of His saints. This is the
explanation of that gracious statement in Romans, so often quoted,
but the depth of whose meaning has rarely been sounded, “And we
know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”
Even the evils brought about by the forces of nature are His
servants, carrying out His will and fulfilling His designs. God even
claims the locusts, the cankerworm, the caterpillar are His servants,
“My great army,” used by Him to correct His people and discipline
them.
Trouble belongs to the disciplinary part of the moral government
of God. This is a life of probation, where the human race is on
probation. It is a season of trial. Trouble is not penal in its nature. It
belongs to what the Scriptures call “chastening.” “Whom the Lord
loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
Speaking accurately, punishment does not belong to this life.
Punishment for sin will take place in the next world. God’s dealings
with people in this world are of the nature of discipline. They are
corrective processes in His plans concerning man. It is because of
this that prayer comes in when trouble arises. Prayer belongs to the
discipline of life.
As trouble is not sinful in itself, neither is it the evidence of sin.
Good and bad alike experience trouble. As the rain falls alike on the
just and unjust, so drouth likewise comes to the righteous and the
wicked. Trouble is no evidence whatever of the Divine displeasure.
Scripture instances without number disprove any such idea. Job is a
case in point, where God bore explicit testimony to his deep piety,
and yet God permitted Satan to afflict him beyond any other man for
wise and beneficent purposes. Trouble has no power in itself to
interfere with the relations of a saint to God. “Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
 Three words practically the same in the processes of Divine
discipline are found, temptation, trial and trouble, and yet there is a
difference between them. Temptation is really a solicitation to evil
arising from the devil or born in the carnal nature of man. Trial is
testing. It is that which proves us, tests us, and makes us stronger
and better when we submit to the trial and work together with God in
it. “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.”
Peter speaks along the same line:
“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, now for a season, if need be,
ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations; that the
trial of your faith being much more precious than that of gold
that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto
praise, and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”
The third word is trouble itself, which covers all the painful,
sorrowing, and grievous events of life. And yet temptations and trials
might really become troubles. So that all evil days in life might well
be classed under the head of the “time of trouble.” And such days of
trouble are the lot of all men. Enough to know that trouble, no matter
from what source it comes, becomes in God’s hand His own agent to
accomplish His gracious work concerning those who submit patiently
to Him, who recognise Him in prayer, and who work together with
God.
Let us settle down at once to the idea that trouble arises not by
chance, and neither occurs by what men call accident. “Although
affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out
of the ground, yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”
Trouble naturally belongs to God’s moral government, and is one of
His invaluable agents in governing the world.
When we realise this, we can the better understand much that is
recorded in the Scriptures, and can have a clearer conception of
God’s dealings with His ancient Israel. In God’s dealings with them,
we find what is called a history of Divine Providence, and providence
always embraces trouble. No one can understand the story of
Joseph and his old father Jacob unless he takes into the account
trouble and its varied offices. God takes account of trouble when He
urges His prophet Isaiah on this wise:
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak
ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
There is a distinct note of comfort in the Gospel for the praying
saints of the Lord, and He is a wise scribe in Divine things who
knows how to minister this comfort to the broken-hearted and sad
ones of earth. Jesus Himself said to His sad disciples, “I will not
leave you comfortless.”
All the foregoing has been said that we may rightly appreciate the
relationship of prayer to trouble. In the time of trouble, where does
prayer come in? The Psalmist tells us: “Call upon me in the day of
trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” Prayer is the
most appropriate thing for a soul to do in the “time of trouble.” Prayer
recognises God in the day of trouble. “It is the Lord; let him do what
seemeth him good.” Prayer sees God’s hand in trouble, and prays
about it. Nothing more truly shows us our helplessness than when
trouble comes. It brings the strong man low, it discloses our
weakness, it brings a sense of helplessness. Blessed is he who
knows how to turn to God in “the time of trouble.” If trouble is of the
Lord, then the most natural thing to do is to carry the trouble to the
Lord, and seek grace and patience and submission. It is the time to
inquire in the trouble, “Lord, what, wilt thou have me to do?” How
natural and reasonable for the soul, oppressed, broken, and bruised,
to bow low at the footstool of mercy and seek the face of God?
Where could a soul in trouble more likely find solace than in the
closet?
Alas! trouble does not always drive men to God in prayer. Sad is
the case of him who, when trouble bends his spirit down and grieves
his heart, yet knows not whence the trouble comes nor knows how to
pray about it. Blessed is the man who is driven by trouble to his
knees in prayer!

“Trials must and will befall;

 But with humble faith to see
Love inscribed upon them all—
This is happiness to me.
“Trials make the promise sweet,
Trials give new life to prayer;
Bring me to my Saviour’s feet,
Lay me low, and keep me there.”
Prayer in the time of trouble brings comfort, help, hope, and
blessings, which, while not removing the trouble, enable the saint the
better to bear it and to submit to the will of God. Prayer opens the
eyes to see God’s hand in trouble. Prayer does not interpret God’s
providences, but it does justify them and recognise God in them.
Prayer enables us to see wise ends in trouble. Prayer in trouble
drives us away from unbelief, saves us from doubt, and delivers from
all vain and foolish questionings because of our painful experiences.
Let us not lose sight of the tribute paid to Job when all his troubles
came to the culminating point: “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged
God foolishly.”
Alas! for vain, ignorant men, without faith in God and knowing
nothing of God’s disciplinary processes in dealing with men, who
charge God foolishly when troubles come, and who are tempted to
“curse God.” How silly and vain are the complainings, the
murmurings and the rebellion of men in the time of trouble! What
need to read again the story of the Children of Israel in the
wilderness! And how useless is all our fretting, our worrying over
trouble, as if such unhappy doings on our part could change things!
“And which of you with taking thought, can add to his stature one
cubit?” How much wiser, how much better, how much easier to bear
life’s troubles when we take everything to God in prayer?
Trouble has wise ends for the praying ones, and these find it so.
Happy is he who, like the Psalmist, finds that his troubles have been
blessings in disguise. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted,
that I might learn thy statutes. I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are
right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.”
 “O who could bear life’s stormy doom,
Did not Thy wing of love
Come brightly wafting through the gloom
Our peace branch from above.
“Then sorrow, touched by Thee, grows bright,
With more than rapture’s ray;
As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day.”
Of course it may be conceded that some troubles are really
imaginary. They have no existence other than in the mind. Some are
anticipated troubles, which never arrive at our door. Others are past
troubles, and there is much folly in worrying over them. Present
troubles are the ones requiring attention and demanding prayer.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Some troubles are self-
originated. We are their authors. Some of these originate
involuntarily with us, some arise from our ignorance, some come
from our carelessness. All this can be readily admitted without
breaking the force of the statement that they are the subjects of
prayer, and should drive us to prayer. What father casts off his child
who cries to him when the little one from its own carelessness has
stumbled and fallen and hurt itself? Does not the cry of the child
attract the ears of the father even though the child be to blame for
the accident? “Whatever things ye desire” takes in every event of
life, even though some events we are responsible for.
Some troubles are human in their origin. They arise from second
causes. They originate with others and we are the sufferers. This is a
world where often the innocent suffer the consequences of the acts
of others. This is a part of life’s incidents. Who has not at some time
suffered at the hands of others? But even these are allowed to come
in the order of God’s providence, are permitted to break into our lives
for beneficent ends, and may be prayed over. Why should we not
carry our hurts, our wrongs and our privations, caused by the acts of
others, to God in prayer? Are such things outside of the realm of
prayer? Are they exceptions to the rule of prayer? Not at all. And
God can and will lay His hand upon all such events in answer to
prayer, and cause them to work for us “a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory.”
Nearly all of Paul’s troubles arose from wicked and unreasonable
men. Read the story as he gives it in II Corinthians 11:23-33.
So also some troubles are directly of Satanic origin. Quite all of
Job’s troubles were the offspring of the devil’s scheme to break down
Job’s integrity, to make him charge God foolishly and to curse God.
But are these not to be recognised in prayer? Are they to be
excluded from God’s disciplinary processes? Job did not do so. Hear
him in those familiar words. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
O what a comfort to see God in all of life’s events! What a relief to
a broken, sorrowing heart to see God’s hand in sorrow! What a
source of relief is prayer in unburdening the heart in grief!

“O Thou who driest the mourner’s tear.

How dark this world would be,
If, when deceived and wounded here.
We could not fly to Thee?
“The friends who in our sunshine live,
When winter comes are flown,
And he who has but tears to give,
Must weep those tears alone.
“But Thou wilt heal the broken heart,
Which, like the plants that throw
Their fragrance from the wounded part,
Breathes sweetness out of woe.”
But when we survey all the sources from which trouble comes, it
all resolves itself into two invaluable truths: First, that our troubles at
last are of the Lord. They come with His consent. He is in all of them,
and is interested in us when they press and bruise us. And secondly,
that our troubles, no matter what the cause, whether of ourselves, or
men or devils, or even God Himself, we are warranted in taking them
to God in prayer, in praying over them, and in seeking to get the
greatest spiritual benefits out of them.
Prayer in the time of trouble tends to bring the spirit into perfect
subjection to the will of God, to cause the will to be conformed to
God’s will, and saves from all murmurings over our lot, and delivers
from everything like a rebellious heart or a spirit critical of the Lord.
Prayer sanctifies trouble to our highest good. Prayer so prepares the
heart that it softens under the disciplining hand of God. Prayer
places us where God can bring to us the greatest good, spiritual and
eternal. Prayer allows God to freely work with us and in us in the day
of trouble. Prayer removes everything in the way of trouble, bringing
to us the sweetest, the highest and greatest good. Prayer permits
God’s servant, trouble, to accomplish its mission in us, with us and
for us.
The end of trouble is always good in the mind of God. If trouble
fails in its mission, it is either because of prayerlessness or unbelief,
or both. Being in harmony with God in the dispensations of His
providence, always makes trouble a blessing. The good or evil of
trouble is always determined by the spirit in which it is received.
Trouble proves a blessing or a curse, just according as it is received
and treated by us. It either softens or hardens us. It either draws us
to prayer and to God or it drives us from God and from the closet.
Trouble hardened Pharaoh till finally it had no effect on him, only to
make him more desperate and to drive him farther from God. The
same sun softens the wax and hardens the clay. The same sun
melts the ice and dries out the moisture from the earth.
As is the infinite variety of trouble, so also is there infinite variety
in the relations of prayer to other things. How many are the things
which are the subject of prayer! It has to do with everything which
concerns us, with everybody with whom we have to do, and has to
do with all times. But especially does prayer have to do with trouble.
“This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of
all his troubles.” O the blessedness, the help, the comfort of prayer in
the day of trouble! And how marvelous the promises of God to us in
the time of trouble!
 “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I
deliver him; I will set him on high because he hath known my
name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be
with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.”

“If pain afflict, or wrongs oppress,

If cares distract, or fears dismay;
If guilt deject, if sin distress,
In every case, still watch and pray.”
How rich in its sweetness, how far-reaching in the realm of
trouble, and how cheering to faith, are the words of promise which
God delivers to His believing, praying ones, by the mouth of Isaiah:
“But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have
redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art
mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with
thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned:
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee…. For I am the Lord
thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.”
 VI

PRAYER AND TROUBLE (Continued)

“My first message for heavenly relief went singing over
millions of miles of space in 1869, and brought relief to my
troubled heart. But, thanks be to Him, I have received many
delightful and helpful answers during the last fifty years. I
would think the commerce of the skies had gone into
bankruptcy if I did not hear frequently, since I have learned
how to ask and how to receive.”—Rev. H. W. Hodge.

In the New Testament there are three words used which embrace
trouble. These are tribulation, suffering and affliction, words differing
somewhat, and yet each of them practically meaning trouble of some
kind. Our Lord put His disciples on notice that they might expect
tribulation in this life, teaching them that tribulation belonged to this
world, and they could not hope to escape it; that they would not be
carried through this life on flowery beds of ease. How hard to learn
this plain and patent lesson! “In the world ye shall have tribulation;
but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” There is the
encouragement. As He had overcome the world and its tribulations,
so might they do the same.
Paul taught the same lesson throughout his ministry, when in
confirming the souls of the brethren, and exhorting them to continue
in the faith, he told them that “we must, through much tribulation,
enter into the kingdom of God.” He himself knew this by his own
experience, for his pathway was anything but smooth and flowery.
He it is who uses the word “suffering” to describe the troubles of
life, in that comforting passage in which he contrasts life’s troubles
with the final glory of heaven, which shall be the reward of all who
patiently endure the ills of Divine Providence:
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed
in us.”
And he it is who speaks of the afflictions which come to the
people of God in this world, and regards them as light as compared
with the weight of glory awaiting all who are submissive, patient and
faithful in all their troubles:
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
But these present afflictions can work for us only as we co-
operate with God in prayer. As God works through prayer, it is only
through this means He can accomplish His highest ends for us. His
Providence works with greatest effect with His praying ones. These
know the uses of trouble and its gracious designs. The greatest
value in trouble comes to those who bow lowest before the throne.
Paul, in urging patience in tribulation, connects it directly with
prayer, as if prayer alone would place us where we could be patient
when tribulation comes. “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation,
continuing instant in prayer.” He here couples up tribulation and
prayer, showing their close relationship and the worth of prayer in
begetting and culturing patience in tribulation. In fact there can be no
patience exemplified when trouble comes, only as it is secured
through instant and continued prayer. In the school of prayer is
where patience is learned and practiced.
Prayer brings us into that state of grace where tribulation is not
only endured, but where there is under it a spirit of rejoicing. In
showing the gracious benefits of justification, in Romans 5:3, Paul
says:
“And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also: knowing
that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience;
and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed;
 because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
What a chain of graces are here set forth as flowing from
tribulation! What successive steps to a high state of religious
experience! And what rich fruits result from even painful tribulation!
To the same effect are the words of Peter in his First Epistle, in his
strong prayer for those Christians to whom he writes; thus showing
that suffering and the highest state of grace are closely connected;
and intimating that it is through suffering we are to be brought to
those higher regions of Christian experience:
“But the God of all grace, who hath called us into his
eternal glory, by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered
awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen and settle you.”
It is in the fires of suffering that God purifies His saints and brings
them to the highest things. It is in the furnace their faith is tested,
their patience is tried, and they are developed in all those rich virtues
which make up Christian character. It is while they are passing
through deep waters that He shows how close He can come to His
praying, believing saints.
It takes faith of a high order and a Christian experience far above
the average religion of this day, to count it joy when we are called to
pass through tribulation. God’s highest aim in dealing with His
people is in developing Christian character. He is after begetting in
us those rich virtues which belong to our Lord Jesus Christ. He is
seeking to make us like Himself. It is not so much work that He
wants in us. It is not greatness. It is the presence in us of patience,
meekness, submission to the Divine will, prayerfulness which brings
everything to Him. He seeks to beget His own image in us. And
trouble in some form tends to do this very thing, for this is the end
and aim of trouble. This is its work. This is the task it is called to
perform. It is not a chance incident in life, but has a design in view,
just as it has an All-wise Designer back of it, who makes trouble His
agent to bring forth the largest results.
 The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives us a perfect
directory of trouble, comprehensive, clear and worth while to be
studied. Here is “chastisement,” another word for trouble, coming
from a Father’s hand, showing God is in all the sad and afflictive
events of life. Here is its nature and its gracious design. It is not
punishment in the accurate meaning of that word, but the means
God employs to correct and discipline His children in dealing with
them on earth. Then we have the fact of the evidence of being His
people, namely, the presence of chastisement. The ultimate end is
that we “may be partakers of his holiness,” which is but another way
of saying that all this disciplinary process is to the end that God may
make us like Himself. What an encouragement, too, that,
chastisement is no evidence of anger or displeasure on God’s part,
but is the strong proof of His love. Let us read the entire directory on
this important subject:
“And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh
unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of
him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth
every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the
father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.
“Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which
corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not
much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own
pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to
be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the
peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised
thereby.”
Just as prayer is wide in its range, taking in everything, so trouble
is infinitely varied in its uses and designs. It takes trouble sometimes
to arrest attention, to stop men in the busy rush of life, and to
awaken them to a sense of their helplessness and their need and
sinfulness. Not till King Manasseh was bound with thorns and carried
away into a foreign land and got into deep trouble, was he awakened
and brought back to God. It was then he humbled himself and began
to call upon God.
The Prodigal Son was independent and self-sufficient when in
prosperity, but when money and friends departed, and he began to
be in want, then it was he “came to himself,” and decided to return to
his father’s house, with prayer and confession on his lips. Many a
man who has forgotten God has been arrested, caused to consider
his ways, and brought to remember God and pray by trouble.
Blessed is trouble when it accomplishes this in men!
It is for this among other reasons that Job says:
“Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth.
Therefore, despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.
For he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his
hands maketh whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles;
yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.”
One thing more might be named. Trouble makes earth
undesirable and causes heaven to loom up large in the horizon of
hope. There is a world where trouble never comes. But the path of
tribulation leads to that world. Those who are there went there
through tribulation. What a world set before our longing eyes which
appeals to our hopes, as sorrows like a cyclone sweep over us! Hear
John, as he talks about it and those who are there:
“What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and
whence came they?… And he said to me, These are they
which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…. And
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

“There I shall bathe my weary soul,

In seas of heavenly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll,
Across my peaceful breast.”
 Oh, children of God, ye who have suffered, who have been sorely
tried, whose sad experiences have often brought broken spirits and
bleeding hearts, cheer up! God is in all your troubles, and He will see
that all shall “work together for good,” if you will but be patient,
submissive and prayerful.
 VII

PRAYER AND GOD’S WORK

“If Jacob’s desire had been given him in time for him to get
a good night’s sleep he might never have become the prince
of prayers we know today. If Hannah’s prayer for a son had
been answered at the time she set for herself, the nation
might never have known the mighty man of God it found in
Samuel. Hannah wanted only a son, but God wanted more.
He wanted a prophet, and a saviour, and a ruler for His
people. Some one said that ‘God had to get a woman before
He could get a man.’ This woman He got in Hannah precisely
by those weeks and months and years there came a woman
with a vision like God’s, with tempered soul and gentle spirit
and a seasoned will, prepared to be the kind of a mother for
the kind of a man God knew the nation needed.”—W. E.
Biederwolf.

God has a great work on hand in this world. This work is involved in
the plan of salvation. It embraces redemption and providence. God is
governing this world, with its intelligent beings, for His own glory and
for their good. What, then, is God’s work in this world? Rather what
is the end He seeks in His great work? It is nothing short of holiness
of heart and life in the children of fallen Adam. Man is a fallen
creature, born with an evil nature, with an evil bent, unholy
propensities, sinful desires, wicked inclinations. Man is unholy by
nature, born so. “They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking
lies.”
God’s entire plan is to take hold of fallen man and to seek to
change him and make him holy. God’s work is to make holy men out
of unholy men. This is the very end of Christ coming into the world:
“For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he
might destroy the works of the devil.”
God is holy in nature and in all His ways, and He wants to make
man like Himself.
“As he who hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all
manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I
am holy.”
This is being Christlike. This is following Jesus Christ. This is the
aim of all Christian effort. This is the earnest, heartfelt desire of every
truly regenerated soul. This is what is to be constantly and earnestly
prayed for. It is that we may be made holy. Not that we must make
ourselves holy, but we must be cleansed from all sin by the precious
atoning blood of Christ, and be made holy by the direct agency of the
Holy Spirit. Not that we are to do holy, but rather to be holy. Being
must precede doing. First be, then do. First, obtain a holy heart, then
live a holy life. And for this high and gracious end God has made the
most ample provisions in the atoning work of our Lord and through
the agency of the Holy Spirit.
The work of God in the world is the implantation, the growth and
the perfection of holiness in His people. Keep this ever in mind. But
we might ask just now, Is this work advancing in the Church? Are
men and women being made holy? Is the present-day Church
engaged in the business of making holy men and women? This is
not a vain and speculative question. It is practical, pertinent and all
important.
The present-day Church has vast machinery. Her activities are
great, and her material prosperity is unparalleled. The name of
religion is widely-spread and well-known. Much money comes into
the Lord’s treasury and is paid out. But here is the question: Does
the work of holiness keep pace with all this? Is the burden of the
prayers of Church people to be made holy? Are our preachers really
holy men? Or to go back a little further, are they hungering and
thirsting after righteousness, desiring the sincere milk of the Word
that they may grow thereby? Are they really seeking to be holy men?
Of course men of intelligence are greatly needed in the pulpit, but
prior to that, and primary to it, is the fact that we need holy men to
stand before dying men and proclaim the salvation of God to them.
Ministers, like laymen, and no more so than laymen, must be holy
men in life, in conversation and in temper. They must be examples to
the flock of God in all things. By their lives they are to preach as well
as to speak. Men in the pulpit are needed who are spotless in life,
circumspect in behaviour, “without rebuke and blameless in the midst
of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom they are to shine in
the world.” Are our preachers of this type of men? We are simply
asking the question. Let the reader make up his own judgment. Is
the work of holiness making progress among our preachers?
Again let us ask: Are our leading laymen examples of holiness?
Are they seeking holiness of heart and life? Are they praying men,
ever praying that God would fashion them according to His pattern of
holiness? Are their business ways without stain of sin, and their
gains free from the taint of wrong-doing? Have they the foundation of
solid honesty, and does uprightness bring them into elevation and
influence? Does business integrity and probity run parallel with
religious activity, and with churchly observance?
Then, while we are pursuing our investigation, seeking light as to
whether the work of God among His people is making progress, let
us ask further as to our women. Are the leading women of our
churches dead to the fashions of this world, separated from the
world, not conformed to the world’s maxims and customs? Are they
in behaviour as becometh holiness, teaching the young women by
word and life the lessons of soberness, obedience, and home-
keeping? Are our women noted for their praying habits? Are they
patterns of prayer?
How searching are all these questions? And will any one dare say
they are impertinent and out of place? If God’s work be to make men
and women holy, and He has made ample provisions in the law of
prayer of doing this very thing, why should it be thought impertinent
and useless to propound such personal and pointed questions as
these? They have to do directly with the work and with its progress
and its perfection. They go to the very seat of the disease. They hit
the spot.
We might as well face the situation first as last. There is no use to
shut our eyes to real facts. If the Church does not do this sort of work
—if the Church does not advance its members in holiness of heart
and life—then all our show of activities and all our display of Church
work are a delusion and a snare.
But let us ask as to another large and important class of people in
our churches. They are the hope of the future Church. To them all
eyes are turned. Are our young men and women growing in sober-
mindedness and reverence, and in all those graces which have their
root in the renewed heart, which mark solid and permanent advance
in the Divine life? If we are not growing in holiness, then we are
doing nothing religious nor abiding.
Material prosperity is not the infallible sign of spiritual prosperity.
The former may exist while the latter is significantly absent. Material
prosperity may easily blind the eyes of Church leaders, so much so
that they will make it a substitute for spiritual prosperity. How great
the need to watch at that point! Prosperity in money matters does not
signify growth in holiness. The seasons of material prosperity are
rarely seasons of spiritual advance, either to the individual or to the
Church. It is so easy to lose sight of God when goods increase. It is
so easy to lean on human agencies and cease praying and relying
upon God when material prosperity comes to the Church.
If it be contended that the work of God is progressing, and that we
are growing in holiness, then some perplexing questions arise which
will be hard to answer. If the Church is making advances on the lines
of deep spirituality—if we are a praying people, noted for our prayer
habits—if our people are hungering after holiness—then let us ask,
why do we now have so few mighty outpourings of the Holy Spirit on
our chief churches and our principal appointments? Why is it that so
few of our revivals spring from the life of the pastor, who is noted for
his deep spirituality, or the life of our church? Is the Lord’s hand
shortened that He cannot save? Is His ear heavy that He cannot