Religion and Development: The Ambivalence of the Sacred

Abstract

We saw in the Introduction that the modern idea of the ‘developing world’ essentially dates to the post-1945 era. We also noted that, until recently, ideas about development usually overlooked or ignored religion — or even assumed that its influence on the development process and outcomes was inevitably baleful. Moreover it was widely assumed that religion’s decline as a public actor was an essential aspect of modernisation: relegated to a matter of private belief in the developing world, just like it had been in the West (Ver Beek 2000; Van Geest 1998). Governments in the developing world, nearly all secularly orientated, would over time need to gain both strength and confidence and in this context religion was seen either as an irrelevance or as an obstacle to development that had to be overcome. Chapter 1 illustrated however that, far from disappearing from public salience, religion has maintained or even increased its public profile in many parts of the developing world. This is manifested in various ways: on the one hand, growing numbers of mosques, churches, temples and other religious sites and, on the other, in expansion of public religious rituals, including the spectacle of heads of state and other high-ranking politicians frequently making high profile public proclamations or gestures of their religious allegiance (Mayotte 1998; Thomas 2005).

This is a reference to R. Scott Appleby’s, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation (2000). Appleby describes how both terrorists and peacemakers can emerge from the same community, and be followers of the same religion. One kills while the other strives for reconciliation. Appleby explains what religious terrorists and religious peacemakers share in common, what causes them to take different paths in fighting injustice, and how a deeper understanding of religious extremism can and must be integrated more effectively into our thinking about tribal, regional, and international conflict. More generally, the book highlights how religious actors can be motivated by a variety of concerns.