Religion And Development Essay

Religion is an indispensable part of human life and is a means of identification and belonging for a large number of people all over the world. Religion is largely linked to God or the phenomenon of creation and has a spiritual dimension to it which makes it so complex and intriguing to understand. People in this world identify themselves as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and so on. However apart from book religions, there are other flexible community religions that stick to oral learning (for example: traditional communities in Africa) (Haar, 298). Religion not only affects basic everyday decisions like food and clothing, but also determines power relations, gender roles and policy making at local and national levels.

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People would be more receptive to ideas such as improving the status of women, allowing girls to go to school and work if their religion asks them to practice it. Most religious people follow particular rituals only because their religion advocates them and there is an element of fear which prohibits them from doing otherwise. This fact can be utilized to bring about a positive change in attitudes of

Development practitioners and international organizations like the World Bank have overlooked the importance of religion (K Marshall, 27) in their pursuit to achieve goals like poverty alleviation and economic growth in developing countries. Most of the scholarship on international relations ignored religion over the twentieth century (K Marshall, 28). Religion has also been excluded from the largely secular rights based approach (Haar, 297). The conflict between religious ideas and development process also lies in the lack of faith in the roles played by the organizations on either side. For example, as Katherine Marshall explains, the World Bank believed that faith based organizations did not support development goals while faith based organizations did not trust the development institutions and found them incomprehensible (K Marshall,