RT Article
T1 Development as a form of religious engineering? Religion and secularity in development discourse
JF Religion
VO 51
IS 1
SP 19
OP 39
A1 Haustein, Jörg 1975-
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/175264414X
AB The burgeoning literature on religion and development tends to frame development as a project of post-WWII secular modernism and hence postulates a new ‘discovery of religions’ in development discourse. This perception is based on a two-fold forgetfulness of history. On the one hand, the colonial genealogy of development in the ‘civilising mission’ came with a decisive Christian input. On the other hand, the notion of secular modernism conceals the conceptual interconnectedness of religion and secularity in Western debates from the neoclassical secularization theories to the recent ‘return of God’ narratives. Drawing out the contours of a long history of international development, the article argues that scholarship needs to move beyond simple diagnoses of the presence or absence of religion in development discourse, but highlight how the ideology of development has tended to follow narratives about progress and values that are closely connected to discourses about global religion and secularity.
K1 Modernity
K1 Christian Missions
K1 faith-based organization
K1 Return of Religion
K1 Secularization
K1 Colonialism
K1 Religion
K1 Development
DO 10.1080/0048721X.2020.1792049