ethics

WORLD FAITHS DEVELOPMENT DIALOGUE:

AN INTER-FAITH RESPONSE TO POVERTY AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

Send us out in the power of your Spirit

1. World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD)

It was in February 1998, at Lambeth Palace, that the WFDD was born, out of surely one of the most remarkable gatherings that that medieval building has ever hosted. Leaders from nine different religions from all over the world met for a day and a half to discuss the themes of poverty and development among themselves and with senior officials of the World Bank. The conference, chaired jointly by Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, revealed the different use of language and the different ways of thinking, as well as the different visions of the very aims of development of the religious communities and the secular development agencies. Nevertheless, a spirit of enthusiasm was generated by a common commitment to justice and to a better deal for the poor, and it was decided to try to build bridges across the divide.

Since then the focus has been on conceptual work about the meaning of “poverty” and of “development” and on what some of the fundamental criteria for development should be. No attempt has been made to reach a consensus among the faith communities, but WFDD’s booklet, Poverty and Development: An Inter-faith Perspective, highlights much common ground that has been uncovered on many key issues. It is on the basis of these shared principles that inter-faith work has been begun in Tanzania (on national health policies), in Ethiopia (on food security) and in Guatemala, where a group made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims and indigenous spiritual leaders is contributing to national thinking about the values underlying educational curricula.

No-one could pretend that such joint action by the faith communities is easy and, as with any new venture, a dialogue with the powerful multilateral agencies involves risks on both sides. It may be necessary to take a few wrong routes before we discover the right one. But the potential of this unlikely partnership for bringing about real changes has so far kept us together, even if we may do quite a lot of arguing, as we make our way along the road.

2. What can religious communities bring to such a dialogue?

a) Practical engagement with the poor
Religious communities have networks among the poor and a depth of knowledge of the poor which are shared by few others. For thousands of years, faith-based organisations have been, in the best of cases, part of the poor. Many of their leaders are poor themselves, they live in poor areas and have poor friends. Moreover they do not tend to come and go. They stay where they are, firmly rooted.

Poverty is, however, only a “virtue” if it is undertaken as a voluntary witness, and as a way of showing solidarity. There are no grounds in any religion for assuming that hunger and homelessness, for example, are the will of God or a manifestation of the divine order.

It is for this reason that religious organisations have always worked to counteract poverty, by charity originally, but increasingly in our times by providing services, such as health care and education, or programmes to open up economic outlets for peasant farmers, rural and urban artisans, fisherpeople and traders. They can give countless examples of ways in which, mostly at a local level, they have been successful in overcoming some of the most detrimental aspects of poverty. They thus have a key contribution to make to the improvement of the planning and implementation of development programmes (as well as a lot to learn from the planners and technicians of the official development agencies).

But even at this purely practical level, the faith organisations’ strong sense of community and their vision of the ultimately transcendent reality of life mean that their aims go beyond economic improvement or the delivery of social services. Equally important to them are the generation of spiritual fulfillment and inner contentment and also human qualities such as hope and dignity.

Technical evaluators, whose job it is to measure the impact of development work, are hard pressed to include such unmeasurable elements in their assessments, but from the standpoint of the faith organisations, and the people with whom they work, these intangible results may, in the end, be more long-lasting, life-enriching and empowering than the quantifiable result of any project. How often have people said: “My eyes were opened” or “Now I feel brave” rather than mentioning the income they may have gained! Many of the debates within the WFDD arise from these considerations.

b) Vision and values
But in these critical times of globalisation and rapid change, the faith communities are challenged to make a different sort of contribution, too, which reaches beyond their practical work. Today, as much as at any time in history, the world needs prophets who have the insights to understand what is going wrong, the courage to denounce it and the wisdom to make alternative proposals. Religious and spiritual leaders are called upon to be at the cutting edge of all key debates about the nature of the global society we are creating, or should create.

At the heart of this debate is the question of the aims and nature of the development process. Up to now, this has been dominated by economists, who have focused on economic growth, rising income levels and technical progress. The challenge for the faith communities is to help to redress the balance by ensuring a vision beyond what is immediately tangible, - by ensuring that the focus is on people.

A people-centred approach means that the aims of development will depend on an understanding of the very nature of the human being and will include the social, political, cultural, environmental and spiritual, as well as the economic dimensions of life. Moreover people will be in charge of their own development, so that the dreams of the Ethiopian man of abundant water and food for everyone and of “neighbours who are happy and well” or of the Iranian woman who wants her village to become “a place where my household and children (will) be happy and living among happy and prosperous neighbours” will be the aim.
It is not a question of denying people access to the advantages brought by science and technology but of refusing to accept that the price for these must be the exclusion of the majority, the breaking up of social networks, the destruction of the environment and the loss of people’s cultural identity. It is a question of recognising that the means by which development goals are reached are as important as the ends and that the desired ends will be different for different people from different geographical regions and cultural traditions. If growth and progress are about “improvement”, they must be about values, too, and thus about moral choices, which cannot be left to science to resolve.

c) A different relationship between rich and poor
Globalisation, in the sense of the integration of the people of the world into a single economic system, is not a-moral or value-free. The stark contrast between the winners and losers whom it leaves in its wake has, up to now, meant that it is a very long way from reflecting the vision of the religious communities of a world wide family based on relationships of compassion, trust and mutual respect.

It is not a case of evoking guilt among those who live in abundance, but a sense of responsibility towards those who can barely survive. It is a case of recognising where there is a causal relationship between wealth and poverty and refusing to accept that the disparity between the rich and the poor is in any way unavoidable, “natural” or justifiable.

There are many creative ways in which the rich can and do share responsibility with the poor, one of which is the Islamic system of lending money without interest, but allowing the lender to share any profits made. The multiple movements through which people in the North help to create fair trade networks with the South are another example, as are the credit unions and other forms of economies of solidarity created in poor communities in both North and South, often with initial capital from outside organisations.

Many of these initiatives are led or supported by religious groups. They should be more widely publicised as models which can be replicated and “scaled up” so that they reach more people, but in the long run, the success of even these alternatives will depend on radical changes in international trade, financial and economic structures – on a balancing out of the unequal power relations between rich and poor.

d) A different relationship to the natural world
Just as societal relations cannot be value-free, nor can our relationship to nature. The utopia of “development” providing limitless resources to meet unlimited needs is fast being exposed as a dangerous illusion and pressure groups on all sides are pointing out the urgent need to exercise restraint and curb our destructive levels of consumption. There is even a growing understanding that to allow short-term financial profits to take precedence over life is to violate the cosmic order.

It is to this debate about restraint, and the nature of the cosmic order that the spiritual and religious traditions have a great deal to contribute. Whether founded on the belief that the world belongs to the Creator, or on a vision of human beings as an integral part of all creation, the teaching of all faith communities is that we have the responsibility to respect and take care not only of each other but also of the earth.

Religious institutions are still very large property owners in many countries of the world. Slowly but surely, from Bolivia to Northern India, they are beginning to commit themselves to more ecologically sound management of the land in their possession , but their participation at the level of global debates on the environment could still be much more vigorous. Such debates must include a focus on the difficult choices confronting us about bio-technology and genetic modification, about increasing food production at the cost of the long-term erosion of the soil and the daily destruction of scores of species. These are spiritual and moral choices, which need guidance of a kind which goes well beyond the competence of technical expertise alone.

3. Challenges to the world’s religious institutions

a) Engagement with life around us
If the faith communities are to provide guidance to the contemporary world, they must be in a position to be able to act as catalysts for the generation of different insights into the burning issues of our day. The WFDD is an attempt to encourage people of different faiths to do this.

The challenge the Dialogue is facing is how to bring together in a meaningful debate people whose starting points are grounded in very different kinds of knowledge – on one hand scientific analysis, based on proof, and on the other, an understanding which includes but transcends what is perceived - the kind of knowledge which has traditionally been known as wisdom. If the debate is restricted to what is pragmatically immediately useful to the practice of development experts, then the religious institutions will have nothing more to bring than secular agencies, but if the religious institutions are not able to clarify in practical terms what their beliefs mean for the aims and methods of development, their contribution will readily be dismissed as irrelevant philosophising.

b) Power
The WFDD has thrown up starkly the question of how spiritual and religious movements should engage with powerful worldly institutions. Attitudes to power are of particular concern in our day and age, when power is being accumulated in such a way that the decisions of a few corporations, and even individuals, can affect the lives of millions.

In their dialogue with the powerful of this world, it is the task of the leaders of the faith communities to give us practical insights into ways of exerting influence without entering into the worldly power game. Given the human nature of religious institutions, how can the WFDD prevent the subtle imposition of a different agenda of positioning for status, influence and money, an agenda which would soon render hollow any debate about sharing and caring for the dispossessed? Symbolic expressions of genuine concern can be the kinds of places chosen for conferences and meetings, as well as the ability to live generously but simply and to differentiate between respect and deference in the presence of powerful individuals and groups. But the faith communities will only manage to keep a distance from the seduction of power by holding on to the conviction, given to us by the wisdom of all religious traditions, that, because of their transitory and illusory nature, status, wealth and power are goals of little worth.

The question of power has also arisen, for the WFDD, within the religious institutions themselves. When, for instance, is it appropriate for well-known leaders to stand back and give space to practitioners who can speak from first-hand experience about work in poor communities? And another question is whether the Dialogue can be led in such a way as to give expression to the movement as a whole, rather than to a few individuals at the top.

c) Gender relationships
Although all religious traditions preach the virtue of equitable sharing, when it comes to the distribution of power among women and men, few positive examples come to the fore. Social inequity leads to material poverty but it also leads to exclusion from full participation in cultural, political (and often spiritual) areas of life. The exclusion of women from education and opportunities to contribute equally with men in public life is having severe social and economic consequences for populations as a whole. It has been shown, for example, that the inequity in gender relations in Africa has been a major cause of low economic growth in many African countries. It is also, with generalised poverty, one of the main reasons for the population explosion in our times, as well as for the spread of AIDS.

In the light of the changing role of women in the context of globalisation, the world’s religions face the challenge of clarifying how much of the male domination habitual within their communities is based on their vision of the divine order and how much it stems from cultural traditions which could now be considered out of date. And they face the challenge, too, of defining what place women – who, with their children, are among the poorest people of the world – would have in a truly “developed” society.

All gatherings and discussion fora of the WFDD, whether in person or by e-mail, have up to now been largely made up of men but a bird cannot fly with one wing only, as the Mayan people say. Unless a balance is sought, the world is likely to continue to flutter along lop-sidedly, unable to take flight.

d) Need for joint action
In the 21st century’s world of information technology and high-speed transport, sectarianism, often based on ignorance arising from a lack of communication, has no place. The WFDD is not advocating a merger of religious beliefs, on the contrary, the richness of diversity is one of the values the Dialogue has been most promoting. But amid the conflicts and destruction all around us, the religious institutions are called to lead the way, through demonstrating different modes of being, which replace rivalry and adversarial behaviour by mutual respect, co-operation and solidarity. This is one of the main aims of the inter-faith group in Guatemala, where rivalry and competition among different Christian groups as well as between them and people of other spiritual traditions, has been a highly divisive force in that conflict-torn country.

4. Engagement with secular development organisations

a) Campaigning
Hitherto, if people from faith communities have engaged with the International Financial Institutions or multilateral development organisations at all, it has tended to be from the other side of the campaigning fence. A prime example of how religious communities campaigning together can make a difference is the Jubilee 2000 Campaign for the cancellation of the unpayable debt of the most highly indebted poorest countries. Their message has been that the international contracts concerning the payment of debts have led to morally unjustifiable injustice and suffering for millions of people in the world.

There is no doubt that this campaign has contributed to changes in policy, both of the international financial institutions and of individual governments. The changes have been achieved through widespread awareness-raising, complemented by careful research and focused lobbying. Campaigning has thus proved itself to be an effective tool for change.

b) Dialogue
There are many who fear that the strategy of dialogue involves too great a risk of being “co-opted”, or seduced by proximity to the powerful into adopting their agenda. But the WFDD has arisen out of the conviction that the wide-spread injustice, material poverty, violence and environmental destruction in the world around us, is calling for the faith communities to look for new ways of bringing about changes in the situation. We are thus daring to say that the time has come for them to try to enter into a relationship of active dialogue and understanding with the international financial institutions and multilateral and bilateral government development agencies.

This does not mean that there is no longer any room for vigorous campaigning, nor does it mean a “marriage” with the powers that be. But it is only through a serious conversation that people from the religious institutions will be able to respect the concerns of those who are trying to combat poverty from a technical and economic perspective. Only thus will they learn to understand the complexities facing the technicians. And, on the other hand, it is only through interaction with the faith communities that the secular world will ever manage to appreciate the validity of the faith communities’ different way of understanding reality.

c) Suggestions for action
Within such a relationship, the responsibility of the religions is to leave nothing to the “experts” alone. The institutions of global capitalism may be able technically to function efficiently but it is only if they work according to an explicit code of moral values that they will achieve socially acceptable results. Spiritual and religious leaders, together with members of their communities, from both North and South can contribute to practical efforts which are already under way, such as the establishment of codes of conduct for the multinational corporations.

At a national level, partly as a result of the Jubilee 2000 Campaign, the governments of the most heavily indebted and poorest countries are now being asked by the funding agencies to engage with civil society and the private sector in drawing up Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. These are to set targets and priorities for the use of available funds. With their intimate knowledge of the needs of the poorest communities and the moral authority which they possess among the people, religious leaders are called upon to take part in these processes, to ensure that those in most need are the focus of attention. Collaboration with religious communities internationally may be helpful to lend more political weight to their participation and also to provide any information and technical help needed.

It is clear that faith-based development agencies, such as Christian Aid, CAFOD or Muslim Aid, have a key role to play in channelling resources to carefully chosen partner organisations and in providing technical expertise and information, but their legitimacy comes from the support they receive from their faith communities. It is the responsibility of the religious communities themselves to take action to raise awareness about issues such as the injustice of the current trading rules, or the evil and destructive nature of corruption – one of the main causes of poverty today.

Common to all the faith communities, however, is the belief that all these actions for social transformation will only be possible, if individuals manage to undergo a change within themselves. Only by knowing ourselves more deeply, can we reach a truer understanding of the world around us. Although there are, of course, plenty of religious people within the multilateral institutions, as institutions they are not likely to latch onto personal spiritual transformation as the key to combating poverty in the world. Nevertheless they are likely to be willing to work together with the religions in the broader area of personal transformation, which is the task of education – an area of work high on the agenda of the United Nations and the World Bank.

Maybe one of the major tasks facing religious – and humanist – organisations and individuals today is to point out that the International Development Targets, set jointly by multilateral agencies and individual governments, cannot merely be about quantifiable statistics. They must also be concerned with the quality of the changes made. It is not just a question, for instance, of getting all children into school by the year 2015, but of educating them in such a way that they can make a contribution to a fairer and more peaceful society. A judge needs not only excellent knowledge of the law but also an understanding of compassion in order to mete out true justice; a politician will never truly represent the needs of the people, unless he or she combines intellectual ability with a deeply-rooted sense of integrity; and unless scientists have a sense of responsibility, they will end by causing havoc.

The WFDD is only one small initiative among many, whose aim is to bring more justice and peace to the world. The tasks it has set itself of achieving changes on both side of the Dialogue are formidable. On one hand, by focusing on issues of common concern, it hopes to generate greater solidarity among the different religious communities and also to encourage a critical appraisal of how their relationships, both with the powerful and with the powerless, might achieve more beneficial results for the latter. On the other hand, the aim is to raise more awareness within the multilateral development agencies of the need to look beyond the purely pragmatic and to place human beings right at the centre of development policies and practice. If the Dialogue makes any contribution to these goals being met, its efforts will not have been in vain.

Wendy Tyndale
Co-ordinator,World Faiths Development Dialogue
Special thanks for their support and advice to the sisters of the Convent of the Incarnation, Fairacres, Oxford.

Notes

Majid Rahnema, “A Development Worker’s Second Thought”, Compass, Toronto, Nov/Dec, 1995
Chowdhry Kamla, The Meaning of Progress, 20th Anniversary Lecture, Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), December 1999.
See initiative with the Alliance of Religion and Conservation: http://panda.org/livingplanet/kathmandu.cfm
World Bank Special Program of Assistance for Africa, Gender, Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1998.

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