Latter-day Satyagraha

I just participated in the greatest two learning sessions of my life yesterday afternoon – perhaps. Seriously, I learned a lot and thanks to my notes I will be able to share some of the incredible insight and understanding I received yesterday. Yes, it confirms and reinforces the importance of the work done within the LDS faith by sites like theMormonworker.org, LiberalMormon.net, and mormongandhi.com. What follows in this post is the first of two or three posts relating the ideas of Michael Taylor:

Michael Taylor, a former director of Christian Aid and a professor on Social Theology, started his presentation on the role of faith in development by asking all participants to each raise an issue with regards to what we are thinking when we talk about the role of faith in development, and to ask ourselves if there is one question in relation to this topic that we would like to see answered. The following two points were my questions to him:

1. ISSUE: Faith as motivation to work for development – because faith without works is futile.

2. QUESTION: Because the understanding of faith is itself developing and changing, are there beliefs that promote or that prevent positive social change, and if so, what are they?

Michael Taylor went on to say that throughout the course of his work in Christian Aid, he came to wrestle with 5 realities. I have recorded them below. These realities will provide a foundation for his proposition of a new paradigm in the way faith-based organizations work on issues of inequality and injustice.

1. Younger staff members in faith-based organization (FBOs) most often think that faith is, and that churches are, irrelevant to their work:

Staff members in aid organizations, especially younger staff, are most often at the start of their career and because of this organizations like Christian Aid have a very large turnover of staff – even though they don’t go very far away. And even though most of those young staff members are mostly critical to churches, they are nonetheless full of idealism. They often believe in some way that their commitment to the poor is also in some way linked to christianity, and reason that it is in order to work for a church-based organization.

2. There is an extreme institutional separation of both mission and development in the work of northern faith-based aid agencies:

When push comes to shove, development, it is often argued, is an economic, technical or practical discipline. It is better to have an educated agriculturalist to help on issues of agriculture than a christian believer who does not deliver on program goals. Over the years, therefore, it has been necessary for church-based organizations and aid agencies to steer away from issues of faith and focus mainly on issues of development – also in order to attract government funding for their work. Development is about economics, and one should not muddle it with religious ideas.

3. Development is more important than ecumenical (inter-church) work, but why?

If we have partners that are non-religious and that are able to deliver ‘the goods’ (so to speak) both more efficiently and effectively, why should church-based development organizations waste time with faith-based partners that have weak organizational capacity. The tendency has therefore been to try and work with whoever that can demonstrate results and those that do not will eventually fall behind.

4. Even though Christian Aid is a church-based development agency, is there really anything that sets it apart from other aid organizations?

Like most other aid organizations, Christian Aid is engaged in relief work, development work and advocacy with funding from the government. Referring to a book Michael had written: “Not Angels, but Agencies”, he suggests that organizations like Christian Aid are engaged in “development decorated with hymns and with prayers”. The ones that are different are the ones that want to call themselves mission organizations. Yet, in most places now, it has become both unpopular, if not illegal to proselytize if you are engaged in humanitarian work – and that is a good thing, if one takes into account issues of power in emergency situations.

5. Religion is still regarded as a very negative thing – regressive, extreme at times, and most often conservative:

It is divisive. It promotes extremism, as well as conservative attitudes about women, on human sexuality, and regressive ideas on hierarchical decision-making. Religion may even be characterized as irrelevant to the idea of a better world. After September 11th, however, it was no longer seen as irrelevant, but still very much as a negative element. Christianity and religion have been on the wrong side of history: just think of the three C’s (Christianity, Colonialism, and Capitalism). Religion is also always lagging behind – it is seldom at the forefront of progressive thought. A good example is environmentalism! Only when the degradation of the environment is a given, do Christians jump on the wagon and reformulate their beliefs in a way that accommodate new realities that scientists and/or activists have been warning about for a long time. Victorian Christianity was extremely individualistic, promoting a very personal relationship to God, completely separated from communities it was meant to serve and never really committed to social realities. Never has there been more people living under ghastly conditions than during the Victorian era. For these reasons, religion is perceived very negatively by those that are non-religious and even by many of those that are.

Please read the rest of Michael Taylor’s presentation in my next post! In it, we will discuss the differences and similarities between faith AND reason, as well as analyze Christian Aid’s youtube commercial on poverty and present the mind-blowing suggestion for the future of faith in relation to social change!