Religion and the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Religion is a major cultural, social, political, and economic factor in many official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries and understanding religious dynamics and the role of faith communities and actors is crucial for sustainable development. While faith communities have endured and thrived the world over, a wave of modernist, secular social change dominated development practice and discourse from the second half of the 20 th century. It was assumed that religion had become outdated and would eventually disappear. However, faith communities, actors, and assets continue to occupy a critical space. Accordingly, development discourse and practice have seen a new wave indicating a turn to recognizing the significant role of religion.Many faith actors have also been involved in development policy, including a commitment to join the global collaboration around achieving the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two factors underpin this paper. First, the process to decide the SDGs involved the largest civil society consultation ever held in the UN's history. Second, over the past decade or so increased attention has been paid to the collaboration between faith actors and secular global development actors. Considering these two factors we wanted to better understand the role that faith actors are playing in the SDG process. The paper is based upon findings from a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-"Keeping Faith in 2030: Religions and the SDGs"-that has been led by the three authors of this paper.

The role of faith-based health professions schools in Cameroon’s health system

“…The findings echoes research that shows that there are assumptions about faith-based health providers, and that donors and the Ministry of Health often engage with these actors without fully understanding them (Herzig Van Wees, 2019;Jones & Petersen, 2011;Olivier & Wodon, 2012;Tomalin et al, 2019). The isolation of the schools described in this study further confirms findings on the challenges of fueling a parallel system through the engagement of faith-based entities (Boulenger & Criel, 2012;Green et al, 2002).…”

Religions, poverty reduction and global development institutions

“…However, a key question facing faith-based organizations and other faith actors involved in the SDG consultations, and now in their interpretation and implementation, is the extent to which their voices have been incorporated, or whether the SDG framework is too far removed from the needs of local communities to reflect their interests, including the way that faith shapes understandings of and approaches to 'development'. Early findings from a current research project 'Keeping Faith in 2030: religions and the Sustainable Development GoaIs' suggest that the picture is complex and varied, with some faith actors (i.e., religious minorities in India) viewing the SDGs as a tool to build civil society and hold the state accountable for providing equitable services and protecting the rights of the most marginalized, while others are critical of the fact that their religious identities are being sidelined within their engagement with the SDGs in international forums (Tomalin et al, 2017(Tomalin et al, , 2018). I will return to this latter point below, as it relates to one of the key concerns underpinning this paper: whether engagement with faith actors by global development institutions is really evidence of the 'desecularization of development' or of the emergence of 'postsecular development praxis', or if it is an instrumentalization of faith that is being used to serve secular neo-liberal goals.…”

“…Key global poverty reduction initiatives such as the UN Millennium Development Goals, which ran from 2000-2015, increasingly drew faith actors into their activities and faith-based organizations (FBOs) couched their work in terms of these shared global goals. More recently the new UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030, which were arrived at following the largest public consultation ever held in the UN's history, have involved faith actors more closely throughout the whole process, including in the final discussions in New York about what the goals and the sub-goals would consist of (Dodds et al, 2017;Tomalin et al, 2017Tomalin et al, , 2018. 2 The main significance of this paper is that it brings together a discussion of this 'turn to religion' with theories from the sociology of religion to better understand the nature of the current engagement between religions and global development institutions, and the implications that this has for poverty reduction and other development and humanitarian initiatives.…”

How do pre-service physics teachers see sustainability issues? A case at an Islamic University in Indonesia

“…Previous research shows how religious teachings influence sustainable development practices such as agriculture [25], economics [26] and solid waste management [27]. The rise of interest in religion in the context of international development must be welcomed [28] because understanding the dynamics of religion and the role of communities and religious actors is crucial for sustainable development [29]. Although disjunction implied by "religion and development" has been considered wrong, at least we can still make a meaningful relationship between the two with a new disjunctionin namely: "religion in development," [30].…”