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Faith Based Organizations
The panel was a very interesting experience for me. I realized the amount of already existing bridges between development work and faith based organizations. However, Imust confess that before the panel started, I thought the main issue would be the fact that FBO’s motivation is not engaged in development work. FBO usually critique the neoliberal economy and appealfor some sort of social justice, aspects which are not that often mentioned in the international development arena.
On the other side, I have always thought that the distance between FBO was basedon the will of secular, international development organizations to avoid strong figurative relationships with religious work.
Although some of these assumptions are still in my head, the panelhelped me realize there are many other streams in the relationship between FBO and secular organizations in the development field. I was surprised by the amount of common grounds detected, especially byImam and Luke. It did call my attention that they both decided to start by explaining the origin of how, in both Islam and Christianity, individuals relate with service, what their motivations are andhow that relates to the history and beliefs of their religion. They both then continued their statement assuming that those individual motivations are scaled up into organizational ones. That isprecisely where I started to question myself.
Imam explained how Islam has a very strong call for service. He even described how the religious texts mandate how much of the annual wealth should begiven to the needy. In the same way, Luke explained how Christianity stands up for the argument that all humans are made in the shape of God. The human community is then, one in which all the partshave equal value. When Abi started her exposition and explained that in World Vision the majority were motivated by faith, although there are some that not, I started to think about the difference...