Inquisitive, relevant, thought-provoking. A blog for reflection on religion as an element of public life, coordinated by the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalisation, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen.
Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, the DRC. In each of these contexts, and numerous others, complex dynamics around politics, resources, religion and power are contributing to the creation of a global crisis of displacement of unprecedented scale, with a record number of 51.2 million people displaced in 2013.[1] Dominant state-centric modes of asylum and protection …
Continue reading "Faith and the Asylum Crisis: The role of religion in responding to displacement"
There's been much discussion recently about faith-based and secular responses to humanitarian emergencies that has attempted to highlight the normative assumptions present in both. Some have even gone so far as to say that secular humanitarianism is a faith of its own in many ways. But while such a description may help to highlight that …
Stories of transformation in development contexts tend to be separated into secular narratives of social transformation, and religious narratives of personal transformation. Yet, as Brenda Bartelink and Erin Wilson discuss in today’s post, reflections from people living in these contexts suggest this division is an artificial imposition that makes little sense of daily lived realities… …
This week marks the 60th anniversary of the coming into force of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Much has changed since the Convention was initially drafted, signed and ratified by states. Increasing globalization, more and more diverse causes of flight and situations requiring protection that often do not fit the …
Continue reading "The UN Refugee Convention 60 Years On – Time to Rethink Approaches to Protection?"
In today’s blog post, Brenda Bartelink reflects on aid in humanitarian emergency and disaster situations, drawing attention to how religion and human rights are lived out and practiced amidst the multiple moral frameworks that influence humanitarian practice. From secular perspectives faith based humanitarianism is questioned because of the potential threat it poses to realizing the …
Continue reading "Humanity in Action: Religion, Human Rights and the Question of Neutrality"
In this post, Brenda Bartelink draws on her research on faith based development organisations in the Netherlands and Uganda, and Dutch initiatives to engage with religion to raise some critical points for reflection on the new US Office for Faith-Based Community Initiatives . Following on from last week’s post on this new office, she points …
In today's post, prof. Manuel A. Vasquez suggests an alternative view to the 'Homo Economicus' in his response to Ella Sebamalai's post on transnational religious networks and faith-based organizations. Rather then calculated rationality, Vasquez argues in favor of a form of contextualized rationality that influences the choices of migrants on both individual and communal level. …
Last week, Prof. Manuel A. Vasquez gave a guest lecture on “Conceptualizing domination and resistance in transnational religious networks” at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies in Groningen. Here Ella Sebamalai engages with the ideas he raised and applies them to practical contexts, in particular faith-based organisations in the contemporary Sri Lankan context. In his …
In her blog-post on the Religion Factor, Cecelia Lynch discusses FBOs in the context of the neoliberal competition on the ‘market’ of international development. In my work on and with development FBOs in the Netherlands I see this illustrated. Changes in government funding for development organizations, has created a highly competitive market in which religious …
Continue reading "Transnational faith based development and the post secular experiment"
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