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Jayakaran/Slimbach, Tough Questions on Faith and Development:  A Reflection  135 
 

 

Tough Questions on Faith and Development:   

A Reflection 
 

Ravi Jayakaran and Richard Slimbach 
 

 

The following is a response by Ravi Jayakaran, president of Medical Ambassadors International, to 

the three questions Richard Slimbach poses on faith and development in his article “Asking Tough 

Questions About Transformational Development,” published in this journal in the summer of 2023 

(Slimbach 2023). A follow up comment by Slimbach appears at the end. Both of these contributions 

were part of a webinar on June 27, 2023 discussing that article; the rest of the webinar content, 

consisting of two other responses and discussion around them, are published this issue as well. The 

full recording of the webinar can be found at  

https://vimeo.com/844345288/e970fe8826?share=copy. The specific questions to which Ravi 

Jayakaran responds are: 

 

1. How important is a Christian conversion experience to the formation of deep morality and optimal 

human development? And how valid is the claim that “transformed persons inevitably transform 

society?” 

2. The “capabilities” approach asserts an alternative moral basis for human development than that 

typically associated with the “transformational” paradigm. In what ways do they contradict, 

complete, or even correct each other?   

3. Why should religion be taken seriously by secular development practitioners? 

 

 

Ravi Jayakaran 
Thank you, Rich, for giving us these impossible 

questions to answer in just a few minutes. That is my 

first disclaimer. My second disclaimer is that I will be 

speaking from my perspective, which is looking at a 

framework called survival strategies. We look at survival 

strategies in any community, and the diagram below is 

for a community in Colombia where we did so in an 

urban community. This is what the finished product 

looked like as we completed it. The diagram is in 

Spanish, but it is not important for you to read it. I will 

explain what we need. 

We look at three dimensions of information from 

the community. It is a very participatory process. We 

work with people who know the community well. We 

look first at a problem analysis, second at the sources of 

livelihood, and third is an uncertainty analysis. We take 

this information collected in different places and 

triangulate it with the rest of the community. Then we 

put it together and get these three concentric circles. 

The innermost circle is what the community does. The 

second is what it depends on for outsiders to engage 

with the community. The third one is what they and the 

outsiders connected to the community are able to do, 

but it is outside of their scope of doing and for which 

they bring in integration with the supernatural to cover 

that.  

  

https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/547
https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/547
https://vimeo.com/844345288/e970fe8826?share=copy


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(2), Winter 2024  

Jayakaran/Slimbach, Tough Questions on Faith and Development:  A Reflection  136 
 

From a data analysis point of view, the two inner 

circles are the capacities of the community, and the 

outermost is the vulnerability of the community. The 

HWVA (holistic worldview analysis) is thus a sort of a 

diagrammatic representation of the survival strategy of 

the community. That is the framework I am using. 

There is thus the empirical stuff and then they engage 

with the supernatural. It is an emergence. At an early 

stage, the community did what it could. When it could 

not, it brought in people or engages with people who 

can help them. And then, if the two of them together, 

the empirical components, were not able to do what was 

required for survival in that community, they engaged 

the supernatural. In some countries you would see 

temples dedicated to those areas of gaps, with the size 

giving an indication of how vulnerable the community 

is. 

That is how the connection to the supernatural 

emerges. Now, being human beings, they still want to 

be able to influence that area. And some are sort of 

caretakers of that engagement; they could be the local 

priest, the shaman, and so on. They thus engage with 

this supernatural, which becomes a holistic part of its 

survival strategy. That is the frame, and it is in that 

context that I want to explain the three questions.  

I will start with what is known about the capabilities 

approach, which appears to be mostly from an 

economic perspective, especially considering some of 

the prominent economists involved. It talks about being 

a theoretical framework that looks first at freedom to 

achieve well-being. For the capabilities approach, that 

freedom is of primary moral importance. The second 

thing is that well-being should be understood in terms 

of people's capacity, their capabilities and their actual 

functioning. Looking from that point of view, one might 

assume that once the constraints are removed or 

provisions are made for these areas of vulnerability, 

people would be able to develop a moralistic 

framework to address those gaps. This is too long an 

issue to discuss in this short time, but suffice it to say 

that the supernatural or the spiritual dimension is a 

prominent part the community’s survival strategy.  

When you go into the developing world, you see 

it. They are already holistically integrated between the 

empirical and the supernatural. Christians talk about 

being integrated between the empirical and the 

spiritual. There is a little difference here. The spiritual 

is supernatural, but the supernatural is not necessarily 

spiritual. When it comes to the worldview of 

communities, when there is a gap, they will use anything 

to address it. And they will listen to anyone who will 

address that gap and accord to them the status of being 

spiritual or connected with the supernatural. They do 

not make any distinctions between what is moral and 

what is not; as long as it works, it is god to them. To 

answer the first question then, how important is a 

Christian conversion experience to formation of deep 

morality and optimal human development? Of course, 

many of us here would have a biased opinion that it is 

important for us to look at it from a Christian 

perspective, because there are strong influences in this 

area of gap, and they are all contending with ways to get 

and exploit the community in those specific areas. If we 

just assume that once the ratios of the gap are taken care 

of, the community would naturally turn to a moralistic 

framework, that is a dangerous assumption.  

The second question is “does the capabilities 

approach provide a certain alternative moral basis for 

human development than what is typically associated 

with transformational paradigms? In what ways do they 

contradict, complete, or even correct each other?” And 

one of the things we have discovered in community 

development is how important it is for those with a 

strong moralistic framework to be engaged in that way 

because of the gaps. Again, I say that with a bias, 

because one who is not inclined that way would say 

“How dare you presume that there is a moral gap?” 

And the reason is that in development strategy, as areas 

of vulnerability are removed, we add them to the 

capacity or build the capacity of the community at the 

core to take care of those areas of gap. If we do that, 

then vulnerabilities disappear. They are now more in 

charge of their community and its development. If there 

is no moralistic framework, what is going to happen is 

they are going to completely exclude the supernatural 

or spiritual dimension and become strongly secular and 

humanistic in their approach. We see this happening in 

many communities. The more they control and are 

able to take care of, the more they push or centrifuge 

God out from their world. This is a tough area to deal 

with. The caution here is we need to see that 

centrifuging the moral and supernatural out of their 

lives is a danger.  

Let us return to the third question: “Why should 

religion be taken seriously by secular development 

practitioners?” It is all linked to our aim to integrate the 

empirical and the spiritual. I also clarified that the 

spiritual is supernatural, but the supernatural is not 

necessarily spiritual. Therefore, as we move towards 

transformational development, we need to keep this 

frame with a moralistic, supernatural understanding, 

which of course is a Christian bias. In the Christian 

approach we talk of engagement with God as the means 

for it to happen, something we have seen over and over. 

The communities in the developing world are 

integrated between the empirical and the supernatural. 

We are conscious of that, but this has led to a great deal 

of slavery to that area of vulnerability, if not guarded 

against.  

 

 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(2), Winter 2024  

Jayakaran/Slimbach, Tough Questions on Faith and Development:  A Reflection  137 
 

Richard Slimbach 
Ravi spoke of the potential for the spiritual 

dimension to drop out in purely rational or humanistic 

models of development, as forwarded by people like 

Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. But even though 

they do not speak much of spirituality outside of a 

collective basis for bringing people together, codifying a 

collective moral sense that includes justice seeking, nor 

speak much about the benefit of religion, they are 

nevertheless very much akin in their discussion of 

practical reason in relationship to natural law theory 

forwarded by Aquinas and C.S. Lewis in The Abolition 

of Man that the moral sense or the moral framework is 

inherent to human nature rather than necessarily 

imposed externally through a religious system. That is, 

human beings have the capacity for reason, for an 

innate moral sense, conscience, free will, and the 

pursuit of truth and happiness. Aquinas would say that 

would ultimately give them the potential to lead them 

to union with God. Of course, those who do not have 

naturalistic assumptions would not necessarily perceive 

that as the “end,” but I do not think the capability model 

is shorn of a moral framework.  

 

References 
 

Lewis, C.S. 1943. The Abolition of Man. London: 

Oxford University Press. 

Slimbach, Richard. 2023. “Asking Tough Questions 

About Transformational Development.” Christian 

Relief, Development, and Advocacy (4)2: 51-63. 

 
 

 

Ravi I. Jayakaran has long-term leadership experience 

in international poverty reduction and strategic 

programing. He joined Medical Ambassadors 

International in May 2017 as the President. He is also 

the Catalyst for Integral Mission for the Lausanne 

Movement, and a Partner of The Barnabas Group. 

Jayakaran has worked in senior management positions 

in the corporate sector, International NGOs—

including World Vision International, the Asian 

Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations 

Development Program (UNDP). He has lived and 

worked long term in India, Cambodia, China and the 

US and provided technical support in more than 23 

countries. Ravi and his wife Vimla live in Ripon, CA. 

 

Author email: ravi@med-amb.org  

 

Richard Slimbach is Professor Emeritus of Global 

Studies at Azusa Pacific University. He founded 

APU’s Global Studies Program and co-founded the 

MA in Transformational Urban Leadership 

(MATUL), which focuses exclusively on the planet’s 

one billion slum dwellers. Slimbach holds a PhD in 

comparative and international education and is the 

author of Becoming World Wise and The Art of 

World Learning. He lives with Leslie, his life partner 

of 40 years, and their two children in Monrovia, 

California. 

 

Author email: rslimbach1@gmail.com  
 

mailto:ravi@med-amb.org
mailto:rslimbach1@gmail.com

